Solar eclipse in April, red heifer, second coming, and rebuilding of the Temple are the key words pronounced now-a-days everywhere among people of the three Abrahamic religions. Why are believers majoring on apocalyptic prophecies in this era?
Every age produces a variety of apocalyptic movements appropriate to its circumstances. When an apocalyptic sense of imminence spreads, eschatological groups emerge under the influence of their religious scholars and politicians. Eschatological religious beliefs may interact politically both at the international and local level. Now Eschatology can have a significant impact on how Christians approach the world around them.
Radical literal readings of the Bible and prophecy are pushing dangerous political ideas which can lead to chaos and war in the world. Christian Fundamentalists believe in the literal nature of all prophecies, and this makes them susceptible to many dangerous claims. They believe that all prophecies in scripture will be fulfilled, especially the end-times prophecies of a Millenial kingdom (Where Christ will reign on earth for 1000 years) and a pre-tribulation rapture.
No doubt, discussions on prophecies will be informative but there is a need of deep knowledge in this regard. Either theRe are writings about biblical prophecies which are going to be manipulated for Jewish political benefits or they are just simple discussions about the wait of every Abrahamic religion’s Messihiah. Most of the time they mislead and create fears with hopelessness in society; so they should be handled carefully as the young generation is already frustrated due to the poor economy and political instability. Otherwise it will not be beyond to say that the next generation will be in trance of Waiting for Godot
They also believe that the Temple of Solomon must be rebuilt and Israel must be “reunited” in the land. For all of this to occur, a popular but misleading claim among these folks is that they need the current state of Israel to have all the land, because that will allow for the tribulation to begin and bring about the end of the world.
The political implications are obvious, they believe in a one-state solution. Moreover, Jews deceive by saying they are God’s chosen people, and Christians should be ready to support Israel. Every faith says that its followers are chosen. The question is who are God’s Chosen people?
The Israelites were God’s chosen people in the past. But, they rejected Christ as the Messiah. These Chosen People didn’t believe in Christ, rather tried to kill him. When the Quran speaks about the Israelites as God’s Chosen People, the Quran speaks of this as, not a categorical matter, there is always a condition.
And this is in the Bible as well: If you do what God says, then you remain God’s chosen people, but if you disobey God, then obviously you are disqualifying yourself from this kind of close relationship with God. They were chosen for purpose and that purpose spelled out for them in the Torah. “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:5-6)”
Their history reveals human frailties more than any other nation. They exhibited such wickedness once that God proposed to wipe them out! “They were rebellious against the LORD from the very first (Deuteronomy9:24)” And their unfaithfulness to the LORD was demonstrated throughout their subsequent history in the Old Testament. (Hosea 9:1) The chosen people are those who obey God. And the Quran speaks about it in a more general way, “whoever submits himself entirely to Allah and he is the doer of good (to others) he has his reward from his Lord, and there is no fear for him nor shall he grieve. (2.112)”
Jewish prophecies about the end times remain a force in the world today and they are the main source of shaping policies and impacting the world. Like Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who has misquoted the Torah for Israel’s own interest, all the Jewish literature is misleading by stressing that it is the foremost duty of Christians to support Israel against innocent Palestinians’ genocide.
Since the war started against Palestinians, many articles have been written to justify genocidal acts by Israel and convince the world by moulding their minds. A hot discussion in papers is that America has been discovered by Columbus to settle Jews and that paved the way for the New World. This made me study more about it. Zionist writers are trying to create a view that Jews participated and even led the way for nation-building in the USA. Now it has become the duty of Christians especially American Christians to support Jews for the creation of Greater Israel, and the complete annihilation of the Palestinians; otherwise Americans should be ready for a complete disaster due to the anger of God who is always in favor of Jews– the Chosen People.
As far as I studied, in German Rabbi Meyer Kayserling’s book there is no hint that Columbus himself might have been a Jew. To the contrary, Kayserling criticized Columbus for his religious fanaticism and for his lack of sympathy towards Jews who were, after all, being expelled from Spain at the very moment he was setting out to sea. In the last century no one suggested that Columbus was anything other than what he claimed to be- namely, a religious Catholic and a native of Genoa. To the question, “was Columbus Jewish or not?” the response is who cares. It is an untimely question and obviously useless discussion too.
The interpretation of prophecies which has been moulded in Jews’ favour is going to be infused in Christians and the rest of the world. Even some Muslims are looking for the end of time ahead, waiting for their Mehdi and believing as everything would be in their favour even without any struggle.
Nowadays many Muslims talk about the end of times, the sacrifice of the red heifer and some other Jewish prophecies. Taking it as part of their fate, they have started believing that now time for Israel and the Third Temple has come as the prophecies predict, and Arabs will have to suffer till the Second Coming. Such beliefs are creating unrest and disappointment among the new generation.
Prophecies have been used politically as religion has been used in the past. Many scholars and reformers have criticized the social, cultural, and political passivity of the Arab and non-Arab Muslims of this age who transferred their hopes of regeneration to the miraculous powers of a Mahdi-to-come, while in truth it was up to the Muslims themselves to actively struggle for a renewal of their past civilizational and political preeminence.
A century ago, Rashid Rida, a prominent Islamic scholar and political thinker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dealt with the concept of the apocalyptic Mahdi as a doctrinal item representative of the inherent weakness and unreliability of the classical corpus of apocalyptic Hadith. Similarly Allama Iqbal, the poet and thinker of the East, contrary to his prose in which he is not sure about the existence of a character like the Mehdi, does emphasize the coming of Mehdi in his poetry.
The same concept was appropriated by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, which eventually paved a way for their material progress and development. Nietzsche introduced the concept of ‘Superman’ to the western world and prepared them for the same. An overman is a main character from his philosophical fiction “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1881) who is ready to risk everything for the sake of enhancement of humanity. The book explains how to live if you want to participate in the advancement of humankind.
Iqbal admits that the concept of Mahdi among Muslims has led to their intellectual decline as they have started relying only on Mahdi and they themselves have become complacent. In his poetry, Iqbal is not hopeless about the coming of Mahdi but he emphasizes that Muslims should not sit idle, rather they should go on striving endlessly in the path of knowledge and create a platform for him to come.
Social media has become a powerful tool for news dissemination, and social movements. Now it is an integral part of our daily lives. It is the duty of social media handlers, bloggers and Youtubers to promote authentic news which paves the way for hope and struggle without creating unrest in society.
No doubt, discussions on prophecies will be informative but there is a need of deep knowledge in this regard. Either theRe are writings about biblical prophecies which are going to be manipulated for Jewish political benefits or they are just simple discussions about the wait of every Abrahamic religion’s Messihiah. Most of the time they mislead and create fears with hopelessness in society; so they should be handled carefully as the young generation is already frustrated due to the poor economy and political instability. Otherwise it will not be beyond to say that the next generation will be in trance of Waiting for Godot.
