Isaiah 14, commonly viewed as a description of Lucifer the fallen angel, yet a closer scrutiny of the verses reveals it as a prophecy against Antichrist, the man possessed by Lucifer after he is cast out of heaven, “Is this the man who made the earth tremble” (v. 16). Even defiling God’s Holy Temple in Jerusalem could possibly allude to a northern location of the Third Temple: “I will sit on the Mount of Assembly, far away in the north.” (v. 13b, KJV) The N.I.V reads, “I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.” The footnote reads, “Hebrew Zaphon, which means north, or on the north side.”
Psalm 48:2 also describes the Temple Mount, “It [the City of our God and his Holy Mountain] is beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth. Like the utmost heights of Zaphon is Mt. Zion.” This can only be referring to the Temple that was likely situated on the north side of the platform. Asher Kaufman, an expert on the Temple Mount believes that the original Temple lies 150 feet north of the Dome of the Rock where a copula was erected with several inscriptions: Qubat Al-Arwah (The Dome of the Spirits) and Qubat Al-Alwa (Dome of the Heights). Al-Arwah, or the spirits could have been intended to say “Al-Ruach” (The Spirit, Shekina Glory) in which the Holy Spirit rested.
As we have seen above, not only does the Mahdi-Antichrist desire to occupy Jerusalem as the capital of his Caliphate, but specifically he desires to sit in Baitul Al-Maqdas “the Holy House,” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
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Our Messiah Is Their Antichrist And Their Antichrist Is Our Messiah
So we’ve seen that Islam’s Messiah is identical to the Biblical Antichrist and it gets even worse, as a Muslim, I was also taught that the man who Christians believe is the Messiah—the one that will return from heaven to defend the nation of Israel—is the Antichrist of Islam’s eschatology. The Antichrist is known as ad-Dajjal who claims to be the divine Messiah and will fight on the side of the Jews. We have seen how Islam’s definition of Antichrist includes his leading 70,000 Jews and Christians into a battle with Isa, the Muslim Jesus who will kill the Antichrist in Lud. Indeed, Satan did not leave any ground uncovered. For even as Christians are repeatedly warned not to fall for false prophets and false messiahs, so also have Muslims been warned not to fall for the “deceptive” powers of the Dajjal. He is said to be a great deceiver who will have miraculous powers and who will temporarily hold power over the whole earth: “The Prophet was warning us that in the Last-Days there would be someone who would deceive all of humanity. The Dajjal will possess power over this world. Thus, Muslims must be careful not to have the love of the world in their hearts so they won’t leave their religion and follow Him. He will be able to heal the sick by wiping his hand on them, like Jesus did, but with this deceit the Dajjal will lead people down the path to hell. Thus the Dajjal is the false Messiah, or Anti-Christ (Massih ad-Dajjal). He will pretend to be the Messiah, and deceive people by showing them amazing powers.”180 “the Dajjal will say to a Bedouin Arab, ‘what will you think if I bring your father and mother back to life for you? Will you bear witness that I am your lord?’ The Bedouin will say, ‘Yes.’ So two devils will assume the appearance of his father and mother, and say, ‘O my son, follow him for he is your lord.’”181 The Dajjal’s deceptive signs are for the purpose of leading people into believing that he is actually their “lord.” Muslim apologist, Abu Ameenah Bilal Phillips said of the Dajjal that he “will claim to be divine.”182 Muslim scholars universally agree with Phillips. As result of the fact that the Dajjal is, according to Islamic tradition, the false Jewish Messiah who claims to be God, Muslims believe that the Dajjal will thus claim to be both Jesus Christ by name and God Almighty.
