JUDGMENT DAY!

 

 

By

 

 

DAVE HUNT*

 

[*From Chapters 1-3, 5, 8, 11, 13-15 in the author’s book:JUDGMENT DAY!]

 

 

“In what is possibly the most comprehensive clear-cut examination of ancient biblical prophecy and modern-day Middle east politics regarding Islam, Israel, and the nations, JUDGMENT DAY! is an eye-opening page-turner for schools, analysts, pastors, professors, politicians, and laypeople alike.  Amazing historical facts and first-hand insight make this book a thrilling, sometimes troubling, reads – but one that is necessary for an accurate understanding of the prophetic times in which we live.

 

 

Drawing parallels between the “land for peace” appeasement of Hitler (prior to his systematic extermination of more than 6 million Jews) and today’s strategy of the nations united against Israel is not at all difficult – but Dave Hunt goes much deeper than that.  With painstaking clarity and detail, JUDGMENT DAY! reveals the ancient agenda against the Jews, and traces its twisted trial to modern-day descriptions of the U.S. Presidents, foreign ambassadors, covert (and overt) military operations, businesspeople, educators, and world leaders alike.

 

 

In this no-holds-barred documentary, Dave Hunt skilfully dissects the myth of Palestinian claims to the “Promised Land,” and exposes the fraud, deceit, and treachery of an international community allied against the Jewish nation.  As the author writes, “In the final analysis, the battle over Israel is a battle for the souls and destiny of mankind.  If Islam and the nations siding with her should accomplish their goal of destroying Israel, then mankind [from a biblical perspective] is eternally lost….

 

 

Why are the stakes so high?  What will the outcome be?  Discover the uncomfortable but irrefutable truth in Dave Hunt’s impassioned expose - JUDGMENT DAY!

 

 

DAVE HUNT is a best-selling author and internationally esteemed researcher, lecturer, and scholar, whose works have been translated into more than 40 languages.

 

 

Over 4 million copies of his books have been sold, which include: The Cult Explosion, the God Makers, The New Spirituality, The Seduction of Christianity, Global Peace and the Rise of Antichrist, Occult Invasion, A Cup of Trembling, A Woman Rides the Beast, In Defence of the Faith, An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith, What Love is This? and Seeking and Finding God.

 

 

Dave’s impeccable research and recognized scholarship make him a sought-after speaker at conferences.  Along with co-host A. T. McMahon, Dave also challenges listeners on the weekly radio program “Search the Scriptures Daily,” broadcast over 350 stations in the U.S. and worldwide via shortwave radio.

 

 

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ENDORSEMENTS

 

 

 

SHIMON EREM

 

 

GENERAL ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES, RETIRED

ONE OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ISRAELI GENERALS

OF ALL TIME

 

 

“Dave Hunt’s JUDGMENT DAY! has encyclopaedic dimensions of the most crucial and vital issues of our times... ‘Life and Death’ issues, which affect us both as individuals and as a Judeo-Christian community.  In 1948, when the State of Israel was just re-established, 600,000 Israelis faced 80 million Arabs!  Sixty-thousand ill-trained and ill-equipped Israeli ‘soldiers’ of a newly organized army (six months old) crushed 600,000 (a ratio of one to ten) soldiers of four Arab armies, well trained and heavily armed, reinforced by units from seven additional Arab countries, not to mention the active help of the British.  Shame and humiliation overwhelmed the whole Islamic world!  To eliminate Israel, a strategy was conceived, establishing the ‘unholy trinity’: Islamic terrorism, a hostile, anti-Semitic Europe, and a corrupt United Nations.  The slogan of conquest is:First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.’  Europe bus already been invaded by hordes of Muslims. It is all there in Dove Hunt’s JUDGMENT DAY!  Who is next? USA?!  Like the biblical prophets, Dave Hunt has a vision and is not hesitant to issue a Battle Cry.  JUDGMENT DAY! is a must-read and a call to action! James’ statement (2: 26), ‘Faith without works is dead,’ cannot be ignored!  Not only will Faith be dead, but, alas, the faithful too ... unless we act!  Dove Hunt makes it utterly clear in JUDGMENT DAY!  It is a powerful book!”

 

 

RICHAND SCOTT

 

COLONEL, USMC, RETIRED

 

Former Marine Chair for Security Studies,

George C Marshall Center, Carmisch, Germany

 

 

JUDGMENT DAY! is a tour-de-force, both in scope, scholarship, and insight.  This superbly researched work examines the most vexing global security issue facing our world today.  Among his other achievements in JUDGMENT DAY!, Dove Hunt invites the reader to honestly examine and evaluate almost 1,400 years of Islamic history.  For students of history, JUDGMENT DAY! is refreshingly honest when one considers the whitewash given this topic in mainstream ocademia today.  For those who believe that Islamic militancy is an aberration of the Muslim faith, that the Jihadists have no (ruthless) designs for world domination, or that Muhammad was a man of peace, this book is required reading.  Dove has exposed the blind side of Western liberal thinking with respect to the threat posed by the Islamists to individual freedom, democracy, and world peace.  How else does one explain that in the Islamic State of today there is virtually no room for the basic freedoms that we enjoy in the West?  Those of us living in the democracies of the West ignore this sobering, well-documented assessment at our own peril.”

 

 

FLONENE MILLER-WATSON

 

USAF, NATIONAL CHAPLAIN, WASP

 

 

One of the only 25 women pilots who formed the original WWII Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying

Squadron (WAFS) in 1942.  (In 1943, upon graduation, newly militarily trained women

pilots began to be assigned to the WAFS.)  The name was then changed to Women Air Force

Service Pilots (WASP).  Mrs. Watson is the national chaplain of the WASP

 

 

JUDGMENT DAY! is a great revelation to the general public regarding the truth about the Islamic religion. It is a highly academic and well-documented presentation of the facts, yet written in a warm-hearted style that makes for outstanding reading.  Dove develops a foundation of the beginnings of the nation of Israel and the religion of Islam, building to the end results today, as the forces of Allah threaten to take over the world.  For those knowledgeable about Islam and those who are unfamiliar with the nature of it, JUDGMENT DAY! will help the render to understand what the Muslims do, what their mindset is, and what our response should be.”

 

 

CLYDE F. AUTIO

 

MAJOR GENERAL, USAF, RETIRED

 

 

“Once in a great while, a book appears that dares to challenge the prevailing spirits of the culture.  Dave Hunt’s book, JUDGMENT DAY, is such a book.  Dave has dared to take on the divisive and potentially destructive liberal stronghold of political correctness by presenting on excellently documented work about one of the greatest threats faced by the United States, and probably the entire western world: Muslim terrorism and the eventual ‘Muslimization’ of the West.  Mr. Hunt and I do not agree on a number of theological points, one being the role of the nation of Israel in future history.  However, I learned many years ago that if I limited my reading and listening to only those people with whom I fully agree, my life would at best he an empty vanilla existence and at worst blindsided by facts from my adversaries.  JUDGMENT DAY! is a book that is a must read for every leader, church worker, and person of influence.  It clearly sets forth not only the current goals of Islam but also recounts the long history of a religion that has prospered by the sword and reveals how Muslim-dominated nations deny the most basic elements of a free western civilization.  Even though most Muslims ore not Arabs, the Wahhabi sect domination of Islam is forcing the religion back to an eighth-century desert culture.  The United States must develop an accurate working knowledge of Islam and become unified in the war against Muslim terrorism or live in a world filled with hate, destruction, threats, and eventual capitulation of our most respected human rights.  We must demand that our nation’s leaders, in every venue, project a clear understanding of the threat and set forth both domestic and international goals to defend the United States!  As Dave Hunt so clearly reveals, we must not continue to permit Muslim education, apologists, or religionists to have access to use our freedoms and institutions for their destructive purposes.”

 

 

DAVID FUNK

 

MSG, USA, RETIRED

 

 

JUDGMENT DAY! is without a doubt a must read!  Dave Hunt’s superb historical research documents the seriousness of the Islamic threat not only to Israel but to every non-Muslim nation on earth.  As the scholarship of this book clearly proves, militant Islam is not an aberration but a global force intent on destroying the very foundations of freedom and democracy for every man, woman, and child on the planet - and will not stop until worldwide submission to its god, Allah, is achieved.  As JUDGMENT DAY! so aptly illustrates, of the heart of Islam is an appetite for absolute rule that cannot he appeased; it leaves freedom-loving leaders no other choice but to defend now - or be dominated for life.”

 

 

JOSEPH FARAN

 

FOUNDER, WORLDNETDAILY.COM

 

 

“What’s going on in our world?  Where are we headed?  What does it all mean?  Dave Hunt has nailed it.  This book is a wake-up call to a sleep-walking world trying to make sense of events that were foretold in the greatest book ever written, the Bible.”

 

 

EARL POYSTI

 

FOUNDER OF RUSSIAN CHRISTIAN RADIO

 

 

An active missionary during the Iron Curtain days,

his influence continues today as President Emeritus of RCR

 

 

“This latest book from Dave Hunt is a must rend for everyone everywhere.  Well written and heavily documented, JUDGMENT DAY! makes us realize that we need to wake up to the truth of what is happening in our world.  The information it contains is shocking, but the reader will he thankful for the facts.  The further one reads, the more compelling it becomes.  Especially impressive is the courage of the author to name many of our most highly respected leaders - exposing the truth of where they have stood regarding Islam and Israel.”

 

 

DAVID SIEGEL

 

FREELANCE RESEARCHER AND EDITOR OF MEMOIRS

OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS; ISRAELI CITIZEN

 

 

“Dave Hunt’s JUDGMENT DAY: Israel, Islam and the Nations is written from a clearly biblical perspective. His treatment of the subject offers no room for political correctness, ecumenical accommodation, or denominational loyalty.  Hunt believes that many who claim to be Christians either fail to understand what the Bible says about Israel, or they wilfully go against what is written.  Whether they are presidents, prime ministers, popes or pivotal Protestant leaders, they risk much by going against what is plainly written in the Bible.  The forces arrayed against Israel are well-organized, and quite committed to her destruction.  It would be a move of wisdom for Christians to make sure which side they ore on.  As a Jew of Israel, I have come to appreciate the Biblical imperative for sola scriptura Christians to support Israel - spiritually, theologically, and personally - through the writings of Dave Hunt.”

 

 

WALID SHOEBAT

 

FORMER PLO TERRORIST AND AUTHOR OF WHY I LEFT JIHAD

 

 

“I have studied Dave Hunt’s writings for years as he has stood against the tide, relentlessly exposing evil.  In comparison with so many who have come and gone, or others who water down the truth, Dave runs the course and fights the good fight.  Indeed, for years Dave Hunt has been a great inspiration to me and to many who come out of the darkness of Islam.  In his new book, JUDGMENT DAY!, Dave calls a spade a spade and tells it as it is.  He accurately, and with much historic and biblical evidence, shows beyond any doubt that the world is on a downward spiral - and is clueless regarding the significance of the Bible, Israel, and the coming danger - by the irrational sellout of Israel.  JUDGMENT DAY! is a must-read and is crucial in exposing the things you never see in the world media regarding human destiny and the eternal consequences we face if we ignore the detailed biblical warnings so carefully detailed in this book.”

 

 

THAD HOVER

 

COLONEL, USMC, RETIRED

 

 

“One of the basic tenets of warfare is ‘Know your enemy.’  Dave Hunt’s JUDGMENT DAY! introduces and explains the radical faith of Islam and the actions of its subscribers.  Any military that takes on this perversion of truth in battle is doomed for defeat unless they con look beyond the current psyche that all men and their religious beliefs are good, if just understood.  A ‘must-read’ for all U.S. State and D.O.D. personnel as they execute this current world war.  Military chaplains should rend it, as they have an obligation to prepare their troops concerning the historical and religious workings of the pending enemy.”

 

 

HANS KNISTIAN

 

PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL SAKHAROV COMMITTEE,

AUTHOR OF 33 BOOKS

 

 

“This is the most important book on the issues of the Middle East and the Holy land.  Strangely enough, historians, politicians, journalists, and even Christians believe the lies and falsification of ‘history’ conceived by the Muslims and repeated as fact through decades and centuries of propaganda.  Dave Hunt goes to the roots and digs up from history … the coming judgment on Israel, Islam, and the nations.  Everyone who loves the truth - whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew - should read it.  This book con change hearts - and even today’s politics.”

 

 

RANDALL PRICE, PH.D

 

FOUNDER & PRESIDENT WORLD OF THE BIBLE MINISTRIES, INC.

 

 

Holding a Th.M. in Old Testament and Semitic Languages,

and a Ph. D. in Middle Eastern Studies, Dr. Price is a prolific author who

lectures worldwide about Israel and Islam; he also leads educational tours

and directs archaeological excavations in Israel

 

 

“It has been said that there may be moderate Muslims, but Islam is not moderate.  Dave Hunt ably exposes this fact and reminds us that the Islam producing today’s terrorism is the Islam of its founder, Mohammed.  As such, it is as much a threat to Judaism and Christianity today as it was when it was first spread by the sword in the seventh century A.D.  Dave’s impassioned warning, however, goes beyond the political to the prophetic, alerting us of the judgment that is about to befall this planet and how to prepare an escape before that day arrives.”

 

 

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[Page 5]

CHAPTER 1

 

THE STAGE IS SET

 

 

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN TINY ISRAEL and the vast coalition of Arab/Muslim nations arrayed against her is without question the most dangerous situation facing the world today.  It is also the major subject of the Bible, in which are recorded in detail, two thousand to three thousand years before they occurred, the events leading to today’s Middle East debacle.  Furthermore (a fact to which political and religious world leaders surprisingly pay little attention), the Bible not only foretold the tragedy in detail but declared its outcome.  The consequences of this fact are logical and obvious: if the Bible is in error concerning Israel, its major subject, then all of the synagogues and Christian churches that claim to base their beliefs upon those Scriptures ought to admit that fact and shut their doors.  If, however, the Bible is true, then the nations of the world ought to govern their conduct accordingly; for if they do not, the consequences will be disastrous.  The following pages throw out this challenge to the world.

 

 

Nearly 30 percent of the Bible is devoted to prophecies.  These are not cheap psychic predictions or the vague French quatrains of a Nostradamus that seemingly can be made to fit every new event that arises.  Biblical prophecies are direct, straightforward, and fully [Page 6] verifiable declarations foretelling major events in world history centuries and even thousands of years in advance.  There are no such prophecies in the Qur’an, in the Hindu Vedas, in the sayings of Buddha or Confucius - nothing that even comes close in any writings, religious or secular.

 

 

It is to the fulfilment of these prophecies, witnessed by the world, that the God of the Bible points as proof that He alone is the true God: “I am God ... there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done ... before it came to pass I showed it thee ... new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” 1 The Bible’s many prophecies identify beyond question the one true God and the Bible as His unique revelation to mankind.

 

1. Isaiah 42: 9; 46: 9-10; 48: 5, etc.

 

 

Who is this God who inspired the Bible through some forty different prophets over a period of sixteen hundred years?  The Bible says His name is I AM [Yahweh]” 2 (meaning that He is self-existent, without beginning or end).  Nine times He is called God of Abraham ... Isaac ... and Jacob.” 3  From these patriarchs, the Jews have descended.  Yahweh, to whom we just referred, is called the God of Isaac 203 times - and it is to Israel that He gave the Promised Land. 4 Never is He called “the God of Ishmael” (from whom the Arabs claim descent), and never is He called “the God of the Arabs.”

 

2. Exodus 3: 13-14.   3. Exodus 3: 6, 15, 16; Matthew 22: 3; Mark 12: 26, etc.

4. Genesis 28:13; 35: 12; Exodus 51; 24: 10; Joshua 7: 13; 1 Samuel 1: 17; 1 Chronicles 16: 15-19, etc.

 

 

Of course, never is He called “the God of the Americans,” or of the French, the Russians, or anyone else.  And that this God is not Allah of the Muslims is made absolutely clear.  Those who may be offended by these facts need to take their complaint to the God of the Bible, not to this writer.  My purpose is only to point out precisely what the Bible says - truth that most ignore and many refuse to accept, but which we will prove in the following pages from history and current developments in the Middle East.

 

 

It rankles many people that the Bible repeatedly declares that the Jews are God’s “chosen people.” 5 That was His choice, whether the rest of us like it or not.  So at the very outset of our study, the identity of the God of the Bible must be made clear.

 

5. Leviticus 20: 26; Deuteronomy 7: 6; 1 Chronicles 16: 13; Psalm 105: 6, 43; Isaiah 65: 15; Jeremiah 31: 1, etc.

 

[Page 9]

Some of the prophecies to which we will turn are specifically for our day.  They set the stage for severe judgment from God, for which planet earth is rapidly ripening.  This will become clear as we proceed.

 

 

Indisputably, Israel is the major topic of biblical prophecy, just as it is of the daily news.  The word “Israel” is found 2,565 times in 2,293 verses in the King James translation of the Bible, while “Jerusalem” is found 811 times in 764 verses.  In contrast, the word “Jerusalem” is not found even once in the Qur’an.  Yet Muslims insist that Jerusalem is their third holiest city.  That this is a false claim we will document beyond dispute, as well as the fact that those who call themselves “Palestinians” and who make the claim that Israel is occupying their land are impostors (see chapter four).

 

 

Prophecies concerning Israel and Jerusalem are precise and beyond misinterpretation.  We will confine ourselves to several that are clearly being fulfilled in our times.  Some of them specifically warn of God’s judgment upon those who attempt to bring a “peace” to the Middle East that defies what God has decreed for His people Israel.  The methods that the West has adopted in recent decades are denounced in Scripture, including the current “road map to peace.”

 

 

Remarkably, the prophecies upon which we will focus in the following pages could apply only to the present day.  Unrecognized by world leaders, who ignore the warnings in the Bible, God is at work behind the scenes, bringing about events that He has foretold in His Word.  In the following pages, we will present specific, fulfilled prophecies for our day-examples of what God says He is presently doing on this earth - and the punishment He is about to pour out upon all the nations for their mistreatment of His people, the Jews, and the nation of Israel.  Hundreds of prophecies fulfilled in the past are the guarantee that biblical warnings that apply to our generation are not empty threats.

 

 

A CUP OF TREMBLING, A BURDENSOME STONE

 

 

Two thousand five hundred years ago, the God of the Bible, through His prophet Zechariah, declared, “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.” 6 This is an amazing declaration - not only that Jerusalem, which was then in complete ruins, would be the focus of worldwide attention one day but also that all of Israel’s neighbours would be united against her.

 

6. Zechariah 12: 2.

 

 

Throughout its history, Israel has had many enemies (Egyptians, Philistines, Syrians, Assyrians, Babylonians, etc.).  Never, however, did “all the people round about” (i.e., her neighbours) join together in common cause to destroy her.  This is true today, exactly as the Bible foretold, for the first time in Israel’s history!  Moreover, it marks the beginning of the end of anti-Semitism, as we shall see.

 

 

God goes on to say, “And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. ...” The language is very precise: a “burdensome stone” for “all people” but a “cup of trembling” for Israel’s neighbours around her.   What is the difference?

 

 

For more than fifty years, Israel’s neighbours have attacked her repeatedly and she has proved too strong militarily for them, even though they outnumber her fifty to one and have tried to catch her by surprise.  Soundly defeated every time, her neighbours tremble and feign a desire for peace, with the aim, of course, to ultimately deceive and annihilate her - a strategy established for Muslims by Muhammad himself, the founder and prophet of Islam.

 

 

The God of the Bible has promised to protect Israel, while Allah of the Qur’an and Islam has sworn to put an end to her.  The real battle is not between Arabs and Jews but between Allah and Yahweh.  There is no question of the outcome, but it will be costly for both sides: Israel will be severely disciplined and her enemies will be destroyed.

 

 

Precisely as foretold, Jerusalem is a burdensome stone to all people of the world.  How much of a burden is she?  The United Nations has spent one-third of its time either deliberating and arguing about or denouncing Israel because of its hold on Jerusalem.  A tiny nation [Page 9] that has one one-thousandth of the world’s population has occupied one-third of the United Nations’ time!  More than sixty thousand individual votes have been cast in the UN against Israel.  That is a burden indeed, exactly as the Bible foretold!  Is this merely a coincidence?  We will pile prophecy upon prophecy being fulfilled in our day until “coincidence” is revealed as utter foolishness.

 

 

Sceptics have accused evangelicals of trying to fit prophecy to current events, claiming that no one recognized such prophecies in the past but only since Israel was formed in 1948.  On the contrary, for centuries before it happened, most evangelical Christians believed and preached from the Bible the return of the Jews to their own land.  Even leading Calvinist John Owen, basing his opinion upon Bible prophecy, wrote in the seventeenth century: “The Jews shall be gathered from all parts of the earth ... and brought home into their homeland.” 7

 

7. Cited in Bridges for Peace website, May 21, 2004.

 

 

Martin Luther recognized some of the prophecies concerning Israel, and because they had not been fulfilled in his day, he wrote off the Jews as God’s chosen people: “If the Jews are Abraham’s descendants then we would expect to see them back in their own land [with] a state of their own.  But what do we see?  We see them living scattered and despised.” 8 That the Jews were scattered and despised was itself, as we shall see, a fulfilment of Bible prophecies that Luther didn’t recognize.  The prophecies concerning Israel’s regathering were not for Luther’s day but for ours.  The very fact that the Jews are back in their own land after twenty-five hundred years of being scattered worldwide, and that they speak their original Hebrew just as King David did three thousand years ago, is a remarkable fulfilment of another Bible prophecy for the last days.  No other people have returned to establish their own nation once again, having retained their original language and after being out of their land for such a period of time.

 

8. J. Randall Price, Paper delivered at the Pre-Trib Study Group Conference, December 6, 2004,

available at http://www.pre-trib.org/article-view.php?id-218.

 

 

There would seem to be more than enough reasons for this tiny and only recently re-birthed nation to tremble before the enemies surrounding her and before the condemnations of the UN and European Union.  Surely such a small country could be easily pushed [Page 10] around.  Of course, if that were the case, she would be a burden to no one.  But Israel cannot be pushed around by her neighbours, nor by anyone else.  The Israeli Defence Forces are among the best in the world - exactly as the Bible foretold.

 

 

LIKE A FIRE DEVOURING SURROUNDING NATIONS

 

 

And that fulfils another prophecy: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood ... and they shall devour all the people round about. ...” 9 This is exactly what has happened, to the surprise and chagrin of the world.  Notice the repetition in many last-days prophecies of the phrase, I will.  God is doing something on this earth in preparation for judging the nations.  Those who refuse to see God’s hand at work will reap the consequences for their unbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence.

 

9. Zechariah 12: 6.

 

 

In October of 1973, in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, the attacking Arab forces from Egypt (eighty thousand Egyptians overwhelmed and slaughtered five hundred Israeli defenders along the Suez) and Syria (fourteen hundred tanks swept down the Golan with only one Israeli tank in service to oppose them) caught Israel completely by surprise.  The Soviets knew exactly when the attack was coming (October 6, 1973) and removed the last of the dependents of their staffs on October 5.  America’s National Security Administration (NSA) knew that an Arab Pearl Harbour was about to be launched against Israel.  Dozens of notices were sent by the NSA to the Nixon White House, which had positive evidence at least two days in advance of the attack.  Nixon, however, for his own reasons, chose not to notify Israel, probably imagining that this horrible betrayal of our only real ally in the Middle East would not be discovered.

 

 

The White House finally gave Israel a reprehensible few hours notice but insisted that Israel refrain from pre-emptive strikes and be certain not to fire the first shot.  U. S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went incommunicado at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York the day of the attack and waited another three days before convening the UN Security Council.  He wanted the Israelis to be bloodied up a bit. [Page 11] Most of Israel’s armed forces were off duty, celebrating Judaism’s highest holy day.  The initial success of the attackers, when Israel was trying to mobilize its military and reservists, so electrified the Arab world that nine other Arab states hurried to get in on the slaughter.

 

 

Instead of rushing military supplies to Israel, the United States excused itself by saying that it had to be careful not to upset the Arabs and cause an oil crisis and that no American airline was willing to fly even the spare parts Israel was pleading for into the war zone.  Oil negotiations were underway in Vienna at that very time. Any country that helped Israel in the war faced an oil embargo.

 

 

The Soviet Union blocked any UN attempt at a cease-fire and refortified the Arab forces with armaments and supplies from the air and the sea.” 10 Israel suffered about three thousand dead - a huge percentage of her population, which would be comparable to one hundred fifty thousand dead for the United States.  Except for a series of what could only be called miracles from God, Israel would not have survived.

 

10. David A. Rausch, The Middle East Maze: Israel and Her Neighbours (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), 57.

 

 

History Professor David A. Rausch writes, “Jordan’s King Hussein sent two of his best armoured brigades to Syria.  Saudi Arabia and Kuwait financially underwrote the huge cost while sending thousands of troops to fight the Israelis.  Kuwait lent her British-made Lightning jets to Egypt.  Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi turned over forty French-made Mirage III fighters and 100 tanks.  Iraqi Mig fighter jets as well as tank and infantry divisions fought on the Golan Heights, while a squadron of Iraqi Hunter jets was utilised by Egypt.  Arabs predicted the extermination of the Jewish state and the ‘liberation’ of Palestine.11 It was the closest Israel ever came to being defeated.  But when the war ended, the Israeli tank columns were on the outskirts of Damascus and Cairo and could have taken those cities had they not been called back for political reasons.

 

11. Ibid.

 

 

A STERN WARNING TO ALL NATIONS

 

 

God goes on to say through His prophet, “All that burden themselves with it [Jerusalem/Israel] shall be cut in pieces, though all the [Page 12] people of the earth be gathered together against it.”  Obviously Israel, no matter how efficient her armed forces may be, cannot defeat all the nations of the world.  God does not waste words.  A world united in a huge military attack upon Israel is not an idle speculation.  Clearly, God is declaring that all nations will come against Jerusalem and that He will defend Israel and destroy them.  This solemn declaration is made a number of times in the Bible. 12

 

12. Ezekiel 38: 16-23; Zechariah 12: 9; 14: 2-3.

 

 

But why would God bring all nations against Jerusalem and Israel in order to put an end to them?  God gives two very clear reasons: I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with [punish] them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.” 13

 

13. Joel 3: 2.

 

 

This is a grim prophecy, precise in its language, and once again it applies only to our day.  For twenty-five hundred years, all nations have played their role in persecuting and thereby scattering the Jews around the world.  Only within the last eighty years, however, has the land been divided.  Israel has been conquered by many nations in the past, from the Babylonians to the Romans to the Turks.  Always, the conquering power occupied the entire land.  Never did they divide the land.  That has only recently occurred for the first time in world history - and all nations have united to do so.

 

 

The 1917 Balfour Declaration, 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and 1922 Declaration of Principles of the League of Nations recognised that the ancient land of Israel (which had come to be known as “Palestine”) belonged to the Jewish people.  It was set apart for them, and Great Britain was given the mandate to see that “Palestine” once again became the national homeland of the Jews who had been scattered worldwide.

 

 

Instead, to curry Arab favour because of their oil, Britain divided it, giving more than 70 percent to its protégé, Emir Abdullah Hussein, when he was forced to leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia.  That gift created the Hashemite kingdom of Transjordan, now known as Jordan.  The Muslims immediately demolished every Jewish house of worship and expelled all Jews.  This was months [Page 13] before the State of Israel was born. (One can count the demise of the British Empire, upon which “the sun never sank,” from the time it betrayed the Jews, as God had warned: “I will ... curse him that curseth thee.” 14 ) In UN Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, the nations joined to further divide the land.  Israel received only 13 percent of what had been designated for the national Jewish homeland.  Jews were pleased to get anything.  The Arabs, however, wanted it all.  They rioted and attacked Jewish settlements in a reign of terror.

 

14. Genesis 12: 3.

 

 

Every so-called peace proposal that the Western powers have since attempted to force upon Israel has been based upon the demand that she relinquish yet more land to the “Palestinians.”  Always the cry is, “Just give them a little more!”  So it is with President Bush’s “road map to peace” - a further dividing of the land.  But God has said, “The land shall not be sold [or traded for ever] for the land is mine. ...”) 15

 

15. Leviticus 25: 23.

 

 

God’s patience is almost exhausted.  His righteous anger is directed against the nations of today’s world for dividing His land and against Israel for ever agreeing to do so.  (That Israel was pressured by the world is not an acceptable excuse to the God of Israel for disobeying Him.)  And He is going to punish everyone involved.

 

 

President Bush, who claims to be a Christian and says that he studies his Bible daily, ought to tremble!  So should the other parties to the “road map.”  They are defying the God of Israel and planning to do what He says will bring His severest judgment, “a destruction from the Almighty.” 16 We will deal with that awesome reality in the last chapter.  It is astonishing how many Christians and Jews who claim to believe the Bible remain blind to these prophecies, which are clearly hastening to their fulfilment at the present time.

 

16. Isaiah 13: 6.

 

 

ENTER ISLAM!

 

 

The enemies surrounding Israel today have one thing that unites them: they are all Muslims.  A basic tenet of Islam is that Israel and all Jews must be destroyed.  That qualifies them for special wrath from “the Almighty”.  Yet this prophecy was recorded in Scripture more than one thousand years before Islam was founded.  Muhammad [Page 14] said as recorded in the Sahih Al-Bukhari hadith, “The last day will not come until the Muslims confront the Jews and the Muslims destroy them.  In that day Allah will give a voice to the rocks and the trees and they will cry out, ‘O Muslim, O Abdullah, there is a Jew hiding behind me.  Come and kill him!’17

 

17. Moshe Ma’oz, The Image of the Jew in Official Arab Literature and Communications Media

(Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976), 14.

 

 

That every Jew on earth must be killed is not an obscure teaching but part of the very foundation of Islam, taught to Muslims down through the centuries from their earliest years.  It is taught in every Muslim school all over the world and in the United States as well.

 

 

Why must Israel be destroyed?  Why not just leave her where she is and isolate the despised Jews from the rest of the world to be confined there?  Why not simply reduce her to poverty by economic boycott?

 

 

That would not be enough, because it would leave the Jews in possession of part of the land that the Arabs claim Allah has promised to them as their sole right.  The very existence of Israel stands as a rebuke to the declarations of the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an, and Islamic tradition, which all declare that the land of Palestine belongs solely to the Arabs - and that they will triumph over the Jews.

 

 

The Jewish state of Israel must be crushed!  Otherwise, Islam has been proved a false religion.  So long as Islam exists, in spite of volumes of rhetoric and mountains of peace negotiations, the Middle East conflict can be resolved in no other way than by the annihilation of Israel.  To imagine otherwise or that the Arabs have any other intention is to be hopelessly deceived.

 

 

At a conference of the Islamic Committee for Palestine, in Chicago, Illinois, December 28-31, 1990, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Oudeh, one of the leaders in the Islamic Jihad Movement, declared: “Now Allah is bringing the Jews back to Palestine in large groups from all over the world to their big graveyard where the promise will be realidsed upon them, and what was destined will be carried out.” 18 Of course, he was not referring to the many biblical prophecies that God would, in the last days, restore the scattered Jews back into their own land, to which the Messiah would return to reign over them and the world [Page 15] from the throne of His father David.  He was obviously referring to Muhammad’s prophecy (in direct opposition to the Bible) that the Muslims would kill all Jews at the last day.

 

18. From the PBS video, Jihad In America, narrated by Steven Emerson, first aired in the USA November 22, 1994.

 

 

This was also the prophecy to which Sheikh Yousef al-Kirdawi referred, when, in 1989 in Kansas City; he told a group of Muslim men whom he was recruiting for Holy War, “On the Hour of Judgment, Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them.” 19 Clearly, the battle is not so much between Arab and Jew as it is between Allah, the God of Islam and the Qur’an, who hates and has sworn to destroy the Jews, and Yahweh, the God of the Bible, who loves the Jews and has sworn to protect them.  There is no question that Allah and Yahweh are not the same!

 

19. Variations of this statement by Muhammad are given in a number of hadiths and other authoritative places.  Sheikh Nadirn A Wisr, Member of the Islamic Research Academy, cited several versions in his presentation at the Fourth Conference of the Academy titled, “Good Tidings about the Decisive Battle Between Muslims and Israel, in the Light of the Holy Qur’an, the Prophetic Traditions, and the Fundamental Laws of Nature and History”: Muslim’s Sahih Bulchari’s Sahilt, both on the authority of lbn’Umar; another version on the authority of Abu Huraira, etc.

 

 

The consequences for those who follow the wrong “God” will be severe.  This is the issue that political, military, and religious leaders are not willing to face.  They are defying the God of the Bible and will be punished.  We cannot pick and choose to believe some parts of the Bible and reject others - but this irrational defiance of God is popularly adopted today.

 

 

THIS IS ISLAM!

 

 

There is not an Arab/Muslim map in the entire world that shows Israel!  The logos of the PLO and similar terrorist groups display “Palestine” without Israel.  For Muslims and “Palestinians,” Israel does not exist, and they are determined to make that a reality.  Israel is also missing from the map of the Middle East on the wall of the apartment of the Christian Peacemaker Team (apparently, without their ever having noticed this damning fact) who are “living in Hebron in solidarity with the Palestinians against ‘colonialist’ Israel.” 20 Until Islam’s real intentions are faced and somehow dealt with, any “peace” plans for the Middle East are a fool’s dream.

 

20. Yossi Klein Halevi, “A pilgrimage to Hebron,” The International Jerusalem Post, August 15, 2003, 12.

 

 

Although there are Arabs living in all of the Middle Eastern countries, and they are collectively referred to as “the Arab world,” these neighbouring nations seek Israel’s destruction are not primarily of Arab descent.  The Lebanese, Syrians, and Iranians are not [Page 16] Arabs, nor are the Iraqis, Egyptians, Libyans, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, et al Only the Saudis are Arabs.

 

 

Islam is an Arab religion that originated in the Arabian Peninsula.  It was the past conquests by Islam’s legions of jihad warriors that converted Israel’s neighbours under threat of death: “Submit to Allah, or die!  And it is the religion of Islam, to which they were forcefully converted and are now fanatically devoted, that unites these otherwise diverse peoples in the passion to annihilate Israel.

 

 

Israel’s neighbours were not united ethnically, politically, or religiously when Zechariah’s remarkable prophecy (it must have seemed impossible in his day) was given twenty-five hundred years ago.  Even the popular T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) had found it impossible to unite Arabs in a sense of nationalism. The only unity came “by invoking the deeply rooted religious prejudice of the masses against the Palestinian Jews. ...” On their part, the British blamed the Jews for provoking the Arabs to hate and murder “by their very presence.”

 

 

Were it not for their common hatred of Israel today, these nations would fight one another.  One cannot understand the present situation in the Middle East without acknowledging that it is the devotion of Israel’s neighbours to the religion of Islam that unites them against her, a fact that western peacemakers refuse to acknowledge, thus dooming their efforts from the beginning.

 

 

This religious unity is not the ancient heritage of these nations.  In their early histories, they all worshiped different gods and fought one another.  It was the Muslim conquest, beginning in the seventh century, that united these nations by force under Allah and Islam.  This was the fastest spreading and largest empire ever seen - and the greatest example of the imperialism of which these Muslim nations accuse Israel!

 

 

Arab leaders have declared repeatedly for more than fifty years, “The struggle with the Zionist enemy is not a struggle about Israel’s boarders, but about Israel’s existence.” 21 Such statements do not come from a few fanatics but from every true Muslim who knows and practices his religion.  This is Islam!  Yet these basic facts are avoided by the West in its attempts to establish “peace” in the Middle East.

 

21. Bassam Abu Sharif, a top Arafat aide and PLO spokesman, quoted by the Kuwait News Agency, May 31, 1986.

 

[Page 17]

JERUSALEM: ANOTHER SIGH IN OUR DAY

 

 

The possession of a large part of the world’s major oil deposits allows Muslim nations to hold a club over the West for Islam and Allah.  Aware of that fact, the European Union continues to remind Israel that it “does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty” over Jerusalem.  The Vatican, for its own reasons (numerous official documents declare that the Church has replaced Israel as the “People of God”), has opposed Israel consistently, refusing even to recognize its existence until 1994, forty-six years after its declaration of independence.  The PLO is in control of Temple Mount, the very heart and soul of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  The nations of the world refuse to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

 

 

The United Nations has consistently taken the side of the Arabs against Israel, making the allocation of land to Israel by the UN in 1947 - something the UN  would not do today - all the more miraculous, in fulfilment of Bible prophecy.  The UN is adamantly opposed to Israel and everything she does - and is thus defiant of the God of Israel and His pledge to restore His people fully to the land He gave them “from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” 22 From 1967 through 1989, out of 865 resolutions in the Security Council and General Assembly of the UN, 526 were against Israel.  The last anti-Arab vote was fifty-eight years ago, in 1947.  Not once has the UN reprimanded those who have, without provocation, beginning in 1948, waged five wars against Israel with the openly declared intention of annihilating her.  Nor have the terrorists ever been condemned by the UN.  In November 2003, Israel introduced its first request for a resolution since 1976, asking for a prohibition against Arab terrorists who deliberately target Israeli women and children.   Its request was rejected, and the UN instead adopted a resolution demanding protection of Palestinian children from Israel.

