PROPHECY: The Destruction Of Damascus

A coming Nuclear War In The Middle East?

Many people will dismiss this post because they have convinced themselves that God is dead.  This is too bad.  I pray there is still time left for them to realize the error of their ways, to repent and to seek God and His Son.   God is real, He lives, and so does His Son.  And it is only by accepting Christ as our personal Savior and by placing our trust in Him that we can be saved from ourselves.  God is good and because He loves us and wants us to know Him, He has left signs for us to discover.  It is by coming to understand these signs that we discover and come to understand what humans can know and understand about God.  One of these signs is prophecy.  It is through prophecy that we can be sure Jesus is the Messiah.

Now, I don’t make any claims to being any sort of ‘expert’ on Scripture or Biblical prophecy.  I am no better than anyone else who studies God’s word: I depend on His Grace and the Holy Spirit to guide me and give me understanding.  But I do know this: there are some prophecies that – if nothing else – should have us paying closer attention to the things of God and God’s kingdom.  For example:

Do you know that Isaiah 17 tell of the destruction of Damascus?

Isaiah 17

New International Version (NIV)

A Prophecy Against Damascus

17 A prophecy against Damascus:

“See, Damascus will no longer be a city
    but will become a heap of ruins.
² The cities of Aroer will be deserted
and left to flocks, which will lie down,
with no one to make them afraid.
³ The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
and royal power from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be
like the glory of the Israelites,”
declares the Lord Almighty.

After foretelling that Israel will once again become a nation in chapter 37, Ezekiel then tells of a battle against the new nation of Israel.  Ezekiel 38-39 is about the Battle of Gog and Megog.  To the best understanding of scholars of Bible prophecy, the nations that will attack Israel in this war will consist of an alliance between the region that is now Russia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the Sudan, Libya, Easter Europe, South Eastern Europe/Turkey and various other nations.

Now, I do not know if the destruction of Damascus is related to the Battle of Gog and Megog, or to any of the other prophecies in this post, but I find a few common threads running between them that – to me – suggest they are related, at least to the same narrow space of time.  I believe this because Damascus is said to be totally destroyed, along with other cities in the general area becoming uninhabited.  I also know about the prophecy in Zechariah 14, where it speaks about a plague that will afflict the people and animals of the nations warring against Israel:

Zechariah 14:12-15

New International Version (NIV)

¹² This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. ¹³ On that day people will be stricken by the Lord with great panic. They will seize each other by the hand and attack one another. ¹⁴ Judah too will fight at Jerusalem. The wealth of all the surrounding nations will be collected—great quantities of gold and silver and clothing. ¹⁵ A similar plague will strike the horses and mules, the camels and donkeys, and all the animals in those camps.

In the book of Daniel, the prophet, Daniel, is told that the last part of the prophecy he was given would not be understood until the last generation.  Until now, until the nuclear age, the plague described in Zechariah would have been difficult for those who had come before to imagine or explain.  But today, I suspect the people of Japan could explain this plague to us.  But there is more that relates directly to Daniel and his vision of the statue.  As the West comes into closer contact with Islam and, as a result, starts to study it closer, it is becoming more and more apparent that the fourth beast and the feet of the statue are one: and they are Islam — not a revived Roman Empire.  This is not new, but the wide-spread acceptance of this interpretation is, and it has only been in recent years that it makes enough sense to overturn the previous view of these prophecies. Which leads back to the Battle of Gog and Megog and something the prophecy tells us about the burial of the bodies of the soldiers who were killed when they came against Israel:

Ezekiel 39:11-16

New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ “‘On that day I will give Gog a burial place in Israel, in the valley of those who travel east of the Sea. It will block the way of travelers, because Gog and all his hordes will be buried there. So it will be called the Valley of Hamon Gog.^[a]

¹² “‘For seven months the Israelites will be burying them in order to cleanse the land. ¹³ All the people of the land will bury them, and the day I display my glory will be a memorable day for them, declares the Sovereign Lord. ¹⁴ People will be continually employed in cleansing the land. They will spread out across the land and, along with others, they will bury any bodies that are lying on the ground.

“‘After the seven months they will carry out a more detailed search. ¹⁵ As they go through the land, anyone who sees a human bone will leave a marker beside it until the gravediggers bury it in the Valley of Hamon Gog, ¹⁶ near a town called Hamonah.^[b] And so they will cleanse the land.’

 Now, this last prophecy may not mean as much to someone who has never been in the military.  However, for those who have been in the military, I ask you.  What could possibly cause it to take seven months to clean a battle field, and why would you need to “cleanse the land?”  And why would you need to burry all the bodies in one place?  And what could possibly explain why travelers would be stopped by that grave yard?  And why would I mark a body part and leave it for others to collect?  For those who have never been in the military, I’ll explain.  This is a perfect description of the process necessary to clean up a nuclear battlefield.

So, once again: I make no assertions here.  I merely point out that, for prophecies that – in some cases – are nearly three thousand years old, they sure seem to be describing the result of a nuclear attack against a coalition of Russian-led Arab forces that attack Israel.  But I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.  It’s enough for me to know that God has this all under control.  However, the politically minded may find it interesting to know that Reagan believed prophecy foretells something much along the same line as I see it.