It's Time To See Things As They Are

These days, it is infinitely pleasanter to experience the “virtual reality” of computer games than to contemplate the mangled victims of suicide bombers, pictured in our “real life” daily news. So, numberless adults spend numberless hours manipulating simulated people on a screen--while real people are threatening to set the world on fire! n
Current events are revealing our urgent need to focus on reality--by speaking openly and realistically about the age-old, “never discussed in polite conversation” religious beliefs that are fueling today’s terrorism.

Those ancient beliefs that have endlessly incited bloodshed began with the Jews and the Christians, who have bitterly argued about Jesus throughout their mutual history. From the start, the Jews would not acknowledge Jesus as the promised Messiah because he did not fulfill the prophecies associated with the Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures.

When Muhammad recited the Koran more than 600 years after Christianity bloomed, he often spoke of “the Messiah Jesus”--which infuriated the Jews. But Muhammad also corrected Christian beliefs about “the Messiah Jesus”—which infuriated the Christians! Consequently, both the Jews and the Christians, each for their own reasons, declared Muhammad a “false Prophet” and Islam a “false religion”--which infuriated the Muslims! So, they declared that Islam had superseded Judaism and Christianity, which were perpetuating “false teachings”—and all Jews and Christians who believed those “falsities” had become “unbelievers” in Abraham’s God.

Today, Muslim extremists firmly believe it is time for them to wage a holy war to cleanse the world of all unbelievers--particularly “the Great Satan,” as they describe the predominantly Christian United States, and Israel, the “sinful” Jewish state that is “occupying” Palestinian land. In fact, the United States recently alerted the United Nations Security Council to the "high probability" that al-Qaeda could launch biological, chemical or nuclear attacks within two years.

If Muslim terrorists use biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons in their publicly declared “jihad,” their “holy war,” there is a “high probability” that similarly armed nations, fearing for their own safety, would launch nuclear attacks against any nation suspected of supporting terrorism. Military experts and news analysts can already be heard discussing “limited” nuclear attacks--which would hurtle the world into nuclear warfare, with its horrific consequences. To prevent that unprecedented horror requires unprecedented thinking.

Of Promises and Previews: Urgent Old Messages for a New Millennium combines the essential messages delivered by the Prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in one volume. When linked, those messages could finally enable Jews, Christians and Muslims to fulfill their mutual goal of bringing Divine Guidance to the world—the guidance that has always eluded them while they fought with each other over “who is right.”

The three organized religions have each sincerely tried to convey knowledge of and guidance from the Higher Power, Who sent teachings to lead us through mankind’s lengthy and typically self-endangering childhood. We can know we are nearing the end of our destructive childhood, because we have learned how to wholly destroy our species! Ignorant children cannot wisely handle that awesome power. But if the world must endure a nuclear war, we are promised we will ultimately be rescued from our self-destructive behavior, bred of our childish ignorance and arrogance.

In short, the official teachings developed by the clergies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have repeatedly drenched the earth in blood and are now spurring us toward a nuclear holocaust. The truth each religion has claimed to deliver rests in the combined messages of all the Prophets, not in the exclusive teachings of one faith!

Jane Broida Drake is the author “Of Promises and Previews: Urgent Old Messages for a New Millennium.” To learn more about the Prophets, the book, and the author, visit: www.ofpromisesandpreviews.com