An apocalyptic war is a Biblical ‘end of war’ War that uses the word Armageddon from the Biblical Hebrew Har Meghiddo, meaning “Mountain of Megiddo”. Har Magedon, which is 80 miles north of Jerusalem, is the symbol of a major battle in which, when the need is greatest and the believers are most oppressed, God reveals His power to His distressed people; and their evil enemies are destroyed. The word Armageddon does not appear in the Hebrew Bible and appears only once in the Greek New Testament, in Revelation 16:16.

Many religious people now think that the road to Armageddon started with the Hamas October 7th 2023 massacre in Israel, when 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages of all ages. Armageddon is a warning of humanity’s need to change to avoid Armageddon.

Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates the end to the world as we know it; a final Last Day confrontation between good and evil (Armageddon); after which, with God’s help, human life will be rewarded and transformed into the Messianic Age of peace and prosperity.

As the Qur’an states: “Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews, Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, and do righteous good deeds, shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” (2:62 and 5:69)

Notice that the Qur’an specifically stresses religious pluralism applies on God’s judgment day.

As ibn Babuya writes in Thawab ul-A’mal, “The Apostle of God said: `There will come a time for my people when there will remain nothing of the Qur’an except its outward form, and nothing of Islam except its name, and they will call themselves by this name even though they are the people furthest from it. “The mosques will be full of people but they will be empty of right guidance. The religious leaders (Fuqaha) of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens; sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return.”

This sounds, and indeed is, terrible. But, those who trust in God know that the night is coldest in the last hours before sunrise. Secularists believe that these apocalyptic visions of a future (Armageddon) are absurd, although many secularists themselves fervently believe that runaway genetic modification of food and/or extreme climate change is going to doom human civilization in future generations.

The basic difference between the pessimistic, humanist secularists and the religious optimists is that those who believe in the God of Abraham also believe that God’s inspiration and guidance guarantees that the spiritual forces of good, will overcome all the world’s evils at the end of days; and justice, peace and religious pluralism will prevail. Or as Prophet Micah envisions it: (4:1-5)

“In the end of days the mountain of the Lord’s Temple will be established as the highest mountain; it will be exalted above........

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