 

22. Genesis 15: 18.

 

 

On March 25, 2004, the United States blocked a proposed UN Security Council condemnation of Israel’s targeted killing of Hamas founder and leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, because the Council refused to include a condemnation of Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.  The next month, an Israeli missile also killed Yassin’s [Page 18] successor, Abdul-Aziz Rantisi, one of the four leaders who founded Hamas in 1997 at the first Intifada. (No wonder Israel’s neighbours tremble, considering the technology, precision, and flawless execution required to identify immediately the occupants of a car and destroy it within minutes with a missile!)

 

 

Hamas has not identified Rantisi’s successor for obvious reasons.  It is rumoured, however, that Khaled Masha’al, who leads Hamas from Damascus, secretly appointed Mahmoud A-Zahar to head Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  Predictably, there was worldwide condemnation for the just execution of Yassin and Rantisi, two mass murderers and terrorist leaders, but no condemnation for the hundreds of suicide bombers Hamas has trained, equipped, and sent into Israel to deliberately kill innocent civilians.

 

 

Indeed, suicide bombers (President Bush calls them “homicide bombers,” i.e., murderers 23) are the most honoured people in PLO territory.  The PLO-controlled newspaper has “wedding announcements” and invitations to join in celebration with families who are rejoicing over the “marriage” of terrorist sons to be “dark-eyed” virgins in Paradise through their “martyrdom” by suicide in Israel, killing innocent women and children in the process.

 

23. From President Bush’s famous June 24, 2002, speech in which he proposed the “Road Map to Peace

and called upon Israel to dismantle Israeli settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

 

 

AMERICA AND EUROPE ARE ALSO TARGETS

 

 

The very morning of September 11, 2001, in a time zone six hours to the east, an editorial in Arafat’s controlled newspaper, Al-Hayat al-jadida, stated, “The suicide bombers of today are the noble successors of the Lebanese suicide bombers who taught the U.S. Marines a tough lesson in Lebanon [443 were killed when a barracks was destroyed].  These suicide bombers are the salt of the earth, the engines of history ... the most honourable people among us.”  A few hours later, down came the Twin Towers, to the glory of Islam and Allah - and thousands danced in the streets in ecstatic approval throughout the Muslim world.

 

 

Since then, a bewildered America has asked a thousand times, “Why were the Twin Towers brought down, and why are American interests [Page 19] around the world being attacked by Muslim terrorists?  Why do they hate us, after all the good we try to do?”  It can’t be because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq: the 9/11 attacks came first.

 

 

It is shocking but true that the real question is, “Why have there not been many more similar attacks throughout America?”  As we will see, the terrorists are not extremists (we’ll have to get over that delusion to successfully fight terrorism); they are real Muslims, earnestly following the example and teaching of Muhammad, the Qur’an, and the hadith.  They hate us not only for supporting Israel (without Israel to focus energies upon, there would be even more terrorism worldwide) but for our economic, political, and military success, and for the freedoms we advocate and practice, which Islam cannot tolerate.

 

 

Madrid and London have learned that Al Qaeda can attack anywhere and at any time.  Why has there not been a major attack in America since 9/1 l? 24 Early in July 2005, counterterrorism expert Juval Aviv said, “I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent ... here in the United States.” 25 WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been reporting for some time that Al Qaeda has nukes inside the United States.  Paul Williams a former FBI consultant, says there is no question but that “according to captured Al-Qaeda leaders and documents, the plan is called the ‘American Hiroshima’ and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border.” 26 An unnamed Homeland Security insider claims that “intelligence within the US. says that a nuclear attack, or more likely many of them at the same time across America, is imminent.” 27

 

24. Fox News, July 11, 2005.    25. www.g2builetin.com.   26. www.insights.injesus.com, July 11, 2005.   27. http://theisraelreport.injesus.com.

 

 

There are literally many thousands - if not millions - of young Muslims, men and women, who are both ready and eager to gain instant entrance to Islam’s “Paradise” by dying as suicide bombers against the United States not only in Iraq but in America itself.  It is not alarmism to state that we could be seeing suicide bombers in our shopping malls, on our [Page 20] buses, and on trains.  The question is only why this has not already happened.  Our borders, especially with Mexico, are easily penetrated.  The situation worldwide is far more serious than the average person who relies upon news media for information can even imagine. This book explains what Bible prophecy says about the current danger, where it will ultimately lead, and what we should do about it.

 

 

JERUSALEM TRODDEN DOWN BY THE GENTILES

 

 

We are witnessing in our day the continuing fulfilment of Christ's remarkable prophecy: “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” 28 Jerusalem has been fought over and occupied by nearly every major power in history.  Today, though Israel is militarily in control of Jerusalem, non-Jews continue to reject her legitimacy and to dictate practical policy with regard to Jerusalem. According to Christ, this will continue to be the case until Armageddon.  Only then will the “times of the Gentiles” be fulfilled.

 

28. Luke 21: 24.

 

 

When Israel took East Jerusalem in 1967, and her soldiers wept at the Western Wall, it seemed that Jerusalem had at last been liberated from Gentile domination.  However, acting on his own, without official approval, General Moshe Dayan, apparently hoping to prove to the Arab nations Israel’s peaceful intentions, turned over Temple Mount (the holiest site in Israel) to the king of Jordan.  In 1994, Jordan turned it over to the PLO.  This openly terrorist organization, through its Waqf (in charge of Muslim sites on Temple Mount), remains in control.  It is in the process of building the largest mosque in the world underground (weakening supporting walls holding up the Temple Mount and blaming Israel for their collapse) and at the same time attempting to eliminate every vestige of any historic Israeli presence there.  In this construction, the Waqf has destroyed tons of priceless ancient artefacts.  The PLO defiantly claims that there never was a Jewish temple on Temple Mount and that this location was never a holy site for Jews - and much of the world believes the lie!*

 

[* This is now questionable.  See the writings of Josephus, who was an eye-witness at the time the Temple and City was being destroyed.  Also Robert Cornuke’s book “Temple” as well as “the Temples that Jerusalem forgot” by Earnest L. Martin; and recent archaeological discoveries which suggest a site, in ‘the city of David,’ - believed to be south of the ‘Wailing Wall’.  See www.askelm.com]

 

In fact, there are numerous centuries-old Arab and Muslim [Page 21] statements acknowledging Jerusalem and Temple Mount as holy to the Jews.  In A.D. 1225, Arab geographer Yakut, while noting that Mecca was “holy to Muslims,” wrote that “the city of Jerusalem was holy to Jews and Christians, as it has been for 3,000 [years].” 29 There are many references in early Arab literature to the fact that the Dome of the Rock was built on the site of the ruins of Solomon’s temple.  The very fact that, as far back as we can trace, it has always been known as Temple Mount proves that it was the site of a temple - which could only have been Jewish, not Islamic, because Muslims don’t have temples but mosques.

 

29. Eiyahu Tal, Whose Jerusalem? (Tel Aviv: International Forum for a United Jerusalem, 1994), 69.

 

 

The 1978 Palestinian Encyclopedia declared, “Ever since the destruction of the Temple, the link with Jews and Christians has been severed.” 30 The Palestinian Authority itself has acknowledged that “Umar [in fact, it wasn’t Umar but Abd al-Malik] ordered the building of a mosque [Dome of the Rock] on the site of the ruined temple ... a revivification of the old Jewish temple ... the mosque was not a usurper of a Jewish holy site [but] a legitimate celebration of that site.” 31 Yet Muslims today promote the lie of Jerusalem and Temple Mount belonging to them as a major argument against Israel - and that becomes the basis of the world’s attitude toward Israel because she neglects to set the record straight!

 

30. Palestinian Encyclopedia (Beirut, 1978), 2:667.

31. Sari Nusseibeh, “Islam’s Jerusalem,” Seminar on Jerusalem - Religious Aspects, Milan, Italy, May 9-11, 1995

(Jerusalem: Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, May 2001), 4.

 

 

Israel considers Jerusalem to be its capital.  It became Israel’s capital under King David three thousand years ago.  Israel’s Knesset is located there.  The embassies of other nations, however (with the exception of Costa Rica and El Salvador), are located elsewhere. UN Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, which partitioned “Palestine,” decreed that “the city of Jerusalem shall be established as a corpus separatum under a special international regime, and shall be administered by the United Nations.”  The UN Security Council, in UN Resolution 478, declared that the 1980 Jerusalem Law designating Jerusalem as Israel’s “eternal and indivisible” capital was “null and void and must be rescinded forthwith” (14-0-1, U.S. abstaining).  The resolution instructed member states to withdraw their diplomatic representation from the city as a punitive measure.  On March 26, 1999, the EU published its “Berlin Declaration” supporting an independent [Page 22] Palestinian state, and the German Ambassador to Israel reiterated that the EU considers the corpus separatum declaration of UN Resolution 181 to be “international law.”  The UN, EU, and the Vatican periodically insist that Israel’s “occupation” of Jerusalem is illegal.  So the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy continues in our day.

 

 

The United States Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed by Congress in 1995, states that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.  Since then, the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv has been suspended by the President semi-annually, each time stating that “[the] Administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem.”  As a result of the Embassy Act, official U.S. documents and websites refer to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  On its part, Israel considers itself not to be bound by Resolution 181 because it was rejected by the Arabs in the UN and in their coordinated attack upon the new state of Israel.

 

 

Section 214 of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, 2003, states:

 

 

The Congress maintains its commitment to relocating the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and urges the President to immediately begin the process of relocating the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. 32

 

32. http://www.mideastweb.org/jeruembassy2002.htm.

 

 

STILL TRODDEN DOWN

 

 

President Bush dismisses this section as “advisory,” stating that it “impermissibly interferes with the President’s constitutional authority.” 33 Bush is technically correct.  The U.S. Constitution reserves the conduct of foreign policy to the President.  Therefore, acts of Congress that make foreign policy are invalid.  But one wonders why, as a professing Christian, President Bush doesn’t take a step that would honour the Bible and the God of Israel, especially since Congress urges him to do so.

 

33. http://www.state.gov/m/mi/rls/rm/2002/13888.htm.

 

 

Is Bush fearful of offending Muslims because they control most [Page 23] of the world’s oil?  Surely he is not intimidated by the denunciations they periodically pronounce against the very thought of America moving its embassy to Jerusalem.   One of the latest such threats came from Sheik Ibrahim Madiras in his Friday sermon broadcast over Palestinian television on January 7, 2005: “Bush dug a grave the day he invaded Afghanistan, and prepared the grave or burial the day he invited Iraq.  By Allah, America will be buried the day the American embassy will be moved to Jerusalem. …” 34 The Sheik acknowledges that the battle for Jerusalem pits Allah against the God of the Bible.

 

34. www.worldnetdaily.com/news/artiele.asp?ARTICLE ID=42305.

 

 

While visiting Jerusalem in 1998, the Vatican’s foreign minister likewise called the Israeli presence in East Jerusalemillegal occupation.”  In March 1999, Israel was notified again the European Union “does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty” over Jerusalem.  In a papal bull on the year 2000 jubilee, John Paul II again rejected Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.

 

 

In mid-February 2000, the Vatican signed an agreement with the PLO calling for “international guarantees” to preserve “the proper identity and sacred character” of Jerusalem under international control. Waqf director Adnan Husseini, declared, “Israel needs to remember that Jerusalem is not an Israeli city but it is a Palestinian city and we decide what happens here.” 35

 

35. Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2004.

 

 

Precisely as Christ foretold nearly two thousand years ago, Jerusalem is still being “trodden down by the Gentiles”!  That fact is nowhere more thoroughly documented than in the book, Jerusalem: The Truth, a compilation of editorials by David Bar-Illan, Executive Editor of The Jerusalem Post.

 

 

The God of Israel will not allow this desecration of His “holy city36 the “City of God,” 37 to continue beyond the time Christ appointed.

 

36. Nehemah 11: 1, 18; Isaiah 48: 2; 52: 1; Daniel 9: 24; Matthew 4: 5; 27: 53; Revelation 11: 2; 21: 2.

37. Psalms 46: 4; 48: 1, 8; 87: 3; Revelation 3: 12.

 

 

In fact, Jerusalem has been an Israeli city for the three thousand years since David established it.  Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” dispute that claim.  To whom does Jerusalem and all of the land that once was Israel but is now erroneously called “Palestine” really belong?  The truth is a matter of history and the testimony of Scripture, which is easily proved.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

 

[Page 27]

CHAPTER 2

 

HATRED’S “FINAL SOLUTION

 

 

ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE prophecies in the Bible is found in the many declarations that Jews would be scattered to all nations, where they would be hated, persecuted, and killed like no other people.  These prophecies are specific and vivid, describing in detail the plight of the Jews exactly as it has befallen them through the many centuries of their dispersion. 1 God pronounced this severe judgment because of Israel’s disobedience and idolatry after being brought into the Promised Land, and He foretold it in numerous prophecies.  This prophesied judgment has been fulfilled consistently throughout Jewish history - and after three thousand years is still being fulfilled today with a vengeance.

 

1. Deuteronomy 28: 15-62; 2 Chronicles 7: 20; Jeremiah 29: 18; 44: 8, etc.

 

 

What must it be like to be part of a people group that is hated and maligned worldwide, with so many lies told about them that it would be impossible to answer them all - and would do little good to try!  It would be maddening, frustrating, and, yes, frightening.  Hitler did not act alone in the Holocaust by any means, as we shall see, but with the consent and cooperation of other world powers, including the United States.

 

 

More than one hundred official anti-Semitic documents have been issued by the Roman Catholic Church throughout its history.  The [Page 28] knights and knaves who constituted the First Crusade, inspired by Pope Urban II (who promised heaven to those who died in this cause), slaughtered Jews all across Europe.  When they took Jerusalem, they drove the Jews into the synagogue and set it ablaze.  Centuries of Jew-hatred, inspired by the Roman Catholic Church wherever it was in power, helped to prepare the way for Hitler’s Holocaust.

 

 

Pope John Paul II tried to woo the Jews worldwide by his kindly but deceitful rhetoric.  He even told them that Catholics “look upon you as our brothers and sisters in the Lord2 hardly compatible with Paul’s desire that they [Jews] might be saved” (Romans 10: 1).  There was no way, however, that the Pope could undo centuries of his Church’s hatred and mistreatment of Jews.  Such sweet phrases are not only inconsistent with history and official Church doctrine, but they were contradicted by his friendship with Arafat.

 

2. From Pope John Paul II’s address to Australia’s Jewish Leaders November 26, 1986, in Sydney.

 

 

John Paul II consistently favoured the “Palestinians” in their false claims.  Nor did he ever affirm the Israelis’ biblical right to the land God gave them.  In fact, like popes and cardinals before him, he openly denied that right: “The existence of the State of Israel and its political options should be envisaged not in a perspective which is in itself religious, but in their reference to the common principles of international law.3 So the opinion of secular world leaders overrides God’s Word!

 

3. From Pope John Paul II’s Notes on the “Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in the Preaching and

Catechesis of the Roman Catholic Church,” Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, May 1985.

 

 

Martin Luther never escaped the anti-Semitism of his Roman Catholic past, in spite of opposing that Church.  In his later life, he advocated burning down the Jews’ homes and giving them the choice between converting or having their tongues torn out. 4 Luther’s anger against the Jews was inexcusable, even though it grew out of a deep-seated frustration that they would not respond to the gospel he had embraced.

 

4. Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. VI, The Reformation (Simon and Schuster, 1950), 727.

 

 

In an interview on September 25, 2001, Israel’s former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that terrorists “don’t hate America because of Israel ... they hate Israel as an extension of America.”  As an Israeli, he should be the expert on that subject.  Perhaps he had forgotten, however, that Hitler did not hate Jews because of America, nor did the Czars of Russia, nor the popes, nor have Muslims throughout [Page 29] thirteen hundred years of history hated Jews for that reason. A blatant “anti-Semitism” has persisted from Israel’s very beginning and is awakening again worldwide, as foretold.

 

 

IRRATIONAL JEW HATRED IS PERVASIVE

 

 

The frequent condemnations of Israel by the UN and EU for defending herself against deadly attacks by those determined to exterminate her, and the refusal to condemn the murderers and their backers who attack her, are only one part of a continuing fulfilment of numerous prophecies foretelling worldwide anti-Semitism.  This is a major and irrefutable proof of the existence of the one true God and the fact that the Bible is His infallible Word.  The hatred did not end with Hitler’s Holocaust but is actually escalating once again.  It is a taunting mocking of six million exterminated Jews.

 

 

That escalation has been in progress for many years.  Desecration of the graves and even the bodies of Jews has been going on periodically in France for two decades in a resurgence of anti-Semitism throughout Europe.  In Russia, in 1990, Pamyat, an anti-Semitic organization, called for a new “final solution to the Jewish problem” and prophesied that “Russia would be the one to eliminate the evil of world Jewry.”  The rising hatred against Jews in Eastern Europe is especially perverse in view of the fact that out of about five million Jews in that area in the 1930s, there remain only some twenty-five thousand today.  In 1989, the Polish Catholic primate, Cardinal Joseph Glemp, “accused Jewish survivors of the Holocaust of introducing communism into Poland ... and introducing vodka.”  It was said that he spoke for the vast majority of Catholics in Poland.  In post-Ceausescu Romania, it quickly became apparent that it was better for one’s political career “to have a Nazi background than a Jewish one.” 5

 

5. Alan M. Dershowitz, “Resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe,” Seattle Times, May 23, 1990.

 

 

In September 1993, the body of Nicholas Horthy, Hitler’s friend who allied Hungary with Nazi Germany during the war and presided over the deportation of four hundred thirty-seven thousand [Page 30] Jews to Auschwitz, was reburied with high honours in his hometown eighty miles east of Budapest.  About fifty thousand people “gathered as the remains of Horthy, his wife and son were placed in a family vault.”  The prime minister and his ministers honoured Horthy in speeches and attended the ceremony, which was broadcast over state television. 6

 

6. Associated Press, “Former Hitler ally reburied with honours in Hungary,” The Orange County Register, September 5, 1993, NEWS 30.

 

 

A Eurobarometer opinion poll late in 2003 questioned five hundred persons from each European Union nation. Fifty-nine percent overall (74 percent in the Netherlands) considered Israel to be the greatest threat to peace of any country in the world.  (In stark contrast, at about the same time, Americans ranked Israel as the tenth greatest threat to world peace.)  Outraged at being called by Europeans a greater threat to peace than terrorist nations such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea, Israel’s mission to the EU nevertheless did not blame European citizens but “those who are responsible for forming public opinion.”  It said that “the poll reflected the impact of distorted media coverage of the Middle East conflict.”

 

 

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, a Jewish rights group, said the survey “shows that anti-Semitism is deeply embedded within European society ... and Israel should exclude the EU from any future Middle East peace process.” 7 But how can Israel dictate to Europe, upon whose goodwill much of its exports depend?

 

7. Robin Pomeroy, “Israel Outraged’ at ‘Peace Threat’ EU Poll,” World - Reuters, November 3, 2003.

 

 

Not only is media coverage of today’s events distorted, but the history being taught in public schools is often deficient by design.  A poll in January 2005 revealed that 45 percent of Britons and 60 percent of those under thirty-five years of age had never heard of Auschwitz, while 34 per cent polled in Italy believed that “Jews secretly control financial and economic power as well as the media.” 8

 

8. Jerusalem Post, February 1, 2005.

 

 

In spite of gross ignorance of the facts, people develop firm opinions and prejudices based upon the misinformation they imbibe from the media.  It is here that we see the influence of a pervasive and persistent anti-Semitism.  More than two thousand adults across Britain were polled in December 2004 concerning their opinions about some two dozen countries.  Israel was rated the country most Britons would least like to visit, the least deserving of international [Page 31] respect, and the least democratic (though it is the only democracy in the Middle East). 9

 

9. http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new web/britons - rank - israel-worst country.htm.

 

 

During December 2004 and January 2005, the official Iranian news agency, MEHR, published a series of anti-Semitic articles.  The lies were unbelievably outrageous yet believed in much of the Muslim world.  Two leading Holocaust deniers were quoted: Dr. Fredrick Toben of the Adelaide Institute in Australia, claiming that the state of Israel is “founded on the ‘Holocaust lie’... exposing the lie [would help] dismantle the Zionist entity...”; and Professor Robert Faurisson of France, referring to the “alleged Holocaust of the Jews.”  In a review of the movie, Exodus, Mojtaba Habibi accused the Jews, of all things, of “collaboration with the Nazis and of orchestrating a grand scheme of world dominion together with Joseph Stalin.”  They could just as truthfully claim that about Mickey Mouse!  On Iran’s TV Channel 1, Professor Heshmatollah Qanbari described Jews as “satanic and anti-human ... dangerous to both Christians and Muslims... [the source] of all corrupt traits in humanity ... coveting and usurping other nations.” 10 Several anti-Semitic TV drama series were also being aired on Iranian TV.  Such lies about Jews are exactly what multitudes love to believe.

 

10. www.memri.org/bin/opener latest.cgi?ID=SDS5405.

 

 

HATRED AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS

 

 

Unreasonable and persistent animosity toward Jews and Israel is not confined to the ignorant and uneducated.  One would expect the United Nations, with its supposed strong stand for the rights of all people, to be a leader in dispelling anti-Semitism.  Instead, it has been a bastion of Jew hatred, systematically singling out Israel for punitive treatment while at the same time embracing terrorist nations with never a rebuke. Incredibly, Zionism (the belief that Jews, like the rest of the world, have a right to their own national homeland) was condemned as racism by UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975. Sixteen long years later (December 16, 1991) that vote was finally reversed over Muslim protests.  Zionism, however, continued to be a capital crime in Iraq.

 

[Page 32]

The UN Commission on Human Rights discriminates against Israel before it even votes: that lone democracy in the Middle East is the one UN member excluded from this commission!  At its March and April 2004 meeting, about “25 percent of the debates were dedicated to attacking Israel [and] out of the commission’s 10 country-specific resolutions, five targeted Israel. ... During the six-week session, while 190 countries met for vital consultation within their regional groups, the Israeli representative was – literally - left standing [alone] in the corridor. ...”  There was only one emergency meeting during the 2004 session: “not for the million-plus victims of Darfur, who were virtually ignored, but to condemn Israel for killing Ahmed Yassin, head of the Hamas terrorist group. ...” 11

 

11. Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, Geneva, Switzerland,

How the UN Can Help Fight Anti-Semitism,” National Post, January 26, 2005.

 

 

On a leading Russian TV program, Vremya, one of Russia’ s most distinguished mathematicians, Igor R. Shafarevich, expressed support for Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.  In 1990, a group of anti-Semitic Russian writers travelled throughout the U.S., some of whom had signed the infamous “Letter of 74 Writers” (Shafarevich was one of its authors), which expressed support for the “Moslem brothers” in the Gulf War and was widely quoted in the American press.  One newspaper covered it with a headline: “Thanks to Iraq for bombarding Israel!  The kikes deserve it!! [emphasis in original].” 12

 

12. Washington Post, April 17, 1990, 1.

 

 

Although anti-Semitism is growing in the United States, especially on university campuses, this country remains one of the few in which leaders speak out against it.  In July 1992, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences asked Shafarevich to resign.  He refused. G. K. Gunsalus, chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility, wrote to Shafarevich: “We wish to express repugnance at and condemnation of your anti-Semitic writings. ... Your prestige as an eminent mathematician gives credence and special weight to your singling out one group for special opprobrium.  The committee finds it regrettable that a mathematician of your stature has disseminated such unfounded and vile characterizations in your writings.”

 

 

At its annual winter meeting, January 12, 1993, the American Mathematical Society passed a resolution condemning “the anti-Semitic [Page 33] writings of I. R. Shafarevich [who] has used his highly respected position as an eminent mathematician to give special weight to his words of hatred, which are contrary to fundamental standards of human decency and to the spirit of mathematics and science.” 13 Such protests, however, are rare and, in fulfilment of Bible prophecy, have little effect in stemming the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

 

13. The Scientist, Vol 7, No 8, April 19, 1993.

 

 

A letter dated January 13, 2005, carrying the Russian parliament’s letterhead, “called on Russia’s prosecutor general to ‘officially open a legal investigation into banning all Jewish religious and community groups’ on grounds of ‘defence of the homeland.’ [Using] some of the most profane language against Jews publicly published in the post-Soviet era,” the seven-page letter, which described Jewish beliefs as “nothing less than satanism,” was signed “by 20 members of the 450-seat State Duma lower house of parliament.”  Andrei Cherkhov, “one of Moscow’s most noted Jewish commentators [declared]: ‘I can tell you this with absolute certainty. ... However you try to cover up anti-Semitism, its naked feet will still be sticking out.’” 14

 

14. Agence France Presse, January 25, 2005.

 

 

A U.S. State Department report to the Senate and House Foreign Relations committees (covering the period July 2003 through December 2004) warned that in Europe, where anti-Semitism is already deeply rooted, “anti-Semitic acts have increased both in frequency and severity since 2000,” with the increase in the Muslim population from immigration.  There is an increase of anti-Semitic sentiment across the Muslim world even in places like Pakistan, where there are no Jews.  This is a new phenomenon, according to the report: “The stereotype of Jews as manipulators of the global economy continues to provide fertile grounds for anti-Semitic aggression.” 15

 

15. Barry Schweid, AP Diplomatic Writer.

 

 

 

Although only about one percent of Japanese have ever had any contact with a Jewish person, anti-Semitism in Japan is deeply rooted, is of long standing (anti-Semitic books have been popular in Japan for at least one hundred years), and is growing.  Best-selling books in Japan blame Jews for every disaster, from earthquakes to the stock market crash of 1993.  Such was the message of an ad covering one-third of a page in the newspaper Nihon Keizasi (Japan’s equivalent of [Page 34] The Wall Street Journal).  It even claimed that Jews controlled Japan’s Finance Ministry and the Bank of Japan.  The paper rejected a call for a retraction or apology by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. 16

 

16. Leslie Helm, “Japan Newspaper Ad Revives Fears of Anti-Semitisrn,” The Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1993, A8.

 

 

There is no rational explanation for this continuous animosity toward a particular people.  It cannot be justified by saying that Jews, in contrast to all others, are so despicable that they deserve to be hated.  Yet this irrational and implacable anti-Semitism is exactly what biblical prophets foretold.  That fact provides another major proof that the Bible is God’s word.  And there are no Jew-haters as vicious as the Muslims, who didn’t even exist when these prophecies were written.

 

 

ISLAMIC PERSECUTIONS

 

 

Ever since the Muslim conquest of the Middle East in the seventh century, Jews have suffered in Muslim lands from inhumane treatment and periodic bursts of deadly violence.  Take only one country, Morocco, as an example of what occurred everywhere under Islam.  Jews were forced to live in ghettos called mellahs.  One historian writes that incidents of rape, looting, burning of synagogues, destruction of Torah scrolls, and murder were “so frequent that it is impossible to list them.”  In A.D. 1032, in Fez, about six thousand Jews were murdered and many more “robbed of their women and property.” 17 In 1066, after Islam took over Spain, the Jews of Granada were massacred.  That fate periodically overtook those who would not submit to Allah, even though Islam promises Jews and Christians (described in the Qur’an as “people of the book”) protection as dhimmis (fifth-class citizens subject to heavy taxation and cultural humiliation).

 

17. FIX Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa (Leiden, Netherlands, 1974), 108.

 

 

The dhimmis were not to be killed, but often their lives were so unbearable, living under “Protection” of Muslims, that death would have been preferable.  In the early seventeenth century, Christian visitors to “Palestine” declared: “Life here is the poorest and most miserable that one can imagine ... [as dhimmis, the Jews] pay for the very air they breathe.” 18 Yet many thousands of Jews, though periodically wiped out [Page 35] by pogroms, or driven out, managed in desperation somehow to cling to the land God had given them, in Hebron as elsewhere.

 

18. Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (New York: Bantam Books, 1973).

 

 

The fierce persecution of 1640, in which even women and children were murdered, was called the “al-Khada.” Under Muslims, Jews suffered “such repression, restriction, and humiliation as to exceed anything in Europe.” 19 Continuing that tradition, although there were no Jews in his country and none are allowed to enter to this day, Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud said, “for a Muslim to kill a Jew ensures him an immediate entry into Heaven. …” 20 Diabolical but persuasive motivation indeed!  This is not the declaration of and extremist.  This is Islam.  If not, why has the mayhem continued for centuries without significant opposition from religious leaders or the Muslim masses?

 

19. Andre Chouraqui, Between East and West: A History of the Jews of North Africa (Philadelphia, 1968), 39.

20. Official British Document, Foreign Office File No. 371/20822 E 7201/33/31.

 

 

In 1839, a British visitor to Palestine declared, “What the Jew has to endure, at all hands, is not to be told.” 21 A Jewish visitor to Palestine in 1847 reported that Jews “do not have any protection and are at the mercy of policemen and the pashas who treat them as they wish ... their property is not at their disposal and they dare not complain about an injury for fear of the Arabs’ revenge.  Their lives are precarious and subject to daily danger of death.” 22 Scores of incidents involving anti-Jewish violence, persecution, and extortion filled page after page of documented reports from the British Consulate in Jerusalem. 23 We lack space to give further evidence of continued Islamic persecution of Jews throughout history.

 

21. Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine

(New York: J. KAP Publishing U.S.A., 1984), 191.

22. Ibid., 154.  23. Ibid., 191.

 

 

Such persecution has continued against those few thousand Jews who failed to escape Muslim lands.  In 1941, hundreds of Jews were viciously tortured and murdered by Iraqi mobs in anti-British, pro-Nazi riots led by Haj Amin Mohammed Effendi al-Husseini, appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British, but who had been forced to flee to Syria for his instigation of riots that had killed and wounded hundreds of Jews, as well as Arabs who wanted to live peacefully with Jews.  Having moved on to Iraq, he was doing more of the same and finding great sympathy among the Muslim masses.  Police watched passively as Jewish homes and businesses were looted and synagogues desecrated.

 

[Page 36]

Years later, when Saddam Hussein became a leader in the Ba’ath Party, he published one of his Jew-hating uncle Khayrallah’s pamphlets, Three Things Allah Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies.

 

 

In a letter dated July 10, 1974, to then - UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark declared, “Jewish people living in Syria today are subjected to the most pervasive and inhuman persecution. ... Young women and children are harassed in the streets.  Old people are knocked down.  Homes are stoned. ... They are forbidden to leave in peace and cannot remain in dignity. ... Many have been arrested, detained, tortured and killed.”  Ironically, in late December 2004, Ramsey Clark signed on as part of the legal team that would defend Saddam Hussein in his trial in Iraq.

 

 

Anti-Semitism is not confined to Muslims and Catholics.  It is worldwide.  The fact that vicious anti-Semitism would pursue the Jews everywhere throughout history is only one - but a very important one - of the many prophecies being fulfilled today concerning Israel that God points to as proof that He is the one true God, that the Bible is His Word, and that the Jews are His chosen people.  A pair of researchers (not evangelical Christians by any means), who have probably done more than anyone else to document modern anti-Semitism, write in their must-be-read book:

 

 

For more than twenty centuries, the Jewish people, more than any other segment of humanity, have been persecuted, uprooted, and annihilated.  It is true that many ethnic and religious groups have suffered grievously at the hands of tyrants, but there is a crucial difference.

 

More Africans were killed in the era of slavery, but there was no determined intent to eradicate the entire Negro race.  A higher percentage of Armenians perished in the Turkish genocide before World War I, but the main intent was to deport them, not extinguish their genetic pool.  Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Suharto murdered millions of their own citizens, but the motive for those crimes was political power, not racial animus.

 

In each of these cases, the genocide was intended to serve a deeper purpose - the conquest of territory, the acquisition of wealth, the enlargement of political power. ... In contrast, the [Page 37] genocide of the Jewish people was not intended to be a means to an end.  It was not attempted in order to achieve a more fundamental purpose.  It was the fundamental purpose.  This is what makes the Nazi Holocaust unique in human history. 24

 

24. John Lollus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People

(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 18.

 

 

Brilliant as these researchers are, and as invaluable as the information they have passed along, they have a blind spot when it comes to Islam.  Nowhere in their monumental work of more than six hundred and fifty pages do they tell us the vital truth that Islam itself (not some extremists) requires that every Jew in the world must be killed.  Nor do they inform us that Islam has been responsible for the slaughter and subjugation of far more people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, than any other evil empire - and that, according to Muhammad, it must take over the entire world.  The horrible truth about Islam, which these authors completely overlook, is still being denied by religious and political leaders, educators, and the media today.  To fill that vacuum and to expose the truth about Islam before it is too late is a major purpose of this volume.

 

 

Why must the Jews, this one very small ethnic group, in contrast to all others, be the universal object of such relentless hatred?  Only the Bible gives a satisfactory explanation.

 

 

HATRED’S “FINAL SOLUTION

 

 

In fallen creation’s long and sordid history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Nazi Holocaust was a close second to Islam.  Hitler declared that the “final objective [of] rational anti-Semitism ... must be the removal of Jews altogether.” 25 It is no surprise, then, that to most Muslims, especially those living in Muslim nations, Hitler is one of their greatest heroes.

 

25. Michael Berenbaum, The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as told in the United States Holocaust Museum

(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1933), 105.

 

 

Mein Kampf in Arabic remains a perpetual bestseller in Muslim countries, especially among “Palestinians.” Hitler was, in fact, a partner with Haj Amin Mohammed Effendi al-Husseini (great uncle and mentor of Yasser Arafat and still a hero to Muslims), a murderous terrorist, appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by Britain and personally responsible for the concentration camp slaughter of [Page 38] hundreds of thousands of Jews. 26 On November 21, 1941, Hitler promised the mufti “a solution to the Jewish problem” in exchange for al-Husseini’s recruitment of thousands of Arabs to fight with Hitler. 27 Based on years of careful investigation, Joan Peters writes:

 

26. From the Mufti's private diary, cited in Arab Higher Committee: Its Origins, Personnel and Purposes,

citing captured Nazi records submitted as documentary evidence to the United Nations, May 1947, 6.

27. Ibid.

 

 

According to documentary records submitted to the United Nations in 1947, al-Husseini was “responsible for the Arab riots in 1920... [against] Jewish lives and property.  Five Jews were killed and 211 injured[on Easter Sunday alone] ... the Arab police remained passive or in some instances joined the rioting. ...

 

British officer R. Meinertzliagen reported later that Haj Amin had been informed by British Colonel Waters-Taylor four days before ... that he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world that the Arabs of Palestine would not tolerate Jewish dominance ... that Palestine was unpopular [with the British] and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols and General Alleriby would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish home.

 

Colonel Meinertzliagen, a senior British officer ... a non-Jew, was charged with being “pro-Zionist” and sent back to a “desk job” in London, where he later protested British policy against the Jews: “Much has been written about injustice to Arabs. There is nothing in a Jewish State which conflicts with Arab rights ... remember that the Arabs are the only nation in the world with at least three kings and several sovereign states.  The Jews are a nation without a home.”

 

 

Hitler and Husseini pledged to work together to exterminate Jews not only in Europe but in the Middle East as well.  The mufti tried to set up a Nazi puppet regime in Iraq.  When that rebellion failed, he escaped to Teheran, from there to Rome, and then to Berlin.  During the three and one-half years (October 1941-May 1945) of serving the Axis, he built up a truly worldwide network of anti-Allied activities, including broadcasting, espionage, and formation of Arab and Moslem military units.  After the collapse of the Third Reich, he [escaped] once more to Cairo, where he was greeted by the entire Arab leadership as the greatest Arab patriot and hero.” 28

 

28. Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The Story of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem

and His Unholy Alliance with Nazism (New York: Thomas Yoseloty, 1965), 6.

