Little is known about the man who was catapulted from obscurity into the seat of power.

Is Putin the man who will lead the Gogian force of Ezekiel 38?

I just finished reading a book by investigative journalist Masha Gressen entitled “The man without a face”.

In her book, Gressen explores the not so well known side of Putin and makes some observations about him which strike me as being very similar to the characteristics we might expect from the latter day Gog.

1. Putins ‘kleptomania’.

When reading about Gogs invasion in Ezekiel 38, one element stands out to me; Gogs desire to ‘take a spoil’.

Putin also, is infamous for taking what doesn’t belong to him.

Gessen dedicates a whole chapter to cover extensively what she calls “Putins Greed”. In this chapter, she documents Putins brazen history of becoming fixated on taking possession of personal items and corporate assets that belonged to other individuals and companies.

One notable example is was when Putin shutdown Russia’s largest privately owned oil & gas firm, Yukos, and salvaged its assets.

Here is a small collection of extracts taken from Gressen’s book showing Putin’s reoccurring urge to steal:

Putin hosting businessmen in St. Petersburg:

On several occasions, at least one of them embarrassingly public, Putin has acted like a person afflicted with Kleptomania.

In June 2005, while hosting a group of American businessmen in St. Petersburg, Putin pocketed the 124-diamond Super Bowl ring of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

He had asked to see it, tried it on, allegedly said, “I could kill someone with this”, then stuck it in his pocket and left the room abruptly.

Putin hosted as a special guest in New York:

In September 2005, Putin was a special guest at New Yorks Solomon R Guggenheim museum. At one point his hosts brought out a conversation piece that another Russian guest must have given the museum: a glass replica of a Kalashnikov automatic weapon filled with vodka.

Putin nodded to one of his bodyguards, who took the glass Kalashnikov and carried it out of the room, leaving the hosts speechless.

Gressen’s assessment of Putin’s ‘Kleptomania’

The correct term is probably not the popularly known kleptomania, which refers to a pathological desire to possess things for which one has little use, but the more exotic pleonexia, the insatiable desire to have what rightfully belongs to others.

If Putin suffers this irrepressible urge, this helps explain his apparent split personality: he compensates for his compulsion by creating the identity of an honest and incorruptible civil servant.

 Putin’s destruction & salvaging of Yukos:

It has been a year since Khodorvsky’s arrest, and it was now clear that Russia had passed two milestones. With the country’s former richest man behind bars indefinitely, no one, not even the rich and powerful, could afford free agency.

With the assets of the country’s largest and private company hijacked in broad daylight, Putin had claimed his place as the god father of a mafia clan ruling the country…. like all mafia bosses he amassed wealth by outright robberies such as with Yukos, by collecting the so called dues and by placing his cronies wherever there was money or assets to be siphoned off.

2. Putin has studied how to take the spoil.

It is worth noting that Gog takes a spoil specifically from two nations:

• Israel (Ezek 38:12)
• Egypt (Dan 11: 42-43)

Israel and Egypt aren’t the only nations that Russia will invade, Turkey will also be invaded. Why then doesn’t Gog take a spoil from Turkey?

Here is the suggestion: Both Israel & Egypt recently discovered unprecedented amounts of lucrative gas in the Mediterranean.

Both of these finds will be very disruptive to Russia’s control of the gas market.

The fact that both Egypt and Israel have now discovered what could be easily considered a ‘spoil’ from a geopolitical perspective makes this year distinct from past generations: The scene of the invasion of Israel in Daniel 11 & Ezekiel 38, is now set.

What is Putins take on all this? Well a few weeks back he called the Israeli PM and offered to guard Israel’s oil and gas assets.

But if we go back further and have a look at Putins past, Gressen shows that Putin actually completed his PHD on the subject of exploitation of natural resources.

His PHD was entitled: ‘Natural resources and the development strategy for the Russian Economy’.

Putin used the time to write and defend a dissertation, a goal he had set for himself when he went to work at Leningrad University seven years earlier.

The dissertation, oddly, was not on international law, as he had originally planned, but on economics of natural resources

So the idea of resource exploitation is well and truly entrenched in Putins mind, AND as Gressen points out, he seems to have some form of kleptomania. Not a good mix.

But that’s not all.

3. Putins overpowering violence

The third element of the Gogian invasion of Israel is the manner in which the invasion takes place.

It is fast and overpowering, Ezek 38:9 says “like a storm”.

Daniel 11 says: “he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many”.

Gressen recounts many stories of Putin that are on the public record showing Putin’s intrinsic tendency to impulsively dish out overpowering violence.

In one such story, Gressen describes Putins childhood:

“Thugs all. Unwashed, unshaven guys with cigarettes and bottles of cheap wine. Constant drinking, cursing, fistfights. And there was Putin in the middle of all this…When we were older, we would see the thugs from his courtyard, and they had drunk themselves ino the ground, they were hitting rock bottom. Many of them had been to jail”

Putin, younger than the thugs and slight of build, tried to hold his own with them. “If anyone ever insulted him in any way,” his friend recalled, “Vladmir would immediately jump on the guy, scratch him, bite him, rip his hair out by the clump – do anything to humiliate him in any way…

he would flare up and start expressing his outrage. He did this several times over”

Gressen notes that Putin likes to cultivate an image worthy of fear:

it is notable that Putin painted himself as consistently rash, physically violent man with a barely containable temper.

Gressen then goes on to show that his overpowering violence and impulsive temper which manifested through the tentacles of the KGB/FSB, resurrected vertical power enabling him to effectively head a security state much like Hitlers Nazi SS.

Is this the same barely containable temper that will “go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many”? (Daniel 11:44)

Three observations from Gressens book:

1. Putins has a tendancy to steal / “kleptomania”, as Gressen puts it.
2. Putin is well educated in and a strong proponent for the exploitation of natural resources for Russias economy.
3. Putins has a record of calculated and overpowering violence.

Dubbed by Forbes the most powerful man in the world, Putin seems to perfectly embody a latter day Nimrod.

There are many other characteristics which define Putin, which when put together seem to all add up to a perfect storm.

Is Putin Gog? We simply dont know, however, with the way the world is headed, and if God wills, we might find out sooner than later.