The race toward Armageddon is the stumbling toward self-destruction.
Armageddon! The great battle against the Antichrist; when the red mist of a vast firestorm is to descend from above to envelop all living creatures in its deceptive embrace, leaving the god of war to spit out the pips.
According to the tricky and treacherous text of the final book in the New Testament, the book of Revelation, when the end time of the world dawns, a scroll with seven seals will be opened. With each seal a new horror will be unleashed against humanity. First, a great dragon will appear; this is later identified with Satan. Next will emerge a monstrous beast ominously rearing its seven heads and ten horns. Finally, a servant of this beast will arrive on the stage, a “false prophet” (16:13)—the Antichrist—who will lead his international satanic army against the forces of God. All these satanic forces will be gathered together “at the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon” (16:16).
Abruptly, a white horse bearing a divine warrior will appear from heaven, a warrior described as “The Word of God” (19:13), whom many interpret to be Christ; he will lead the “armies of heaven” (19:14) in a vast and bloodthirsty battle that will erupt against a background of terrestrial plagues and earthquakes. The three satanic allies will be defeated: the beast and the false prophet will be thrown alive into burning sulfur; their followers will all be put to the sword by the heavenly rider. According to the book of Revelation, God will take no prisoners—except, strangely, for Satan, who will be quickly locked up in a bottomless pit. Then the calm following this mayhem will usher in a thousand years of peace.
But in a curious and unexplained twist, at the end of the thousand years of peace, Satan will be released from his prison for a short time. This act of apparent mercy will immediately lead to a second great war.
It does seem a very cruel trick for God to play upon the newly peaceful inhabitants of the world. God appears to be toying with Satan like a cat toys with a mouse, because this new satanic army will also be rapidly destroyed, permitting a shiny new Jerusalem to descend from the clouds—a new Jerusalem from which Jesus will rule forever over a world where death is no more.
Personally, I have always wondered why, if Jesus is destined to be victorious, he and God should put themselves to so much trouble first. It seems to me that by delaying the inevitable, they are actually colluding with the beast, the false prophet, and Satan. It is also pointless, and the collateral damage so extensive.
But it does not seem pointless to approximately 59 percent of Americans who, according to pollsters, say they believe in the coming battle of Armageddon. And this is in addition to the millions of fundamentalist Christians worldwide who hold the same belief. Indeed, fundamentalist preaching has been pushing this kind of material out for years, material that does not allow for any doubt in the literal interpretation of Revelation. John Hagee, a prominent Texas fundamentalist preacher and author, clearly has none: “Armageddon is an actual battle, and the Antichrist is a living, breathing person.”
It is evident from statements such as these that fundamentalist preaching operates in the service of fear—fear of the big battle to come and fear of not belonging to the side of Jesus so as to benefit from the thousand years of peace.
Fear is all to these people, and every opportunity to spread it is taken. In January 2007 fundamentalist evangelist and former presidential contender Pat Robertson told his television audience that millions of people would die that year in a huge terrorist attack on the United States. He claimed that God had personally told him this but added, rather as an afterthought, “I’m not saying necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn’t say nuclear.” Which is, of course, reassuring.
Such an attitude is not so far away from that of the Islamic suicide bombers who are sure that upon their deaths they will go straight to paradise to enjoy the favors of seventy-two young girls, favors they have missed out on in life due to their restrictive beliefs.
This battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ is, according to thousands of Christian fundamentalist preachers, coming soon. In fact many are convinced that our modem military involvement in the Middle East is linked to this fiery end. In the book of Revelation, Babylon is the source of all evil and is ultimately overthrown; Babylon, of course, is in Iraq, which has presently fallen to U.S. forces and their allies. To Christian fundamentalists, the connection, and the importance, is obvious.
But the Christian fundamentalists are not the only ones to believe in a final battle. Muslims, too, with increasing urgency speak about the coming of their messiah, the Mahdi, who—with the aid of Jesus—will fight against the demonic forces of the Dajjal, the Islamic Antichrist figure. Especially important is the belief held by many Muslims that the Mahdi will rule from Jerusalem, which the Muslims claim as their own. Muslims who follow these beliefs expect the final battle to come very soon, and this is affecting their politics, which, in turn, is affecting all of our lives.
Jewish fundamentalists, by contrast, do not think of a battle to come, but it is hard to see how their end times can appear without one. For they hold that when the Messiah comes, he will rebuild the Temple, referring to Solomon’s Temple, the very first temple, according to the Bible, to serve the ancient religion of the Israelites in Jerusalem, a temple that was pillaged and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. And with the Messiah’s coming, they hold that Jerusalem will be wholly Jewish. There will be no room on the Temple Mount for any Islamic structures, nor will there be room for the Islamic population within Jerusalem, indeed within all of Israel—which they define as stretching as far as western Iraq. They believe that the signs of the coming of the Messiah have already appeared; it will not be long now. The thousands of years of waiting are about to end. Of course, there are those who wish to hurry the time along and remove the mosques from the Temple Mount in advance of the Messiah’s arrival. The anti-Islamic position of these groups is inflexible and runs very deeply. Their true relationship with Christianity is prickly and kept rather close, for they all depend upon the constant flow of funds donated to them by Christian supporters, but the tensions are there to see. For them, there is no need for compromise or tolerance; God gave Israel to the Jewish people, and that is all that needs to be said.
