While this message will be of interest to everyone, it has been put upon my heart, what is left of it after enduring such sadness and evil of the world, to convey a message to all Muslims. First of all greetings from me personally, recalling my affection for you all, and how much I enjoyed my short sojourn in the Muslim country of Turkey.
The Holy Spirit placed upon my heart this morning, soon after I woke up, that I must explain, with the intention of clarifying, some things with the purpose of urging all Muslims to unity. Nothing I say is contrary to the scriptures of the Bible and the Qur'an and instead, rather, wipes away some of the fog of politics, corruption of faith and impurity that can only be ascribed to the actions of humans, not of the perfect God nor of his scriptures, which remain everlasting and unchanged.
Brothers and sisters, you must not continue to have hardened hearts toward each other based on your respective sects of Islam. In particular I of course indicate the ill will in many places between Shia and Sunni believers. Here is the image that the Holy Spirit gave to me to tell you. In olden days the Spanish had in their currency a coin that had a certain value, but it came with lines drawn upon it so that the coin could be divided by the owner into eighths. Islam is like that coin. The value of any part of it still derives purely from the material of the coin that all the potential pieces share. Thus people may be Shia, but it is a piece from the original coin. And people may be Sunni, but it is a piece from the original coin. Do not allow humans to hold in their hands one piece of the coin and disrespect, demean or war against those who hold in their hands their piece of the same coin. You must let go of previous human based injustices from both sides, and stop ascribing divine reasons for your differences, no matter how profound (or small) those differences are. How can you let go of ascribing divine reasons for your differences? By remembering that the pieces that you hold in your hand still come from the same coin, a spiritually united Islam, that is enfranchised by the same God and the same scriptures.
Why is this so urgent for me to tell you? The Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart that one way you will look past your differences is to realize that each of you holds part of the key that must work together to please God. I'm going to make a large generalization now, and bear with me, because I am putting into words a divine image, and that is difficult to do (and of course excuse typos or mispellings or punctuation lapses, they are not "Freudian slips" or "spiritual messages," ha, but simply my lack of good equipment and a shortage of time). It is essential that Islam puts its house into order, by achieving spiritual unity, because all the parts of Islam will play a vital role in the time, and let me say this right now, it is still far in the future, when the genuine Antichrist arises, and the end of the world draws near, to combat the Antichrist and his works.
Despite what mislead Christians think, the Antichrist, the real one, is still far off. What we are in the midst of, however, is the "first wave" of false prophets that Jesus warned about. The second error that many Christians have is that the Antichrist is "anti-Christian." That is totally wrong, for while the real Antichrist is indeed anti-Christian, he is foremost anti-God. This means he is anti-believers. The Antichrist is called such because he is the anti-salvation. He is the one who will totally oppose God's will and that means that all believers of God are his enemy and the object of his domination and extermination. That's why I must laugh when people speculate about modern people who "might be" the so called "Antichrist." You would know him, oh my goodness, you would know him... you would not have to "wonder."
Thus many Christians are "asleep at the wheel," to use a term that refers to falling asleep while driving a car. They do not recognize that any false prophets of any "faith" are active in laying the unintentional, not intentional groundwork for the actual false prophets of the actual Antichrist. It's like today we have mini-John the Baptists, laying down the crooked ways for the eventual real Antichrist, to use the example of how the real John the Baptist prepared a straight way for the Messiah Jesus Christ. Most of the false prophets of today are from the ancient pagan religions, of the so called "New Age" manufactured "religions," and those Christians who willfully misunderstand the scriptures in order to write themselves a role in divine matters. Today's false prophets do not realize they are preparing the way for the genuine Antichrist, and Satan can only marvel at their stupidity. Today's false prophets strengthen love of the world and their own works and loosen love of God and obedience to him alone. They have achieved their greatest inroads in the formerly Christian nations, but Muslims, be alert, because they work on the young people through the increasing "sophistication" of the world.
So the great myth that many Christians, those on the fringe, and those who are lukewarm in their faith is that 1) the Antichrist is within reach of these times, possible arisen or rising soon, which he is not and 2) that the Antichrist is the enemy of only Christians, while in fact he is the enemy of all the faithful believers in the one true God. Hence the Antichrist is the enemy of the Muslims too and, of course, the Jews.