 

[Page 39]

Egyptian newspaper columnist Ahmad Rajab (echoing Anwar Sadat) wrote, “Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory. ... We do have a complaint ... his revenge [on the Jews] was not enough.” 29 At the same time, much of the Muslim world attempts to deny the Holocaust.  Dr. Issam Sissalem of the University of Gaza declared, “They are all lies ... no Dachau, no Auschwitz! ... [T]he holocaust was against our people. ...” 30 Sheik Ibrahim Mahdi vowed in a sermon, “Allah willing ... Israel will be erased ...!31

 

29. Al-Akhbar (Egypt), April 18, 2001.   30. Palestinian Authority TV broadcast, November 29, 2000.  

31. Palestinian Television, June 8, 2001.

 

 

At the Wannsee Conference in Germany, January 20, 1942, fifteen Nazi officials met to discuss the “Final solution to the Jewish Problem.”  They enthusiastically and without any conscience plotted the extermination of the eleven million Jews they had identified in Europe and Russia.  The conference was convened and chaired by SS General Reinhard Heydrich and followed the protocol written two years earlier by SS Lt. Colonel Adolf Eichmann.  About five hundred thousand Jews had already been killed by various means, but the gassing of Jews by mobile vans, which had begun December 8, 1941, had proven too slow and inefficient. Eichman confessed that at Wannsee they “spoke about methods of killing, about liquidation, about extermination.” 32

 

32. Berenbaum, World, 103-108.

 

 

Hitler and his Nazi henchmen did not act alone. They  could not have carried out the Holocaust without the cooperation of the German people as a whole.  Nor do Hitler and Germany bear sole responsibility for the Holocaust.  Many other governments share in this guilt as well.  The world refused to be stirred by the horror of what it knew was happening, much less to do anything significant about it.

 

 

A GUILT SHARED BY THE WORLD

 

 

The United States government had full knowledge from reliable intelligence of the extermination of the Jews at least as early as August 1942.  The State Department (which remains firmly anti-Israel to this day) deliberately suppressed the information and, incredible as it may seem, actively worked to prevent the rescue of Jews.  Dated February 10, 1943, State Department telegram 354 shut down the [Page 40] secret channels of communication with informants and indicated that further information about the extermination of Jews was of no interest and should not be accepted in diplomatic channels.

 

 

At meetings with British and American leaders (including the British War Cabinet, Eden, President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Hull, Secretary of War Stimson, Attorney General Biddle, and Justice Frankfurter), Jan Karski, who had visited the Warsaw ghetto an talked with Jewish resistance leaders, offered shocking statistics of the ongoing efforts to exterminate Europe’s Jews.  Karski’s revelations about the systematic slaughter of Jews by the Nazis appeared in The New York Times and other major periodicals.  He lectured on the subject diligently all across America, and his book, Story of a Secret State, became a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection and was published simultaneously in Britain, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.

 

 

In the end, Karski’s disappointed and frustrated comment was, “The Lord assigned me a role to speak and write during the war, when - it seemed to me - it might help.  It did not.”  And sadly, attempts to warn of today’s even more destructive Islamic threat to wipe out all Jews in the world and to conquer the world for Allah seem likewise to fall on deaf ears.

 

 

It was not until January 16, 1944, at the urging of a minor official who presented to him once more the staggering information already known, that Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Moreanthau, Jr., persuaded Roosevelt to take action.  The motive, however, was not to rescue Jews from Hitler’s ovens, but to defer political criticism that could hurt him in the upcoming elections and his bid for an unprecedented fourth term. The War Refugee Board was formed, but its efforts were too little and too late.

 

 

American journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote in Hitler’s day, “It is a fantastic commentary on the inhumanity of our times that for thousands and thousands of people a piece of paper with a stamp on it is the difference between life and death.”  And even the proper piece of paper proved worthless as the bloodlust reached new heights worldwide.

 

[Page 41]

The ocean liner St. Louis reached Havana, May 27, 1939, with nine hundred thirty passengers fleeing from Nazi Germany who possessed valid permits to land in Cuba.  The Cuban government changed its mind, refused to honour the visas, and demanded $500,000 per person, then raised the price to $1,000,000 each.  Of course, that was impossible.  The price was eventually reduced but remained beyond reach of Jewish would-be benefactors by the heartless deadline set.  To its everlasting shame, the United States, too, rejected the pleas of Captain Gustav Schroeder to take in his passengers.  Eventually, they all found refuge in England, Belgium, France, and Holland; but only the 288 taken in by England and very few of the others escaped the Holocaust.

 

 

THE BALD HYPOCRISY OF WORLD POWERS

 

 

The die had already been cast a year earlier at the conference held at the luxurious Hotel Royale in Evian, France, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where delegates from thirty-two countries gathered to discuss the worsening plight of the Jews.  Though President Roosevelt had called the conference, from the beginning he made it clear that the United States would do nothing.  Britain said there was no room in Palestine for Jews beyond the cruel quota its White Paper  of 1939 would set of ten thousand per year, to be ended altogether in five years - and insisted that Palestine was not to be discussed.  In addition, Britain generously would allow over the same period of five years, twenty-five thousand refugees from Nazi Germany to enter.  Considering the fact that the Nazis had identified 11 million Jews for extermination, this quota was an insult to common sense, compassion, and conscience. 33

 

33. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/rnideast/brwhl939.htm.

 

 

At the same time, Britain was closing its eyes to and even aiding the influx of many thousands of Arabs, who would later claim to be “Palestinians” descended from the original inhabitants and to have been there since “time immemorial.”  The United Nations would consider Arabs who had been there at least two years to be “original [Page 42] inhabitants” but would not apply the same standard to Jews.

 

 

The only conference (other than sailing, riding, summer snow skiing at Chamonix on Mont Blanc mineral baths, and gambling, which the delegates enjoyed to the fullest) seemed to be to give the nations a forum to hypocritically profess their great sympathy for Europe’s Jews, who the whole world knew were facing extinction - and then to present various excuses for their “inability” to anything to intervene in their going extermination.

 

 

And what an opportunity the conference gave Hitler, like Pilate, to wash his hands of guilt and to show that the entire world was his partner in destroying the Jews! Two days after Roosevelt announced the Evian conference, Hitler shrewdly declared, “I can only hope that the other world which has such deep sympathy for these criminals [Jews] will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid.  We on our part are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.”

 

 

When the conference ended as it began, with nothing for the Jews, Hitler mocked the participants: “Since in many countries it was recently regarded as wholly incomprehensible why Germany did not wish to preserve in its population an element like the Jews ... it appears astounding that countries seem in no way anxious to make use of these elements themselves now that the opportunity offers.” 34

 

34. Berenbaurn, World, 49-50.

 

 

No one called Hitler’s bluff, if that is what it was.  No one can blame Hitler alone for the Holocaust - not when he offered to let the Jews go and no nation was willing to open its arms and receive them!  Later in the war, desperate for cash, he would offer to sell five hundred thousand Hungarian Jews for two dollars each, and no one would offer to ransom them from death even at that bargain price!  There was no need for millions of Jews to perish in Hitler’s ovens; it happened simply because world leaders did not value Jews as human beings enough to accept them.

 

 

In April 1943, British and American officials met in Bermuda to discuss the Holocaust, which was grinding out its daily quota of victims, now in the millions.  Once again, it was formally decided to do nothing.  Finally, the reason for the inaction at [Page 43] Evian five years earlier was openly admitted, at least among the delegates.  The emerging picture unveils the truth about the evil  in the human heart and makes one ashamed to be part of the human race:

 

 

The British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department were both afraid that the Third Reich would be quite willing, indeed eager, to stop the gas chambers, empty the concentration camps, and let hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jewish survivors emigrate to freedom in the West.  The Foreign Office “revealed in confidence” to the State Department its fear that Hitler might permit a mass exodus.  If approaches to Germany to release Jews were “pressed too much that is exactly what might happen.” 35

 

35. Lottus and Aarons, Secret War, 49; see also David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews

(New York: Pantheon, 1984), 342.

 

 

No less callous to the plight of the Jews, two months later Pope Pius XII wrote an urgent letter to President Roosevelt to persuade him that Jews should not be allowed to return to Palestine.

 

 

We are able to provide only a small amount of the documentation to demonstrate the crime of anti-Semitism and the fact that the whole world is guilty.  This should be enough, however, to reveal the horror of this evil that is still with us and is becoming uglier.  There is no escaping the fact that this is exactly what the Bible foretold.  Just on the  basis of prophesied anti-Semitism alone, re have sufficient proof that the God of Israel exists and that the Bible is His infallible Word.

 

 

A RISING TIDE OF JEW HATRED TODAY

 

 

Anti-Semitism did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany and the death of Hitler.  In fulfilment of biblical prophecies, not only in Muslim countries but worldwide, it is again on the rise, causing a heightened level of alert in Jewish communities.  A brief search of the internet reveals scores of examples.  There is an alarming increase in the widespread desecration of Jewish cemeteries.  Violence against Jews and Jewish property is rising.  In Istanbul, Turkey, in the middle of the fast of Ramadan (a time of “peace” for Arab tribes prior to Islam) car bombs devastated two synagogues, killing or wounding [Page 44] dozens.  In Morocco, in May 2004, terrorists hit a Jewish community centre and hotel, leaving a trail of death.  Other incidents are too numerous to mention.

 

 

In polls across the EU, most Europeans continue to rate Israel as “the greatest obstacle to peace” in the world, ahead of the United States, which places second.  The EU has repeatedly condemned Israel for using force against Palestinian terrorists who attack her, killing and maiming thousands of innocent women and children. Yet they never condemn the terrorists and have been supporting the Palestinians at the rate of five hundred thousand Euros a month, much of which has been used to fund terrorism against Israel.  Apparently, Israel is expected to fight terrorism non-violently.  Like we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq?

 

 

The Jewish synagogue in Vienna, Austria, has suffered attacks in the past.  As others throughout Europe, it must be guarded by heavily armed police twenty-four hours a day.  Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, recently wrote: “I am convinced that we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s - if not a greater one.” 36 Violent acts against Jews have risen to an alarming level in France, which has a Jewish population of about six hundred thousand, surrounded by six million Muslims worshiping in fifteen hundred mosques.  As a result, record numbers of Jews are leaving France for Israel.

 

36. http://www.today.ucla.edu/2004/040413voices-anti.html.

 

 

The rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany brought more than four thousand Christians from all over that country to stage a protest demonstration in front of the Reichstag in Berlin in August 2002.  A poll by Germany’s University of Bielefeld early in December 2004 revealed that 51 percent of Germans believe that Israel’s present-day treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the Nazis did to the Jews during World War II.  The survey also found that 68 percent of Germans believe that Israel is waging a “war of extermination” against the Palestinians.  How could they get it exactly backwards?  Anti-Semitism, prophesied in the Bible, blinds to the truth.

 

 

Even in Israel, anti-Semitism is on the rise.  According to the Information Centre for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel, there [Page 45] have been some five hundred such incidents in Israel during the past three years.  The Russian-language newspapers in Israel print a story on an anti-Semitic incident every week, and at every police station in the country at least one anti-Semitic case is registered,” says Zalman Gilichinsky, director of the information centre. 37

 

37. www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/030725/rise.shtml.

 

 

Harvard University’s president, Lawrence H. Summers, recently condemned what he termed “growing anti-Semitism” at Harvard and elsewhere.  Nearly 600 professors, students, staff members, and alumni from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed a petition urging Harvard and M.I.T. to divest from Israel.  Similar efforts have been mounted at about 40 other universities.” 38

 

38. The New York Times, September 21, 2002; see also http://www.president.harvard.edu/ speeches/2002/momingprayers.html.

 

 

The Presbyterian Church USA (it had a “Palestinian” president in 2002) is leading a campaign to pressure Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, and United Technologies to cease sales of military equipment and supplies to Israel under the threat of churches divesting themselves of their stock.  A similar campaign of divestiture was successfully waged by American churches during, the 1980s to pressure South Africa to end apartheid.

 

 

THE REASON FOR ANTI-SEMITISM

 

 

According to the Bible, there are two reasons for this universal hatred of Jews and Israel.  First of all, the Jews, as God’s chosen people, are under His judgment for their rebellion against Him and the rejection of their Messiah. 39 Secondly, anti-Semitism is inspired of Satan - a being whose existence many “educated” people deny.  The reason is obvious.  It was foretold that the Saviour of the world, who would rescue mankind from Satan’s control, would be a Jew. 40 Satan’s only hope to escape eternal doom, therefore, was to destroy those whom God chose “to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” 41 Had Satan been able to destroy the Jews before the birth of the Messiah, he would have prevented his own defeat.  For promising a Messiah who never came, God would have proved Himself a liar and lost any moral ground for punishing Satan.

 

39. Deuteronomy 28: 15-68; 29: 24-28; 30: 17-20, etc.   40. Genesis 12: 3; 2 Samuel 7: 8-16; Isaiah 9: 6-7; Micah 5: 2, etc.

41. Deuteronomy 7: 6.   42. Hebrews 2: 9.

 

[Page 46]

The Bible declares that the Messiah came and defeated Satan by “tast[ing] death for every man42 and bearing “our sins in his own body on the tree.” 43

 

43. 1 Peter 2: 24.

 

 

But that fact did not end the battle between God and His arch-enemy for the hearts, minds, and eternal destiny of mankind.  That battle continues to rage - and Israel is at its centre.  The Bible contains hundreds of prophecies that, although God would severely punish Israel for her sins, He would preserve a remnant and bring the scattered Jews back into their own land.  This prophecy, too, is undeniably in the process of being fulfilled in our day.

 

 

Satan could still escape his eternal doom if he could wipe out Israel.  That fact provides the only rational explanation for Muslims’ irrational obsession with destroying that tiny nation.  It also stands as evidence that Satan is a reality, not a myth.

 

 

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL

 

 

Nothing aroused Satan’s desperate fury and the wrath of Islam as did the birth of the nation of Israel.  It must be annihilated.  And to this end, the driving force is not a few “extremists” but Islam itself Islam promises Muslims victory against the Jews as well as against the entire world.  Instead, they taste only humiliation in every attack they launch.  Israel, on the other hand, in spite of being under God’s judgment, enjoys His protection in many ways, as we have already seen: “In that day will I make the governors of Judah like ... a torch of fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the people round about.” 44

 

44. Zechariah 12: 6.

 

 

The wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973 have borne eloquent testimony to the truth of Scripture: “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say; If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us:  Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us ... Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. ... Our help is in the name of the LORD who made heaven and earth.” 45

 

45. Psalm 124: 1-8.

 

 

The Arabs’ repeated defeat at the hands of Israel is both embarrassing and maddening for them.  The Imams blame this shame [Page 47] upon the departure from true Islam by the masses of Muslims.  They are whipping up a worldwide revival of fundamentalist Islam as the way to regain Allah’s blessing and thereby defeat Israel.

 

 

As long as Israel retains autonomy over one square yard of land, it is an affront to Islam and declares to the world that Islam is a false religion, Allah a false god,  Muhammad a false prophet, and the Qur’an a false revelation.  This is the issue - and all the talk of “peace,” without recognizing and changing this teaching of Islam, is both a fool’s dream and a fraud.

 

 

It has well been said, if Arabs/Muslims put down their weapons today, that would be the end of Arab-Israeli wars.  If Israel put down her weapons, that would be the end of Israel.  These are simple facts that no one can deny - and are worth thinking about very seriously.

 

 

ANOTHER AMAZING PROPHECY

 

 

Balaam is one of the most enigmatic figures in the Bible.  He was at one time in touch with God and made some genuine prophecies as recorded in Scripture, yet he later turned away from God and is in hell [Hades] now. 46 For example, he foretold the star in the East 47 that the wise men saw and followed to find Christ at His birth. 48 One of Balaam’s prophecies recorded in the Bible that has been and is still being fulfilled in our day is most unusual.  He declared that Israel would “not be reckoned among the nations.” 49

 

46. 2 Peter 2: 15; Jude 11; Revelation 2: 14.    47. Numbers 24: 17.    48. Matthew 2: 1-2.    49. Numbers 23: 9.

 

 

This remarkable utterance does not stand alone.  God has stated it many times and in other ways.  For example, “The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth”; 50I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people ... I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.” 51 Except for the holiness it was to manifest, this is precisely the situation in which Israel finds herself today.  Israel has been a member of the United Nations for more than fifty years.  Yet she is not allowed to take her two-year turn as one of the ten rotating nations (joining the five permanent ones) on the UN Security Council.  Of the [Page 192] current UN members, 190, including the worst terrorist nations, are allowed to take their turns on the Security Council - but not Israel.

 

50. Deuteronomy 7: 6.   51. Leviticus 20: 24-26.

 

 

Nor is Israel, as already noted, allowed to take a rotating term on the fifty-three-member UN Commission on Human Rights.  All of the other one hundred ninety UN member nations are allowed to do so.  These have included Libya, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and other egregious violators of human rights.  Incredibly, Sudan, where more than two million blacks in the south have been slaughtered by Muslims, has been voted in for a third consecutive term.  But Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is excluded, as the Bible foretold.

 

 

Nor is Israel allowed to be a member of the International Red Cross.  The Red Crescent, representing Muslim countries, among which are many terrorist nations, is part of this international humanitarian organization.  But Israel, which signed the 1949 Geneva Conventions (many of the members of the Red Crescent did not), is barred from the International Red Cross.

 

 

As we have noted, whether the rest of the world likes it or not, the Jews are God’s chosen people.  That fact carries not only blessings and privileges but also responsibilities - and penalties for disobedience.  Israel has experienced both God’s blessing and judgment in the past.  Both testify to the integrity of God and His Word.  Israel remains in His hands and under His protection today, even while she is at the same time experiencing His discipline.  God must fulfil His Word concerning judgment - as well as the prophesied full restoration and eternal blessing - for the remnant that survives Armageddon.  Woe to those who oppose God’s promises to Israel.

 

 

TEN LOST TRIBES?

 

 

There are other ways to get rid of the Jews than putting them into Hitler’s ovens or killing them by Muslim terrorism and war.  There is the myth of the “ten lost tribes” that is popularly believed among Christians today.  Yes, the ten northern tribes were indeed carried into Assyria in about 740 B.C.: “Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none [Page 49] left but the tribe of Judah ... as he had said by all his servants the prophets.  So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.” 52 Of course, this day refers to the day in which this was written, not to our day.

 

52. 2 Kings 17: 17-23.

 

 

Furthermore, it is clear that many if not most of those who were carried away had returned, even at that time. There is specific mention of a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim, and Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulon,” who escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria and kept the Passover in Jerusalem in the days of Hezekiah more than a decade after the carrying away into Assyria. 53 Then we read of Israel joining with Judah in keeping the Passover during the great revival under King Josiah about ninety years later.  Seven of the “ten lost tribes” are mentioned as being present, and the implication is that all were there. 54 Nearly two hundred years after the ten tribes were carried into Assyria, God gave Ezekiel a vision of the future restoration and referred to the Promised Land being divided according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” 55

 

53. 2 Chronicles 30: 6, 18, etc.   54. Ibid., 34, 35.   55. Ezekiel 47: 13.

 

 

If ten tribes were lost, Christ’s promise could not be fulfilled to His disciples: “When the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” 56. Then Christ would be a liar and Satan the victor.  Paul did’t think any tribes were lost.  In his appeal to King Agrippa, he refers to the “twelve tribes” as in existence at that time. 57 James addressed his epistle “to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad.” 58 Yet the myth of the “ten lost tribes” is still believed by many Christians.

 

56. Matthew 19: 28; Luke 22: 30.   57. Acts 26: 7.   58. James 1: 1.

 

 

MORE ANTI-SEMITISM AMONG CHRISTIANS

 

 

Another idea gaining popularity among Christians today is the false teaching that the church has replaced Israel.  This Roman Catholic doctrine, which is a form of anti-Semitism, is also promoted by evangelicals.  It declares that Israel has been cut off because of her sins, and the prophecies concerning her restoration are no longer valid.  If that were so, then the “everlasting covenant” promised to Israel eleven times in the Old Testament 59 and the everlasting possession [Page 50] of the land promised twice 60 were not everlasting at all, and God has lied.  Satan has won, and this world belongs to him.

 

59. Genesis 17: 7, 13, 19; Leviticus 24: 8; 2 Samuel 23: 5; 1 Chronicles 16: 17; Psalm 105: 8-11, etc.   60. Genesis 17: 8; 48: 4.

 

 

There are scores of promises that God would in the end restore Israel fully to her land.  Yet Christian leaders deny these promises by saying that Israel is finished: “...physical Jews. ...are in slavery and will not be heirs of God’s promise because they are not the children of promise [author’s emphasis].” 61 Another author writes, “The idea that corporate national Israel is still God’s chosen people is prevalent in the minds of many today.  But … the Word of God shows that ... Israel broke the Old Covenant and thereby forfeited any rights to it.” 62 This claim, if true, would clearly make God a liar.  We will deal with this more fully in Chapter Eleven.

 

61. Brian Godawa, “The Promise to Abraham: Yesterday, Today and Forever,” SCP Journal, 27: 2-27: 3, 53-70.

62. Alan Morrison, “The Two Jerusalems: A Biblical look at the Modern State of Israel, Judaism & the Church,”

SCP Journal, 27: 2-273, 14-51.

 

 

Why did God chose Israel?  He had to chose a people through whom the Messiah would come into the world as a man to pay the penalty for our sins.  It was not a matter of favouritism, but selection of someone named Abraham, who, like Noah, “found grace” in His eyes 63 and would be obedient to Him.  He is given the amazing designation in the Bible as “the friend of God.” 64 Abraham was promised a land that would be an “everlasting possession” for his heirs.  The present conflict in the Middle East involves the question of who those heirs are today.  We will turn to that issue next.

 

63. Genesis 6: 8.    64. James 2: 23.

 

 

*        *       *

 

[Page 53]

CHAPTER 3

 

 

WHO INHERITS THE PROMISED LAND?

 

 

THE PROBLEMS IN THE MIDDLE EAST all centre upon a dispute over a land that was promised to Abraham and to his heirs.  On that promise, Jews, Muslims, and Christians basically agree.  The dispute concerns the identity of Abraham’s heirs who were to inherit the Promised Land. We know from the Bible that Abraham had at least eight sons:: Ishmael, the firstborn, by Hagar, his wife Sarah’s maid;1 Isaac, the second born, by his wife Sarah; 2 and six other sons by Keturah, whom he married after Sarah’s death. 3 Which of these sons’ descendants qualify?  Or do they all get a share?  The Bible gives a clear answer.

 

1. Genesis 16: 1-16.   2. Ibid., 17: 15-21; 21: 1-12.   3. Ibid., 25: 1-2.

 

When reading the Bible, one is immediately impressed with the fact that this is not the fiction of the Bhagavad Gita, Hindu Vedas, Qur’an, or Book of Mormon.  The Bible presents both history and prophecy concerning real people, real places, and verifiable events that actually happened on this earth.  That evaluation must apply as well to the Garden of Eden, the flood, and the Tower of Babel, all of which we learn about in the first eleven chapters of Genesis - but those are not our subject.

 

[Page 54]

As we have already seen, the numerous prophecies found in the Bible (in contrast to the scriptures of the world’s religions, which contain none) prove beyond question that there is one almighty God, infinite in knowledge, wisdom, love, and holiness, who created this universe, and that the Bible is His infallible Word to mankind.  Therefore, no matter what any other book says (whether religious or scientific), if it contradicts the Bible, it is wrong.

 

 

BIBLE “SCHOLARS” TRASHING THE BIBLE AND ISRAEL

 

 

Incredibly, growing numbers of those who still claim to be evangelical Christians are denying the veracity of Scripture, especially when it comes to Israel.  A case in point is the new The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible, edited by Rickard J. Foster, Eugene Peterson, author of The Message - a blasphemously perverted “version” of the New Testament - is “Consulting Editor, New Testament.”4

 

4. Richard J. Foster, Ed; Gayle Beebe, Lynda L. Graybeal, Thomas C. Oden, and Dallas Willard, Gen. Eds.,

The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

 

This new “Bible” includes commentaries by supposed leading Bible scholars such as Bruce Demarest, Professor of Theology at Denver Seminary; Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; Tremper Longman III, the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College; and Earl F. Palmer, on the Board of Trustees of the long-apostate Princeton Theological Seminary and senior pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington.  Its explanatory notes deny the Divine authorship of much of Scripture - even that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Isaiah the book of Isaiah, and Daniel the book of Daniel.

 

 

Hypocritically declaring, “we read the Bible literally, from cover to cover... [and] in context,” 5 the Renovare Bible claims that Genesis 1-11 is neither historic nor scientific but mythological, 6 and that the entire book of Genesis, which is the foundation of the Bible, is merely a collection of hearsay passed down by word of mouth.  This “Bible” attacks true Bible with the long discredited objections of the “Higher Criticism” movement in Germany of one hundred fifty years ago.

 

5. Ibid., General Introduction, xxxi.   6. Ibid., 14-15.

 

[Page 55]

There is no recognition of the great prophecies in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, et al., of Israel being brought back into her own land in the last days and the fact that she must endure forever (Ezekiel 36-37, etc.).7  For example, the powerful prophetic promise from God to bring back the Jews scattered around the world in Jeremiah 31: 8-14 is interpreted as a promise to all homeless people (nothing about Israel); and God’s promise that Israel can never be destroyed (31: 35-37) is ignored!  Israel is treated as having been replaced by the church.  Incredibly, the valley of dry bones brought back to life in Ezekiel 37, which is clearly declared to be “the whole house of Israel” (37: 1-11), is interpreted as the birth of the church at Pentecost!  Ezekiel 38-39 is supposedly not about Armageddon, with real armies attacking the nation of Israel back in her land in the last days to be rescued by the Messiah but is about “dark forces” always; at work in the world.

7. Ibid., 987.

 

 

CANAAN, NOT “PALESTINE”!

 

 

In the last two verses of Genesis 11, we meet a man named Abram.  At the age of seventy-five, in obedience to God, he leaves his homeland in Ur of the Chaldees and by faith takes his wife, servants, and flocks on a long journey to a land of which God had said, “I will show thee.” 8 God’s purpose, reaching into our own day, goes far beyond anything Abram imagines, but he believes what God has said: I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee. ... And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” 9 Because he believes implicitly what God has said, God credits Abram with righteousness. 10

8. Genesis 12: 1.   9. Ibid., 12: 2-3.   10. Romans 4: 5.

 

 

Surprise!  The laud into which God led Abram was notPalestine.”  There was no such place.  Nor was there such a people as “Palestinians.”  In all of history; there never were a Palestinian people, nation, government, language, culture, religion, or economy.  There are those today who call themselves “Palestinians” and claim that they descended from a Palestinian people who lived  thousands of years in a land called Palestine.  In fact, that claim is an outright [Page 56] hoax.  Yet the world accepts this lie as the basis of a false peace that they have been attempting for years to force upon Israel.

 

 

God’s Word declares. Into the land of Canaan they [Abram et al.] came ... the Canaanite was then in the land. ... Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan. ... And the LORD said unto Abram ... all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever ... walk through the land ... for I will give it unto thee.  Then Abram removed his tent ... and dwelt ... in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the LORD [and] the LORD made a covenant with Abram ... unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.” 11 The land is further defined by the nations then living in it, which Israel was to destroy and displace.  It is far larger than that tiny piece of it that the world has allotted to Israel.

 

11. Genesis 12: 5-6; 13: 12, 14-18; 15: 18.

 

 

Abram (whose name God changed to Abraham) settled in Hebron in the land of Canaan. 12 Everyone knows that Hebron and Canaan are nowhere near Saudi Arabia.  Yet the Qur’an and Islam claim that Abraham and his firstborn son, Ishmael, together built the Ka’aba in Mecca.  This is pure fabrication, of which the Qur’an has many more.  For example, the Qur’an claims that Noah had another son, who refused to enter the ark and died in the flood, 13 that Mary the mother of Jesus was the sister of Moses 14 and gave birth to Jesus under a palm tree, 15 that the golden calf was built by a Samaritan seven hundred years before Samaritans even existed, 16 etc.  Nevertheless, Pope John Paul II, in May 14th, 1999, at a ceremony in the Vatican, bowed to and kissed a copy of the Qur’an presented to him by Shi’ite and Sunni leaders from Iraq, even though it contradicts the Bible, rejects the Trinity, denies Christ’s deity, says He didn’t die on the Cross, 17 and offers no way that God could justly forgive sins.  Tragically, Muslims are continuously being pacified by honouring Islam’s lies in an unconscionable disregard for truth.

 

12. Ibid., 13: 18; 23: 2, 19; 35: 27; 37: 14, etc.   13. Surah 11: 42-43.   14. Ibid., 19: 28. 

15. Ibid., 19: 21-27.   16. Ibid., 20: 85-87, 95-97.   17. Ibid., 4: 157.

 

 

ISHMAEL AND ISAAC

 

 

As the years went by, both Abraham and Sarah his wife began to doubt God’s promise that He would give them a son.  Sarah was sure [Page 57] she could never bear a child and told Abraham that God would give him the son He had promised through Hagar, her maid.  He accepted the idea (even though God had promised him a son through Sarah) and Hagar gave birth to Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, after Abraham had lived in Hebron for ten years.

 

 

There are few things on which the Bible and Qur’an are in complete agreement.  One of them is the fact that God gave the entire Promised Land of Canaan to Abraham and to his heirs. There is agreement also that Abraham’s firstborn was Ishmael and that Isaac was born next.  Disagreement comes with Islam’s insistence that the Arabs, who claim to be descended from Ishmael, are the rightful heirs to the Promised Land, whereas the Bible clearly states that the legitimate heir to the promise are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In fact, God declares: I AMthe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” 18 As noted in Chapter One, nine times He is referred to in that same way.  Both Jesus 19 and Peter 20 honour God with this title.  Never is He called the God of Ishmael or of the Arabs - or of any [national] people group except Israel.

 

18. Exodus 3:13-16.   19. Matthew 22: 32; Mark 12: 26; Luke 20: 37.   20. Acts 3: 13.

 

 

That fact does not mean that the God of the Bible, the true God, does not love and provide salvation for all mankind.  In fact, He does.  It only means that the Jews are His people in a unique way, with special provisions that apply only to them.

 

 

Islam claims that, as the firstborn, Ishmael had the right of inheritance to the Promised Land.  Ordinarily that would have been true - but God had promised Abraham that Sarah, his wife, would bear him, a son who would be his heir.  Ishmael was not the son of God’s promise but of Abraham’s and Sarah’s unbelief.  Nevertheless, Abraham loved Ishmael (now thirteen years of age) and told God that he was happy with the son he had - as much as saying that he didn’t want another son.  Here is the fascinating story that authoritatively settles forever any dispute between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac concerning the land God gave to Abraham and his heirs forever:

 

 

And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife ... Sarah shall her name be ... I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her. ...

 

[Page 58]

Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed. ... And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!

 

 

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.  And as for Ishmael ... I have blessed him. ... But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee. 21

 

21. Genesis 17: 15-21.

 

 

The following year, fourteen years after Ishmael’s birth by Hagar, Isaac was born in Hebron to Abraham and Sarah, his wife.  Ishmael mocked his half-brother, Isaac.  In anger, Sarah banished him and his mother from the land God had given to Abraham and to his heirs. 22 From that time onward, Ishmael was no longer part of Abraham’s household but lived far away “in the wilderness of Paran.” 23

 

22. Ibid., 21: 10-20.   23. Ibid., 21: 21.

 

 

THE ULTIMATE TEST OF ABRAHAM’S FAITH

 

 

Distinguishing Isaac beyond dispute from the other sons born to Abraham, God called Isaac Abraham’s “only son.” As a test of Abraham’s obedience and faith, God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah: “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest ... and offer him [as] a burnt-offering. ...” 24 In submission to God’s command, Isaac willingly allowed his father to bind him upon the altar.

 

24. Ibid., 21: 1-2.

 

 

Confident now of God’s promises, Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead. 25 God tested Abraham to the very point where he raised his knife to slay Isaac.  At that moment, God intervened and provided a ram to be offered in Isaac’s place, having proved the complete obedience of both father and son. 26 This is the testimony of Scripture from the God who “cannot lie” 27 and whose “gifts and calling ... are without repentance.” 28

 

25. Hebrews 11: 17-19.   26. Genesis 21: 3-14.   27. 1 Samuel 15: 29; Psalm 89: 35; Titus 1: 2, etc.   28. Romans 11: 29.

 

 

The fact that Isaac, miraculously born to both Abraham and Sarah, was the one through whom God’s promises of the land and of the Messiah would be fulfilled, and that Ishmael was not the son whose descendants would possess the Promised Land, is so clearly and repeatedly declared in Scripture that it cannot be honestly disputed.

 

[Page 59]

Yet the Arabs, who say they are descended from Ishmael, lay claim to the promises given by God to Isaac and through him to the Jews.  Islam’s assertion that Ishmael was the son of promise not only contradicts Scripture but irrationally gives an illegitimate son priority over the legitimate son, whom God designated to be the true heir.

 

 

IMPORTANCE OF HEBRON TO ISRAEL

 

 

Thirty-seven years after giving birth to Isaac, Sarah died at the age of 127. 29 Abraham was still residing in Hebron of Canaan, where he had lived more than seventy years.  He purchased the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite, 30 and there he buried Sarah.  Thirty-eight years later, at the age of 175, Abraham died and was buried in Machpelah next to Sarah.  After Abraham’s death, Isaac continued to live in Hebron in the land of Canaan another one hundred and ten years.  Ishmael never lived there as an adult.  One by one, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah all died and were buried beside Abraham and Sarah in the family tomb, the cave of Machpelah - but not Ishmael.  No Arab or Muslim was ever buried there.

 

29. Genesis 23: 1.   30. Ibid., 23: 1-20.

 

 

David was first crowned king in Hebron and ruled there over Judah 7 ˝ years before moving his throne to Jerusalem.  Hebron is of great significance to the Jews.  Yet Muslims built a mosque at Machpelah, claim the burial place of Jewish patriarchs as their own, forbid access to Jews (Israeli soldiers in full battle gear are required to keep it open to Jews), have periodically slaughtered and expelled Jews from Hebron, and are determined to make it as Jew-free as Nazi Germany.  They also persist in the preposterous claim that Jerusalem and the entire land of Israel have always belonged to them, that no Jews ever lived there, and that the Israelis are occupying Arab land!  And the world accepts such outright lies as the basis for forcing upon Israel an unjust peace in the Middle East.  God’s judgment cannot long be delayed unless America and the world repent of this defiance of Him and His Word.

 

 

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their families lived for more than three hundred years in Hebron in the land of Canaan, which God [Page 60] had promised to them and to their descendants. (Arabs never lived there in any numbers until after the seventh-century Muslim invasion of Israel).  Jacob and his family temporarily moved to Egypt because of a famine in Canaan.  Their descendants remained there four hundred years and became the slaves of the Egyptians, and then were brought back to conquer Canaan as God had foretold, establishing them as the heirs of God’s promises to Abraham. 31

 

31. Ibid., 15: 13-14.

 

 

The P.L.O. claims that Hebron, a city with no connection to Islam, belongs to Muslims and insists that every Jewish resident be removed.  In fact, Hebron is one of the most revered places to every Jew.  No “Palestinian” ancestor was buried there.  Ishmael is buried many miles away.  Yet the lie continues.

 

 

THE BATTLE FOR HEBRON

 

 

On February 25, 1994, a deranged American-born Israeli, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, acting on his own, walked into the ll Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron and sprayed praying Muslims with an automatic weapon, killing twenty-nine and wounding many others.  It was a brutal act, headlined and regurgitated in the media around the world for days as proof that Israel is the evil aggressor who has stolen a country from the Palestinians and is continually abusing them in its “occupation.”  Goldstein was overwhelmed and killed by survivors.

 

 

In fact, unlike the terrorism Israel has endured for fifty years, which is carefully planned and continues with the full knowledge and blessing of the Arab world, this was an isolated act by one Israeli - and it was condemned by Israel.  That Israelis have been murdered by the thousands in continuous assaults for more than fifty years, and that the murderers of Israelis are praised as heroes, was somehow overlooked as unimportant. One might be justified in wondering why, for example, the slaughter of sixty-one Israelis and the maiming of hundreds in two bus bombings in Jerusalem just two months earlier were not referred to as a comparison - but the headlines and multi-page criticisms worldwide blaming Goldstein’s isolated act on Israel failed to mention the hundreds of celebrated terrorist attacks against Israel.

