Bible Study Seattle

“Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, all of these were dead.  So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh.”  Isaiah 37:36-37

No doubt this is a picture of what will happen in the future.  It is probably more representative of the disaster at the end of the 1,000 years than the beginning.  In the beginning of the 1,000 years right before the Day of Atonement, we see:

“Behold, a day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you will be divided among you.  For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.  Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle.  In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.  You will flee by the valley of My mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel; yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord, my God, will come, and all the holy ones with Him!”  Zechariah 14:1-5

Here we see women ravished and other horrible atrocities of war.  But in the Sennacherib example, the army never gets to even touch the Israelites.  Like this:

“When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore.  And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.  And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone,”  Revelation 20:7-10