Gog & Magog: Fulfilled or Future?
By Robert E. Cruickshank, Jr. (March 27, 2026)
[6 ½ -Minute Read Time]
As readers of my blog know, Ezekiel 38-39 (the Gog of Magog prophecy) was fulfilled in the events of the book of Esther. The exegetical and historical evidence is overwhelming in this regard. For the details, the reader can go to my ten articles on the topic, Gary DeMar’s book on it, Phil Kayser’s 25-point summary, Jeff Durbin’s short video, and my 2023 conference messages here and here.
Gog and Magog show up again in the Bible in Revelation 20:8. There, John is recycling the core theme or idea behind the Gog and Magog imagery and applying it to the new situation that he’s writing about. This is no different than his references to Balaam (Rev. 2:14), Jezebel (Rev. 2:20), Sodom and Egypt (Rev. 11:8), and Babylon (Rev. 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:2, 10, 21). For more on this, the reader can go to my article here.
So, Ezekiel 38-39 was fulfilled in the book of Esther, and John is using the Gog and Magog imagery in a manner similar to these other Old Testament examples.
With that said, pop-prophecy pundit Joel Richardson doesn’t see it that way.
Fear Today, Gog Tomorrow
For Richardson, Ezekiel wasn’t prophesying about the events of Esther’s time, but about the events of the end times. He says, “Ezekiel 38-39 is one of the most critical and most essential end time passages to grasp.”[1] For the pop-prophecy pundits, Ezekiel 38-39 is just another passage used to prop up their doomsday version of the end times, coming straight at us from the headlines.
The point of Richardson’s article, “Ezekiel 38, 39 – The Battle of Gog and Magog,” is to dispute other prophecy pundits who think that Gog is not the Antichrist but some other end times bad guy. So, it seems that they can’t even decide among themselves where exactly the figure of Gog fits in their end-times scheme.
From a purely Biblical standpoint, Gog was Haman the Agagite from the book of Esther, and again the reader can refer to the above-mentioned resources for more information on that.
For my purposes here, I simply want to focus more generally on a few of Richardson’s salient points where he attempts to push Ezekiel 38-39 far into the distant future – effectively far removing the prophecy from its own historical context and setting.
This is not an easy task since the article is basically a conglomeration of randomly written notes, which Richardson himself admits “are not the best, easiest or the most complete way to communicate regarding a particular subject.”
But I’ll try my best.
Zechariah 14:12-13
One of the first things Richardson does is the hopscotch hermeneutic. This is typical of pop-prophecy. For the most part, the prophecy pundits spend very little time in any one text dealing with the context of that text. A plethora of unrelated passages are strung together in a zigzag exegesis and cobbled up to support their pre-packaged end-times narrative.
In keeping with this trend, Richardson immediately dislodges from the text that his article is supposed to be addressing (i.e. Ezekiel 38-39) and makes a beeline to Zechariah 14.
Under the heading “Antichrist,” Richardson summarizes and references the passage. He says, “On that day men will be stricken by the LORD with great panic. Each man will seize the hand of another, and they will attack each other. -Zechariah 14:12-13.”
But Zechariah 14 is not talking about the Antichrist, or Gog of the land of Magog, the end of the world, or in this case even the events in the book of Esther. As I point out in my article on this passage, these verses are about the circumstance surrounding the events of the Roman-Jewish War. Zechariah gives a fitting depiction of the infighting within the city as the Zealot factions and their respective followers were at odds with one another.
Based on the works of Josephus, Michael McGoodwin summarizes the situation inside the city:
“Simon’s partisans and John and his Zealots continue to fight each other, even when the Romans are closely encamped. Josephus states that Jerusalem’s internal divisions destroyed the City, and the Romans destroyed the internal divisions.”[2]
My point is that Zechariah 14 has nothing to do with Ezekiel 38-39, and neither passage has anything to do with the Antichrist – which is only mentioned in the epistles of John, incidentally. In essence, Richardson is stringing together not two, but three unrelated texts and completely ignoring the context of each, i.e. Ezekiel 38-39, Zechariah 14, and the epistles of John.
Such is the methodology of pop prophecy.
Ezekiel 38:20
Ezekiel 38:20 says, “all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence.” According to Joel Richardson, this must mean that Ezekiel 38 is speaking about the Parousia (presence) or Second Coming of Christ.
The problem is that this same language is used with regard to God’s judgment-coming against ancient Egypt, and this certainly wasn’t referring to the Second Coming of Christ:
“Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt;
The idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence,
And the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them” (Isa. 19:1).