 

[Page 61]

Nor did any of the reports in the Western media refer to the rumours of an imminent pogrom by the Arabs that had been circulating in Hebron for days, or that the evening before, Muslims had threatened Jewish residents, nearby settlers, and worshipers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.  At Purim services that evening, as Jewish worshipers, including Goldstein, were reading the Scroll of Esther, local Muslims loudly disrupted the ceremony with chants of “It-bakh al Yahud” (slaughter the Jews), a cry frequently heard in Hebron.  Though not an excuse for his actions, these facts reveal the daily threat of terrorism that Dr. Goldstein, an IDF medical officer, had continually faced in Hebron, where he had treated victims of Muslim violence.

 

 

A pacifist group called the Christian Peacemakers moved into Hebron in June 1995 at the invitation of its mayor to monitor violence and to document Israeli aggression against Palestinians.  Seemingly blind to Palestinian propaganda and aggression against Israelis, the Peacemakers concluded that “to the Jewish settlers, Palestinians are inferior and murderous by nature, and killing those who refuse to leave [Hebron] is justifiable self-defence.32 A full page was devoted to the Goldstein story in the National Catholic Reporter.  It declared that problems began some 20 years ago when Jewish settlers, claiming an exclusive right not only to the city, but to all of Palestine, began moving into Hebron.”  How can theseunbiased observers and peacemakersget it so wrong?

 

32. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Jewish settlers as pushy ‘chosen people’ - 

Christian Peacemakers have thankless task,” National Catholic Reporter, April 26, 1996, 12.

 

Began moving into Hebron twenty years ago?  On the contrary, the Jews, though chased out periodically by invaders, had been there for three thousand years.  Arabs arrived only after the seventh-century Muslim conquest of Palestine and immediately began to brutalize the Jewish residents for failing to convert to Islam.  That mistreatment has continued to a greater or lesser degree ever since - for more than thirteen hundred years.  Reading this full-page National Catholic Reporter truth-defying diatribe (typical of so many others) condemning the Jews for their alleged brutal mistreatment of innocent and helpless Palestinians, and praising the latter for patiently enduring such suffering, one’s blood begins to boil!

 

 

In the vicious pogrom of 1929, sixty-seven Jews were murdered [Page 62] in Hebron alone, and the rest forced to flee.  Based on deliberate lies that he had invented about Jews raping Muslim women and murdering widows and babies, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, fomented riots against Jews throughout the entire country in order to convince the British that stopping Jewish immigration would prevent violence.  Hebron was attacked.  Unarmed yeshiva students were murdered, Jewish homes were attacked, and their occupants were slaughtered.  The synagogues were desecrated. ... The Grand Mufti’s policy of ethnic cleansing of Jewish inhabitants was being implemented with a vengeance.  The British police chief of Hebron later gave the following testimony:

 

 

On hearing screams ... I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword.  Seeing me, he tried to aim the stroke at me but missed. ... I shot him. ... Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as an Arab police constable named Issa Sheril from Jaffa ... standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand.  He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out - shouting in Arabic, ‘Your Honour, I am a policeman.’  I got into the room and shot him. 33

 

33. Cited in Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003), 43.

 

As a result of that pogrom, Hebron, which had been the exclusive home of Jews for centuries, became for the first time in its history an Arabs-only city.  Years later, cautiously and fearfully, some Jews began moving back into one of their most sacred cities, where their patriarchs are buried.  Then came the war of 1948, when Israel, accepting the partition under U.N. Resolution 181, declared its independence and was attacked by the regular armed forces of six Arab nations.  Jordan captured the West Bank and with it, Hebron.  It was a further disaster for Jewish residents, who were trying to re-establish themselves in Hebron.  All were summarily expelled.

 

 

BLINDED BY PREJUDICE?

 

 

In its zeal to depict the four hundred Israelis in Hebron as the aggressors brutally mistreating the one hundred twenty thousand [Page 63] Arab residents, the National Catholic Reporter forgot to explain why there are so few Jews and why they have only recently begun to return to Hebron.  During the Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967, Jews were not allowed to live in Hebron or even to visit the Jewish holy sites there - though that prohibition was a blatant violation of the terms of the 1948 Armistice Agreement.  In East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank, which they had captured, Jordanian authorities and Arab residents undertook systematic destruction of all evidence of any Jewish presence in the past in order to bolster their preposterous claim that Jews never lived in Israel!  They razed the Jewish Quarter of Hebron, desecrated the Jewish cemetery, and built an animal pen on the ruins of the Avraham Avinu synagogue.  Of course, that means nothing in view of the horrible way today’s Israeli settlers allegedly treat the Muslims!  It is maddening how eagerly the world accepts bald-faced Arab lies and revisionist history, and repeats it all with pomp and authority as though it were really true!  Indeed, these lies become the basis for “Peace”!

 

 

The “Peacemakers” seem to be completely ignorant of the history of Hebron and unwilling to consider anything that puts the “Palestinians” in a bad light.  The truth is that Jews in Hebron have through the centuries been subjected there, as elsewhere, to indescribable cruelty and murder at the hands of Muslim Arabs.  Jumping quickly over a few instances: In 1518, Hebron’s prosperous Jewish community was “plundered [by Muslims], many Jews killed, and the survivors forced to flee.” By 1540, however, the Jewish community had recovered, 34 though they were still plundered periodically by travelling Arab marauders.  In 1775, lies about Jews killing non-Jews for their blood to make matzo balls (still a popular myth among Muslims today) caused riots against the Jews.  In 1834, the Jews of Hebron were massacred by Egyptian soldiers.  Some “converted” to Islam to escape persecution. 35

 

34. Ruether, “Peacemakers,” 21.  

35. Moshe Ma’oz, ed., Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975), 147-48.

 

In 1851, the British Consulate in Jerusalem reported that “the Jews in Hebron have been greatly alarmed by threats of the Moslems there at the commencement of Ramadan...”  In May 1852, the Consul General came to Hebron because of reports of [Page 64] the mistreatment of the Jews.  He reported that “the Jews were all so alarmed ... that they would tell me nothing ... one of the leading Rabbis implored me not to inform [governor] Abderrahhman ... that I had come to protect the Jews, as he would inevitably punish them the more for it after my departure.”  In July 1858, he reported, “During my stay [in Hebron] a Jewish house was forcibly entered by night [and] heavy stones thrown from invisible hands at every person approaching the place to offer help.”

 

 

Under the influence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini (whose terrorist followers killed Jews and Arabs alike that stood in his way), “The mayor of Hebron, Nasr el Din Nasr, was murdered August 4, 1936; the wife and daughter of the mayor of Bethlehem were wounded July 1937; the mayor of Nablus, Suleiman Bey Toukan, who publicly warned the government of chaos if terrorism was not squelched, fled after an attempted assassination in December of 1937.  No fewer than eleven [Arab] mukhtars [heads of villages] were slain [for living peacefully with Jews], along with family members, between February 1937 and November 1938.” 36 The same is true today.  The number of “Palestinian” Arabs killed for political reasons by Palestinian death squads far exceeds the number killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

 

36. Peters, Immemorial., 314.

 

The misinformation today is nothing new, and just as frustrating as it has always been.  In 1937, angry at the pro-Arab lies being reported in British newspapers, one British Foreign Office correspondent complained that terrorists “were viewed by an increasing number of British officials and observers as ‘sincere Arab patriots’ whose violence was justified.’”  He went on to report:

 

 

The Arabs [Muslims] hate civilization and would like to keep the country in its present backward state. ... The goats are allowed to eat off all the young plants and the women take what is left for fuel.  Fortunately, the Jews are enclosing their land and they are the one hope. ... The Arabs ... talk big about their country but what have they done for it?  They tread down the poor and take backshish [bribes] and that is all they care for.” [Emphasis in original]” 37

 

37. Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine

(New York: J. KAP Publishing U.S.A., 1984), 315.

 

[Page 65]

AMAZING AGREEMENT IN THE QUR’AN!

 

 

Thoroughly established history, along with the verses cited above from the Bible, prove beyond question that the land God promised to Abraham and his heirs belongs to the Israelis.  Their tide deed was signed by God four thousand years ago.  How can today’s Arabs reject biblical passages supported by prophecy, a multitude of ancient manuscripts, and indisputable history?  Muhammad’s early “revelations” in the Qur’an called Jews and Christians the “people of the book38 and honoured the Books of Moses as inspired of the true God.  But when Christians and Jews refused to accept him as a prophet of God, Muhammad turned against them and the tone of the Qur’an changed.  Muslims claim that between the early parts of the Qur’an, which honoured the Bible, and later parts that contradict it, the Bible was perverted in order to make it seem that the Jews were the rightful heirs to the Promised Land.

 

38. Surah 3: 18-20, 64-71, 72-80; 4: 171; 5: 15-19, 59, 77-80, etc.

 

However, there are manuscripts of the Old Testament dating back nearly nine hundred years before the Qur’an, and they are identical to the Bible we have today.  The Bible wasn’t “changed”!  The Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament, for example, was translated in about 275 B.C. from even earlier Hebrew manuscripts and is identical to today’s text.  Furthermore, the Qur’an itself agrees with the Bible that the Jews are the rightful heirs to the land:

 

 

We made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel (Surah 5: 70); We brought the Children of Israel across the [Red] sea, and Pharaoh with his hosts pursued them ... and we verily did allot unto the Children of Israel a fixed abode (10: 91, 94); [Pharaoh] wished to scare them from the land, but we drowned him and those with him [in the Red Sea] all together.  And we said unto the Children of Israel ... dwell in the land...” (17: 103-104); we delivered the Children of Israel ... from Pharaoh. ... We chose them, purposely, above all creatures (44: 30-32); we favoured them above all peoples (45: 16); Remember Allah’s favour to you. ... He ... gave you what he gave no other of his creatures.  O my people, go into the Holy Land which Allah hath ordained for you (95: 20-21), etc.

 

[Page 66]

In spite of the undeniable fact that the Qur’an declares repeatedly and in the clearest language that the Jews are God’s chosen people, unique among all nations, and that the Promised Land was given by God to them alone, Muslims insist that the land belongs to Arab “Palestinians.  This is only one of many similar contradictions found in Islam.  For example, the Qur’an even declares that the God of the Jews is the true God and the one Muslims should worship: “Pharaoh ... when the fate of drowning overtook him [in pursuing the Israelites through the Red Sea] ... exclaimed: I believe that there  is no God save him in whom the Children of Israel believe, and I am of those who surrender unto him.” 39

 

39. Ibid., 10: 91.

 

Despite such passages scattered throughout the Qur’an, and a profusion of other proofs, Islam declares that “Palestine” belongs to the Arab descendants of Ishmael.  This is the basis for the hatred Muslims have toward Israel and for their determination to exterminate its people and to possess all of Israel for themselves.  In fact, the word “Palestine” is not found once in the Qur'an - very strange, considering the importance Muslims attach to it today.

 

 

FURTHER PROOF THAT THE LAND IS ISRAEL’S

 

 

Though it is hardly needed, we are given additional conclusive evidence that the Jews and Israelis are the heirs of Abraham to whom God gave the land.  God made an everlasting covenant with Abraham, saying, “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto ... the river Euphrates.” 40 At that very time, before either Ishmael or Isaac had been born, God identified which descendants of Abraham would inherit the land:Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them [i.e., as slaves]; and they shall afflict them 400 years ... and afterward shall they come out with great substance [and] shall come hither [to Canaan, the Promised Land] again.”

 

40. Genesis 15: 18.

 

 

God could not have stated the fact more clearly that the true heirs were to be slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years before being led back into the Promised Land.  Never did this happen to the Arabs.  In fact, they were not even an identifiable people at this time but scattered nomads who would only take on their identity centuries later - and not in Canaan but in the Arabian Peninsula.  Their were two reasons why the children of Israel remain for four hundred years in Egypt.  First of all, during that time as slaves they did not intermarry with the Egyptians under whom they served- or with any other non-Jews.  Thus they became an identifiable, ethnic people who were led en masse into the Promised Land, and we know who they are today.

 

 

Ishmael’s descendants, on the other hand, intermarried with those of Abraham’s son Midian (by his second wife, Keturah), so that the term “Midianite” was used interchangeably with “Ishmaelite.” 41 The Ishmaelites also intermarried with the Edomites (descendants of Esau), 42 who intermarried with the Hittites. 43 The Arabs were a nomadic people who tended to intermarry with the nations among whom they travelled and traded and whom they later conquered.

 

41. Judges 8: 8, 12, 22, 24.   42. Genesis 28: 9.   43. Ibid., 26: 34.

 

Secondly, God told Abraham, The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” 44 God was not going to wipe out the Canaanites simply to give their land to the Jews.  He would do so only because of the wickedness of these people.  In four hundred years, they would be so evil that the Lord would righteously be forced to destroy them as He had the people of Sodom and Gomorrah - and He would use His chosen people, delivered from Egyptian slavery, to execute His judgment.  And so it happened.

 

44. Ibid., 15: 16.

 

 

Thereafter, Canaan was known as the land of Israel, which is, called thirty-one times in Scripture.  Its kings ruled from Jerusalem over a vast empire stretching from the Sinai to the Euphrates.  In fact, Israel was the only united, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in what today is called “Palestine.”  Thus, for  three hundred years before they were enslaved in Egypt and about one thousand years thereafter (a total of thirteen hundred years), the Jews dwelled in their own land, the land of Israel, before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians.  It is an insult to the God of Israel and to His chosen people to call the promised land of IsraelPalestine!

 

[Page 68]

A FINAL PROOF

 

 

As an important part of their deliverance from Egypt, the Israelites were commanded to kill a lamb for each household, sprinkle its blood on the house frame around the door, roast it, and eat it in readiness to leave Egypt on the night that God delivered them.  Thereafter, as a memorial of this miraculous event, they were to keep the feast of the Passover each year forever.  The Passover is not like the Hajj and Ramadan, both of which had been practiced by pagan Arab tribes for centuries before the Muslims began to claim them as their own.  The Passover is unique to the Jews, and it began the day they were delivered from slavery in Egypt. 45

 

45. Exodus 12: 1-13.

 

Furthermore, in another amazing and confirming prophecy, God declared that, in spite of breaking the Ten Commandments, and in spite of breaking and even abandoning the many other ordinances that He would give them, they would keep the Passover forever: “Ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD ... by an ordinance for ever.” 46 Only one people on earth, the Jews, keep the Passover.  And do exactly as God foretold, in spite of the fact that most Jews today do not take the Scriptures seriously.  Here is the final proof that they are the heirs whose ancestors were slaves in Egypt, were miraculously delivered by God, and as a result were brought back to conquer Canaan, where their patriarchs had already lived for three hundred years.

 

46. Ibid., 12: 14.

 

 

More than 90 percent of Jews worldwide keep the Passover every year.  This same percentage holds true among those living in Israel, even though very few believe the Bible and about 30 percent claim to be atheists. This is an undeniable fulfilment of a specific prophecy. To see how remarkable this is, not two well-known comparisons.  The “prophets” in Rome declared that the sacred fires of the godess Vesta, rendered by the Vestal Virgins, would never go out.  They went out.  The Zoroastrian prophets swore that their sacred fires would never go out.  They were extinguished in the Muslim invasion of Persia in the seventh century.  God said Israel would keep the Passover forever, and Jews worldwide still keep it today.

 

[Page 69]

But how do we know that the Passover story is true?  The proof is contained in the Passover itself and the fact that the Jews still keep it and have one so continuously. When an event is witnessed by many people and is immediately commemorated by some special rite, which then continues ever after, we have absolute proof that the event actually occurred.

 

 

No one could invent such a story and start the tradition of keeping the Passover if it had never really happened.  Jews would immediately protest, “But we didn’t do this last year!” The very fact that it was done last year, and the year before, and the year before - as far back as one can trace - is proof that an original Passover marked Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and passage into the Promised Land was given.  In fact, such proof was God’s intent.  He commanded Moses to tell the Israelites:

 

 

And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service?  That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S Passover, who passed through the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians... 47

 

47. Ibid., 12: 26-27.

 

ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO HER LAND IS BY GOD’S GRACE

 

 

The promise of the land and of the Messiah was renewed by God to Isaac: Unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father ... in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” 48 God confirmed the same promise to Isaac’s son Jacob (Israel) as well: The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed ... and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” 49

 

48. Genesis 26: 3, 4.   49. Ibid., 28: 13-14.

 

 

Islam can produce no evidence (either from the Qur’an or from history) that the land was ever promised to Ishmael, that all of his descendants together were ever slaves for four hundred years anywhere, or that upon their deliverance they were led en masse into the Promised Land.  In fact, Ishmael’s descendants never lived in Canaan.  Furthermore, Arabs certainly don’t keep the Passover but follow the [Page 70] same pagan rituals that their ancestors observed for centuries before Muhammad was born!

 

 

Sadly, the Israelites eventually came under God’s judgment for practicing the idolatrous ways of the nations they had displaced.  Pleading with them to repent, God had warned, “[Y]e shall be plucked from off the land ... and the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other.” 50 Stubbornly, Israel continued in idolatry and rebellion and was put out of the land.  Around 600 B.C. they were conquered by the Babylonians and scattered to many nations - but not forever.

 

50. Deuteronomy 28: 63-64.

 

In spite of their disobedience and being under divine judgment, the Jews are consistently identified as the chosen people belonging to the God of the Bible.  As already noted, He is calledthe God of Israel” 203 times.  Never is He called the God of any other people - and certainly never is He called the God of Ishmael or of the Arabs.  It is not because of Israel’s obedience that God promised that after her dispersal under His judgment He would restore her fully to her land in the last days.  Far from meriting restoration, she has been disobedient and rebellious and has forsaken the Lord throughout her history.  Nevertheless, numerous times God has made such promises as the following:

 

 

Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen, whither ye went.  And I will sanctify my great name ... and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.  For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.” 51

 

51. Ezekiel 36: 22-24.

 

THE “GOD OF ISRAEL” IS ANGRY!

 

 

Chased out of their land under God’s judgment in the Babylonian dispersion, and later twice by the Romans (A.D. 70 and 135), Jews always returned to their ancient homeland.  This despised people have lived in Israel continuously for twenty-five hundred years since returning from Babylon.  Thus, for nearly four thousand years, beginning with Abraham and Isaac, Israelis have lived in the land God gave them - though during most of that time they suffered under the oppressive heel of various conquerors.

 

 

God is angry with the nations of today’s world for having robbed Israel of most of the land that He gave as an everlasting inheritance to Abraham’s descendants.  They have confined Israel to a small fraction thereof and are demanding that she give up even more to the “Palestinians.”  The “Palestinians” claim that all of the land belongs to them and that Israel is therefore occupying their land and must be removed.  This defiance of God cannot continue without His righteous judgment falling upon the perpetrators!

 

 

God is also angry with present-day Israel for going along with this fraud, even though under heavy pressure from the United Nations, European Union, and the United States.  God’s judgment will come upon Israel for her disobedience and unbelief - but He will not forsake her.  Tragically, modern Israel has repeatedly agreed to give away ever more of the Promised Land for one transparently false promise of “peace” after another.  They have violated what David Ben-Gurion, her first prime minister, relying upon the Bible, correctly declared at Israel’s modern beginning:

 

 

Our right to this land in its entirety is steadfast, inalienable and eternal. ... This right ... cannot be forfeited under any circumstance ... [Israelis] have neither the power nor the jurisdiction to negate it for future generations. ... And until the coming of the Great Redemption, we shall never yield this historic right. 52

 

52. “BETRAYAL,” American Friends of Women For Israel’s Tomorrow,

Norfolk, VA, ad in The International Jerusalem Post, November 30, 2001, 11.

 

 

Yes, but the land is called “Palestine,” and there are millions of people whom the whole world recognizes as “Palestinians” that have lived there for generations.  After all, Muslims conquered that land in the mid-seventh century A.D. and held it until 1917.  Even after that, Arabs continued to live there.  Why are not their claims of prior occupation of that land valid?  We turn to that question in the next chapter.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

[Page 93]

 

CHAPTER 5

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT REFUGEES

 

 

IN ALL OF THE CONCERN for Arab refugees who fled Israel, mostly in late 1947 and early 1948, the Jews have been forgotten.  Many had hoped to become refugees from Nazi Germany before it was too late but could find nowhere in the world that would receive them.  Millions of them perished in the Holocaust.  In 1939, when Jews longing to escape Nazi Germany most desperately needed a homeland to flee to, the British not only tried to suspend all Jewish immigration into Palestine but purchase of land there by Jews as well.  Jewish underground organizations were appalled.  Great Britain was attempting to seal off the only escape route the European refugees had. 1

 

1. David A Rausch, The Middle East Maze: Israel and her Neighbours (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991), 35.

 

 

In spite of its mandate to see that “Palestine” became a national home for the Jews, Britain was adamantly opposed to the fleeing Jews returning there and was doing everything it could to stop them.  Frustrated and angry, a Jewish extremist right-wing underground group founded in Palestine in 1931, Irgun Zvai Leumi, blew up the British embassy in Rome and the British office wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in retaliation, killing ninety-one people, seventeen of them Jews.  Though headed by Menachem Begin (later prime minister), its terrorist actions were condemned by David Ben-Gurion.

 

[Page 94]

If anyone deserved to be called refugees, surely it was the survivors of Hitler’s attempt at their extermination.  Yet when they came, in half-sinking ships, within sight of the Promised Land they had been longing to reach, they were driven back by the British navy and put into detainee camps!  Many of those few who had managed to get ashore in hope of starting a new life in the land God had given their ancestors were rounded up by the ever-alert British and deported to the same camps - all in violation of the mandate Britain had received to resettle the Jews in their rightful homeland.  And all in violation of common decency, of human compassion, and of the conscience God has implanted in each of us.  Britain’s actions toward the Jews were, in a word, unconscionable!

 

 

Britain, in exercising its mandate, had given the Arabs many independent states, from Egypt (1922) to Saudi Arabia (1931) to Transjordan (1946).  The latter was taken from the land that the League of Nations had set apart for the Jewish homeland and for which Britain had the mandate to see that Jews were settled there.  It was given to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah I (Ibn Hussein), as a compromise when Ibn Saud was given Saudi Arabia.  Hussein was the brother of King Faisal I of Syria, who had been ejected from Damascus in July 1920 by the French.  Britain’s motive was to keep peace between feuding Muslim families and to establish relations for future oil exploitation.

 

 

The Jews were still waiting for their promised state while Muslim terrorists daily attacked and murdered them.  Without settling the Jews in their own homeland as promised, and claiming that the situation had gotten beyond its control, Britain turned its mandate over to the United Nations in February 1947.  UN debate began over what to do about the Jews in Palestine - a problem that is still the overwhelming burden to the nations of the world, exactly as the Bible said it would be.  The families of some “Palestinian Jewshave been living for a hundred generations in the land that God gave to their ancestors as an everlasting* heritage.

 

[*NOTE: The “heritage,” shown in this context, should be understood as lasting for as long as this present earth will remain, (2 Pet. 10-13).]

 

 

In a 1964 interview, Nasser had stated that Egyptstill pledged allegiance to the old Nazi cause: ‘Our sympathy was with the Germans.’”2 [Page 95] Indeed, the entire Arab world had sided with the Nazis against the Allies, while Jewish volunteers had fought in the British army - which makes it all the more perplexing that the British would side with the Arabs against the Jews.  Of course, Israel has almost no oil - at least, not by publicized discoveries to date.

 

2. Interview published in Deutsche National Zeitung, April 1, 1964.

 

 

On November 29, 1947, UN Resolution 181 partitioned the remaining 23 percent of Palestine that was left after 77 percent had been carved out to create Jordan.  Of that reduced territory, 56 per-cent (13 percent of the original mandate) was allocated to a Jewish state, 42 percent to an Arab state, and 2 percent was set aside in an international zone for the holy sites in and around Jerusalem.  Though they had been literally robbed of the land they had been promised, Jewish settlers accepted what they had been allotted.  At least they had a national home recognized by the world.  Furious, the Arabs demanded all of “Palestine,” and the six Arab delegates from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen stormed out of the UN, threatening a war that would annihilate the Jews.

 

 

ARAB REACTION

 

 

Muslims intensified their rioting in Jerusalem and elsewhere.  Attacks against Jewish settlers were launched by armed Arab invaders, with the supposedly watchdog British turning a blind eye and in some cases aiding the belligerents.  Speaking in Cairo, Iraqi Foreign Minister, Fadel al-Jamali declared: “I can assure you that the British forces in Palestine would not try to oppose or fight the Arabs, because Britain is a real friend of the Arabs.” 3 It was a friendship Britain carefully cultivated for selfish reasons at the expense of the Jews.  Robert Macatee, American Consul General in Jerusalem, reported on a typical incident among many being repeated almost daily:

 

3. Cited in Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine

(New York: J. KAP Publishing USA, 1984), 360.

 

 

It is tragic that many of the present casualties comprise innocent and harmless people. ... They are picked off while riding in buses, walking along the streets, and stray shots even find them while sleeping in their beds. A Jewish woman, mother of five children, was shot in Jerusalem while hanging out clothes on the roof.  The ambulance rushing her to the hospital was machine gunned and [Page 95] finally the mourners following her to the funeral were attacked and one of them was stabbed to death. 4

 

4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947.

 

 

With the demise of Hitler and his Nazi regime, and with a price still on his head if he reappeared in Palestine (but admired by most Arabs as “Mr. Palestine”), Haj Amin al-Husseini was directing much of the terrorism from Damascus (which is still the headquarters for terrorist organizations today).  On November 24, Jamal el-Husseini, vice-chairman of the Mufti’s Arab Higher Committee, had warned the United Nations: “By imposing partition on Palestine you will precipitate the country into a virtual blood bath. ... The boundary line proposed, if ever decided upon, shall be nothing but a line of fire and blood.”  He declared a three-day general strike from December 2-4, 1947.  Even earlier, his followers had “launched a campaign of indiscriminate violence against the Jewish community.  Within the first 24 hours - on November 30, 1947 - eight Jews had already been killed near Nathanya.  Ambushes, arson, bombings became the order of the day.” 5

 

5. Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and The Fuehrer (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 220.

 

 

Between November 29, 1947, and March 3, 1948, more than five thousand Arabs invaded Palestine while British authorities looked the other way.  They were largely bankrolled by Haj Amin, who was “lavishly financed” by Saudi Arabia’s Ibn Saud and Egypt’s King Farouk.  Supplying the funds for the destruction of Israel, the Mufti was setting himself up to be the future ruler of a Palestine Arab state.  From his years in Germany working with Hitler, he had “managed to get a large proportion of his Nazi financial backing out of Germany even while the war was still on.”  He had “a large cache of gold in Iraq, and a considerable fortune in Switzerland, largely in the form of easily negotiable Swiss watches.” 6

 

6. Schechtman, The Mufti, 221.

 

 

History puts today’s terrorism in perspective - its methods, goals and financing are nothing new but have been the modus operandi of Arab/Muslims against Israel from the very beginning as their means of bringing about its intended and vowed demise.  Infiltration by foreign terrorists, as is occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan today, is nothing new: the Mufti used the same tactic seventy years ago.

 

[Page 97]

Within a week after the UN partitioned Palestine, Arab guerrillas and terrorists had killed more than one hundred Jews.  John Bagot Glubb, British commander of Transjordan’s Arab Legion, admitted: “Early in January [1948], the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria.  Some came through Jordan and even through Amman. ... They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.

 

 

Unashamedly, the Arabs boasted to the entire world of their intentions.  Jamal Husseini, speaking for the Arab Higher Committee, had told the Security Council on April 16, 1948: “The ... Jewish Agency [said] that the Arabs had begun the fighting.  We did not deny this.  We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”  This was a month before Israel declared itself a nation.  The vow to exterminate Israel is a foundational doctrine of Islam.  That fact obviously requires unusual measures to ensure real peace in the Middle East - but political correctness remains in denial of this awful truth.

 

 

ISRAELI OVERTURES OF PEACE AND THE ARAB RESPONSE

 

 

On May 14, 1948, re-born Israel declared itself an independent nation.  Within minutes, at 5:16 p.m., in swift reaction that astounded the United Nations and flew in the face of objections of his government ministers, President Truman authorized recognition of Israel by United States.  The Soviet Union was next.  Other nations followed.  Impossible in today’s world, it was a miracle that could have taken place only in the shadow of the Holocaust.  That horror had aroused a momentary worldwide guilt for having stood by while millions of Jews were exterminated like vermin.

 

 

The world was unwittingly participating in the fulfilment of another remarkable prophecy.  Looking forward to Israel’s rebirth in the last days, the prophet Isaiah had written, “Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things?  Shall ... a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.” 7 Surely “Zion travailed” was an eloquent description of Zion’s loss of six million of her children.

 

7. Isaiah 66: 8.

 

[Page 98]

Truman’s brave recognition of Israel came over the stern objections of secretary of State George C. Marshall. Reflecting an anti-Semitic/ anti-Israel attitude that permeates the State Department to this day (Secretary of State James Baker, for example, was very anti-Israel), the Secretary threatened angrily, “They don’t deserve a state; they have stolen that country.  If you give this recognition, Mr. President, I may not vote for you in the next election.”  Stolen that country?  In fact, we have shown most of that country had been stolen from the Jews by Britain and the UN, leaving Israel with very little of what rightfully belonged to her.  Marshall was expressing a willing blindness to the truth - a blindness that still clouds the thinking of political leaders worldwide.

 

 

Israel’s Proclamation of Independence stated: “We extend ... to all neighbouring States ... an offer of peace ... and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land ... placing our trust in the Almighty ...”  That olive -branch held out by Israel in good faith was

trampled by the regular armies of at least five Arab nations.

 

 

The next morning, the fledgling State of Israel found itself at war in earnest, under heavy attack on several fronts.  The Arab armies had begun their coordinated invasion: the Lebanese from the north, the Syrian armies down the Golan from the northeast, the Arab Legion and the Iraqi forces attacking in the centre, and the Egyptians from the south assisted by bombers - in what they unashamedly announced to the world would be a war of extermination.

 

 

Yes, annihilation was their avowed intention, but by God’s grace it was an empty boast.  Israelis who have defended the country have told this author, “I was an atheist.  But in the war [it could be any, one of the five] I saw things happen that could only be described as miracles, and I came to believe that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was fulfilling His promises to His ancient people.  One retired general, who carries the Bible with him everywhere he goes, claims that at least 30 percent of Israel’s top military officers believe in the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and trust His care over Israel, without which she could not have survived.

 

[Page 99]

THE FIRST CEASE-FIRE

 

 

Fearing that the Arabs, with their overwhelming superiority numerically and in weaponry, could make good their boast, the United States demanded a UN Security Council resolution creating a cease-fire and sanctions to enforce it.  Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko told the Security Council on May 29, 1948, “This is not the first time that the Arab states, which organized the invasion of Palestine, have ignored a decision of the Security Council or of the General Assembly.”

 

 

Consistent with their history of favouring Arabs and opposing Jews, Britain rejected the cease-fire resolution, confident that the Arabs would destroy Israel.  Arab delegates demanded, as a condition for peace, that Israel’s independence be rescinded.  Israel’s response was blunt and to the point: “If the Arab states want peace, they can have it.  If they want war, they can have that too.  But whether they want peace or war, they can have it only with the State of Israel.”

 

 

The first truce with a cease-fire went into effect on June 11, 1948.  It left the Arabs in control of about one-third of the minimal territory that had been allotted to Israel.  Fighting broke out again, and by this time Israel had procured some tanks, artillery, and sufficient small arms to equip all of its fighters.  In the next ten days of fighting, Israel made important gains, causing Britain to plead for haste in establishing another cease-fire.

 

 

THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

 

 

War is cruel and costly in every way.  The five full-scale wars that Israel has been forced to fight during its brief modern existence were not of her choosing.  She didn’t start any of them but has had to finish them, defending herself against an enemy determined to destroy her.  In the 1948 War of Independence, instead of Arabs driving the Jews into the Mediterranean as they had sworn they would, about five hundred thousand Arab civilians fled the war zone.  From that time to the present, they and their descendants, whose numbers [Page 100] have multiplied into the millions, have been classified by the world as “Palestinian refugees.”

 

 

The most tragic part about these abused and misused people is that most of them didn’t need to flee.  Such a necessity (though imaginary) was a direct result of the Arab nations’ refusal to accept the UN partition plan.  As already noted, the Arabs now want to go back to the borders set by UN Resolution 181.  Israel, however, considers that resolution to be null and void because the Arabs sternly rejected it and attacked Israel in an attempt to exterminate her at that time.  Furthermore, the Israelis tried to persuade them all to remain to build a new country together.  Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued on May 14, 1948, had offered:

 

 

In the midst of wanton aggression [Arab military units, with the tacit approval and sometimes help of the British “peace keepers,” had been attacking Israeli settlements for months], we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.  We extend our hand in peace and neighbourliness to all the neighbouring states and their peoples. ...

 

 

The Arabs who remained in Israel learned that Israel kept its word.  They now make up more than 20 percent of Israel’s voters with full citizenship rights.  Some Arabs are even members of the Knesset.  In fact,

 

 

Every Knesset, since the founding of the State in 1948, has had Arab and Druze members.  All transactions in the Knesset are simultaneously translated into Arabic, and Arab members may address the Knesset in Arabic. ... Arabic is an official language in Israel, together with Hebrew.  Israel’s Arabic press [more than twenty periodicals] is the most vibrant and independent of any country in the region. ... There are daily TV and radio programs in Arabic.  Arabic is taught in Jewish secondary schools. ... There are nearly 1,000 Arab educational institutions in Israel, with about 300,000 students. ... Israeli universities and technical institutions are freely available to the Arabs.  About 5,000 Arab students attend such schools. ... Israeli Arabs ... are free [Page 101] to exercise their faiths, to observe their own weekly day of rest and holidays. ... In contrast to the non-Israeli Arab world, Arab women in Israel enjoy the same status as men.  Israeli law grants women equal rights ... to vote and to be elected to public office, prohibits polygamy, child marriage, and the barbarity of female sexual mutilation [practiced under Islam]. ... Arabs are exempted from military duty ... to spare them conflicts of loyalty and conscience. ... In a recent poll, 70 percent of Israel’s Arabs ... declared that they would much prefer to live in Israel than in any other country in the area. 8

 

8. The Arabs of Israel: Are they a ‘persecuted minority?’” ... FLAME, Facts and Logic About the Middle East,

P.O. Box 590359, San Francisco, CA 94159, WORLD, December 30, 2000/ January 6, 2001.

 

 

In contrast, no Jew has such rights in any Arab or Muslim country.  In fact, a Jew isn’t allowed to set foot in Saudi Arabia.  Contrary to the claims that put the blame on Israel, the truth is that it was the Arab military command that told the Arabs to get out.

 

 

ENEMIES OF TRUTH

 

 

Truth is not easy to find.  One must be careful of the source of information and check it out, especially when it comes to the subject of Palestinian refugees and their alleged mistreatment at the hands of Israelis.  Professor David A. Rausch has said it well in his excellent book:

 

 

Hatred by Christian Arabs for Jews and the Jewish state runs as deep as it does among Muslim Arabs. Periodicals and analysts who believe they are receiving an unbiased “Christian” perspective on the problems of the Middle East because they are in touch with Christian Arabs of their denomination or theological persuasion need to use extreme caution.  Missionaries from the West who work among Arabs often become unwitting accomplices in spreading anti-Israel propaganda and deceit.  Lest one seem to be too harsh toward such missionaries, consider that even hardened news reporters working the beat in an Arab country soon learn that their sources dry up if their reports appear to be too harsh on the Arabs or too lenient toward the Israelis. 9

 

9. Rausch, Middle East, 79-80.

 

 

A number of books have been written expressly to whitewash the Arabs, Palestinians, and Islam, and to paint Israel as the villain. [Page 102] Among these, we would put at the head of the list a large and impressive volume, Fateful Triangle: The United States. Israel and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky. 10 Many of its stories of the plight of the Palestinians are tragic.  One would surely side with them against Israel - were it not for suspicions aroused by its total one-sidedness.  In its nearly six hundred pages, there is not a single reference to Islam or Muhammad, not a word of Arab/Muslims’ sworn vows to annihilate Israel, of their years of military build-up and attacks against Israel for that express purpose, not a word of Israelis suffering from Arab terrorism (terrorism isn’t even listed in the index!).

 

10. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & the Palestinians (Cambridge: South End Press, 1999).

