End-Times Adventures

Written by Miriam Felton-Dansky

Koranic Catastrophe, Tribulation Tirade
Koranic Catastrophe

Wondering where the next natural disaster is likely to strike? Look no further than the fail-safe predictor recently hit upon by Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi: Koran-based numerology. According to the Jerusalem Post, Silwadi’s method has produced the frightening forecast that the United States will be destroyed in 2007 by a tsunami larger than the one that hit Southeast Asia this winter. In a recently-published report, the scholar expounds upon his prediction, explaining that the calamitous flood will be punishment for American sins of hubris and violence. “The [Southeast Asian] tsunami waves,” his study concludes, “are a minor rehearsal in comparison with what awaits the US in 2007.”

According to the Post, Silwadi arrived at this conclusion through close analysis of the many Koranic verses that he claims allude to American evil. Adding up letters and numbers from the verses in question, Silwadi came up with the sums 1776 and 231. Given the same evidence, anyone would be hard-pressed not to conclude, as Silwadi did, that the United States was destined to last a total of 231 years and end in 2007.

The scholar noted that the tsunami will constitute divine retribution for a number of America’s misdeeds, including its treatment of Native Americans, slavery, current Middle East policy, and the many other injustices committed since 1776. And since American sins of pride and oppression apparently correspond directly to those committed by the biblical Pharaoh, it only stands to reason we’re slated to die by drowning, as he did.

Silwadi, who hails from the West Bank village of Silwad, near Ramallah, is not a career academic. His work is not particularly well-known. But when he uncovered such a calamitous prediction, he deemed it imperative to go public, “out of a sense of responsibility because what is about to happen is extremely shocking and frightening.” And public he has gone: the Post reports that Silwadi’s study is circulating widely in the Arab world and has gained the attention of millions of readers.

Silwadi did express some concern about the effects of the tsunami, mainly the worry that the collapse of the dollar would strain the economies of the rest of the world. Ultimately, the report asserts, according to the Post, that “It would be fair to say that the world would be better off with a US that is not a superpower and that does not take advantage of weak nations than a world where this country does not exist at all.”

The Second Coming…on Campus

“We’re not pre-trib, we’re not post-trib, we’re pan-trib,” says Joel James, development director for the Buffalo-based Eagles’ Wings Ministry, of his organization’s eschatological philosophy. “And that means, it’ll all pan out in the end.”

James is explaining the evangelical Christian ministry’s approach to their latest foray into Israel activism: the Israel Experience Trip for Christian student leaders, piloted last summer and currently getting ready for round two. The program, which took a dozen young Christians to the Holy Land, is, James explains, modeled on birthright israel, and seeks to create relationships between young evangelicals and Israel. But rather than bolstering an expansionist Jewish state as a prophetic prerequisite for Christ’s return and the end of days, as is the alleged hope of other “Christian Zionists,” Pepperdine law student Bill Ostan, who served as the trip’s student leader, explains that the program helps Christians see what is “really going on” in the Middle East. “It became clear,” he wrote afterwards, “that we are a group of leaders upon whom there now lays [sic] a responsibility to speak out with educated hearts for Israel.”

Jews and evangelicals have been cooperating in support of Israel on the national stage for years, but Ostan reports that campus collaboration is just beginning. “We’re kind of pioneering a new thing,” he said, explaining that on his own campus, Christians and Jews have begun to work together on such programming as a conference on fighting poverty. Eagles’ Wings leaders help students to understand the religious connection between their own faith and its “elder brother,” Judaism. “The whole purpose,” James says, “is so they can be defenders of the Judeo-Christian worldview,” adding that in the future, Eagles’ Wings hopes to expand the trip. “Our goal down the road,” he explains, “is to take larger numbers and then being able to really generate mass results.”

But James denies that those “mass results” would serve the purpose of helping bring on the Second Coming. “The bottom line,” he says, “is that this isn’t part of some grand end-times theory at all.” Rather, he claims that this love of Israel is about the fact that “God has always had a heart especially for the Jewish people.” Most would argue that the “special role” evangelicals see for Jews is, uh, taking possession of Israel in preparation for the end-times—at which point they’ll have to accept Christ or burn in hell. But James decries the mainstream media’s role in spreading this vicious rumor, adding that in his outreach to the Jewish community, he’s discovered that the more liberal the Jews, the less likely they were to want evangelical Christians’ involvement on Israel—or, he laments, their involvement on any issues at all. Nonetheless, Eagles’ Wings intends to persevere. “We just hope that the Jewish groups understand that we’re coming with a sincere heart,” says Ostan. “I think the evangelicals, they really get it. That speaking out for Israel is on God’s heart.”

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.