The Desperate Mullahs of Iran

eclipsenow said:

Absolutely! It's very serious stuff. But it's not part of any biblical timetable that I can see. In fact, I defy anyone to prove a timetable that actually works for anything!

There is no timetable.

When Jesus told people to recognise the signs of the times, he was saying they should have recognised him! Who he was. What that meant. How salvation was going to arrive.

Jesus said to be aware of the signs of the times, which was basically a rebuke against the Jews who should have recognised who he was. That this was the day of the Lord's salvation.

Warnings about an abomination that causes desolation was simply to warn that if Israel did not repent the Romans were coming!

The abomination of desolation was a general reference to Antiochus, that's something horrible would desecrate the temple. The Romans burning it down while sacrificing to the eagle standard as an idol representing Caesar himself fulfils the criteria.

All we know is that the Lord will return one day and judge the living and the dead, and usher in the new heavens and the new earth.

We do not know when.

Your timetables have failed on multiple accounts and have zero credibility.

Your inability to read the Old testament prophets for what they are actually saying actually alarms me more than many things I've read on the internet! I hope nobody here takes anything you say seriously, because it is simply that shocking an example of ripping verses out of their context.

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Good post

Most analysists that seriously look at a potential war with Iran conclude that it would have a serious cost on the United States, quite possibly ending in substantial losses that would make Iraq or Afghanistan look trivial in comparison.

bbbbbbb said:

What seems to be missing in this thread is the Iranian Shi'ite view of Islamic eschatology. When the Shah was overthrown in 1979 there was immense anticipation that the long-prophesied caliphate centered in Tehran would be established encompassing the entire world leading to the imminent return of Mohammed in glory, preceded by Jesus. That was the primary impetus for the failed Iran/Iraq war. As time has gone on, however, none of these prophecies have come to pass; rather, Iran has steadily become a pariah nation with increasingly dire living conditions for the common people. At this point in time there is simmering discontent with occasional outburst as in the widespread rejection of women's headcoverings which are brutally repressed by an increasingly desperate political/religious bureaucracy. As with Mr. Putin and his quagmire in Ukraine, desperate times are leading to increasingly desperate measures. Having failed to "persuade" the Sunni regime in Iraq to submit to the Shi'ite caliphate in Tehran, Iran turned its attention to the perpetual bogeyman of Islam - Jews and the Jewish state. The Q'ran is quite explicit about the extermination of the Jews by the divinely led Muslims, such that Iranian mullahs determined that the rapid elimination of Israel via its allies in Syria and Palestine, would fulfill the long-expected prophecies. This is not happening; rather, Isreal seems to have the upper hand at this point against Islamic terrorism.

Islamic caliphates, of course, are nothing new at all and there have been many over the centuries of Islamic history, most of which have used varying forms of eschatological arguments to provide a theological motivation for their existence and aggression against enemies, both real and perceived.

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This is nonsense. Shi'ite theology doesn't recognize a caliphate. It's based on Twelver Islam. They believe in a succession of imams, the last of which has yet to be revealed. There's a traditional skepiticism of the state in Shia Islam that is distinct from Sunni Islam. Iran's regime is motivated as much by anti-imperialism and Persian nationalism as it is by Islam, and the revolution has always had competing factions within it.

Iraq also started the Iran-Iraq war, not Iran. Saddam Hussein, a nominal Sunni, was paranoid about ruling a majority Shia nation and incorrectly saw the Iranian revolution as a moment of weakness to strike first.

keras said:

Of this we can be sure: The world cannot continue on like it is forever. Or even for a relative short term.
There has to happen, sometime; a dramatic reset of our civilization. As many civilizations before us have experienced.

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21 years ago my son nearly died from leukaemia. It was a horrendous time, and between my career and my wife's career at the time, I ended up the full-time carer in hospital. I had insomnia, and my doctor at the time tried and antidepressant on me.
I read one of those mid 2000s peak oil doomer websites - and BOOM! All the factors above came together in a huge mental health episode.

So I know what it's like.

I had studied the effects of stress and the wrong medication in my earlier social sciences advanced diploma, but experiencing it was another thing.

The way the church looked after us back then was a real witness. My son got better.

But I remained stuck on those environmental doomer forums, trying to decide whether or not to pack up and head out to some kind of permaculture community with years of tinned food and ammo and archery making kits!

Back then the questions were legitimate. The concerns were valid. I didn't want it to be true, but I couldn't see a way society would survive another 10 years - let alone 20!

And when no one believed me for so long, I started to feel like the young John Connor from the Terminator franchise.

I felt I knew the potential future I was fighting far better than most other people.