 

 

There are even books written by Jews that are in the same category.  For example, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman G. Finkelstein, 11 whose parents are survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz and Maidariek extermination camps.  The endorsements are impressive, coming from Le Monde Diplomatique and The London Review of Books - and one of them, of course, by Noam Chomsky.  The Royal Institute of International Affairs says it “will challenge the most cherished beliefs of Israel’s supporters.”  The

Middle East Journal says it “calls into question many of the accepted ‘truths’ associated with the Israel-Palestine conflict.”  Yet there is not the slightest hint in the entire volume of any culpability at all on the part of Arabs, no mention of anti-Semitism or of sworn vows to annihilate Israel.  Finkelstein likens Israeli soldiers to the Nazis, as though it was the European Jews who attacked, and the SS had to put them in extermination camps in self-defence!

 

11. Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995).

 

 

WHO DROVE THE ARABS OUT OF ISRAEL?

 

 

The accusation has been widely publicized and believed that the Israelis drove nearly a million Arabs out of Palestine during the 1948 war.  This is the foundation for the demands that the “Palestinians” make for the right of return to their former villages.  There were some instances where Arab civilians who were sheltering, helping, or hiding attacking Arab soldiers were forced to leave.  But most of the Arabs who fled did so in spite of Israeli promises of safety and pleas [Page 103] to stay and without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.  Many left before Israel declared its independence and the war had really begun.

 

 

It was the Arab military that warned Arab civilians to “get out” and declared that those who remained would be considered traitors to the Arab cause.  Nevertheless, they are the only “refugees” in the Middle East, as far as the world is concerned, and to whom all the sympathy is given.  No thought is given to the Jewish refugees who, in far larger numbers, were either expelled or managed to flee Muslim countries in 1948.

 

 

On April 22, 1948 (three weeks before Israel declared itself a nation), Aubrey Lippincott, U.S. Consul-General in Haifa, stated that “local mufti-dominated Arab leaders [were urging] all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.” 12 About the same time, Haifa’s British police chief, A. J. Bridmead, reported, “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab population to remain.”  A foreign visitor reported: “In Tiberias I saw a placard affixed to a sealed Arab Mosque that read, ‘We did not dispossess them [and] the day will come when the Arabs will return to their homes and property in this town ... let no citizen touch their property.’  It was signed by the Jewish Town Council of Tiberias.” 13

 

12. Foreign Relations of the US. 1948, Vol. V. (GPO, 1976), 838.   13. The New York Times, April 23, 1948.

 

 

Unquestionably, “… the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.” 14 A Jordanian newspaper reported, “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies.” 15 Another Jordanian newspaper quoted a complaining refugee: “The Arab government told us: ‘Get out so that we can get in.  So we got out, but they did not get in.” 16 A New York Lebanese paper reported: “The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, [gave] brotherly advice to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.” 17

 

14. Near East Broadcasting Station of Cyprus, April 3, 1949;

Samuel Katz, Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (Bantam Books, 1985), 15.

15. Filastin, February 19, 1949.   16. Ad Diofaa, September 6, 1954.   17. Al Hoda, June 8, 1951.

 

 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said declared: “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place where the Jews seek shelter.  The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to [Page 104] safe areas until the fighting has died down.18 Syrian Prime Minister, Khaled al Am later admitted, “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees. ... But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave.” 19 Jordan’s King Hussein stated in 1960: “Since 1948, Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.  They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes.  This is ridiculous and I could say even criminal.”

 

18. Myron Kaufrnan, The Coming Destruction of Israel (The American Library Inc., 1970), 26-27.

19. Khaled AI-Azrn, Memoirs [Arabic], 3 volumes (AI-Dar al Muttahida lil-Nashr, 1972),

vol. 1, 386-87, cited in Peters, Immemorial, 16.

 

 

In his 1972 memoirs, Khaled al-Azm deplored what Arab leaders had done:

 

 

Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees ... while it is we who made them leave. ... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave. ... We have rendered them dispossessed. ... We have accustomed them to begging. ... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level, … then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children - and this in the service of political purposes. ... 20

 

20. AI-Azm, Memoirs, cited in Peters.

 

 

OVERWHELMING TESTIMONY

 

 

The New York Times reported that “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. ...” 21 The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children, and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes and warned, “Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war  ... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.” 22

 

21. The New York Times, May 3, 1948.   22. Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986.

 

 

Emil Ghory, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, admitted, “The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously...” 23 Arafat’s successor, the Palestinian Authority’s current prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, admitted in writing, “The Arab armies, who [Page 105] invaded the country in ’48, forced the Palestinians to emigrate and leave their homeland and forced a political and ideological siege on them.” 24  According to a British report, “Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained ... the most potent [factors in the Arab flight] ... were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive urging all Arabs to leave ... [and] that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” 25

 

23. The Beirut Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948.   24. PLO journal Palestine a-Thaura, March 1976.   25. The Economist, October 2, 1948.

 

 

While visiting Palestinian Arab refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, Carl. Hermann Voss was told by the refugees themselves that “the Arab High Command ordered them out of Palestine during the 1948 war ... told [them] that the Jews in Palestine would be annihilated within a few weeks and that the Arab Liberation Army did not want to worry about any fellow Arabs getting in the way of such a devastating Arab jihad.  Those Palestinian refugees were bitter at their Arab compatriots who had left them homeless. ... [But] four decades later he would be reading about the intense hatred harboured toward the Jewish people by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those refugees. ... Accounts of Arab negligence and Arab miscalculation during the 1948 war had been forgotten, having been replaced with stories of Jewish ‘atrocities.’26

 

26. Rausch, Middle East, 75-76.

 

 

Having failed to exterminate Israelis by military attack, the Arabs are now trying to do it by playing on world sympathy for “abused refugees.”  In the summer of 2000, Palestinian negotiators submitted an official document at Camp David demanding that the refugees automatically be granted Israeli citizenship and that the right of return should have no time limit.  Additionally, the PA demanded that Israel provide compensation amounting to $500 billion.  Abu Mazen said that compensation payments should be made by Israel alone and not from any international funds.  Such unconscionable demands can come only from minds badly twisted by Islam.

 

 

The PLO continues its attempt to rewrite history.  In spite of the Arabs’ outright rejection of UN Resolution 181 and their failed attempts to destroy Israel ever since, Muslim nations and the “Palestinians” demand that Israel be held to that resolution’s terms. [Page 106] Israel, as already noted, rightly considers UN Resolution 181 null and void because the Arabs rejected it and would only pretend to agree to it now in order to recover their losses due to that rejection and the aggression that followed.

 

 

ISLAM’S RECORD OF OPPRESSION AND SLAUGHTER

 

 

The hatred against all Jews, which comes not from being an Arab but specifically from Islamic teaching, was reflected in the inhumane treatment of Jews in Arab countries ever since Islam took over.  Prior to the seventh century and the advent of the prophet Muhammad and Islam, as investigative reporter Joan Peters (in her monumental book, From Time Immemorial), points out from her exhaustive research, “Jews and Arabs did have harmonious relations, and words of praise regarding the noble virtues of the Jews may be found in ancient Arab literature.  Indeed, Muhammad himself in the early years, as he was seeking recognition as a prophet, looked with favour upon both Jews and Christians and cultivated their friendship.”  But that turned to hatred when they rejected him as “the prophet of Allah.”

 

 

Though Muhammad continued to call Christians and Jews “the people of the book,” the fierce hatred that had begun when they rejected him continued to grow.  The Qur’an declares, “O ye who believe!  Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends.” 27 Muhammad’s dying words were, “May Allah curse the Christians and Jews!”  What a contrast to Christ’s teaching that we are to love all mankind as ourselves, 28 and to His dying words spoken specifically of those who had tortured and crucified Him - but also of all mankind: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” 29

 

27. Surah 5: 51.   28. Matthew 22: 39.   29. Luke 23: 34.

 

 

As we noted in Chapter Two, the oppression of Jews and Christians in Arab countries throughout the centuries after the birth of Islam was at times almost beyond description.  Hundreds of books have been written about this evil, but thousands could not contain the full record.  The following is a sample of what Bat Ye’or reports in a fully documented volume:

 

[Page 107]

The religious oppression ... in the period ... regarded as the “Golden Age” began under Abd al-Malik (685-705). ... The destruction of churches and convents [and synagogues] was perpetrated on such a scale in the whole Arab Empire that in 830 Ma’mun forbade further destruction without his permission.  Yet during the Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil (847-61) a wave of religious persecution, forced conversions, and the elimination of churches and synagogues plagued the whole Abbasid Empire. ...

 

 

During their 1268 expedition, the Mamluks put all the men of Antioch to the sword and seized all the women and youngsters.  The town became a pile of uninhabited ruins.  During the 1275 expedition ... sixty thousand people were killed [in just one city] and an incalculable number of women, youngsters and children deported as slaves.  Jean-Baptiste Tavernier ... in 1651, recounts that all the churches [on Cyprus] had been converted into mosques. ... 30

 

30. Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude

(London: Associated University Presses, 1996), 84, 85, 110, etc.

 

 

In A.D. 1012, one Caliph in Egypt, al-Hakim of the Fatimids, furious at failing to convert Jews and Christians to Allah despite threats and humiliation, destroyed Cairo’s Jewish quarter along with its residents. 31 A new community eventually grew in its place.  They had no country of their own.  There was never a way of escape and nowhere to go.  Treatment of Jews varied from country to country and from generation to generation. Under the Ottoman Turkish Empire, it was recognized that the Jews in Egypt were less oppressed than elsewhere.  There was a relatively flourishing Jewish community for a time.

 

31. Saul Friedman, “The Myth of Arab Toleration,” Midstream, January 1970, 58.

 

 

Nevertheless, in early nineteenth-century Egypt, Jews were “held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general ... detested by the Muslims far more than Christians ... jostled in the streets of Cairo ... beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim ... dared not utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Qur’an or the Prophet ... [or] sacrificed to save a Muslim. ...” 32 In 1926, it was made a national law that immigrants desiring to become citizens had to belong “racially to the majority of the population of a country whose language is Arabic or whose religion is Islam.”33

 

32. Edward William Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians 1833-1835 (London, 1890), 512-17.

33. Article 10 (4) of Egyptian Nationality Code.

 

[Page 108]

In the 1940s, organized anti-Jewish riots injured or killed many Jews in Egypt.  Egypt passed a law that made it nearly impossible for a Jew to find employment, the government confiscated much Jewish property, and within a few months Jews were reduced to financial ruin.  After the UN partitioned Palestine on November 29, 1947, “Jews in Cairo and Alexandria were threatened with death, their houses were looted, and synagogues were attacked.” 34

 

34. Peters, Immemorial, 48, see comments in footnotes 120 and 121.

 

 

THE FORGOTTEN JEWISH REFUGEES

 

 

In 1948, as soon as a national Jewish homeland was created, more than eight hundred fifty thousand Jews fled (most of them to Israel for refuge) from Muslim lands, where they had lived for two thousand or more years, leaving behind virtually everything they had possessed.  This was far more than the number of Arab refugees who fled from Israel during the War of Independence.  Beginning in 1947 and accelerating in 1948 and thereafter, there has been an aggressive effort on the part of the international community to assist the “Palestinian” refugees.  Many programs have been put into action and billions of dollars expended for their assistance.  During the same period, no concern has been expressed by the United Nations for the plight of some eight hundred fifty-six thousand Jewish refugees who fled severe persecution in (or were forcibly expelled from) Arab lands.  There have been more than six hundred eighty UN General Assembly resolutions dealing with every aspect of the Middle East Arab-Israeli conflict.  More than one hundred have dealt specifically with the “plight of Palestinian refugees.”  In none of these, nor in any others, has the slightest concern been expressed for the even larger number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

 

 

This has not been due to ignorance.  On many occasions, the Israeli government, the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), and other agencies, have brought to the attention of the UN and its affiliates the numbers of and circumstances creating the far larger number of Jewish refugees, and have appealed for help.  Numerous times, the mistreatment of Jews in Muslim countries, in gross violation of the UN [Page 109] Charter and of its Declaration of Human Rights, has been brought to the attention of the UN: by Golda Meir on November 27 and 30, 1956; on December 21, 1956, by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., as U.S. Representative to the UN; on December 2, 1968, to then UN Secretary General U-Thant by the International League for the Rights of Man (non-Jewish), and on many other occasions.  The appeals fell on deaf ears.

 

 

UN Resolution 237, adopted during the 1967 Six-Day War, called upon all parties to “respect scrupulously the humanitarian principles governing the protection of civilian persons in time of War” as set forth in the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.  Though there was no specific mention of Jewish refugees, one could by implication include them.  Yet a year later, the UN passed Resolution 259 clarifying the intent of 237 and expressing concern for “the safety, welfare and security of the inhabitants of the Arab territories under military occupation by Israel.”  Any mention of Jewish refugees was specifically excluded.

 

 

Here are a few examples revealing the origins of the Jewish refugees whose existence the UN and world community refuse to acknowledge.  In 1948, there were about two hundred sixty-five thousand Jews in Morocco; today there are about five thousand.  There were about one hundred forty thousand Jews in Algeria, while today there are none.  There were about one hundred thirty-five thousand in Iraq, seventy-five thousand in Egypt, and thirty thousand in Syria, with only about one hundred remaining in each of these countries.  In all the Muslim countries in the Middle East, there were more than nine hundred thousand Jews in 1948, while today there are less than twenty thousand.  The rest managed to flee from the brutal totalitarian regimes of Syria, Transjordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

 

 

How could more than eight hundred fifty thousand refugees be overlooked by the United Nations and the world?  Yet these Jewish refugees who fled the unbelievably inhumane persecution and slaughter they and their forebears had endured for centuries are ignored at the UN and in the media.  In her report, after investigating the refugee problem, Joan Peters writes:

 

[Page 110]

Though I read through stacks of documents concerning the refugees, looking for official consideration of these “other” Jewish “Middle East refugees,” I found little or none.  But in the process, some other key beliefs in the popular (and my personal) understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict were shaken. 35

 

35. Ibid., 4.

 

 

One would think that the larger number of Jewish refugees from Muslim countries who were given refuge in Israel would be more than a fair exchange for the Arabs who fled from Israel.  Arab leaders have cautiously expressed concern that Israelis would raise this argument - but for some unknown reason, they never have.  Perhaps it is because they realize that these eight hundred fifty thousand Jewish refugees would count for nothing as far as the UN is concerned, so why press the issue?  Here is anti-Semitism in raw form!

 

 

The persistence of world leaders in pursuing such gross injustice in the face of the mountains of evidence that have been presented over the years is maddening.  Such blatant anti-Semitism, which violates everything the United Nations is supposed to stand for, has no rational explanation.  It can only be a continuing manifestation of the Satanic hatred against God’s chosen people foretold by His prophets - a hatred and persecution that would dog the steps of Jews worldwide until Israel’s national repentance.  The prophets foretold both Israel’s persistent rebellion through the centuries and the resulting punishment that would not be finished until Armageddon had drained the last bitter drop of the cup of God’s judgment.”

 

 

An Arab researcher, author, and member of the Palestinian National Council admitted: “The Jews of the Arab states were driven out of their ancient homes ... shamefully deported after their property had been commandeered or taken over at the lowest possible valuation. ... This is true for the majority of the Jews in question.  He was concerned that Israel would argue, “Israel is absorbing the Jews ... the Arab states for their part must settle the Palestinians in their own midst and solve their problems [author’s emphasis].” 36 Indeed, in 1977, Lebanese Arabs demanded that “the Palestinian refugees be relocated to all Arab nations. ...” 37

 

36. Sabri Jiryis, AI Nahor (Beirut), May 15, 1975.   37. Chicago Sun-Times, January 24, 1977; The New York Times, August 27, 1977.

 

[Page 111]

TREATMENT OF PALESTINIAN

AND JEWISH REFUGEES CONTRASTED

 

 

On June 7-8, 2004, delegates from more than ninety countries, “addressing the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian refugees ... made a solemn declaration on behalf of the international community – ‘you will not be abandoned. ...’ They committed the international community, UNRWA, and the host countries to the continuing support of the four million refugees scattered across the Middle East.”  The conference was hosted by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and chaired by its director, Swiss Ambassador Walter Fust.  Conspicuous by its absence was any mention of, or concern about, the more than eight hundred fifty thousand Jewish refugees who fled from Muslim lands in 1948 or for their many descendants.

 

 

Israel’s six hundred fifty thousand settlers absorbed nearly seven hundred thousand refugees into normal life in that tiny, besieged land while under constant attack by Arab armies.  Yet Arab nations, with seven hundred times the land and huge oil revenues, refused to absorb five hundred thousand refugees.  In December of 1948, supposedly to deal equitably with the refugee problem created by the war that had raged that year over Israel, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194.  It declared (among other provisions) that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so.” It also provided that “compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return.”

 

 

Of course, by “refugees” the UN meant “Palestinian” - but not Jewish.  Sadly, “live in peace” in Islam’s vocabulary does not exclude terrorist attacks against neighbours.  Surely the United Nations would not accept such a definition - or would it?  During the years of continual international pressure upon Israel to receive the Muslim “refugees” into its midst as peace-loving citizens, the UN has steadfastly refused to condemn the terrorists.

 

[Page 112]

PRETENSE AND ROAD BLOCKS

 

 

Officially, the UN covers up the axiomatic fact (acknowledged in rare instances at lower levels) that Jewish refugees from Arab lands must be taken into account in any equation dealing with the Middle East conflict.  Refugees and Displaced Persons” is the title of Article 8, Paragraph 1, of the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty.  It recognized “the massive human problems caused to both parties by the conflict” and was clearly not limited to Palestinian refugees but must have been intended to include Jewish refugees as well.  In Article 24, the parties agreed to establish a claims commission for settlement of all financial claims.  However, this commission was never created.

 

 

At Camp David II in July 2000, President Clinton declared that the rights of Jewish refugees would have to be taken into account.  On July 28, 2000, in an interview on Israeli television, Clinton said, -

 

 

There will have to be some sort of international fund set up for the refugees.  There is, I think, some interest ... on both sides, in also having a fund which compensates the Israelis who were made refugees by the war, which occurred after the birth of the State of Israel.  Israel is full of … Jewish people who lived in predominantly Arab countries who came to Israel [as] refugees.

 

 

Other leaders (with the exception of President George W. Bush) have not echoed Clinton’s concern.  The UN did appoint a “High Commissioner for Refugees” (UNHCR).  Mr. Auguste Lindt, in his first statement after being elected to this office, declared at the January 29, 1957, meeting of the United Nations Refugee Fund Executive Committee, “There is no doubt in my mind that those [Jewish] refugees [from Egypt] fall under the mandate of my office.”  On July 6, 1967, representing the office of the High Commissioner, Dr. E. Jahn declared in a letter that “Jews [who fled] from Middle Eastern and North African countries ... may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office.”

 

 

The High Commissioner has attempted to obtain permission from Arab governments for Jewish refugees to transfer the assets they left behind when they fled from Arab countries.  Such efforts have [Page 113] met with no cooperation from the Arabs.  Although the UNHCR has gone on record that Jewish refugees fled from Arab lands because they were suffering serious human rights violations, nothing has happened to redress that wrong. In spite of such efforts at lower levels, at the higher levels Jewish refugees are treated as though they never existed.

 

 

NEEDLESS SUFFERING, HATRED, AND HYPOCRISY

 

 

It should be infuriating to anyone with even a minimal sense of fairness - and it should cause a worldwide outcry of protest - that in the continuing concern expressed in repeated international conferences that discuss the plight of the Palestinian refugees, no concern is expressed, nor is any mention made, regarding the far greater number of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands.  Of course, they are no longer refugees, having been absorbed into normal life in Israel.  Nor would there be any “Palestinians” remaining in that category had the Arab nations, with their vast wealth and resources, accepted them - but they refused.

 

 

From 1967 to 1985, income from oil for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia was nearly $1 trillion, yet, in spite of the billions of dollars that they provide for terrorism, they contributed a pitiful $84 million to Palestinian refugees.  By comparison, since 1950 the United States has contributed $1.5 billion to the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees.  Much of that, of course, was diverted by Arafat for terrorism against Israel.  At the same time, Palestinian refugees were kept in the refugee camps when they could have been absorbed many times over by the Arab nations who desperately needed workers.  Joan Peters reports:

 

 

In June 1977, during interviews in Damascus, Syrian officials expressed the wish that Syria might get American technological assistance to develop the arable Syrian land. ... The Syrian Minister of Trade and Economy asked that a message be given to the American government.  Syria hadn’t the population to develop that land ... [they] needed people as well as technology.  They would give plots of valuable land in Syria to anyone who would come to work it. ...

 

[Page 114]

I asked various Syrian officials, “Why not give the land to those Palestinian Arabs who would choose to accept your offer?” The answer was always the same ... : “We will give the land to anyone - the lbos, the Koreans, Americans ... anyone who comes - anyone but the Palestinians!  We must keep their hatred directed against Israel.” 38

 

38. Peters, Immemorial, 406.

 

Popularly accepted propaganda gives the average person the impression that it was the Israelis who forced these exploited people into refugee camps.  On the contrary, as we have seen, it was not Israel but the Arabs who did so, but that fact is suppressed.  One author writes that, in the course of investigating the refugee problem, he found it impossible to get an interview with the head of the Palestinian delegation in Washington, D.C., and that “his assistant sidestepped the one question I put to him: ‘With so much money in the Arab world, why are the Palestinians still living in refugee camps?’”  Peters’ investigation into this problem was exhaustive; it changed her mind.  She writes:

 

 

In 1951 Syria was anxious for additional workers who would settle on the land. An Egyptian paper reported, “The Syrian government has officially requested that half a million Egyptian agricultural workers ... be permitted to emigrate to Syria in order to help develop Syrian land which would be transferred to them as their property.  The responsible Egyptian authorities have rejected this request on the grounds that Egyptian agriculture is in need of labour.”

 

 

Near East Arabic Radio reported that Syria was offering land rent free to anyone willing to settle there.  It even announced a committee to study would-be settlers’ applications.  [Yet] the Arab world has assiduously worked to build the myth that no jobs were available in Arab lands for Arab refugees in 1948 or since. ... At about the same time, the Egyptian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Muhammad Saleh el-Din ... demanded the return [to Israel] of the refugees,” even admitting that in returning, “they intend to annihilate the state of Israel. ...” 39

 

39. AI-Misri, October 1, 1949, cited in Peters, Immemorial, 23.

 

 

United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammerskjold reiterated that there were ample means for absorbing the Arab refugees into the economy of the Arab region [and] that the refugees would be beneficial to their host countries, by adding needed manpower to assist in [their] development. ... 40

 

40. Peters, Immemorial, 21-23.

 

[Page 115]

Thousands of Arab refugees did return to their homes and businesses in Israel.  The Jewish refugees would much rather stay in Israel.  But they have received no compensation for what they were forced to leave behind.  Indeed, they are ignored as though they never existed.

 

 

THE ONE EXCEPTION!

 

 

In the last one hundred years, there have been about one hundred million displaced persons who have fled from violence in their former homelands to be taken in as refugees by neighbouring countries.  For example, when India and Pakistan were given independence by Britain, more than eight million Hindus and Sikhs fled from what had become East and West Pakistan, while nearly seven million Muslims fled from what had just become independent India.  About fifteen million refugees were created in that exchange.  No one has called for their return to the homes from which they fled - nor for a return of any of the other eighty-five million.  This is the rule and practice.

 

 

Ah, but there is one exception - the “Palestinians.”  In March 1976, Matthew Mitchell, then director of the United States Committee for Refugees, declared in all seriousness in an interview that in contrast to “the world situation ... Arab refugees are a special case.” 41 These exploited victims of Arab hatred against Israel, deliberately kept on display in squalid camps, must be received back to Israel in order to destroy her - so says world opinion.  As John McCarthy, one of the world’s leading experts on refugees, admitted in a December 19, 1978, interview, the Arab world demands that these people go “back to Israel, right or wrong.  You must remember well - these people are simply pawns,” 42 The tragedy is all the more disturbing in the light of the editorial in a Damascus newspaper in 1949: “Syria needs not only one hundred thousand refugees, but five million to work the lands and make them fruitful.” 43

 

41. Ibid., 27.   42. Ibid., 29.   43. Al-Qubs, January 1949, quoted in az-Sameer (New York), March 28, 1949.

 

 

If justice demands that the “Palestinians” return to Israel, why isn’t there an equal cry of justice for the even larger number of Jews to be allowed back into Muslim lands?  The answer to that question, [Page 116] as we are emphasizing, is indisputably overwhelming proof of the pervasive anti-Semitism that the Bible prophesied the Jews would suffer until the Messiah returns at Armageddon to rescue them.

 

 

*       *       *

[Page 181]

 

CHAPTER 8

 

 

FACING HARD FACTS

 

 

MIDDLE EAST ANALYSTS and authors, A. J. Abraham and George M. Haddad, have stated the Islamic view very clearly: “Islam is God’s plan for the world, every inch of it, not only the Islamic regions.  Islam is for everyone, whether one wants it or not.  It is the duty of every Muslim to help expand the borders of Islam until every being on this planet acknowledges that ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger.’” 1 No honest Muslim would deny this.

 

1. A. J. Abraham and George Haddad, The Warriors of God (Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall Press, 1989).

 

 

Omar Bakri Muhammad (belatedly banned from England since he fled to Lebanon in early August 2005), has long claimed to be “Bin Laden’s man in Britain,” which makes it all the more puzzling why he was so long allowed to openly preach, in London and elsewhere, hatred of the West and an Islamic take-over of the world.  International political intrigue is a tangled rats’ nest of double-dealing.  John Loftus claims that Haroon Rashid Aswat (who has been linked to Omar Bakri), suspected mastermind of the July 7, 2005, London bombings, was once recruited by British Intelligence to fight in Kosovo “in defence of Muslim rights.” 2 Our sins come back to haunt us.  Iraq and Afghanistan are both examples of that fact.  The Muslim riots that traumatized France in November 2005 were her “Islam is peace” chickens coming home to roost.

 

2. FOX News, Day Side Program, July 29, 2005.

 

[Page 182]

While still in London, Bakri declared:

 

 

The aim of the Khilifah [Caliphate] - the ideal Islamic State, which does not presently exist - is to conquer the world. ... There can be no end to jihad ... until the Muslims conquer the White House. ... 3

 

3. Anthony McRoy, “There Can Be No End to Jihad,” interview with Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad in late January 2005,

Christianity Today, January 31, 2005.

 

 

Compromisers call Bakri an extremist.  In fact, he represents true Islam, which is gaining strength.  Nothing less can be justified by the Qur’an, by Muhammad’s words and deeds as recorded in the hadith, and by the history of Islam as practiced consistently by Muhammad’s immediate successors and through the centuries that followed.

 

 

Although Egypt has a secular government, Islam is nevertheless strong and presents a perpetual problem for Egypt’s rulers, even though they are Muslims - at least in name.  Egypt’s Western ways are criticized by those who believe that the only way to dress, eat, and behave is the way Muhammad and his followers did in the seventh century and as the Taliban enforced when it was in power in Afghanistan.  The power of Islam even in this secular state is evident in the fact that Cairo is the location of the Al-Azhar University, recognized as the authoritative centre of Islamic thought and theology for the entire Muslim world.

 

 

Muslims insist (apparently in all sincerity) that the only true freedom comes through submission to Islam.  How could they honestly believe that?  Could it merely be a semantic problem that centers upon differing interpretations of the meaning of words?  Or must the difference in thinking go deeper?

 

 

In the previous chapter, we noted that on December 10, 1948, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations at its third session after coming into existence on October 24, 1945.  There were fifty-six members at that time and fifty-four present.  The vote for the Declaration as a whole was forty-eight in favour (including, surprisingly, a number of Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Turkey), with eight abstentions.  Those abstaining were the Soviet block of nations (USSR, Byelorus, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, and Yugoslavia), Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

 

 

This Declaration remains one of the most important ever adopted [Page 183] by the UN.  Article One of the Charter, upon which the UN was founded, declares that one of the principal purposes of the United Nations is: “To achieve international co-operation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. 4

 

4.TheUnitedNationsYearbookSummary,1948,http://www.udhr.org/history/yearbook.htm# (2%20Provisions%20of%20the%United%20Nations%20Charter.

 

 

In the process of composing the entire Declaration, votes were cast by the members for and against each proposed article.  Of particular interest is the fact that Article 18 was adopted by all fifty-six members.  It reads:

 

 

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

 

 

WHAT DID YOU SAY?

 

 

Although it abstained from voting for or against the Declaration as a whole, Saudi Arabia, along with every other member state, approved Article 18.  Even the Soviet Union and China agreed to abide by Article 18, although any child living in either of those countries knew that these freedoms were no more permitted there than under Islam.  Saudi Arabia was pledging to the world that every person in that country would have the right to “change his religion or belief” and “in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief. ...” Yet, as we have seen, Saudi Arabia beheads any Muslim who changes from Islam to any other belief, no non-Islamic religion may be practiced, and these Islamic laws came into being by decree of Muhammad himself and are therefore unchangeable.  Could the contradiction between Islam and Article 18 be any more plain?

 

 

How can the undeniable difference between what Saudi Arabia professes to the world and what it does in practice be explained?  Of course, the same question could be asked not only of other Muslim countries but of communist countries as well.  We would rather not believe that they are deliberately lying.  Then what is the explanation?

 

[Page 184]

The Bible provides the uncomfortable answer: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?  I the LORD search the heart. ...” 5 Quoting Isaiah 29: 13, Christ rebuked the rabbis of His day with these words: “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias [i.e., Elijah] prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.  But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” 6 It is a common human failing to profess one thing with the lips while denying it in practice.

 

5. Jeremiah 17: 9-10.   6. Matthew 15: 7-9.

 

 

Those who call themselves Christians are as prone to such hypocrisy as anyone else.  The Bible declares that the hearts of all people are the same.  But some cultures encourage the natural evil and dishonesty of the heart.  Such was the situation in the pagan Arab culture from which Islam sprang and in which it is still deeply rooted.  It is one thing for an individual Christian to profess to love Christ and his neighbour as himself and yet to fail to live up to this in daily life.  It is something else altogether, however, for one’s religion itself to teach its followers to lie, commit violence, plunder, and murder, in order to advance its cause in the world.  As we have seen, this is the case with Islam - and the hypocritical denial of that fact is practiced daily throughout the Muslim world and in its dealings with the West. And Western leaders seem content to accept and even encourage this deadly deception.

 

 

A POLICY BASED UPON DECEIT

 

 

How long can we continue to ignore the past and present persecution and slaughter of Jews and Christians by Muslims worldwide and to persist in defining Islam as peace?  As one historian states: “Thirteen centuries of religious discrimination, causing suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic ‘tolerance’. …” 7 The West overlooks (as though nonexistent) the outright denial of basic human rights and support of terrorism by Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries - and, incredibly, favours and sometimes even arms Islamic terrorists, as in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Cyprus, Bosnia, [Page 185] Kashmir, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sudan, and East Timor.

 

7. SergeTrifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet: Islam, history, theology, impact on the world

(Boston: Regina Orthodox Press, 2002), 127.

 

 

Repeatedly, Israel has been taken to task for “overreacting” to suicide bombings, for pursuing terrorists into PA territory, and for destroying the houses from which terrorists have operated.  How could someone who acts in self-defence to save himself from assailants who are intent upon murdering him possibly be accused of overreacting?  America and Britain and their few allies in Iraq and Afghanistan are finally learning what Israel has faced alone and under heavy criticism for the past fifty years.  It is a shocking discovery to finally realize that we are confronted by an enemy that is eager to kill or be killed in order either to conquer the world for Allah or be martyred in that battle and thus hopefully gain the Paradise promised by his religion.

 

 

The world court has condemned Israel for building a fence and wall.  This barrier is not like the Berlin wall, designed to keep the oppressed from escaping communism’s “paradise.”  This one is erected in self-defence to keep out terrorists intent upon murdering Israelis.  It has, in fact, reduced the death rate in those areas where it has been completed.  But without sympathy for the murder victims, the UN and EU censure Israel for defending herself, while never expressing any disapproval of the murderers who attack her.

 

 

WHY THIS DOUBLE STANDARD?

 

 

We have quoted statements from many Muslim leaders declaring in the clearest language possible that Israel must be annihilated and that they intend to do it no matter what the cost in human lives on both sides.  Typical of hundreds of such threats was this statement by Farouk Kaddoumi, head of the PLO political department at the time: “This Zionist ghetto of Israel must be destroyed.” 8 It couldn’t be said any more brazenly because he knew, as Muslims today are confident is still the case, that no matter what murderous intent they bluntly declare and effect against Israel, Western leaders will continue to pressure Israelis as though they are the aggressors.

 

8. Newsweek, November 17, 1975 and March 14, 1977.

 

 

If Israel made such threats against those who are determined to destroy her, Muslims would go berserk and the UN, EU, and [Page 186] United States would condemn her soundly.  Has the world gone completely mad?

 

 

The Iron Curtain was rightly condemned by the non-Communist world.  Stiff pressure in the form of world opinion and various sanctions was laid upon the Soviet Union.  That pressure eventually brought down the wall and helped to bring about at least some of the desired changes.  Yet the United States, UN, and EU remain silent concerning the Islamic Curtain, even though it is more vicious and impenetrable than the Iron or Bamboo Curtains ever were.

 

 

Even during the most oppressive times under Stalin and Mao, at least a few churches were allowed to remain open.  In today’s China, there are many officially sanctioned Christian churches (in addition to those that meet in secret) as well as other places of worship for Buddhists, Muslims, and those of other faiths.  But in Saudi Arabia, not one non-Muslim place of worship is tolerated!  In other Muslim countries where, under secular governments, shari’a is not officially practiced, churches are nevertheless being destroyed and Christians killed by Muslims because this is what Islam requires.

 

 

Is it not time for the West to bring serious pressure to bear upon Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries for their violations of human rights professed by UN members, just as it did with the Soviet Union and continues to do with China?  How can the United States be a party to the hypocrisy of the United Nations professing to stand for human rights while its own members flaunt their violations with impunity?  How can we ignore any longer the hundreds of millions of Muslims held in bondage behind the Islamic Curtain without raising an anguished cry of protest in their defence?

 

 

Although the EU, UN, and Western powers have been slow to put public pressure on Muslim countries, there has been behind-the-scenes arm-twisting, especially by the United States during the Bush administration.  Through greater understanding and boldness on the part of some in the Western media to report the truth (such as Mortimer B. Zuckerman, (Editor-in-Chief of US. News & World Report,) the pressure of public opinion is beginning to have its effect.  Saudi Arabia, for example, “Will make all possible efforts to improve [Page 187] its international image ... Higher Education Minister Dr. Khaled Al-Anqari said” in Riyadh, October 2, 2004. Much of the effort will be deceptive public relations.  Nevertheless, the Saudis, are feeling the heat of what Anqari defensively called “strident media campaigns to tarnish the Kingdom’s international image and ... discredit its values and institutions ... since the Sept. 11 events. ...” 9

 

9. http://www.arabnews.com/?page= 1 &section=0&article=52314&d=3&m=10&Y=2004

 

 

The Saudis are attempting to cover up the truth, as Anqari’s speech revealed: “We will work with our friends in the world to highlight the true picture of Saudi Arabia, the qiblah of Islam and Muslims and the heart of the Arab world.”  He said the Higher Education Ministry was contacting educational agencies and institutions in other countries “to correct the distorted picture of Saudi Arabia.”  Obviously, their intent is not real change but to polish their false image, which hasn’t been distorted at all, except by the Saudis themselves in covering up the shocking truth of what Islam really is.

 

 

In trying to protect what it calls its “true image,” Saudi Arabia will have to face frank criticism.  A four-day forum (the second annual communication forum titled “The image of Saudi Arabia in the world”) was held in early October 2004 involving more than one hundred prominent personalities from within and without Saudi Arabia.  The Saudis will have to make real changes.  Hopefully, the scholars they have called in for help from around the world will not be satisfied with smoke and mirrors.

 

 

REMEMBER, THIS IS ISLAM!

 

 

Most of today’s Muslims (whatever their origin, including Saudi Arabia) have forgotten, if they ever knew, that their ancestors were unwillingly forced into Islam under threat of death.  This is Islam as it was at the beginning, always has been whenever possible, and still is.  If Western religious and political leaders do not awaken from their delusion and stop mouthing the lie that “Islam is peace,” it will soon be too late to defend our freedoms!

 

 

In the early centuries of Islam, its forces nearly conquered Europe.  Had they not been turned back at Tours, France, and at Vienna, [Page 188] Austria, we might all be speaking Arabic today.  Such aggression was not a mistaken zeal or a holy resolve applicable only to the past; it is the very heart of Islam as Muhammad and his immediate successors taught and practiced it and as it remains.  The conquest of the world is demanded by Islam as its unchangeable goal.

