Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
Three Beliefs Looking for a Leader (Jesus, Mashiach, or Mahdi)!
February 8, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
The three major monotheistic religions in Israel are all looking for a leader who will come to carry them to the height of glory as a people. The Jews are still looking for their prophesied Mashiach to come for the first time, and then to lead them to victory over their many enemies, and establish his kingdom on this earth. Islam is waiting for the 12th Imam Mahdi to return and lead them to a great victory over their many enemies, and establish his kingdom on this earth. The Christians are waiting for its Messiah Jesus Christ to come again at his Second Advent, having already won the great victory over sin on the cross, to establish his spiritual kingdom on a physical earth.
John 18:36 – Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.
The founder of the religion of Islam was Muhammad. His full name is Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abd al-Muttal-ib ibn Hashim. He was born in Mecca in 570 AD, 500 years after the destruction of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. Both the Old and New Testament teachings were available during his lifetime.
About 610 AD, Muhammad reported having a vision with a majestic being, later identified as the great angel Gabriel, in which he heard a voice saying to him, “You are the Messenger of God.” This marked the beginning of his career as messenger (or apostle) of God (rasul Allah) or prophet (nabi). From this time, at frequent intervals until his death, he received “revelations” – that is, verbal messages that he believed came from God.
Sometimes these were kept in memory by both Muhammad and his followers, and sometimes they were written down.
The descendants of Ishmael’s 12 sons and Keturah
s 6 sons, the grandfather of all 18 being Abraham had, as Abraham’s father Terah, fallen into worshipping many different gods and idols. The village of Muhammad’s birth, Mecca, worshipped many gods. The earliest passages of the Koran (Qur’an) emphasize the goodness and power of God as seen in nature and in the way that he has blessed the Meccans, and calls on them to always be grateful and to worship the Lord of the Ka’bah, who is thus identified as God. These passages also warn men they will appear before God on the Last Day for a final judgment by God. They will be judged according to their deeds and assigned to heaven or hell.
The new religion of Muhammad was eventually called Islam (Submission to God), and its adherents identified as Muslims (Those Submitting to God), although the Koran speaks of them primarily as “the believers.”
One of the contributing factors in the great hatred one sees in Islam for the Jews involves the Jews rejection of Muhammad as a prophet. He first turned to Israel to receive him as a Prophet of God, but their rejection led him to break with them, and he began to assert the very specific Arabian character of what became the Islamic religion. Before his break with Judaism, his followers had faced Jerusalem in prayer, but Muhammad said he had received a revelation they were to begin praying toward Mecca. Over the centuries the followers, of a man who wanted to be recognized as a prophet from God by the Jews, have turned on the Jews with a great vengeance.
After Muhammad’s death, and especially after the great battle of Yamamah (633 AD), in which a great number of those who knew the Koran by heart had fallen, fear arose that the knowledge of the Koran might disappear. So it was decided to collect the revelations from all available written sources and, as Muslim tradition had it, “from the hearts of people.” A living companion of Muhammad, Zavd ibn Thabit, is said to have copied on sheets whatever he could find and to have handed it over to the Caliph ‘Umar. After ‘Umar’s death the collection was left in the care of his daughter Hafsah.
Other copies of the Koran appear to have been written later, and different versions were used in different parts of the Muslim empire. So that there would be no doubt about the correct reading of the Koran, the Caliph ‘Uthman (644-656AD) is reported to have commissioned Zavd ibn Thabit and some other learned men to revise the Koran, using those who knew the Koran by heart.
It was decided that in case of doubt about the correct pronunciation, the dialect of Quraysh, Muhammad’s tribe, was to be given preference. Thus an authoritative text of the Koran (known as the ‘Uthmanic recension) was established.
Much of the historical information up to this point was extracted from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1982.
The vast Islamic region dominated by countries, where the majority of the population is of the Islamic belief, stretches across a vast stretch of the old world of the Old Testament.
