The real question about Vladimir Putin is not what is he trying to pull, or if he will he get his way in Ukraine, or win the vote to secede in Crimea, or this, or that, or some other thing. The real question on peoples’ minds is who and what is this guy and where does Vladimir Putin fit into Bible prophecy?

Though reckless and daring, Putin is also a sagacious politician. Diplomats around the world are holding their collective breath because they know this son of a KGB minister will not stop at annexing Crimea or conniving to get what he wants for mother Russia. The direction he has set his sights upon goes beyond Crimea and the Ukraine. Putin’s drooling maw licks its hungry chops, for Russia’s appetite for booty is increasing and it will not end until it puts together the mass of conspirators identified in Ezekiel 38-39 that will descend in full force and fury, unprovoked and unannounced, upon unsuspecting Israel so it may abscond with the ‘booty’ of Israel’s wealth.

While Putin was partying at the 50 billion dollar Olympics he most certainly had already decided that mother Russia would annex Crimea, and probably, the whole of Ukraine itself. Putin is a master politician and the one who has converted the former Communist economy into a thriving economic system of state capitalism. He is all about the rubles. He is about the booty that can be had – all to the glory of mother Russia.

It is evident that he is not scared at all by President Obama, or Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, or of anyone for that matter. He is an “all in” type of guy, a risk taker like Hitler, one who has the nerve and cold heart of an ultimate fighter. His actions during this whole Ukrainian affair have shown what his rivals at home know: he knows how to play Russian roulette better than anyone, especially Obama or any of the other world leaders who have been forced to stick their nose into what he believes is the Russian people’s business alone. There is no doubt that he is a contriving political genius who has the help of cagy spirits that have their own spy network which is far better equipped for high espionage than the KGB, MI5 and the CIA combined.

One can surmise that Putin knew far in advance that he had the pro-Russian votes locked up in Crimea so that Russia could commandeer the rich peninsula away from confused Ukraine. United States and E.U. intelligence had to have had this contingency knowledge of Putin’s designs at the top of their dossier of possibilities. The U.S. and the E.U have issued warnings and imposed sanctions like asset freezes and travel bans on Russian and Ukrainian officials as if this will make Putin reconsider his course of action. But it is obvious that Putin knew this would be the response and has taken them as a reason to fight, rather than something from which he should back down.

Putin plays it close to the vest, even with his own constituency. He has viewed the Ukrainian affair as just one episode in a series of battles in the war. A war he is conducting to advance Russian power and influence, and to make her the great economic power of the earth. What else does he have up his sleeve? Does he have a secret deal in the works with the Muslim nations or the Chinese to create another global monetary currency? Is he striving to set up a new economic world power, one that can compete with the primacy of the dollar? We shouldn’t put anything past Putin’s wily politics. We know he has other plans. He is not one to sit on his hands, smell the roses and sip tea with Mrs. Obama and talk of the needs of humanity.

For many decades after the Lenin led Communist Revolution in 1917 and World War II, pundits of bible prophecy often projected Russia as the Antichrist. This assumption went something like this. Since Communism is utterly atheistic and not at all God-fearing (though truth be known, it is highly dubious that there is one government or nation on earth that is God-fearing in these last turbulent, prophetic days) that Communism had to be the Antichrist.

While this was roundly conjectured it was also assumed that Russia would be the leader of the notorious group of nations revealed in Ezekiel 38-39. That consortium of nations would swoop down on Israel without warning in the end days, only to be annihilated in one twenty-four hour period under the supernatural hand of Almighty God.

Never mind that this is an inherent contradiction caused by patriotic political bias that obscures prophetic truth because of nationalism that is foreign to the truth about biblical prophecy.

It is more than hinted at in the Bible that the leader of the league of nations of Ezekiel 38-39 will come from directly north of the Middle East in the ancient land of Gog And Magog, which is today’s Russia. This Gog and Magog are to be summarily judged, along with its named hordes, in extraordinary fashion before the eyes of the whole world.

But this is not the way the Antichrist and his Empire shall meet their end. The Antichrist’s confrontation is with God Himself and Jesus Christ, and all armies from East and West among the whole remaining earth which are left at that point, will accompany the Antichrist and the False Prophet to Armageddon where they shall meet their final doom. (Rev. 19:19)

But the fate of the Antichrist is not the same as the consortium of Ezekiel 38-39 which are being represented in this hour by the spirit and actions of Putin. Therefore let us apply the law of Ockham’s Razor (the most plausible theory is the one which should be accepted and believed.) We can deduce that Russia will be the head of Ezekiel 38-39’s and its pack of scoundrel confederate nations. Along with Russia they will be supernaturally annihilated in the same day of its sneak attack on an unsuspecting Israel.  This being the case, Russia cannot possibly be the Antichrist. This makes Vladimir Putin a leader and, at the least, a forerunner forecasting, if not actually being, the one who will lead Russia into this military attack that looms in Israel’s near future. Whether Putin turns out to be the one used to spearhead the conspirators in this unprovoked sneak attack is a matter which the eye of The Outcast Eagles is now placing under close scrutiny. All that Putin has done has been done by stealth; never does Putin tip his hand to what his true intentions are.