So the image that was put upon me that is difficult to describe in writing is that the Sunni part of Islam is keeping in preservation the purity of the holy places and the dictates of the faith, from which Islam must continue to draw its strength like water from a well. However, the Shia Imams must be acknowledged and respected because they are like the hands that draw from the well the water of purity of belief in God. This is not to say that each side does not do all of that which I listed above; it is the urging that you not discard or minimize what either side has in their faith repertoire that I am saying. Why is this? Because the Holy Spirit has put it upon my heart to explain to you that the Twelfth Imam will return, as a young boy, when it is genuinely time to oppose the Antichrist. All that you can do now and in future generations to keep your faith pure in its attentiveness to the one true God, which we, the people of Abraham, all share, will assist in confounding the work of the false prophets who at first unintentionally, and eventually intentionally, prepare the way for the Antichrist.
The Twelfth Imam will arise, as a young boy purified in his faith, and oppose, along with the Christians and the Jews and all true believers, the real Antichrist when he arises.
This is what the Holy Spirit put upon my heart to tell you most urgently today.
Showing posts with label Mahdi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mahdi. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
God expects humans to work for the best
I'm interrupting my late evening dinner (pasta with fresh tomatoes and cheese) because I just remembered something I wanted to point out to those who often worry and ponder about the End of Times.
Remember what happened when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and found himself in Egypt under the Pharaoh. Joseph became elevated due to the Pharaoh recognizing that Joseph received authentic dream interpretation charism directly from God. Most notably Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh to know that seven years of famine will afflict the entire region and that it cannot be survived unless it is prepared for years in advance. Joseph was put in charge and saved the people of the region by putting aside the surplus of the food that was grown each year so that they had enough stored to take them through the seven years of famine. They saved not only themselves in Egypt but also the Israelites who were starved out of their land and sought food in Egypt.
Here is the interesting point that I'm not sure people have properly pondered. The Egyptians were notorious unbelievers. They not only were pagans, believing in multiple gods and idols, but they had an elaborate death cult. Yet two curious things happened. One is that the Pharaoh believed in the message of the one God without converting or being a believer himself. Thus the Pharaoh trusted Joseph and acknowledged God, turning the welfare of the kingdom into his hands, yet God did not choose to force Pharaoh to be a believer or, to put it another way, Pharaoh served God's purpose as he was, where faith in the God of Joseph was enough. A very targeted and narrow commonality of faith was sufficient to please God and bind them in purpose.
The second point is related to the first. Notice that God did not take that opportunity to have Joseph say, "Well, I will tell you what the dream means and what to do only if all Egyptians renounce pagan gods and their cult of death and accept worship of only Yahweh." Why do you think that is? Why would God not "demonstrate his power" and force very superstitious and culture of death prone (even Apocalyptic) mindset people into knowing him and acknowledging him as the one and only God? Remember, this is before Moses and so the Exodus, the theophany, and the Law giving by God had not yet happened, yet God had a clear identity that he could have used the famine to force upon the Egyptians.
There is one answer that can be viewed from a multiple of facets. The one answer is that God gave humans free will, a free choice to believe, love, know and obey him, and God has never reneged on that gift, even when it seems that imposing his will would have been for the betterment of those who lost for that time their freedom of choice. That is the whole point of free will as God's gift to humans, despite how often they use that gift to throw it back into God's face, so to speak.
And so God expected those to whom he revealed the truth of the impending famine to work together without being forced into common faith first, even though the pagan beliefs of the Pharaoh were repugnant. God permitted Pharaoh to have a dream, and gave Pharaoh enough kingly concern for the welfare of his people that the dream troubled him enough to seek the correct interpretation and what warning it contained. Joseph in his demeanor and humility set the example of how pious men and women draw other men and women to God without force, threats, terror or disaster. Imagine the leap of faith that all the people had in order to follow Joseph's instructions to conserve food for years and how things must have seemed very odd and even frightening, yet they all followed Joseph, at Pharaoh's orders. Pious and earnest believers set a continual example without drama, without force, and that is ultimately in emulation of God's true way.
Even much later when God had to send afflictions in order to force the Pharaoh in the time of Moses to release the Israelites from slavery God did not use the force of Armageddon type of terror that he well could have. As bad as each plague was, God never terrorized the people so that they believed that they were in the End of Times where their very country and all the people would be destroyed. Each plague was dreadful, but God, again, did not force people to believe in him, to fall and abase before him, to be terrorized that all will end. God continues to give people their gift of freedom of choice and discernment, even when they continually make the wrong choice.
