Daniel Lesson 35

Antichrist, Anti-Semitism and Islam – Daniel 8

 

We have been studying in Daniel 8 about Antiochus Epiphanes and Antiochus Epiphanes was prophesied in Daniel 8.  There are going to be other prophecies in Daniel 10 and Daniel 11 that relate to Antiochus Epiphanes as well.  Antiochus Epiphanes was one of the Seleucid rulers, or rulers of the Seleucid Empire, the Seleucid dynasty, one of the four divisions of the Greek Empire after Alexander the Great died.  As we studied last time Antiochus Epiphanes was concerned about consolidating his empire and he had to pay back his reparations to Rome after the defeat by Rome militarily, reparations that were just about on the same level of extremity that the Western allies put down on Germany, the Armistice of 1918 after World War I.  It was so rough and so onerous and so difficult for the Syrian Empire under the Seleucids to come up with the bucks that they were raiding the temples which would serve as the banks, the depository of people’s savings in the ancient world, and he was also invading down through Israel and taking control of Judea.

 

That culminated in one of the most horrendous acts of blasphemy in the ancient world when he put a statute of Zeus into the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and sacrificed a pig on the altar.  And that is called in the book of Maccabees, in 1 Maccabees, the abomination of desolation. That’s the phrase Jesus picks up in Matthew 24 when he warns the Jews in the Tribulation period that when they see the abomination of desolation take place, which will occur halfway through the Tribulation, we’ll get details of that when we get into Daniel 9, but halfway through the Tribulation that takes place and that’s a sign that the Jews are to flee, that that last series of bowl judgments in Revelation are about to come to pass, which culminate in the battle of Armageddon.  So Antiochus Epiphanes becomes in the Scripture a type of the antichrist.  We look at Antiochus Epiphanes and we can see some of the elements, some of the characteristics, some of the qualities that are also going to be present in the antichrist when he appears on the scene during the Tribulation. 

 

Now one of those characteristics is anti-Semitism, and the reason is that there is a conspiracy; we all hear all kinds of conspiracy theories in the world, that it’s this group or that group; but there is a conspiracy and the great conspirator is Satan.  And he is always trying to destroy God’s plan and he knows that God has made promises in the Old Testament to the Jews and they have never been fulfilled.  And so at the core of anti-Semitism or what lies behind anti-Semitism is Satan’s attempt to destroy the Jews so that he can prove that God cannot fulfill His promises, God is an inadequate God, and then Satan can win.  So that’s what underlies all of that.  So all anti-Semitism, both the kind that was expressed by the Seleucids, by Antiochus Epiphanes and Hitler and all the way down through human history is all energized by Satan.  And there’s no group, no religious group on earth more anti-Semitic, more antagonistic to the Jews, more hateful toward the Jews, than Islam.  And that is what underlies so much of what’s going on today.  Every night we turn on the news and we hare about another 20, 30, 40 Palestinians or Israelis that are blown up by a couple of suicide bombers over in Israel and the violence has intensified in this latest intifada. 

 

Now intifada is a term that means uprising, and there have been several intifadas over the last 20 years and this latest one began in September a year ago and it is important to understand how that fits into the overall picture of what happened on September 11th because we still ask that question, why did September 11th happen, and the more I reflect on it, the further we get away from it, the more we have an opportunity to reflect on Scripture, I think as things happen in history God did that for probably a number of reasons, not all of which are obvious to us at this particular point.  But what we need to understand is that this fits within the anti-Semitic agenda of Islam.

 

For example, on September 4, 1996 Osama Bin Laden issued a statement called arms to his fellow Muslims.  He stated: “My Muslim brothers of the world, your brothers in Palestine, in the land of the two holy places,” and that’s Saudi Arabia, “are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy, your enemy and their enemy, the Americans and the Israelis.”  See, in their mind we are intimately connected.  In fact, I would say that Israel is probably the only true ally the U. S. has.  “They are asking you to do whatever you can with one means and ability to expel the enemy, humiliated and defeated, out of the sanctities of Islam.”  So this has to do with removing the Americans out of Saudi Arabia because he was aggravated and angered and offended, had religious antagonism because of the presence of American military forces on Saudi land, but it goes beyond that.  It is seen as intimately connected to what’s happening in Israel.

 

And what we see here is the issue is really Israel.  Then in 1998 five of these Islamic leaders issued a fatwa which is a religious proclamation calling for a holy war, a jihad, and this was signed by Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, who’s the leader of the Egyptian jihad, a leader of the Islamic jihad, another leader of a terrorist organization made up of Pakistanis and then one from Bangladesh and in that they state that the purpose of this is to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque which is in Saudi Arabia.  Now the al-Aqsa Mosque is on the temple mount in Jerusalem so they see from their perspective… and no matter what else we do as a nation, as Christians we’d better understand why these things are happening and why they are happening is determined by why the people who are perpetuating it say it is happening.  And it is happening to liberate the temple mount.  That is the reason, it’s not about American capitalism, it’s not about American power, it’s not about envy, American envy, envy for Americans because of all of their possessions or because of their power of anything like that.  All of that is a smoke screen, don’t get caught up in any of these crazy Marxist or psychological interpretations of history.  It is all about the temple mount and keeping that from the control of the Jews.

