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The True Fulfillment of Prophecy, part 12

The term “Jew” does not strictly apply to a racial group of people, even if the original stock were descendants of Judah, the patriarch. The meaning of the term came to be applied nationally as a citizen of the nation of Judah, and later to an adherent of the religion of Judaism, including converts from Persia, Edom, and many others over the years.

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of black Jews in New York City, Chicago, and other cities, as well as Japanese Jews who are racial Japanese, Chinese Jews who are racially Chinese, and so on—along with the so-called “white Jews” of Europe. It would be highly improbable that all these Jews came from the same racial stock. Through intermarriage, of course, it is possible that many may have a few genes from Abraham, but they are anything but a “pure race,” as many Christians today mistakenly believe.

The real question posed by this is whether or not a man can become “chosen” by converting to Judaism. Many Christians apparently believe so, because in their desire to attain a higher status with God, they have converted to Judaism. Did this conversion suddenly confer upon them a “chosen” status that they did not already enjoy under Christ? Or did such conversion graft them from the living Christ into a dead tree called Judaism?

The Edomites were forcibly converted to Judaism in 126 B.C. A century later, they were among the most extreme Jews in the land, even to the point of assassinating peace-loving Jews who did not want to rebel against Rome. But there was yet to be another mass conversion to Judaism seven centuries later in Eastern Europe—this time voluntary.

The Chazars Convert to Judaism: 740 A.D.

The Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe have been identified by many Jewish historians as Turkish-Mongolian converts to Judaism in the eighth century. These were not converted forcibly, but their conversion was to a religion that had already rejected Jesus Christ. And so, while their conversion from paganism might be considered to be an improvement in their social life, it did not put them into a covenant relationship with God.

The entire story of their conversion is told in The Jewish Encyclopedia under the heading, Chazars. It is the first article in Volume IV in the 1903 edition. The article opens with the statement:

“CHAZARS: A people of Turkish origin whose life and history are interwoven with the very beginnings of the history of the Jews of Russia.”

Later in the article, it tells the story of their conversion,

“It was probably about that time that the chaghan of the Chazars and his grandees, together with a large number of his heathen people, embraced the Jewish religion. According to A. Harkavy (“Meassef Niddahim,” i.), the conversion took place in 620; according to others, in 740. King Joseph, in his letter to Hasdai ibn Shaprut (about 960), gives the following account of the conversion:

“Some centuries ago King Bulan reigned over the Chazars. To him God appeared in a dream and promised him might and glory. Encouraged by this dream, Bulan went by the road of Darian to the country of Ardebil, where he gained great victories [over the Arabs]. The Byzantine emperor and the calif of the Ishmaelites sent to him envoys with presents, and sages to convert him to their respective religions. Bulan invited also wise men of Israel, and proceeded to examine them all. As each of the champions believed his religion to be the best, Bulan separately questioned the Mohammedans and the Christians as to which of the other two religions they considered the better. When both gave preference to that of the Jews, that king perceived that it must be the true religion. He therefore adopted it” (see Harkavy, ‘Soobshchenija o Chazarakh,’ in ‘Yevreiskaya Biblioteka,’ vii, 153).

“This account of the conversion was considered to be of a legendary nature. Harkavy, however (in ‘Bilbasov’ and ‘Yevreiskaya Biblioteka’), proved from Arabic and Slavonian sources that the religious disputation at the Chazarian court is a historical fact.”

The article in The Jewish Encyclopedia is complete with pictures of the Jewish Kingdom of Chazaria (or Khazaria/Gazaria), extending from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea and north to Poland. (See the photo above, taken from the 1903 edition.) The Ashkenazim comprise the majority of “white Jews” today. On the back cover of Arthur Koestler’s book, The Thirteenth Tribe, 1976 edition, we read:

“This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry.”

Koestler himself was a Hungarian Jew who became a British citizen after World War II. Some dispute the extent of the Khazar tribe’s conversion to Judaism in terms of population figures, but again The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, under Chazars says,

“. . . it may be assumed that in the ninth century many Chazar heathens became Jews, owing to the religious zeal of King Obadiah. ‘Such a conversion in great masses,’ says Chwolson (ib. p. 58), ‘may have been the reason for the embassy of Christians from the land of the Chazars to the Byzantine emperor Michael. . . The Jewish population between the seventh and ninth centuries, must have been considerable.”

