BY WILLIAM G. JOHNSSON
bout the time you conclude that the situation in the Middle East can't get any worse, it does. Every day the horror escalates in a grim tit-for-tat that seemingly offers no prospect of letup.
As I write, the Israelis have set their will in a struggle for their survival. After a series of suicide bombings they have thrown away all concern for what others may think of their actions. Despite calls from United States president George W. Bush, United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, and other world leaders, the Israelis have taken matters into their own hands.
On the other side the mood seems equally determined. The Palestinians want a homeland, a place of their own where they can live and work and raise their families. Three million in number, they are limited in space, access, and basic freedoms. We grasp something of the depth of their anger and desperation by the young men and women who strap explosives to their bodies and blow up themselves in public places.
Every bombing triggers fresh Israeli reprisals. Every reprisal deepens the hatred and brings new volunteers for a mission of death.
Because of print deadlines I am writing this editorial a couple weeks before you will read it in the Review. It's possible that by now the two sides have temporarily exhausted their anger, and a fragile calm has descended. I hope so; I pray so. But given the ferocity and bitterness of the events of the past months, I wonder how long any peace can last.
The mess in the Middle East isn't primarily a religious conflict. The fight is over land-a land, and a quite small one at that. Go to Jerusalem (if you can summon the courage!), and you will be amazed to see how close together are the Israeli and Palestinian settlements.
But the struggle has religious overtones. This little land has been the cockpit of wars and religious battles for thousands of years, its history drenched with the blood of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Today its strategic value is greater than ever. Some 6 million Israelis find themselves surrounded by maybe 200 million Arabs, but the whole world waits and watches. For this region supplies the bulk of a commodity essential to modern life-oil.
We Seventh-day Adventists take a keen interest in the prophecies of the Bible, in particular those of Daniel and Revelation. Evangelists preach on the great image of Daniel 2 and the beasts of Daniel 7, with the succession of empires: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the European nations.
But Babylon is what we call Iraq today. Medo-Persia is Iran. Suddenly these ancient predictions seem right up-to-date: they plunge us into the Middle East.
These prophecies don't provide a crystal ball for the future. They don't tell us, for instance, whether the modern nation of Israel will be able to survive the huge odds numbered against it.
But the prophecies, like the whole Bible, tell us about God. They tell us that God exists and He knows the future. He isn't caught off guard when a 24-year-old Palestinian blows himself up, killing 28 and wounding 150 at a Passover meal. Or when Israeli tanks roll into the Jenin refugee camp and scores of Palestinians, fighters and civilians, are wiped out. "The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future," Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2:45, NIV).
And most important of all, God will intervene in His own time to bring an end to killing, hate, and cruelty. "The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed" (verse 44, NIV).
I see no way out for the Middle East, but I look beyond the horizon and see hope. I see Jesus coming back to this earth. Only then will the mess in the Middle East and in so many other places be made right.
Fellow Adventists, these are difficult times, and they will get worse. "The work which the church has failed to do in a time of peace and prosperity she will have to do in a terrible crisis under the most discouraging, forbidding circumstances" (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 463).
These are times to pray as never before. These are times to ground our lives in God's Word. These are times for courage, to go forward boldly and proclaim Jesus, humanity's only hope.
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William G. Johnsson is the editor of the Adventist Review.