 

A week after the attacks Al-Qaeda issued the following statement.  “We say to Bush, the father, son, former President Clinton, Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who are at the head of the Zionist criminals and crusaders, who have committed the worst crimes against millions of Muslims,” remember this, they think that the very fact that we support Israel in their presence in the land means that we have attacked Islam.  That means everything that they’re doing is viewed from the perspective of self-defense.  And that gives them the right to do whatever they deem necessary in order to defend themselves.  “…that we will avenge them.  The truth is that Bush is an agent of Israel; he sacrifices his people and his economy for them, the Israelis, and helps them occupy the land of Muslims.  This storm will not calm, especially as long as you, the United States and Britain do not end your support for the Jews in Palestine.  We tell and recommend Muslims in the United States and Britain and those who reject the American policies not to take airplanes and not to live in towers and high buildings.”  In fact, the Palestinian authority has stated in their own elementary school textbooks that the Palestinian conflict with Israel and American are two branches in the general total global war of Islam against the west and all other religions. 

 

That’s in an elementary school textbook so they’re brainwashing these kids and that’s why last night I saw an interview on one of these news shows where they were interviewing a bunch of Palestinian college students from Lebanon and they were saying there’s no real religious motivation here, we just want to have our land back, you know the Jews stole our land.  But they have not been told the truth and they don’t understand the dynamics and we need to be able to answer that question, do they have a rightful claim to the land?  Who are the Palestinians?  And is there a rightful claim to the land or is this purely something that is a religious motivation motivated by hatred? 

 

So in light of all these statements we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that it is Israel, the very existence of Israel in the land and the residents of Jews living in freedom in a land that God gave them 3,000 years ago that is the real heart of the reason that America was attacked on September 11th.  As part of that we have to ask and answer several important questions, like: Why is Israel important?  Why is it that the whole world is really focused in on this whole war right now? And the issue is not just Israel, it’s Jerusalem and it’s the temple mount.  And why is that important?  Why is Jerusalem so important?  Why is the temple mount so important?  We need to answer briefly some questions about God’s plan for Israel and also ask and answer the questions about the Palestinian’s claim to the land that is now known as Israel.

 

As a preface to this we have to go back to the Old Testament and look at God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3.  We’ve covered all of this in detail but I’m just going to briefly remind you of this.  In Genesis 12:1, “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, and from your relatives, and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; [2] And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing. [3] And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse,” and that clause should really be translated from the Hebrew, “the one who treats you lightly I will judge harshly, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”  And then in verse 7 God reiterates, “to thy seed,” that is to his descendants, “I will give this land.”

 

So God promised the land in Genesis 13 and 15 He describes the boundaries of the land and the boundaries of the land are such that they go from approximately this area here, there’s the Wadi- el Arish which is considered by most scholars to be the correct identification of the River of Egypt, all the way to the Euphrates on the west and the Tigris on the east and all of this land in between, from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, what makes up much of modern Syria, all of modern Jordan, much of Iraq is all part of the land that God promised to Israel in the original land grant to Abraham which was then later reiterated to him in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 and 29.  There also is the promise that God would bring them back to the land once they were taken from the land and there, especially in Deuteronomy 28 and 19 God promised that in discipline He would remove them from the land and He would return them to the land and in context He’s talking to the whole nation. 

 

Now remember, we studied that God took the nation out under the fifth cycle of discipline, the northern ten kingdoms of Israel went out in 722 BC when the Assyrians came down and then the southern kingdom went out in 586 BC, that’s when Nebuchadnezzar came in and destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.  They began to return in 535 BC; we’ve talked about that in our study of Daniel but that’s not the return that these prophecies foretell because only a segment of the tribes returned to Judea, not the whole tribes returned.  I want you to pay attention to two key prophesies in Zechariah but before we get there let’s remind ourselves of this chart.

 

When God made these promises they are going to be fulfilled but they haven’t been fulfilled yet.  Here’s the timeline of history, these are the Old Testament dispensations here, from the formation of Israel, the theocratic kingdom, the monarchy, then the exile from roughly 585 to 535, then the restoration of the kingdom.  It is this restoration, during the restoration to the land when they come back from Babylon that is not the fulfillment of those restoration prophecies.  Zechariah was written during this time period, but he foretells a future restoration for both the northern and southern kingdom.  Then we have the coming of Christ, the Church Age and then the future millennium.  The key covenant is the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12:1-3; Genesis 17:1-21 and other passages in Genesis.

 

Then we have the real estate covenant given in Deuteronomy. That has not been fulfilled so it must be fulfilled in the future.  Then we have the Davidic Covenant that there would be an eternal king, an eternal dynasty, and an eternal throne.  That has not happened and will not happen until Christ returns at the Second Coming, and then the New Covenant.  So that’s just a reminder for you of how this establishes the principle that God has a plan and a future for Israel.  So anyone who is trying to destroy Israel or say they don’t have a right to the land or there is not a future for Israel is standing as a block, as a stumbling block to the plan of God. 

