In 2023 the United States had its most recorded heat deaths in more than 80 years, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The death certificates of more than 2,300 people mentioned excessive heat. Heat killed 874 people in Arizona, 450 in Texas, 226 in Nevada, 84 in Florida and 83 in Louisiana.
And 2024 will be even worse because the first six months of 2024 have already broken the record highs from 2023, which was the hottest our planet had been in for about 120,000 years.
The arid Middle East is a global climate hotspot where temperatures are increasing much faster than the global average; and where declining rainfall will exacerbate existing water shortages and raise the dangers of water wars. In an average year this century, climate disasters in the Middle East and Central Asia have injured and displaced seven million people.
And now UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warns humanity is choosing "collective suicide" with its failure to act on climate change saying: "Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction,"
So are we headed toward a Gog and Magog climate war?
Various Christian sects have predicted the end of the world throughout the tumultuous 22 decades of the 19th-21st century; and in recent decades many Muslims have started believing that the Bible's and the Quran's war of Gogu-Magog in Hebrew, and "Yajuj and Majuj" in Arabic, will blow up in the 21st century. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that in South and Southeast Asia 55-60% of all Muslims believe in the Madhi's imminent return; and in the Middle East and North Africa 51% are believers.
As two Hadith Islamic traditions state "Among the signs of the Hour are that knowledge will be taken away, ignorance will be widespread, and wine-drinking will be widespread." [Bukhari]. And "The Hour will not come until a man passes by a [another] man's grave and says: Would that I was in his place." [Bukhari].
Yajuj and Majuj are mentioned both in Qur'an and hadith. In Islam their appearance will be one of the signs of the end times. These events will transpire after the arrival of Dajjal, Mehdi and Jesus. Gog and Magog ("Gog u-Magog" in Hebrew and "Yajuj and Majuj" in Arabic) are names that appear in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Qur'an.
They are sometimes personified as individuals, sometimes identified as nations, or as terrible natural catastrophes: but all references in the Bible, Qur'an and Hadith (oral and then written tradition) clearly indicate that they are very numerous in number, and will come from the north at the end of times, before the Days of Judgement:
"They said, "O Dhul-Qarnayn, indeed Gog and Magog are [great] corrupters in the land. So may we assign for you an expenditure that you might make a barrier between us and them?" (Qur'an 18:94) —[Dhul-Qarnayn] said, "This is a mercy from my Lord; but when the promise of my Lord comes, He will make it level, and ever true is the promise of my Lord. And We will leave them that day surging over each other, and [when] the Horn will be blown, We will assemble them in [one] assembly." (Qur'an 18:98-99)
A Hadith transmitted by both Imam Al- Bukhari and Imam Muslim, on the authority of Zainab Bint Jahsh relates that Prophet Muhammad once came to her in a state of fear and said: "None has the right to be worshipped but Allah. Woe unto the Arabs from a danger that has come near. An opening has been made in the wall of Gog and Magog like this," making a circle with his thumb and index finger. Zainab Bint Jahsh said: "O Allah's Messenger! Shall we be destroyed even though there are pious persons among us?" He said: "Yes, when evil persons greatly increase."
It is true that human society changed more rapidly, violently and fundamentally in the last 250 years than ever before in history. Doctors saved the lives of millions. Dictators sacrificed the lives of millions. Populations are exploding in Africa and populations are declining in Europe. Technology produces both worldwide prosperity and worldwide pollution at the same time.
Should we look upon the future with optimistic hope or with fatalistic trepidation?Is the world and our society heading towards a wonder-filled new age, or toward a doomsday? Or are both occurring almost concurrently because breakdown is often a prelude to breakthrough?
Jews, whose prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures were the ones who first wrote about a future Messianic Age, recognize that the birth of a Messianic Age must be preceded by its birth-pangs. But the prophets of Israel also emphasize the glories of a future world living in peace and prosperity with justice for all.
Ancient Jewish prophecies did proclaim that there would be an end to the world as we know it.But they did not prophesy that the world will come to an end, nor did the Prophets of Israel offer an exact date for the transition.
