Hello,
you must admit this is another..puzzle!
*** w93 11/1 23 The Final Victory of Michael, the Great Prince ***
19. As indicated by Ezekiel’s prophecy, how may we identify the report that incites Gog’s attack? (See footnote.)
*** w93 11/1 22 The Final Victory of Michael, the Great Prince ***
From which direction, symbolically, does Gog come? Jehovah, through Ezekiel, says: “You will certainly come from your place, from the remotest parts of the north.” (Ezekiel 38:15) Hence, the report “out of the north” may well be Satan’s propaganda inciting the king of the north and all the other kings to attack Jehovah’s people.(*)—Compare Revelation 16:13, 14; 17:14.
(*) footnote
Alternatively, the report “out of the north” could prove to originate with Jehovah, in view of his words to Gog: “I shall certainly . . . put hooks in your jaws and bring you forth.” “I will . . . cause you to come up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you in upon the mountains of Israel.”—Ezekiel 38:4; 39:2; compare Psalm 48:2."
As the saying goes: "If it is tail I win, …if it is head …you loose"
Oh, wait a moment, it is not finished because 35 years ago…(hic!)
the WTS, was sure about the "origin " of the report!
*** yw 303-5 11 "The Appointed Time of the End" ***
68 He does not destroy the king of the south, nor does the king of the south destroy him. What, then, causes the king of the north to take the final step to his own destruction? Jehovah’s angel throws light on this by the prophecy: “But reports out of the east and out of the north will terrify him; and he will go forth with great fury to destroy, and to exterminate many. And he will pitch the tents of his palace between seas and the glorious holy mountain [the beauteous holy mountain, JPS]; and he will come to his end, without one to help him.”—Daniel 11:44, 45, Le.
69 The terrifying reports out of the east and north could not be reports from the king of the south. Neither are they from his own kingdom in the north. The reports must come from outside the realms of the king of the north and the king of the south, between whom this earth is divided. Neutral nations do not count much, because of not being nuclear nations. Although the symbolic Gog of Magog is prophesied to come down from the “farthest ends of the north” (Ezekiel 39:2, Le), yet the terrifying reports do not come from Satan the Devil, for this symbolic Gog of Magog leads both the king of the north and the king of the south in his train. From whom, then, do the reports come with terrifying effect?
70 In the prophecy of Daniel, the king of the north had pushed south, penetrated into Egypt, grabbed control over its precious things and influenced the southern peoples, the Libyans and the Ethiopians, to follow at his steps. From this strategic southern location of the king of the north, the “beauteous land” or land of Judea was to his north and east, or northeast, just as ancient Judea was northeast of Egypt. The terrifying reports must therefore come from Jehovah’s sanctuary class in the “beauteous land” of spiritual prosperity. Up to now the sanctuary class, supported by the great crowd of “other sheep,” have been reporting on Jehovah’s universal sovereignty, on the establishment of his kingdom by Christ at the close of the “appointed times of the nations” in 1914, and on the coming “war of the great day of God the Almighty,” commonly called the battle of Armageddon. What contents the reports will finally bear so as to infuriate him to go forth to bring the sanctuary class and their fellow worshipers to ruin and to devote them to destruction, Jehovah now knows and will yet determine.
71 Since the reports really issue forth from Jehovah and through his reigning King Jesus Christ, it is Scripturally well said that the reports are out of the north and the east. The Scriptures locate Jehovah God relatively in the north. (Psalm 75:6, 7; 48:2) He the King of eternity and his reigning King Jesus Christ are symbolically spoken of as the “kings from the rising of the sun” or from the east, who move against the organization foreshadowed by Babylon on the Euphrates River. (Revelation 16:12) Jehovah speaks of calling his reigning King from the east or sunrising. (Isaiah 46:10, 11) So, not merely the reports, but also the forces of destruction will come from those directions upon the king of the north. As the reports must reach this king by means of Jehovah’s visible earthly channel of newsreporting, so as to infuriate the king to his ruinous course, this prophecy makes one thing clear: Jehovah’s sanctuary class and their great crowd of fellow worshipers will persist in obeying Matthew 24:14 by preaching “this good news of the kingdom” in all the inhabited earth down to the “time of the end” of the king of the north. He will not stop them!
…Excuse me, do you begin to have a terrible …headache???
Agape, J.C. MacHislopp