For example, in Deuteronomy 20:16-17, we read, “But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an  inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction….”  And Deut.7:2 says, “….you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.” See also Deut.7:1-5; Josh.6:17; Exodus 23:23-33

This seems objectionable because:

• it amounts to an order to commit genocide, wiping out whole peoples.
• it violates the rules of war by including innocent women and children in those to be killed.
• it countenances dispossessing indigenous peoples of their land and property.
• it provides a biblical precedent for holy war and genocide.
• it implies an objectionable notion of God favouring one people over another. The idea of election thus boils down here to racism.
• it contradicts Jesus’ teaching about non-resistance and “turning the other cheek.”

Surely a God who would give such an order is ethically evil if he exists at all. Surely this text was produced simply by Israel to rationalize and defend their indefensible actions in invading Canaan.

What kind of response can Christians give to this? Here are a few thoughts.

1. We need to remember this was a “one off” situation. God did not authorise Israel, or anyone else, to make a habit of dispossessing others of their land and lives. In fact the context in Deut.20 gives clear “rules of war” for normal cases, including limits on who could be killed (v.13-14)

2. This unique action was justified not by the choice of Israel as God’s people but by the extreme immorality and violence in the target groups. In Deut.20, the order is explained as follws: “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods” (v.18), including such practices as child sacrifice. In Genesis 15:16, we see that the descendants of Abraham could not take the land for 4 generations, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete”; in other words, the situation in Canaan was not yet so bad as to justify dispossessing and destroying them. In other words, the invasion under Joshua was a “police action.”

3. While God had clearly chosen Israel as His people, and this is reflected in the passages above (especially Deut.7:6-10), this did not mean that they were racially superior or that God applied different standards to them. When they turned aside to idolatry, immorality, injustice and violence, He sent other nations to punish them and eventually sent them into exile, just as he had dispossessed the Canaanites. Indeed such consequences are warned about in Deuteronomy 28-30, 32.

4. God’s ethical revelation and dealings in the Old Testament are to some degree relative or situational. It was too early to expect the level of ethical purity we see in the Sermon on the Mount. God tolerated, but restricted, such evils as war, polygamy and slavery until Jesus came.

Maybe you as a reader may have other comments on this question.

It would take a very long article to really explain it, but here are a few brief points.

First, let’s note that the ancient creeds associate his coming primarily with judgement:

“From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead” (Apostles’ Creed)

“And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end” (Nicene Creed)

I believe they are right but incomplete (Matt.25:31-46; Acts 17:31; 2 Thess.1:7-10).

So what else is he coming to do?

1. to raise the dead, particularly believers (1 Thess.4:16; 1 Cor.15:23,52) and to transform the saints alive at his coming (1 Thess.4:17;  2 Thess.2:1; Phil.3;20-21; 1 Cor.15:51-52), bringing the final stage of salvation (Heb.9:28; 1 John 3;2)

2. to destroy the lawless one (2 Thess.2:8; Rev.20:9-10)

3. to settle accounts with his servants (Matt.24:45-25:30; 1 Cor.3:13-15; Rom.14:10)

4. to restore creation to perfection (Rom.8:19-21; 2 Pet.3:10-13; Rev.21-22)

5. to complete his rule and hand over the kingdom to the Father (1 Cor.15:24-28)

6. to be with us forever (1 Thess.4:17), seeing him “face to face” (1 John 3:2; 1 Cor.13:12; Rev.22:3-4)

7. and more than we know!! (I had to have a 7th point!)

Natural disasters: tornadoes, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, bushfires

Upheaval in the Arab world including overthrow of entrenched dictators and civil wars.

Death of Osama bin Laden.

Economic upheaval in Europe especially and ongoing economic problems in the US.

No wonder many are wondering, is this the End, especially when Harold Camping says it is?

Certainly such shakings are meant to get our attention and shake us out of our complacency.

But do they signify the imminence of Jesus’ second coming or the end of the world?

I want to draw your attention to a couple of scriptures here.

