Messianic expectations of Jews and Muslims become one — Bible points to a false Jesus they and others will accept
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The messianic expectations of Muslim and Jewish leaders are dovetailing, with many scholars from each camp agreeing that coronavirus is the harbinger of a divine figure who will arrive as a king in the midst of pandemics and economic crises.
The Jerusalem Post reports that chief rabbi of Safed Schmuel Eliyahu, in a video posted to youtube March 16th, has identified the beginning of the “the days of Messiah” with the outbreak of coronavirus, which will presage mysterious acts of goodwill by Muslims toward Jews that allow for a third temple.
“Maybe the Muslims will tell us to build the temple,” Eliyahu mused.
Other rabbis have claimed a Messiah will arrive in Israel with a cure to coronavirus, and that the etymology of the virus points to the need for God to be “crowned” as Messiah in a third temple.
On the Muslim side, Breaking Israel News reports that an Iranian Shi’ite cleric and head of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini’s “think tank for universities” has posited the plague as necessary preparation for the soon emergence of the Mahdi or Twelth Imam.
“According to Shiite accounts, before the emergence of Imam Mahdi, the world suffers from widespread fears and many economic problems and deaths, and people will need a religious government led by Imam Mahdi,” Ali Reza Banahyan said, suggesting that spreading coronavirus will “accelerate” the process of revealing the hidden Imam.
Paul outlined the order of events by which a false Messiah would be revealed to the world in 2 Thessalonians 2 prior to the real second coming.
Specifically, the danger would come by means of a vast “pseudo” reality (2:11) and false apocalypse (2:3) that would seem to suggest “that the day of the Lord has already come” (2:2)–perhaps even a different “Jesus” seeming to have returned at the second coming to establish his millennial government and heal all diseases (Matthew 24:11).
In both the Lord’s own words in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Luke 21, and Mark 13, and Paul’s warnings in 2 Thessalonians 2, the result of a deception so convincing that it would “deceive even the elect, if that were possible” (Matthew 24:24) would be a falling away by the world, Jews, Muslims, and by many people professing Christian faith (2 Thessalonians 2:3; Matthew 24:10).
Paul warned about having proper eschatological expectations as a matter of life and death, telling people to be on guard lest “anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed,” by means of “signs and wonders that serve the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:3; 2:9).
The Lord prefaced His discussion of the end times in all three gospel accounts with the same warning.
“Watch out that no one deceives you” (Matthew 24:4; Mark 13:5; Luke 21:8).