If only I hadn't been obsessed with all that, I might not have been distracted from more productive endeavours for my family.

I weep at the time I wasted worrying about this when there were so many other great opportunities I could have had.

In the meantime, the technology has changed so fast that I'm convinced we have the tech to form a sustainable civilisation for 10 billion people or more, all well fed, and all living modern convenient lives with an intact biosphere.

The only question is whether we have the wisdom to do this. According to revelation, a repeating theme of this period between Jesus resurrection and his return is that there will be tyrants, and there will be wars.

Let's not get too Utopian in our expectations. But not too doomer either.

We just don't know and there is no biblical evidence supporting any of your hypotheses.

keras said:

We DO have a timetable - it is Gods 7000 year Plan for mankind.

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This ignores the science behind the 13.4 billion years it took for God to fashion this world. It also ignores the highly structured way the early chapters of Genesis were written, almost in a form of Hebrew poetry. The number symbolism is amazing.

keras said:

That we are now close to the 6000 year point, is proved by the time periods given to us in the Bible and known historical events.

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You've constructed this thing, not the Bible.

keras said:

I have posted the series of 47 scriptures and tied them to the 586 BC date of the Babylonian conquest.

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And I could selectively quote other scriptures out of context and whip up something else.

Some eggs and cheese and ham and we'll have a right omelette!

keras said:

This important document has been ignored and dismissed, I can only think why - because people refuse to face up to reality.

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This kind of comment sounds like Cassandra syndrome.
I used to get so frustrated that people did not even want to study the data I had, let alone talk about it all day and come to conclusions about what to do about it.

I wanted our family to convert my brother-in-laws hobby farm stead into a survivalist compound.

But no one was listening to me. So I watched more peak oil documentaries and wept at the coming greenie judgement day on western consumer civilisation.

It all seemed so inevitable.

One young man on that email list committed suicide!

That is why I still blog about sustainability issues and go on to reddit to debate doomers now and then.
Young people need some sort of future hope to give them the psychological cushioning to even begin to hear the gospel.

Or at least to keep them alive long enough to hear it!

keras said:

The Bible Prophets tell us how...

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These were ancient prophets discussing ancient kingdoms mentioned ancient technologies involved in ancient wars that we can look back in ancient history, and realise the Lord fulfilled his ancient words.

There were only a few cases across the whole Old testament where we can demonstrate that the prophets were actually discussing eternal eschatological matters.

But just like many in the environmental doomsday circuit, selling books and doomsday prepper kits, it's hard to go back once you go down that pathway.

Cassandra syndrome gives some people their identity. They become apocalyptic outsiders. They see other people as sheeple, almost less than human in their denial of the outsider's 'truth' claims.

I remember fearing peak oil and trying to warn family and friends - at the same time as trying to be a Christian witness. The manic peak oil phase really did not help my gospel witness!

In a similar way do you really think the arrogant way you presented your timetable back in 2020 helped?

Where's the temple Keras?

keras said:

A new Temple will be built, by the Christian peoples,, as many Prophesies tell us. After the Holy Land has been cleared and cleansed.

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There's an ancient prophecy retold by Hippoplytus and Origen that whoever builds the third temple will be Antichrist. The entire witness of the early Church is that the temple is spiritual, in the hearts of the covenant community, not in stone. Jesus himself says as much in the Gospel of John, people will worship in spirit and truth.

keras said:

A new Temple will be built, by the Christian peoples

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That would be a blasphemy! Why would they build a temple when Jesus body was the only temple we need, his sacrifice the only sacrifice we need, his prophetic word the only gospel we need, and his priesthood the only eternal high priest we need?

It really sounds like you forgotten the New testament is a thing and what the book of Romans and Hebrews and Galatians is all about.

keras said:

,, as many Prophesies tell us.

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No they don't. They were talking about the second temple. History has been there, done that.

keras said:

After the Holy Land has been cleared and cleansed.

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It was. Cyrus sent them home.

keras said:

I sympathize with your outlook on things, but I cannot refute what I get from the Prophetic Word.

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I can.
And dressing things up with phrases like The Prophetic Word does not help your cause sound more right or credible when you rip things out of context every time you quote an Old testament verse!

keras said:

Events will take place as the Prophets describe

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Correction.
They did take place as the prophet s described.
99% of them at least.

In the muck and horror of watching their lands be taken by the enemy, and contemplating the fierceness of God's judgement against these tools of his anger, on some rare occasions the prophets lifted there immediate focus to more eternal matters. These passages are famous, and nothing you have said adds to them or explains them any better than theologians have through the centuries.

