A stunning and wide-ranging prophecy, one of the longest in the entire Bible, is recorded in the Book of Ezekiel, in 600 BC. This prophecy in Ezekiel 38:8 says: "After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years..." and continues: "Now the word of the Lord came to me saying 'Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him. Thus says the Lord God: 'Behold, I am against you, O Gog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal...'" On the eastern side of the Ural Mountains lies the city of Tobolsk, named after the Tobol River, derived from Tubal. Scholars generally agree that "Gog" is Russia. In Assyrian and Greek histories Meshech appears as Musku, Moschi or Mushki relating to the Russian spelling of Moscow (International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia). Would these latter years mentioned in this prophecy have to do with the present days, where the Doomsday clock has been set to two minutes to midnight? What is more astounding about this prophecy in Ezekiel 38:2 is the name Rosh. The King James Version uses the word as an adjective "chief." Other translations use the word as a proper noun, which means the leader of Rosh.

In 2005, Vladimir Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet empire was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". He made it clear that he was determined to rebuild Russia in the image of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Before becoming Russia's president in 2000, Putin spent 16 years, from 1975 to 1991 as an agent of the notorious KGB, the brutal secret service organization that succeeded Joseph Stalin's secret police, a force that helped the Soviet regime kill tens of millions of people. I am not being judgemental; this is modern day history and of current events unfolding daily before our eyes.

The communist system of the Soviet Union collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the stagnated Soviet economy in 1989-1991. Along with the downfall of this totalitarian regime was the collapse of the repressive puppet governments of the eastern European countries who ruled their people with a rod of iron and which formed part of the Russian dominated Warsaw Pact for which Winston Churchill coined the phrase 'behind the Iron Curtain'. History records, among other atrocities committed by the perpetrators of the communist regime, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the invasion of the satellite state by the Soviet Union with 1000 war tanks, the death of thousands of its people and of thousands more who fled the country. In 1968, the combined army of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia to silence its revolt. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 by the communist government of DDR, the German Democratic Republic of East Germany, and a symbol of ideological division and suppression of human rights. During the Cold War era, Alexander Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970. He was one of the world's most famous writers and a victim of the brutal Communist regime. Mr Solzhenitsyn was in the Russian prison system, the Gulag Archipelago, for eight years. He was exiled in own country for another three years and his life was threatened several times. However, he continued to write books and speak out against the evils of Russian Communism. In his autobiography The Oak and the Calf, he wrote how he tried to find meaning of the suffering for which he was unable to find justification. In February 1974, he was expelled from Russia, and settled in the West and published The Gulag Archipelago. Other publications sold by the millions include the Cancer Ward and The First Circle revealing the evils of Russian Communism.

Vladimir Putin is the strongman of the modern era. Seventeen years after becoming Russia's president, his popularity is still growing. The recent presidential election gave him a majority of over 70 per cent. His first significant impression of a personality cult came in 2008. The Russian Constitution limited presidents to two consecutive terms in office. Therefore, because he could not stay on as president he changed the Constitution. He became prime minister but retained power unofficially, while Medvedev became President. In 2007, the Estonian government decided to remove monuments of its history under the Soviet regime. Russia retaliated by waging a massive internet attack that crippled Estonia's newspapers, banks, ministries, and parliamentary network. In August 2008, Russian soldiers invaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, occupying territories in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which truly rejected Georgian rule in the early 1990s as integral regions of Georgia. In 2014 Putin forces stealthily invaded Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and annexed it to Russia. In the same year, these same gunmen assisted pro-Russian rebels in Donbass to separate from Ukraine. Russia's intervention in Syria helped Bashar Assad to remain in power. The Russians always vetoed the Security Council resolutions that would have condemned the Bashed Assad regime. Putin had literally redrawn the borders of Europe. What is in store for this authoritarian leader and how will it affect the whole world?

 

Francesco Simon Mercieca

Fgura