Too many fundamentalists of various extremes, notably Christians that are not Catholic or Orthodox, openly expect God to terrorize countries or the entire planet as expression of wrath, impatience with sin, and to herald the "Second Coming." As a result these humans with that erroneous mindset are willing to "throw in the towel" at each and every hardship that humans face, thinking these are opening salvos in the times of tribulation and wrath of God before the final judgment. But sheesh, calm down and read the Bible, will you? Is it God's style to just rain terror upon a people, when he did not even do that with the Egyptians who had purchased Joseph in slavery? Instead, God gifted Pharaoh with a dream and the wisdom to seek out Joseph and listen to him. Even later God applied only the pressure in the plagues that people needed in order to finally make the right decision on their own. So why would the troubling times that humans are in now make people only focus on darkly hoping that God is "smiting" (or getting ready to smite in overture for the final judgment?) And of course I am not speaking of those of you who have engaged in occult practices, who have guilty consciences that you now see God brings right back at you the consequences of your occult beliefs and activities. (I'll bet that smiting has finally dawned on you as a possibility, but on a personal scale, not on the worldly context.) No, I wonder why so many Christians for the past twenty years have sat on their hands instead of helping to work in companionship for the best outcome of all human problems. I've mentioned before how dismayed I am at the suffering that has been secretly egged on by those who actually "want" the Apocalypse, particularly in the Middle East. This is exactly why Jesus warned that there will be many false prophets.
Some who anticipate the Mahdi predict that first there will be sixty false prophets claiming to be him. Gosh, can we count Christian false prophets too? We must surely have had six hundred false prophets at least in the past several decades, ugh.
My point is that if you read and comprehend the Bible (I'm addressing these cultists and extreme fundamentalist, dispensationalist Christians) you will observe that God expects humans to work together for the common good right up until the end, and not withholding good will because you somehow have decided that "it's time." Even Jesus did not claim to know the time and trust me, you'll know with absolutely no uncertainty when it is actually arriving. So I hope that this is helpful and once again, read the Bible and stop imposing depressive wishes and delusions onto the clean and truthful prophecy of God. If you understand God and truly follow Jesus, you know that it is mutual good will and charity that is expected until people "drop in their places in mid stride" (just a colorful image, ex-Biblical *wink*) at the Second Coming.
Remember what happened when Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and found himself in Egypt under the Pharaoh. Joseph became elevated due to the Pharaoh recognizing that Joseph received authentic dream interpretation charism directly from God. Most notably Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh to know that seven years of famine will afflict the entire region and that it cannot be survived unless it is prepared for years in advance. Joseph was put in charge and saved the people of the region by putting aside the surplus of the food that was grown each year so that they had enough stored to take them through the seven years of famine. They saved not only themselves in Egypt but also the Israelites who were starved out of their land and sought food in Egypt.
Here is the interesting point that I'm not sure people have properly pondered. The Egyptians were notorious unbelievers. They not only were pagans, believing in multiple gods and idols, but they had an elaborate death cult. Yet two curious things happened. One is that the Pharaoh believed in the message of the one God without converting or being a believer himself. Thus the Pharaoh trusted Joseph and acknowledged God, turning the welfare of the kingdom into his hands, yet God did not choose to force Pharaoh to be a believer or, to put it another way, Pharaoh served God's purpose as he was, where faith in the God of Joseph was enough. A very targeted and narrow commonality of faith was sufficient to please God and bind them in purpose.
The second point is related to the first. Notice that God did not take that opportunity to have Joseph say, "Well, I will tell you what the dream means and what to do only if all Egyptians renounce pagan gods and their cult of death and accept worship of only Yahweh." Why do you think that is? Why would God not "demonstrate his power" and force very superstitious and culture of death prone (even Apocalyptic) mindset people into knowing him and acknowledging him as the one and only God? Remember, this is before Moses and so the Exodus, the theophany, and the Law giving by God had not yet happened, yet God had a clear identity that he could have used the famine to force upon the Egyptians.
There is one answer that can be viewed from a multiple of facets. The one answer is that God gave humans free will, a free choice to believe, love, know and obey him, and God has never reneged on that gift, even when it seems that imposing his will would have been for the betterment of those who lost for that time their freedom of choice. That is the whole point of free will as God's gift to humans, despite how often they use that gift to throw it back into God's face, so to speak.