Matt.24:6-8 warns of wars, rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes. But Jesus specifically tells his audience “the end is not yet” and “this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” In context, he is probably speaking of events leading to the destruction of the temple (v1-3).  But whatever context this is in, it warns us not to rush into speculation.

Luke 13:1-5 dismisses the idea that disasters come to people because they are worse sinner than others, but states “unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” In other words, natural disasters, wars, etc do not tell us anything about the timing of the second coming, but do warn us that judgement will come to everyone eventually.

Matt.16:3 speaks of “the signs of the times”. But this means discerning what God is doing now, in this case through Jesus of Nazareth, not working out when the end would come.

Natural disasters and civil disturbances should lead people to repent because they show us that our normal future is not guaranteed, that death can strike at any time, and so can the second coming. But they are not meant to be the basis for eschatological calculation or speculation.

In fact, this kind of disaster has happened before. History is repeating itself.

The most famous case involved William Miller, who stirred up the USA in a big way in the 1840s by predicting the End, based on calculations like Harold Camping’s.  First, it would happen between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Then when that didn’t happen, the date  was reset by some of the Millerites (Miller was slow to accept this himself) at October 22, 1844. Up to 50,000 Christians became Millerites and maybe up to a million were sympathetic to the ideas he preached. Many took radical steps such as not harvesting their crops, forgiving debts and disbursing fortunes to unbelieving heirs. Some preached that other churches were antichrist and believers should “come out” of them.  Does any of that sound familiar now? All for nothing, as it turned out, though in the aftermath of the “great disappointment” that followed October 22, 1844 some of the adventists reinterpreted what had happened and founded what is now the Seventh-day Adventist church. (see, e.g. Stephen D. O’Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse; Oxford University Press, 1994: 101-110).

Closer to the present, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have have several goes at setting the time of the End. So also have some influenced by Dispensational premillennialism. See my book, Revelation Reclaimed, for some details. But many have tried to set dates based on events in modern Israel. For example, modern Israel was born in 1948, a Bible generation is 40 years, so the last generation would wind up in 1988.  One author even wrote a book called “88 Reasons why The Rapture will happen in 1988.” Then they calculated from1967, since that was when Israel took control of old Jerusalem and the old temple site.  But 2007 has also not produced a rapture. Others built their calculations from various Arab-Israeli peace accords brokered by successive US presidents.  And so the sorry saga continues.

When will people realise that all this is based on faulty presuppositions?

Will Camping’s predictions lead to a new cult? That seems to be implied by  his agenda, especially his allegation that the Spirit left the churches in 1988, but he seems to old to benefit much, so perhaps (as happened with the adventists and the predecessors of the JWs) a new leader (a new Ellen White or Judge Rutherford) will rise up and take control of the “movement”.

I watch with interest, but let’s exhort anyone we know to abandon such date-setting before they make shipwreck of their faith.

But that doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t coming again, it just means we won’t know in advance and it probably won’t happen that way. This is important now, as no doubt most people will take the failure of Camping’s prediction to mean the whole expectation of a second coming to be wrong.

So why do I, and others, still believe in the second coming?

1. because the NT clearly teaches it (Acts 1:11; 1 Thess.4:16; Matt.25:31;  1Cor.15:23; Heb.9:28; etc). Both Jesus and his apostles unanimously taught it as a core truth.

2. because it is an article of belief in the ancient creeds. If you read the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, you’ll find they both say something like  “he will come again to judge both the living and the dead.”

3. Christian theology demands it: the bodily resurrection of Jesus is the “firstfruits of them that sleep” (1 Cor.15:20); that is, it foreshadows the future resurrection of all believers. Moreover Christian gospel demands a final judgement, which cannot happen until he comes again (e.g. Matt.25:31-46).

4. Justice also demands it. He must be publicly revealed as Lord and Messiah and judge the world in justice so that the many crimes committed by humans do not go unpunished. cf Rev.20:11-15; Acts 17:31.

