Admittedly, this disturbed me. Not because Ahmadinejad is Islamic and trying to hasten his understanding of prophecy. What is frightening to me is that we can see this religious fanaticism that is gaining an equally dangerous amount of political power mirrored in certain branches of Christianity! What Ahmadinejad is trying to do is no different than what Zionist Christians are doing - attempting to "hasten" the second-coming of Jesus by doing what they can to escalate the Middle East crisis between the Islamic Arab nations and the nation of Israel. They believe by throwing their support behind the expansion of the nation of Israel, despite what such a move may do to not just Muslims in the region but to our fellow Christians living in Palestine, any move toward a war in their view is a "good" thing because they believe that is what is spelled out in scripture HAS to happen in order for Jesus to return--so the sooner it happens, the better! The message: Christians should rejoice in the wreaking of death and destruction upon humanity.
Yet, as a Christian, such a prospect brings me sadness rather than joy. Not that Christ will return, but that so much death and destruction is NECESSARY and indeed somehow pre-ordained by God to occur in order to bring about ultimate salvation and redemption of the world. Furthermore, to somehow not embrace this vision of a future that is so destructive and dismal is seen by many Christians as not embracing the joyful return of Jesus Christ. Hasten the death, hasten the destruction, rape our earth...it doesn't matter because it's what HAS to happen in order for scripture to be fulfilled.
There can be no denying, we live in scary times. We live in an age where we have harnessed knowledge of the atom to both humanity's benefit and destruction. This knowledge is now loose and will eventually wind up in the hands of someone who will not show the restraint that our world leaders have shown up to this juncture, respecting the destructive nature of this knowledge (first-hand through actually USING two of them at the close of WWII--and hopefully realizing that kind of power should never be used again) that could bring about the end of not only our enemies, but of ourselves as well. This unfolding of frightening world events is interpreted as "we're living in the end times" as has been spelled out in Biblical prophecy. And perhaps they are correct (though Jesus himself said such signs will be as "birth pangs" - they will come and they will go, growing in intensity, and never knowing when exactly the birth will take place), but I also think Barbara Rossing in her book "The Rapture Exposed" hits upon a point that has been missed by the vast majority of Christians - especially Zionist Christians. And that point is this: the purpose of prophecy.
Prophecy is not fortune telling. Prophecy in the Old Testament was never used as a "script" to outline future events in the way modern "dispensationalist" Christians have treated Revelation (and to be fair, are not even really using just Revelation, but piecing together other parts of the Bible to fit their end-times scenario). No one will find the gospels accounted for totally in the Old Testament. In fact, we have to delve pretty deeply into the Old Testament prophecies and find foreshadowing of Jesus' coming spattered throughout a variety of different texts, claiming different things about the messiah that would all ultimately be true, but not in ways that were expected as was evidenced by many first century Jews rejecting Christ. For one thing, the Old Testament points to the messiah coinciding with the resurrection of the dead. Christians, in hindsight, are able to interpret this as Christ being the "first-fruit" of the resurrection and only at his second-coming will the "full" resurrection of ALL the dead occur--but you will not find that particular part of messianic understanding spelled out anywhere in the Old Testament. Even Jesus' own followers thought his first coming heralded "the end" of this world and the beginning of the restoration of the NATION of Israel (as evidenced by their questions in Acts 1 at His ascension.) And certainly, the gospels contain some events that are not even mentioned in the prophetic foreshadowings of the messiah. If one were to have taken what we had in the Old Testament and tried to "piece together" the events of Jesus' birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension - we undoubtedly would have come up with a "series" of events that would be far from the reality of what actually happened. Not that prophecy was "wrong" - it was just not fully understood, nor was it completely meant to be!
All of that aside - getting back to the point and purpose of prophecy, that it is not a means of fortune-telling. Prophecy throughout the Old Testament was utilized as a way to communicate and warn God's people when they were heading down the wrong path, when they were acting in ways that were not in accordance with Godly living. The point: to alter Israel's behavior and path, to evoke a change in their behavior both to God and to those around them. In fact - there are some "prophecies" that never come to pass in the Old Testament for one reason and one reason alone--the warning was heeded. The entire book of Jonah is a shining example of a "failed" prophecy! God warned that unless the people of Ninevah repented of their ways, they would be destroyed. What happens? Ninevah heeds the warning, repents, and the destruction God warned about is averted (much to the dismay and anger of Jonah who wanted to see them all destroyed!).
Now granted, there does seem to come a point of no return, where a last minute ditch effort to change is futile, as evidenced by Jeremiah telling the people of Israel they should submit to the yoke of Babylon. Their going into captivity was a done deal, and Israel's sudden desire to fight off the Babylonians that they were warned not to "get into bed with" in the first place would not stave off what had already been set in motion. Now, what must be remembered is that God promised to bring them out of Babylon eventually and would not abandon them to the Babylonian captivity into perpetuity, so an element of Biblical prophecy is to also give promise and hope.
But I really love Barbara Rossing's analogy between prophecy and Charles Dickens' character Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" when he comes face-to-face with the ghost of Christmas future and shows him his cold, lonely grave. Scrooge cries out to the apparition: "Why show me this if I am past all hope?" Rossing pushes us to likewise ask the question regarding our apparently dismal future: why show us this if there is no hope? Now, granted, the dispensationalist will say it is being shown so that you will turn to Christ, be "raptured" at some point and avoid all this messiness that is to come. It's not that the events themselves may be avoided, but that as Christians, we can somehow avoid the very death and destruction we seem so hell-bent on creating in the first place!
