Has Time Run Out? : Religion: Some worry Armageddon is near. But most evangelical pastors call the war a prelude, not the ‘main event.’

Is it over? Is it coming? Are we hurtling toward The End?

From Glendora to Harlem, Santa Ana to Buffalo, those who believe in biblical prophecy are clamoring to know:

Is the Persian Gulf War the ultimate voyage toward a fiery end before a blissful beginning? Will there be, as the Bible says, a battle of Armageddon, followed by the Second Coming of Christ?

Since Iraq overran Kuwait last summer, a fervor has been building among millions of evangelical Christians nationwide. Many pastors are trying to address it directly, and mostly calmly, with answers straight out of the Bible.

But instead of declaring, as God does in Revelation 16:17, “It is over,” most televangelists, “end-time” scholars and senior pastors are qualifying their sermons, saying the current conflict might be a “foreshadowing,” “prelude” or “preview” to the final conflagration--but not the main event.

“A lot of us are aware, watching and alerted to what’s happening,” said Greg Laurie, a radio evangelist in Southern California.

“After all, any time something happens in the Middle East where the security of Israel is threatened, it could tip the first domino of the prophetic calendar.”

Shortly after the war erupted last month, Laurie began reviewing the Book of Revelation, the prophetic story that details the world’s last days, with his Monday night Bible study class that draws 4,000 young people to the Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana.

“There are so many people out there searching right now, groping for answers,” he said. “I feel it is time to go through God’s manual, teaching about what is coming.”

But Laurie, like many others, does not go too far out on a limb.

“I’m not the kind of person that makes statements that put me out there,” he said. “I’m not a prophet, and we have to be careful that we don’t eat our words in two months.”

America’s 50 million evangelical Christians interpret Bible stories as containing varying degrees of prophecy. Some see these rich and vivid stories as highly metaphorical, to be read for their moral value and sagacity.

Yet there always have been those who combed the engrossing plots, particularly in the Books of Daniel, Revelation and Ezekiel, for detailed scenarios of the prophetic panorama, scrutinizing them not only for their lessons about good and evil but also for times, dates and locations of upcoming events.

Over time, some have even pinpointed the “end time,” naming Hitler, Mussolini and even former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger as the Antichrist who would drive civilization over the brink. These days, however, only a few venture to be that specific.

Yet among those who interpret the Bible literally, speculation has been focused on the words of the enemy himself.

Although Iraqi President Saddam Hussein takes his cues from Islam, he has startled many Christians with his religious imagery--such as when he said after the first allied air strike on Baghdad that it would lead to “the mother of all battles,” or when he claimed he had rebuilt Iraq to the glory of ancient Babylon and likened him self to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem in the 6th Century B.C.

“The Bible does say that Babylon will be revealed in last days,” Laurie said. “Could this be Babylon actually being rebuilt?”

The Rev. Ezra Williams, senior pastor of the Bethel Assembly Gospel Church in Harlem, said his Sunday services have been flooded with people who not only are questioning “the Bible relevancy of (Operation) Desert Shield” but also by those who feel unable to cope with the rising economic turmoil.

“I tell my people that we are living in a crucial time in history when nations are positioning for the final battle of Armageddon and they must do what they can for their brothers and sisters,” Williams said. “But I don’t say when it will happen. I just feel we must be ready.”

Instead of encouraging his parishioners’ sense of hopelessness and panic, Williams has asked them “to look beyond and feel a type of peace. There should be more than anxiety; there should also be joy about what comes next.”

Similarly, the Rev. Chuck Smith, a popular radio evangelist from Orange County, said dire circumstances, such as the drought, gang shootings and bank failures, have gripped people in Southern California and compounded their fears about the Apocalypse.

“People are wondering what is happening to the world,” said Smith, whose sermons are carried by 150 radio stations. “The turmoil in the Middle East seems to be a final catalyst that has turned people to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, something is happening, and we’d better find some foundation to deal with it.’ From there, I do tell them to turn to the prophesies.”

In a poll taken a week after the war started, the Gallup organization asked 1,011 people in telephone interviews if they thought this battle would be Armageddon: 15% said yes; 74% answered no; 11% were unsure.

Yet so many people are wondering that popular books about biblical prophecy are outselling more secular treatises about the troubled region. In the last 10 weeks, 600,000 copies of John F. Walvoord’s recently updated “Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis” have been sold; another 300,000 copies are being distributed by evangelist Billy Graham.

