Storm Clouds Rising, Part 1

Storm Clouds Rising

Setting the Stage for the Rise of Antichrist and the End of the Age

A new look at Ezekiel 38-39

The Western World has feared it since the end of World War II—the threat of a Russian attack on the free world. Though uneasy allies with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union against Hitler’s Third Reich, Great Britain and the United States never enjoyed good relations with the Russians, and following the war, Stalin made it his clear intention to impose Communistic ideals upon Eastern Europe. This quickly escalated into the Cold War of the 20^th Century—no outright confrontations but a long build-up to the conflict that never came.

Cold War relations were punctuated with the Berlin Airlift, the Korean and Viet Nam Wars against the spread of Communism, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, and multiple instances of spy and counter-spy on both sides of the undeclared war. Children of the 50s and 60s grew up with the constant cloud of a Communist nuclear strike against American shores, complete with bomb shelters and safety drills. But such an attack never came.

One of my mentors was in the Navy in the 1960s, serving onboard two submarines, the latter of which had nuclear launch capability. As the targeting officer, it was his job to plot the launch codes for strike against numerous Soviet targets in the event of a nuclear attack on our country. The nuclear attack never came.

My Dad was stationed on the German-Czechoslovakian border with the 82^nd Airborne Division in August 1968 when more than 5,000 Soviet tanks and a half-million Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. He honestly believed that he was going to die defending Germany against a Soviet Invasion, but that attack did not come. Years later, as a preacher and student of prophecy, he often taught on the subject of a future war with Russia, usually under the title, “The Russians are Coming!” In the last years of his life, he was privileged to visit Russia on three different occasions to preach the gospel, and he saw hundreds come to the Lord during that time. But one of the things he shared with many of his translators was this—one day, Russia was going to attack Israel and lose five-sixths of its army to the wrath of God. To date, that attack has not yet come.

For decades, prophecy teachers and scholars have believed that Russia would one day launch an attack on Israel in fulfillment of the prophecies found in Ezekiel 38-39. In the 19^th Century, many predicted the rise of a Russian empire that would shake the world when Russia was an impotent and backward Asian nation. Then the Communists seized power during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Russia became a superpower that rivaled the United States. But corruption and the innate desire of humanity for freedom led to the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, we have watched for a Communist Revival in Russia that will reunite all the former Soviet Republics into a great empire. It hasn’t happened yet, but the question is this: Does Russia have to rise again in order for the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39 to be fulfilled? We are going to look at that question in detail and hopefully find a satisfactory answer in the Scriptures.

Storm clouds are rising to the north of Israel, but I contend that the threat we need to be watching now will not come from the Communists, but from a growing alliance between the various republics of the former Soviet Union and the Islamic nations of Northern Africa, South Central Asia and the Middle East.