Tags: apocalypse, armageddon, bush, christian, end times, israel, jew, muslim
Israel and Islam are locked in battle over Jerusalem, and Christianity is the superpower centered in America encouraging a fight to the death. America is a two party system, and one of those parties benefits from rising tensions in the mideast because that excites their voting base and gives the base hope that voting for the party of the rich really was a godly thing to do. The rich doesn't want destruction of the world, but they are selling the base a product that the base wants to hear. Just in case, the wealthy would like to increase their wealth a little bit more compared to the rest of the population so that they will be able to afford to buy into whatever part of the earth remains the most comfortable if destruction does start. This strategy can work for both fundamentalist wars, and for global warming.
Some people are happy about these things. Hagee is happy overall, and when he is happy so are the fundamentalists. The Republicans are currently out of power, but they are still getting more rich and consolidating corporate power, and they know in some future election they will return to political power, and meanwhile their overwhelming military superiority including most of the world's stockpiles of WMDs will be preserved for them by the other party.
Without the wars for and against His religious commitments, the world would be even more overpopulated. The monotheistic certainty gives the best reason for killing. Certainly non-monotheists have warred and massacred but they have done it for themselves or their states. When was the last war to conquer for Buddha or Brahma? Armageddon is a logical conclusion!
We need to make sure people don't become overly alarmed about this topic. Armageddon is destruction of the entire world in name only. No religion or combination of religions could bring that about. They can cause some wars and create a lot of chaos and damage, but it won't actually be universal destruction. So when a religion says it is working for end times, it is really only working on getting a few wars started and at that point it will be out of their control.
In some ways the world is in less danger now than it was a couple generations ago. We survived the cold war period where a war between the superpowers could mean tens of thousands of nukes killing half the world's population, and the resulting radiation and nuclear winter killing about 99.9% of the rest from hunger and disease in the following years, and no civilization to rebuild for the few human animals that did survive. In today's world, a nuclear war could destroy a few cities, and possibly even some smaller countries, but it wouldn't be the end of human civilization. That is really the way we should be looking at Armageddon today. It will be known by the destruction it causes, probably in the middle east, but mankind will live through it and hopefully learn from it.
"Fundamentalist religions are humanity’s greatest enemy. ...
We simply cannot permit that future to occur; we must oppose that future with all the strength at our disposal."
While I agree with much of the analysis here, this also seems a bit extreme. a little too fundamental perhaps.
End times -- always predicted, never arrive. What I think is a more interesting topic is the socio-psychological phenomenon among the monotheistic traditions (which emerged from those old warring gods of the OT) that gave rise to this belief in a god of such horrific nature that HE could will such an awful end to most of humanity. What is in the nature of this historical impulse that gives rise to this need on the part of so many people to believe in such a god, and such an end?
Divine retribution, of course, contradicts the loving God of the gospels, the one Jesus experienced and tried to manifest in his life of healing, forgiveness, reaching across ethnic, cultural, and political boundaries, prophetic denunciations of religious leaders and their hypocrisy. I think I know what he would have to say to the Hagees' and others who would use the name of God to denounce others and create a religion of self-loathing and fear - very lucrative for these preachers.
Many times people have felt their world crumbling, thinking it the precursor of end times. Well, we aren't going to get off that easily. We will actually have to go on struggling with the narratives that form the essence of the gospels - the Good Samaritan, Matthew 25, the rich young man, the Beatitudes and Woes, the healings of lepers and sons of Roman centurions and poor people and blind people, the narratives of Dives and Lazarus, and on an on.
No end times to get us out of the demands of the Christian tradition - to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, resist violence with non-violence (turning the other cheek), laying down weapons, even in defense of Jesus (at the time of his arrest), and building cultures in which we stop doing battle but rather do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our god.
True believers look on this not as warring OT gods bringing an horrific end to most of humanity, but as a NT god that loves them and will rapture them above the horror that people of other religions must face, and if any of the believers are driving their cars at the time their driverless vehicles will run down any non-believer pedestrians in the way. They pray every day that God will schedule the rapture in their lifetime. The rest of the world doesn't really believe in the rapture, but that is what makes America stand out, that and our stockpile of nukes.
I concur. The OT God was an emotionally insecure bully, ready to go ballistic for most any reason. Sort of like some of the tribal chieftains of the time.
I like the NT God much more, he is far more emotionally mature, kinda like the persona you may find in "The Course in Miracles"
Christians follow Christianity. The religion has become their idol.
True, though not all Christians - or Jews, Muslims, etc... - are idolaters. Any god, even YHWH, even Jesus, can become an idol.
"Divine retribution, of course, contradicts the loving God of the gospels . . ."
Reread the gospels. Divine retribution is not absent from them.