 

Zechariah, a couple of interesting passages I just want to highlight before we look at some modern application.  In Zechariah 10:3 God says, “My anger is kindled against the shepherds,” that’s the leaders of Judah, “and I will punish the male goats; for the LORD of hosts has visited His flock, the house of Judah, and will make them like His majestic horse in battle.”  So here He is going to use Judah as an army.  That hasn’t happened yet.  Verse 4, “From them will come the cornerstone, from them the tent peg, from them the bow of battle, from them every ruler, all of them together.”  That emphasize the importance, the central role Israel will play in the future.  Verse 5, “And they will be as mighty men, treading down the enemy in the mire of the streets in battle,” now that hasn’t happened.  “…treading down the enemy in the mire of the streets of battle, and they will fight, for the LORD will be with them; and the riders son horses will be put to shame.” 

 

Then in verse 6 he says, “And I shall strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the house of Joseph.”  Now Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.  Those are northern tribes, so when you see the phrase, “house of Joseph” he’s not talking about the southern tribes, the kingdom of Judah; he’s talking about the northern tribes, which are sometimes simply referred to as Ephraim.  It is sometimes called Israel, sometimes it’s called Ephraim, and here it’s called the house of Joseph.  So the specific prophecy in Zechariah 10 is that the house of Judah and the house of Joseph, northern and southern kingdoms, will be restored to the land.  “…And I will bring them back,” God says, “Because I have had compassion on them; and they will be as though I had not rejected them,” now that cannot be said of what happened to the kingdom of Judah in that post exilic period, after they came back from Babylon.  We studied last time in that period when Antiochus Epiphanes is coming down that Israel is already getting caught up into legalism, they have given birth during that time to the legalistic religious organizations that will eventually evolve into the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  They have exchanged religious superficial legalism for the idolatry that they were punished for before the captivity.  But they’re still not right with God, but here they are going to have a close relationship with God in this restoration mentioned in Zechariah 10.

 

Zechariah 10:7, “And Ephraim,” that’s the northern kingdom, “Ephraim will be like a mighty man, and their heart will be glad as if from wine; indeed, their children will see it and be glad, their heart will rejoice in the LORD.”  Verse 8, God says, “I will whistle for them to gather them together,” so this is not talking about the present regathering.  The Jews are being regathered to the land I believe by divine will, but it is not this regathering.  This is a supernatural regathering; the one we have today is a precursor because as we’re going to see when we get into Daniel 9, for the antichrist to sign a peace treaty with Israel in the land there must be a nation, there must be some geopolitical entity in the land in order for this kind of an international treaty to be signed.  There also has to be, as we’ll see in a minute, some vacancy, something has to happen to what’s currently existing on the temple mount.  Now all of that is important to factor in to our understanding of what may be going on today. 

 

Let’s continue in Zechariah 10:9, God says, “When I scatter them among the peoples,” that’s talking about the Diaspora that occurred initially in 596 BC and then again in 70 AD, when God scattered the Jews among other peoples, He said, “When I scatter them among the peoples,” now when God says this to Zechariah, this is in the 4th century BC, I misspoke a second ago, this could not be the 586 BC scattering.  That’s already happened; they’ve already started to come back from that.  This must be talking about some future scattering and that would be the 70 AD scattering.

 

“When I scatter them among the peoples, they will,” future tense, “remember Me in far countries,” that’s right now, when they’re in the United States, they’re in Germany, Britain, they’re in Arab countries, they’re in African countries, they’re in Russia, and this point God says “they will remember Me in far countries, and they with their children will live and come back.”  So it’s prophesying a future restoration of Israel to the land, and the land is the land that He promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Abrahamic Covenant.

 

Zechariah 10:10, God says, “I will bring them back from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria; and I will bring them into the land of Gilead and Lebanon, until no room can be found for them.”  Notice in “in the land of Gilead and Lebanon,” so this is talking about the full extension of the land under the dimensions given in the Abrahamic Covenant.  Verse 11, “And He will pass through the sea of distress and strike the waves in the sea, so that all the depths of the Nile will dry up and the pride of Assyria will be brought down, and the scepter of Egypt will depart.”  So it’s talking about the fact that there are going to be supernatural events here, the Nile will dry up, Assyria will be destroyed which would be the region of modern Iraq and Iran, and the scepter of Egypt, that is Egypt as a ruling power is going to be destroyed at the end of the Tribulation.  Then in Zechariah 10:12 God says, “And I will strengthen them in the LORD, and in His name they will walk,” so this is talking about the regenerate nation at the end of the Tribulation. 

 

Then if we skip a couple chapters, there is the dire warning of Zechariah 12:2 about the nature of Jerusalem.  “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah.”  That is talking, ultimately, about the final assault on Judah and Jerusalem during the Tribulation at the beginning of the campaign of Armageddon.  Then verse 3, “And it will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the people; all who lift it will be severely injured.”  Now this is a prophecy that up until the end of the Tribulation Jerusalem is going to be just a royal pain in history; it is going to be a major sore point for everybody’s foreign policy and we see that every night on the news today.  And there is always going to be these assaults on Jerusalem. 

