Two prominent Bible Prophecy identity theories are going down in flames these days and recent events are underscoring the facts that Iraq cannot be Mystery Babylon and Russia can not be Magog of the Ezekiel 38/39 prophecies. How so? Let's look at the latest developments of each separately.

Civil War In Iraq
But Its Unofficial

The first theory we'll look at is the idea identity theory of Mystery Babylon being rebuilt in Iraq or that Iraq is Mystery Babylon. The newly developing sectarian violence in Iraq is showing us that such developments mean that there can be no such super-power arising from that land for many generations to come at best.

If we assume that Bible Prophecy is near fulfillment, then we have to rule out Iraq or its land as being the place for a rebuilt Babylon of Bible Prophecy. We are basing this argument on empir-ical grounds alone. However, we've noted  in previous articles that textually, it is impossible for a Mystery Babylon to be located in Iraq due to 59 textual reasons within the written text which tell us otherwise. Most notably is the Messianic prophecies that contradict the theory that Iraq is Babylon.

Messianic prophecies indicate that much of Iraq including the ancient site of Babylon will be part of Christ's millennial kingdom. The Babylon prophecies however state that Babylon the nation and not just the city (meaning Iraq) will be destroyed and never inhabited. Indeed, it will fall under the waves of the sea/ocean. That can't happen for Iraq because it is to be populated by Jews and lived in because of the Messianic Prophecies stating it will be part of Christ's kingdom fulfilling the prophecies given to Abraham, Moses and Joshua. But we digress.
 
Our point is to note that events in Iraq now underscore the utter foolishness of the theory that Iraq is the future Super-Babylon of Prophecy. Why? Because Iraq is really in civil war now and some experts are beginning to openly admit it, despite protests from the Bush administration to the contrary.
 
So we ask: When is a civil war a civil war?
 
Technically, an internal conflict within a nation is only called a civil war when governments recognize it as a civil war. In the case of Iraq, there is no real government and the real authority is an outside nation (America) whose leadership has a desperate political need not to admit that astate of civil war now exists inside Iraq.
 
SpaceWar.com is a website of military and intelligence analysts who, like a baseball umpire, call events as they see them. That website is now admitting and proving that what is now happenning in Iraq really constitutes a civil war.

Space.com notes that many other conflicts in history, including recent history have been
labelled civil war with far few casualties and violence than Iraq has experienced.

Yes, Iraq is indeed in civil war and the entity we've known as Iraq is about to shatter into
pieces, leaving the area to fester much like central Africa without the ability to become a
Super-Babylon of Bible Prophecy. But we already knew that anyway. The question is when will
the Charles Dyers and Tim LaHaye's of the Christian world of Bible Prophecy finally realize
this? Probably not until its too late.
 
For Space.com's article proving the point that Iraq, for all practical purposes is now experiencing civil war - click here.
 

Now let's examine the second theory that is going down in flames.
That would be the theory that Russia is Magog.
 
Is Russia Magog?

News Headline:

"Russia Abandons Military Parity With America"

Here's the story: [Corroborating link]
 
Russia's top military leaders admitted on Monday that Russia can no longer remain equal with the USA. Russia is (and has been for some time) abandoning its military role as a force to be reckoned with, and is apparently attempting to shift focus on becoming an economic power through its vast natural resources, especially energy. Monday's announcement merely confirms the reality many of us have known for some time now.
 
Russian leaders noted that NATO outnumbers Russia, 4 to 1, in number of soldiers in uniform. Russia's top general says that Russia's only ability is to defend itself from invasion and has no desire to seek adventure outside its borders. The reality is that it couldn't do so anyway, even if it wanted to.
 
Please note that there are MORONS out there in the world who are most likely Illuminists or are shills for the Illuminists that are spreading fears that Russia and China are on the verge of attacking the United States and destroying America. Is J.R. Nyquist and Illuminist or an unknowing shill for the Illuminist agenda? Has Nyquist been fed disinformation and repeating it or is he following instructions as an agent of the New World Order? One thing we know, that he and others like himself are only promoting the NWO agenda whether they realize it or not.
 
Nyquist and others still beat the drum promoting a Red Menace from Russia and China threat-ens America.
 
The China Threat?
This is complete and utter nonsense. Neither nation has any such capabilities at this time or any time soon. Perhaps China will have such a capability in the next 20 years, but not now. They have a hard time creating anything new that has any quality or reliability to it. They are good however at copying things. Sometimes of good quality and sometimes of inferior quality.
 
The Russian Threat?
Russia's military has rusted out due to a lack of money and spirit. The Russian people  have discovered capitalism and materialism. They like those ideas far better than militarism, which in itself was primarily a concept of Russian leadership not the ordinary Russian citizen.
 

How Does This Affect Bible Prophecy Interpretation?
 
