God's War on Terror: Islam, Prophecy and the Bible

by Walid Shoebat

  “For it is the day of Jehovah’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. Its streams shall be turned into pitch and its dust into brimstone; its land shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night or day; its smoke shall ascend forever” (Isaiah 34:8-10).

  Incredibly, almost three millennia before the discovery of fuel oil, Isaiah predicted the burning of the very thing that was used in Babel to build a name for the rebellious ones—the pitch. Pitch is bitumen and tar, which technically is simply crude oil. Have you ever wondered why God calls the Antichrist “Nimrod” in Micah 5? His roots go back to Babel. Notice that the land shall not be “like” burning pitch but shall actually become burning pitch—there is no simile here. This prophecy could only be fulfilled in an oil rich land. The word for “streams” (nachal) is not water streams but “torrent,” “torrent-valley,” “wadi/valley,” “mine,” or “tunnels,” and thus need not be understood strictly as streams of water. Obviously water would never burn like pitch as the verse mandates. The picture painted is literally of a land that turns into a river of burning wells (tunnels) of petroleum. This is also confirmed in Revelation 18 regarding the harlot city:

  “And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning” (Revelation 18:9). “And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What [city is] like unto this great city!’” (Revelation 18:18)

  Remember the oil fields during Gulf War I, when Saddam Hussein set the oil wells on fire? Even during the day, the skies were black with smoke. This is precisely how Isaiah the prophet portrays Babylon’s End-Time judgment. In Revelation, we read that God will, “Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself” (Revelation 18:4-7). This chalice of Mystery Babylon is the same as in Jeremiah 51: “He shall recompense her. Babylon was a golden cup in the Lord’s hand that made all the earth drunk. The nations drunk her wine; Therefore the nations are deranged” (Jeremiah 51:7). When God issues a judgment, he hands over this cup to the Harlot and makes her drink. From the very cup that she used to establish her influence, from the abundance of her oil wealth, she will be fed a double portion of punishment by the very product that she used to establish herself and her power by her own burning with it. Though she has funded the export of this Abaddon destroyer called by the West “radical Islam” and the terrorists who have turned the world upside down, so also will the radical Islamists eventually turn on Saudi Arabia and give her something twice as bad as anything that any other nation has seen. She will be burned—in one hour, she will fall. Therefore the kings of the earth shall weep and mourn for their oil, but their oil will go up in flames. All this is what the Bible declares to be, “Jehovah’s vengeance, and the year of recompenses for the [legal] controversy of Zion.” This cannot be ancient Babylon. God Himself finally executes judgment on Israel’s behalf with a great destruction. The same rendering is in Jeremiah 51:11: “the vengeance for His Temple.” Again, this judgment against “Edom” extends from Teman to Dedan:

  “Thus Says the Lord GOD; ‘Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, and revenged himself upon them.’ Therefore thus Says the Lord GOD; ‘I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it; and I will make it desolate from Teman; and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword’” (Ezekiel 25:12-13).

  Teman is a place name meaning “right side” that is “southern.” The Edomites were a clan descended from Esau (Genesis 36:11, Genesis 36:15; 1 Chronicles 1:36). Teman was a city that was associated with the Edomites (Jeremiah 49:7, Jeremiah 49:20; Ezekiel 25:13; Amos 1:12; Obadiah 1:9; Habakkuk 3:3). Teman has often been identified with Tawilan, fifty miles south of the Dead Sea, just east of Petra, though archaeological evidence does not confirm the site as the principal city of southern Edom. Others understand Teman to designate southern Edom in general. To others still, the link with Dedan (Jeremiah 49:7; Ezekiel 25:13) suggests Tema on the Arabian Peninsula.5 Because the Bible chose to identify Teman with Dedan, we need to accept that Teman is in South Central Arabia in Yemen. Dedan is well defined and was an ancient city in central Saudi Arabia that is now known as Al-Ula. 6 The Lord made the geographical location of Mystery Babylon quite clear for anyone who would seek it out.

  THE EXTENT OF ARABIA’S DESTRUCTION

  This destruction of Arabia is complete and fits the description made by several prophets whose prophecies correlate with Isaiah 34:

  “Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning, and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: ‘Woe! Woe, 0 great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!… Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, ‘Was there ever a city like this great city?’” (Revelation 18:8-10, 17-18)

  Ships on the Red Sea can easily see Arabia’s destruction. The Harlot will be destroyed violently and swiftly “and in one day,” “with such violence,” she will be “consumed with fire.” The judgment on the Harlot is permanent. There will never be heard in this city the sound of music or musicians. Workers will never rebuild the city. The sound of tradesman will never be heard or seen in her again. All agriculture will cease. There will be no weddings. All signs of human habitation will be permanently eliminated. Apart from Sodom and Gomorrah, this type of utter destruction has never been seen in any other city, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “After her destruction, Babylon will merely be a home for demons, evil spirits, and scavenging desert creatures” (Revelation 18:1-2).