 

Verse 4, “In that day, declares the LORD, I will strike every horse with bewilderment, and his rider with madness.  But I will watch over the house of Judah, while I strike every horse of the people with blindness.”  So this is the event right at the end of the Tribulation when God is going to protect and preserve the Jews as He destroys the armies of the antichrist. 

 

Then in Zechariah 12:9-10 we read, “And it will come about in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.”  That’s a fulfillment of the promise in Genesis 12:3 that those who treat you lightly I will judge harshly.  God is going to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.  Verse 10, “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced,” this is a reference to looking on Jesus Christ as their Savior and accepting Him as Messiah; this is when all Israel will be saved when the deliverer will come from Zion and remove ungodliness from Jacob, according to Romans 11:25-27.

 

Throughout history it has been true and it continues to be true that Israel is still at the centerpiece of God’s plan for history, even though Israel is not the centerpiece of God’s redemptive work in this dispensation, that does not mean that He has abrogated or put in abeyance the basic principles of the Abrahamic Covenant that those who curse Israel He will curse.  In Zechariah 2:8 we read, “For thus says the LORD of hosts, He sent Me after to the nations which plundered you, for he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye.”  That is Israel; she is still God’s favorite, even when they are under divine discipline. 

 

Now what is going on today with the attack from Islam?  And I think that the attack from Islam is Satan’s ploy to destroy Israel because that is their agenda and too often today we are being deceived again and again and again by news reports, news reporters, politicians who are trying to communicate to us that Islam is not a problem, these are peaceful people, it’s a peaceful religion, these are just a few extremists, a few terrorists who are doing this, who are carrying out these terrorists attacks.  In fact, you really ought to think of some of these Palestinians more in the sense of freedom fighters than terrorists because they are actually trying to recover their land, they have a legitimate claim to the land and to some level of a Palestinian state.  And we’re being bombarded with this day in and day out and we need to ask if any of this is really true.  And the answer is no it’s not true.  The news media is historically ignorant, and I’m not talking about ancient history, I’m talking about what took place in the 20th century.  They have bought every lie, every propaganda ploy that the Palestinians and the Arabs have put out and they always seem to, and the U.N. as well; always seem to side with the Palestinians and never side with Israel.  Islam, therefore, in the last century has gained an unprecedented strength. 

 

Now the interesting thing is, as we’re going to see, is at the beginning of the Tribulation you have a western king making a peace treaty with Israel to allow them to rebuild the temple on the temple mount which the Arabs will not allow a Jew to go on the temple mount, not even to set foot on the temple mount right now, aside from official visits in order to investigate things, because since they won the temple mount in the 1967 war they have had oversight of the security and safety, in fact it is Jewish police who protect the temple mount so that Arabs can go up to the mosque and worship.  And so Islam has grown incredibly strong in just the last few years but there seems to be a picture at the beginning of the Tribulation of a much weakened Islam.  So we need to wonder what it is that’s going to bring about a weakening of Islam, so that those conditions can take place.

 

Let’s learn some things about Islam.  Some of this we’ve gone over before but I just want to remind you of some things.  First of all, over the past 50 years the total number of Moslems has grown 500% worldwide; in the last 50 years they have grown 500% whereas Christianity has only grown by 47% worldwide.  The result is that Islam has 1.3 billion adherents worldwide; one out of every five people on the planet is a Muslim.  While 85% of Muslims are not Arabs, Islam controls, completely controls the attitudes and actions of every single Arab country in the Middle East and in North Africa.  And in those nations there are no legal alternatives, there are no options, Christianity is outlawed and they live under a tyrannical regime of religion.

 

Furthermore, in Europe Islam is now the second largest religion.  And it’s expected to become the dominant religion in the next 20 years.  Now that causes me something to think about when I’m trying to look at Biblical prophecy because if Islam does become the dominant religion in Western Europe, I want to know how is it that they’re going to then produce an antichrist that’s going to allow Israel, sign a peace treat with Israel and allow them to rebuild the temple mount, because not Muslim is going to allow a Jew to rebuild the temple.  In fact, the Muslims are doing everything they can to keep Israel from ever even authenticating the fact that there was a temple on that location ever.  So right now Western Europe is becoming more and more Muslim.  In fact in France there are one and half million Muslims; that means there are six Muslims for every Christian.  England has more than two thousand mosques and in the U.S. almost seven million Muslims and 1,370 mosques.  Remember 30 years ago the U. S. only had 500,000 Muslims so they’ve gone from 500,000 to 7,000,000 in the last 30 years.

