Profecias

Niall Ferguson "... Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld, the professor of military history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Van Creveld is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future, menaced on one side by an increasingly violent and fissiparous Palestinian population and on the other by a would-be nuclear Iran. But he expects his country at least to go down fighting.

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions," van Creveld declared in an interview in September 2003. "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under."

[strong words...]

Nota1: Martin van Creveld tem um interessante livro "The Rise and Decline of the State" [estou a lê-lo] onde faz a história da formação dos Estados e deixa as razões do seu declínio em futuro-próximo.

Nota2: Suponho que se calhar o Armagaddeon antecipado pelos evangélicos "dispensionalists" (que correm o risco de contribuirem para uma self fullfilling prophecy - diga-se condição necessária para o que dizem ser a segunda vida de Cristo - dado o seu ultra-apoio à linha mais dura, e que inclui a "Grande Israel") ...

[John Walvoord, for three decades the president of Dallas Theological Seminary, the nation's leading dispensational seminary, wrote the following in his book, Israel in Prophecy (1988):

The purge of Israel in their time of trouble is described by Zechariah in these words: "And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith Jehovah, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried" (Zechariah 13:8, 9). According to Zechariah's prophecy, two thirds of the children of Israel in the land will perish, but the one third that are left will be refined and be awaiting the deliverance of God at the second coming of Christ which is described in the next chapter of Zechariah (p. 108).]

estará mais perto do que julgamos. O "Ocidente" pode mesmo literalmente desaparecer, porque suponho ... depois apenas restará mesmo a Ásia.

Nota3: sobre as questões teológicas presentes

"...premillennial dispensationalism. This is a late variant of Christian eschatology, i.e., the theological doctrine of the last things or last times. There are three basic views:

premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism. (On this subject, see my article, "Millennialism and the Progressive Movement," published in The Journal of Libertarian Studies [Spring 1996]).

The prefixes pre-, a-, and post-refer to the timing of the time period that Christians believe will precede God's final judgment.

Premillennialists say that Jesus will return to set up a literal 1,000-year period of peace and justice, in which He will rule here on earth through an international bureaucracy of Christians. This view has been held throughout church history. The post-1830 dispensational variant is the view of the famous Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford University Press, 1909, 1917), most Southern Baptists, most Pentecostals, and members of virtually all independent Bible churches.

Amillennialists think that the millennium is spiritual and allegorical, and it will have no literal political fulfillment in history. This is the view of Dutch Calvinists, Lutherans, and most Roman Catholics.

Postmillennialism proclaims a period of peace and justice during which most of the world's population will be Christian. This was the view of most Puritans in the first half of the seventeenth century, prior to the restoration to the British throne of Charles II in 1660. It was also a predominant view of Scottish Presbyterian in the seventeenth century and in its American branches until after the American Civil War. Jonathan Edwards is the most famous American postmillennialist.

Jesus did teach of a coming tribulation (Matthew 24, Luke 21). He called this period "the days of vengeance" (Luke 21:22). He said specifically of the timing of this period of terror and slaughter, "Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (Matthew 24:32-34).

While there has been much debate as to the timing of the fulfillment of this prophecy, the dominant view in church history has been that this prophecy was fulfilled in 70 A.D., when the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem, crucified thousands of Jews who tried to escape, and took the city. Two Roman soldiers then burned the temple, according to the post-war court historian for the victorious emperor Vespasian, the Jew Josephus. A short introduction to this interpretation is David Chilton's 1987 book, The Great Tribulation.

There are amillennialists who believe that the fall of Jerusalem fulfilled this prophecy. Others think the slaughter is yet to come, and will be imposed on Christians rather than Jews, since they believe that the church has replaced Israel as God's people. Most postmillennialists place it in the past: A.D. 70.

Dispensationalists without exception believe that the event is still in the future. A small, unorganized group, called post-tribulational dispensationalists, think that Jesus will take the Christians out of history only after the Great Tribulation. They believe that Christians will go through it. But there are very few of these people. They have no seminaries or publishing houses. The vast majority of dispensationalists are pre-tribulationists. They say that Christians will be pulled into Heaven and out of history immediately before a seven-year period of church-free history. In the second half of this seven-year period, the slaughter of the Jews will begin. "