  This is in line with the ancient Eastern perception that desolate desert wastelands were the dwelling place of demons and unclean spirits. The point being emphasized is that after Babylon is destroyed, there will be absolutely no human life ever found there again. Jeremiah agrees; he describes this: “So desert creatures and hyenas will live there, and there the owl will dwell. It will never again be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation” (Jeremiah 50:39). Isaiah confirms a similar fate: “It shall be a habitation of jackals” (Isaiah 34:14). And again later, the destruction of Babylon is described as being absolute. Isaiah speaks of this event: “For I will rise up against them, says the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon its name and remnant, and offspring and posterity, says the Lord…I will sweep it with the broom of destruction” (Isaiah 12:15). The broom of destruction? Anyone who has seen footage of a nuclear explosion has seen the fury and the power of the ominous cloud that sweeps up everything in its path. Could this verse be describing a nuclear explosion? “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth; Blood and fire and pillars of smoke” (Joel 2:30). Could the pillars of smoke be the scene of mushroom clouds from a nuclear explosion?

  HOW COULD THE BEAST DESTROY THE HARLOT?

  Revelation 17 tells us that the Beast hates the Harlot. He will ultimately turn on her, killing her, devouring her, and burning her body with fire:

  “The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until God’s words are fulfilled. The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:16-18).

  How can this be? Some may argue that Muslims would never attack such Islamic “holy” sites as Mecca and Medina. If we take the Western view of Rome being the Harlot, one could argue the same, how could Europe burn and destroy Rome?

/>   Yet when it comes to Mecca, plenty of Muslims have attacked the city before. In the late 7th Century, Al-Hajjaj bin Yousef Al-Thaqafi (a Muslim) laid siege to Mecca and destroyed much of the Ka’ba with stones launched from catapults. During the First World War, Saudi Arabia was actually occupied by the Turkish Ottomans. The Turks deeply resented Arab imperialism that had spread through the vast Islamic empire and made strong attempts to restrict Arab culture and language throughout their empire. This enmity and resistance was so severe that the Arabs were persuaded by the British through their envoy, T. E. Lawrence (also known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), to revolt against the Ottoman occupation and help the allies. The Turks bombarded the mosque of the Ka’ba, the most sacred shrine of all Islam. One shell actually hit the Ka’ba, burning a hole in the “holy carpet” and killing nine Arabs who were kneeling in prayer. In modern times, the same disregard for Mecca by Muslims has been seen. On November 20, 1979, over 500 militants and their leader attacked the false Islamic Mahdi, Juhaiman ibn Muhammad ibn Saif al Utaiba.7 In the 1980s, on several occasions, followers of Ayatollah Khomeini disrupted the annual hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of this was quelled by heavy security controls, but in July 1987, over 400 people died as a result of a serious riot instigated by thousands of Iranian pilgrims.8 Three years later, during Gulf War I, Saddam Hussein sent numerous scuds flying over Saudi Arabia, disregarding the high risk they would pose to the Islamic “holy land.” There were no protests from Muslim nations. And as recent as 2003, three al-Qaeda militants blew themselves up during an attack in Mecca.39 The idea of Muslims attacking Mecca or Saudi Arabia is far from impossible. The day is drawing near when the emerging Beast Empire led by Turkey and Iran will attack Mecca and destroy the Arabian Harlot.

  THE DESTRUCTION OF MECCA AND MEDINA IN ISLAMIC PROPHECY

  Confirming what the Bible which predicts as the destruction of this Harlot by the Beast that she rides is an Islamic prophecy that predicts the destruction of it’s bride Mecca by Muslim nations: “The final battle will be waged by Muslim faithful coming on the backs of horses…carrying black banners. They will stand on the east side of the Jordan River and will wage war that the earth has never seen before. The true Messiah who is the Islamic MehdL…will defeat Europe…will lead this army of Seljuks, He will preside over the world from Jerusalem because Mecca would have been destroyed…” (Yawm Al-Ghadab, Safar Alhwaly).

  Medina is not immune of this destruction: “The flourishing state of Jerusalem will be when Yathrib (Medina) is in ruins, the ruined state of Yathrib will be when the Great War comes, and the outbreak of the Great War will be at the conquest of Constantinople and the conquest of Constantinople when the Dajjal (the Antichrist) comes forth. He (the Prophet) struck his thigh or his shoulder with his hand and said: This is as true as you are here or as you are sitting.”10 Yathrib is another name for Medina, the city of the Prophet Mohammed, the second holiest city to Islam. Constantinople is Istanbul in Turkey. Many radical Muslims perceive that Istanbul has been under the control of secular hypocritical Muslims until its recent restoration to the Islamists. So according to this prophesy, after the fall of Istanbul to the true Muslims, (which, through recent elections in 2007, has just occurred) Medina will be destroyed.11

  In the Last-Days, a coalition of radical Islamic nations will turn on and destroy Saudi Arabia. The prophecies by which radical Muslims live dictate just such an event. Thus, if the day comes that radical Muslims actually destroy Saudi Arabia, it is also very likely that this prophecy will embolden and empower them to imagine that they are acting according to Allah’s plan.

