Admittedly, what follows must be considered conjecture, though I think I may honestly say that it is reasonable from a Biblical perspective in so far as we may be humanly capable of understanding God's plans for our future. It is the nature of His prophecy to reveal that future in a rather "jigsaw puzzle" fashion, obviously intended to give us just enough information so as to give us comfort that He is clearly in control of future developments that would otherwise cause us to become fearful, and indeed will cause the unsaved to become so fearful that they may actually listen when we explain His intentions, and desire to be saved themselves. We call this "evangelism", and He has no greater purpose for us on earth, as long as it is not too late for anyone to be saved.
The reason I call this Biblical conjecture is because it is the result of decades of meditative reflection from one perspective that may, or may not be an accurate reflection of God's intentions. If I am correct, I hope it will add some insight into some rather obscure prophecies. If not, I extend my sincere apologies as I do not wish to mislead anyone. However, nothing I write will in any way effect someone's salvation, because I am never arguing that various prophecies will not happen, I am merely speculating on precisely how God is planning to bring them to pass, or in what chronological order.
My perspective on viewing prophecy is not the most common view. Most people accept that when God says "I will cause" something to happen, it just miraculously and instantaneously comes to pass. Frequently this is truly the case. But it seems logical to me that when God causes some great and apparently tragic development which at least initially brings about an evil result, if man has the utter foolish capacity to cause it to happen himself, either by mistake, or by sheer evil intent, it seems more logical that He causes it to happen by placing an evil thought in the minds of evil people who have the capacity to bring it about (see Ezekiel 38: 10, 11 &12). This way those evil people bear the blame for causing it to happen, though it serves God's purpose eventually, through hopefully offending others to the point where they will turn away from the evil and seek Jesus, in repentance. This way God's judgment for a sinful, and rebellious world comes to pass while creating good results simultaneously. ("All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose". Romans 8:28)
Therefore, it is my view that when God prophecies some disaster is going to happen, especially when He shows it happening in a vision to some old testament prophet ( who can't be expected to understand the technological capacity of people who will be alive in thousands of years to the future) he generally allows them to describe what they see in their own words, presuming that these things could only happen by God's miracles and not by man's technology. Thus we have the apostle John describing a vision of what he called Locusts (in Revelation 9:3), which could easily have been a vision of an Apache helicopter, or more likely its Russian counterpart, some 2000 years in his future. The distinction changes the prophecy not a bit, but it does make it less obscure to today's readers. My point is not that it has to be true, but that it may well be true, without violating the prophecy one bit.
It is with this perspective in mind that I have drawn my conclusions concerning the end of the Gog/Magog war, which I believe might lead to a nuclear exchange between Russia and America, with the "Rapture" of the believers in Jesus occurring before the missiles detonate. ( see my post of June 10th, "Revelation 6, & 7" for my explanation).
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