Quran and Torah On Gog and Magog Qiyamah Today

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including gonorrhoea and syphilis have hit record levels in Europe, according to new data. Gonorrhoea hit 106,331 cases – a 303% increase since 2015 – while syphilis more than doubled in the same period to 45,557.

Human-caused climate change turbocharged killer heat is baking the Southwestern United States, Mexico and Central America. Sizzling daytime temperatures that triggered cases of heat stroke in parts of the United States were 35 times more likely and 2.5 degrees hotter (1.4 degrees Celsius) due to warming from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.

High temperatures which scientists say are being worsened by human-driven carbon emissions caused 47,690 deaths in Europe last year, a study published by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health during the world’s warmest year and Europe’s second-warmest year on record.

Millions of people are giving in to feelings of depression and despair when faced with the reality of global warming. Carbon dioxide levels continue to increase, followed by rising temperatures around the world. Sea levels are rising as ice melts, droughts are spreading and storms are getting stronger, leading to catastrophic floods.

Despair gets good people to give up the practice of virtue because Armageddon is coming upon all of us. Prophet Muhammad warned us of a group of extremists who would emerge, claiming to be more religious than all others but causing great harm to the Muslim Ummah: “They will recite the Quran but it will not go beyond their throats. They will pass through Islam as an arrow passes through its target.” (Sahih Bukhari 5057)

A Pew Research Center poll found that in South and Southeast Asia 55-60% of all Muslims believe in the Madhi’s imminent return; and in the Middle East and North Africa 51% do.

One of the signs of the End of Days is the arrival and defeat of Gog and Magog (Ya’juj and Ma’juj or Ajuj and Majuj). Gog and Magog can appear as individuals, tribes, counties, and in our days as racist nationalist states and political movements.

The Quran mentions Gog and Magog twice: “He said: “This (barrier) is a mercy from my Lord: but when the warning of my Lord comes to pass, He will reduce it to dust (and Gog and Magog—the Colonialist Empires, the Nazi racists, and the Communists would be released into the world); and the promise of my Lord is true.” (18:98)

So Gog and Magog are destructive human groups like the Colonialist Empires, the Nazi racists, the Communists and Isis type non-government murders as well as widespread human caused nature pollutions of Mother Earth; who near the time of the end of days will penetrate every part of the world like the persistently high levels of ozone pollution in Asia that are costing China, Japan and South Korea an estimated $63 billion annually in lost rice, wheat and maize crops.

The very worst period of human caused spread of Gog and Magog was the 30 years between the autumn of 1914 and the summer of 1945, when 150 million people were killed in World War I and World War II. In addition, nature caused spread of Gog and Magog according to Patterson and Pyle (1991) added between 24.7 and 39.3 million people worldwide who died from the Spanish flu pandemic.

Ezekiel 38, predicts the war of Gog and Magog which will be a harbinger of the Messianic era. God’s protection from the catastrophic Gog and Magog war that will destroy many people of the non-Jewish nations that will culminate in a gathering of former enemy nations at the Jerusalem Temple in harmonious worship of God (Yalkut Shimoni on Lev. 23, paragraph 653)

Prophet Isaiah (2:2) states: “In the days to come, the Mount of the Lord’s House shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the hills; and all the nations will gaze on it with joy 2:3 And many peoples shall go and say: “Come, Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord to the House of the God of Jacob; that He (God) may instruct us in His ways, and that we may walk in His paths.” (see also Isaiah 56:7; and 60:5-6)

The other mention of Gog and Magog in the Quran is: “But there is a ban on a town which We have destroyed: that they (the people of the town) shall not return (to reclaim that town as their own); until Gog and Magog are let through (the barrier), and swiftly spread out in every direction.” (21:95-96)

This verse refers to Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, and only reclaimed 18 1/2 centuries later as the State of Israel’s capital, following the era of the defeat of the Nazis, the Communists, and the Colonialist Empires, who had been Gog and Magog for many generations.

I am an American Reform Rabbi who has studied Islam for 65+ years; and I use both Biblical and Qur’anic insights to understand the last 3-4 centuries of world history. The classical scholars who lived many centuries before the present era of pre Gog and Magog did not have the advantages that we have. I offer a 21st century understanding of the Messianic-Mahdi age we are now a part of.

“There is a ban on a town (Jerusalem) which we destroyed (and whose people were expelled)  that they (the townsman) can not return (to reclaim that town as their own) until Gog and Magog are released; and they spread out in all directions (establishing the Gog and Magog world-order).” (Qur’an 21:95-6)

This era when “Gog and Magog are released; and they spread out in all directions” begins slowly with four centuries of increasing European colonialism; and ends with the French-British agreement dividing up the Ottoman Empire’s Near East Arab countries, and the Communists taking over first Russia and then China.

The word “until” refers to the final releasing of Gog and Magog political anti-semitism in Germany and Russia which led, in the next two generations, to the Zionist movement and the rebirth of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel; which was tragically and violently opposed by many Palestinian leaders, who should have welcomed their cousins home.