There are some 50 countries, across all of Africa from the Sahara Desert northward, eastward across the Middle East extending north from there to Kazakhstan, across India to Bangladesh, and southeast across Malaysia to Java, that have a majority of the Islamic faith making up their individual populations.
The CIA totals give a world population of 6.5 billion as of mid-2005, which includes 1.3 billion of the Islamic faith, or about one-fifth of the world’s population.
The Industrial Revolution in Europe was one of the contributors to the rapid decline of an Islamic empire that swept across Spain and across the Balkans in its heyday. Most of its territory was under British and French control at the close of World War I. But the breakup of the great colonial empires led to many new independent Muslim countries over the period 1920 to 1985, and many more along the southern flank of the old Soviet Union, when it broke up in the late eighties and early nineties!
Very few people ever dreamed these sand republics had the potential to become what they are today, but oil has made the difference, just as I indicated it would more than 30 years ago. And the super power, that Europe was supposed to become to house the antichrist, is now afraid of its own shadow and the sand republics it once controlled.
The action is precisely where the prophets indicated it would be in the last days – In the Middle East. And the major combatants are just who prophets said they would be – The offspring of Abraham through Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah. It is the Middle East that will both produce and house the antichrist, not Europe!
At the battle of Armageddon most of the kings of the earth will come to join the antichrist in a final attempt to eradicate the nation of Israel. Among them will be 10 nations
representing the 10 Jihad toes of Daniel 2 that drove Israel into the Negev three and one-half years earlier.
Revelation 19:19 – And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
Some three and one-half years before the final battle of Armageddon, which closes the tribulation period, ten kings of nations out of the southern flank territory once occupied by the ancient Roman Empire will attack Israel from the north.
Daniel 2:42 – And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
II Thessalonians 2:3 – Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
The last evil kingdom of antichrist on this earth was to initially be comprised of 10 nations with 10 kings led by the man of sin himself. It was to arise out of the ashes of the old Roman Empire. I have always believed it would rise out of the southern half of the Empire and be made up of 10 Arab nations. I believe the elements for its formation are in place today, and I suspect that the most likely Arab nations of which it will be comprised are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Some of these nations are strong like iron, and some are as soft and pliable as clay.
I do not question that in the final battle of Armageddon the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth will be combatants against the nation of Israel.
But I have always contended, along with the Bible expositors of the 18th and 19th centuries, that the antichrist’s initial attack would be led by Arab descendants of Abraham. They are the mingled seed of his oldest son Ishmael with the seed of the six sons he sired by Keturah, as well as some of the other offspring of his own father Terah. The empire of the antichrist will be an Islamic empire that eventually takes into it other old world nations. And, in the final great battle of Armageddon, all those nations that made up the world as it was known in A.D. 95 will come against Israel, such that Japheth, Ham, and Shem’s descendants will also be involved.
Daniel 2:41-43 – And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, for asmuch
as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. [42] And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. [43] And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
The 10 toes will consist primarily of Terah’s descendants. Abraham came out of Terah.
Out of Abraham came the leaders of the three great monotheistic faiths associated with Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad. And they have always been in conflict.
(See Archive Update 78 Diagram)
The inspired word in Daniel 2:43, from which the word “mingled” comes, is ARAB, which means “to interlace or mix.” The “seed of men” refers to non-descendants of the man Abraham, from which both Jews and Arabs descended.
“They” refers to the 10 toes of Daniel’s statue in Daniel 2:42, which have 10 kings over them. Isaac, the father of Israel, had seven half brothers – Ishmael from Hagar and the six sons of Keturah. It was from these seven half brothers that the Arab world has been primarily created. The descendants of Israel have been more likely to marry within the blood line of the man Israel than have the Arabs to marry within their separate bloodlines of Hagar and Keturah, and the Arabs have also intermingled with non-descendants of Abraham more than have the Jews.
Daniel 2:43 – And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
Just as iron and clay do not hold together very long, the 10 Arab nations will only hold together long enough to fulfill God’s end time tribulation period prophecies. The saved will be caught up on the sounding of the seventh trump to be judged in heaven, and the kingdom of God will all be united in heaven, waiting to return to earth with Christ at his Second Advent.