As a Muslim, I was always taught that the Dajjal would be Jewish. If you go to the Islamic bookstores, you will find dozens of books warning Muslims about the coming evil Jewish Antichrist. Emergence of the Dajjal, The Jewish King by Matloob Ahmed Qasmi is a big seller. Imam Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi of the Palestinian Authority articulated the Islamic perspective regarding the expectation of the Jewish people quite well in one of his sermons: “The Jews await the false Jewish Messiah, while we await with Allah’s help…the Mahdi and Jesus, peace be upon him. Jesus’ pure hands will murder the false Jewish messiah. Where? In the city of Lod, in Palestine. Palestine will be, as it was in the past, a grave-yard for the ‘invaders.’”183
Even many proclaiming Palestinian Christians like Samuel Shahid says of the Dajjal that he will be “the embodiment of the Jewish hope and longing. The bulk of his army is recruited from the Jews.”184 The sad thing is that many Christians in the West believe that the Antichrist is a Jew. The real Jesus of the Bible however, will indeed come as a divine defender of Israel and her people as Israel’s spiritual children, the Christians. We can see that Satan’s strategy in blinding the minds of the Muslims in order that when the real Jesus returns, the Muslims will already have been prepared to reject him as the great deceiver and false Jewish Messiah.
At least six hundred years before Islam ever existed, the Jewish Prophets and the Jewish Apostles described the event of Jesus returning to Israel, defeating her enemies and finally gaining full acceptance among the Jewish people: “In that day I (The Lord) will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zechariah 12:10). “And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob’” (Romans 11:26).
When Jesus returns, “to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem,” he will be physically present in Israel. At this time, it is said that those Jews who are alive in Israel will realize that He is “the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him.” Thus the acknowledgement of Jesus as the genuine Jewish Messiah and divine Savior will fill their hearts and, “so all Israel will be saved.” But this will only serve to confirm the suspicions of the Muslims. This will be proof that he is the Dajjal!
Muslims are expecting Jews to acknowledge the Dajjal as the divine Jewish Messiah, thus in the Islamic mind, the Jesus of Biblical tradition will fulfill the three most primary Islamic expectations of the Dajjal. Clearly, these traditions will be used by Satan, not only to preempt the Muslims of the earth from receiving the real Jesus when He comes, but literally to empower them to attack Him.
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Both Stop The Rain
Why would Islam parallel the works of the two great witnesses in Revelation to the works of the Dajjal? Mohammed warned Muslims of the Dajjal that he will work all kinds of miracles, controlling the weather and bringing drought or rains:
“Then he (ad-Dajjal) will command the sky to rain, and the earth to bring forth vegetation, and their cattle will come back to them in the evening, with their humps very high, and their udders full of milk, and their flanks stretched.”185 “The false messiah (al-Maseeh al-dajjaal) is the liar who leads people astray, the messiah of misguidance who will tempt people by means of the signs that he is given, such as bringing down rain, reviving the earth to bring forth vegetation, and other ‘miracles.’”186
Yet the Bible in nearly an identical fashion portrays the great works of the Two Witnesses as being able to “have power to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will” (Revelation 11:6). Islam is set up to kill the Two Witnesses that testify of the coming Christ. In the Book of Revelation, we find the description of these two eschatological characters. In brief, they are two Old Testament prophets who will appear in Jerusalem a couple of years prior to the return of Jesus, during the reign of Antichrist. They will be identified as great miracle workers:
“And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and
they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceeded out of their mouth, and devoured their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will” (Revelation 11:3-6).
The two witnesses will fulfill a forerunner role similar to the ministry of John the Baptist who prepared the people for the “first” coming of Jesus in the first century.
In light of the confluence of these traditions and Scriptures, consider now the following scenario: The city of Jerusalem is under either the complete or partial control of the Muslim Caliph. During this time, two Jewish individuals emerge on the scene and begin to declare that the Mahdi is a deceiver and the chief henchman of Satan. They declare that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Messiah, the Son of God and the only true way of salvation. They declare that Islam is a sham and the religion of the devil. In the midst of this, these individuals work great miracles and have great success in winning many people to their cause. Not only would these individuals be Messianic Jews who proclaim that Jesus (Yeshua) is the Messiah, but they would also literally claim to be Old Testament prophets of Jehovah. In all of this, these individuals would fulfill many of the Muslim apocalyptic traditions and expectations of the Dajjal—or deceivers to come. Clearly these individuals would be immediately branded by Muslims as being dajjals and their deaths would be sought with ferocity that we cannot imagine.
