Week 33 Ezekiel 39
Ezekiel forecast that in the distant future Gog (a powerful enemy of Israel) would be defeated & annihilated. Ezekiel gave six details about the massive post-war clean-up operation:
1. A burial site would be designated on land east of the Dead Sea
2. An existing highway would have to be rerouted around the cemetery
3. The district – ‘Valley of the Travelers’ – would be renamed ‘Valley of Gog’s Hordes’
4. It would take seven months to bury most of the bodies
5. Special crews would continue searching for the remaining skeletons
6. A town named Hamonah would be near the cemetery.
For Ezekiel’s prophecy to be true the details would have to come true. Unfortunately for Gog those details would come too late to be of any personal use. But surviving observers could test Ezekiel’s forecast: here are six predictions. Do they actually happen?
Ezekiel was confident they would and that: from that time on the people of Israel will know that I am the Lord their God. Testing leads to Knowing.
It might be splitting-hairs but it’s probably safer to say that people “could know” or “might know” the Lord. Knowing-the-Lord wouldn’t be automatic or mandatory. I think it’s a good bet that some people might just look back at Gog and figure Ezekiel had his lucky horseshoe with him. And so those people wouldn’t end up knowing-the-Lord and the Gog Prophecy would be wasted on them. But that’s how prophecy seems to works.
Note: see the forecast in Ezekiel 39:9-16. Quote from 39:22 (NLT)