Revelation 11:15 – And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.
Daniel 2:44 – And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.
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Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
LATER THAN WE THINK!
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February 7, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Supplement to the Previous Blog of February 6, 2006
Islam is waiting for Saladin 2 to deliver them from the evil Crusaders as Imam 12, the Mahdi, the Islamic version of the Messiah.
The Islamic faith has been waiting for 58 years for the arrival of one of their faith to come on the scene and deliver them from the “big devil” and “little devil” Crusaders.
In the Arab mind-set, Israel (little devil) and the United States (big devil) are modern-day Crusaders. The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, wresting it from the Arabs, who themselves had conquered the city in 638. The Crusaders stayed until 1187, when Saladin tore through the walls of the Old City, and restored Arab sovereignty.
The following news in the Washington Times by Arnaud de Borchgrave is the latest article on the 12th Imam Mahdi, who has suddenly come to the forefront since the election of the current Iranian President. It is well
worth reading. The theology of the Islamic Messianic counterfeit to the Christian and Jewish Messiah is so mething that has intrigued
me for more than 30 years. It is very interesting to see others that are now reporting it. When Islam’s Prophet wrote the Koran he used both the Jewish Old Testament and the Christian New Testament as the basic documents from which he created a twisted new religion, which is now referred to as Islam. It is only natural that his document would lead to the teaching of a counterfeit Islamic Messiah, namely, the 12th Imam Mahdi.
BEGIN WASHINGTON TIMES ARTICLE
LATER THAN WE THINK
By Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times
Published February 6, 2006
The man in charge of hoodwinking the Western powers about Iran’s now 18-year-old secret nuclear program believes the apocalypse will happen in his own lifetime. He’ll be 50 in October.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Shi’ite creed has convinced him lesser mortals can not only influence but hasten the awaited return of the 12th Imam, known as the Mahdi. Iran’s dominant “Twelver” sect holds this will be Muhammad ibn Hasan, the righteous descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. He is said to have gone into “occlusion” in the 9th century, at age 5. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war, bloodshed and pestilence. After this cataclysmic confrontation between the forces of good and evil, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.
“The ultimate promise of all Divine religions,” says Ahmadinejad, “will be fulfilled with the emergence of a perfect human being [the 12th Imam], who is heir to all prophets.
He will lead the world to justice and absolute peace.
Oh mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad is close to the messianic Hojjatieh Society, which is governed by the conviction the 12th Imam’s return will be hastened by “the creation of chaos on Earth.” He has fired Iran’s most experienced diplomats and scores of other officials, presumably those who don’t share his belief in apocalyptic conflagration.
The Iranian leader’s finger on a nuclear trigger would be disquieting under any circumstances. Positively alarming would be a nuclear weapon in the hands of a man who badgers Israel, the U.S. and the European Union in belief a pre-emptive aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities will hasten the return of the missing Mahdi.
Such an attack presumably would trigger anti-Western mayhem throughout the Middle East.
When he became Iran’s sixth president since the 1979 revolution last summer, Mr. Ahmadinejad decided to donate $20 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the faithful can drop their missives to the “Hidden Imam” in a holy well. Tehran’s working-class faithful are convinced the new president and his Cabinet signed a “compact” pledging themselves to precipitate the return of the Mahdi — and dropped it down Jamkaran’s well with the Mahdi’ s zip code.
In Mr. Ahmadinejad’s eyes, Iran is strong, with oil inching up to $70 a barrel and America, dependent on foreign oil, is weak. He has said publicly America and Europe have far more to lose than Iran if the U.N. Security Council votes for tough economic sanctions.
He also figures if Israeli and/or U.S. warplanes strike Iran, all he has to do is give the U.S. a hard time in Iraq as American forces prepare to withdraw.
