The Real History of the End of the World (31 page)

Most evangelical Christians do not set a date for the Parousia. But they do feel that they're living in the end times. How they react to this varies with each person. Some expect to avoid the whole business by being raptured up to heaven. Others have stocked up on provisions to survive the years of tribulation. Many try to convince others to convert to their faith, either directly or through donations to missionary efforts.

The last groups who are expecting the end of the world are not usually religiously motivated, although many belong to established religions. These are the most frightening of all because they do not rely on biblical exegesis or visionary experiences. They use scientific observation, statistics, and computer modeling. From these, we have learned to fear global warming, an asteroid or meteor hit, the melting of the ice caps, global freezing, or the eruption of a super volcano. It is odd that the old standbys of nuclear power plant meltdowns and all-out atomic war are losing popularity. I'm not saying that none of these will happen. I'm certainly trying to reduce my carbon footprint just on general principles. But by adding all of these together, I think that we have to conclude that the twentieth and, so far, the twenty-first centuries have the honor of being the most apocalyptically inclined in all of human history.

1
Paul F. Starrs and John B. Wright, “Utopia, Dystopia and Sublime Apocalypse in Montana's Church Universal and Triumphant,”
The Geographical Review
95, no. 1 (2005): 102. Considering that Yellowstone is supposed to be a super volcano on alert, the Apocalypse might have started right under their feet.

2
Sally K. Slocum,
Popular Arthurian Traditions
(Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1992), 105-108.

3
The Summit Lighthouse at
www.tsl.org
, the website for the Church Universal and Triumphant. Accessed July 2009.

4
Janja A. Lalich,
Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults
(Berkeley: California University Press, 2004), 25-30.

5
Marshall Applewhite, “Do's Intro, Purpose, Belief.” Available at
http://heavensgate.com/misc/intro.htm
. Accessed July 2009.

6
Jenody—A Student, “Overview of Present Mission.” Available at
http://heavensgate.com/misc/ovrview.htm
. Accessed July 2009.

7
Available at
http://heavensgate.com/misc/pressrel.htm
. Accessed July 2009.

8
Available at
http://heavensgate.com/misc/letter.htm
. Accessed July 2009.

9
Allen Hall, “The Nutty Professor Who Led Flock to Their Death; MASS SUICIDES: Cult Brainwashed by ‘Gospel' about UFO,” (Glasgow, Scotland)
Daily Record,
March 29, 1997, p. 4. This title expresses the media take on the event.

And of mankind are some who say, we believe in Allah and the
Last Day, when they believe not. They think to beguile Allah
and those who believe, but they beguile none but themselves:
but they perceive not.

—Mansur Al Yaman,
al-Baqara,
II:8-9
¹

 

 

 

 

W
ith the spread of Islam across the world, the Shi'ite concept of the Mahdi, one sent to re-create a “just society,” is one aspect of the religion that was most prone to being adapted to the circumstances of the already established culture. This section looks at some of the many forms of the Mahdi in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of these Mahdi inspired new sects of Islam. Most of them are considered heretical to Sunni Muslims. Some go beyond Shi'ite beliefs as well. But they all have their roots in the teachings of Muhammad.

One of the most enduring of the modern Mahdi is Mirzam Gulam Ahmad. He was born in the Punjab, in India in 1839. He came from a Sufi Muslim family and, as a teenager, had become acquainted with Scottish missionaries and debated religion with them. He was somewhat sickly, suffering from diabetes and vertigo.
²

He passed his early adult life as something of a recluse, but in 1880, because “god's command was imperative,” he published the first two parts of his treatise,
Barahin-i-Ahmadiya
(Ahmadiya Proofs) in which he announced that he was the Mahdi for the fourteenth century (fourteen hundred years after the
hegira
). It was not until 1889 that he began to have a small group of followers. Two years later, he told them that he was not only the Mahdi for the century but the final one, sent to usher in the end of days. After that, he became increasingly active in substantiating this claim, which was denied by Muslim, Christian, and Hindu clerics. The Mullahs of India condemned him and his teaching but, by his death in 1908, there was a group of a few hundred people who supported him.

After Ahmad's death, the leadership of the sect was contested. One group, known as the Qadiani, after Ahmad's home town, was led by Ahmad's eldest son. The other side followed Maulvi Mohammad Ali. The two groups split into separate sects shortly after 1914. Both groups were fervent missionaries, preaching throughout the world. Ahmad wrote tracts designed to appeal to Christians. In one, he reminds them that he is both the Mahdi and the Messiah. “Ye Christians of Europe and America!” he proclaims, “and ye seekers after the Truth! Know it for certain that the Messiah that was to come has come, and it is he who is speaking to you at this moment!”
³
He proved his claims with the usual millennial count, stating that he was the savior prophesied to come at the beginning of the seventh millennium.

Ahmad also reminded his readers that the signs of the end as predicted in the Qur'an had occurred in India in his lifetime; an eclipse of the sun and the moon, both in the month of Ramadan, and plague sweeping the area.

