The Reign and Coming of the Christian Saviour

4. The Reign and Coming of the Christian Saviour

The New Testament understanding of Jesus as the Saviour has a number of interesting parallels with both Imams Hussein and Mahdi. For example, like Hussein, Jesus was cruelly murdered by His religious opponents, suffering scourging (Mark 15:15) and Crucifixion at the hands of the pagan Romans (Mark 15:24), incited by the Jewish priesthood (John 19:6). Just as at Ashura Shia recall the self-sacrifice of Hussein, every time Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper, they remember the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross:

Luke 22:19 And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me’. 20 And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.’ (Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:24-25)

Christians believe it is by the self-sacrifice of Jesus that they are saved from Hell, admitted to Paradise and forgiven by God: Jesus stated in John 6:51 ‘I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh’; Jesus declared about the cup of wine at the Last Supper, from which the Lord’s Supper derives (Matthew 26:28): ‘this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins’. Just as Shia hold that by weeping for the martyred Imam they have the prospect of Paradise, Christians believe that they have the absolute assurance of salvation by their faith in Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, John 1:69.

However, there is a further aspect to Christ’s self-sacrifice that is relevant to our theme: the defeat of Satan. Jesus, speaking of His impending self-sacrifice on the Cross, declares ‘Now … the ruler of this world will be cast out’, (John 12:31, cf. 16:11). The Passion of Jesus at Calvary has analogies with the Passion of Hussein at Karbala: both confronted murderous tyrannical usurpers (John 8:44 – the Devil was a ‘murderer from the beginning’ i.e. of Man). Satan is depicted in the New Testament as the global usurper and tyrant – a kind of spiritual Yazid/Muawaiya. Khomeini even referred to Yazid as a devil, again providing an analogy with the Biblical narrative, and just as the New Testament presents the self-sacrifice of Jesus as effecting the overthrow of Satan’s regime, Khomeini understood Karbala as overthrow of Yazid’s regime:

The Master of Martyrs (a.s.) rose up with a handful of disciples … As the uprising was for God, they defamed and ruined the monarchy of that devil (Yazid). Outwardly, they all got killed but their sacrifice caused the overthrow of the corrupt regime which meant to turn Islam into a tyrannous, corrupt monarchy.[1]

We are told in 1 John 5:19 that ‘the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One.’ Satan gained control of the world through the transgression of Adam in Eden, since this allowed Sin to enter the world. By paying the price for Man’s sins, the power of the Devil was mortally wounded. What looked to the world like the defeat of Jesus was actually His triumph over Satan – Colossians 2:15: ‘When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.’ This has parallels with Karbala: Khomeini stated ‘For the Shiite Faith, Muharram is the month in which victory was achieved amid blood and sacrifice.’[2] Jesus triumphed by His blood: Revelation 12:11 ‘And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb’. Interestingly, Khomeini saw the triumph of Hussein over the Ummayads as resulting from the blood of the Imam:

The Master of Martyrs was slain, not defeated but, he defeated the Bani Omayyads in such a way that they could not rise again. His blood drove them away so thoroughly that even today, defeat is registered in name of Yazid and his subjects while Islam thrives by the victory of the Martyrdom of Imam Hosein (a.s.).[3]

However, there is a further parallel. As we have seen, the self-sacrifice of Imam Hussein still left oppression in the world, and for Shia, this part of his calling is to be completed by Imam Mahdi, who will extinguish tyranny forever. Equally, Christians often speak of themselves as living between two ages – the ‘present evil age’ (Galatians 1:4), under the continued but wounded domination of Satan, and the Age to Come (Hebrews 6:5) following the Second Coming of Christ, when there will be a New Heavens and a New Earth (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1), with Satan and his followers despatched to eternal Hell (Matthew 25:41, 46). At His first coming, Jesus said ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Reign of God is at hand’ (Mark 1:15 – meaning spatially imminent). The Greek word basileiea is best translated in most cases as ‘reign’ rather than ‘kingdom’ since it usually describes a dynamic activity than a place.[4] When Jesus exorcised demons, He said to the healed person ‘But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you’, Matthew 12:28. Hoekema comments: ‘The Greek verb used here, ephthasen, means has arrived or has come not is about to come.’[5] Yet the Reign is also future - Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Corinthians 15:50 – ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’).

How then do we resolve this apparent tension between the fact that the kingdom of God is ‘already’ and ‘not yet’? The answer is that the Kingdom of God belongs to the Age to Come - the two terms are interchangeable - Mark 10:25, 30 (‘…enter the kingdom of God …the age to come’). What has happened is that the powers of the Age to Come have invaded this present age through the Saviour, Jesus. We are presently awaiting the completion of the work wrought by Jesus at His First Coming. After His Ascension, Jesus sat the right hand of God as Ruler and Saviour, Acts 2:33, 5:31. He is reigning now, and His reign is characterised by the subjugation of His enemies, Acts 2:34-35; 1 Corinthians 15:24-25. His Return disposes of the last enemy, death, by establishing the Resurrection Age in its fullness, v23.