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Both Enjoy Desecrating Bodies
As we read the narrative about the Two Witnesses, we see that after these two prophets are killed by the Antichrist, their dead bodies are left on display in the streets of Jerusalem. This practice of displaying the dead bodies of enemies or criminals in public places is a distinctly Islamic practice and is still done to this day. In typical Palestinian fashion, the two witnesses are finally killed and their bodies are desecrated:
“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindred and tongues and nations (Gentiles) shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a half the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them” (Revelation 11:7-12).
Often times the bodies are even dragged through the streets for all to see. Of course, most of us still remember the stripped body of the U.S. soldier that was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 or the charred bodies of Americans strung up in Iraq. The purpose of these acts is to shame the dead and to scare any others who might consider committing a similar “crime.” It is also a sick celebration of victory. Only recently, this practice has been seen in Afghanistan. According to Can West News Service, on December 19, 2006: “26 local Afghan men were executed by the Taliban yesterday and their headless bodies put on public display around a local village, in a morbid attempt to dissuade other civilians here from assisting NATO and Afghan National Security Forces operating in the area…Their heads were removed and their bodies were hanged from trees in and around Bazar Talukan, a small agrarian village.”187 As recently as February of 2007, in Saudi Arabia, America’s biggest Arab ally, four men who were charged with robbery were publicly beheaded and crucified: “The bodies of four Sri Lankans beheaded in Saudi Arabia have gone on public display, in what was said to be an effort to halt a rise in crime committed by foreigners. The gang was executed on Monday at a public square in a busy market district of the capital, Riyadh…The al-Riyadh Newspaper reported that the men had been ‘crucified’—tied to wooden beams after beheading—as part of moves to deter other foreigners from crime…The desert kingdom, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, says it applies strict Islamic law.”188
CELEBRATE AND GIVE AWAY GIFTS
Beyond the fact that Islam has a long-standing pattern of publicly displaying dead bodies after killing them in accordance with Islamic law, we also see that after the Two Witnesses are killed, that the people will celebrate their deaths as if it were Christmas: “And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another” (Revelation 11:10). Almost no one will forget the TV images of Muslims from Kabul to Kuala Lumpur, from Amman to Tehran dancing in the streets and celebrating after 9-11. In Palestine, we saw candy being given away in the streets until Yasser Arafat threatened the lives of AP reporters to stop showing what was really taking place. This type of schadenfreude—the taking of pleasure and rejoicing in the misfortune and pain of non-Muslims is an ever-present reality throughout the Muslim world. It is not even uncommon to see or hear of the mothers of suicide bombers celebrating the fact that their child was able to kill some “enemies of Islam.” How much more if the greatest thorns in the side of the Islamic world were both killed on the same day? The Muslim world would virtually explode with joy and songs of excitement. I can see the party streamers and confetti even now. And so, in both the public display of the dead as well as the giving of gifts to celebrate the deaths of “infidels,” we see distinctly Islamic practices. It should now be clear to everyone that Islam has taken those things that the Bible calls evil and has made them good. Islam has taken the Biblical Antichrist and has made him its Messiah. Yet Islam has taken the Biblical Messiah and has made him the Antichrist. This is the backwards world of Islam. Islam is a reversalist religion. As John Calvin the protestant reformer rightly observed “That was the ‘Gospel’ of Mahomet (Mohammed)—to turn all things upside down and to bring all things into confusion…”189
While Islam denies the fact that Christians and Jews will ever find eternal life, it claims that murderous suicidal martyrdom operations carried out against Christians and Jews are the key to eternal life and paradise. Islam calls rape and stolen booty the rewards of righteousness. Islam refers to the aggressive imperialistic invasion of a sovereign nation as Futuhat (liberation), but when a nation is genuinely liberated from tyranny, it is called “aggression,” and “occupation.” Islam calls Jews monkeys and terrorists holy. It forbids even music, calls joy evil and the oppression of women righteousness.
Section III
Literal References to Christ’s Wars With Muslim Nations
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