Moving two or three Iranian divisions into Iraq and activating Shi’ite suicide bombers and hit squads throughout the region would not be too hard for a country that fought an 8-year war against Iraq (1980-88) and had no compunction about giving thousands of youngsters a key to paradise and 72 virgins before sending them across Iraqi minefields.
A top Ahmadinejad officer, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Kossari, who heads the political watchdog, or Security Bureau, of Iran’s armed forces, recently taunted the U.S. when he bragged “we have identified all the weak points of our enemies” and have sufficient cannon fodder — i.e., suicide operation volunteers — “ready to strike at these sensitive locations.” Iranian television recently broadcast an animated film for Iranian children glorifying suicide bombers.
So far, Supreme Leader and Chief of State Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sits in the holy city of Qom, has not expostulated. Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to have his religious rear well covered.
His ideological mentor and spiritual guide is Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who heads the ultraconservative acolytes who believe the 12th Imam’s return is “imminent.”
The son of a bl
acksmith, Mr. Ahmadinejad earned an engineering Ph.D. and is a former member of Iran’s notorious Revolutionary Guards at a time when dissidents and “counterrevolutionaries” were executed by the thousands. A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, first showed Iran how to build a nuclear weapon 18 years ago.
He opened his nuclear black market to Iranian engineers and scientists.
The Bush administration is anxious to clear the decks in a democratic Iraq before facing the Islamist counterpart of the “Rapture” in the “Left Behind” series of books on the end of times by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. President Bush says all options are on the table. But the military option is probably the one the “twelvers” would look forward to. Some Washington think tank strategists argue if Iran’s Dr. Strangelove attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon, five Iranian cities would be vaporized next day.
It might behoove the United States to sit down with “axis of evil” Iran to find out if the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine that kept the Soviet Union and the U.S. at peace for a half-century could still be made to work. In any event, one would have to be irredeemably myopic not to see that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program. The only question is how far this secret program is from delivering a usable weapon and fitting it in the nose cone of a Shahab-3 missile with the range to reach Israel. The Israeli Air Force will be “overhead” Iran long before.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large for The Washington Times and for United Press International.
END WASHINGTON TIMES ARTICLE
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Supplement to Archive Special Prophecy Update Number 165B
February 6, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Having gone to military schools, lived among, worked with, and trained those of the Islamic faith as a much younger man, plus being familiar with prophecy since my youth, I have not only been waiting for many years for the true Messiah, Jesus Christ, but I have also been waiting for the arrival of the 12th Imam on the scene prior to the arrival of Jesus. I have long believed the 12th Imam Mahdi will be the 11th little horn of Daniel, and the beast of John’s Revelation.
I have long identified him as the leader of the 10 toes of Daniel’s great latter day empire of the descendants of the descendants of the twelve sons of Ishmael and the six sons of Keturah, all of them being the sons of Abraham. In all my books, the first written in the seventies, I have never swerved from identifying the ten toes as being Islamic nations.
(Please read Archive Prophecy Update Numbers 125B, 121C, 78, 74B, and 54 at: http://www.tribulationperiod.com/ under the heading of “Prophecy Updates” for a complete exposition
of the 10 toes).
As I have written in many Archive Prophecy Updates and Blogs, in Genesis Ishmael is called a “wild” man as Abraham’s descendant. The Hebrew word translated “wild” is donkey, a wild ass, which has long been manifested by the inability of Islamic nations to get along with each other or any other nation for very long. So, one of the things I did not know, when I wrote my first book, was how in heavens name you could ever get clay and iron to come together, and hold long enough to form a temporary latter day empire. It would be as difficult as trying to keep a herd of wild asses together in a wilderness with no fences.
Daniel 2:41-43 – And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: for asmuch
as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.
[41] And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of
the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.
[42] And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. [43] And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.
I knew that God would put it into their hearts to come together, but I did not understand the instrument he would use to being their hearts together into the unholy union of Jewish and infidel destruction.
Revelation 17:12,13 – And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. [13] These have one mind, and shall give their power
and strength unto the beast.