  87

  The Harlot’s Connection To A False Religion

  The Harlot, in many ways, might be likened to Dr. Frankenstein. The Beast is the monster that the Harlot has created.

  The Beast is a coalition of ten kings representing the seven kingdoms in the past, under the authority of the Antichrist. The Harlot is a distinct and separate geographically definable entity that represents the primary religious source of the Antichrist’s religion. The Harlot is sitting atop a scarlet Beast. This beast is the final Islamic Empire of the Antichrist that we have already discussed in detail. This close, seemingly symbiotic relationship of rider and steed should not be dismissed as an irrelevant component of this picture. The Lone Ranger had Silver and the Harlot has the Beast. There is a very close relationship that is evident between the two. Beyond the fact that the Harlot is riding the Beast, there are other noteworthy similarities that the two share. First, the woman is dressed in scarlet; the Beast likewise is portrayed as a scarlet Beast—the two match. Secondly, even as the Beast Empire will behead God’s people, so the Harlot is drunk on the blood of the saints. They both share in the bloodguilt of God’s people.

  We have examined what “Mystery Babylon” means, but we also need to understand the meaning of the rest of her title: “The Mother of all Prostitutes and Abominations of the earth” (Revelation 17:5). The first thing that we need to understand is that this title is a typical Eastern sort of phrase—the kind of phrase Ahmadenijad uses when he says that Islam will be on top of all the mountains. Remember Saddam Hussein’s comments in the days leading up to first Gulf War? He declared that the U.S. and Iraq were about to engage in “the mother of all battles.” Of course, in typical megalomaniacal game-talk, he also declared that America was about to experience “the mother of all defeats.” The term “Mother of” is simply an Eastern way of expressing a superlative; it is the biggest, the worst, the unmatched, and most significant of all.

  I point this out because many mistakenly interpret “Mother of” here to mean the source of all other forms of idolatry. The Eastern-minded reader; however, immediately recognizes that the purpose of this phrase is to portray the Great Harlot as the greatest manifestation of spiritual infidelity against the God of the Bible that has ever existed throughout the history of the world. So the Harlot is the greatest of all spiritual prostitutes, but she is not necessarily the source of all other false religions. Throughout history, many “prostitutes” or false religions exist and have existed, but the Great Harlot is portrayed here as being by far the most significant of them all. The Harlot’s false religion is also a mystery in that like no other pagan religion, it sprouts from a mixture of a heretical Christian cult and a pagan Moon-god religion that has attempted to cloak itself with certain Jewish and Christian elements in order to appear as a Biblical faith and the rightful successor of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

  When the veil is pulled back, Islam’s true nature and pagan source becomes apparent: It is a religion that denies the essence of God, contradicts His character and blasphemes His attributes.

  GALATIANS 4—THE TWO COVENANTS

  Galatians 4 speaks of two covenants: one is true and the other is false: “for these are two covenants.” The first is crucial for our study; “the one from mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar. For this Hagar is mount Sinai in Arabia” (Galatians 4:24-25).

  The covenant of bondage is allegorized by Mount Sinai, yet the literal definition for this reference is Arabia. The spiritual battle, according to Galatians 4, is between Arabia (Hagar) and Jerusalem (Sarah):

  “For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he [who was] of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman [was] by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the Mount Sinai, which genders to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, [thou] barren that bears not; break forth and cry, thou that travail not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him [that was born] after the Spirit, even so [it is] now. Nevertheless what Says the script
ure? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free” (Galatians 4:21-31).

  Most historians agree that Sinai is in Egypt, so why is this text insisting on an Arabian location? The Bible states that a religion of bondage—Islam literally means submission—came out of the desert of Arabia through Hagar (Ishmael’s lineage). Even the name Sinai comes from the Moon-god’s name “Sin.” The desert is the “Wilderness of Sin” or the “Desert of the Moon-god.” In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539 B.C.), the last king of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia as center of Moon-god worship. As Segel, a historian of the ancient Middle East has stated, “South Arabia’s stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations.”12

  THE RICH ROYAL PROSTITUTE

  The Prostitute is dressed in scarlet and crimson garments that glitter with jewels, pearls, and gold. Scarlet is the color of royalty. When Jesus was taken prisoner, the Roman centurions dressed Him in a scarlet robe (Matthew 27:28) to mock His “royalty.” The scarlet and crimson clothes of the Harlot also connote royalty. Because they literally glitter with gold, jewels, and pearls, she is also considered rich beyond measure.

  But there is also another meaning to the color crimson. Crimson represents sinfulness. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). Of course, this also perfectly matches the nature of this corrupt and murderous prostitute.

  What Islamic desert nation is governed by a Royal Monarchy that is known throughout the earth as being fabulously wealthy and utterly corrupt? What place is decked with gold, silver, and precious stones?