And so God expected those to whom he revealed the truth of the impending famine to work together without being forced into common faith first, even though the pagan beliefs of the Pharaoh were repugnant. God permitted Pharaoh to have a dream, and gave Pharaoh enough kingly concern for the welfare of his people that the dream troubled him enough to seek the correct interpretation and what warning it contained. Joseph in his demeanor and humility set the example of how pious men and women draw other men and women to God without force, threats, terror or disaster. Imagine the leap of faith that all the people had in order to follow Joseph's instructions to conserve food for years and how things must have seemed very odd and even frightening, yet they all followed Joseph, at Pharaoh's orders. Pious and earnest believers set a continual example without drama, without force, and that is ultimately in emulation of God's true way.
Even much later when God had to send afflictions in order to force the Pharaoh in the time of Moses to release the Israelites from slavery God did not use the force of Armageddon type of terror that he well could have. As bad as each plague was, God never terrorized the people so that they believed that they were in the End of Times where their very country and all the people would be destroyed. Each plague was dreadful, but God, again, did not force people to believe in him, to fall and abase before him, to be terrorized that all will end. God continues to give people their gift of freedom of choice and discernment, even when they continually make the wrong choice.
Too many fundamentalists of various extremes, notably Christians that are not Catholic or Orthodox, openly expect God to terrorize countries or the entire planet as expression of wrath, impatience with sin, and to herald the "Second Coming." As a result these humans with that erroneous mindset are willing to "throw in the towel" at each and every hardship that humans face, thinking these are opening salvos in the times of tribulation and wrath of God before the final judgment. But sheesh, calm down and read the Bible, will you? Is it God's style to just rain terror upon a people, when he did not even do that with the Egyptians who had purchased Joseph in slavery? Instead, God gifted Pharaoh with a dream and the wisdom to seek out Joseph and listen to him. Even later God applied only the pressure in the plagues that people needed in order to finally make the right decision on their own. So why would the troubling times that humans are in now make people only focus on darkly hoping that God is "smiting" (or getting ready to smite in overture for the final judgment?) And of course I am not speaking of those of you who have engaged in occult practices, who have guilty consciences that you now see God brings right back at you the consequences of your occult beliefs and activities. (I'll bet that smiting has finally dawned on you as a possibility, but on a personal scale, not on the worldly context.) No, I wonder why so many Christians for the past twenty years have sat on their hands instead of helping to work in companionship for the best outcome of all human problems. I've mentioned before how dismayed I am at the suffering that has been secretly egged on by those who actually "want" the Apocalypse, particularly in the Middle East. This is exactly why Jesus warned that there will be many false prophets.
Some who anticipate the Mahdi predict that first there will be sixty false prophets claiming to be him. Gosh, can we count Christian false prophets too? We must surely have had six hundred false prophets at least in the past several decades, ugh.
My point is that if you read and comprehend the Bible (I'm addressing these cultists and extreme fundamentalist, dispensationalist Christians) you will observe that God expects humans to work together for the common good right up until the end, and not withholding good will because you somehow have decided that "it's time." Even Jesus did not claim to know the time and trust me, you'll know with absolutely no uncertainty when it is actually arriving. So I hope that this is helpful and once again, read the Bible and stop imposing depressive wishes and delusions onto the clean and truthful prophecy of God. If you understand God and truly follow Jesus, you know that it is mutual good will and charity that is expected until people "drop in their places in mid stride" (just a colorful image, ex-Biblical *wink*) at the Second Coming.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Mahdi of the Twelver Imami
Many wonder, including those who do not believe, about the Mahdi, who he was and if he truly existed. Yes, he did exist. He was a young boy through whom the Holy Spirit chose to speak. One can read this Qur'an passage and find it a help in thinking about him.
Surah 16:102
Say: The Holy spirit has revealed it from your Lord with the truth, that it may establish those who believe and as a guidance and good news for those who submit.
The meaning is that the Mahdi received truth from the Holy Spirit in order to bring comfort to those who follow and believe. I am not saying that the Qur'an requires belief in the Mahdi by those who do not follow that school or sect of Islam. I am saying that the Mahdi was real and was a vessel through whom the Holy Spirit spoke, so that in the many years later believers of that school will have the comfort of knowing this authentic blessing from God in their sacred lineage. This passage explains in general why the Holy Spirit chooses certain people through whom he speaks, and can certainly be applied to the Mahdi.
