Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Bruce N. Cameron
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000165A
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00:23 Welcome to the Liberty Insider. This is a program bringing you
00:26 discussion, up-to-date news and views and information on 00:29 religious liberty. My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty 00:33 magazine and on this program I have a very special guest, 00:37 Professor Bruce Cameron, who is the Reed-Larson professor at 00:41 Regent University. Welcome Bruce 00:43 Thank you Lincoln, it's great to be here. 00:45 I'm looking forward to our discussion and privately we've 00:49 talked about a lot of things but you have some great experience 00:52 and some great views. But let's really jump in on a topic that 00:56 our viewers might not expect. Since 9/11 the United States has 01:00 had a crash course in understanding Islam. Wasn't it 01:06 Mark Twain that made the comment that foreign wars are God's way 01:10 of teaching geography to Americans. 01:12 Well I have certainly learned geography since then. 01:16 There's geography but maybe the foreign wars also, or 9/11, 01:19 is also God's way of teaching a little of the theology of other 01:22 belief systems to people in North America. I know you have 01:27 opinions on this and let's pick it up with the United Nations. 01:32 Okay. Well there's an amazing video clip of the president of 01:36 Iran addressing the United Nations and he is invoking 01:41 the coming of the Mahdi and saying may he be given health 01:46 and victory. And so you look at that and you say the Mahdi 01:50 what is the Mahdi. Well I have had, it seems, these 01:55 information bombs ping on my head for a number of years now 02:01 about this issue of the Mahdi. So I finally got serious about 02:06 looking at this. 02:08 Had you known before when you first heard him say that? 02:11 Did it resonate with you? 02:13 No, no. So you were like most of the 02:16 viewers because I know at the time the media didn't understand 02:19 it. They just said he went on and on for 20 minutes about some 02:23 obscure Islamic theology that didn't resonate with them. 02:27 It did with me because I'd studied history. I remember 02:32 General Gordon in Khartoum. You know that old story back in the 02:36 heyday of the British empire. The whole modern British army 02:41 was destroyed by the Mahdi's army the guy that believed 02:45 that he was the Mahdi. 02:47 Yes, yes. Well here's the reason why it became important to me. 02:50 I had been litigating religious liberty issues for more than 02:54 three decades now and what is the traditional Seventh-day 02:59 Adventist view about the end of days? We say, well we'll know 03:03 that the end of days are about to arrive when there is a 03:08 national Sunday law. Well, we had books in our ABC's, you 03:13 read articles... Adventist Book Centers 03:15 Adventist Book Centers, yes. It's not the happy hour 03:20 beverage control. We encourage people. You know 03:22 there's some wonderful Christian books that are sold in Adventist 03:24 Book Centers in most of the states in the United States. 03:27 Well, that is right. In fact I recently had a fellow send me 03:31 a book for review hoping I would comment on it favorably and the 03:36 thesis of the book was that Sunday laws were increasing in 03:40 the United States. The problem is it's just not true. They are 03:44 diminishing. I mean in the field of religious liberty litigation 03:49 today in the United States Sunday laws don't even raise a 03:53 blip. I mean there truly are not any cases of any importance 03:57 going on. That's true. I often tell 04:01 Adventists that we know of no direct Sunday legislation in the 04:06 pipeline. But there are troubling examples in North 04:10 Dakota. They have a new Sunday oriented blue law that is a 04:14 little troubling that we think derives from this new movement 04:18 in Europe to designate Sunday as a family rest day that's sort of 04:22 Sunday law light. But in the classic sense, you're absolutely 04:25 right. I mean overall it's absolutely 04:27 diminishing. So you say well should I believe we're not 04:31 living close to the end of times? I changed my mind when 04:35 I started looking at this Mahdi issue. If you look at the Bible, 04:41 Jesus tells us in Matthew 24 that when he comes he will come 04:46 like lightening from east to the west, but he says that there 04:50 will be false messiahs. Don't go out into the desert. 04:53 Right, right, don't go into the room, don't do these things and 04:58 so why is he saying that? The implication is that there will 05:02 be a messiah who will be imitating him and will in fact 05:06 make people think this is the second coming. Paul is more 05:11 specific about this. In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 Paul 05:15 says Jesus will not come until there is a false messiah who 05:20 performs signs and wonders; that this will either be Satan or 05:25 Satan's creature, his figure, that proclaims that they're the 05:31 messiah and brings about then the end of days because Jesus 05:36 comes shortly thereafter. It's the antichrist, absolutely. 05:41 Denies that Christ has come in the flesh. 05:43 So then I started looking at what Ellen White was saying 05:47 about this and Ellen White says in chapter 39 of The Great 05:51 Controversy... Now we often mention Ellen White 05:53 on this program. Ellen White is a visionary and one of the 05:59 founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church. 