The Ganges River, a lifeline for 600 million people in India and neighboring countries, is experiencing its worst drying period in over 1,300 years. Using a combination of historical data, paleoclimate records and hydrological models, researchers from IIT Gandhinagar and the University of Arizona discovered that human activity is the main cause. They also found that the current drying is more severe than any recorded drought in the river’s history.
Not only is the Ganges river drier overall, but droughts are now more frequent and last longer. The main reasons are the weakening of the summer monsoon and global warming.
In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers first reconstructed the river’s flow for the last 1,300 years (700 to 2012 C.E.) by analyzing tree rings from the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas dataset. The scientists found that the recent drying of the Ganges River from 1991 to 2020, is the worst Ganges River’s drying in 1,300 years, which occurred during the 16th century.
The Ganges river’s present drying, as the worst in 1300 years, is a warning for India and neighboring countries similar to the western world’s warning of Armageddon.
The Greek word Armageddon is a transliteration of the Hebrew har məgiddô, a mountain near Megiddo, a hilltop fortification built by King Ahab, that dominated the Plain of Jezreel. Har Magedon is the symbol of a battle in which, when the need is greatest and believers are most oppressed, God suddenly reveals His power to distressed peoples and the evil enemies are destroyed.
Armageddon is a warning of humanity’s need to change to avoid Armageddon. The term “apocalypse” comes from the Greek word “apokalypsis,” meaning “revelation.” Although often associated today with the end of the world, apocalypses in ancient Jewish thought were a source of encouragement in times of great hardship or persecution.
The majority of Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not believe that all of humanity is moving closer and closer to many catastrophic nature Judgement Days. The minority who do think that Judgement Day is coming soon share the usual negative, fear-filled views of most end-times thinkers: Christians, Jews and especially Muslims, who do believe that: “The hour (of Judgement) is near” (Qur’an 54:1); and ˹The time of˺ people’s judgment has drawn near, yet they heedlessly turn away.” (Qur’an 21:1)
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam has a powerful eschatological strain. It anticipates the end to the world as we know it; a final historical confrontation between good and evil (Armageddon); after which, with God’s help, human life will be rewarded and transformed.
As the Qur’an states: “Verily! Those who believe and those who are Jews, Christians, and Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, and do righteous good deeds, shall have their reward with their Lord, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” (2:62 and 5:69) Notice that the Qur’an specifically stresses religious pluralism applies on God’s judgment day.
As Pope Francis said: ‘All Religions Are Paths To God’ This is a new and very strong support for religious pluralism.
Yet a Pew Research Center poll found that in South and Southeast Asia 55-60% of all Muslims believe in the Madhi’s imminent return; and in the Middle East and North Africa 51% do.
A hadith says that Prophet Jesus, will return to a place east of Damascus and will join forces with the Islamic messiah, the Mahdi, in a battle against the false messiah, the one eyed Dajjal. As ibn Babuya writes in Thawab ul-A’mal, “The Apostle of God said: `There will come a time for my people when there will remain nothing of the Qur’an except its outward form, and nothing of Islam except its name, and they will call themselves by this name even though they are the people furthest from it. The mosques will be full of people but they will be empty of right guidance.
“The religious leaders (Fuqaha) of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens; sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return.” This sounds, and indeed is, terrible. But, those who trust in God know that the night is coldest in the last hours before sunrise.
Secularists believe that these apocalyptic visions of a future (Armageddon) are absurd, although many secularists themselves fervently believe that runaway genetic modification of food and/or extreme climate change is going to doom human civilization in future generations.
The basic difference between the pessimistic, humanist secularists and the religious optimists is that those who believe in the God of Abraham also believe that God’s inspiration and guidance guarantees that the spiritual forces of good, will overcome all the world’s evils at the end of days; and justice, peace and religious pluralism will prevail. Or as Prophet Micah envisions it: (4:1-5)
“In the end of days the mountain of the Lord’s Temple will be established as the highest mountain; it will be exalted above the hills, and peoples will stream to it. Many (not all) nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the Temple of the God of Jacob. who will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.
“Torah will be broadcast from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. God will judge between many (not all) peoples and will settle disputes among powerful nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into ploughs, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more.
“Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig-tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken. All the nations will walk in the name of their gods, and we (Jews) will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”
Thus, the Bible and the Qur’an’s final judgement is the self-destruction of violent, hate filled, religion twisted terrorism and narrow ‘my way or death’ philosophy (Armageddon); and the victory of kindness, love, democracy and religious pluralism.
The Qur’an refers to Prophet Abraham as a community or a nation: “Abraham was a nation/community [Ummah]; dutiful to God, a monotheist [hanif], not one of the polytheists.” (16:120) If Prophet Abraham is an Ummah then fighting between the descendants of Prophets Ishmael and Isaac is a civil war and should always be avoided. Remember: “The very earth itself is a granary and a seminary,” said Henry David Thoreau “and every seed means not only birth; but rebirth.
If all Arabs and Jews can live up to the ideal that ‘the descendants of Abraham’s sons should never make war against each other’ is the will of God; we can help fulfill 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. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together.
“On 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 saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.” (Isaiah 19:23-5)
Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.