 

 

Foundational to Islam is the declaration Muhammad made: “Allah has commanded me to fight against all people until all people confess that Allah is the true God and Muhammad is his prophet.”  Islam divides the entire world into Dar al-Islam.  (the house of peace) and Dar al-Harb (the house of war) and demands perpetual jihad everywhere against Dar al-Harb, i.e., non-Muslims.  There can never be “peace” until Islam has subjected the entire world to Allah.  Everywhere, with the complicity of those who are cooperating in their own eventual subjugation, Islam marches on!

 

 

Terrorists are playing out their special role in that conquest.  Unquestionably, Islam is behind most terrorism.  Yet the spread of Islam’s mosques is allowed throughout the Western world and accelerates even while Islam denies the same liberty for other religions in territories it controls.  Most mosques are funded by Saudi Arabia with oil profits from money we pay at the pump.  Many mosques in the West are centers for terrorist cells and training, an indisputable fact consistent with Islam (thoroughly documented in the video, Jihad In America). 10

 

10. Available at www.amazon.com.

 

 

In July 2002, “a RAND Corporation analyst told the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board that Saudi Arabia was an enemy of the United States, [that] ... Saudis were active ‘at every level of the terror chain.’” 11 Clearly, Saudi Arabiaexports two products ... oil and religious fanaticism.” 12  Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, documents the uncomfortable truth about Saudi Arabia in his excellent book that everyone in the West ought to read. 13

 

11. Dore Gold, Hatred Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism

(Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2003), 2.

12. Fareed Zakaria, “The Allies Who Made Our Foes - How Arab states we call our friends sow seeds of terror

– and what we should do about it,” Newsweek, October 1, 2001, 34.

13. Gold, Hatred.

 

 

There is no explaining away today’s suicide bombers and terrorists as “extremists.”  In Muslim countries, terrorists are treated with the same hero worship that matadors receive in Spain and that NFL and NBA stars receive in America.  Their faces appear on posters everywhere, with accolades of praise and admiration.

 

[Page 189]

A NEW AND MORE SUBTLE JIHAD

 

 

In A.D. 732, in perhaps the most important battle in European history, Charles Martel, at Tours, France, defeated an invading Muslim army of several hundred thousand jihad warriors, killing their commander, Abd el-Rahman.

 

 

That was nearly thirteen hundred years ago.  And now, through another and more successful invasion, Islam has become the second largest religion in France, with about six million Muslims and fifteen hundred mosques.  Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s top anti-terror judge, recently said, “The terrorist threat today is more powerful ... than it was before September 11.  Rabei Osman El Sayed Ahmed, known as Mohammed the Egyptian [alleged mastermind behind the Madrid train bombing in 2004 that killed 191 and injured 1,400], is an example of this new generation of jihadi operatives who apparently operate independently of the old Al Qaeda network ... an example of the next generation of Islamist terrorists that Europe must now contend with.” 14

 

14. AI Qaeda’s New Front,” produced by FRONTLINE and aired January 24-25, 2005 on PBS.

 

 

The major international threat is still Al Qaeda but in a new and even more deadly version.  A new breed of recruits is swelling its ranks worldwide, no longer exclusively from Muslim countries in the Middle East but angry, home-grown young men who hate the Western countries in which they have lived since their parents immigrated there.  As Fox News recently reported:

 

 

With its founding fathers in hiding, and dozens of key operatives under watch, Al Qaeda has changed [and] is taking advantage of people who don’t have to cross borders, receive cash from abroad or engage in other international transactions that might alert authorities. ... “We are now dealing with many little Al Qaedas,” with the potential of neighbourhood Al Qaedas,” said Brian Jenkins, senior advisor to the president of the Rand Corp.  They may not be able to carry out specialized operations ... but they can still operate at a lethal level.”

 

The diffuse nature of the shape - shifting AI Qaeda is one reason it’s hard to fight.  Security services may crack one cell but find little connecting it to others.  Police in Britain have failed so far to charge anyone in the July 7 attacks on three subway trains and a [Page 190] bus that killed 52 and four suicide bombers - an attack authorities said bore Al Qaeda hallmarks. ... Part of the goal is simply to keep going and keep launching attacks - thereby winning more recruits and money to the cause of creating Islam-led countries.

 

The new Al Qaeda is finding fertile ground for recruits ... among the children of Europe’s immigrants. ... Their families left for a better life, but they really have not been able to fully integrate with the recipient societies. ... 15

 

15. Fox News, August 8, 2005.

 

 

An eye-opening documentary aired on PBS in late January 2005 explained, “It might come as a surprise to many Americans, but the most pressing threat to the United States is not the suspected Al Qaeda cells at home, but rather the cells operating overseas, especially in Western Europe.  Home to an estimated 18 million Muslims, Western Europe has become the new and deadly battleground in the war on terror.” 16

 

16. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/press/2306.html.

 

 

In England, more Muslims meet in mosques each week than Christians in churches.  Islam is not capable of launching a military frontal assault against Europe, as in the distant past, but it is accomplishing more than earlier jihad warriors ever did, by the “peaceful” invasion of immigrants under the cover of successful propaganda about its benevolent intentions.  Sir David Veness, assistant commissioner for specialist operations with London’s Metropolitan Police, recently said, “This country has seen terrorism since the end of the 1960s, both domestic ... and international terrorism here on the streets of London.  What is different about this form of terrorism is the unequivocal intention to cause mass murder ... without warning in any form to the public.” [The new terrorists hide inside the mosques and Muslim communities.]

 

 

“European police have thwarted dozens of Islamist terrorist plots set to be launched following the U.S. attacks of September 11.  Reda Seyam, an Egyptian-born German citizen who reportedly had been under investigation in connection with the Bali bombings, has said: “Any observer can see that this war in Iraq [has created] a school to train graduates on acts of terrorism and fighting. ... It revives the spirit of jihad in the Muslim nation.’” 17

 

17. “New Front,” PBS.

 

[Page 191]

Areas in England, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe already have concentrations of Muslims that are able to vote in their own local candidates.  By 2009, the three largest cities in the Netherlands will have a Muslim majority.  Yet Europe has been unwilling to acknowledge the threat of Islam in its midst.  Incredibly, even after the Muslim riots that ravaged France in November 2005, the lie that Islam is a benevolent, peaceful religion continues to be promoted by French national leaders.

 

 

AN IMPASSABLE BARRIER?

 

 

It is nearly impossible for Muslims to be integrated into society as other immigrants have been, because Islam does not allow any distinction between religion and the state.  Islam must rule not only in the mosque but in daily life and commerce, in the legal system, courts, and government.  Thus, for genuine democracy to be established in Afghanistan, Iraq, and PLO territory would be the death of Islam.  Muslim countries will do all they can to prevent this disaster for their religion.  Furthermore, even in secular Islamic countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamists rule to a large extent.

 

 

In contrast, Western civilization follows the clear distinction Jesus made between church and state when He said, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22: 21; Luke 20: 25).  This fundamental difference in political philosophy (recognizing that Muslims will attempt to use lawful democratic means in order to establish shari’a) must be confronted if the West is to survive the internal threat posed by the flood of immigrants.  Omar Ahmad of CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) has bluntly said:

 

 

Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any faith but to become dominant. ... The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.

 

 

Texans used to cry, “Remember the Alamo!”  Jews still remind themselves, “Remember the Holocaust - never again!”  So Westerners [Page 192] had better repeat to one another in earnest, “Remember the conquest of India (‘the bloodiest story in history’); remember the slaughter of a million Armenians; remember what Islam has done for centuries and is still doing in Sudan, Indonesia, Nigeria, and elsewhere; remember New York, Washington, D. G, Madrid, London, and Paris - don’t let it happen again!”

 

 

Instead, many leading Christians promote “peaceful” opposition to terrorism as though terrorists would be persuaded by kindness.  The liberal Christian (allegedly evangelical) organization, Sojourners, placed a full-page ad in a national newspaper that naively assumed that violence could be stopped by non-violence. 18 By implication, blame for terrorism that operates by force was placed upon Israel and the United States for opposing it with force.  Particular blame was placed upon Christian leaders who encouraged the president to pursue terrorists.  The ad critically quoted Jerry Falwell: “But you’ve got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops.  And I’m for the president to chase them all over the world.  If it takes 10 years, blow them all away in the name of the Lord.19

 

18. USA TODAY, November 1, 2004.   19. CNN Late Edition, 10/24/04.

 

 

Although most Christians would be uncomfortable with Falwell’s rhetoric, the ad denouncing him made no criticism of the terrorists, much less of Islam’s promotion of murder in the name of Allah.  We have documented Islam’s role.  As Israel’s former ambassador to the UN succinctly declared, Without an unshakable conviction in the merits of martyrdom and in its rewards in the afterlife, terrorists would never have undertaken the suicidal attacks of the past decade.” 20 Such teaching comes from Islam alone.*  No other religion even comes close to promoting murder and mayhem, much less offers heavenly reward for such despicable evil.

 

20. Gold, Hatred, 6.

 

[* NOTE: Taken out of context, the words  - “the merits of martyrdom and its rewards in the afterlife”… “such teaching comes from Islam alone,” – are  not true!  See Matthew 16: 18; Luke 16: 23; 23: 43; 2 Thess. 1: 4-5; 4: 6-8; Rev. 6: 9-11, R.V. ]

 

 

Islam itself is the root of the terrorist problem that plagues the world.  Western leaders must begin there if we are to win the war against terror!  But that is almost impossible, given the climate of tolerant acceptance of virtually everything in America and reluctance to truthfully criticize anyone or anything.  On August 22, 2005, following protests by CAIR for a July 25 broadcast, conservative radio host Michael Graham was fired from his daily three-hour talk show in Washington on [Page 193] WMAL-AM because he refused to apologize for truthfully saying, “We are at war with a terrorist organization named Islam.”  CAIR executive director Nihad Awad accused Graham of using “hate-filled words” and praised WMAL’s action as “a step toward removing some of the harmful anti-Muslim rhetoric that fill our nation’s airwaves.” 21

 

21. The Associated Press, August 23, 2005.

 

 

Hate-filled words”?  They are the trademark of Islam - but they amazingly are transformed into “peace” in Western minds when Muslims speak them.  And never forget that Muslim vows to exterminate Israel, destroy America, and take over the entire world are not mere “rhetoric.”

 

 

TERRORISM IS ISLAM’S PATH TO PEACE

 

 

To bring “peace,” Allah commands, “I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels.  Strike off their heads!; 22 Slay the idolaters wherever you find them ... ; 23 O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites and be thou harsh with them ...; 24 Believers, make war on the infidels that dwell around you. …25  More than one hundred other verses in the Qur’an advocate fighting to bring Islam’s peace to the world. 26

 

22. Surah 8:12.   23. Ibid., 9: 5.   24. Ibid., 9: 73.   25. Ibid., 9: 123.

26. Ibid., 2:190-193, 210, 224; 4: 74-76, 89, 101; 5: 36, 54; 8: 12, 17, 59-60, 65; 9: 5, 14, 29, 41, 123; 47A, etc.

 

 

Remember, Muhammad’s dying words were, “May Allah curse the Christians and Jews!”  Muhammad Atta, Egyptian leader of the 9/11 terrorists, attended a mosque in Hamburg, Germany, where the imam preached that “Christians and Jews should have their throats slit.” 27 Try to imagine a Christian minister preaching that from his pulpit.  Wake up, West!

 

27. The New York Times, July 16, 2002.

 

 

The same violence is preached in many other mosques world-wide.  This is genuine Islam according to Muhammad and the Qur’an in spite of denials by Muslim propagandists such as CAIR.

 

 

Throughout its history, as we have documented, Islam unquestionably has been responsible for the slaughter of many millions of innocent victims, including Muslims themselves by rival factions.  Islam doesn’t bring peace even among its most devoted followers.  In the last chapter, we made brief mention of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, both Muslim countries.  They used one thousand tons of poison gas on one another.  Many thousands of young [Page 194] boys were sacrificed to clear mine fields for the troops following them (and were deceived into doing so by Islam’s promise of Paradise with unnumbered dark-eyed virgins for those who die in jihad).

 

 

We have seen the slaughter of Muslim citizens by Muslim rulers, such as the murder of thousands by Saddam Hussein in Iraq.  Muslim leaders of Iran and Syria have committed similar atrocities against their citizens.  The destruction and rape of Kuwait (a Muslim country) by Iraq (another Muslim country) shocked the world - while Arafat and the “Palestinians” were cheering Saddam as a great hero because he was raining Scud missiles on Israel.  In twelve years of civil war in Algeria, Muslims have killed more than one hundred thousand of their fellows.  So it has been since the beginning, wherever Muslims were in power.

 

 

The vast Al Qaeda terrorist network began in the early 1990s.  It was composed of a loose amalgam of groups in Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, who sought to overthrow their respective governments for not being true to fundamentalist Islam.  Unsuccessful in this enterprise, they turned their attention to America, seen as the evil “Satan” representing a democratic and stabilizing presence in the Middle East 28 - and worst of all, the supporter of Israel.

 

28. Zakaria, Newsweek, October 1, 2001, 34.

 

 

ARAFAT AND THE PLO

 

 

Dangerous as Al Qaeda is, it ranks far below Arafat’s Islamic PLO networks, which today, in spite of his death, still hold the record for the largest number of hostages taken at one time (three hundred), the largest number of people shot at an airport, the largest ransom collected ($5 million paid by Lufthansa), the greatest number and variety of targets (forty civilian passenger aircraft, five passenger ships, thirty embassies or diplomatic missions plus innumerable fuel depots and factories), plus assassinations by the thousands, etc. 29 Jordan had given these fellow Muslims shelter.  But their heinous crimes against his people, and Arafat’s attempt to take over the country, became so unbearable that King Hussein I finally turned his Bedouin troops on them and, with the help of the Israelis, drove them out of his country and into Lebanon.

 

29. John Laffin, The PLO Connections (Transworld, 1982), 18.

 

[Page 195]

There the PLO (all devout Muslims, sincerely believing they were acting in the name of, and to the greater glory of, Allah and in obedience to the Qur’an) created an unequalled legacy of torture and death, killing tens of thousands and leaving about one hundred thousand young girls pregnant when the PLO was driven out.  Often the bodies of PLO victims, some of them small children, were mutilated and dismembered.  Lebanon became a huge base for terrorist attacks against Israel with the PLO’s increased weaponry and the blessing of Syria.

 

 

Life for Israelis became intolerable in Galilee, where there were constant massive artillery and mortar attacks launched by the PLO from within Lebanon.  Thousands of residents either fled their homes or were forced to spend much time in bomb shelters.  Israeli air strikes and commando raids failed to stop or even lessen the PLO attacks, forcing Israel to take more decisive action.  As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, “No sovereign state can tolerate indefinitely the buildup along its borders of a military force dedicated to its destruction and implementing its objectives by periodic shellings and raids.” 30

 

30. Washington Post, June 16, 1982.

 

 

On June 6, 1982, under the direction of then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel invaded Lebanon, determined to drive the PLO out of that country as King Hussein I had driven them out of Jordan.  There was a further reason: to remove huge hidden caches of arms known to be stashed in Lebanon - enough to equip a million-man army, much of it too sophisticated for the PLO to operate.  It was obviously intended for a planned major Soviet invasion of Israel.  Thousands of truckloads were required to haul it all into Israel.

 

 

As the battle raged and the Israelis tightened the noose, the PLO retreated toward Beirut.  Arafat’s men would take people off the street, strap them into hospital beds, command the nurses to drain every drop of blood for transfusions for their wounded, and stack the dead bodies like cordwood in the halls.  Sharon would have destroyed the PLO murderers and killed Arafat, but President Reagan insisted that the worst terrorist of our day be allowed to leave Lebanon alive.

 

 

Arafat was given shelter in Tunisia, where he set up PLO head quarters in Borj Cedria.  He was still directing worldwide terrorist [Page 196] operations from Tunisia when, incredibly, Israel took Arafat on as its partner for peace and recognized the PLO as the official representative of the Palestinian people.  He was allowed to leave Tunisia and set up his new headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank, where he received a hero’s welcome.

 

 

Instead of being tried by an international tribunal and treated like the Nazi, Serbian, Taliban, and Iraqi leadership, as justice would require, Arafat was given the status of a highly honoured world statesman.  His bloody exploits gained for him international acceptance as a leader for peace and the Nobel Peace Prize!  The United Nations, European Union, and countless world political and religious leaders sided with Arafat in his unjust demands and terrorism against Israel - and every indication is that his equally terrorist successors will receive the same favouritism.  Arafat was treated at a French military hospital during his last days, and after his death, French President Jacques Chirac eulogized him as “a man of courage and conviction.” 31 Tunisia has named a major avenue in Arafat’s honour.

 

31. USA Today, November 22, 2004.

 

 

Arafat was cheered by the United Nations general assembly, received at the Clinton White House and Camp David, was received warmly at least ten times by Pope John Paul II - and the Pope visited him in his palace in PLO-occupied Israel and supported Arafat’s opposition to Israel.  In spite of murdering eleven members of Israel’s team at the 1972 Munich Olympics (for which Libya’s Qaddafi awarded Arafat $5 million), the PLO was invited to send its own team to the Olympic Games!  In 1973, the PLO was granted observer status in the United Nations, and in 1974, Yasser Arafat was invited to address the UN General Assembly, where he received a standing ovation, though he called for Israel’s destruction.  At the 2004 Olympics in Greece, the “Palestinians” received the most applause as all of the teams made their entrance.  The West rewarded Arafat’s terrorism.  He became proof that terrorism and related riots can pay big dividends.

 

[Page 197]

TRAINING THE NEXT GENERATION FOR PEACE

 

 

That every Jew on earth must be killed and the entire world subjected to Islam to the glory of Allah is not an obscure teaching.  One does not have to search in dark corners of a library to find it.  This ambition is taught in today’s textbooks in Islamic schools worldwide, including, for example, the Muslim Academy outside Washington, D.C.  It is devoutly preached in Mosques, presented as the heroic ideal to youth, and blared forth on radio and TV and over loudspeakers in the streets.  Textbooks in Syria today lead pupils to the “inevitable conclusion … that all Jews must be annihilated.” 32 The  Egyptian textbook, Studies in Theology: Traditions and Morals, explains that the Qur’an encourages the faithful “to perform jihad … [and] behead the infidels. …33 The  beheading of hostages in Iraq simply marks the terrorists as Muslims who are following the example of Muhammed and the teaching of the Qur’an and hadith.

 

32. Meyrav Wurinser, The Schools of Ba’athism: a Study of Syrian Textbooks (MEMRI, 2000), xii.

33. Anthony Browne, “The triumph of the East,” The Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Australia), September 5, 2004, 54.

 

 

And yet Islam continues successfully to sell itself to the world as a religion of peace.  This fact remains one of the mysteries of our day.  There ought to be an international cry of outrage raised against Islam.  This volume is not the first or only one by any means to sound the alarm in an attempt to awaken the world to the awful truth.  Perhaps readers will be moved to demand the truth from Western leaders.  That is the only hope for the West’s survival!

 

 

Captured documents have revealed that “at the graduation ceremonies for the [Hamas] Islamic Society’s network of kindergartens [funded by Saudi Arabia], Palestinian children enacted the attacks of suicide bombers.  Children wore military uniforms and mock explosive belts, wielded imitation Kalashnikov rifles, and burned the Israeli flag.” 34 Palestinian TV carries a children’s program modelled after Sesame Street called The Children’s Club.  It features children singing songs about wanting to become suicide bombers against Israel.  Sheik ’Ikrima Sabri, appointed Mufti (highest Islamic authority) of Jerusalem by Arafat, told the Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi, The younger the martyr, the greater and the more I respect him ... a new generation will carry on the mission with determination.” 35 What a tragedy!

 

34. Gold, Hatred, 246.   35. World Net Daily, January 14, 2003.

 

[Page 198]

Could the innocence of such children ever be restored?  Can that generation ever be convinced of what a normal conscience knows for sure - that the true God would never condone murder, much less give murderers a special reward in Paradise?  If so, millions of lives might be saved.  Former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat writes:

 

 

I was born and raised in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, in the West Bank.  Hatred of Jews was my education, what I was taught each day by teachers and parents and the entire community.  I knew nothing else, so I believed it was the righteous thing to grow up and kill Jews. ...

 

My lullabies and many of the poems we memorized were about flying body parts and rolling heads.

 

I was initiated into Yasser Arafat’s Fatah terror group and recruited by a well‑known bomb maker named Mahmoud Al- Mughrabi from Jerusalem. ...

 

My life was turned upside down when I discovered that everything I had been taught about the Jews was a lie. 36

 

36. Walid Shoebat, Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam,

(Top Executive Media, 2005), 13-14, 20.

 

 

To die as a martyr in jihad was always the only sure way (maybe) to Paradise for the Muslim.  However, committing suicide in the process was never considered honourable until fairly recently.  Perhaps as a result of having been tempted to kill himself a number of times, Muhammad condemned suicide.  He reportedly said, “Whoever kills himself in any way in this world will be tormented with it on the day of resurrection.” 37 If Muhammad’s condemnation of suicide as part of jihad could be widely communicated, it might turn the Islamic world against this practice.  However, most imams justify suicide bombings as jihad martyrdom operations and claim that suicide in such instances is justified and rewarded.

 

37. Bernard Lewis, A Middle East Mosaic (New York: Random House, 2000), 273.

 

 

Hatred for Israel and the determination to destroy her is a prominent theme in publications officially distributed by Ministries of Education in Muslim lands.  For example, in Jordan a book used in the first year of high school declares, “Israel was born to die.  Prove it.”  A book for the second year of junior high in Damascus declares, “The Jews are vile, greedy enemies of mankind.”  In Syria, a fifth-grade book boasts, “We shall expel all Jews from all Arab countries.”

 

[Page 199]

In Egypt, a textbook for the first year of junior high urges students, “The Arabs do not cease to act for the extermination of Israel.”  A ninth-grade textbook declares, “Israel shall not live if the Arabs stand fast in their hatred. ... Even if all the human race and the devil in hell conspire to aid her, she shall not exist.”  One finds this underlying and perpetual hatred for Jews and the accompanying resolve to annihilate them in the writings of Muslim fundamentalists everywhere.

 

 

In his testimony before the Senate subcommittee referred to earlier, David A. Harris pointed out that “Saudi Arabian schoolbooks, even grammar books, are full of phrases exalting war, jihad, and martyrdom.  And though all forms of terror are rejected by the Saudi Arabian schoolbooks, it appears that such prohibitions do not apply to cases that fall in the categories of jihad and martyrdom38 - especially against Jews.  Harris elaborated further in a newsletter:

 

38. From testimony of David A. Harris before Senate subcommittee hearing.

 

 

Saudi schoolbooks are a hate-filled portrait of a bizarre and fictitious world - a place where the Protocols of the [Learned] Elders of Zion is a history text ... where Israel does not exist on a map ... where organizations such as the Freemasons, the Lions, and Rotary clubs are bound together in a global Zionist conspiracy.

 

 

The textbooks are not the product of renegade religious fanatics.  They are official publications of the Saudi Education Ministry - the work of a monarchy that passes itself off as a moderate regime and American ally. ...

 

 

Recently we joined with the Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace to conduct an investigation into Saudi schoolbooks.  What we found was - to put it plainly - chilling.  Practically every lesson - from grammar, to geography, to history - was bent and twisted to transform it into a vehicle for teaching hate. ...

 

 

“You will hardly find any sedition without the Jews having a part in it,” one schoolbook says ... blaming Jews for ... World War I and the French and Russian Revolutions.

 

 

Students are challenged to fill in this blank: “Those who have incurred Allah’s wrath are -.”  You will not be surprised to learn the correct answer: “the Jews.”

 

 

Nor is bigotry [aimed at] Jews alone.  Saudi textbooks teach youth to despise all that is Western as well. ...

 

 

Our work on this report was instrumental in the introduction of a resolution in the U.S. House and Senate condemning [Page 200] the bigotry in Saudi textbooks, calling on the Saudi monarchy to change its curricula and expressing “extreme disappointment” with the slow pace of education reform. ...” 39

 

39. http://www.ajeadvocacy.net/saudi.htm.

 

 

AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION

 

 

This is not to criticize fundamentalism or fundamentalists.  Every person who stands firmly upon his convictions is a fundamentalist.  All Christians ought to be fundamentalists.  That simply means teaching and practicing the fundamentals of the faith as set forth in the Bible and as taught and exemplified by Jesus Christ.  All Muslims, too, ought to be fundamentalists.  The problem is that the fundamentals set forth in the Qur’an and as taught and exemplified by Muhammad involve force, violence, and murder in order to spread Islam.  But a true Christian is called to spread his faith by love, by charitable example, and by appealing to reason - helping people face the fact that the penalty for sin was paid in full by Jesus Christ on the Cross and salvation is offered as a free gift to “whosoever will.”  There is a vast distinction between Islamic and Christian fundamentals - a distinction that any honest person ought to recognize.

 

 

Everyone is free to make up his own religion if he so desires.  But no one is free to make up a religion and call it “Islam,” because that religion is already established, with its founder, scriptures, traditions, and lengthy history of the example set by Muhammad and devout Muslims.  So it is with those who make up their own religion, then call it “Christianity” and claim to be “Christians.”  They have no right to do so.  Christianity, like Islam, has its founder, Scriptures, and lengthy history of those who practiced it biblically.  It is deceitful for anyone to call himself a Christian who does not follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ - just as it is deceitful for anyone to call himself a Muslim who doesn’t follow the teachings of the Qur’an and the example of Muhammad as recorded in the hadith.  That much is axiomatic.

 

 

No one can excuse Islamic violence and murder by saying that the same thing (though on a much smaller scale) was practiced [Page 201] by the Crusaders.  Though they waved crosses and obeyed the Roman Catholic Church and her popes in doing so, their slaughter of Jews and Muslims was in violation of the teachings of the Bible and of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, proving that they were not Christians.  But what the Muslims did in slaughtering millions in spreading Islam from France to China, and what terrorists do today, is in obedience to the Qur’an and the life and teachings of Muhammad.  Thus they demonstrate that they are true Muslims.  Those who claim that Islam is peace and that they are not in favour of violence in spreading Islam have no right to call themselves Muslims, and they are deceiving Westerners when they make that claim.

 

 

FACING THE AWFUL TRUTH

 

 

Every child in the Palestinian Authority’s schools reads the textbook, Our Country Palestine.  Its title page declares, “There is no alternative to destroying Israel!”  What a bald-faced deception, then, for the Palestinian Authority to pretend it wants peace with Israel and at the same time to teach its citizens that Israel must be destroyed!  And yet the West encourages this fraud, pressuring Israel to make “peace.”

 

 

Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic declared, “There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic fait and non-Islamic societies. ...”  Could have explained Islam more plainly and doesn’t that statement include the entire non-Muslim world?  How can anyone who denies this basic Islamic teaching honestly call himself a Muslim?  And isn’t it dishonest in view of such foundational Islamic teaching for Islamic diplomats from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere to pretend otherwise?

 

 

Islam has created a culture of hatred and murder that has devalued human life.  On March 22, 2004, eleven-year-old Abdullah Quran was stopped at an IDF checkpoint outside Nablus.  When soldiers opened his schoolbag, they found inside, along with his Spiderman doll, a ten-kilo bomb that his dispatcher, who was obviously following and watching him from a distance (not having told the boy he was blessing him with a free ride to “Paradise”), had rigged to be detonated by [Page 202] cell phone.  As the sappers worked to disarm the bomb, the cell-phone trigger was dialed.  Only a technical failure saved the lives of the boy and many around him.  In this case, Abdullah (his name means “servant of Allah”) did not know his true mission.  He said he had been offered “a lot of money” to take a package into Israel. 40

 

40. International Jerusalem Post, March 26, 2004.

 

 

Speaking at the United Nations on September 23, 2003, President Bush said that the Palestinian Arab cause “is being betrayed by lead ers who cling to power but are feeding old hatreds and destroying the good will of others.  The reprehensible necessity of being politically correct prevents Bush from stating the truth that not only certain of today’s leaders but Islam itself is the direct cause of Palestinian hatred motivation for terrorism of Israel and of the West and provides the and suicide attacks worldwide.  Morton A Klein, National President

of the Zionist Oreanization of America (ZOA), stated that truth clearly: “In fact, the central obstacle to peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is the fact that a culture of anti-Jewish hatred and violence envelops the entire Palestinian Authority’s cabinet ministers and parliament members.” 41 And that culture is created by Islam.

 

41. www.middleeastinfo.org/modules.php?op=modload& name=XForum&file=viewthread&tid=1276.

 

 

WHATS WRONG WITH MULTICULTURALISM?

 

 

It has become popular in the United States public school system to downplay any uniqueness or benefit of the American way of life established by those who founded and built this country.  Students are being taught that the values America has stood for over the centuries, rather than something to be cultivated and preserved, are something to be embarrassed about and actually to be despised.  It has come to the point that almost anything from the East is preferred over anything from the West.  This delusion began in the ’50s and ’60s with the hippie and drug movements that found our youth travelling to the East for “enlightenment” at ashrams of urine-drinking yogis and hashish-smoking “spiritual masters.”  The more bizarre the behaviour, the more “superior” it was deemed to be, and the more followers it attracted.

 

[Page 203]

This brought an invasion of Eastern gurus to the West, and resulted in the New Age movement, where anything is okay except saying that something isn’t okay. To celebrate the new broadmindedness, public schools (especially universities) began to glorify anything African or “native,” no matter from where.  White skin was out and colour was in.  White was ugly and wicked, black was beautiful and could do no wrong.  Business and commerce, which had built our civilization, were damned for destroying the earth. Environmentalism, no matter how extreme and destructive in its own peculiar way, was the new darling.  It is in this context that Islam and Muslims have gained an admiration that they do not deserve.  In an article titled, “Cultures Aren’t Equal,” Michael Barone shared some wisdom:

 

 

Anyone who has been keeping up with British opinion since the July 7 bombings will have noticed that “multiculturalism” is under sharp attack.  Multiculturalism preaches that ... society should be not a melting pot but, in the phrase of former New York Mayor David Dinkins, “a gorgeous mosaic.”  That mosaic, of course, looked less gorgeous as people surveyed the work of the British-born-and-raised bombers.

 

 

In the past, Tony Blair has spoken favourably about multiculturalism.  But on July 7, he struck a different note.  “It is important, however, that the terrorists realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause the death and destruction of innocent people and impose their extremism on the world” (Italics added).  Sadly, the multi-culturist policies of Blair’s Labour government and its Conservative predecessors gave refuge to preachers of Islamist hate in what some have called “Londonistan. ...”

 

 

Now the Blair government has moved to expel Muslim clerics who preach hatred and terrorism, and the left-wing Guardian fired a writer who was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical group that advocates a “clash of civilizations” and urges Muslims to kill Jews. ...

 

 

The Dutch novelist Leon de Winter wrote that as traditional Calvinist discipline frayed and Muslim immigrants rejected Dutch tolerance, “the delicate mechanism of Holland’s traditional tolerant society gradually lost its balance.” In The Age [Melbourne, Australia newspaper], Pamela Bone wrote, “Perhaps it is time to [Page 204] say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here.” The Age’s Tony Parkinson quoted the French writer Jean Francois Revel’s Cold War comment: “A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.” Tolerating intolerance, goodhearted people are beginning to see, does not necessarily produce tolerance in turn. ...

 

 

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. ... But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. ... In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swaths of our society.  So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders.  World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima.  Slavery is identified with America though it has existed in many societies, and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians. ...

 

 

Multiculturalist intellectuals do not think our kind of society is worth defending.  But millions here and increasing numbers in Britain and other countries know better. 42

 

42. Michael Barone, “Cultures Aren’t Equal,” US. News & World Report, August 15/August 22, 2005, 26.

 

 

Obviously, Nazism created a culture in Germany of which most Germans are now ashamed and that they would like to forget.  Yet after more than sixty years, as noted in Chapter Two, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is still a bestseller in Muslim countries.  Egyptian columnist Ahmad Rajab wrote: “Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth.  But we do have a complaint against him - his revenge was not enough.” 43 The Palestinian Peace Prize for Culture was awarded to Abu Daoud for his book telling how he planned and carried out the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  Imagine a self-confessed mass murderer in the West, instead of being imprisoned or executed for his crime, boasting of it in a best-selling book, for which he is honoured with a special prize!

 

43. Al-Akbar, April 18, 2001.

 

 

ARE ISLAMIC VALUES CHANGING WESTERN CULTURE?

 

 

Islam destroys the essential sense of right and wrong that God has implanted in every human conscience - so that murder is rewarded [Page 205] with Paradise, and murderers are lauded as the most highly honoured heroes!

 

 

This is the atmosphere Islam has created and in which not a few fanatics but the average follower of Islam is immersed from earliest childhood.  Muslims in the West may attempt to be aloof from such evil, but in the long run they cannot be.  Is it not time for them to admit the truth about the religion to which they still cling in denial of its established teachings and many centuries of violent history?

 

 

But even Western governments have rewarded terrorists.  The rewards heaped on Arafat are not the only example.  Arrested by the French police in 1977, Daoud was released from custody for fear of PLO reprisals against France – a weakness that reaped a harvest of riots all the way into November 2005.  If we continue out of fear to give in to terrorist demands, we have surrendered our moral sense of right and wrong - and have lost the war.

 

 

When I present the undeniable truth about Islam to audiences around the world, I see reactions ranging from discomfort to outright disbelief - and even accusations that I am lying.  It is extremely painful for a normal person to acknowledge that a religion in our day literally calls for the extermination of an entire people and the subjugation of the world by force.  Islam itself is Israel’s chief and most determined enemy - and it is the enemy of Muslims, too, as well as of all non-Muslims.  Though many Muslims living in the West do not reflect the passion of world dominion in the cause of Allah which is their duty - and may not even be aware of this aspect of Islam - they would soon learn the awful truth if they resettled in a Muslim country.  Instead of enjoying their former Western freedoms, they would have to conform to real Islam!

 

 

Why is there such a migration of Muslims to the West?  Obviously, they prefer living in freedom under a democracy to living under the totalitarian regimes in Muslim countries.  Speaking frankly, with rare courage, and calling upon Muslims living in the United States to face the awful truth of what Islam does to a country, Dr. M. A. Mtiqtedar Khan, Director of International Studies, Adrian College, [Page 296] Michigan, put it succinctly: “It is time that we Muslims acknowledge that the freedoms we enjoy in the U.S. are more desirable to us than superficial solidarity with the Muslim World.  If you disagree, then prove it by packing your bags and going to whichever Muslim country you identify with.”  He is among a growing number of scholarly Muslims who are raising their voices against terrorism by Muslims in the name of Allah.  Of course, in doing so they are criticizing Muhammad himself.

 

 

A WAKE-UP CALL

 

 

The Western world prides itself on freedom, democracy, and liberality.  There is no better proof of the genuineness of this boast than the openness, generosity, and opportunities with which it greets emigrants - and especially Muslims.  That the latter are particularly favoured above all others, including Christians, apparently reflects the fact that Muslims control most of the world’s oil deposits and the West is afraid to offend them.  They are allowed to build their mosques by the thousands, to have special prayer rooms in public places such as schools and airports.  They are given equal freedom to become citizens and to express their opinions, desires, and complaints with their votes in elections and in every forum offered in an open and free society that practices the human rights denied in Muslim countries: freedom of conscience, of speech, of the press, and of religion.

 

 

Nor do we deny that such freedoms ought to be granted equally to all without regard to race or religion.  But there is no justification for suppressing (and even denying) the truth about Islam’s aggressiveness unto the death of all who oppose it.  As a result, tens of thousands of deluded Westerners have converted to Islam, which they have been assured is “peace” - and its influence is steadily increasing so that both political parties in the United States wooed Muslims in the 2004 elections.

 

 

In stark and shameful contrast, no such freedoms are offered in Muslim countries to non-Muslims - and generally not even to Muslims themselves.  Yet no voice is raised at the UN in objection, nor do Western political leaders speak out.  Israel, the only real democracy in the Middle East, is criticized for every misstep. Yet the Muslim [Page 207] world, in virtual slavery to a religion that threatens with death any who dare question, much less oppose it, is never criticized for its continual denial of basic human rights.  This is not pleasing to God, and it is only one of the sins for which His judgment will shortly punish the nations of this world.

