Describing the Next to Last War?

''Ezekiel only listed one major modern nation from each of the four corners of the compass so as to highlight the massive scale of this coming regional invasion. The following map represents the nations specified by Ezekiel revealing the likelihood of this interpretation.'' Throughout the Christian church, an idea that has gained much traction in recent years holds that the next major Middle Eastern war is described in Psalm 83. According to this view, a contingent of Arab nations that immediately surround Israel will soon make an attempt to invade her, only to be utterly defeated by the Israeli Defense Forces. Many even believe that as a result of this great victory over her neighbors, Israel will literally come to occupy the nations of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This growing view also holds that after this period of victory and peace, another massive war, this time described in Ezekiel 38 and 39, will follow. If one peruses several of the larger online Bible prophecy discussion forums, it will quickly become apparent just how widespread this view truly is among prophecy students.

But few of these students of prophecy are aware of the many problems with this view. For the past few years, I’ve been highlighting several of these problems, but recently, both Dr. Thomas Ice, the executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center, and Pastor Mark Hitchcock, another very well-accomplished prophecy teacher and author, have also articulated several of the problems with the popular interpretation of Psalm 83.

The first problem is that most scholars reject the idea that Psalm 83 is even an actual prophecy, but is simply, “a national prayer of lament.” Such a Psalm would not be considered a prophecy in the sense of that which was uttered by the biblical prophets.

Second, even if one does consider Psalm 83 to be a prophecy in the proper sense, the primary reason many have come to accept this two-war scenario is because of the differences between the nations listed in Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38 and 39. While Psalm 83 lists what are often referred to as the “inner circle” of nations that immediately border Israel, Ezekiel 38 and 39 lists a series of nations that form a larger “outer ring” around Israel including Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Libya and, many argue, Russia. But a closer examination of both texts reveals that it is far more likely that these two passages speak of the same war.

If one examines the list of nations in Psalm 83, few analysts include the nation of Turkey. Yet Asaph, the writer of this Psalm, mentions that “Assyria” (v.8) will join this coalition. When this Psalm was written during the reign of King David, the Kingdom of Assyria included portions of modern-day Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Analysts of Psalm 83 have included both Iraq and Syria in their coming invasion scenario, but never Turkey. Yet the reality is that the Assyrian Kingdom during the time the Psalm was written included quite a bit more of modern Turkey than Syria. This is significant, of course, because Turkey features so prominently in the Ezekiel 38 & 39 prophecy.

http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/does-psalm-83-describe-next-mideast-war/