The counter-attack of the Mahdi-Messiah democratic forces starts with the defeat of the Nazis, the Communists, the Colonial powers and ISIS like religious extremists.

Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates an end to the world as we know it; a final historical confrontation between good and evil; after which human life will be transformed. As the Qur’an states: ”Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews, Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, and do righteous good deeds, shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”. (2:62 and 5:69) Notice that the Qur’an specifically stresses religious pluralism in God’s judgment.

Some Ahadith have it that Jesus, will return to a place east of Damascus and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against the false messiah, the one eyed Dajjal, Armilos in Jewish tradition. After the death of both the Dajjal and the Mahdi, the Muslim Jesus will rule the Earth. This Hadith is not useful to Isis because the Hadith say that these events will come to pass when Islam itself is threatened by its own corrupt fanatics which is happening now.

As ibn Babuya writes in Thawab ul-A’mal, “The Apostle of God said: `There will come a time for my people when there will remain nothing of the Qur’an except its outward form, and nothing of Islam except its name, and they will call themselves by this name even though they are the people furthest from it. “The mosques will be full of people but they will be empty of right guidance. The religious leaders (Fuqaha) of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens; sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return.”

After all, since the year 1600, Planet Earth has already estimated to have lost between 7.5% and 10% of the ten million species on Earth.

The basic difference between the pessimistic, humanist secularists and religious optimists is that those who believe in the God of Abraham also believe that God’s inspiration guarantees that the spiritual forces of good will overcome all the world’s evils at the end of days; and justice, peace and religious pluralism will prevail.

Or as Prophet Micah (4:1-5) envisions it: “In the end of days the mountain of the Lord’s Temple will be established as the highest mountain; it will be exalted above the hills, and peoples will stream to it. Many (not all) nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the Temple of the God of Jacob. who will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’

“Torah will be broadcast from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God will judge between many (not all) peoples and will settle disputes among powerful nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into ploughs, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig-tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken. All the nations will walk in the name of their gods, and we (Jews) will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”

“And We certainty settled the Children of Israel in an agreeable settlement [Land of Israel] and provided them with good things. And they did not differ until [after] knowledge had come to them. Indeed, your Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that over which they [Jews and Christians] used to differ. So if you [O Muhammad] are in doubt, about that which We have revealed to you, then ask those [Jews and Christians}who have been reading the Scripture before you. The truth has certainly come to you from your Lord, so never be among the doubters. (Qur’an 10:93-4)

“And remember Our servants, [Prophets] Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – those of strength and [religious] vision. Indeed, We chose them for an exclusive quality: remembrance of the home [the “safe haven” Land of Israel]. And indeed they are to Us among the chosen and outstanding.” (Qur’an 38:45-7)

As Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin says “Judaism has holy places (the Western Wall is the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, where the two ancient temples once stood). But Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that when it comes to holiness in Judaism, holy times are more significant than holy places. The first thing God declares holy is time — the Sabbath — and not a site.” This is why rebuilding the Temple is not as important as observing Shabbat and Holy Days.

Yet there is open land on the Temple Mount, and a 3D digital broadcast Jewish house of worship could be rebuilt as a virtual replica like those made by the Factum Foundation, a Madrid-based nonprofit that creates high-resolution digital replicas of the world’s cultural heritage; could be built about 600 feet north of the Al-Aqsa, near the Dome of the Rock, provided the Muslims would cooperate. This would fulfill Prophet Isaiah’s statement that in the early part of the Messianic Age: “Torah will be broadcast from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2:3)

Most observers agree that anyone who could arrange such Jewish-Muslim cooperation would really be the Messianic Ruler of Peace (Isaiah 9:5). Christian support for such a cooperative venture would also be very important. Anyone who can bring Jews, Christians, and Muslims together in mutual respect and cooperation would surely fulfill the greatest of all Messianic predictions: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning knives; nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again teach warfare.” (Isaiah 2:4)

Just as millions of Muslims can join every day with tens of thousands of Muslims pilgrims praying and circling around the cube-shaped Kaaba at Islam’s most sacred site; Jews would be able to strap on a headset and enter the holy city of Jerusalem, and see and hear Jewish prayers at the Western Wall, and someday God willing, as broadcast from the virtual reality Jerusalem Temple, without ever leaving their own homes.

Thus, the Bible and the Qur’an’s final judgement is the self-destruction of violent, hate filled terrorism and narrow ‘my way or death’ philosophy and the victory of kindness, love and religious pluralism. If we all can live up to the ideal that religious pluralism as the will of God. we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: who declares:( 2:2–4) 2 “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, 3 and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth Torah and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.4  He shall judge between (all) nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Qur’an 59:23 states: “Allah is He, than Whom there is no other god;- the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Source of Peace, the Guardian of Faith, the Preserver of Safety, the Exalted in Might, the Irresistible, the Supreme: Glory to Allah, above the partners they attribute to Him.”

“On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel  will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”… (Isaiah 19:23-5)