The advent of the Messianic Age is not knowable because humans have free will and thus the exact time and manner of God's redemption cannot be determined in advance. Much depends on what we humans do.
The beginning of the Messianic Age marks God's promise of a time of transition from one World Age into another. How we move through this transition, either with resistance or acceptance, will determine whether the transformation will happen through cataclysmic changes or by a gradual religious reform of human society; which will lead to a world filled with peace, prosperity and spiritual tranquility.
In most religious traditions, redemption is defined in terms of individual enlightenment or personal salvation. However, the Prophets of Israel presented redemption as a transformation of human society that would occur through the catalyst of the transformation of the Jewish community.
This transformation, which will take place in this world at some future time, is called the Messianic Age.The transition to the Messianic Age is called the birth pangs of the Messiah.The birth of a redeemed Messianic world may be the result of an easy or difficult labor. If everyone would simply live according to the moral teachings of his or her religious tradition, we would ourselves have helped bring about the Messianic Age.
But, if we will not do it voluntarily, it will come anyway through social and political upheavals, worldwide military conflicts and generation gaps.The Messiah refers to an agent of God who helps bring about this positive transformation.
The Jewish tradition teaches that this agent of God (together with several forerunners and many disciples) will be a human being, a descendant of Prophet David, with great qualities of national leadership similar to Prophet Moses and Prophet Mohammed.
The arrival of the Messianic Age is what's really important, not the personality of the agents who bring it about, since they are simply the instruments of God, who ultimately is the real Redeemer.
The Messianic Age is usually seen as the solution to all of humanity's basic problems. This may be true in the long run but the vast changes the transition to the Messianic Age entails will provide challenges to society for many generations to come.
For example, 2700 years ago the Prophet Isaiah predicted that someday there would be a radically new world in which Jerusalem would be filled with joy for "no more shall there be in it an infant that lives only a few days." (Isaiah 65:20) Before the mid 19th century almost 1/3 of children born in any year died before their first birthday; in some subgroups, half died. Because childbirth was very hazardous, mortality among pregnant women was also very high.
A century ago, the infant mortality rate in Jerusalem (as in most of the world) was 25-30%. Now it is less than 1%. For thousands of years almost every family in the world suffered the loss of at least one infant; now it happens to less than one out of two hundred.
The fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy has thus gone unnoticed and uncelebrated. But even when the events are rapid and dramatic, people rarely connect them to their Messianic significance for very long. The amazing rescue of 14,235 Ethiopian Jews in a 1991 airlift to Israel, lasting less than 40 hours, stirred and inspired people for a few weeks.
Subsequently, the difficult problems the newcomers faced (similar to those of the 900,000 Soviet immigrants) occupied the Jewish media. Now both are taken for granted. The miracle has become routine. But if you had told the Jews of Ethiopia two generations ago that they would someday all fly to Israel in a giant silver bird, they could only conceive of this as a Messianic miracle.
If you had told Soviet Jews a generation ago that the Communist regime would collapse, the Soviet Empire disintegrate, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews would emigrate to Israel, they would have conceived it only as a Messianic dream.
In our own generation therefore we have seen the dramatic fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy: "I will bring your offspring from the (Middle) East and gather you from the (European) West.To the North (Russia) I will say 'give them up' and to the South (Ethiopia) 'do not hold them'. Bring my sons from far away, my daughters from the end of the earth." (Isaiah 43:5-6)
The Qur'an refers to Prophet Abraham as a community or a nation: "Abraham was a nation/community [Ummah]; dutiful to God, a monotheist [hanif], not one of the polytheists." (16:120) If Prophet Abraham is an Ummah then fighting between the descendants of Prophets Ishmael and Isaac is a civil war and should always be avoided.
If we can live up to the ideal that religious hope for a peaceful future is the will of God, we can help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: "In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together.On thatdayIsrael will joina three-partyalliance with Egyptand Assyria,a blessing uponthe heart.The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, "Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance" (Isaiah 19:23-5)