If you had any hermeneutical skills or real theological reading you would know this.

keras said:

Without a clue about Gods plans for our future?

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Exactly! Welcome to the human condition. This is where faith comes in.

This is where Ecclesiastes comes in.

This is where not worrying about tomorrow comes in.

This is where the rubber hits the road.

We don't know stuff. But we have to keep trusting anyway.

The Lord could return in 5 seconds or 50,000 years we just honestly do not know.

What changes in your relationship with God if that is true? Why do you dread not knowing? Have you become a victim to Cassandra syndrome and feeling a bit special knowing the future? Because I know how tempting that is! There's a smug certainty.

In fact psychologists have shown that human beings hate uncertainty far more than they hate a dire prognosis that is certain.

Not knowing hurts more than knowing the future is going to be bad! That's why summer attracted to environmental apocalyptic narratives, and summer attracted to biblical end times constructs they've whipped up from their subconscious.

keras said:

Your flat out rejection of the given time periods...

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FOOLISHNESS!!??

HANG ON! Who is it that had absolute certainty that the AOD would happen last month?

99% of the prophesies came to fruition in 70AD.......

Jesus is the 3rd Temple....fact.

keras said:

But they did

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keras said:

n't. There was no cosmic signs and events then.

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N.T. Wright explains what the "signs in the heavens" language is meant to be, compressed political speech. When Isaiah describes Babylon's fall, the stars go dark and the heavens shake. Nobody reads that as a literal astronomical prediction; it's sovereignty language. It's not a fringe position; it's where serious biblical scholarship has landed across confessional lines for decades.

The Talmund itself speaks of the Shekinakh, the divine Presence leaving the temple some time after 30 AD and lasting until it's destruction. The Scapegoat lot would return as a bad omen, the lamp of the Presence would go out, and the doors of the temple would swing open. There are also accounts of signs in the heavens around the destruction of the temple, Josephus himself records this.


2nd Thessalonians. passage is crisis correspondence, not a prophecy calendar. The most historically coherent reading ties the "man of lawlessness" to Caligula's attempt to install his image in the Jerusalem temple around 40 AD — an event that genuinely terrified both diaspora and Palestinian Jews and was very much alive in early Christian memory. The "restrainer" is almost certainly the Roman legal order that Claudius then restored. Paul is responding to a specific situation his readers already understood, not encrypting instructions for a 21st century audience.

keras said:

Do those 'skills' make a person believe the Prophesies all happened in the past?

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Does having a timetable to sell make you unable to present an opponent's opinions correctly and honestly?

You know what I think.

You KNOW that the use of the word ALL here is a dishonest representation of my views.

keras said:

Most of what is Prophesied has not yet taken place.

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Oh? In that case the we got the gospel wrong and are still looking for our Saviour and King!

keras said:

Proved by the Bible itself and the historical record.

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Nope

keras said:

Paul said we should not be in the dark about what the Lord has planned for our future.

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Nope.

If you read in context he said we DO NOT know about times.
Instead we know a saviour.

Being of the night or day is about character - not some stupid timetable his audience should memorise for over 2000 years later!

What an irrelevant load of rubbish!

keras said:

He will arise and no longer restrain Himself"-

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Nope. If you can't read Isaiah 13 correctly, there is no way I'm going to waste my time reading your misinterpretation of the Psalms!

They are prayers, not prophesies - even though they are prophetic in nature.

They train our spiritual emotional muscles - not an irrelevant timetable only a Kiwi seems to read into the text.

keras said:

But they didn't. There was no cosmic signs and events then.

So; does the man of sin sit in Jesus? 2 Thess 2:4

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All based on 'your' interpretation of scripture Keras. Signs that only 'you' believe will happen.

keras said:

I look forward to the great and terrible Day that the Lord sends His fiery wrath. Luke 21:25-25 - the Words of Jesus.
Beliefs other that what the Prophets clearly say, will be just swept away, like a house built on sand, like straw and stubble.

I assume people here do keep up with the world news.
Will there be an agreement between the USA and Iran? Can we Christians get any information from the Prophetic Word?
It is plain to me that we can and the outcome of all the turmoil in the Middle East is well described by all the Prophets. Why reject and ignore them?

Right; Most people are in the dark about future events.
As Daniel 12:9-10 says: The Words are sealed until the time of the end.....Only a few will understand.

This situation is not so bad, but when wild and weird interpretations are promoted, then the Lord may question why a simple and normal understanding was rejected.

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Keras, these types of wars have been happing for centuries!! Rinse and repeat....

You are the one preaching wild and weird interpretations yet you don't see that.

No disrespect to you at all. God bless you.