Like Ezekiel 38:20, this passage contains both a reference to God’s presence and the idea of trembling at His presence.[3]
Isaiah goes on to say that the Lord will “incite Egyptians against Egyptians…city against city, and kingdom against kingdom”(Isa. 19:2). As John Watts notes, these “are apt descriptions of the situation in Egypt of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.”[4] Watts cites J. H. Breasted who said that the internal Egyptian “struggles among themselves now led to the total dissolution of the Egyptian state.”[5]
During Isaiah’s time, Egypt would be conquered by the Ethiopian King, Shabaka, who would then rule Egypt “from about 722 to 707 BCE.”[6]
Watts continues:
“Internal chaos leads to Egypt’s impotence as it had to Judah’s (cf. chap. 3). God turns them over to a strong tyrant ruler from outside the realm. For Judah that was Assyria (7:17). For Egypt it is Ethiopia’s new ruler, Shabaka. Their panic leads them to useless necromancy (cf. 8:19-22).”[7]
All this is to say that we have language very similar to Ezekiel 38:20 in Isaiah 19:1, and the language clearly does not refer to the Second Coming of Christ and/or the end of history in the Isaiah passage. It in fact refers to something that already happened in history, long ago.
If the concepts of trembling at God’s presence can refer to such historical judgments, then the concept of trembling at God’s presence does not necessitate that any given passage must be referring to the Second Coming. If Isaiah 19:1 is a historical judgment coming, then Ezekiel 38:20 can certainly be a historical judgment coming.
In short, this language can clearly refer to a judgment-coming of God in history rather than the Second Coming of Christ at the end of history.
Facing the Text
In order to buttress his contention that Ezekiel 38:20 must be referring to the Second Coming, Richardson hopscotches to 2 Thessalonians 2 and then latches onto the word translated “presence” in this verse and tries to equate it with the Parousia of Christ. He writes,
“And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming (parousia lit. presence). (2 Thessalonians 2:8). Presence = Panim: Means face, or in front of. Actual presence. The actual face of God.”
Once again, we have unrelated texts being tethered together to weave into the tapestry of pop-prophecy. As I’ve pointed out in two previous articles (here and here), 2 Thessalonians 2 has to do with the Zealot rebellion against Rome once the restraining force of the official Jewish leadership was taken out of the way. If we are free to randomly plug one passage into another, we can make the Bible say whatever we want it to say – and many do!
That aside, the use of the word “face” in a judgment-coming passage in no way necessities that the particular passage is speaking about the Second Coming. In the context of the destruction of Jerusalem the first time, in 586 BC at the hands of the Babylonians, Jeremiah says,
“You shall also say to this people, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. 9 He who dwells in this city will die by the sword and by famine and by pestilence; but he who goes out and falls away to the Chaldeans who are besieging you will live, and he will have his own life as booty. For I have set My face against this city for harm and not for good,” declares the Lord. “It will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon and he will burn it with fire” (Jer. 21:8-10).[8]
In a nutshell, the use of “presence” or “face” in judgment language does not require a reference to the Second Coming. Such language regularly describes temporal judgments, not the end of history.
Sound Interpretation Cures Crazy Speculation
To sum it up, hopscotch hermeneutics and zigzag exegesis lead to forced connections and forged interpretations.
Richardson pushes Ezekiel 38–39 into the distant future by importing ideas from elsewhere in Scripture, but the texts he appeals to consistently refer to past historical judgments themselves, and not the end of history.
In the end, the Biblical Gog remains fixed on the pages of the past, despite the sellers of sensation parading him about in their speculations about the world’s end.
Being familiar with our Bible and past history is the antidote to drinking the Kool-Aid of pop-prophecy.
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[1] Ezekiel 38, 39 The Battle of Gog and Magog | Joel’s Trumpet https://bit.ly/41uYOtx
[2] Flavius Josephus: The Jewish War (Bellum Judaicum) | Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 2002 https://bit.ly/40U9Pof
[3] The word for “presence” in both passages is pe’nah, meaning “face.” In Ezekiel 38:20, the word for “tremble” is ra’ash, which means “to shake.” In Isaiah 19:1, the word for tremble is nu’a, which also means “to shake.”
[4] John D.W. Watts, Word Biblical Commentary 24: Isaiah 1-33 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), 308.
[5] J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt (New York: Scribner’s, 1905), 536; Q: Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 308.
[6] Shabaka king of Egypt | Britannica https://bit.ly/3O2fPIv
[7] Watts, Isaiah 1-33, 308.
[8] Thanks to Daniel E. Harden for pointing out this reference to me.