 

Now we’ve gone over the history of Islam before, just to remind you, Mohammed was an illiterate camel drive who married a wealthy widow who was older than himself so that allowed him to have a lot of leisure time and to enjoy going off to Club Med with the camel drivers every now and then and as he traveled around the middle east he spent some time with Christians and Jews and he became somewhat entranced with certain aspects of their religious system, he rejected most of it and decided that he would maybe have his own, he learned a technique of self-hypnosis and by doing that, or while under that self-hypnotic trance he thought he was getting revelations and that the angel Gabriel appeared to him, and he claimed that Gabriel dictated the Koran to him, which was 78,000 words which he memorized and then taught to all of his followers.  But Mohammed was not readily accepted by the Arabs; they already had a religious system, they had a polytheistic system of about 360 gods, one of whom, the highest of whom, was a moon god named Allah, and Allah had three wives, three consorts, and in fact, in the early stages those three wives, those three consorts were part of the system, but he got rid of them fairly quickly. 

 

In that part of his life when he was in Mecca he was ejected and he left and he went to Medina and there he gathered the riffraff of the desert around him and they became sort of a raiding band and that was how they raised their operational funds to expand their religious system.  That’s how the concept of jihad or struggle came about.  And so jihad was borne from military ventures in God’s name.  Eventually he returned to Mecca in 628 with a force of 10,000 men where they killed 600 of 900 men in Mecca and then he took all the good-looking widows for his own harem.  That always gives you some… how a man treats women always gives you some idea of his real motivations in developing a new religious system. 

 

Now we’ve gone over the five pillars of the faith of Islam before; that they have to recite the Shahada, every day, which is the statement that “there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His messenger.”  Secondly they have five daily prayers toward Mecca, one in the morning, one at noon, one in late afternoon, sunset and before bedtime.  They must pray while kneeling with their forehead pressed against the ground reciting the Shahada.  They are to give alms; that’s the third pillar. They are to fast during the month of Ramadan. That’s no eating before sunrise and sunset; it’s really a partial fast.  And fifth, they are to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.  Many people think that the sixth pillar is jihad; jihad is critical to the whole system of Islam.  For example, we read in the Hadith, which is their second holy book, it’s a commentary on the Koran: What is the best deed: to believe in Allah and his apostle?  That is the best.  What is the next; the implication is the second best is to participate in jihad in Allah’s cause.  So that is their highest thing next to belief in Allah.  In Surah, that is in chapter 2 verse 190 the Koran states: Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostility,” see everybody says see, they’re peaceful, they don’t want to begin hostilities, but if you oppose them, if you are not submitted to Allah then you are fighting against them, and so that becomes the justification for them to attack non-Muslims.  The very fact that they aren’t Muslim means that they are attacking them.

 

So the first duty of any Islamic leader is to prosecute jihad against non-Muslims and to bring about the victory of Islam. If he doesn’t do this he’s really better of dead than alive because he is considered to be corrupting the world according to the Koran.  That’s why secular rulers like Saddam Hussein and some of the other leaders more radial leaders in the Islamic world, spend so much time giving money and building mosques and acting like a faithful Muslim is in order to have this façade of religious devotion.  And much of Islamic spiritual life is nothing more than that; it’s just going through the motions.

 

Another point of Islam is that when Muslims have conquered a territory it can never be relinquished, it is forever and ever to be under the domain of Allah and if any nation reclaims nation territory, any non-Islamic nation reclaims territory, and then Allah has lost face.  Now that’s exactly what’s happened in Israel, is that the Jews have come back to their land and reclaimed land that was once under the control of Allah, once under Islamic domination.  And therefore they can never let that rest because that is a real slap in the face to Allah, so it’s impossible for them, on the basis of their religious system, to let Jews exist in the land. 

 

We’ve covered things in the past about what Islam believes, that they are the only true and eternal religion, according to the Koran, chapter 3, verse 17.  Islam claims that Jesus, as well as David and Moses and Abraham were also Islamic prophets.  Now how that can come about when the Koran wasn’t revealed until about 700 AD some 1500 to 2500 years after David and Abraham and Moses they never explain, they just read their history back and distort history.  So the Koran is a historically revisionistic book from its very inception.  They reject any idea of pluralism, freedom of religion because their goal is world domination; Islam means submission and they are to cause the world, bring the world into submission to Allah; therefore there’s a permanent state of jihad between Islam and the world. 

 

Now we have to ask the question because we get it on the news media all the time, is Islam really a religion of peace?  You have to understand what they mean; when you see one of these Islamic spokesmen get on television and they say Islam is really a religion of peace, you have to understand what they mean, it’s double speak, because for them peace means submission to Allah; it doesn’t mean non-violence.  When we hear that a religion is a religion of peace we hear non-violence.  They mean it’s a religion of peace, that is bringing people into submission to Allah and any method of doing that is okay, it can be brought about through argument, through intrigue, through duplicity, lying, threats, terrorism, warfare, whatever it takes the end justifies the means.  Terrorism is therefore a natural byproduct of Islam.  For example, over half of all the terrorists’ organizations in the world are united by the religion of Islam.  During the last 30 years Muslim terrorists have attacked and murdered thousands of people, bombed and destroyed buildings, planes and vehicles.  They have committed terrorist’s acts in Kenya, Algeria, Indonesia, Tanzania, Egypt, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, France, South America, Austria, and the United States. 