But let me clarify what I mean by the second coming of Jesus Christ. I am talking about a coming that, according to the New Testament, is:

• personal (Acts 1:11)
• visible (Matt.24;27; Rev.1:7)
• glorious (Matt.25:31)
• unexpected (Matt.24:36-44,50; 1 Thess.5:2-3)
• consequential for both Christians and the world as a whole, leading to rewards and punishments (Matt.24:45-51; 25:31-46; 2 Thess.1:6-10)
• followed by bodily resurrection or translation of his followers (1 Thess.4:16-17)

This is the great hope of Christians (Tit.2:13), a motivation to godly living and fervent service and a warning to the whole world of coming judgement.

But does this signify the imminence of the day of the Lord? Maybe not tomorrow, but soon? After all, Joel is full of such language.  But of course, the land has been divided for over 60 years; in fact, it was only united in modern history, at least for any length of time,  under the Ottoman Turks. But Joel’s (original) targets were those who attacked Israel in ancient days: the people of Tyre, Sidon, Philistia and the Greeks (Joel 3:4,6). Since then we have had the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, rule by the Persians and Greeks, the brief period of independence under the Hasmoneans, the long rule of Rome, the destruction of the temple in AD70, the even longer period of Muslim rule, etc. Is God about to punish all these people? Is he going to side with an unbelieving and anti-Christ nation?

Well, maybe. No doubt God has not forgotten his ancient people, as Paul affirms (Rom.11:1). But the promise of both Joel and Romans suggests that God’s concern for the Jews is centred on bringing them to Christ rather than on guaranteeing their natural borders. Joel looks forward to the era of the Spirit and the salvation that Jesus came to bring (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:16-21). Paul confidently expects that Israel will receive mercy and “all Israel will be saved” (Rom.11:26). And Jesus refused to indulge the disciples’ speculative question about restoring the kingdom to Israel, instead promising that they would be Spirit-empowered witnesses to Jews and Gentiles alike (Acts 1:6-8).

This is God’s agenda; not redrawing the political boundaries, but calling people to Himself through Christ.

“This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11)

“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess.4:16; from perhaps the first book of the NT to be written)

“Now concerning the times and seasons, brothers and  sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say,  ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape” (1 Thess.5:1-3).

In other words, Jesus will come again and this will usher in judgement from which no one will escape.

Just because he doesn’t come tomorrow doesn’t mean he won’t ever come again. he’s giving us time to get right with God. Don’t take that lightly. Read 2 Peter 3:3-13.

But they are not the only people forecasting big events. Quite part from the climate change stuff and other secular alarms.

We now hear that the Iranian government is sponsoring a video “The Coming is Near”. In this video, current signs are said to  show that the appearance of the Islamic messianic figure, the Mahdi, is near.  According to Islamic scriptures, he will lead Islam to victory over all non-Muslims in the last days.

My source writes about this video:

‘”The Hadith have clearly described the events and the various transformations of countries in the Middle East and  Iran in the age of the coming,” said a narrator, who went on to say that America’s invasion of Iraq was foretold by Islamic scripture, and that the Mahdi will soon rule the world from Iraq. The ongoing upheavals in Middle Eastern countries like Yemen and Egypt, including the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, are also said to be prophetic signs that the Mahdi is near. So is the current poor health of the king of Saudi Arabia, an Iranian rival.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, are hailed as pivotal end times players, whose rise was predicted in Islamic scriptures. The same goes for Iran’s President Ahmadenijad, who the video says will conquer Jerusalem prior to the Mahdi’s coming. ‘

This source goes on to explain:  ‘In Sunni and Shia eschatology, the Mahdi is the prophesied redeemer of Islam who will stay on Earth for seven, nine or nineteen years (according to various interpretations) before the Day of Judgment, and, alongside Jesus, will rid the world of wrongdoing, injustice and tyranny.’

Muslims expect Jesus to come again and assist the Mahdi to bring everyone under Islamic rule.

Now there are only a few possible outcomes here:

1. the Iranians are right and Islam will triumph.

2. the Mahdi is actually the “antichrist” figure of the New Testament, which means he will have success for a time but be overthrown by Jesus at his real second coming.

3. nothing will really happen yet because God will send Christ back when He is ready, not when we expect it.