While not many were converted through this, the Ahmadiya did make converts because of their belief in Ahmad as the Mahdi and also because the sect followed conservative Sunni theology and practice.
⁴

Missionary work is one of the most striking aspects of the Ahmadiya. One of many reasons they reach out to other cultures might be that in Pakistan, where Ahmad's town is since the partition, the members of the sect are forbidden to call themselves Muslims.
⁵
They are especially active in Africa, despite the animosity of the majority of Sunni Muslims, who accuse them of translating the Qur'an into the Kiswahli language, changing certain parts to fit their own doctrines.
⁶
In Nigeria, despite dissension due to personality conflicts, the Ahmadiya have succeeded because of their support of education for both men and women, allowing women to participate in Friday prayers and preaching in English or Yoruba.

They also have mosques in Fiji, England, Australia, and the United States. The millenarian aspects of the sect have been toned down as they have entered the world stage. An Ahmadi scientist, the theoretical physicist Abdus Salam, even won the Nobel Prize in physics a few years ago.
⁷

 

 

IN Nigeria, belief in the imminent arrival of the Mahdi was part of the pre-colonial Sokoto caliphate. But the arrival of the British colonial powers caused many Muslims to believe that Gog and Magog were upon them and that they were living in the end times.
⁸

As the
Wakara Nasara
, the “Poem on Christians,” written about 1900, says:

Even when it had been decided that the coming of the British was one of the signs of the end, Nigerian Muslims were of different opinions as to what the Mahdi would do when he arrived and what the faithful should do to prepare. These ranged from forming an army to support the Mahdi in throwing out the invaders to going into seclusion to prepare oneself for judgment. The poem continues:

This defeatist attitude was not the only alternative to war. Others saw this time of tribulation as a call to renew the faith and follow the law of Islam more devoutly. In a bizarre twist, in 1925 the British governor sent to Mecca for a ruling against those in Nigeria claiming to be Mahdi. The court issued one on the grounds that the signs of the end had not been fulfilled; therefore, anyone saying that he was the Mahdi or Isa (Jesus) and all who followed him, were infidels.
¹¹

The British also asked that the same ruling apply to India, indicating that they were having trouble there, possibly from the Ahmadiya. The pronouncements from Mecca do not seem to have dissuaded the African Muslims.

IT wasn't only European colonial powers that caused Mahdi to appear. The advent of the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad ibn Adhallah in the Sudan in 1881 was directed against the rule of the Egyptians. Muhammad Ahmad was a Dunqulawi, living on an island in the White Nile, a man known for his Sufi piety and ascetic life. When he announced that he was the Mahdi, his intent apparently was to remove the Turkish-Egyptian government because it was corrupt and did not follow strict Islamic law.
¹²

While some of his followers shared his desire to make a just society, others who joined Muhammad Ahmad included slave traders who were being forced out of business by the Egyptians and small farmers and landholders crippled by the onerous taxes of the Egyptian government.
¹³
Forming a coalition, the army of the Mahdi spent three years battling the Egyptians and their British allies. With each win, more Sudanese tribes joined the cause. The climax came on January 26, 1885, when the army of the Mahdi attacked and took the city of Khartoum. Two days later, a British relief force arrived to find Muhammad Ahmad in control of the city.
¹⁴

For many Sudanese, the revolt proclaimed the time of peace and justice before the end. The tribes of the Sudan had proved they could unite and drive out the colonial powers. But the death of Muhammad Ahmad in 1886 brought an end to that unity. Without the Mahdi, the world returned to its imperfect state. In 1898, the British General Kitchner defeated the successors of Muhammad Ahmad.
¹⁵

But the organization founded by Muhammad Ahmad continued, and in 1945, it established a political party, the
Umma
, whose religious leader was Sayyid ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, the son of Muhammad Ahmad.
¹⁶
Sayyid, born after his father's death, had been watched closely by the British colonial government. During World War I, Sayyid aided the British by convincing the Sudanese to fight on their side in opposition to the Ottoman Turks. In the 1920s, Sayyid was trying to organize a subtle power base. This wasn't helped by a local holy man, who announced that the British council was the Dajjal (Antichrist) and that Sayyid was the
Nabi Isai,
or the Second Coming of Jesus.
¹⁷
During the 1920s and 1930s the millennial expectations of his followers were high, but in the end, Sayyid decided to work for independence within the system.
¹⁸
Although Sayyid died in 1959, his grandson Sadiq al-Mahdi led a Mahdi-inspired revolt against President Nimieri in 1976. After it failed, he followed his grandfather's lead in continuing peaceful opposition and, in 1986, won a political victory.
¹⁹

The most intriguing part of the history of these two movements is that, although Shi'ite teaching states that the Mahdi must be descended from one of the two sons of Fatima and Ali, the Prophet's daughter and cousin, this was not a consideration, for either Ahmad or Muhammad Ahmad. It also didn't seem to make a difference to their followers. Islam had spread far beyond those of Arab descent. A savior could henceforth come from any among those faithful to Islam.