The Last World War?

by ProfDave, ©2023

(Oct. 11, 2023) — What a weekend!  As I watched the news of war in the Middle East I felt a sinking feeling of dread.  Is this IT!?  The beginning of the Last World War?  Thanks be to the Presence of God, I have not feared death for years, but I am ambivalent about the rapture.  I have loved ones I do not want to see lost and I don’t want to see Israel suffer.  I don’t want to see the USA lost, either.

Full disclosure.  I am not a prophesy guru.  I believe God’s Word is true, Christ’s dramatic return is certain, Armageddon is in there, and the Valley of Megiddo is a real place near the Golan Heights.  Biblical prophesies have been fulfilled with pinpoint accuracy in the birth, life and death of Christ and we have no reason to doubt they will be in the last days.  I once taught a young adult Sunday School class (their request) on Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth, and I have read the Left Behind series. 

BUT, I discovered that pious and believing Bible scholars are not nearly as certain of the interpretation of those prophecies as popular writers and preachers.  Adolf Hitler was not the Antichrist as they thought in the thirties (although he gave it a good try), nor was the Soviet Union the coming world empire as Lindsay believed.  In fact many staunch evangelicals believe “the rapture” (a word not actually in the Bible) is figurative!  I suspect that God’s purpose in these scriptures is not to make us fortune tellers, but to warn us to be ready and for us to recognize what is happening when it comes.  “Look up!  For your redemption draws near!  So I call myself a “pan-millennialist” – I am watching to see how it all pans out.

What we are to expect is Israel to stand alone against massive armies from the north and from the east (200 million).  Israel will repent and mourn “for the one they had pierced” and be delivered by the massive supernatural intervention of the Messiah. 

Perhaps the Israelis will find a way to surgically obliterate Hezbollah and its cousins without going nuclear.  You can see why my heart races at the alignment of the terrorists with Iran, Russia, and China (the only nation on earth that could muster a fraction of the Biblical numbers).  Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!  They will need a miracle either way.

Romans 11:25-26: “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening [not accepting Jesus as Messiah] in part [not all] until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.  And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob’ [Isaiah 59:20,21].”  Wake-up call!  It could be this week – or another thousand years.

Just when it appears that Israel is not going to nuke Iran immediately, the images of the news disturbed me in the night.  War brings out what humanity is really like.  In macro-historical terms, every people on earth has blood on their hands.  My heritage is Celtic, Anglo, Norse, Briton, and a whole train of others who conquered, brutalized, and absorbed each other from the days of Stonehenge and before – not to mention the occasional excesses in the New World.  And the indigenous tribes of this continent did it to each other long before we got here.  The Jewish people are miraculous survivors of the process of destruction and absorption.  Successive conquerors tried and failed to annihilate them.  They were driven out of their homeland twice – the last for 1900 years – but returned again to have grave difficulty absorbing those who occupied it in their absence.

What shocks us about the Middle East – and what is coming to our own cities – is our experience with centuries of the influence of the Christian ethic of love and forgiveness.  The veneer is wearing thin, but there are some things we won’t do even in all-out war – or at least feel guilty and get court-martialed if we do.  Even Muslim Jihadists are not supposed to harm noncombatants – but it is easy for them to forget after being drilled for generations to hate Jews to the death.  Muhammad never told them to love their enemies.  That would be Jesus – and we ourselves are trying to forget Him.

As we feel shock and awe at the horror of what both sides are doing, do not forget that terrorists and IDF, Jews and Palestinians, are both men and women of the same nature as ourselves – who must also answer to God for our hatreds.  Many are completely innocent – well, almost.  The plurality in Gaza did vote for Hamas local government (big mistake), but almost as many did not.  A sizeable minority are Palestinian Christians!  Pray for the peace of Jerusalem – and for the coming of Messiah!

Psalm 58:4-5: “Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed the tune of the charmer, however skillful the enchanter may be.”  Whoa!  Without the grace of God, would I be like that?  Have mercy, O God!

David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College.  He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota.  He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020).  He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.