 

Arafat, in fact, Arafat and the PLO hold world records in terrorist activities.  Arafat himself is the most vicious and successful terrorist of all time.  Look at some of the things that they have done.  They have the record for the most airplane hijackings at one time—four. That was not equaled until September 11th.  They have a record for holding the most hostages, 300 hostages held at one time.  They hold the record for the largest ransom ever collected from an airline; they collected 5 million ransom collected from Lufthansa; they also have the most number of people shot at an airport.  They have attacked over 40 civilian aircraft, 5 passenger ships, embassies, fuel depots, armories and they have sent hundreds of suicide bombers to kill hundreds, if not thousands of innocent civilians.  Yet for all of that, we award Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize.  There is some inequity there.

 

Since 1979 the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was taken over by Islamic extremists.  In the fall of 1983 a Gulf Air 737 exploded from a bomb placed there by an Islamic terrorist.  The United States has had the Marine barracks in Beirut attacked, killing 241 U. S. Marines in 1983.  In 1988 Pan American flight 103 was blown out of the skies over Scotland killing 270, and the next year Americans were among the 171 killed when the French UTA DC10 Jetliner was bombed by the Lebanese Islamic Holy War.  U. S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1993; the U.S.S. Cole was attacked and the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, and then eventually destroyed in this latest attack in 2001.  Furthermore, there are more and more people who are alleging a connection with Islamic terrorists to the bombings in Oklahoma City as well as TWA flight 800.  Somehow the press wants to overlook the fact that the common denominator here is Islam and Islam they continue to claim is essentially a peaceful religion. 

 

Yet historically Islam has been spread by the sword.  Let’s look at some passages in the Koran.  Surah 3:28 states: “Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers.”  So they are forbidden from having any kind of friendship or close association with a non-Muslim.  Now you have to remember, that must be applied to any kind of diplomatic treaty, to any kind of treaty between the PLO and Israel, any kind of peace treaty.  It’s forbidden for them to enter into that, so that is just a religious fraud for them.  Let’s go on and read the rest of it: “If any do that, in nothing will there be any help from Allah,” in other words, if some Muslim enters in or takes friends with unbelievers, they can’t expect any help from Allah.  “The only exception is by way of precaution that you may guard yourselves from them,” in other words, enter into a duplicitous relationship.  “But Allah cautions you to remember himself for the final goal is to Allah.”

 

In Surah 3:118 we read, “O ye who believe, take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks.  They will not fail to corrupt you; they only desire your ruin.  Rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths and what their hearts conceal is far worse.  We have made plain to you the signs if you have wisdom.”  So they are forbidden to have these relationships.  Furthermore, in Surah 9:7 it states: “How can there be a league,” that is any kind of treaty, “before Allah and his apostle with the pagan,” so how can we expect them to enter into a legitimate peace treaty with Israel if they are forbidden to by their very Scripture.

 

Furthermore, the Koran itself calls for Muslims to wage continual war against non-Muslims.  In Surah 2:191 we are told, “Slay them wherever you catch them and turn them out fro where they have turned you out, for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the sacred Mosque unless they first fight you there.”  See, the fighting you there can be verbal, it can be just resisting, being brought into submission to Allah.  “If they fight you, slay them,” that’s the command, “such is the reward of those who suppress the faith.”  In Surah 2:193 it states: “Fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression,” that is until you have brought all into submission to Allah; that’s the ultimate goal. 

 

We could go on and read dozens more passages but they continue to emphasize the principle of fighting and violence in order to bring non-Muslims into submission to Allah.  In Surah 9:29 we read: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and his apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of truth, even if they are of the people of the book,” that would be Christians and Jews, “until they pay the [can’t understand word] that is, until they come under the submission to Allah.”  So that is the goal of Allah, is to bring people into submission even if it involves violence.  Surah 2:193 states: “Fight them on until there is no more tumult and religion.” 

 

So the question we need to ask is in light of these verses, what is this contention of modern Muslims is that Islam is really a peaceful religion.  In all of their protestations to the contrary we ought to be asking why is it that the moderate Muslims haven’t done more since September 11th to distance themselves from the radical Muslims and why is it that even last week when Vice President Chaney went to Jordan that King Abdullah was not willing to give his support to an assault against Saddam Hussein.  So what we see is that there is a lot of talk among the moderate Muslims but they don’t really back up their action.  We need to realize that there is this inherent terrorism there.  For example, at the memorial service, the national memorial service after September 11th, the Muslim cleric that gave the opening prayer was named [can’t understand name], and he was invited to say the prayers in order to calm fears that the U. S. was going to have some kind of war against Muslims.  But in the previous year he was …[tape turns]…that also included representatives from terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and made many statements supporting their terrorist activities. 

