Today I'm going to address Gog and Magog in Revelation chapter 20 verses 7 through 8.

There we read, Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison

and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth,

Gog and Magog to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.

This passage is bewildered many students of the Bible.

They understand that it portrays the world rebelling against the Messiah

and his government at the end of the millennium. They understand that this rebellion is

instigated by the devil who is released for a short while after the thousand years.

What they don't understand is the typology. Why Gog and Magog? Why not one of the classic

illustrations of the ungodly world system

that we are already familiar with from the pages of Scripture, like Babylon or Egypt or

Assyria? The answer to this question not only sheds light on this passage, but it sheds

light on history and prophecy. The use of Gog and Magog at the end of the thousand years

can only be understood when viewed against the backdrop of two important components of world

history, God's appointment of the world empires to exercise dominion over Israel in the known

world, and the long history of Magog's resistance to this hegemony.

Now, God's four appointed superpowers over the times of the Gentiles are the Babylonians,

the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. These are detailed in the second chapter of Daniel,

where they are represented by the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream.

These nations were given exclusive empire authority over Israel in a known world.

At the end of the chapter, the rock not cut out by human hands, strikes the image in the

feet, and completely destroys the entire image. This represents the destruction not only of the

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