Mahdi and Messiahs Will Come to a Much Hotter Planet

Europe’s climate monitor said that August was the hottest month ever recorded around the world and warned of worse to come, as an unprecedented El Niño pattern grows stronger. Global temperatures over land and sea soared to all-time highs in August and capped an extreme summer of heatwaves and wildfires that ranked the hottest on record for western Europe and the contiguous United States. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said global average air temperatures in August were 16.96C (62.52F) — surpassing the previous record for a single month set in July 2023.

Copernicus observations go back to 1940, but evidence from ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons puts today’s climate in a much starker historical context. “Humans haven’t seen temperatures as hot as today for, at least the last 100,000 years,” Samantha Burgess from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which oversees Copernicus.

Experts warn that the Arab region’s heavy reliance on food imports leaves it exposed to climate shocks and global price spikes: Across the Arab world, climate change is increasingly being felt through shrinking water supplies, damaged crops and rising food prices. Experts warn that a region already among the world’s most water-stressed is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven hunger and humanitarian crises. “The Arab world is the most water-scarce region in the world when it comes to per capita availability of freshwater,” said Ahmad Mukhtar, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization coordinator for GCC states.

Both Judaism and Islam teach their followers to take care of the earth. Muslims and Jews also believe that humans should act as guardians and trustees (stewardship and khalifah) off our planet, and that they will be held accountable by God for their actions. New research suggests that the number of people threatened by sea level rise has been underestimated by tens of millions due to poorly-interpreted satellite data and a lack of scientific resources in many developing countries.

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have shed more than half-a-trillion metric tons annually since 2000—six icy Olympic pools every second. These kilometers-thick ice cubes have replaced glacier melt as the single biggest source of sea level rise, which has accelerated three-fold over the last decades compared to most of the 20th century.

More than 90% of the world’s population is projected to face increased risks from the compound impacts of extreme heat and drought, potentially widening social inequalities as well as undermining the natural world’s ability to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere—according to a study from Oxford’s School of Geography. And communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power.

Warming is projected to intensify these hazards ten-fold globally under the highest emission pathway, says the report published in Nature Sustainability. In the wake of record temperatures in 2026, from London to Shanghai, continuing rising temperatures are projected around the world. And Antarctic sea ice shrunk to a record low at the end of February 2023 in the 45 years of satellite record-keeping.

If humans will not reduce man made carbon magnification, not even the coming of Mahdi and Messiahs may be able to overcome human unwillingness to reverse human pollution. God demands that humans fulfill their God given responsibilities.

Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has a powerful eschatological strand. Islam anticipates the end to the world as we know it, a final historical confrontation between the forces of good and evil; after which human life will be transformed in a positive way.

Many Islamic traditions (Ahadith) say that Prophet Jesus, will return and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against a false messiah, the cruel one eyed Dajjal, called Armilos in Jewish tradition. Now would be a good time for one or more Messianic figures to get to work. As a Reform Rabbi who believes that the world wide upheavals we see, are part of the birth pains of the Messianic Age, I offer Christians and Muslims some positive insights from the Jewish Prophets and the Rabbinic Sages.

Many millions of Jews, Christians and Muslims believe the wars of Gog and Magog (Gog u-Magog in Hebrew and “Yajuj and Majuj” in Arabic) which started in the 18th to 20 centuries will come to an end in the 21st century.

It is true that human society changed more rapidly, violently and fundamentally in the last 250 years than ever before in history. Doctors saved the lives of millions. Dictators sacrificed the lives of millions. Populations are exploding in Africa and populations are declining in Europe. Technology produces both worldwide prosperity and worldwide pollution at the same time.

Should we look upon the future with optimistic hope or with fatalistic trepidation? Is the world and our society heading towards a wonder-filled new age, or toward a doomsday? Or are both occurring almost concurrently because breakdown is always a prelude to breakthrough?

