The date of the Last Day may be unknown, but some religious groups are seeking to speed up its arrival. The twist is that its not just some Christians who are working out plans for welcoming the End Times, but some Muslims and Jews as well:
“With that goal in mind, mega-church [Christian] pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.
“In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
[…]
“Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.
“Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.”
If the Jewish groups mentioned in the story actually are trying to displace the Dome of the Rock, I can well see how such a plan might culminate in Apocalypse Now.
For more information on apocalyptic questions, see Jimmy Akin’s “Apocalypse Not,” which ran in the January 2000 issue of This Rock.
If Ahmadinejad thought in 2004 that he’d be welcoming Mahdi to Tehran in two years, that would make it this year, right?
So when it doesn’t happen, does that mean others can tell him he was wrong and needs to step down?
Yes, they can, but they shouldn’t plan on doing anything after that.
Silly fools, the world will end in 2060. Sir Isaac Newton said so.
April
http://www.meretrice.com
No, no. The world will end in 1874, as Charles Taze Russell (founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses) predicted.
Wait a minute…
Yes. the J-dubs and their predictions.
…and I remember Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel saying that the Believers will be raptured in May 1981… er, December 31, 1981… er, 1986… er, yes, in 1988… er…
Yet,according to a former adherent to Calvary Chapel, on a December 1996 Radio program, Smith denied ever setting a date.
“A caller to the To Every Man An Answer radio program on KWVE, on 12-27-96 asked Chuck Smith a question about date setting and Calvary Chapel.
… at some point there was a prediction of Christ’s return via Calvary Chapel – is that real; some years ago? is that; did that happen?
Pastor Smith responded with:
No. Uh, never, we all, we do believe he’s going to return soon, and, uh, but, and but never any date. No. No. No. Never any date. Because no man knows the day or the hour. I believe he’s going to come this next year, but [laughter] you know…” [CC >http://members.tripod.com/ccfuaq/cc2ndcom.htm]
*************
let Ahmadinejad do all he can to bring back the 12th Mahdi, let the Jews in Israel take the temple mount and rebuild the temple. Newton said 2060, the Mayan calendar ends at 2012, the same year (2012) that predictions and prophecies of an approaching asteroid encountering the earth.
Come whenever the Father is pleased for you to return, Lord Jesus… tomorrow or in 2012 or a thousand years from now. Maran atha!! Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!!! that you may receive glory forever and ever!!!!
The end of the world comes every day for thousands of people. It came recently for a friend of mine. It will come for me when my heart stops. Sorry if I’m freaking some people out with this kind of talk, but it has to be said.
You want to speed up armageddon? Stop fighting for morality in the world so God will have no choice but to destroy it. Not a very Christian thing though.
Interesting that you see all of this heightened end of the world stuff in the religions that have Abraham at their genesis somewhere. Regardless of whether the religion comes through Ishmael or Isaac.
The end of the world comes every day for thousands of people. It came recently for a friend of mine. It will come for me when my heart stops. Sorry if I’m freaking some people out with this kind of talk, but it has to be said.
Mr Eko, you’re absolutely right! Life is a blessing from God, not only for us but also for others. We should recognize it as such and not become infatuated with this de facto “culture of death and destruction” permeating some elements of Evangelical Protestantism.
The Evangelicals who are trying to “advance” the Second Coming are nothing but de facto idolaters. They believe in their own theological and political agendas rather than in humility and submission to a God Who has reserved the exact times and details to Himself.
The only true way to prepare for Christ’s return is to try live as He would want you to live everyday, to confess sin, to make decisions that would please Him. Everything else is vain and irrelevant.
If people really want to be a blessing to Israel, they should ferociously oppose the Muslims who want to destory that country, particularly the suicide bombers who delight in taking innocent life.
They should also oppose Islam itself because Islam is irrevokeably opposed to the Jews.
Religion is used by many educated people so as to sway uneducated people to their side. Ahmadinejad who holds a PhD and many other qualifications almost certainly does not even believe in the 12th Imam/Mahdi but KNOWS a sizeable population of his country does. His campaign was to appeal to the poor and – being from a poor background originally – showing that the poor can make it. 50% of Iran are secular atheists who are well to do or are at least educated (many educated poor do exist in Iran), the other 50% are poor, religious and uneducated. Ahmadinejad has balanced himself so as to appeal to all of these (the Shah and the last 2 IRI Presidents only appealed to the rich, perhaps the earlier IRI Presidents only to the poor). Far from being a religious fanatic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an educated man aware of his own background and that of his country (it is not his “fault” that his country has a large, restive religious population who would resort to violence if necessary, a large secular population demanding democracy and velvet revolution and a large segment of the population who do not like/trust US, UK or Israel and believe a lot of wrong was done by the allies in WW2).
All religious cults – from Christian Moonies to terror organisations like al Qaeda, Ansar al Islam, Michelle Hughes, Baathists and all the rest in Iraq to Jewish ones to the Japanese guys in 1995 – are obsessed with the end of the world.
There are people in Iran who believe in the Mahdi and would be very insulted if their President who they voted for actually dismissed it. Various Shahs, Ayatollahs, Mullahs, academics, politician and so on all have dismissed the Mahdi, and ended up out of office, demoted or even killed by angry mobs! Ahmadinejad is a calculating academic who knows what he’s about. He is a tough negotiator and a pragmatist. He knows he is in charge of a country at a crossroad and he knows the West is in no position to go to war with Iran so knows he is capable of getting a really good deal.
