You may be right; the main problem I have with most kinds of ‘futurism’ with regard to Revelation is the violence it tends to do to recent history, and the traditional role of biblical prophecy as calling people to righteousness, and especially, in the land of Israel, to the covenant.

I’m referring of course to some of the injustices on which the modern state of Israel was founded - and are perpetuated to this day in a two-tier racial society. If you doubt this, ask a Palestinian. Consider Deir Yassin and 385 Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed after 1948, and the continuation of this policy to the present day.

Christians can be fixated on Islam as the source of all evil in the middle east, but the power of Islam today rests as much on its role as a rallying point for political and social injustice as its spiritual character. In Israel, the attitudes which are the foundation for injustice cast the Palestinian as a second or third rate citizen, and millions rot in refugee camps.

The rise of militant Islam in the middle east has as much to do with a reaction to western interference as the operation of abstract spiritual forces. Our awareness of history should include the carve-up of the middle east after World War 1, the population displacements which occurred at the founding of Israel, and the imperialism which replaced Mossadeq with the Shah in Iran through western oil interests in the 1950’s. Problems in Iraq today need to be viewed in this context. The frequently overlooked victims of this history are the ancient Christian communities of the middle east, many now in danger of extinction.

Maybe if some of the justice issues were addressed , the spiritual issues would exert less of a malign influence. Where is the prophetic voice calling for justice, and vindication for the oppressed? I don’t hear it in popular expositions of Revelation and ‘end-time prophecy’.