[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!A harsh prophetic speech has been heard among us from two thousand five hundred years ago. The ears of the modern man have grown weary of such prophecy, and at first hearing we do not know what it is about - but it is worth listening more closely to the Word, for it is a great warning and a great consolation to us all. It is about Gog, a king who does not exist in reality, the prince of an imaginary kingdom called Magog. In a prophetic vision, Ezekiel is shown by God that this king, the eternal enemy of the children of God, is coming against the people of God with a well-armed and powerful army, seemingly unarmed and defenceless against the overwhelming force. He wreaks terrible havoc among the peaceful believers, until at last God takes up the cause of His people openly, and so confounds the hordes of Gog that they fall to destruction at each other's weapons.
In the Old Testament prophecies, when God's people are spoken of, it is always in anticipation of the people gathered around Jesus Christ from among the peoples and nations of the world, that is, the Mother Church of God, the believing people of the Christian churches. And the king called Gog, who seeks to attack the people of God, that is, the Christian Church, is the same great evil power which Jesus called "the abomination of desolation", the apostle John in the heavenly Revelation calls the beast, 666 and the apostle Paul, the man of sin, the devil incarnate, or by his most familiar name, the Antichrist. In the Bible, then, from beginning to end, we often find prophecies of the Antichrist, only one calls him Gog, another man of sin, and a third the beast. We feel, do we not, what an intensification there is in this designation, an intensification of evil and depth. We know from the Bible that the appearance of the Antichrist immediately precedes the return of Christ, and that his terrible reign, from which the Christian Church must suffer most, will be brought to an end by the return of the Lord Jesus.
Who or what is this Antichrist? The incarnation of Satanic evil on earth in one human person. This is the case with His name in the Book of Revelation, 666, which was recently used in a distasteful game by uninitiated hands. The meaning of this mysterious number is clear to all Bible-literate people: in six days God created the world and on the seventh day it rested. To illustrate this: the number seven is the holy number in the Bible, the seventh day is the day of the Lord, while the number six (as if the seventh day dedicated to God were missing from the end of the working day) represents human endeavour, human effort, work, power, which is without God, which does not count on God. The number six in the Bible is therefore a symbol of human power without God or against God. Three sixes in succession, since three is a symbol of completeness, means that the human thought and aspiration which rebels against God has attained completeness and world power, and all this is embodied in the person of one man as the head and king of anti-Godliness. This person is the Antichrist, who attacks with unprecedented power the defenceless mother church of Christ, the life of every believer.
Let us now state that this Antichrist has not yet come, his action and reign will still take place in the unknown, perhaps distant, perhaps near future. Yet it is not untimely to speak of it, for the forerunners of the Antichrist and the spirit of the Antichrist have been preparing the ground for the appearance of the Antichrist for so long that, behold, two thousand five hundred years ago a prophet thought it timely to warn the people of God of it. The power of Gog is gradually being realized, growing and growing, until one day it will be complete. It begins when someone smiles, not cynically but a little disdainfully, at your fervent prayer; it begins when someone innocently remarks to you that he regards many of the stories in the Bible as bland naivety. Then it goes on to make it commonplace to remain silent on the deepest questions of faith, it becomes natural for families not to read the Bible together - then the same anti-Christian spirit continues with churches being closed and turned into stables, priests simply executed - but that is not the whole story.
We do not even have enough human imagination to imagine what is to come for the church of Christ when the antichristian power that is growing among us here will achieve world domination, completeness. All we see of the prophecy is that a vast army, recruited from all the continents then known, will attack a single city, Jerusalem. The Antichrist will thus have a world power the like of which no man has ever had on earth. With the fullness of his power he will attack all those who seek to submit not to him but to God. According to the apostle John, he says that all those who do not worship the image of the beast will be slain. The struggle between the anti-Christian power and the church is unequal. A small army of God's elect, saints, believers, Christ's defenseless sheep, the church on the one hand - without army or ammunition - and a modernly armed world power on the other.The struggle would end, according to the most optimistic human calculation, in the total annihilation of the Christian church, the final extinction of the Christian spirit and soul - if the Lord did not intervene in the last hour and save His own!