 

 

The West has stood up for civil rights in the face of Communism, bringing pressure upon Russia and China that has born fruit.  On what basis can it any longer be justified that Muslim countries are in a class of their own - untouchables when it comes to basic human rights?  Continuing to give Muslims in the West freedoms denied in Muslim countries supports a gross unfairness that encourages the perpetuation of a double standard that denies everything the West holds dear.  It can only lead to the discovery one day that we have gone so far along this shameful one-way road (supported by the so-called “road map to peace”) leading to the destruction of the rights we advocate that there is no turning back.

 

 

Would it not be best, instead of deluding ourselves further, to insist right now upon a just and fair equality with Muslims - an equality without which no lasting peace can ever be established among free peoples?  Rather than continuing to promote the grossest of inequities that can only lead ultimately to a loss of basic liberties, should not the same pressures that brought down the Iron Curtain be applied to Muslim countries to bring down the even more vicious and impenetrable Islamic Curtain?

 

 

An honest look at the demographics is all it takes to realize how deeply we are sinking into what could become a hopeless situation unless the truth is faced now.  Pat Buchanan has predicted that “Europe will be inundated by an Islamic-Arab-African invasion [and Africa is fast becoming a Muslim continent]. ... The Islamic invasions of Spain and France in the eighth century, and of the Balkans and Central Europe from the 14th to the 17th centuries, will be re-enacted in the lifetime of most of those now living.  Islam has already surpassed Catholicism as the largest religion on earth. ... Islamic populations are exploding. ... By 2025 Palestinians will outnumber Israel’s Jewish population two-to-one.” 44

 

44. Drudge Report, January 2, 2002.

 

[Page 208]

WHAT SHOULD THE WEST DO?

 

 

The “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and the Crusaders,” over the signatures of Osama bin Laden and various leaders of militant Islamic groups in Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, declared:

 

 

The United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, Arabia ... and using its bases [there] to fight against the neighbouring Islamic peoples. ... To kill Americans and their allies, both civil and military, is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able. ... By Allah’s leave, we call on every Muslim ... to obey Allah’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can. 45

 

45. Al-Quas-al-Arabi, February 23, 1998; quoted in The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), September 16, 200 1, A1, 9.

 

 

This infamous organization was co-founded by bin Laden and his personal physician, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, in February 1998.  Zawahiri comes from one of the most aristocratic families in Egypt.  He and bin Laden met in Afghanistan in 1987 and have been partners in terrorism ever since.  Zawahiri is, in fact, the mastermind behind Al Qaeda.  He has declared his willingness on Al-Jazeera television to die in jihad for Allah - yet he’s doing all he can to avoid that fate.  None of the leaders who exhort to martyrdom practice what they preach. The honour of dying is left to others.

 

 

Zawahiri is a talented physician.  He was raised among the wealthy in a luxurious villa in Cairo.  Like most terrorists, he proves the lie that poverty among the Muslim masses drives them in desperation to desire to die in jihad.  None of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were from a deprived background.  Islam itself is the catalyst for terrorism.  As journalist Stephen Schwartz has pointed out concerning fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers:

 

 

These were not poor people from refugee camps on the West Bank or in Gaza.  These were not people who had grown up feeling some grievance against Israel and the United States because they lived in difficult conditions. These were not people from the crowded and disrupted communities of Egypt or Pakistan, or people who had experienced anti-Islamic violence in the last 20 years and had therefore turned against the United States.  These [Page 209] people had grown up in the country that Americans often think of as our most solid and dependable ally in the Arab world - the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. ... Al Qaeda is essentially a Saudi political movement ... twenty-five percent of those detained in Guantanamo are Saudis. 46

 

46. Stephen Schwartz, “Radical Islam in America,” Imprimis, May 2004, available at www.billsdale.edu.

 

A LONG OVERDUE AWAKENING IN WESTERN EUROPE?

 

 

Nor are the many acts of terrorism occurring in Europe the work of poverty-stricken men who have sneaked in from downtrodden parts of the Muslim world.  These are devoted Muslims who are for the most part well educated, have lived in the West for years, have enjoyed its freedoms and opportunities, and yet have carefully plotted its destruction to the glory of Allah.  Only recently have there been signs that Europeans are slowly awakening to the truth and preparing to fight back.  It is high time.

 

 

In Holland, the shooting and stabbing to death on November 2, 2004, of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, in revenge for his having made a documentary showing the abuse of women under Islam, has aroused angry reactions.  Geert Wilders, one of the most popular politicians in the Netherlands has warned that “the country’s democracy is under threat and [has] called for a five-year halt to non-Western immigration.” The man arrested for Van Gogh’s murder is a twenty-six-year-old Muslim activist who holds both Dutch and Moroccan passports.

 

 

Wilders’ own life has been threatened many times for speaking out about the danger that Islam poses to his country and to all of Europe.  The latest threat broadcast on the internet (in Dutch with a background of Arabic music) “condemns Wilders for insulting Islam and offers the reward of paradise for his beheading.”  Citing a recent report by Dutch intelligence that “recruitment for jihad ... is taking place in as many as 20 mosques in the Netherlands,” with a sense of urgency Wilders declares:

 

 

If in a mosque there is recruitment for jihad, it's not a house of prayer, it's a house of war [and] should be closed down ... its [Page 210] imams, or preachers, arrested and deported.  Without swift, bold action, Islamic fundamentalism will topple the country’s democratic system.

 

 

The Netherlands has been too tolerant toward intolerant people for too long.  We should not import a retarded political Islamic society to our country ... closing borders isn’t enough.  Newcomers should be forced to integrate.

 

 

If we don’t do anything ... we will lose the country that we have known for centuries ... this is something that I get angry about and I am going to fight for, to keep the country Dutch! 47

 

47. Anthony Deutsch, “Popular Dutch lawmaker urges halt to non-Western immigrants, shutting down radical mosques,”

November 19, 2004.

 

 

In Belgium, in mid-November 2004, “authorities arrested a suspect accused of sending death threats to a senator of Moroccan heritage who criticized radical Muslims.”  In a meeting on November 19, 2004, European Union justice and interior ministers agreed that “Immigrants to the 25-nation bloc should be required to learn local languages, and to adhere to general ‘European values’ that will guide them toward better integration. ... EU justice and home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini told reporters in Rome that integration had to be an essential part of an EU policy.”  Pointing to the fact that five hundred thousand Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands don’t speak Dutch, immigration minister Rita Verdonk declared, “If you want to live in the Netherlands, you have to adhere to our rules ... learn our language.” 48

 

48. Constant Brand, “EU officials implore new immigrants to learn ‘European values,’”

Associated Press, Brussels, November 19, 2004.

 

 

This is a good start for Europe (America has failed to take such steps), but the awakening will have to go much further than blaming terrorism on extremists.  Even Wilders still imagines that the problem is radical Muslims. Those who have begun to speak out and call for action against the growing terrorism in Europe must be willing to admit that Islam itself is the problem.  Until then, they will be tilting at windmills and missing entirely the real culprit.

 

 

MUSLIMS DESPERATELY NEED TO BE FREED FROM ISLAM

 

 

This naiveté was not even dispelled by the November 2005 Muslim riots in France.  Only after twelve nights of uncontrolled anarchy and destruction that had spread to three hundred towns did French [Page 211] President Jacques Chirac finally declare a state of emergency leading to curfews.  Thousands of vehicles had been burned and property damage was the worst since World War II.  Yet the riots were explained by many commentators as resulting from poverty, unemployment, and lack of social programs in the Muslim enclaves in Paris and other cities.  In fact, the major cause was France’s decades-old failure to face the truth about Islam (a grave mistake being repeated throughout Europe).

 

 

Undeniably, the rioters were “young men from North Africa [including many French-born from Muslim parents] ... estranged from the broader community. ... For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. ... France’s Arab street correctly identified Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq war [as] a sign of weakness. …” 49 Fire fighters and ambulance drivers have long been afraid to enter many Muslim areas without police escort.  Even before the riots, thirty or more cars would be set ablaze on a quiet night and more than nine thousand police cars had been stoned already in 2005.

 

49. Mark Steyrt, “Wake up, Europe, you’ve a war on your hands,” Jewish World Review, November 7, 2005.

 

 

Muslims’ refusal to be assimilated into the community around them causes their lack of qualification for jobs. They attempt to create eventually a Muslim state as Islam requires.  Until each Western country demands that immigrants conform to its national rules, the situation not only in France but elsewhere will only become worse.

 

 

Ernest Renan once praised Islam.  Now he declares, “Muslims are the first victims of Islam ... to liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.” The words of Serge Trikovic may sound harsh, but they are the truth - and the sooner the West faces that uncomfortable reality the better:

 

 

Islam is a collective psychosis seeking to become global, and any attempt to compromise with such madness is to become part of the madness oneself.  No one who believes that jihad is the right or duty of all Muslims, or who promotes adoption of Shari’a law or reestablishment of the Caliphate, should be allowed to settle in any Western country, and every applicant should be asked.  The passport of anyone preaching jihad should be revoked.  This may be called discrimination but the quarrel is not of our choosing.

 

[Page 212]

Islam, in Muhammad’s texts and its codification, discriminates against us.  It is extremely offensive.  Those who submit to that faith must solve the problem they set themselves.  Islam discriminates against all “unbelievers.”  Until the petrodollars support a Kuranic revisionism that does not, we should go for it with whips and scorpions, hammer and tongs.  Secularists and believers of all other faiths must act together before it is too late. 50

 

50. Trifkovic, Sword, 173.

 

 

We need a series of international debates to expose Islam to the world for what it really is.  Muslims themselves (especially those being recruited for “Paradise Operations”), must understand that terrorism exposes Islam’s moral bankruptcy.  The fact that it takes terrorism and murder to maintain it proves that Islam has no appeal to truth, honesty, and love from the heart.

 

 

Incredibly, yet predictably, the vital words the French steadfastly refused to use in describing the November 2005 riots were Islam, Muslim, and terrorism.

 

 

The true God pleads, Come now, and let us reason together. ...” Allah demands submission without any reason except that to refuse means death.  The fact that Muslims have always had to use the threat of death to enlist and keep converts proves that Islam has nothing to offer to the person of goodwill.  As Netanyahu has well said, “It is the terrorists who are in fact weak, resorting to bombs only because they can get no one to listen to them in any other fashion.” 51

 

51. Benjamin Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorists Network

(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 49.

 

 

The determination of the terrorists to take the world for Allah and Islam must be opposed with even greater determination to protect the freedoms we hold dear and which every conscience knows have been bequeathed to mankind by the true God, who created us all.  As anti-terrorist expert John Giduck writes:

 

 

To an America that sleeps safely and securely in its beds, giving no thought to the world in which we exist or the horrors that other nations face - confident in the belief that it can’t happen here - much has occurred which should be setting off alarm bells for all of us.  Indeed those bells have been sounding for some time; we just haven’t heard them.  Yet. 52

 

52. John Giduck, Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America’s Schools, (n.p.: Archangel Group Publishing), 38.

 

 

*        *       *

 

 [Page261]

CHAPTER 11

 

 

REBELLION AND JUDGMENT

 

 

PROPHECIES IN THE BIBLE refer often to the last days,” “the latter days,” or “the latter times.” 1 The first use of that phrase is found in Genesis 49: 1, where Jacob declares to his sons: Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days.” In addition to foretelling what will happen at that time, Jacob’s prophecy clearly declares that in the last days,” Israel will still exist and be important in God’s plans - a biblical teaching that many who call themselves Christians deny today.*

 

1. Numbers 24: 14; Deuteronomy 4: 30; 31: 29; Isaiah 2: 2; Hosea 3: 5; Micah 4: 1;

Acts 2: 17; 1 Timothy 4: 1; 2 Timothy 3: 1; James 5: 3; 2 Peter 3: 3, etc.

 

[*A-millennialists’ teaching and replacement theology.]

 

 

Nor can Israel and its importance as a nation, as already noted, in possession of the entire Promised Land, ever cease.  Repeatedly, the Bible, declares that God gave the Promised Land to Israel by an everlasting covenant.” 2 God’s integrity is tied to Israel, to her survival, ultimate restoration, and eternal blessing, as He has promised in His Word through His prophets.  Therefore, as we’ve seen, if Satan could destroy Israel and thereby prevent this full restoration and ultimate blessing, he would have proved God to be a liar, removing any moral basis for God to punish him for his lies to mankind, including the lies with which he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden.  That is what the Middle East conflict is all about.

 

2. Genesis 17: 7, 13, 19; 2 Samuel 23: 5; 1 Chronicles 16: 17; Psalm 105: 8-11; Isaiah 55: 3; 61: 8, etc.

 

[Page 262]

THE REAL ISSUE

 

 

The Satanic goal of Israel’s destruction is the only rational explanation for worldwide anti-Semitism, including Islam’s incredible yet foundational teaching that every Jew on earth must be annihilated before any Muslim can be resurrected.

 

 

Obviously, Israel’s survival and ultimate blessing under Messiah not only is essential to vindicate the God of Israel and the Bible but to prove that Muhammad, Islam, and Allah are all frauds.  Thus, the importance of what happens to Israel goes beyond the plans of the world’s religious and political leaders. Their attitude toward Israel reflects their attitude and relationship to their Creator and ultimate Judge.  The issues are eternal.

 

 

Of the hundreds of prophecies about Israel, as we have already seen, many can be fulfilled only in “the last days.”  For that reason, too, Israel cannot cease to exist, or many prophecies would be false.  If even one prophecy were false, how could we trust anything else the Bible says?  Incredibly, there are pastors and seminary professors who pick and chose what they believe of Scripture.  In so doing, they are destroying the very foundation of the faith they hypocritically profess.

 

 

What could be more foolish than for mere men to judge God?  If the Bible is God’s Word, it is all true; if not, then let’s stop honouring it, the God who claims to have written it, and the Christ it tells us about, and let’s honestly admit that Christianity is a dangerous delusion.

 

 

The climax of all prophecy involves Jerusalem and occurs in what is referred to as “the day of the LORD,” also called “that day.”  For example, “Behold, the day of the Lord cometh ... I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle. ...” 3 The question (as previously noted) is often asked, “Is the United States in Bible prophecy?”  Yes. All nations (and that must include the United States) will join together under Antichrist in one massive attack upon Israel and Jerusalem at the end of the Great Tribulation.  Christ will intervene to rescue His people, destroying Antichrist’s armies and kingdom at Armageddon.

 

3. Zechariah 14: 1-2.

 

 

God says, “I will gather all nations.”  But Satan the one who hates Israel and who will continue to attempt to destroy her to [Page 263] the very end?  Doesn’t he gather all nations against Israel under his false messiah, the Antichrist?  How can God and Satan be working together?  They cannot.  God uses Satan and his followers, but He does not inspire Satan to evil - that is Satan’s nature.

 

 

Nor does God even encourage, much less cause, anyone to seek to destroy Israel.  He allows this hatred against Israel to be vented in order for the truth about the human heart to be revealed.  He also allows it as part of His judgment upon Israel.  That judgment is clearly spelled out in the prophecies given by Israel’s own inspired prophets.

 

 

It was Israel that gave us the Bible and the Messiah.  The Bible’s attention is focused on Israel from beginning to end.  The current Middle East crisis is unfolding exactly as the Bible foretells.  Based upon overwhelming evidence, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the grand finale of last days prophecies is drawing very close, as we will see in the last chapter.

 

 

The entire history of the Jewish people and of the nation of Israel is foretold by the Hebrew prophets under inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  We have been able to look at only a small fraction of those amazing prophecies and the ongoing fulfilment-in-process of some of them today.  When He brought the Israelites into their land, God warned that if they forsook Him for pagan gods, He would scatter them to the ends of the earth.  They would be hated, persecuted, and killed like no other people.  He would not, however, forsake them completely. A remnant would be preserved.  In the last days He would bring them back into their own land again.  At that time, God would make Jerusalem a cup of trembling to the neighbours surrounding her - and a crushing burden to the whole world.  We have dealt briefly with these prophecies, which are clearly in the process of being fulfilled in our day.

 

 

How astonishing that “the people of God,” 4 in spite of all the miracles they had witnessed coming out of Egypt, would rebel against God, turn to idolatry and immorality (these two always go [Page 264] together), and as a result be cast out of their land in God’s wrath!  That fact, however, could not have been stated more plainly than in the many declarations concerning the future by Israel’s own prophets.  Such prophecies are given in specific detail and elaborated upon by many Hebrew prophets throughout the Bible.

 

4. Judges 20: 2; Hebrews 11: 25, etc.

 

 

The following prophecies are not the pronouncements of anti-Semites, but of God himself speaking through His chosen prophets.  And no one pronounced God’s judgment upon rebellious Israel more severely than Moses, who led them out of Egypt and to the borders of the Promised Land.  As they were about to enter Canaan, God warned them once again through this great leader, to whom He spoke “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” 5 Nor can it be denied that all of the following has occurred exactly as God foretold through Moses:

 

5. Exodus 33: 11; Deuteronomy 34: 10, etc.

 

 

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee. ...

 

 

The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. ... And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee. ... Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee: And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever ... if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD ... ye shall be left few in number ...

 

 

And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.  And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other ... among these nations shalt thou find no ease ... the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life: In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see. 6

 

6. Deuteronomy 28: 15-68.

 

 

Surely the millions of Jews who throughout history endured exactly what Moses foretold (at the hands of the Roman Catholic crusaders, in Muslim lands for centuries, in the pogroms on Russia, in the hatred and persecution on Europe, and, finally, in the Holocaust) did not know their own Scriptures or they would have recognized the fulfilment and repented, crying out to God for mercy.  And what of today?  Do the Israelis understand their situation in light of what their prophets have said?  Amazingly, millions of Christians claim not to see any connection between the Bible and modern Israel.

 

 

JUDGMENT CONTINUING TO THIS DAY

 

 

That theme of judgment pursuing a scattered people was taken up by many other Hebrew prophets as God reiterated His warnings.  The fulfilment of these judgments upon Israelis scattered everywhere is one more proof that they are the people of God to whom the Promised Land was given.  No other people have experienced through history this continuing specific judgment.  There are hundreds more such passages in Scripture.  We can only cite short excerpts of a very few:

 

 

If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations. ... 7I will cause them to be removed into all kingdoms of the earth. ... 8 I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve. ... 9 Then shall they know that I am the LORD, when I have laid the land most desolate because of all their abominations. ... 10

 

7. Nehemiah 1: 8.   8. Jeremiah 15: 4.   9. Amos 9: 9.   10. Ezekiel 33: 29.

 

And the LORD hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear.  They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings. ... Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt. 11 As I live, [Page 266] saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? 12

 

11. Jeremiah 25: 4-5, 7.   12. Ezekiel 33: 11.

 

 

In spite of the unbelief of most Jews around the world, there has always been a nucleus through the centuries who believed God’s promises - and who even recognized and admitted that the dispersion of Jews all over the world was God’s judgment because of their sin.  Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), the famous Jewish physician and philosopher, whose family had fled from Islamic persecution in Spain to, of all places, Fez (and who himself had to flee from Morocco later), wrote in his “Epistle to Yemen” in 1172:

 

 

It is ... one of the fundamental articles of the faith of Israel that the future redeemer of our people will ... gather our nation, assemble our exiles, redeem us from our degradation. ...

 

 

On account of the vast number of our sins, God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely … as Scripture has forewarned us. ... Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they. ... 13

 

13.  Isadore Twersky, ed., A Maimonides Reader (New York, 1972), 456-457.

 

 

AN INCREDIBLE EVENT!

 

 

Both God’s blessings and judgments upon Israel throughout her history reveal His character: He is loving, kind, faithful, and true, but He will not leave rebellion unpunished and He will not go back on His promises, whether for blessing or for judgment.  Israel is a picture of all of mankind.  Her history shows that God knows our weaknesses and is willing to pardon.  But it also shows that, like Israel, we are all by nature stubborn rebels, proud, selfish, self-willed, determined to take our own way, and that God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness must be tempered with His justice.  From out of the fire of His presence that was blazing atop Mount Sinai, God thundered the Ten Commandments in a terrifyingly majestic voice that all Israel audibly heard - yet, incredibly, did not obey!

 

 

As they well might, the people trembled before this awesome display of God’s presence and power.  No fiction writer would have [Page 267] imagined, much less dared to write, the unbelievable rebellion that Scripture tells us occurred next.  One of the many evidences that the Bible is the true Word of God lies in the fact that, in giving us man’s history from the Garden of Eden through the flood and onward, it spells out the evil in the heart even of those whom God graciously blesses - and nowhere more clearly than at Mount Sinai.

 

 

Astonishing though it seems, in spite of this audible and visible proof of exactly who the true God was - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, who had delivered them miraculously from Egypt - they rebelled against Him.  God had taken them through the Red Sea on dry ground, drowning the pursuing Egyptians behind them.  He had led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, fed them daily with manna, and quenched their thirst with water miraculously flowing from a rock.  Yet while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law from God, the people below broke the very commandments they had promised to keep, having just heard them audibly spoken out of the fire and lightning, where Moses lingered above, and had promised to keep:

 

 

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down [they said] unto Aaron ... make us gods, which shall go before us. ... And all the people brake off the golden earrings ... in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he ... made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And ... Aaron ... built an altar before it [and] made proclamation. ... Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.  And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings ... and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

 

 

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people [have] turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto ... a stiffnecked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

 

 

And Moses besought the LORD his God. ... Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them ... all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for [Page 268] ever. ... And Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand ... the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables. 14

 

14. Exodus 32: 1-14.

 

 

God was testing Moses with the offer of having his descendants replace the twelve tribes of Israel.  That was a great temptation and Moses passed the test.  He reminded God of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - promises that He must fulfil to maintain His integrity.  If He failed to establish their descendants as a nation in the land He had promised to them, the other nations would say, with good reason, that He was not the true God.

 

 

The same holds true today.  The God of the Bible must fulfil His promises of ultimately restoring Israel as a nation in her own land once more, never to be scattered again - or He is a liar and not the true God and Creator.

 

 

We well know the tragic story.  When Moses returned to the camp of Israel and saw with his own eyes the idolatry and fornication that the [redeemed] people [of God] had fallen into at the very base of Sinai, he angrily smashed to the ground the tables of stone on which God had written His commandments.  And why not?  The people had already broken the law.  What an incredible and yet instructive story, revealing the human heart!

 

 

GOD’S COMPASSIONATE LOVE - AND JUSTICE

 

 

It was in the midst of this awesome scene that Moses begged of God, I beseech thee, show me thy glory.” 15 The Mount was ablaze, the earth was quaking, and the [redeemed, disobedient and deceived] people [of God] were being punished for this grievous, almost unbelievable sin.  It was the perfect setting for God to thunder, “I will show you what a harsh judge I am!”  Instead, He invited Moses to come once more up the Mount into His presence, where He would write the law on tables of stone again - the law that Israel had already broken.

 

15. Ibid., 33: 18.

 

 

In response to the request of Moses, God replied, I will make all my goodness pass before thee.” 16 Up on the mount once again, “the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD [Page 269] God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. ...”17

 

16. Ibid., 33: 19.   17. Ibid., 34: 6-7.

 

 

God seems to add “will by no means clear the guilty” almost reluctantly.  Repeatedly the God of the Bible tells the Jews that He loves them: The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself because the LORD loved you. ...” 18  The Apostle John, inspired of the Holy Spirit, declares, God is love.” 19 He cannot but love not only Israel but all mankind, because love is not only His nature but His very essence.

 

18. Deuteronomy 7: 6-8.   19. 1 John 4: 8, 16.

 

 

Yet God is also perfectly just.  He cannot clear the guilty,” for that would condone sin and corrupt His justice.  The penalty He has pronounced must be paid.  And, wonder of wonders, God would Himself come as a man to pay that penalty in full (as He alone could) so that all who would believe could righteously be forgiven.

 

 

Generation after generation, as they continued to rebel against Him, God sent His prophets to plead with His chosen people: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. ... If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the [promised] land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” 20  God did not want to punish His people (nor does He want to pour out His wrath upon this world), but He cannot condone evil.  His pleadings with Israel came to an end at last - as they will with all mankind shortly.  His holiness and righteousness required Him finally to punish Israel:

 

20. Isaiah 1: 18-20.

 

 

I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.  But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness. ... Wherefore my fury and mine anger was poured forth. 21

 

21. Jeremiah 44: 4-6.

 

 

Sadly, in spite of God’s pleadings for His people to return to Him with their whole heart, Israel has persisted to this day in unbelief and rebellion against Him and thus has missed the full blessing [Page 270] God  graciously had promised to their forefathers. * From the days of Moses to the present time, rebellious Israel has been under God’s judgment.  Nevertheless, Israel’s full and final restoration (already in process) is assured, never to be under His judgment again - but only by God’s grace, not by her merits.  Scripture makes that fact clear:

 

[* The “full blessing” is their millennial inheritance - after the “First Resurrection,” and after the Lord Jesus returns to this earth to establish His messianic Kingdom - the inheritance promised to Him by His Father, (Psa. 2: 8, R.V.).

 

Hence, the warnings against Christian disbelief and apostasy today; which the Holy Spirit and the Apostles John and Paul addressed in their epistles to the churches.  See for example, - Rev. 3: 14- 22. cf. Acts 7: 2-7; 1 Cor. 6: 9; 10: 1-15; Gal. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 5; 2 Tim. 4: 1-4, R.V. etc.]

 

 

The LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth ... because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers. ... I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for mine holy name’s sake, which ye have profaned among the heathen ... be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel. ...” 22

 

22. Deuteronomy 7: 6-8; Ezekiel 36: 22, 32, etc.

 

 

THE PROMISE OF THE MESSIAH

 

 

It was God’s purpose to include, from all eternity, the entire world in His mercy toward Israel.  At the very beginning, when God told Abraham, “I will ... curse him that curseth thee,” He also declared, “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” 23 That amazing guarantee was repeated again to Abraham, 24 later to his son Isaac, 25 then to Jacob. 26 This promise, of course, could be fulfilled only through the Messiah, descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He would come to pay the full penalty for the sins of all mankind.  All families of the earth could be forgiven and brought into unbroken fellowship with their Creator - if they were willing to accept salvation on His terms.

 

23. Genesis 12: 1.   24. Ibid., 22: 18.   25. Ibid., 26: 4.   26. Ibid., 28: 14.

 

 

The Messiah would not suddenly appear on earth out of thin air.  Nor would He step out of a UFO and declare, “Voila! Here I am, the long-awaited Messiah!  He required a genealogy of human ancestors in order to be a genuine man.

 

 

He had to be God in order to be without sin and capable of paying the infinite penalty His own justice demanded for the sins of mankind.  Yet He had to be a genuine flesh-and-blood man in order to pay the penalty on behalf of all mankind.  God chose Abraham, and through him, Isaac, Jacob, and King David (and revealing His grace [Page 271] and forgiveness, even the harlot Rahab and Ruth the Moabitess), to be the ancestors of the Messiah.  The Messiah had to be, and is, a Jew - another reason why God has a special place in His heart for Israel.

 

 

There is no escaping the prophecy of the great Hebrew prophet, Isaiah:

 

 

For unto us a child is born [the baby born in Bethlehem], unto us a son is given [the eternal Son of God come as a man]: and the government shall be upon his shoulder [so this promised One is the Messiah]: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father [so God is a Father and has a Son whom He gives to be the Messiah, and they are one], the Prince of Peace [this is the one who will bring everlasting peace]. 27

 

27. Isaiah 9: 6.

 

 

To be God’s chosen people is a great honour, but it holds responsibilities as well as blessings.  That the Jews would be scattered all over the world, hated, persecuted, and killed was more than prophecy - it was God’s judgment upon them for rebellion and for the worst rebellion of all: rejecting their Messiah.  Yet through that rejection would come the crucifixion - and through that the salvation of all who would believe.

 

 

Many centuries after God’s promise of the Messiah to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the prophet Isaiah would not only foretell His coming, as quoted above, but His rejection by His own people and, through that, the redemption of mankind:

 

 

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him ... and we esteemed him not. ... But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities ... with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. ...

 

 

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief mak[ing] his soul an offering for sin. ... 28

28. Ibid., 53: 3-10.

 

 

[Page 272]

RESTORATION PROMISED

 

 

In spite of their being under God’s severe discipline for unbelief, and in spite of the prophesied fact that for centuries they would reject their Messiah, nevertheless, dozens of times in His Word Yahweh has promised to preserve the Jews from total destruction. 29 He would finally establish them back in their own land as an identifiable ethnic people (though in unbelief), after which Messiah would return to rescue them at Armageddon and take the throne of His father David. 30 God’s integrity is tied to the ultimate restoration of Israel to her own land, never to be displaced again:

 

29. Jeremiah 30: 10-17; 46: 27-28, etc.   30. Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 34, 36, 37, etc.

 

 

But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save ... thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid.  Fear thou not, O Jacob ... I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished. 31

 

31. Jeremiah 46: 27-28.

 

 

We have been able to refer to only a few of the many biblical prophecies concerning Israel.  We have sufficiently documented, however, what is being fulfilled in our own day to show beyond doubt that everything that still remains for the future of what God has prophesied for Israel, and for the world that opposes her, will yet take place exactly as foretold.  God’s promise that He would finally gather all Jews from around the world to establish them as a nation back in their own land is undeniably now in process and will yet be completely fulfilled.

 

 

Only since 1948, as He declared, has God begun to restore Israel (nearly twenty-five hundred years after the Babylonian dispersion), and then only partially and with continued fierce opposition from the Muslim nations surrounding her and from the entire world.  There can be no question that the following prophecies have begun to be fulfilled and will be completed on schedule:

 

[Page 273]

I will ... gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.    32 I will multiply them, and set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. … 33 Hear the word of the LORD, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock.  For the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.  Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. ... For I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow ... and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the LORD. 34

 

32. Ezekiel 36: 24.   33. Ibid., 37: 26.   34. Jeremiah 31: 10-14.

 

 

As a shepherd seeketh out his flock ... so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered ... and I will ... gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land. … 35

 

35. Ezekiel 34: 12-13.

 

 

Behold I will gather them out of all countries whither I have driven them in mine anger ... and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. ... And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them ... that they shall not depart from me ... so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. 36 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them ... and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God. 37

 

36. Jeremiah 32: 37-42.   37. Amos 9: 14-15.

 

 

AN UNBUILICAL, IRRATIONAL THEORY

 

 

There are Christians today who claim that these prophecies refer not to the last days in which we live but to Israel’s deliverance under Moses from Egypt.  That this view is in error is made clear by the precise language of Scripture.  Just the word again is enough to disprove that theory.  The repeated phrase, “all places where they have been scattered,” and, “all the countries whither I have driven them,” clearly could not refer to the exodus from the one country of Egypt.  Nor could the future language employed in prophecies uttered many centuries after the exodus refer to that past event. [Page 274] What is the point of a “prophecy” that foretells events that have already occurred?

 

 

The precise language of Scripture utterly refutes the idea that prophecies of the Jews returning to their land refer to the long past exodus out of Egypt into Canaan.  That would not be prophecy but history.  The following passage in Jeremiah, for example, written in the future tense about nine hundred years after the deliverance from Egypt, specifically declares that it does not refer to coming from Egypt into the Promised Land but to a future return from many lands after the Jews have been cast out of the land and scattered worldwide for their sin:

 

 

Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;

 

 

But The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from ... all the lands whither he had driven them; and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.

 

 

Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them. ...

 

 

For mine eyes are upon all their ways ... neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.  And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled my land ... mine inheritance... [and] cause them to know my hand and my might: and they shall know that my name is The LORD [Yahweh]. 38

 

38. Jeremiah 16: 14-21.

 

 

Obviously it is appropriate today, for the first time in history, to affirm the words of this amazing and accurate prophecy: The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from ... all the lands whither he had driven them. ...”  In fact, Jews living in Israel today have come from more than one hundred nations.  For that reason (and other prophecies we have cited), we have confidence that we are witnessing the Last-Days regathering of Israel (Ezekiel 38: 12), with her enemies united all around her and the entire world burdened by her and especially by Jerusalem.  All of the evidence points to the fact that we [Page 275] are heading for a false peace leading to the battle of Armageddon, to which we will turn in the final chapters.

 

 

Certainly, they shall build the waste cities could not describe Israel’s first entrance under Joshua into the Promised Land, which at that time was “flowing with milk and honey39 and whose cities were prosperous and anything but lying “waste.”  Nor could “they shall no more be pulled up out of their land” describe the entrance into the land after the deliverance from Egypt, or these would be false prophecies in view of the Babylonian captivity and the diasporas in A. D. 70 and 135, as well as the fact that the land lay barren for centuries before the Jews’ return leading to Israel’s rebirth in 1948, exactly as these prophecies also foretold.  It is inescapable that the prophets foretold a future and final restoration of Israel, never to be removed again - and which would culminate with the return of the Messiah to reign on the throne of His father, David.

 

39. Exodus 3: 8, 17; 13: 15; Leviticus 20: 24; Numbers 13: 27; Deuteronomy 31: 20; Joshua 5: 6, etc.

 

 

Unequivocal as these statements are, however, and in spite of the clarity of their language, they have not been believed by most Jews, either in the past or today, whether in Israel or worldwide.  Nor have they been accepted at face value by the majority of professing Christians.  The Roman Catholic Church rejects these promises because she claims to have replaced Israel.  Most Calvinists take a similar “Reformed” position that Israel has been replaced, but by the Protestant church.

 

 

OPPOSITION OF MANY CHRISTIANS [both nominal and regenerate] TO ISRAEL

 

 

We have seen from the scriptures cited above (and there are literally hundreds more like them) that God has promised a full and final restoration of Israel, both physically in relation to her land and spiritually in relation to God himself.  Of that final restoration, Paul declares:

 

 

I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall?  God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.  Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the [Page 276] Gentiles; how much more their fulness? ... For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? ... [B]lindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.  And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. 40

 

40. Romans 11: 11-16, 25-26.

 

 

It is astonishing how many who claim to be Christians apparently have no fear of the God of the Bible.  They are not afraid to flaunt their denigration of Israel in the face of the Creator of the universe, who 203 times calls Himself “the God of Israel” and has declared that these are His people by an everlasting covenant.  Moses said, For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance ... he kept him as the apple of his eye.” 41  Clearly this does not refer to Jews as individuals but to Israel as a nation - much less does it refer to the church as Israel’s replacement!  As already noted (but it bears repeating), twice more in Scripture is the nation of Israel affectionately referred to as “the apple” of God’s eye. 42

 

41. Deuteronomy 3: 19-10.   42. Lamentations 2: 18; Zechariah 2: 8.

 

 

Yet most Calvinists and many of those who call themselves “Reformed” insist that Israel has been replaced by the church.  For example, in 2002, the faculty of Calvinistic Knox Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (D. James Kennedy, Founder, Chancellor, President, and Professor of Evangelism) issued “An Open Letter to Evangelicals and Other Interested Parties: The People of God, the Land of Israel, and the Impartiality of the Gospel.”  This statement, which denied that the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (i.e., the Jews) have any special blessings or place in prophecy, much less any claim upon the land of Israel, was initially signed by seventy-one prominent evangelical leaders, among them R. C. Sproul and Michael S. Horton.

 

 

This document declares:

 

 

Section VI.. The inheritance promises that God gave to Abraham ... do not apply to any particular ethnic group, but to the church of Jesus Christ, the true Israel. ...

 

[Page 277]

Section A. The entitlement of any one ethnic or religious group to territory in the Middle East called the “Holy Land” cannot be supported by Scripture.  In fact, the land promises specific to Israel in the Old Testament were fulfilled under Joshua.

 

 

Fulfilled under Joshua?  Yet this refers to the church?  Can they be serious?  The church [of today] didn’t even exist in Joshua’s day!

 

 

The error of that statement should be plain to any serious student of the Bible.  We have seen that the land was given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their physical descendants by an “everlasting covenant.”  Certainly the “everlasting” possession of that land could not have been fulfilled under Joshua, because he died at the age of 110 – a far cry from “everlasting.”  The “land promises specific to Israel in the Old Testament” included prophecies that Israel would be cast out of the land for unbelief but brought back into it in the last days.  Surely neither the casting out nor restoration were fulfilled under Joshua.

 

 

Nor could the prophecies possibly have been fulfilled under Joshua that the Messiah would come to that land as a man to redeem Israel, that Israel would reject and crucify Him in that land, or that Israel, having returned to her land after being scattered worldwide, would be attacked by all the nations of the world in the battle of Armageddon and that the Messiah would intervene to rescue her.  Behold the power of prejudice against the Jews to blind even Christian leaders to the plain teaching of God’s Word!