We merely point out what is said by Jewish writers to establish the simple fact that the Jews are not “the purest race in the world,” as many Christians have been taught. The fact is that Judaism includes people of all races, and all of these are commonly called “Jews.” Furthermore, the Israeli state also recognizes people of all races as Jews and has extended to them the right of automatic citizenship.

The Chazar branch of world Jewry is today called the Ashkenazim to distinguish them from the Sephardim, or “Spanish” Jews. The Sephardim are descended primarily from the Jews of Judah and Edom that were expelled from Palestine by the Romans. However, the Ashkenazim come originally from the area of Ukraine, and the bulk of Jewish immigrants to the Israeli state in the past century are Ashkenazim.

The Land of Unwalled Villages

Many evangelical Christians today are expecting the nation of Russia to invade the Israeli state. This view of Ezekiel 38 and 39 seemed very plausible during the Cold War of the twentieth century. Prophecy teachers had a heyday, but it all fell apart in the end. Since then, the Soviet Union has not even been successful militarily in its tiny province of Chechnya. Theoretically, they could still throw nuclear missiles at the Israeli state, but Ezekiel describes an invasion involving actual people, not a nuclear strike from afar.

Furthermore, in 2003 the Israelis began to build a partitioning wall to protect themselves against suicide bombers from Palestinian territory. And yet Ezekiel 38:11 says about Gog and Magog,

¹¹ and you will say, I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will go against those who are at rest, that live securely, all of them living without walls, and having no bars or gates.

Palestine was mostly an unwalled place prior to the arrival of the Zionists. Only then did it become a land of barred gates and walls—probably the most insecure place on earth. The Jewish state has never been at rest since its inception in 1948, nor does anyone “live securely.” It cannot possibly fit the description of the Jewish state today. In fact, it has recently built “the mother of all walls,” the longest wall since the Great Wall of China that was built over 2,000 years ago. Each passing day seems to bring Ezekiel’s prophecies into disrepute—unless, of course, there is a different fulfillment.

The Magog Invasion

Is there a reason why the Russian “Ashkenazi” Jews are named for Ashkenaz, the nephew of Magog (Genesis 10:2, 3)? What if the Chazars—Russian Jews—are actually the physical descendants of Gog and Magog? What if the so-called “Russian invasion of Israel” was fulfilled by Russian Jewish immigrants, rather than by Russian troops? What if the invasion has already been fulfilled by Zionists coming “to capture spoil and to seize plunder” (Ezekiel 38:12) by seizing land from the Palestinian people?

In an article published at the World Zionist Organization’s website, we read,

“It is now the accepted opinion among most scholars in the field that the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism was widespread, and not limited merely to the royal house and nobility. Ibn al-Faqiih, in fact, wrote, ‘All of the Khazars are Jews.’ Christian of Stavelot wrote in 864 that ‘all of them profess the Jewish faith in its entirety’.”

But WZO itself was not the original source—it was summarizing medieval witnesses. This comes from the Persian geographer, Ibn al-Faqīh (early 10th century), in his Mukhtaṣar Kitāb al-Buldān (“Concise Book of Lands”). The fuller wording is commonly given as:

“All the Khazars are Jews, but they have been Judaized recently.”

This is also reflected in modern scholarly summaries such as:

“Persian historian Ibn al-Faqîh wrote that ‘all the Khazars are Jews, but they have been Judaized recently.’”

So the WZO quotation is a shortened form of Ibn al-Faqīh’s statement.

In regard to Christian of Stavelot (above), this is a quotation from his Expositio in Matthaeum Evangelistam, that is, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, which he wrote in the year 864, over a century after the Khazars began to convert to Judaism. A more complete quotation is as follows:

“At the present time we know of no nation in the world where Christians do not live. For in the lands of Gog and Magog who are a Hunnish race and call themselves Gazari [i.e., Khazars] there is one tribe, a very belligerent one—Alexander enclosed them and they escaped—and all of them profess the Jewish faith. The Bulgars, however, who are of the same race, are now becoming Christians.”

These last two quotations come from the website of The American Center of Khazar Studies: khazaria.com. They make the point that “Judaism has always welcomed converts like the Khazars into the Jewish fold as equals.” It then lists the passages in the Bible and from the Talmud where converts are welcomed. Then it ends with the statement, “Nevertheless, there are many who distort history to attempt to deny the Jewishness of the Khazars.”

I do not dispute the Jewishness of the Khazars insofar as man’s definition of a Jew is concerned. My dispute is whether a physically circumcised adherent of the Old Covenant is a Jew in the eyes of God, or if a true Jew is a follower of Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant.