As a Christian, who is called to walk alongside those who suffer, to bear the burdens of my fellow human being - this idea flies completely in the face of that. Rather than hastening Christ's coming by expediting death and destruction, as a Christian, I see our role not in establishing a foreign policy that is motivated by a specific interpretation - similar to what Iran's president is doing - of prophetic scripture and actually dislodging our fellow Christians in Palestine in order to achieve a certain vision of "prophetic fulfillment," but rather to tend to our neighbor. To clothe the hungry, feed the poor, care for the earth which has been entrusted to our care--not hasten its destruction. If God's divine will is to reign down destruction upon the earth through war and pestilence, He will do so without our helping hand. Prophets condemn injustice and greed, advocate for the poor, widowed and orphaned, and threaten what the consequences of NOT doing that will be!
Our solidarity should be with both Israelis and Palestinians, condemning mistreatment, injustice and violence on both sides. It should not be in creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that comes about through our hands rather than God's. What very few "end time scenario" proponents note in Revelation is that the battle of Armageddon is probably one of the most anti-climatic battles in the Bible. Not a shot is ever fired. Only the "sword of Christ's mouth"--the Word of God--is wielded to bring the forces of evil to nothing. Not war, not bloodshed - but rather, the blood of the lamb that Christ bears on his robes before he ever enters into the battle. The Word of God is what heals all wounds, what brings the power of Satan and his armies to their knees.
It's interesting that Jesus' "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God," has been thrown out in favor of a paranoid understanding of Daniel 9:27 that the "covenant" spoken of is a peace agreement between the anti-Christ and the nations of the world (which, it is contested and unclear who the "anointed one" spoken of actually is - Christ, or the anti-Christ) "Beware the peacemaker" seems to rule modern Christian dispensationalism rather than "blessed are the peacemakers" - though 'beware the peacemaker' is actually not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
Yes, the devil is a deceiver - yes, the devil and his 'anti-Christ' attempt to mimic Jesus, but Revelation is clear: though he may look Christlike, he will speak like the dragon. His words will be evil, his words and actions will incite exactly what God is against--hatred that leads to war, death and destruction. Will it be allowed? Yes. Do Christians need to unwittingly contribute to the work of the beast? No. If that truly is what is "destined" to happen, it will happen without our aid, without blood on our hands. Our job is to be witnesses for Christ--to be the lampstands that utter the word of God as our weapon against the devil, the anti-Christ, and all his followers. To be faithful unto death, to work for justice and love, not oppression and hatred. To engage in the idea that we need to somehow work on hastening Christ's second coming is to fall into the same trap as President Ahmadinejad. It is to engage in the work of violence and hatred. Can we say "Israel has a right to exist?" Yes, absolutely. Do we need to say that Israel MUST obtain ALL the land they once owned in order to usher in the second coming? No, we do not. Because what many Christians seem to have missed is that with Christ's coming, many things were re-defined.
In Christ, God has fulfilled all his promises and covenants with "Israel." In Romans, Paul takes great pains to redefine who Israel is as compared to who the "Jews" are (the subject of another blog entirely). But for the sake of expediency, I will simply state that Paul's ultimate argument is that Abraham's offspring encompass all the faithful, not through blood-lineage, but through a faith like Abraham's. "Israel" is not synonymous with "Jew" in Romans - a "Jew" is being used to distinguish the difference between a "Jew" and a "Greek" in the Christian church - and both Jew and Greek are a part of "Israel" - God's faithful people. "Christian" is not a term Paul knows - Israel as a term for those who follow God in faith IS a term he knows. As for the promises regarding restoration of the Promised Land to "Israel," the "Promised Land" WILL be restored upon Christ's return to "Israel" - God's people through faith. We just need to understand how "the Promised Land" has taken on new meaning in the New Testament. Revelation gives us a vision of that restored Promised Land, that New Jerusalem:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.My hope is that we have not so misunderstood the point and purpose of prophecy that we are actually bringing about what God was trying to warn us NOT to bring about! That rather than following the way of Christ, we have followed the ways of the beast that bring about only destruction, pain, and war. Humanity as a whole is capable of bringing these things about without our "hastening" it along. When the time is right, every eye shall see, and every knee shall bow. Until that time, we are called not to participate in furthering hatred and anger, but be "little Christs" to our neighbor, to love our enemy, and be faithful witnesses unto death. As is likely to happen, people may disagree with me on this, as they are more than welcome to do. And I am willing to admit - I could be wrong. We ultimately will not know until that final day - but in the meantime, I know I can rest with a clear conscience that rather than pushing for what may or may not be a correct interpretation of "the end times," and causing more strife and hatred, I will go about the work of being a witness to the death and resurrection of Christ, of the transformative power of the Gospel and the Word of God, and desire peace between peoples and nations. War is sometimes an unavoidable "nature of the beast" of living in a fallen humanity, but IF I am to engage in supporting any type of war, it will be for the purposes of justice and love for my fellow human being who is being oppressed and I am willing to stand in judgment for that decision. It will not be because I have interpreted prophecy to mean at the expense of even my fellow Christians some bits of desert need to be returned to a group of people who reluctantly accept that help because they have no other allies, while simultaneously resenting it because of the religious reasons behind it that are completely contrary to their own faith tradition.
—Revelation 21:1-3