Yes, this is God's view of the course of world history: desperately difficult times, terrible trials, await every earnest believer in the future. It would be frightening to think of the way the antichrist spirit is growing if we could only see things from a human perspective. But how good it is that God has opened our eyes to mysteries that the Antichrist himself can never see. God is not as painfully surprised by the appearance of the Antichrist as we are. "Prepare thyself and all thy multitudes that are gathered unto thee, and be thou a ruler over them." That is, the Lord not only prophesies of the Antichrist, but also sovereignly disposes of him. It is almost uncanny that God himself should call forth his most wrathful enemy on the world stage, and move his every move as the puppet theatre's characters are moved behind the scenes by their owner. The Antichrist, in his hatred of Christ, forges his plans against the church with blind zeal, and does not realize that all his plans are only to advance God's plans towards realization. The prophet says - listen with joy - "And I will entice thee, and will cast oats into thy mouth, and will lead thee out, and all thy host." (Ezek 38:4) God leads Gog, the Antichrist, and all his zealous forerunners, as a caged animal that can no longer have a will of its own, because there is oats in its mouth; as a bear with a chain tied to its nose. Thus God uses the Antichrist and all his army to carry out his own purposes. "Prepare thyself and prepare thyself," says the Lord to Gog. A king of awesome power must be ready for God. The Lord Himself issues the command to mobilize even in the camp of His enemies. The Lord orders the day and hour of the attack. The Lord issues the command to the Antichrist: make sure you are at hand when I need you! The Lord does all this in such a way that the Antichrist is unaware of it, believing that he is acting voluntarily, freely, according to his own design, destroying and destroying all that is Christian.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, do you not realize how powerful God is, and how he dwarfs even our greatest enemy, the Antichrist himself? In the light of the Word, how tiny are all the enemies of Christ shrunk: the unbelieving pagan public opinion, the Christ-denying apostles of ancient paganism, the worldview stupefied by materialism, the contemporaries of the faith-shaking natural sciences, the Marxes and Lenins, all the potentates of Soviet monstrosities, and all others who attack the cause of Christ in any way or who hate the believers of Christ, threaten the Church. Behold, all these are nothing but builders on the great edifice of God, pawns on the chessboard, unwilling instruments for the execution of God's plans, unwise animals led around by the zabla. Lords and great powers in their own minds - and they themselves do not know that in reality they are humble servants of the supreme power in heaven and on earth.
If you meet the spirit, the idea or any of the earthly messengers of the Antichrist, remember what a ridiculous figure he is: he thinks himself a formidable lord of power, but he is a pitiful cow and an unwise animal. He thinks he is destroying the cause of Christ, when in the end he is only building it. However much he may serve God against his will, woe to the Antichrist and all his relatives!
God says to Gog, "Prepare thyself and prepare thyself"! Jesus has such a warning, not only to his enemy, but to us: "Be ready at all times!" For as comforting as it is to know that even the Antichrist cannot move against the will of God, this does not mean that we should watch the struggle of Christ's people and the Antichrist from a box with folded hands! Be ready at all times, says Jesus. The Church of Christ must be in a constant state of mobilisation, there is no truce or disarmament or peace. There is no way, it is impossible! All the less so, because the anti-Christian power is growing and is becoming more and more desperate, more and more insidious, more and more open in its attempts to destroy the Church. Perhaps not with a weapon, but as Jesus says: false Christs and false prophets are rising up, performing signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect - or as Paul says: they are coming by the power of Satan, with all the power, signs and wonders of a lie! So be ready, all of you!
We may not live to see the coming of the Antichrist, but we may. In any case, Brother, God desires from you faithfulness to the point of martyrdom! If He may not require it now that we be willing to die for Him, He requires it every day that we be willing to live for Him! Both are equally difficult! Be ready, all of you!
Amen.
Date: 10 January 1943.
Lesson
Ez 38,1-12