Jews, whose Biblical prophets were the ones who first wrote about a future Messianic Age, recognize that the birth of a Messianic Age must be preceded by its birth-pangs. But the prophets of Israel also emphasize the glories of a future world living in peace and prosperity with justice for all. Ancient Jewish prophecies did proclaim that there would be an end to the world as we know it. But they did not prophesy that the world will come to an end, nor did the Prophets of Israel offer an exact date for the transition.

The exact advent of the Messianic Age is not knowable because humans have free will and thus the exact time and manner of redemption cannot be determined in advance. Much depends on what we humans do when Qiyamah comes. The beginning of the Messianic Age is a time of transition from one World Age into another. How we move through this transition, either with resistance or acceptance, will determine whether the transformation will happen through cataclysmic changes or by a gradual reform of human society; which will lead to a world filled with peace, prosperity and spiritual tranquility.

The Prophets of Israel conceived redemption as a transformation of human society that would occur through the catalyst of the Jewish community. This transformation, which will take place in this world at some future time, is called the Messianic Age.

The transition to the Messianic Age is called the birth pangs of the Messiah. The birth of a redeemed Messianic world may be the result of an easy or difficult labor.  If everyone would simply live according to the moral teachings of his or her religious tradition, we would ourselves have helped bring about the Messianic Age.

But, if we will not do it voluntarily, it will come about through social and political upheavals, worldwide conflicts and generation gaps and most obvious of all climate change which will affect both nature and the economy-society. The Messiah (Mahdi) refers to one or more human agents of God who help bring about a non-destruction positive transformation.

The Jewish tradition teaches that this agent of God (together with several forerunners and many disciples) will be a human being, a descendant of Prophets Abraham and David, with great qualities of national leadership similar to Prophets Moses and Mohammed. The arrival of the Messianic Age is what’s really important, not the personality of the agents who bring it about, since they are simply the instruments of God, who ultimately is the real Redeemer.

The Islamic 1440s we are now living in, is the age of the coming of Hazrat Mahdi. Prophet Jesus will also return to Earth in this century. As Prophet Micah states: “In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; and exalted above the hills, and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.

“The Torah will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD GOD has spoken. All the nations may walk in the name of their gods, but we (Jews, Christians and Muslims) will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.” (Prophet Micah 4:1-5)

One of the signs of the End of Days is the arrival and defeat of Gog and Magog (Ya’juj and Ma’juj or Ajuj and Majuj). Gog and Magog appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible, and the Islamic Quran as individuals, tribes, countries and catastrophic acts of nature.

The Quran mentions Gog and Magog: “He said: “This (barrier) is a mercy from my Lord: but when the warning of my Lord comes to pass, He will reduce it to dust (and Gog and Magog—the Colonialist Empires, the Nazis, and the Communists would be released into the world); and the promise of my Lord is true.” (18:98) So Gog and Magog are destructive groups like the Colonialist Empires, the Nazis, and the Communists, who near the time of the end of days will penetrate into every part of the world.

Thus, humanity has so far passed through the most devastating era of human history. However, we have not yet reached the goal of the Messianic Age when “They (all nations) will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD GOD has spoken.” (Prophet Micah 4:2-4)

But there will be no peace until both Palestinians and Israelis declare the chant ‘From river to sea’ becomes an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, and not death, destruction, or hate. We can make it truly aspirational by making it focus on both peoples first, and the land second. “From river to sea Palestinians and Israelis should be freed of hatred and suffering by ‘two peaceful states for two peaceful peoples sharing the land peacefully.’”

The exact identity of Dhu al-Qarnayn remains uncertain, although some Muslim scholars have identified him with Cyrus the Great, the Persian king whom the Hebrew Bible uniquely describes as God’s “anointed” because he liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity and permitted the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. If this identification is correct, it is plausible that the Jewish scholars who proposed the question had likewise Cyrus in mind.

Jews were more willing to present Cyrus, as their worldly savior and as God’s chosen instrument for the fulfillment of His promise, personally responsible for the liberation of His people from the Babylonian bondage and the chains of exile and for restoring the Jewish civilizational project centered on the Holy Land through the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.

This era will come about when Israelis and Palestinians make a long lasting two state partnership of peace; thus fulfilling the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel  will join a three-party  alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them; “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:23-5)