I hope that you find this information helpful.
Surah 16:102
Say: The Holy spirit has revealed it from your Lord with the truth, that it may establish those who believe and as a guidance and good news for those who submit.
The meaning is that the Mahdi received truth from the Holy Spirit in order to bring comfort to those who follow and believe. I am not saying that the Qur'an requires belief in the Mahdi by those who do not follow that school or sect of Islam. I am saying that the Mahdi was real and was a vessel through whom the Holy Spirit spoke, so that in the many years later believers of that school will have the comfort of knowing this authentic blessing from God in their sacred lineage. This passage explains in general why the Holy Spirit chooses certain people through whom he speaks, and can certainly be applied to the Mahdi.
I hope that you find this information helpful.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Football analogy to help understand "end of times"
I’ve written about proper understanding of Biblical “end of times” references before, and continue to focus on this topic because of the high interest in it and also to continue to help people toward a proper understanding. Rather than write long and comprehensive postings I like to take one aspect at a time to explore.
The point I would like to make is that God has not mapped out the specific set of events that takes humans to the “end of times.” God is all knowing, but that does not mean he is all manipulating. There is a huge difference. I’d like to use, since this is Superbowl season, American football and coaching analogies. In the Superbowl the winners of the two leagues compete and one team wins the game, making that team the Superbowl champion. God can be thought of as the overall sponsor of sports in general. God has encouraged humans to enjoy sports and recreation in addition to their devotions, their work and their family. So God likes seeing all the football teams compete and kind of cheers for both leagues and all the players. If it were up to God there would someday be Superbowl One Thousand. (It is Superbowl 42 that is going to be played this Sunday). In fact, if it were up to God, he’d be thrilled if someday people played Superbowl Ten Thousand, or Superbowl One Hundred Thousand!
God is all about life and being fruitful. If one was going to try to summarize God’s “agenda” it would be to be “fruitful and multiply.” This does not mean just numerically having babies. It means stewarding a world that humans did not create but have day to day responsibility for so that people stimulate life and increase in goodness, since that is what “fruitful” really means. Think about a fruit tree. It could yield tons of sour and inedible apples, for example. You could call that a “fruitful” tree but that is not the spirit of the meaning of the term. Fruitful means an abundance of goodness that is passed along to one’s children, children that are encouraged and welcomed into the world.
So God is not interested in humans having children who are then made to suffer in an increasingly sour world. That is only half the spirit of the words “fruitful and multiple.” That is the “multiply” without the joy of sweet “fruitfulness.” God does not want humans to be “mean SOB’s and multiply.” God does not want humans to “prune away babies so you can have unlimited sex and then multiply just enough to provide low income workers or as accessory babies.” God wants sweetness and goodness to be produced by humans along with and FOR their children. Therefore, God would be thrilled if the humans kept multiplying in children and in goodness until they could see Superbowl 100, 1000, 10,000 or more! So long as people are pious and in fear of God (by fear I mean the proper definition which is to respect God’s place and fear the consequences of losing him) and they bear and love children, and work toward making a flawed species and their flawed world as good as possible, the “end of times” will not come.
However, God understands the nature of humans all too well, and he knows everything about everything. Like a coach God knows the strength and weaknesses of his team, of each of the players, and of the circumstances they are playing under (weather, injuries, home or away, etc.) God knows that there is only one winner of the Superbowl each year. Likewise God knows human weakness. Someone could be a great football player but a rotten human being, for example. God knows about drug use, about gambling, about throwing games, about poor refereeing and bad breaks. (I’m mixing my analogy a little bit because I’m more of a baseball fan than a football fan!) But God continues to coach and cheer all of the individual team players, coaches, fans and support staff, whether they are 0-18 or 18-0 for the year. That is because it is the enjoyment of sport, the family focus of sport events, the providing of jobs, the gathering of community and the stimulating of the honest economy that is the fruitfulness of the football season and the Superbowl. It’s not the winning team, it is the annual season of coming together in good natured sport crowned in the Superbowl, and then the anticipation of second chances in the next season, and the next, and the next, and so forth. Therefore why would God decide that humans will live until Superbowl Number (imagine some number) and say, well, this is enough, time for the Second Coming? God would not want that because so long as each year and each generation is fruitful and multiplying, it is “Good.” God will not destroy what is good. That is the temptation of humans, to destroy what is good for others in order to achieve power and control. A related temptation is to define what is good and force people to conform to societal dictatorships of vices that are now defined as being “good.”