[17] For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
It finally all came together for me with the rise of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, where he was successful in driving out the Soviet army by Islamic Jihad guerilla warfare. The 9/11 attack left no doubt that the world’s future was headed for the rise of Islamic fanaticism, which is the instrument that is uniting the 10 toes, the 10 horns, in a common united cause, namely, the destruction of Israel, and other infidel nations that do not honor their Prophet Muhammad and Allah.
There is no question in my mind that Islamic Jihad is the spirit of the antichrist. All that Islam masses need is for a man to show up who they will accept as the 12th Imam, and they will unite as surrendered souls to follow him to the death.
We have gotten a taste of the fever
of Islamic Jihad fanaticism in the French Riots, and now the devoted religious extremism over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is causing riots, burnings, and deaths across Europe and the Middle East in many of the countries and states. It is this religious Islamic fever that will unite all Arabs under the banner of the 12th Imam when he arises. If you think that what seems to the West to be isolated extremism from the lips and actions of the current Iranian leader is just a microscopic cult belief, you are quite wrong. The Shiites are the most zealous of the Muslims in their devotion to the 12th Imam, but the Sunni also have their own version of him, as do virtually all of the branches of the Muslim faith. I know this by my association with Islamic believers from many countries.
I hope you will have time to look back in our Archive Prophecy Updates at Number 165B, “The Coming Messiah of Islamic Tradition,” April 1, 2004, for more information on the 12th Imam.
I am including the Blog, which follows, from our Blog Archives, issued December 13, 2005.
Islamic Jihad is the Spirit of Antichrist!
December 13, 2005
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
While many continue to await the rise of the antichrist in the European Union, the spirit
of antichrist is making a path for his appearance in the Islamic world. Islam considers us to be the “big devil” and Israel the “little devil.” How ironic that Satan himself is the “big devil” they worship as Allah, and his son, the antichrist, will be the “little devil,” who leads 10 Arab nations against Israel in a united spirit of Jihad.
Five Islamic terrorist groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq, denounced Thursday’s elections in Iraq as a great “satanic project.” They vowed to continue their Jihad to establish an Islamic regime. They claim the election of free choice by individual ballets is a violation of the law of Allah.
However, it would seem that the brutal homicide bombings, which have now taken thousands of innocent Iraqi lives, meet with Allah’s approval.
I applaud President Bush’s noble effort to attempt to establish a democratic government in Iraq elected by the people of Iraq. And I thank God for our American service men and women who are valiantly putting their lives on the line every day to help the Iraqis establish a democratic government. I stand behind the President’s decisions as I have from the beginning. But I would be less than honest if I changed what I have believed from the beginning – It is impossible to establish a “lasting” democratic government in Iraq no matter how sincere we are in making the attempt. Whatever our president decides is the appropriate time to being our troops back to the U.S., I support, and I pray for him and our men and women in harm’s way daily, and I will support him and our troops through thick and thin, but I have never believed it is possible to establish a lasting democratic government in Iraq. If I had not lived among, worked with, and gone to school which those who worship Allah as their God, and had not studied the Koran, I might have a different opinion. If I had never studied biblical end time prophecies, I might have a different opinion. If I had not fought in Vietnam, I might have a different opinion, but I really have no choice but to believe there will not be a “lasting” democratic government in Iraq.
Once our troops are withdrawn, with Iran to the east and Syria to the northwest, it will not take long for the democratically elected government to fall and a civil war to begin for supremacy between the Sunni, Kurds, and Shiite. It is out of this conflict I expect antichrist to arise, most likely in Syria.
I have always believed he would come out of the ancient Assyrian Empire.
That is why I say “most likely” from Syria. But he could come out of northern Iraq, extreme southern Turkey, or even Lebanon.
You will find my specific reasons for this prophetic belief in our Archive Prophecy Updates on our Web Site at http://www.tribulationperiod.com/ under the Menu Heading “Prophecy Updates,” listed as Numbers 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, and 69.