If these Khazars “in the lands of Gog and Magog” had converted to Jesus Christ, they would have given up their old fleshly identity as Gog and Magog for a new identity in Christ. Then we would welcome them into the Kingdom of God as warmly as Judaism has welcomed them into the Jewish fold. But they did not convert to Jesus Christ. Therefore, from a New Covenant perspective, we must conclude that they are still the prophetic Gog and Magog of Ezekiel 38 and 39. Conversion to Judaism does not change their fleshly status, nor does it make them “chosen” from God’s perspective. If the nation of Kenya or China were to convert to Judaism, that would not give them a God-given right to immigrate to Palestine and displace the Palestinians.

Further, Ezekiel 38:6 says that others would come with Gog and Magog to invade the mountains [the land, not the people] of Israel:

⁶ Gomer with all its troops, Beth-togarmah [“House of Togarmah”] from the remote parts of the north with all its troops—many peoples with you.

Genesis 10 does not list for us the sons of Togarmah, and so they appeared to be lost from history. But then just as suddenly they reappeared in 760 A.D. in a letter written to a prominent Jewish diplomat in Cordova, Spain. Togarmah was the father of the Chazars. According to the letter that King Joseph of the Khazars wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut, quoted by Koestler in The Thirteenth Tribe, p. 72,

“Joseph then proceeds to provide a genealogy of his people. Though a fierce Jewish nationalist, proud of wielding the ‘Sceptre of Judah’, he cannot, and does not, claim for them Semitic descent; he traces their ancestry not to Shem, but to Noah’s third son, Japheth; or more precisely to Japheth’s grandson, Togarma, the ancestor of all Turkish tribes. ‘We have found in the family registers of our fathers,’ Joseph asserts boldly, ‘that Togarma had ten sons, and the names of their offspring are as follows: Uigur, Dursu, Avars, Huns, Basilii, Tarniakh, Khazars, Zagora, Bulgars, Sabir. We are the sons of Khazar, the seventh.’. . .”

Christians ought to take a new look at their theory of the Russian invasion of Israel. If King Joseph’s records were accurate, it would indicate that the Russian Jews are the ones who were to invade Palestine.

Did this invasion of Gog and Magog succeed only because they were able to masquerade as Israelites fulfilling Bible prophecy? Such a suggestion may be shocking to those who have been taught never to suggest anything detrimental about Jews. But much of the history of the Chazars has been written by Jewish authors and is available for anyone to read—if people actually do so.

But my question is this: If it is so bad to suggest that Zionist Jews from Russia might be the ones actually fulfilling the prophecies of Palestine’s invasion by Gog and Magog, is it not equally bad to suggest the same of the Russian people? Should we hold Russians and Jews to different moral standards? American Christians have bashed Russians for the past century or more. Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, it is time to re-evaluate that entire line of thinking.

Does this explain why the Jews have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah even half a century after they laid claim to Palestine—even though prophecy teachers assured the Church that they would do so within seven years of their declaration of independence (May 14, 1948)? Why do they yet reject Jesus Christ?

Why have the Israeli Jews never been “at rest,” as Ezekiel describes true Israel? They have always claimed to be under siege. They have made the security issue paramount in everything they do. Why have the Israeli Jews built a great wall for their protection, contrary to Ezekiel’s prophecy?

Perhaps the Church has mistakenly identified the Jews as Israel. Perhaps, like Isaac, the Christians have been blinded so that God could rectify the wrong done to Esau many centuries ago. Perhaps it was in the plan of God that Jacob would have to give back the birthright to Esau for a time in order to fulfill Isaac’s prophecy in Genesis 27:40.

It is my contention that the Israeli state, though it is called “Israel,” is not the fulfillment of the regathering of the lost tribes of the house of Israel. Instead, it is a regathering of the bad figs for judgment to fulfill Malachi 1:4 and Luke 19:27. Their lack of repentance and refusal to this day to accept Jesus as the Messiah fulfills Jesus’ curse on the fig tree in Matthew 21:19, where He decreed that no fruit would grow on that tree ever again.

Zionism itself has a triple fulfillment. First, it fulfills the desire of the bad figs to return to the land where they had been displaced by the Romans in the first century. Second, it fulfills the aspirations of Esau, who desired to inherit that land (Malachi 1:4). Third, it fulfilled the desire of Gog and Magog to rob and plunder the Palestinians, as described in Ezekiel 38:12. The bad figs, Edom, and Gog all converged in Judaism over the centuries in order that all their fleshly aspirations might find their highest expression in a single modern ideology—Zionism.