What a fascinating time in history.  As a student of history, it’s compelling but also laden with peril for the world.  The comparison between these days and the 1930s is uncanny.

Like the 1930s, a figure has emerged on the world stage that threatens the globe.  Hitler rose to prominence, then power and plunged the world into the abyss of World War II.  Now, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has talked openly about “wiping Israel (and the U.S.) off the map.”

He also called Israel “a disgraceful stain on the Islamic world” and a “rotten tree that will be eliminated by one storm.”  Furthermore, he said “Israel was a danger, but one that was coming to an end.” Despite these genocidal threats, he’s was given a platform to speak to the assembled delegates of the world at the U.N.

Like Hitler, Ahmadinejad too shows particular venom against the Jews. Like accomplishes in a crime generations apart, Hitler carried out the Holocaust while Ahmadinejad casts doubt that Hitler ever committed a crime at all.  He has said, “They (the Jews) have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion, and the prophets.”

Hitler espoused the dream of a thousand year reich.  Ahmadinejad too talks about a messianic age and the re-appearance of the mahdi, or twelfth imam. In fact, Ahmadinejad boasts the imam gave him the presidency of Iran to provoke “a clash of civilizations.”  In this clash the Muslim world, led by Iran, defeats the West and the U.S.  

By the way, if you didn’t see George Thomas’s story and interview with Pat Robertson on the mahdi, you should look at Tuesday’s 700 Club, September 19.  

Just like the 1930s, there is a debate among the Western powers how to deal with this new global threat.  English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became his era’s infamous standard bearer of appeasement when he returned from his Munich meeting with Hitler.  With the Munich pact in hand, he declared “peace in our time.” 

More hollow words were seldom spoken.  Within a short time, the world was at war. 

Today, appeasement by many nations, particularly in Europe, seems the order of the day.  Despite deadline after deadline, Iran continues to defy every international limitation on its goal to acquire nuclear weapons.         

But unlike the 1930s, we are facing a time in history when the weapons used in the next war could be far more deadly and destructive than anything Hitler possessed in his arsenal.  It’s all the more reason to pray for our leaders so as Paul wrote to Timothy, “We can lead quiet and peaceable lives” and to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”