4. the whole thing is a load of garbage because neither Christianity nor Islam is right.

I’m going with No.3. And I hope to see you on the 22nd as well.

For me as a Christian theologian, Osama is one more lost sinner who failed to turn to Christ, was captured by an extremist ideology and used to bring a lot of grief to the world. We can pause to mourn with all those who suffered because of his actions, and sometimes because of foolish counter-actions.

But behind bin Laden there is a much bigger issue in play and a greater war in progress. It has been won already but not yet over. At stake is the eternal destiny of millions and the cause of true justice under the only legitimate ruler of the world, Jesus Christ. And all of us are involved: as a combatant, POW or fellow-traveller. At least we can choose whose side to be on.

I see the current unrest all over the earth, including the recent “natural” disasters, as moves in the defeat of the devil and the liberation of a lot of lost souls. Al Qa’eda probably arose out of the devil’s realisation that his long hold on Muslims is coming unstuck: more of them are turning to Christ than ever before.

So what we can all do now is turn to Christ ourselves, then pray for the defeat of the devil and the advance of the kingdom of God through the preaching of the gospel by all possible means

Large bill boards, internet sites, vehicles plastered with the news, you-tube all are proclaiming that the rapture will take place on May 21 (this year!) followed five months later by the end of the world.

This is based on some of the following points:

• a new way of calculating Bible chronology, which puts creation at 11013 BC and the Flood at 4990 BC.
• combining a day/age system (one day=1000 years, justified from 2 Pet.3:6-7) with statements about the Flood to place the second coming 7000 years after the Flood, i.e. 2011 AD.
• exact dates are also based on parallels with the Flood story
• the “church age” (a term not found in the Bible) finished in 1988 (not sure why 1988), setting off the great tribulation of Matt.24:21. At this time, according to www.ebiblefellowship.com, “God finished using the churches and congregations of the world. The Spirit of God left all churches and Satan, the man of sin, entered into the churches to rule at that point of time.”
• The tribulation lasts 23 years, so finishing also in 2011.

Thus on May 21, expect to see all the dead raised, more devastating earthquakes and bodies scattered across the earth.

On October 21, expect to see the destruction of the universe, including all unbelievers, by fire. But then you won’t be alive to see it if these predictions are correct.

Much could be said in response to this latest wild speculation. My main concern is that it will cause people to scoff at the very idea of a last judgement or the second coming of Jesus Christ, and that is dangerous, because these are clearly predicted in the New Testament and may come at virtually any time. We do need to be ready for His return. There will be horrendous consequences for failing to repent. Read Acts 1:11; 1 Thess.4:13-5:11; 2 Thess.1:6-12; Rev.1:7; 20:11-15 among other passages; and the historic creeds of the church which all declare Jesus will come again and judge the living and the dead.

But these events will probably not be on May 21 or October 21 this year.

Here are some reasons why I say this:

1. Jesus warned us that no one knows the day or hour of his coming (Matt.24:36), indeed this is the point of the comparison with the Flood: “they knew nothing until…” (Matt.24:39), so also “you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt.24:42). See also Acts 1:6-8. 2 Pet.3, which the authors appeal to for calculating dates, actually warns that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Pet.3:10) and implies that the time is not actually fixed, as God is waiting for more people to repent (2 Pet.3:9,12).
2. there is no compelling evidence that 1988 is prophetically significant or that the Holy Spirit left all churches on May 21 that year. I myself was pioneering a new church in NSW, Australia, then and God kept saving people and healing them after that date as before. I’m sure most people could relate similar experiences. 1988 was, of course, Australia’s bicentenary year, but I doubt if that is relevant!
3. the assumptions behind all these calculations are very different to a “normal” reading of Scripture (e.g. the 23 years tribulation instead of seven or three and a half) and seem very plastic.

Are we seeing the end of the world or the beginning of a new cult? Both Seventh-day Adventism and Jehovahs Witnesses came out of efforts to calculate the date of the End.

Dear Reader, forget about date-setting but do be ready at any time by putting your faith in Jesus Christ.