Further, if that ancient Russian Bear with its politics, its religions (much more Muslim than generally believed), its leadership and its people are something other than the Antichrist, then we are obliged to ask: who and what is the Antichrist? Where will he and the kingdom come from? Where is its domain, what nations and peoples will comprise its force, what will be its international makeup? Is it just as conceived among U.S. prophetic church pundits – a European Union or something more? But one thing is sure, it cannot be the Russian Bear, it will not be the Ezekiel host of nations and people.

We are informed in the Book of Daniel that the end-time Antichrist will be nothing but a hybrid of the Roman spirit that has never ceased to pulse and breathe, but only will morph into its final end-time global beastly power. It will impose international tyranny, be the big brother of all in the ‘free’ world. It will not settle for a rich booty as Ezekiel’s confederacy will attempt to acquire. The Antichrist wants all, including the souls of men. The Antichrist evolves to the highest riches. Unlike the Ezekiel conspirators, it is not a local force but a global one. Only the ‘King of the South’ (so-called in Daniel 11) will oppose the Antichrist in the end. The confederation of Ezekiel is a different Muslim force than the Arab Spring countries that are a part of the King of the South which is not the same as the Ezekiel conspiracy. The Antichrist has evolved through millennia from one world power to the other, the Ezekiel consortium is on the spur of the moment. Its attributes of politics, human theology, and thirst for power through man’s vision of law and order has morphed the Antichrist into a beast that will engulf the earth. Its master, the Antichrist, shall be installed on the throne of the world in the Temple in Jerusalem declaring to be the omnipotent God of this world. His allies are all of the remaining powers on earth, though dwindled in magnitude and force over the seven years of judgment that have ensued. This final alliance of nations fighting against God will include the Chinese and the rest of the powers in the far-flung regions of the East within its ranks.

The allied hordes of Ezekiel are a localized block of nations of the immediate north stemming from Russia; they are of Muslim nations in the Middle East region surrounding Israel. They are expressed directly using their ancient names of the house of Japheth, giving us bearing as to their location for all times sake, to identify them whenever the prophecy was to be fulfilled. Ezekiel 38:2-6 gives us the location as well as defining their origins and names. Some of the conspirator’s names are familiar even today – like, Persia, Ethiopia and Libya. The other places, not having their names yet invented at the time the prophecy was delivered in the sixth century B.C., were identified by the wisdom of God by their original tribal names: Meshech, Tubal, Gomer and Togarmah. These were sons of Noah’s son Japheth, whose children settled just north of the Middle East in Russia, the Caucasus, the Black and Ariel Sea and the mountains to the north of the Fertile Crescent. Today these places are the Muslim nations that end with the suffix of ‘stan’, all predominantly Muslim countries of the former Soviet Union. The Arab Spring countries brought revolutions to Tunisia and Egypt, the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the ongoing civil war in Syria, uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen, mass protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco and Oman, and reverberated to a lesser extent in several other countries. These are not the former northern settlements of the ancient tribes of Japheth.

We might be wise to note that a large Muslim population resides in Ukraine, as well as the five other Asian countries of the old Soviet Union: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, which remain at the feet of the bear in humble submission even today. Given Muslim sentiment toward neo-Roman Antichrist ambitions and government dogmatics this identification of the co-conspirators of Ezek. 38-39 makes it more evident that Ezekiel 38-39 is a prophecy of Russia and its hordes, and has little to do with the Antichrist and its dealings with Israel or its conflict with God.

The prophecy is silent on exactly when this surreptitious attack will take place. It therefore could take place at any time. Putin will not be planning it, for the prophecy states that God himself will put the thought in the leader’s head and it will be done in impulsive fashion for gain only, because they feel they can get away with it. Those who oppose it from the West will be able to do nothing out it.

We need look no further than Putin’s pedigree and rise to power to see that he is an extraordinary and ruthless man with insights that rival the finest political deviant minds of the world today. He, or some premier of Russia like him, is a prime suspect for one who could be instigated by greed, and urged impulsively to lead such a conspiracy as described in Ezekiel’s whirlwind prophecy. It is not in keeping with the nature of the prophecy; it being a surprise to the whole world and to the Jews, that one could predict when it will happen or which person will be its mastermind. But, the fact that Putin’s father was high up in the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) who was important in the operations the Soviet Gulag during World War II, speaks of Putin’s grooming and education as a predator of men. He is a thug, an anti-Semite and an “all-in” type of risk taker, as Hitler was. Stealing Robert Kraft’s Super Bowl ring under the nose of the whole world, and virtually saying, ‘what are you gonna do about it!’ is a clear spiritual statement about his thoughts concerning Jewish people in general. The guy has the guts of a Don Corleone and the craftiness of a consigliere to go with it.

Without going into the details of Putin’s meteoric rise to becoming the virtual Czar of the Russian Bear, we gaze upon this man’s rising star and wonder where he might fit into the tide of events that are leading to the specific fulfillment of bible prophecy about the conspiracy of Ezekiel 38-39. How far away is Israel from this miracle happening to it? What night will it be when we go to sleep only to awaken to the news that Russia and its eclectic band of conspirators have been miraculously destroyed and its weaponry used as fuel by the Israeli people?

After all, as a prime credo of the Band of Outcast Eagles declares: “These are the days of vengeance when all things written shall be fulfilled.” Luke 21:22