So God knows that it is inevitable that at some point in human’s future they will make choices that will take them to the brink where they are no longer being “fruitful and multiplying” in the way that God wills and plans for humans to live. When the fruit of humans is predominately sour apples you can expect the Second Coming. But just because an awful lot of sour apples are being made today, does that mean one should throw up one’s hands and say, “Ah ha, time for the Second Coming, I’m ‘covered’ in my ‘faith’ and now I’m going to dump the world in the Lord’s lap?” You better not think that lest you be one of the ones who cries “Lord, Lord!” and yet find thou art judged to be chaff instead of wheat. Remember chaff is the indigestible part of the wheat. People who gleefully point to the sorrow of the sour apples and hope that it is a counter toward the Second Coming at the “end of times” are useless, since they are not working to put off the ill deeds that could reckon with the end of times. Those who gloat for the end of times as being comeuppance for others of different faith have made themselves into chaff rather than wheat.
So would God give up on a franchise that has a 0-18 record and say, “Well, football is no good, let’s cancel this team altogether?” No, of course he would not. If God had a team full of immoral people, would he cancel the entire sport for all the rest of the teams and end the Superbowl? Obviously not, he would get a coach to reform and/or replace the players on that team. Would he not crown with laurel leaf crown the coach who is like a role model for the team, and who brings a team that lacks character into honorable, if not winning play? Yes he would.
So long as humans are working to have children in a moral society and be sweet in their fruitfulness people have nothing to fear about imminent end of times. That should be good news to everyone. If you are thinking, “Aw shucks, everyone is not going to die and be judged soon” you better start rethinking your culture of retribution, self satisfaction and death orientation lest it take you down too. Who hopes that the entire sport of football will be canceled by God because many of the teams are doing poorly and perhaps have serious moral flaws? That is not God’s way. If it was he would have canceled human’s football season, so to speak, a long time ago. And if you read your Bible and understand you will know that God had his moments when he thought “it was time.” But God gave the second chance and good men and women brought the world back from the brink before.
Make no mistake; understand that the world is in dire and abysmal moral condition. People have actively worked to make as much sour and rotten fruit as possible and they have succeeded on a scale that should surprise even them. But for the love of God, that should make people roll of their sleeves and work to bring back the sweetness and combat the sourness more than ever! Rather than gloating or becoming another boring media depressive everyone ought to recapture the memory of what a land flowing in milk and honey is like.
I understand devout people who think only Jesus Christ (and/or the Mahdi if you are a Twelver in belief) can fix the world. And they are correct to the extent that only in the faith is the way shown for goodness on earth under God and hopefully anticipation of eternal reward in heaven. But like the coach, this does not mean that the person who first wrote the football rule book has to attend every game. Imagine how the sport would go if no one knew how to play a game of football properly unless the one and only football rule book author had to be physically present at every game and shout out instructions, and call each play? Jesus Christ taught what people need to do in the Gospels. The Old Testament preserves the words of God through the prophets, including in good living advice in the Book of Proverbs! And the Prophet (PBUH) received from God’s angel the way to live in virtue and with strength and fidelity to the one God. Every time humanity gets itself into an awful situation people should not sit back and let their children (and the children of their global neighbors) to suffer while waiting for Jesus to arrive with his iron rod of final judgment.
Here is one final point with the analogy. Notice that I started with the observation that God would like to see “Superbowl” seasons for many, many years to come. I didn’t say each football season must be higher scoring, more talented, more exciting or more profitable than the season before or God will “cancel the sport for lack of progress.” To the contrary! It is “good” the way it is, just as the basic nature of humanity, if it lives by God’s rules and in the family unit is “good” already. It is maintaining the goodness that is humanity’s problem. But to use this example, every ten years of football, another generation of schoolchildren are born, learn about football, watch it on TV or attend games with their family. Later they grow up and become players, spectators, or part of the football economy (they at least wear a jersey!) Each child, each adult gains the benefit of football. It is not a cumulative success thing, just as the goodness of humanity is measured one person at a time in the goodness of their life and not by which team of humans won the Superbowl that season. If God fathered humans to be good and to live good lives, is not a thousand years of billions of humans being good even better? And is not ten thousand years of billions of humans being good better yet? Each person who lives in goodness and provides it to others is their own justification for life and for humanity continuing. So God wants to see the already “good” football sport continue to the Superbowl each year for season after season after season for as many as humans can muster and manage so long as the “goodness” is maintained. Likewise God wants to be a fan and coach of humanity, not be the one who has to turn out the lights and do the firings because humans stopped being good and gave up on the season.