Though I would argue that such retribution is not carried out by human agents of any kind in Jesus' understanding, but is strictly limited to God's own, personal action at a soon-and-future end-time (singular), known only to "the Father." If the concept of divine retribution is contradicted, it is contradicted by "Nature," and not anything in the Bible, Old Testament or New. I see no evidence of divine retribution in Nature; the various theories of science account quite well for the so-called "acts-of-God" in Nature (Robertson and Co. idiocy be damned), not to mention the ho-hum day-to-day evolution of, well, everything. But there is plenty of evidence, literarily (is that a word?) speaking, throughout the Bible.
Perhaps the Jesus written about preaches (1) a human community (kingdom) that lives in love (of self, neighbor, and God) under God's sovereignty (the kingdom of God) and participates in the anticipated end-time only as observers, and (2) a hope that such an end-time, though prophesied long before Jesus' time, may never come. The gospel writers (and Paul before them and others after), however, preach something else entirely.
What the hell is a "masters degree in mysticism and religious experience?" Why does the "scholarship" of Baigent and Co. still get serious attention?
It is a point of view. What do you think about end times?
Went through it late last year, beginning of December. Good riddance. Right-wing Conservative Christians are scary, though - an Undead Falwell (sp.?) costume come Halloween sounds freakin' creepy! But I don't need the baggage of Baigent on "our side." My dog's point of view is more interesting.
He does bring up an important topic. Destruction for the world and suffering for everyone else is about the most dangerous doctrine a religion could ever have. They have mixed love and hate, and confused cruelty and kindness, and who knows what they might end up doing, or condoning, or encouraging others to do as they work to resolve contradictions that can never be resolved? At least 8 years of Bush taught us to be careful because we will always underestimate what they are capable of.
Ok, fine. The right-wing nut-jobs, whatever their brand of religion or ideology, are their own worst enemies. They are incompetent theologians, incompetent politicians, incompetent scientists, inco - hell, name a field of human endeavor, they're incompetent at it. They are also ignorant ignoramuses to boot. Not only that, they are unaware of their ignorance, so there ain't no fixin' 'em from within. They are an almost entirely western sort of idiot (radical Islam notwithstanding). Case in point: Bushie. His boundless incompetence initiated what amounted to a "minor" world war, killed a whole lot of people and made life more miserably for the least of us here in the USofA. Not to mention the further erosion of our already tenuous reputation throughout the world community. But here's the thing: it isn't the theology/religion of Bush, etc... that makes 'em dangerous, it's their almost supernatural incompetence. And incompetence has a way of limiting itself. Of course, this notion is of little comfort to those who suffer or have suffered at the hands of these nincompoops. But that doesn't make it any less valid. How we analyse it makes a difference. It's the crazies who can wreak real, lasting damage. The right-wing nut-jobs are "merely" stoopid. Really, really stoopid. They'll never truly win because they're to busy poking themselves in the eye. Yes, they can hurt, maim, kill. But they have to stop or they won't get raptured (remember that it only those who currently believe the wrong things that are left behind to do the fighting; personally, I wish that they would all be raptured tomorrow so the rest of us can get on with it). They will always be with us (have always been with us) as a concrete reminder that evolution is not (necessarily) a progressive process. They are creatures whose mutated genes do not result in adaptations that make them fit for anything other than a blissfully oblivious dead-end on a broken branch of the human family tree. Be careful around them, yes. Challenge them at every turn of Mother earth on its axis, you betcha. Am I sure of all of this? Well, no; I'm never 100% sure of anything (except, maybe, God is Love). Always a chance one of 'em gets incompetently unlucky and wipes us all out. But that would just be evolution, now wouldn't it?
I still say we (progressive liberals or whatever) don't need the here-today-gone-tomorrow scholarly incompetence like that of Baigent and Co. on our side in the fight against the eternal incompetence of the Christian (or whatever) right-wing nut-job coalition(s).
Or maybe not.
Case in point: see hopefully55 under Republican Wackos below. Can you say blissfully oblivious unaware ignorant ignoramus? I knew you could . . .
And if I ever see the End Times a-comin', Arm-a Geddin' out-a here.
LOLx2!!
What many fundamental right wing republicans believe is that they will be zoomed away and leave all the sinners on earth. That is what a couple of guys wrote in a book. Then a movie was made and pushed by the Christian right. What I believe is that Satan will come before Christ. He will have powers that are unquestionably super powers like Jesus had when on earth. People will worship this fake and be misled. Jesus comes after and the fight begins in the Middle East.
Uh . . . LOL?
BTW, I consider myself a sort of "mystic" with "religious experience," but I can't imagine how one would earn a degree in such a thing. What the hell is on the test?
There is more to the picture when it comes to Jewish fundamentalists (the same might be true for Christians and Muslims - I just don;t knwo enough about them).
Already in Jewish legal texts known as teshuvot/responsa (letters written in response to legal inquiries) noted rabbis took the position that the Temple in Jerusalem could stand alongside a mosque. There is at least one "fundametalist" rabbi living in the West Bank (Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of Efrat) who has referred to this ruling many times in his teaching.
No triumphalism here - or the suggestion that this is the opinion of even a sizable minority of Jews - just that there are "fundametalist" perspectives that do not always result in armageddon.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.