Graham discussed the tract on the end of Western civilization with President Bush, according to a spokesman for Walvoord’s publisher, Zondervan Publishing House. Apparently after Graham saw his good friend Bush on the eve of the war, White House officials contacted Walvoord asking for six copies of the book.

“They were for the President and his men,” said Jonathan Peterson, a spokesman for Zondervan.

Walvoord is considered the leading scholar of this very dramatic school of biblical prophecy and was for many years the head of the Dallas Theological Seminary, long an academic hotbed of literalist study. But neither the 80-year-old scholar nor others at Dallas are committing themselves about the biblical significance of this war.

“In our school, we would hesitate to make positive identification because that would be proving the Bible through the newspaper instead of proving the newspaper through the Bible,” said Dwight Pentecost, a professor of Bible exposition at Dallas and author of his own book about the end, titled “Will Man Survive?”

But Pentecost can’t resist a little ruminating on what might be.

“What we’re seeing is a preview of what will be when the prophetic program begins,” Pentecost said, “but because Egypt is involved in the alliance to support Israel, well, that doesn’t follow the script. “This is just a foreshadowing, but it could be the opening act.”

Most conservative Christian leaders say they do not care to be identified as doomsday visionaries--known as dispensationalists--like Pentecost, Walvoord and author Hal Lindsey, the great popularizer of apocalyptic prophecy.

John Newport, the former academic dean of Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., pointed out that most conservative Christians do not use the Bible as a blueprint to determine what will happen in the world.

“The Book of Revelation should not be interpreted as a precise timetable,” said Newport. “It gives broad principles and shows how history is moving toward a crescendo, with an Antichrist appearing in every generation.”

But the dispensationalists, part of a school begun in the late 19th Century by Englishman John Nelson Darby, believe the “end time” will begin by enemies overrunning the land of the Israelites.

These students of Bible prophecy were ecstatic, for example, when a Jewish state was formed in Israel in 1948. This, they said, was predicted in Ezekiel 37, and was, they asserted, perhaps the most concrete sign that the Armageddon scenario might be unfolding.

As scholars like Pentecost and Walvoord interpret the Scriptures, here is what could be coming next:

* First, a 10-nation peacekeeping force would be formed to protect Israel and possibly police the oil situation.

* Then this alliance would be overrun by a dictator who would be popularly be known as the Antichrist. In time, he would impose a seven-year covenant on Israel but would break it halfway through, setting off the great battle and plagues from God.

* In the next 3 1/2 years, three-quarters of the world population would be wiped out, until finally Christ would physically return to Earth in Jerusalem to punish the sinful and reign in peace for the next 1,000 years. Before the seven years of tribulation, however, in an episode called the Rapture, millions of Christians would be delivered to Heaven to sit out the passing of these horrible events.

The Rev. Mike Cocoris, a graduate of the Dallas seminary and now pastor of the Church of the Open Door in Glendora, has felt compelled these days to review these prophecies and try to see in them a tie to contemporary events. So many people have been pressing him.

But Cocoris told 1,000 parishioners jammed into his church three Sundays ago that he simply could not find any specific passages in the Bible that say Iraq would go to war with the United States. Rather, in a sermon called “Reflections on a Desert Storm,” he traced what happened from the time God promised the land to Abraham “to the current mess.”

“I can’t look at this one event,” Cocoris said. “I have to take a longer historical view--and what I see is that over the last 100 years some flabbergasting events have occurred that were predicted in the Bible.

“I am awe-struck that there were once 24,000 Jews in Palestine, and now 4 million Jews are living in the homeland after 2,500 years,” he added. “It’s sort of like saying the American Indians would somehow take over Washington, D.C. But I can’t go much farther right now. Not now. We must wait and see.”

Revelation 16:16-21

(16) These spirits assembled the Kings at the place called, in Hebrew, Armageddon. (17) The seventh angel poured out his bowl on the air; and out of the sanctuary came a loud voice from the throne which said, ‘It is over!’ (18) There followed flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, so violent that nothing like it had ever happened in human history.

(19) The great city was split in three, and the cities of the nations collapsed in ruin. God did not forget Babylon the great, but made her drink the cup which was filled with the fierce wine of his wrath. (20) Every island vanished, and not a mountain was to be seen. (21) Huge hailstones, weighing as much as a hundredweight, crashed down from the sky on the people; and they cursed God because the plague of hail was so severe.