06:00 That's right. The Seventh-day Adventist church's eschatology 06:05 with regard to Sunday laws is pinned on her. I mean, I think 06:09 an argument can be made based on the Bible, but she is very 06:13 explicit about this and what she says about this is that this 06:19 false messiah, this Satan/anti- Christ figure will in fact say 06:25 that there must be a world wide Sunday law and then she 06:29 says, ah Sunday sacredness, and then she says that Christendom 06:33 will follow along and impose it. 06:36 And that is the term she uses and I think I've mentioned it on 06:39 this program before. Globally there'll be something big going 06:43 on, but as far as the effective meaning of the Sunday law, it's 06:47 in Christendom, the Christian world. 06:50 I mean that's the area where you would expect a Sunday law. 06:54 But the most remarkable thing about this, that is her 06:59 description of this false messiah, this makes it a world 07:04 wide event. I'm always concerned about Americans naval gazing 07:09 and thinking that they're the center of the universe and so it 07:13 seems to me a bit arrogant to say well Sunday laws in the 07:17 United States would be important for Christians worldwide, but 07:21 a false messiah proclaiming this worldwide would certainly be 07:24 something. So I say, all right, if I'm looking for the signs, 07:28 the end of days, maybe I shouldn't be looking for Sunday 07:32 laws. Maybe I should be looking for a false messiah. Now that is 07:39 what triggered my extraordinary fascination with Muslim doctrine 07:44 about the Muslim messiah. Most Christians are probably unaware 07:49 of the fact that Muslim eschatology has a messiah that 07:55 comes at the end of days, the day of resurrection, and this 07:59 Messiah's name is the Mahdi. In fact, he's called the 12th Imam. 08:03 If you're reading Revelation, if you know about Revelation, you 08:07 know that the seven churches in Revelation not only reflect 08:12 actual churches but they also demark eras of Christianity. 08:16 That's right. They mark off the progress of Christianity. Islam 08:21 has a very similar concept. They demark the history of Islam by 08:27 these Imams. Imam is a teacher. 08:29 It's not something that grew up in Islam; they take it directly 08:31 from the pronouncements of Mohammad. He said that this end 08:36 of days would be in the coming of the 12th Imam and the Imam 08:41 was the ruler of Islam. He was the first Imam. 08:44 Right, right. He was the first Imam, right. 08:46 So and his successors are well designated and there's been more 08:51 that 12 but there's a convenient treatment of the 12th Imam, and 08:56 I forget his actual name. But it's said by most Muslims that 09:02 he did not die, that he was spiritually taken away. 09:06 Oh, that's right, occultation. In fact, I'll talk about that in 09:09 just a minute. But here's the point about the 12th Imam; 09:13 the 12th Imam is the end of days. He brings in the end of 09:18 the world. He is the world wide lord and this is also called the 09:23 Mahdi. Now you mentioned he was taken away. Islam believes that 09:29 the Mahdi was born. He's got a very long name that would 09:32 challenge me to say it, but we'll call him the Mahdi. 09:35 The Mahdi was born more than a thousand years ago and when 09:39 he was five years old his father was killed. This was a trigger 09:44 event in his life because he was then supernaturally taken 09:47 into what Muslims call occultation. I'm not sure I'm 09:51 correctly pronouncing it, but it's essentially the Muslim 09:54 version of cold storage. That means he's off some place just 10:00 sort of existing and at the end of days he will come as this 10:05 lord, as this messiah, and Jesus will be come with him, right. 10:10 Islam believes in Jesus. They just don't believe that he's God 10:15 he's one of the prophets. So yes, this is a well understood 10:22 teaching particularly in the sharia branch of Islam, the 10:25 Shiites. Right, right Shia and Sunni. 10:28 Shiites say yes that Jesus will come with him so he will come 10:36 to kill the Jews, tell Christians they should convert 10:40 or die and Jesus will be there as a handy testament that in 10:44 fact all of us Christians are wrong and there's Jesus to 10:48 explain our error in our thinking. So okay, that is 10:52 Islamic eschatology and I think this is well understood in Islam 10:57 and this is precisely what the president of Iran was talking 11:00 about. He was talking about the coming of the Mahdi. So okay. 11:04 This is logic time and this is where people can disagree with 11:07 me and say Bruce this either does or does not make sense. 11:11 If you were Satan and you were looking down through the ages 11:15 and you knew that Jesus had said that there would be a false 11:20 messiah and you know that Paul had been very clear about the 11:24 fact that Satan would impersonate the second coming, 11:27 what do you do? I mean if you... 11:29 It's a logical fit to what probably you'd expect to happen. 11:33 Well the mask has been ripped off. So anyone that reads the 11:37 Bible would say well there's going to be a false messiah. 11:40 So I would do two things. 11:41 And it neatly joins Islamic expectations with false 11:46 Christian expectations. Yes! See that's the thing. You 11:50 know you have to either tell people the Bible is nonsense or 11:54 encourage them not to read it, not to take it seriously. Those 11:58 people would believe what they see rather than what they read 12:03 in the Bible. Then if you have a worldwide religion that is in 12:08 fact looking forward to a messiah figure, not Jesus, it 12:13 seems to be the perfect thing. This is precisely 12:18 what I would do if I were Satan. That's the twin strategy that I 12:22 would pursue. So where are we now? 12:27 We're 20 some seconds before the break. I'm listening more 12:32 than usual but I've spoken about this myself a little and it's 12:35 wonderful to hear this presented but let's discuss it a little 12:39 more after the break. We'll be back after a few seconds to 12:43 continue this discussion of a certain messianic expectation. |
Revised 2014-12-17