 

From the very beginning, Islam has been spread and continues to be spread by violence.  Now of course the retort that we always get on this is well, what about the Crusades, the Christians were spreading Christianity by violence.  Well, they were, but not legitimately.  Remember Jesus said in John 18:36 to Pilate that “My kingdom is not of this world; if My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting that I might not be delivered up.”  So when Christians fight to spread Christianity it is in violation of the Scripture, it is in disobedience to Christ and it is not consistent with the Scriptures.  But when the Muslim spreads the faith by violence it is in obedience to their Scriptures, so we all have people in our various religious systems who aren’t consistent and give each of us a black eye, but the issue is whether or not they are doing it in obedience to their Scriptures or in disobedience to their Scriptures.  The Koran clearly states that they are to fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them and cease them.

 

All of this is the background for the Arab-Israeli conflict.  So we need to ask what is the motivation, what’s the religious dimension there.  Louis Renee Burress, who is a political science prof at Purdue University, makes the following observation of the Oslo Peace Process.  He states: “Jewish supporters of the Oslo Peace Process still do not understand the true sources of terrorism against Israel.  Projecting their own very generic conceptions of western history upon the contemporary Middle East, they naïvely identify these sources within the standard theoretical frameworks of economic disenchantment and rising expectations.  Palestinian terrorism is a conscious expression of blood sacrifice, including the blood of the Jews.  And violence against the Jews is always an expression of what is sacred.  So there is this holy dimension to it that is ignored by our western secularism and secularized approach to peace in the Middle East.  The Muslim worldview cannot conceive of religion divorced from politics any more than most Americans and American politicians can understand how religion has anything to do with politics. 

 

In fact, the Islamic Research Council states: “The Palestinian question is not a national issue nor is it a political issue; it is first and foremost an Islamic question.”  Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Chicago Sun Times states: “The Oslo Peace Process seems to have failed because of its pretense that the conflict is not a religious war.  Much of the well-intentioned American mediation has assumed that compromises over territory,” that is land for peace, giving up the West Bank, giving up the Gaza Strip, that this “can settle the conflict.  Western liberalism, with its easy optimism that religion doesn’t matter any more simply cannot comprehend that for most people it still does, especially in the Holy Land.” 

 

Now how did all of this develop?  What’s the historical background to the modern crisis?  Remember, number one, Jewish immigration began in the 19th century; at that time much of the land known as Palestine was under Syrian control, it was a desert, it was not productive, the Arabs that lived there were Bedouins and they were not land owners.  By 1897 this Jewish immigration was formalized into the Zionist movement and Jews were moving back to Israel and they were purchasing the real estate for themselves.  So the vast majority of the land was starting to be owned by Jews.  The British established a mandate in 1920, due to the influence of evangelicals in the British government who understood Israel’s historic right to the land, and they established the boundaries on the map that you see that would be the land that would be given as the national home to the Jews.  That included not only all the land to the west of the Jordan but also all of the territory that is now modern Jordan. 

 

However, the Arabs, as they are want to, rioted in 1929 and killed a number of Jews and they began to put a lot of pressure on the British to back off of the British mandate.  So they offered another solution that violated their own mandate and the Balfour Declaration and they gave all the land to the east of the Jordan River, it became known as the Transjordan, they gave all that land to the Arabs and the rule of the Hashemite Bedouin tribe and this created the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.  The new state of Israel that was left would have had 23% of the original land given to them, not the 100% the Palestinian propaganda maintains.  Arabs got 77% of the land; that is, at this division.  One thing that we should remember is that King Hussein of Jordan stated in 1968 that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.  It wasn’t until about ’69 or ’70 that the term Palestine started to be used to refer to the land of Israel, in a modern context; historically it was applied much earlier, but there was no such thing as a Palestinian until 1969.  The term “Palestinian” still referred to Jews but King Hussein said that Jordan is Palestine; Palestine is Jordan.  And even Arafat recognized that in 1974 when he said what you call Jordan is actually Palestine.  So they’ve reversed themselves; they’ve redefined all the terms and that’s all part of their propaganda ploy.

 

But in 1946 this British partition which gave Israel all the land to the west of the Jordan, that failed, and in 1947 they had to partition the land again and this time only 23% of the land was to go to Israel and the rest would go to the Arab states.  The Jews continued to get a shrinking portion of the land.  At that time the term “Palestine” was applied equally to both the Jewish and the Arab population.  In fact, the Jerusalem Post was called the Palestinian Post.  When Israel was established in 1947 the Arabs invaded.  Jordan annexed a strip, this is West Bank and they annexed that and Egypt annexed the Gaza strip, and the Arab governments, because these five Arab nations were going to invade, the Arab governments told the Arabs living in the land to flee their homes.  That’s what created the homeless refugees, not the Jews.  The Jews did not expel them; it was the Arabs who told them to flee.  So the reason there were Arab refugees is because the Arab nations violated the U.N. mandate and invaded the land. 

 

Now who are the Palestinians?  First of all, we’ve often thought the term derived from the Philistines but it doesn’t.  Randy Price has done an excellent job of researching all of this in his book Unholy War that I highly recommend.  And in there he shows that the Greeks had a word, polio[?*], which meant wrestler, and the Greeks loved word plays, and when the Jews translated the Septuagint they did not use the Greek word Palistino for Palestine, they still used a translated Hebrew word, Philistine.  But the Greek word polio means a wrestler and that was the name of Israel, Israel wrestled with God back there in Genesis, when the angel of the Lord struck his hip and Israel meant one who wrestles with God, and so the Greeks called it Palestine because they were making a pun, using their own word.  So even Josephus and Philo used that terminology, Palestine, to refer to the land. 