At this point in time, Russia does not have the ability to realistically launch an invasion of Israel with the hope that it could accomplish anything except disaster. We don't see Russia as being Magog of Ezekiel 38, 39. We dropped the identity theory that Russia was Magog about 20 years ago when our deeper research showed that Hal Lindsey and others dogmatically claimed Russia was Magog.

The facts simply do not support such a conclusion. AO featured a 2-part article on this subject a year or two ago. You may want to read or re-read it again for why we come to such a conclu-sion, from strictly a textual standpoint.

What we are witnessing now is empirical evidence that merely confirms our own thinking and disavows the theory dogmatically asserted by Lindsey and others that Russia is absolutely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, Russia.
 
If we didn't know better, and maybe we don't, we'd wonder if Hal Lindsey was merely a shill for the Illuminists and their NWO agenda. The last thing the Illuminists want is for a vast majority of true Christians to recognize in advance who the key players are in their vast conspiracy to bring the Antichrist to power. This would include the Illuminists desire for Christians to be misinformed about the true identity of Magog and Gog - its leader. They also apparently don't want Christians to realize who is Mystery Babylon. Again, they don't want American Christians to wake up and try to stop their plans. They also don't want Christians to know about them-selves either.

As long as Christians remain ignorant of Satan's truly key players Christianity can only be tossed too and fro by the whims of Satanic forces. That is what is happening now particularly with Christians in America. Many of our readers from around the world contact us asking
why it is so apparent to belivers outside the United States that America is Babylon, yet most American Christians can't seem to see it.

We guess the old saying is correct about not seeing the forest for the trees.
 
We, at AO see the Mystery Babylon identity all the time as being America.
 
We have also been made aware by some of our readers that the prophetic spiritual blindness is intensifying among the online Bible Prophecy Discussion Boards/Forums. This is sad. Some forums, such as Rapture Ready have become heretical in their attempts to bannish anyone who proposes alternate theories on Mystery Babylon and other identity theories in Bible Prophecy. We don't really pay any attention to such boards per se, but we are disturbed to hear
of such things.

One thing we need to remember is this. Theories are theories but there are times when develop-ing events show that a given theory is absolutely invalid. Such is and has been the case all along with regards to the theory that Iraq is Mystery Babylon. It is a theory that Satan wants everyone to swallow, while the real Babylon remains unrecognized by most of God's people. We think and theorize that America is Mystery Babylon, but we do caveat that statement by noting that we could be wrong. We don't think so, but its possible. There is no absolute proof in scripture for explicitly identifying who is this Mystery Babylon nation, and it is a nation not a city and not a religion per se. Some say its an organization, we'd give that notion a greater likelihood than that its merely a city or a relgious denomination. But we digress.

The idea that Russia is Magog is simply a theory. The text is not explicit. It could be a different nation, such as Turkey that is Magog. We tend to hold to such a view. This researcher has not ruled out the Russia = Magog theory, it is becoming more obvious with each passing year that Russia simply doesn't fit the description and the alleged linguistic evidence linking Meshech with Moscow is an absolute joke and fails the scholarship test dramatically in light of actual
empirical evidence to the contrary. Again, we won't rule out completely the idea that Russia is Magog, but for all practical purposes, that theory has been going down in flames for a decade or more and Monday's statement only underscores that fact. See our articles on the Gog-Magog subject here - Part 1,  Part 2.
 
One final thought on these develoments. We have noted in the past that many people claiming to be "prophets" have predicted that Russia and China would attack destroy the United States. In fact, one of them, Dumitru Duduman false predicted the attack would come at different times in the 1990s and certainly before the year 2000

That wasn't the only false prophecy subject Duduman was wrong about. He also falsely prophesied his wife's taking over his ministry. She died weeks after the prophecy. He also falsely prophesied that he would die before she would. She died first. Combine these false prophecies with the numerous false prophecies about America's destruction and we can conclude Duduman was a false prophet. Of course we knew that even before hand because Duduman proclaimed a False Gospel. His gospel message was a "works plus faith" message - much like the message
proclaimed by Judaizers to the churches in Galatia which prompted the Apostle Paul to write his Epistle to the Galatians. In chapter one verses six through nine,
The Apostle Paul makes it quite clear that Duduman's gospel is not only false but damnable and those who think it or proclaim it - "let them go to hell" is the most literal translation from the Greek text itself. It's original text force of the words is weakend in the KJV by the less emphatic "let them be accursed."

Duduman was not alone. He had other false prophets also making similar claims. Some alleged "prophets" saw missiles launched from submerged submarines off the coasts of America, destroying America. They were Russian submarines. These "prophets" again have been proven false on a variety of other prophecies for the most part.
 
So, the news on Monday from Russia's generals again underscores another aspect of Bible Prophecy and False Prophecies for that matter. What more can develop in 2006?
 
Let's see what else 2006 brings us. So far, the year seems to be shaping up to be a critical, turning-point year in Bible Prophecy if event trends continue.

 

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