We are used to talking about prophecies and there are those situations when it is appropriate to indicate the signs of the Day of Judgment. Especially now – against the backdrop of the worsening Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The main Abrahamic religions, that is, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, are united in the idea that all humanity awaits the Day of Judgment, when the familiar earthly world will cease to exist and the dead will be resurrected. God will reward the righteous and sinners for their deeds. The time of the end of the world and the Day of Judgment is known only to the Almighty, but the approach of these events is marked by certain signs.
Are there signs everywhere?
In the context of the aggravation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and in the Islamic concept of the end of the world – qiyamat – people receive rewards for earthly deeds. You can read about such retribution in the Koran and Sunnah, but, of course, no one will name the date of the end of the world. We can only talk about signs indicating the approach of the day of reckoning – Judgment Day.
Thus, in the book of Abdur-Rahman Abdul-Khalik it is written as follows:
There are signs of the Last Hour, both large and small. Small signs of the Last Hour: a war between Muslims and Jews, the unification of Muslims and Christians in the battle against the Jews, and then a war between Muslims and Christians, which will end in the defeat of the latter. The Last Hour will not come until Rome is taken.
In the Middle East today we are witnessing a war between Jews and Muslims. This is a conflict that has been going on for decades but today the aggravation has reached such a peak that many began to talk about the coming Apocalypse. But is there much truth in such worries? From a religious point of view, we must always be prepared for the onset of the Apocalypse but, obviously, it’s not worth bringing it closer.
Pay attention to context
If we turn to secular rhetoric, a regional war in the Middle East has been a long time coming:
The conflict was resolved for a long time, and the parties tried to reconcile, but, as we see, it did not work. Not only the Middle East can blaze, but also Asia and Africa, Europe is slowly smoldering. The world has become multipolar, countries are beginning to fight for their freedom.
As soon as the acute phase of the confrontation ends, the parties will in any case have to sit down at the negotiating table. And then we will get closer to building a new, just world.
But there is another context of what is happening, related to the already mentioned signs of the approaching Judgment Day:
Christians, according to the word of the Holy Scriptures, do not know and cannot know the “times and dates” of the Day of Judgment. There is only knowledge that it is approaching and there are more and more signs of it. And we must admit that the actions of the authors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are one of the factors bringing the End Times closer.
According to Christian doctrine, Jews were truly God’s chosen people. Until they not only accepted the Messiah-Christ, but also did everything so that the Lord incarnate would be killed by a terrible execution through the Crucifixion. Publicly proclaiming “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25), it is no coincidence that already in the year 70 from the Nativity of Christ, the Second Temple of Jerusalem, which had turned from an Old Testament shrine into an anti-Christian temple, was destroyed by the soldiers of the Roman Empire, which was still pagan, but, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, had already become a katechon, keeping the whole world from absolute evil and the very End of Times.
Thus, did God curse the Jews for executing Jesus Christ and scattered them throughout the world? Now Israel has gathered to buy up and conquer lands for itself, and as soon as the Third Temple is erected in Jerusalem, according to prophecies, this will be the beginning of the End of the World, the beginning of the Apocalypse.
Since then, Christians, and subsequently Muslims, have been united by the eschatological judgment that the End of Times will come after the Jews build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, in which the Antichrist will reign (in the Muslim tradition called the Dajjal).
But now on this mountain there are two Muslim shrines – the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock sanctuary. Without the destruction of which the construction of the Third Temple is impossible. And therefore, as long as the Palestinian Arabs among whom, by the way, there are many Christians prevent this, the reign of the Antichrist-Dajjal is impossible together with the establishment of he Third Rome, which became Katechon back in the 15th century after the fall of the Roman Empire (better known as the Byzantine Empire),
At the same time, according to many Christian prophecies, not all Jewish people will accept the power of the Antichrist at the End of Times. And therefore, it is no coincidence that some Orthodox Jews today support not the Jewish ultranationalist State of Israel, considering it liberal and godless, but the Arabs who suffer from it.
Thus, there are indeed many signs. And there is only one conclusion: achieving peace is in the interests of each of us.
