Introduction
Dr. Charles Malik is a native of Lebanon, raised in the Eastern Orthodox Church in the midst of an Islamic world. He was one of the founders of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 and has been his country’s ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. In the United Nations Dr. Malik has served as President of the General Assembly and President of the Security Council. A graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a M.A. and a Ph.D., he has been a visiting professor there as well as a resident professor at the American University in Beirut.
In late 1979 Dr. Malik gave an address entitled “The State of the World” at a pastors’ advisory committee I attended at Arrowhead Springs. Malik believes the world is on the brink of disaster unless something dramatic happens. He gave a lengthy list of the crucial issues facing America and the western world as we enter into what may be the most chaotic period of our history.
A. An Analysis of Several World Problems
1. The nuclear arms race
Dr. Malik calls the nuclear arms race “the balance of terror” because it has the potential to end the world if the wrong man pushes the right button.
2. The strain in the western alliance
Dr. Malik also said America has not done well in maintaining its European ties. He saw the Soviet Union as gradually wooing the American allies in Europe so that they would be more prone to listen to them than the United States. There is a low level of commitment between us and our allies compared to what we once had in the past, and he believed that was bringing Soviet power closer to engulfing the world.
3. The perpetual retreat of the United States
Dr. Malik said America has continuously retreated from equality with its sworn enemies, and at that time observed it was standing in a position of weakness in the world.
4. The stress on money and machines
Dr. Malik also said that the West worships the great “gods” of mechanization, progress, technology, and modernization–idols made by our own hands. He pointed out that in recent years we have tried to buy friendship and affinity around the world with money and machines apart from a loving concern for people. He said the only time he could find America sharing community of spirit with a foreign nation is through the efforts of obscure missionaries.
5. The secularism of western universities
From Dr. Malik’s perspective, the main problem facing the world today is the western university system, in which all the world’s policy makers have been educated. He criticized it as being humanistic, Freudian, naturalistic, secularistic, atheistic, and cynical–one that knows nothing about God, absolute standards, or a commitment to truth. He said that when a man like the Ayatollah Khomeini rises to power, no one in the West understands his motivation because they don’t know what it means to be committed to absolutes.
6. The retreat of Christianity
Dr. Malik then pointed to three major revivals that have occurred in the world recently. One is the revival of atheism, which is sweeping through the East, through Europe, and through other parts of the world. There is also a revival of Judaism in the Zionist movement. And the third is the revival of Islam, which will sweep across the world if it continues at its present rate. Dr. Malik concluded that Christian truth no longer makes a significant impact on the world. He saw it as playing no part in the politics of the western world. Biblical Christianity in Europe is well nigh non-existent, while Christianity in America is fading into liberalism as well as secularism.
B. An Attempt to Secure World Peace
After his analysis of the decay of western civilization, Dr. Malik said something that shocked me, especially since he professed to be a Christian. He said that the only hope for the western world lies in an alliance between the Roman Catholic Church (one of the greatest unifying factors in Europe) and the Eastern Orthodox Church (which controls the western front of the Middle East). He believed that if those two powers don’t solidify their control politically, Islam will march across Europe. Therefore he called for all Protestant Christians around the globe to join hands with the Pope so that the Christian world will be unified.
It is clear that Malik saw the globe in an imbalance: Islam and the East on the rise while the West wanes because a loss of absolutes leads to dissolution. He saw the Roman Catholic Church as a common factor in Europe and North and South America, and suggested it could provide the necessary unification to strengthen the western world. Dr. Malik was particularly concerned that the western world declare the eastern Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt) as part of its domain.
That part of the world once belonged to Rome. And the prophet Daniel said that some day the Roman Empire would be revived (Dan. 2:41-43; 7:19-26). The things Dr. Malik said illustrate how fast we are moving toward the fulfillment of Daniel 2.
Daniel lived six hundred years before Christ, yet he outlined the course of history, even up to our own lifetime. We shouldn’t be shocked at that. The Old Testament prophesied the destruction of Babylon (Isa. 13:19-22), Egypt (Ezek. 30:13-16), Tyre (Ezek. 26:1; 28:19), and Sidon (Ezek. 28:21-23), and they were destroyed exactly as foretold. It also prophesied that a man named Cyrus would release Israel from captivity (Isa. 45:1, 13), and about two hundred years later he did (Ezra 1:1-4). One of the greatest proofs of the Bible’s divine inspiration is fulfilled prophecy because the prophecies are externally verified in human history.
Review
I. THE DREAM RECEIVED (vv. 1-30)
Every power and nation assumes it will exist forever–or at least hopes it will. One such nation was Babylon, technically known as the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Its first great king was Nebuchadnezzar, who received an important dream from God about the future kingdoms of the world.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
