Black Banners, Gog, and the Geography of the End

The previous chapter set the two redeemers against each other, and taught how to tell them apart by their hands. But the struggle between the true and the counterfeit does not play out only in doctrine; it plays out on a map. And it is time to unfold that map, for the end has not only a shape — it has a geography.

There is a tradition in Islam that has circulated for fourteen centuries, and in our own time it has stepped off the parchment and marched into reality.

"When you see the black banners coming out of Khorasan," it runs, "go to them, for among them is the Mahdi." Black flags, advancing out of the east, an army that nothing can withstand, on its way to escort the Awaited One. For centuries it was a promise that hung in the future. And then, in our own day, movements from Afghanistan to Mosul deliberately raised precisely that flag — black, with the confession of faith upon it — because they saw themselves as the fulfillment of those words. When you watched those black banners cross the news, you were not looking at random fanatics. You were looking at men who believe they are walking through a script written a thousand years ago.

And that leads to what carries this whole chapter: the end has a geography. Not a vague "somewhere in the world," but places, with names, that you can point to on a map. And the astonishing thing is that the places of the Islamic end-time script and the places of the biblical end-time script are the same places.

Khorasan and the Kings of the East

Begin with those black banners. Where does Khorasan lie? It is an old regional name for the territory that today covers Afghanistan, eastern Iran, and a swath of Central Asia — the east of the Islamic world. And it is no accident that precisely there, in our days, lie some of the most unyielding, nuclear-armed, and radicalized powers of the Muslim world: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond them the masses of Central and South Asia.

Lay the Bible beside it. When Revelation describes the last advance, it speaks of "the kings from the rising of the sun" — the kings of the east — for whom the great river Euphrates is dried up, "that the way might be prepared" (Revelation 16:12). Since antiquity the Euphrates has been the border, the threshold between west and east. To dry it up is to throw open the gate. And through that opened gate the eastern powers come marching toward the heart of the Middle East.

I offer this to you cautiously, as a weighed reading: those "kings of the east" need not be a distant, foreign superpower. They fit strikingly well upon the mighty Muslim nations east of the Euphrates — the Khorasan of the black banners. The Islamic image of an eastern army advancing unstoppably, and the biblical image of the kings of the sunrise crossing the dried-up river, point to the same quarter of the compass, the same peoples, the same advance.

The Great Battle in the North

And where are they marching? That too the tradition sketches, and that too stands on the map.

The Islamic end time knows a great, final battle: al-Malhama al-Kubra, "the great slaughter." And it has a place: Dabiq, an insignificant speck in the north of Syria, near Aleppo, where according to the tradition the armies of Islam and the armies of "Rome" — the Christian world — will meet in the decisive struggle. It is not a forgotten detail; a notorious movement named its magazine after this spot, so certain were they that the end would be consummated there. With it comes the conquest of Constantinople and ultimately of Rome, and the gaze is fixed continually on the north, on Damascus, on the axis that runs from Anatolia through Syria to Jerusalem.

Hold Syria and Damascus and the northern axis in mind, for exactly there — in post-Assad Syria, in the rise of the north, in the veins that run from Turkey southward — the earth is moving today. The places of the old tradition have become the places of the evening news.

Two Rings Around One Land

But the sharpest geography of the end is not Islamic; it is biblical, and it is organized around one land and one city. For the whole end time, as the third chapter showed, turns on the contested inheritance — and Scripture sketches the enemies of that inheritance in two rings, two circles that close around Israel.

The inner ring stands in Psalm 83. There the neighboring peoples forge a covenant with one purpose: "Come, let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more" (Psalm 83:4). And who are those peoples? Edom, Moab, Ammon, the Ishmaelites, the Hagrites, Gebal, Amalek, Philistia, the inhabitants of Tyre — with Assyria as their ally. It is, one by one, the inner circle: the peoples who dwell right up against Israel, on the territory of present-day Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza, the immediate neighbors. Many therefore read Psalm 83 as the image of the wars that since 1948 have been waged without ceasing out of that inner ring against Israel — the century of the immediate neighbors, and the slogan that still rings out across the squares: "from the river to the sea," from the river to the sea Israel shall vanish. I give this as a weighed reading; some see in Psalm 83 above all a prayer, not a foretold war. But the voice of that inner ring — the will to erase the name Israel — is no thing of the past. It sounds every day.

