Could It Be Now?

Could It Be Now?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
J. Michael Sharman
 
In the 1960s when the fourteen-day Cuban Missile Crisis ended, BBC Radio reported: "[T]he world has been on tenterhooks wondering which superpower would back down first, desperately hoping this was not the beginning of a nuclear World War III."[1]
A majority of Americans during that time believed World War III would occur within five years. The sense of impending doom was so strong that 200,000 American households  built bomb shelters in their backyards.[2]
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Christians questioned whether their culture's problems could be harbingers of the End Times and Christ's Second Coming. William Miller's 100,000 followers were so sure of his prediction that October 22, 1844 would be the exact date of the "seventh day of creation" and Jesus Christ's return to earth, that they sold their farms and businesses to prepare for it.
Now the spiraling conflict  with <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran and Lebanon has brought those voices back again.
Bill O'Reilly was one of the first to say publicly, "Iran is behind the terror attacks on Israeli forces. The whole thing is part of World War III, ladies and gentlemen. Islamic fascism against the West."[3]
Louis Sahagun, writing in the Arab-American News, claims that many Christians are "laying the groundwork for Armageddon" in order to "speed the promised arrival of a messiah". Sahagun also notes, however, that: "In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. Ahmadinejad, defiantly pursuing a nuclear option, has suggested that the elimination of Israel would herald the return of a 9th-century Muslim cleric known as the Mahdi, the 12th Imam. He hopes to welcome that messiah to Tehran within two years."[4]
Iranian President Ahmadinejad told the official Iranian news agency that any Israeli attack against Syria would be an aggression on the whole Islamic world.[5]
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-supported terrorist group Hezbollah, is says in a televised message to the Israeli public, "You want an open war, we will go to the open war, and we are ready for it. War, war on every level, to Haifa and beyond." (Haifa, Israel's third-biggest city, has been hit by Hezbollah with some of the 120 rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon.) "You are fighting the sons of Muhammad, you are fighting people who have faith no one else has."[6] 
Nasrallah told the Israeli people, "Soon you will find how stupid your new government is and how it is incapable of reading the situation...We will reach Haifa, and believe me, even beyond Haifa."
Iran's state-sponsored newspaper, the Tehran Times, confidently editorialized that, "Israel may bombard or invade Lebanon, but it cannot afford a long war in the face of resistance. Even the U.S. was forced to withdraw from Beirut in the early 1980s after scores of its Marines were killed in a suicide attack."
Could we be experiencing the first days of World War III? Could it be now? If so, is World War III the final prelude to Christ's return?
The Bible, in the third chapter of Second Timothy, says: "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God- having a form of godliness but denying its power."
Well, if we are not in the last days yet, we certainly fit the description of the people who will live in that time.
But rather than sell the farm like Miller's followers did, or build backyard bomb shelters like the folks in the sixties did, maybe we can plan on how to prepare our lives for whatever happens in the coming times.
Think about this: if we are in the first days of World War III, what would you do to change the priorities of your daily life?
If we are in the last days before Christ's return, what would you change about your life to be better able to meet Him?
Maybe those are good questions we need to ask ourselves even if there wasn't a crisis going on in the Middle East.
 
 
 
 
 


[1]BBC On This Day,  http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/28/newsid_2621000/2621915.stm

[2] http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/studentwork/cns/2004-05-03/774.asp

[3] FoxNews.Com, "Why Should You Care About Violence in Israel and Lebanon?" July 14, 2006

[4] "Religious groups work to hurry apocalypse" Arab American News,  July 8, 2006 http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?articleid=5746

[5] "Hezbollah Rockets Fall on Israel's Third-largest City", by Sam F. Ghattas, 7/14/2006, Associated Press

[6] Hezbollah's Beirut Headquarters Hit in Israeli Attack (Update3) July 14 (Bloomberg) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBkXVvV8icZk&refer=home
 

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