Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Man and the end-time

By Abraham Ogbodo
31 July 2016   |   5:41 am
As a Christian, I wasn’t nurtured to contest the scriptures. End-time tribulations are theologically real, at least. They constitute the build-up to the apocalypse or more precisely, the Armageddon, recorded in the Book of Revelation...
The Editor of the Guardian, Mr. Abraham Ogbodo

The Editor of the Guardian, Mr. Abraham Ogbodo

As a Christian, I wasn’t nurtured to contest the scriptures. End-time tribulations are theologically real, at least. They constitute the build-up to the apocalypse or more precisely, the Armageddon, recorded in the Book of Revelation as the final show down between the forces of God and Lucifer and the permanent liquidation of the latter that must follow to bring about a new beginning called the Kingdom of God without the destructive machinations of Lucifer.

If global strife is the only measurement of the dawn of the end-time, then, we can conveniently state that the end has always been with us from the very beginning of time. There is no time in recorded history when the world was in perfect tranquility. The Israelites, even with God behind them, never had anything on a platter of gold. They fought great battles for the land they dwelt on, the air they breathed and the water they drank. They are still fighting for these things.

Empires, including some recent ones like the British expanded by conquest and in the process put the world in turmoil. The fall of the Western Roman Empire in about the 6th century effectively heralded the age of the Church and even the Mosque, to further set the stage for centuries of global strife. Coordinated jihads to push Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula into the Christian states of Europe were countered by the Crusades, which were series of military campaigns at the instance of the Papacy to keep Islam at bay and recover lost Christian territories, including Jerusalem and much of Spain from Islamic domination.

This period of mainly religious wars, including the evangelical attack on paganism was notable not for its expansion of the human frontiers but for its brutality and philistinism. For want of better description, the period is called Dark Age by historians. It is also called the Middle Age or Medieval. The persistent clash of faiths and the attendant savagery of martyrdom of early Christians by pagan rulers had made the Dark Age look like the end-time.

But the end did not come. Instead, the annihilations continued far into the 15th century culminating in the sack of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) by the Ottoman army in 1453. The Dark Ages dissolved with the Ottoman invasion as classical scholars fleeing the brutality of the Turks congregated in Italy to start the intellectual and artistic engagements that blossomed into the magnificent Renaissance or Rebirth of Learning.

Just when it seemed humanity had escape the apocalypse, succeeding powers and states in post Renaissance Europe stirred up even much greater strife to drown all hopes of redemption. The centuries that followed saw a tumultuous Europe that exploded beyond its continental boundaries and got the entire world involved in its internal contentions on two tragic occasions, in 1917 and 1939. The two World Wars, devastating as they were, did not end the time. They did not also end or even limit the propensity in men and women to stir up conflicts.

Even with all the ominous signs available to guide a prediction, I cannot tell how close we are to the end-time. But I do know that nobody, except God the Father, not even Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:36), knows the exact hour. In fact, on the theology of end-time, I have my own narrow understanding, which is different from the mainstream of Christian thinking. I have a feeling that it is men and not God that are creating the evolving end-time scenario. Since men can hardly wait for God’s time, they have perfected the art of creating the accompanying signs to drag the end-time into their own interpretation.

God is too good (and all the time too) to end the world just like that. Men are the one working to end the world, which can never happen outside the purpose of God. In other words, if per adventure, the ongoing global conflicts succeed in terminating the human race, God shall raise stones to continue until His own end-time.

I am saying both Christianity and Islam are doing too much to help God and it is not good. The unchangeable God does need anybody’s help to meet His purpose. And so, for some people to raise a salvation or end-time army to fight God’s battle is blasphemous in strict theology. The raving battles in the world today, including the ones in Nigeria, are all created in the hearts of men to impose the fatalities of end-time on humanity.

That said, humanity has a responsibility to stave off ultimate destruction with rational choices. The push by radical Islam alone is taking the world much closer to the end-time than before. For instance, in just about three years, Jihadists have carried out about 143 attacks in 29 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Middle East/North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia, resulting in about 2000 deaths.

While the carnage continues, the standard response in all cases by moderate Islam has this refrain: Islam is a religion of peace and the horror wrecked by ISIS and other radical groups has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam. Fine, but I want to appeal that a little more be done by the homelands of Islam, notably, Saudi Arabia and other states in the Middle East to strengthen the peaceful message of Islam and convince a doubting world. If truth be told, it is the intensity of the Islamic theocracy, which forbids completely alternative religious views in public and private lives in these countries that cast doubt in the minds of the rest of the world.

I mean, if a Khan can come from Pakistan with his Qur’an and become Mayor of London and actually mayor of the Queen of England, why can’t a Samuel Sojourn to Saudi Arabia with his Bible and become a high public officer too in Riyadh? In matter of religious and cultural accommodation, Christianity is well ahead of Islam. And this is the cleavage that aspiring state actors like Donald Trump has exploited in the brewing politics of American presidential election to touch off a most dangerous rhetoric that is pushing the world closer to the man made end-time.

It must be noted that the saving grace has been the liberalism of the West and its inherent capacity to resist mob action and isolate every problem for determination based on the prevailing circumstances. This is the position of Democratic nominee, Mrs. Hilary Clinton, who argues that the fear of ISIS and Islamic fundamentalism should not create basis for a hasty review of the American value system. She seems to be saying that America and much of the West have capacity to isolate radical Islam for fixing without having to cause collateral damage to the entire Islamic faith.

My fear though is the temptation to take the liberalism of the West for granted as is already manifesting in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is struggling to convince a bemused nation that the decision to open the borders of Germany to refugees fleeing the war theatres in the Middle East is still okay in the face of serial terror attacks by ISIS sympathizers in mainland Germany. Attacking Germany, a kind host is not a nice way to say thank you to Chancellor Merkel who risked her political career to save Muslims from themselves.

In the so-called end-time battles, the West has managed to remain on the defensive mode. This may not continue forever if the Islamic radicals keep piling pressure. Someday, elements on the other side of the religious cum ideological divide may get radicalized also and switch to an offensive mode and take the battle to the Islamic enclave with all the might, military and otherwise, that could be brought to bear on such adventure. That would usher in man-made end-time ahead what was purposed by God. The decision to stay back and ensure the continued survival of the human race is the hands of human beings, not God.

7 Comments