Evangelical pastor Jimmy Evans calls Putin the 'new Hitler on a rampage'
An evangelical pastor in Texas recently preached a sermon on Bible prophecy in which he declared that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “the new Hitler on a rampage."
Pastor Jimmy Evans, the founder and apostolic elder of the multi-site Trinity Fellowship Church in Texas, appeared as a guest preacher at Ed Young’s Fellowship Church last Sunday, where he preached the culmination of a four-part sermon series on End Times prophecy.
During the March 13 sermon, titled “What in The World is Going on?” the 66-year-old pastor and founder of XO Marriage discussed the eschatological belief that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be part of the End Times prophecy being fulfilled.
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“Today, I would say that Vladimir Putin is Gog,” Evans said, referencing the figure mentioned in Ezekiel 38. “Now, if this is going to happen years in the future, Gog could be somewhere else. But now we have a leader in Russia who is a very evil man.”
He said Russia “is bombing women and children, bombing nursing homes, bombed a mosque this week and killed the people in it that were hiding there.”
Evans believes that Putin wants to “reassemble the Soviet Union,” a collection of communist governments dominated by Russia that officially collapsed in 1991.
“Ukraine is not his end game,” the pastor asserted.
“This is a new Hitler on a rampage. This is the most aggressive military action that has been taken since World War II,” he added, believing that Putin “more than likely” will continue to conquer parts of Europe.
While some evangelical pastors and biblical scholars believe that Ezekiel 38’s mention of Gog and Magog joining other nations in attacking Israel is modern-day Russia, other scholars disagree.
Using a map to show that Ukraine is positioned to the far north of Israel, Evans cites Ezekiel 38:1-6 to surmise that all of the nations mentioned in the Scripture as going to attack Israel are “politically and militarily aligned.”
“Rosh is Russia at the top of the map. You’ll notice Ukraine is there to the left. The Ukraine, biblically, could be part of Rosh, especially East Ukraine, which is historically Russian. So, the Ukraine could be part of that Magog. Ezekiel 38 mentions Magog,” he said.
“Today, that is Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. Gomer and Togarmah, Meshech and Tubal, that is modern-day Turkey. Put, that is Lybia, could be Algeria, parts of Tunisia. That is northern Africa. And Ethiopia and modern-day Sudan. These are all the nations that are mentioned there. By the way, Persia is Iran.”
“What do these nations have in common?” he asked. “They are all allies of Russia, and they all hate Israel. These are all Muslim nations except for Russia. And Russia is very, very angry at Israel right now. [Over] 2,600 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel sits down and writes this prophecy. It is exactly what is happening the world might now. All these nations are in their place, they are all politically and militarily aligned, and they all hate Israel. They would attack Israel in a heartbeat if they could.”
According to Evans, the End Times was “the most prophesied about period of time in human history.”
“The Bible tells us exactly what’s going to happen in the End Times, and it is happening right before our very eyes,” he added. “Just about every generation of Christians since Jesus has believed they were living in the End Times.”
Earlier in the sermon, Evans read Joel 3:1-2 and explained that God is saying, “when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, there’s also going to be Armageddon.”
Evans claimed Israel is the only nation in the history of the world that has been dispossessed twice and has come back to be reestablished as a country.
“The first time they were dispossessed was around 500 B.C. Because of their sins, God allowed the Babylonians, Nebuchadnezzar, to defeat the Jews. They took them captive from Israel, took them to Babylon. While they were in Babylon, Persia defeated Babylon,” Evans described. “At the end of the 70 years, they were able to go back and literally revive their nation.”
“They only went back from one nation. They only went back from Persia. They only went back from Babylon where they were taken.”
The second time that Israel was scattered, Evans said, was in A.D. 70, when the Romans crushed a Jewish uprising and destroyed Jerusalem, scattering the population.
Evans believes that the founding of the modern state of Israel in May 1948 was the fulfillment of prophecy in the Old Testament book of Isaiah and is a sign that the End Times are near. He said that in Isaiah 11, God declares that He will, for the second time, “regather my people from all the nations.”
Evans said that in Matthew 24:32-34, Jesus was basically telling people that “the generation that sees the beginning of the end will see the end of the end.’”
“Every generation has had signs of the End Times. Every generation has had earthquakes. Every generation has had famines. Every generation has had pestilences. Every generation has some evil person that they thought was the anti-Christ,” Evans said.
“But, we’re the only generation that has the existence of Israel. That’s what makes us different. That’s why we know we are living in the End Times. Israel has to exist for dozens of End Times prophecies to come true.”
An important question, Evans said, is how long is a generation. He pointed to Psalm 90, which says, “the days of a man’s life are 70 years or if by reason of strength, 80 years.”
Evans speculated that, since modern Israel will turn 74 later this May, it is possible that “we have six years left.”
“So if a generation is 80 years. We have six years,” Evans said. “I’m not setting dates. I’m just telling you what the Bible says.”
The belief that the founding of the modern state of Israel was predicted in the Bible and signals the start of the End Times is not without its critics, including within Christian theological circles.
Some, such as adherents to Replacement Theology, believe the modern state of Israel is not foretold in the Bible, but rather the biblical prophecies thought of as applying to it actually are about Christianity.
Last year, Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts released a survey that reportedly found that 51% of Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that the Jews are still God’s chosen people. In comparison, 17% believe that Christians have replaced them, 19% said they were unsure and 10% said they believe Jews were never God’s chosen people.
“From the Jewish and Israeli perspective, the Evangelical community is often viewed as a monolithic group that is both pro-Israel and pro-Jewish,” Mark Dreistadt of Infinity Concepts told The Christian Post last year.
“We knew this was not true but felt it was important to quantify the diversity as best we could. By looking at theological viewpoints, charitable giving, and support priorities we were able to see the mosaic of diversity emerge.”