 

The Palestinians, the so-called Palestinians of today are not historical residents in the land.  They are descendants of a group of migrant workers who came to Palestine starting in the late 1800s, starting about 1875.  They came from all over the Middle East, North Africa, and even Europe.  They came from Balkans, Greece, Syria, Egypt, there were Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Germans, Sudanese, Samaritans, Hungarians, Tartars, Scots, English and French, they all blended together as migrant workers just looking for work; they never owned the land.  They never had a desire for a government or an independent state; it never existed as such and the Arabs never sought to declare it as such.  In fact these immigrants were not landowners.  In 1947 the Palestinians, the Arabs, only owned 3% of the land in Israel. 

 

In fact, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica notes that in 1911 the nationalities of Palestine spoke over 50 different languages, so they didn’t even have their own native language.  So there is no such thing as a Palestinian, it’s not a nationality; it’s just descendants of these itinerant workers.  Now the Palestinians are Islamic and since 1993 the Islamic Jihad and Hamas have launched over 150 suicide attacks, over 50 in just the last 6 months.  Since the Palestinians began the Al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000 there have been over 6,000 attacks on Israel military facilities, Jewish communities and public places and private vehicles.   

 

The question we need to ask is: is peace in the Middle East even possible?  For example, they have various slogans that they like to use.  The Palestinian authority, [can’t understand name] in his weekly Friday prayer sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on July 11, 1997 stated:  “O Allah, destroy America for she is ruled by Zionist Jews.”  And then there’s an Islamic slogan, “kill the Jews on Saturday and kill the Christians on Sunday.”  Furthermore, Hamas issued the following communiqué: “All forces of our people, backed by our Arab and Islamic nation, are determined on persisting in escalating the intifada until the eradication of occupation from all usurped lands.”  They want to get rid of all the Jews.  Point two, they urge that “Palestinian authority to break away from the so-called peace process once and for all, adopt the resistance program and refuse all forms of coordination and negotiations and security meetings with the enemy, not to be deceived by American promises.”  And third, they ask their people scattered throughout the world, those living in non-Arab lands, to “display more interactions with our people’s intifada in the occupied homeland and share with them in the duty of resisting occupation,” that means they’re calling on Palestinians who live in the U.S. to rise up here and to be involved in terrorism.  There are over 7,000 Palestinians who live in New Jersey alone, so that certainly poses a threat. 

 

It is the Moslem clerics who call for the destruction of the Jews and the Christian.  For example, Edwin Locke who is the Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Motivation at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland writes: “The two sides are not equal.  Every Arab country is a monarchy, theocracy or military dictatorship.  Freedom of speech, property rights, free elections and the separation of Church and State are almost nonexistent.  Israel is the sole country in that entire region that recognizes individual rights.  The non-violent, non-PLO-supporting Arab who lives in Israel enjoys far greater freedom than he would in an Arab nation.”  15% of the population in Israel is Arab, they are Jewish, they are citizens in Israel and they have all the rights and freedoms that they would not have if they lived outside of the land.  And yet we don’t hear anything about them, we just hear about those who did what the Arabs wanted them to do in 1947, those who fled.  That created the refugee population.  Over 600,000 Arabs fled Israel and approximately the same amount of Jews were expelled by the Arabs, but the Jews didn’t expel any Arabs, but when the Arabs expelled the Jews from Yemen, from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt, they confiscated all of their possessions, the only thing they could leave with was the clothes on their back, and yet somehow Israel made room for all of them, brought them in and rebuilt the land. 

 

The Moslems are inherently against all of the Jews and their desire, their goal, is to destroy them.  In fact, Yasser Arafat stated to Arabic [can’t understand word] in Stockholm on January 30, 1996, that “we Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem; we plan to eliminate the state of Israel and establish a Palestinian state.”  That is their goal; their goal is not peace, it’s not coexistence, it is to destroy the Jews and to wipe out Israel.  And for that reason I think that the United States has been brought into this conflict in order to keep that from happening because I think in the long run we’re going to be preparing, we could very well be preparing things for the coming Tribulation, at least in the sense that we’re going to be used to destroy the power of Islam and that will set things up for the future because as it now exists, Islam is growing very powerful.  But in the end times there is no place for a powerful Islamic presence.  So something must happen.

 

So that gives us a different perspective and it all comes back to the fact that God’s plan for Israel is the center point of history and it is the center point of the future and therefore we as Christians must take… one point of application, we must make sure that we elect leaders in Washington that are pro-Israel above everything else.  It doesn’t matter about tax breaks, it doesn’t matter about economic plans, and it doesn’t matter about anything because if we are pro-Israel then God blesses those who bless Israel.  If we are not, then God curses those who curse Israel, it doesn’t matter what else we do.