“The only true way to prepare for Christ’s return is to try live as He would want you to live everyday…”
Exactly.
Just don’t try it in Church…right, Michelle?
Jimmy, do you mean to say the Israelites mean to knock down the Dome on the Rock and reconstruct the Temple? I’d like to see that happen.
“In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi…”
Mahdi!? So he’s waiting for Paul Atreides…?
Toloha: I don’t know — from everything I’ve seen, Ahmadinejad gives the appearance of being both a genuinely enthusiastic Twelver and also bat-guano insane.
I agree with you, MenTaLguY; if he’s not, he’s another Vinnie “The Chin” Gigante.
“Jimmy, do you mean to say the Israelites mean to knock down the Dome on the Rock and reconstruct the Temple? I’d like to see that happen.”
My post, Kevin, not Jimmy’s. As for what I meant to say, the story said that “some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.”
Since the Dome of the Rock is on that site, I speculated that if it is true what the story claimed then a Jewish group trying to build on the site of Islam’s third holiest site might well trigger a war of apocalyptic scope with the Muslims. Whether or not the story is accurate, I don’t know.
A Jewish group called The Temple Mount Faithful and a few other Jewish groups are preparing for the resumption of the Mosaic priesthood and sacrificial system. Some of these groups are studying and practicing so they’ll be ready for the rebuilding of the Temple and the return of animal sacrifices. As the abovequoted story says, there is a law in the Book of Numbers that requires the sacrifice of a completely red heifer. A pinch of the ashes of the red heifer are to be added to water so the water can be used for ceremonial ablutions. In Mosaic law, if you are ritually unclean or defiled, you must be purified in living water that contains a pinch of those ashes. So, without the ashes of the red heifer, there can be so priestly sacrifices, because there can be no ceremonial cleansing of those who become unclean per Mosaic law.
But another requirement is that when you start to run out of ashes, you have find a new red heifer and sacrifice it, burning it down to ashes, and then the new ashes must be mixed with what is left of the old ashes.
The ashes of the last red heifer were lost when the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. So, even if you can find a completely red heifer to sacrifice, you can’t sacrifice it if you are unclean — if you did, you’d render the sacrifice unclean and invalidate it. First you’d have to find the old ashes of the red heifer, toss a pinch in some living water, immerse yourself in the mikveh, build a new altar of sacrifice and purify it with living water and red heifer ashes, and then you can (if you are a male-line descendant of Aaron) sacrifice the new red heifer on the new altar, and voila! you will have successfully brought back to long-defunct sacrificial system of the Old Covenant.
Many Protestants believe that Christ can’t come back until the Jews resume animal sacrifices. They base that belief on Daniel chapter 9, which speaks of Antichrist abolishing the daily sacrifice. So, they reason, if Antichrist will abolish sacrifices, then the Jews will have to resume animals sacrifices first. Some Christians are even trying to help Jews find the long lost ashes of the red heifer (good luck with that!). It’s like they’ve never read the Book of Hebrews.
As for Daniel’s prophecy of the abolition of the daily sacrifice, we know that prophecy was fulfilled by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C., but even if (as many Catholics over the centuries have believed) Daniel’s prophecy will have a second fulfillment by Antichrist, there’s no reason to believe “daily sacrifice” should be taken to mean “animal sacrifice.” How do we know the Holy Spirit wasn’t talking about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass? Indeed, there have been many Catholic writers, including early Church Fathers, who have said Antichrist will outlaw the Mass.
Oh, I should have also mentioned that The Temple Mount Faithful and similar groups aren’t necessarily hoping to demolish the Dome on the Rock, but they do hope and pray for, and are working for, the time when the Muslim presence will be removed from Mount Moriah. I’ve read of other proposals that a new Temple be built next to the Dome on the Rock, but I doubt that proposal would make anybody happy.
It should also be mentioned that, under Mosaic law, if you really want to resume Jewish sacrifices, you don’t even need a Temple: all you need is an altar, at least in the short term.
But it will never happen. The last time serious efforts were made to rebuild the Temple, it was the reign of Julian the Apostate, and both Christian and pagan historians of that time recorded that construction had to be halted due to earthquakes and fire. God has decreed an end to the old sacrificial system, and His word shall stand.
Oh, I should have also mentioned that The Temple Mount Faithful and similar groups aren’t necessarily hoping to demolish the Dome on the Rock, but they do hope and pray for, and are working for, the time when the Muslim presence will be removed from Mount Moriah. I’ve read of other proposals that a new Temple be built next to the Dome on the Rock, but I doubt that proposal would make anybody happy.
It should also be mentioned that, under Mosaic law, if you really want to resume Jewish sacrifices, you don’t even need a Temple: all you need is an altar, at least in the short term.
But it will never happen. The last time serious efforts were made to rebuild the Temple, it was the reign of Julian the Apostate, and both Christian and pagan historians of that time recorded that construction had to be halted due to earthquakes and fire. God has decreed an end to the old sacrificial system, and His word shall stand.
As for Daniel’s prophecy of the abolition of the daily sacrifice, we know that prophecy was fulfilled by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C
Or Titus in 70 A.D., since those passages seem to be connected with the Messiah and the establishment of a new covenant.
The last time serious efforts were made to rebuild the Temple, it was the reign of Julian the Apostate, and both Christian and pagan historians of that time recorded that construction had to be halted due to earthquakes and fire. God has decreed an end to the old sacrificial system, and His word shall stand.
Well, so much for Tim LaHaye and the Left Behind series…. 😉