I hope this helps.
The point I would like to make is that God has not mapped out the specific set of events that takes humans to the “end of times.” God is all knowing, but that does not mean he is all manipulating. There is a huge difference. I’d like to use, since this is Superbowl season, American football and coaching analogies. In the Superbowl the winners of the two leagues compete and one team wins the game, making that team the Superbowl champion. God can be thought of as the overall sponsor of sports in general. God has encouraged humans to enjoy sports and recreation in addition to their devotions, their work and their family. So God likes seeing all the football teams compete and kind of cheers for both leagues and all the players. If it were up to God there would someday be Superbowl One Thousand. (It is Superbowl 42 that is going to be played this Sunday). In fact, if it were up to God, he’d be thrilled if someday people played Superbowl Ten Thousand, or Superbowl One Hundred Thousand!
God is all about life and being fruitful. If one was going to try to summarize God’s “agenda” it would be to be “fruitful and multiply.” This does not mean just numerically having babies. It means stewarding a world that humans did not create but have day to day responsibility for so that people stimulate life and increase in goodness, since that is what “fruitful” really means. Think about a fruit tree. It could yield tons of sour and inedible apples, for example. You could call that a “fruitful” tree but that is not the spirit of the meaning of the term. Fruitful means an abundance of goodness that is passed along to one’s children, children that are encouraged and welcomed into the world.
So God is not interested in humans having children who are then made to suffer in an increasingly sour world. That is only half the spirit of the words “fruitful and multiple.” That is the “multiply” without the joy of sweet “fruitfulness.” God does not want humans to be “mean SOB’s and multiply.” God does not want humans to “prune away babies so you can have unlimited sex and then multiply just enough to provide low income workers or as accessory babies.” God wants sweetness and goodness to be produced by humans along with and FOR their children. Therefore, God would be thrilled if the humans kept multiplying in children and in goodness until they could see Superbowl 100, 1000, 10,000 or more! So long as people are pious and in fear of God (by fear I mean the proper definition which is to respect God’s place and fear the consequences of losing him) and they bear and love children, and work toward making a flawed species and their flawed world as good as possible, the “end of times” will not come.
However, God understands the nature of humans all too well, and he knows everything about everything. Like a coach God knows the strength and weaknesses of his team, of each of the players, and of the circumstances they are playing under (weather, injuries, home or away, etc.) God knows that there is only one winner of the Superbowl each year. Likewise God knows human weakness. Someone could be a great football player but a rotten human being, for example. God knows about drug use, about gambling, about throwing games, about poor refereeing and bad breaks. (I’m mixing my analogy a little bit because I’m more of a baseball fan than a football fan!) But God continues to coach and cheer all of the individual team players, coaches, fans and support staff, whether they are 0-18 or 18-0 for the year. That is because it is the enjoyment of sport, the family focus of sport events, the providing of jobs, the gathering of community and the stimulating of the honest economy that is the fruitfulness of the football season and the Superbowl. It’s not the winning team, it is the annual season of coming together in good natured sport crowned in the Superbowl, and then the anticipation of second chances in the next season, and the next, and the next, and so forth. Therefore why would God decide that humans will live until Superbowl Number (imagine some number) and say, well, this is enough, time for the Second Coming? God would not want that because so long as each year and each generation is fruitful and multiplying, it is “Good.” God will not destroy what is good. That is the temptation of humans, to destroy what is good for others in order to achieve power and control. A related temptation is to define what is good and force people to conform to societal dictatorships of vices that are now defined as being “good.”