The outer ring stands in Ezekiel 38. And here the scale changes. Now it is no longer about the immediate neighbors, but about a coalition from a far wider circle, mightier and farther away: Gog, of the land of Magog, with Meshech and Tubal and Gomer and Beth-Togarmah — the peoples of the uttermost north, of Anatolia, present-day Turkey — together with Persia (Iran), Cush (the Sudan region), and Put (Libya). An army like a cloud covering the land (Ezekiel 38:9). Where the inner ring are the neighbors, the outer ring are the great powers. Two circles, and the second closes when the first has failed: growing rings, mightier enemies, closer and closer around the one city.

And here belongs one honest weighing, for the identity of Gog has been disputed for centuries. The best-known reading makes "Rosh" the land of Russia, and Meshech and Tubal the cities of Moscow and Tobolsk — a coalition from the far north under Russian leadership. That interpretation has a long tradition, but it stands under linguistic pressure: the Hebrew roʼsh is read in most modern translations as "chief, foremost" — an adjective, not the name of a people (only the old Greek translation read a name in it, Rōs, and that has nothing to do with Russia) — and Meshech and Tubal are well-documented peoples of Asia Minor, present-day Turkey, in antiquity: the Assyrian kings call them Musku and Tabal. I lay both readings before you and leave the open place open. But it cannot be denied that the Anatolia reading, which places Gog in Turkey, fits strikingly more closely upon the power that rises before our eyes in this book.

And note the silent corner of Ezekiel's tableau. When Gog advances, there is one group that protests but does not intervene: "Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish with all their young lions will say to you, 'Have you come to seize spoil?'" (38:13). The prosperous trading nations on the edge — the seafaring powers of the far west — ask a question, and do nothing further. "What are you going to do?", no more than that. A world that looks on while the rings close.

The Lines Converge

Now take a step back and look at the whole map, for here lies the wonder that this chapter means to show.

The black banners out of the east, Khorasan. The great battle in the north, Damascus and the Anatolian axis. The inner ring of the immediate neighbors. The outer ring of Turkey, Iran, and the distant powers. The Islamic script and the biblical script sketch, independently of each other, their decisive hour onto precisely the same places — and they are precisely the places where the earth is moving today. I work out the geopolitics of all this — the position of Israel, the rise and fall of Iran, the pivotal role of Turkey, the changed chessboard — further on in this book, for it deserves its own, full treatment. But see here already what it means: the geography of the oldest prophecies and the geography of the news broadcast are converging. The lines run toward one point.

The Ring That Closes Too Far

And here, finally, is what you must know when you see those rings tightening and those black banners approaching, for otherwise fear will paralyze you.

Ezekiel 38 does not end with the victory of Gog. It ends with his downfall. On the mountains of Israel, just when the outer ring has closed completely and the city seems beyond rescue, God Himself intervenes: "On the mountains of Israel you shall fall" (39:4). And the reason He gives is staggering: "I will show My holiness before the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD" (38:23). The drawing-together of all the enemies around that one city is not the end of Israel; it is the stage on which the whole world will at last see the living God act. The prophets call it the "valley of decision," where God gathers the nations — not to conquer, but to be judged (Joel 3; Zechariah 14).

That changes everything about how you look at the map. The rings that close, close too far. The black banners march toward a battle they have already lost before they fight it. For they advance against the one city that the rightful King has kept for Himself, and on the mountain of that city He will set His feet.

So when you presently see the banners on the horizon, and feel the circles drawing tighter, and the world on the edge shrugs its shoulders and asks "what are you going to do?" — then do not be afraid. The geography of the end is not a map of the beast's victory. It is the map of the place where the King returns to claim His inheritance. The enemies have chosen the right city to attack. It is only the wrong city to win against.

Now the map of today: oil, data, and armies, a West that gave away its resilience, and the covenant with the many that draws it all together.