So God knows that it is inevitable that at some point in human’s future they will make choices that will take them to the brink where they are no longer being “fruitful and multiplying” in the way that God wills and plans for humans to live. When the fruit of humans is predominately sour apples you can expect the Second Coming. But just because an awful lot of sour apples are being made today, does that mean one should throw up one’s hands and say, “Ah ha, time for the Second Coming, I’m ‘covered’ in my ‘faith’ and now I’m going to dump the world in the Lord’s lap?” You better not think that lest you be one of the ones who cries “Lord, Lord!” and yet find thou art judged to be chaff instead of wheat. Remember chaff is the indigestible part of the wheat. People who gleefully point to the sorrow of the sour apples and hope that it is a counter toward the Second Coming at the “end of times” are useless, since they are not working to put off the ill deeds that could reckon with the end of times. Those who gloat for the end of times as being comeuppance for others of different faith have made themselves into chaff rather than wheat.
So would God give up on a franchise that has a 0-18 record and say, “Well, football is no good, let’s cancel this team altogether?” No, of course he would not. If God had a team full of immoral people, would he cancel the entire sport for all the rest of the teams and end the Superbowl? Obviously not, he would get a coach to reform and/or replace the players on that team. Would he not crown with laurel leaf crown the coach who is like a role model for the team, and who brings a team that lacks character into honorable, if not winning play? Yes he would.
So long as humans are working to have children in a moral society and be sweet in their fruitfulness people have nothing to fear about imminent end of times. That should be good news to everyone. If you are thinking, “Aw shucks, everyone is not going to die and be judged soon” you better start rethinking your culture of retribution, self satisfaction and death orientation lest it take you down too. Who hopes that the entire sport of football will be canceled by God because many of the teams are doing poorly and perhaps have serious moral flaws? That is not God’s way. If it was he would have canceled human’s football season, so to speak, a long time ago. And if you read your Bible and understand you will know that God had his moments when he thought “it was time.” But God gave the second chance and good men and women brought the world back from the brink before.
Make no mistake; understand that the world is in dire and abysmal moral condition. People have actively worked to make as much sour and rotten fruit as possible and they have succeeded on a scale that should surprise even them. But for the love of God, that should make people roll of their sleeves and work to bring back the sweetness and combat the sourness more than ever! Rather than gloating or becoming another boring media depressive everyone ought to recapture the memory of what a land flowing in milk and honey is like.
I understand devout people who think only Jesus Christ (and/or the Mahdi if you are a Twelver in belief) can fix the world. And they are correct to the extent that only in the faith is the way shown for goodness on earth under God and hopefully anticipation of eternal reward in heaven. But like the coach, this does not mean that the person who first wrote the football rule book has to attend every game. Imagine how the sport would go if no one knew how to play a game of football properly unless the one and only football rule book author had to be physically present at every game and shout out instructions, and call each play? Jesus Christ taught what people need to do in the Gospels. The Old Testament preserves the words of God through the prophets, including in good living advice in the Book of Proverbs! And the Prophet (PBUH) received from God’s angel the way to live in virtue and with strength and fidelity to the one God. Every time humanity gets itself into an awful situation people should not sit back and let their children (and the children of their global neighbors) to suffer while waiting for Jesus to arrive with his iron rod of final judgment.
Here is one final point with the analogy. Notice that I started with the observation that God would like to see “Superbowl” seasons for many, many years to come. I didn’t say each football season must be higher scoring, more talented, more exciting or more profitable than the season before or God will “cancel the sport for lack of progress.” To the contrary! It is “good” the way it is, just as the basic nature of humanity, if it lives by God’s rules and in the family unit is “good” already. It is maintaining the goodness that is humanity’s problem. But to use this example, every ten years of football, another generation of schoolchildren are born, learn about football, watch it on TV or attend games with their family. Later they grow up and become players, spectators, or part of the football economy (they at least wear a jersey!) Each child, each adult gains the benefit of football. It is not a cumulative success thing, just as the goodness of humanity is measured one person at a time in the goodness of their life and not by which team of humans won the Superbowl that season. If God fathered humans to be good and to live good lives, is not a thousand years of billions of humans being good even better? And is not ten thousand years of billions of humans being good better yet? Each person who lives in goodness and provides it to others is their own justification for life and for humanity continuing. So God wants to see the already “good” football sport continue to the Superbowl each year for season after season after season for as many as humans can muster and manage so long as the “goodness” is maintained. Likewise God wants to be a fan and coach of humanity, not be the one who has to turn out the lights and do the firings because humans stopped being good and gave up on the season.
I hope this helps.
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