 

 

That the vast majority of Jews today (including most rabbis) either ignore or deny these clear prophecies is no less astonishing.

 

 

ISRAEL MUST BE FULLY RESTORED

 

 

For Satan to be defeated, it is not enough for individual Jews to survive.  Israel must exist as a nation in her own land: Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar ... if those ordinances depart from before me ... then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.” 43

43. Jeremiah 31: 35-36.

 

[Page 278]

Many Jews worldwide reject the Bible and deny the existence of the God of Israel.  Their Jewishness is purely cultural and traditional.  As a consequence, they denounce what the world calls “Zionism.” Norman G. Finkelstein, already mentioned, is an example of this idea.  He rejects the very existence of a nation called Israelwhose proprietorship would be Jewish.”  Yet he has no problem with the fact that the “Proprietorship” of Germany is German, of France is French, etc.  He cannot allow there to be a Jewish state that would serve as the homeland for a people who were repeatedly thrown out of their land by aggressors and persecuted and killed all over the world for centuries!  He argues that the very existence of a “historical homeland of the Jewish people” would render “the Jewish people ‘alien’ to every other state/territorial unit, thus sanctioning the claims of anti-Semitism.”

 

 

It’s apparently acceptable that everyone else, from American Indians to Finns to Zulus, claims a “historical homeland” - but not for Jews.  He even supports Arab imperialism that claims the entire Middle East for the “great Arab nation,” with no room in it for Israel to exist!  He doesn’t recognize that his anti-Israel position is inspired of another being in whom he doesn’t believe - Satan.

 

 

This same opposition to Israel is firmly held by many who call themselves Christians.  It is astonishing how many true [regenerate] believers who are clear on most of the Bible remain adamantly opposed to what the Bible declares so plainly about Israel being restored fully to her land in the last days.  It could rightly be said that one’s attitude toward Israel (which is by far the major subject of the Bible, taking up ar least 70 percent of its pages) defines whether or not one believes in God.  Almost every event in the Bible happened either to or in Israel, as will prophesied events that are yet future.

 

 

The church is not a nation, but is made up of people from every nation, and therefore could not have replaced Israel in prophecy.  There is only one nation and one people - the Jews alone - to whom God ever gave a land, with specific, perpetual promises concerning it.

 

 

Certainly, the Promised Land was never given to the church, nor did she ever occupy it as a nation.”  The church was never, for [Page 279] her rebellion against God, cast out of a Promised Land.  Nor was the church ever promised a return to be established again as a nation in that land.  But all of that and more was prophesied of and fulfilled in Israel.  The church is clearly not Israel - it never was and never could be!

 

 

A CLEAR DISTINCTION

 

 

God declares through Jeremiah 44 (as quoted above) that if a distinct nation known as Israel (which must comprise the physical descendants of the Israel that was established in the Promised Land under Joshua) no longer exists, there, is no sun in the sky, the stars have vanished, and the whole natural order is destroyed!  Yet there are not only Muslims and atheists but also many Jews and professing Christians who say that today’s Israel has neither prophetic significance nor divine legitimacy.  They stand in direct opposition to God and to His Word.  Indeed, they are denying the major prophetic proof God gives for His existence and that the Bible is His Word.  They must either repent or be punished for their opposition to what the prophets have foretold.

 

44 Norman G. Finkelstem, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995),10.      45 Ibid., 14.

 

 

Romans Chapters 9 and 10 make as clear a distinction between the church and the physical people known as Jews constituting the nation of Israel as could be made.  Paul is willing to go to hell eternally if that would bring about the salvation of his kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites ... of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came.” 46 But one must be saved to be in the church - the church is composed only of saved people.

 

46. Romans 9: 3-5.

 

 

Moreover, there are Germans, French, Spanish, Australian aborigines, Zulus - in fact, people from every tribe and nation on earth in the church.  How could this variety of races all be called “Israelites,” the “kinsmen according to the flesh” of Paul and Christ?  Impossible!  He goes on to say that his heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” 47 Paul declared that Israel isn’t saved.  Then how could Israel be the church?  This teaching turns the Bible inside out!

 

47. Ibid., 10: 1.

 

[Page 280]

Indeed, so perverse is this teaching that many who espouse it claim that Christ’s promise to return has already been fulfilled - that back in A.D. 70 in the person of the Roman armies to destroy Jerusalem and to punish the Jews for rejecting Him.  Well, the dead were certainly not raised at that time, nor were the living caught up to meet Christ in the air and taken to heaven as the Scripture declares. 48 He is coming to rescue Israel, not to destroy her - and to rule the world from David’s throne in Jerusalem.

 

48. 1 Corinthians 15: 51-57; 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18.

 

 

Even more astonishing, some of those who teach the “Israel is now the church” doctrine even claim that we are in the Millennial reign of Christ.  But the lion doesn’t lie down with the lamb and eat straw like an ox 49 as Scripture foretells for the millennium; and it, certainly could not be said that Satan is now locked up. 50 In fact, he still goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” 51

 

49. Isaiah 11: 1-9; 65: 24-25.   50. Revelation 20: 1-3, 7-9.   51. 1 Peter 5: 8.

 

 

Tragically, from the days of Moses to the present time, Israel as a nation has been under God’s judgment, as her history proves - and will continue to be, though back in her land, until she repents and turns to the Lord.  At the same time, however she is under His protection, and woe to those who harm her!  Jerusalem will continue to be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” 52 In Chapter Fifteen, we shall see when that judgment from God will end in the final fulfilment of these last days prophecies.

 

52. Luke 21: 24; Romans 11: 25.

 

 

*       *       *

 

 

CHAPTER 13

 

SIGNS OF HOPE

 

[Page 309]

SOME MUSLIMS HAVE EXPRESSED SURPRISE and anger that Islam is linked with terrorism.  Such a state of denial is not helpful.  Thankfully, however, there are signs of a growing embarrassment over the continuing murder of innocent people by Muslims.  Imams across England have been urged by the Muslim Council of Britain to change this image.  They are asking Friday worshipers to cooperate with police in their anti-terror investigations and efforts.

 

 

In 2004, the Turkish government ordered the mosques in that nation to deliver an anti-terrorism message as authorities pieced together evidence to determine who was behind a string of suicide bombings (a trademark of Islam) that killed fifty-seven people and wounded hundreds more.  There is a growing movement within mosques in the United States to remind worshipers that Islam does not condone unlawful acts. 1

 

1. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103872,00.html.

 

 

That terminology, however, could be misleading.  In the Muslim mind, Islamic terrorists are obeying Allah, Muhammad, and the Qur’an and thus are not lawbreakers.  That they are murderers of innocent women and children, according to man’s laws, is of no concern.  They are not looked upon as lawbreakers but admired as heroic martyrs in Islam’s jihad against the world of unbelievers.  There are, [Page 310] however serious conflicts of opinion when the terrorism is by one faction of Islam against another faction.

 

 

Surprising to most Westerners, who imagine that non-Muslims are the only targets of Islamic terrorism, is the fact that most terrorist acts are by Muslims against Muslims.  We have seen that scenario being played out in Iraq, where by far the greatest number of terrorists’ victims are not coalition troops but Muslim civilians.  News from Iraq is reported worldwide, but the many terrorist bombings in other Muslim countries are largely unheard of in the West.  Consider one example out of many that could be given: the October 1, 2004, suicide bombing during Friday prayers at the Masjid Zanabiya Shi’ite mosque in Sialkot, Eastern Pakistan.  About thirty worshipers were killed and more than one hundred wounded.  The victims are looked upon by Shi’ites as shaheeds (martyrs in jihad) assured of immediate entrance into Paradise.  Yet the suicide bomber, a Sunni Muslim, imagined that by killing them he would gain instant entrance to Paradise for himself.  Of course, the Shi’ite clerics said he went directly to hell. 2

 

2. http://www.shaheedfoundation.org/foundationnews.asp?ld=292&Type=News.

 

 

Who is right?  This is a serious question!

 

 

TERRORISM AND MOSQUES

 

 

The fact cannot be denied that many mosques are training and support centers for terrorists.  In some of them, even in the West, terrorism is openly preached, as it is in every mosque in Muslim countries.  We have already seen that this is not extremism but true Islam as Muhammad established it and as his successors practiced it for centuries, all the way from France to China.  Today, terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon perpetrated in the name of Allah to advance by intimidation the cause of Islam - or a particular brand of it, depending upon the Islamic faction involved.

 

 

Of course, all Muslims of every faction are united in their hatred of Israel and the West.  On September 30, 2003, the Israeli army captured Hamas propaganda materials at al-‘Ein mosque in al-Bireh.  The material included posters commemorating shaheeds [Page 311] who were suicide bombers attacking Israel.  Other material was dedicated to terrorists held in custody.  Laudatory posters were also found proclaiming the bravery and virtue of those who carried out suicide bombing attacks on September 9, 2003, near the cities of Ramla and Jerusalem and elsewhere. 3 In the mosque were also militant Islamic manifestos attacking Israel, the Jewish people, the United States, and the entire Western world.  Remember the statement issued on September 11, 200 1, in AI-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official PA newspaper, “Suicide bombers of today ... are the salt of the earth ... the noblest people among us.”  How does this daily reality throughout so much of the world relate to the new image Islam is trying to create in the West?

 

3. http://www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/mpa 11_03/alein‑12‑03.htm.

 

 

The IDF found a Hamas operative rolled up in a prayer rug in the Abd al-Nasser mosque in Ramallah.  Ahmad Odeh, another wanted Hamas terrorist, was discovered hiding in the Zeid mosque near the entrance to the city of Tulkarm on the West Bank.  He shot at Israeli troops, who returned fire and killed him.

 

 

Nor is the relationship of mosques to terrorism confined to the East.  Many mosques in the West, including some in America, have been associated with terrorist cells.  In February of 2004, Representative Peter King (R) of New York, a member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, claimed that 85 percent of mosques have extremist leadership and that “no Muslims are cooperating” with law enforcement in the war on terror.  The FBI’s raid of the Masjid As-Salam (“House of Peace”) in Albany, New York, in August 2004, has led to indictments against the mosque’s imam and another member caught in a government sting on charges of money laundering and promoting terrorism. 4 These are but a few of the examples among many.

 

4. The Christian Science Monitor, August 12, 2004.

 

 

Unfortunately, the mistake continues to be made of calling true Muslims “extremists.” Was Muhammad an “extremist”? That would be absurd.  How can the founder of Islam be an extremist?  Surely of all Muslims, he would be the exemplification of true Islam if ever there was one!  Yet Muhammad plundered and murdered in the name of Allah to the glory of Islam.

 

[Page 312]

This refusal by the Western leaders to face the truth that Islam itself is the enemy is costing us dearly.  Yet, at the same time, there are hopeful signs that opinions are changing.

 

 

A RELIGION OF DEATH

 

 

Fallujah, Iraq’s “holy city” of more than one hundred mosques and the largest Sunni city west of Baghdad, sheltered so many terrorists (acting for Islam and to the glory of Allah) and was such a centre from which terrorist attacks were launched, that the U.S. and Iraqi military had to take the city, house by house.  In the process, they captured or killed hundreds of terrorists.  The military operation netted at least fifteen portable surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down aircraft, dozens of mortar tubes, and sophisticated anti-tank weapons among hundreds of weapons caches, many of them in mosques.  One out of every two mosques in Fallujah was used for hiding fighters and/or weapons. 5 This practice is only to be expected in Islam, because it recognizes no distinction between religion and state.

 

5. USA TODAY, November 29, 2004, 1A.

 

 

The place of one’s burial is extremely important to a Muslim’s hope for the next life.  Najaf, another of Iraq’s “holy cities,” this one Shi’ite, has a booming business entirely devoted to corpses.  Here is located the tomb of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad.  His murder by rival Sunni Muslims near Kufa some thirteen hundred years ago gave birth to the Shi’ite movement.  Near Ahi’s mausoleum is the largest graveyard in the world, with more than 1. 8 million tombs.  Why so many?  Amir Taheri, editor of a Muslim publication, explains:

 

 

For the world’s 150 million Muslim Shias, Najaf is the ideal burial place.  Proximity to Ali is supposed to improve chances of avoiding Gehenna, the abode of the fallen, according to the Koran. [Improve chances? What assurance is that?] Believers spend a lifetime’s savings to have their corpses transported to Najaf for burial close to Ali’s mausoleum.  Five generations of my family are buried there thanks to a tradition that began in the 17th century. [What does this have to do with justice and truth? It sounds like Catholicism!]

 

[Page 313]

Death is at the centre of life here.  Tens of thousands of grave-diggers, undertakers, masters of funeral ceremonies, tomb watchers, givers of prayers for the dead, intercessors, Koran reciters, mediums for communication with the departed, and so on make up the bulk of the workforce.

 

 

While Najaf’s chief import is corpses, its major export is mullahs.  The city hosts the most eminent of Shia seminaries which, at the height of its theological boom in the 1950’s, boasted 124 madrassahs with 40,000 trainee mullahs.  All the grand ayatollahs of the past 150 years either studied or taught there. 6

 

6. Amir Taheri, Times, August 28, 2004, http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/6890.

 

 

Muhammad’s son-in-law, All, is to the Shi’ite what Catholic “saints” are to their devotees.  However, neither praying to a Catholic saint nor being buried near Ali's remains will ever pay the penalty for sin.  Not even earthly justice - and surely not God’s - works that way.  Certainly, being buried in the same tomb with Ali would not help.  Muslims are all being deceived!  How can the true God remain just and holy and yet forgive sins?  This is the issue.

 

 

And right here, we encounter a major difference between the Qur’an and the Bible - between Islam and Christianity - that cannot be swept under the rug of wishful ecumenism.  Islam really offers no hope that satisfies the conscience concerning God’s justice.  The penalty for sin must be paid - and that certainly can’t be done by being buried near Ali, dying in jihad, or offering good deeds to counter-balance evil.

 

 

The question is how a just God could forgive sinners.  Inspired of the Holy Spirit, Paul declared:

 

 

But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God ... by faith of Jesus Christ unto ... them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ... for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God ... that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. 7

 

7. Romans 3: 21-26.

 

[Page 314]

Here, as elsewhere, the Bible declares that Christ paid the penalty for our sins and that we merely need to accept His payment in our place.  If that is true, the conscience has legitimate basis for peace - and if not true, then we must spend eternity paying that penalty ourselves in hell.  There is no other alternative.

 

 

The jihad “martyr,” however, believes that his blood pays for his sins, even though in his death he sent others to hell.  His shattered remains are not washed or dressed but buried just as he died.  His blood will thus presumably testify to Allah that he is worthy of entering Paradise because he sacrificed his life to kill others.  Every conscience is repelled by such perversion!  Israel does not return the mutilated bodies to their Muslim families because that would give occasion for parading the remains and arousing even more fanaticism at the funeral.  Israel, however, claims that it gives each of them a genuine Muslim burial.

 

 

SUPPOSED WAYS TO PARADISE

 

 

Islam has one thing in common with every other religion, which separates them all from true Christianity: attempting to appease God with works and sacrifices.  And for a Muslim, that even includes giving up one’s own life to gain Paradise.  Whatever happens, it is up to the individual Muslim to live a good enough life and to make amends for any misdeeds in order to be acceptable to Allah.  But Allah changes his mind and decides to send some to hell regardless of what they may think or do.

 

 

Of all terrorists, suicide bombers are the most difficult to detect and stop.  There are literally millions of young men and boys in training in Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries, to become suicide bombers.  They haven’t heard the latest propaganda in the West that terrorism is un-Islamic and that suicide bombers are giving Islam a bad name.

 

 

In Iran alone, as already noted, in just one appeal, forty thousand were signed up for suicide missions in Iraq, where thousands of foreign fighters have infiltrated to confront the coalition and Iraqi [Page 315] troops.  For many, this is a lifetime ambition.  The greater the number of innocent people the bomber kills, the greater the reward from Allah.  The families of a successful shaheed (i.e., who kills others in his suicide) will receive a large monetary reward, once paid by Saddam Hussein, but now by the Saudi royal family and from contributions collected from Saudi citizens.

 

 

The shaheed is promised instant entrance into Paradise, where the rivers run with wine (forbidden to the Muslim in this life), the tables are laden with every delicacy the palate could desire, and at least seventy-two, and perhaps hundreds or even thousands of dark-eyed houris await his pleasure.  He is promised the appetite and strength of one hundred men for food, drink, and sex.  The Muslim “heaven” is hedonistic and sensual, gratifying base desires rather than enjoying the love, fellowship, and wonder of God.  Indeed, Allah, the Muslim god, is unknowable and not to be loved.

 

 

For most Muslims, martyrdom is the best hope for reaching Paradise - but Paradise is not sure even then.  Abu Bakr, Muliammad’s first successor, received from Muhammad his personal promise of Paradise without martyrdom.  Yet we quote him in Chapter Seven declaring that he feared that he might be “the first one to enter [hell fire].” He was afraid that even if he had one foot inside Paradise, Allah might shove him out.  Can a suicide bomber, then, really be certain of his destiny, when Abu Bakr was not?  And on whose authority, if Abu Bakr had doubts in spite of Muhammad’s promise?

 

 

The disastrous fact is that the first thing the jihad “martyr” discovers after his suicide is that he is not in heaven but in hell (as his own conscience must have told him) and that instead of being rewarded, he is being punished for the death and destruction he caused in this final act of his life.  What a tragedy that so many are being deceived in this way.

 

 

What “god” rewards murderers with heaven?  The conscience God has given each person cries out in protest! Those under this immoral delusion are victims as well as those they murder.  The fact that the United Nations, world leaders, and billions of citizens around the world do not rise up in outrage against this barbaric [Page 316] practice is as clear an indictment of the world of our day as was the thunderous silence in the face of the Holocaust in Nazi times!

 

 

JUSTICE MUST BE SATISFIED

 

 

Let us think clearly for a moment.  How can anyone’ s sins, committed over a lifetime, be expunged by one final “good deed,” much less by the sin of mass murder?  What court of law would accept that?  The murderer would, in fact, be punished for this additional crime.  And imagine the hundreds of thousands of trusting Muslims whose surviving relatives pay dearly to have them buried as close to Ali’s tomb as possible under the hope that they will thereby gain some greater measure of mercy from Allah.  Amir Taheri is an intelligent man.  Can he really believe that his family’s sins have been forgiven because of their being buried in the vicinity of Ali’s remains?  What “justice” is that?

 

 

Nor is this the only deadly delusion that grips Muslims.  We have noted that only by killing every Jew on earth can Muslims bring to pass the “last day.”  And what is that day’s significance?  That is when one’s deeds will supposedly be weighed by Allah in the balance, and if the good outweighs the bad, then one is admitted to Paradise without being a jihad martyr.

 

 

Every conscience rejects such reasoning.  What judge would excuse the guilty, party from paying a speeding ticket who pleads that he or she had driven more within the speed limit than exceeding it?  Or what judge would declare innocent a man who had committed murder, because he had once saved the lives of two (or even a dozen) people from drowning  or from a burning building.  To the person who promises never to break the law again if the judge will let him off this time, the judge would surely reply, “If you never break the law again, you are only doing what the law requires.  You don’t get extra credit for keeping the law in the future with which to pay the penalty for past sins.

 

 

The human race, individually and collectively, is guilty of rebellion against God.  Living by its own rules and for its own ends, [Page 317] mankind is collectively defying the Creator of the universe!  That rebellion will not go unpunished.

 

 

God pronounced eternal death (i.e., separation from Him in conscious pain and remorse) as the penalty for breaking His law in even the smallest way.  In fact, there is no “small” breach of the law.  To break the law in any respect is rebellion against God.  That mankind would act selfishly rather than for God was inevitable. Obviously, then, God needed to have a means of forgiving and restoring man.  But to forgive man without the penalty being paid would mean that God condoned evil and was even a partner in sin.

 

 

THE PENALTY MUST BE PAID IN FULL

 

 

Conscience teaches every man that it is wrong to lie, steal, murder, commit adultery, to fornicate, to covet what belongs to someone else, to be proud, self-serving, etc. 8 Everyone also knows that justice demands a penalty for breaking God’s laws.  We can’t buy God off.  He doesn’t negotiate or offer a special deal to anyone.  His perfect, holy justice must be satisfied.  The penalty must be paid.  Yet God loves every person deeply enough to find a way to forgive man righteously.  The only way was for God himself to come to this earth as a man and pay that penalty for the entire human race - which, according to the Bible, He did in Jesus Christ:

 

8. Ibid., 2: 14-16.

 

 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 9

 

9. John 3: 16-17.

 

 

He that believeth on the son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. 10

 

10. Ibid., 3: 36.

 

 

This is the message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation - the promise of the Messiah by God’s prophets.  If this is not true (in fact, we can prove that it is), then there is no hope.  Buddha certainly didn’t provide a way for anyone to be forgiven by God (in [Page 318] whom he didn’t even believe) - nor did Muhammad or any other religious leader.  Nor is any rational hope of just forgiveness from God found in the Qur’an or the scriptures of any other religion.  It is the Hebrew prophets alone who infallibly foretold Israel’s future and who also prophesied the coming of the Messiah with enough details to identify Him beyond question.

 

 

As we have already noted, the great Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, declared concerning the Messiah, whose coming and rejection by His own people he foretold: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” 11 True Christianity simply believes and teaches that the Messiah, promised by the prophets to Israel and through her to the world, did indeed come to earth in the manner and precise time foretold, was rejected by the Roman authorities, the Jewish religious hierarchy, and His own people, was crucified for the sins of the world, and was resurrected the third day, as the prophets declared and as history records.

 

11. Isaiah 53: 6.

 

 

History verifies the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?  Of course it does.  Even the resurrection?  Can any educated person today believe that?  The evidence is overwhelming.  Lord Lyndhurst, one of the greatest legal minds in British history, declared, “I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you such evidence as that for the Resurrection has never broken down yet.12 Simon Greerileaf, co-founder of Harvard’s Graduate School of Law, as an agnostic came to the same conclusion after careful examination and became a fervent Christian.  He wrote a book, The Testimony of the Evangelists, addressed to his colleagues in the legal profession, challenging them to face the evidence.  Sir Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard, addressed his testimony to the truth of the resurrection, as did many eminent scientists and historians too numerous to quote here.  Professor Thomas Arnold, who held the chair of Modern History at Oxford University, wrote:

 

12. Wilbur M. Smith, Therefore Stand: Christian Apologetics (Baker Book House, 1965), 425, 584.

 

 

I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and 1 know of no one fact in the history of [Page 319] mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead. 13

 

13. Professor Thomas Arnold, Sermons on the Christian Life (Simon and Schuster, 1944), 324.

 

 

Many a sincere person has been swept into skepticism and even atheism by the contemptuous declarations of liberal clergy or university professors, delivered with the finality of superior wisdom, that “no intelligent, educated person any longer believes in the miracles in the Bible, much less in the Resurrection!”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  However, this is not the forum to pursue the overwhelming proofs any further.

 

 

True Christianity, then, is separated from every religion in the world by an impassable gulf - and the difference rings true to the conscience.  All religions propose that man do good works, engage in ritual, make sacrifices, or do something to somehow appease God; the Bible teaches that it is a matter of Justice, not of appeasement.  The penalty must be paid in full.  God’s justice and the penalty for breaking His law are infinite because God is infinite, and thus God is the only one who can pay it - which He did, by becoming a man, in Christ.  All anyone can do is accept the substitutionary death of Christ in His enduring the full penalty for the sins of all mankind and thereby be forgiven.  This is good news that every Christian is obliged to share with the world, persuasively, in love and reason - and without being dissuaded from doing so by threats or force.

 

 

INTIMIDATION OF CHRISTIANS BY MUSLIMS

 

 

What a tragedy that the Muslim knows nothing of the assurance of sins forgiven.  And that tragedy is exacerbated by the reluctance of Christians to tell that good news to Muslims for fear of retaliation.  Mark A. Gabriel (a pseudonym for obvious reasons) was a staunch Muslim and professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, the most authoritative centre of Islamic thought in the world.  Here is part of his story:

 

[Page 319]

I could see Christians wherever I went in my country [but] not one Christian person tried to talk to me about his Jesus Christ ... except the wonderful pharmacist who gave me the Bible ... Fundamentalists tried to burn down her pharmacy, and she ultimately left Egypt and went to Canada.  Christians living in Egypt ... are persecuted by the Muslim fundamentalist groups.  So they have decided to live quietly and to distance themselves as much as possible from the more than 50 million Muslims living in the country who need to hear about Jesus Christ.  This Christian society lives under great fear, and they actually refuse to witness to Muslims.

 

 

I was required to spend one year in the Egyptian military.  I shared a room with one other soldier, who happened to be a Christian. ... I questioned him constantly about his faith.  I asked him how he could believe in ... the Trinity ... how he could believe that God has a son.  ‘Does God have a wife?’ I mocked.  All these concepts were blasphemous according to Islam.  Whenever I questioned him, he refused to answer.  He would say to me, ‘Let us just be friends.  Leave religion to God, please. ...’  He was very fearful of me and of the Muslims in our military group ... this was one of the most difficult years in his life.

 

 

After I met the Lord Jesus Christ, I remembered this man ... sorry for how he allowed the spirit of fear to control his life ... [and how he] refused to share the true Jesus Christ with others. ... When I went back to the Christian pharmacist who had given me the Bible and declared my faith in Jesus Christ ... she arranged to go with me to meet the leader of an Egyptian church.  She hoped this man would ... baptize me [and] help me in biblical study and receive me as a new member. ... We sat down together in his office, and he basically told me, ‘My son, you can go back to your home.  We do not need to add a number to our congregation.  And if you go home, we will not lose any number of our congregation.  We are not interested.”  Later [he told] my pharmacist friend that he didn’t want other Muslims to hear that he had opened up his church to a [former] Muslim because he was afraid they would come and burn down the building.” 14

 

14. Mark A Gabriel, Ph.D., Islam and Terrorism: What the Qur’an really teaches about Christianity,

violence and the goals of the Islamic jihad (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2002), 188-90.

 

 

Yet Christ commanded His early disciples (and every Christian today is included) to “go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” 15 Millions of Muslims have come to the West, so we cannot excuse ourselves by saying that we aren’t able to go [Page 321] to them.  They have come to us.  True Christians must, in love and compassion and without fear, share the good news of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with Muslims and Jews - and with the whole world.  The greatest challenge we face is how to bring this message of God’s love not only to Muslims in the West, but to those remaining in their own countries.

 

15. Mark 16: 15.

 

 

This author has prayed for many years that the Islamic Curtain, which is more impenetrable than the Iron or Bamboo Curtains ever were, could somehow be brought down.  The Muslim world desperately needs to hear the good news of salvation through Christ’s payment for their sins.  They need to have the opportunity to make a free choice without intimidation.  For that to become possible, some major changes would have to take place.  At this time, even to question Islam, or to consider alternate beliefs (much less to turn away from Islam to another religion), would bring persecution and even death.  This is the frightening situation even for those living in Muslim communities within the Western world.  The long arm of zealous enforcers can reach anywhere.

 

 

SOME HOPEFUL SIGNS

 

 

One indication that events are moving in a better direction has been a new willingness on the part of university students (usually nearly unanimous in their opposition to Israel) to pay attention to speakers critical of Islam. For example, on the evening of May 11, 2005, students crowded Montezuma Hall at San Diego State University (after standing in long lines to endure security searches) to hear Walid Shoebat criticize the PLO and to speak out in support of Israel.  Not long ago, such a meeting would have been protested to such an extent that hardly anyone would have attended - which may still be the case at many American universities.

 

 

Shoebat (not his real name) writes and lectures against the PLO, an organization he once served as a terrorist. He has written a book titled, Why I Left jihad.  Security was heavy.  There was a minimum of heckling, but lively challenges from opponents during the question [Page 322] time.  One young woman, who said that her family also came from Bethlehem, disputed Shoebat’s claim that the Holocaust is denied in Palestinian schools.  She subsided in embarrassment, however, when Shoebat challenged her claim that she had never heard of Palestinians killing innocent Palestinian civilians in PLO territory:

 

 

Are you saying that Palestinians lynching civilians in the streets of Ramallah or Bethlehem is not true?” Shoebat exclaimed.

 

 

I’ve never seen that before,” she responded.

 

 

Shoebat replied, “I’m flabbergasted that you say you have never seen anything of that sort.  This ... is exactly how I used to be ... I denied the Holocaust ever existed.” 16

 

16. The Daily Aztec (San Diego State University), May 11, 2005.

 

 

Encouraging, too, is the evident awakening on the part of some Western leaders and certain segments of the media to the truth about Islam - and, what is most important, the courage to express it.  For months after 9/11, the lie that Islam is peace was sounded by almost every public voice in the West.  Honesty, however, cannot forever turn a blind eye to the truth.  Eventually, the realization can no longer be stifled that those responsible for the vast majority of terrorism in the world today (and it is spreading like a virus) are devout Muslims - and that the terrorism they inflict upon the world is for the purpose of spreading Islam by bringing all mankind into submission to Allah and Muhammad as his prophet.

 

 

Consequently, there has been a growing boldness not only to speak out against terror but also to expose its connection to Islam itself.  One of the leaders in this new honesty, as we have noted, has been Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US. News & World Report.  In mid-2004, in an editorial titled, “Looking evil right in the eye,” he wrote:

 

 

The grotesque cruelties ... leave no doubt about the enemy we’re up against.  News of their horrific abductions and beheadings fly around the globe on ... technologies, in their twisted minds, invented by the infidel. ... The masked cowards pose with their helpless captives while presenting demands they know cannot, and will not, be met.  Their purpose is manipulation: to increase the pain of the victim’s family and friends; to force western governments to moderate their [Page 323] opposition to the terrorist networks; to panic foreigners into leaving Muslim lands. ... We are in their way as these misguided men seek to restore a new unified Muslim umma (community) ruled by a new Caliphate, governed by Islamic law, and organized to wage jihad against the rest of the world.

 

 

As for the Muslim world, which has bred this plague, it will have to decide who is the enemy... [it can’t] have it both ways, the indulgence of deriding the West while tolerating the evil in their midst.  It is outrageous that ... Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 September 11 murderers, has done virtually nothing to clean up its colleges of intolerance.  We must persuade the Muslim regimes to condemn this new barbarism - before it consumes them, too. 17

 

17. Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief, “Looking evil right in the eye,”

US. News & World Report, July 19-26, 2004, 84.

 

 

A NEW SELF-CRITICISM AMONG MUSLIMS

 

 

There are hopeful signs within the Muslim community as well.  A growing number not only of intellectuals but also of Islamic clergy are expressing increasing embarrassment and displeasure at the deeds of those they refer to as “Islamic extremists.”  By their definition, however, as we have documented, Islam’s founding prophet, Muhammad himself, would have to be labelled an extremist and even a terrorist.  So would most of his followers over the past thirteen hundred years.  But we needn’t press Muslim leaders to admit the obvious.  That admission will come with time, and with it, we can hope and pray, a new willingness to engage in open discussion without the sword of Islam poised over the necks of those who may decide on the basis of the facts to leave this destructive religion for a new life.

 

 

There has been an attempt to root out “extremist” ideas from some Muslim public schools.  On September 5, 2004, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abd AI’ Aziz told senior education officials: ‘Watch your teachers.  We want to serve the religion and the homeland, not terrorism. ...’  Saudi Education Minister Muhammad Ahmad Al-Rashid said ... ‘the Education Minister will in no way accept a teacher who holds misguided views that influence the younger generation’ and that ‘any element implementing an extremist policy will be uprooted from the education system.’”  There’s the misnomer “extremist” again, betraying the unwillingness to admit the horrible truth.

 

[Page 324]

Tabouk District Governor Prince Fahd bin Sultan said in a September 12, 2004, speech to members of the Tabouk Educational Council: ‘It is unacceptable for one of us to disseminate extremism, fanaticism, terrorism, and apostasy.  We must not allow anyone who identifies with the group holding a dangerous and deviant view to [remain] among us....’ The Mecca Education Administration organized information campaigns in all the city’s schools, with the aim of ‘increasing awareness regarding the danger of terrorism and the extremist view, and [for encouraging] the middle path in Islam.’” 18 Although there is still an unwillingness to admit the truth about Islam, which is being swept under the rug of “extremism,” at least some steps, no matter how small and groping, are being made in the right direction.  For these the world can be thankful.

 

18. memri@memri.org, “Public Debate in Saudi Arabia on Extremism in the School System,”

Special Dispatch - Saudi Arabia/Reform, January 5, 2005.

 

 

The fact that democratic elections have been carried out in Iraq for the first time in its history despite fierce terrorist attempts to prevent anyone from going to the polls, is a very encouraging sign.  Bush pulled it off, confounding the multitude of doomsayers.  In the process, terrorism, in its ugliest and most brutal form, revealed itself as the enemy of freedom.  The opposition of Islam itself to peace and justice is being exposed.  Eyes are opening to the naked truth.  Hopeful changes must follow.

 

 

AN AWAKENING IN THE MUSLIM WORLD?

 

 

Some of the lies that have been used to justify suicide bombings are being exposed by Muslim leaders themselves, who oppose such tactics.  One of the first to speak out was Hamza Yusuf, who declared that the obligation of opposing terrorists falls upon “Muslims to root them out.  And I think it is a jihad now for the Muslims in the Muslim countries to rid themselves of this element.” 19

 

19. CBS’s 60 Minutes, September 30, 2001.

 

 

Several Arab columnists have recently published articles critical of the [common excuse] that the main motivation behind terrorism is poverty or despair.  They instead cite the role of cultural and religious factors in motivating terrorism, and particularly the incitement by sheikhs who encourage young men to conduct terror operations.”

 

[Page 325]

For years, and not only in Palestinian territory but throughout the Muslim world, to be a suicide bomber has been held up to millions of Muslim youths from their earliest childhood as the loftiest ideal.  That scam is now being openly and widely challenged in the Islamic world itself with new courage and vigour.

 

 

For example, Saudi columnist Muhammad Mahfouz courageously wrote recently in the Saudi Gazette, The phenomenon of terrorism and violence we are facing [is] carried out by a group of brain-washed youth influenced by glamorous slogans. ... In my opinion. ... [any] delay in fighting this ideological cultural battle against terrorism will drag our country into the abyss of instability. ... Our determination will pave the way for successfully dismantling the ideological and cultural structure that offers fertile ground for the proliferation of this phenomenon.” 20

 

20. Arab Columnists,” memri@memri.org.

 

 

Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Sheikh of the Al-Azhar mosque of Cairo, recognized as the highest authority in Sunni Islam, declared at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that extremist Islamic groups had appropriated Islam and its notion of jihad, or holy struggle, for their own ends.  Islamic scholar Dr. Muqtedar Kahn, in a scathing open letter dated February 12, 2003, addressed to Osama bin Laden, boldly declared: “I would rather live in America under Ashcroft and Bush at their worst, than in any ‘Islamic state’ established by ignorant, intolerant and murderous punks like you and Mullah Omar at their best.  Another prominent Islamic scholar, Dr. Youssef Al-Qaradawi, openly condemned Al Qaeda for killing innocent civilians and for their bombing of a centuries-old Jewish synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba in April 2002. 21

 

21. BBC News, 11 July, 2003.

 

 

Riding the crest of this new wave, United Arab Emirates’ writer, Abdallah Rashid, in the Al-Itihad daily, wrote: “The socio-economic situation of most of the terrorists who participate in the criminal operations around the world is very good. ... Interrogations by the Iraqi authorities of terrorists arrested during raids and searches ... revealed that most of the Saudi youth and some of the [youth] from the Gulf who went to Iraq to join the AI Qaeda terrorist groups come from families that are not poor and from a social environment [Page 326] that does not suffer from economic problems. ... The reason for the involvement of the Arab Muslim youth in such criminal and despicable acts ... is the terrifying brainwashing ... at the hands of ‘religious clerics’ [who] nourish the Muslim youth with ... hostility, hatred and resentment towards ... members of other divine religions. ... They incite others to ... fight ‘the atheists and Christian infidels,’ as they put it, while not one of them volunteers to go himself … as a model and an example to others....” 22 (Yet all of Christ’s disciples - except Judas and possibly John - died as martyrs.)

 

22. Arab Columnists,” memri@rnemri.org.

 

 

Another Saudi columnist, Abdallah Nasser Al-Fawzan, pointed out the same hypocrisy of these rabble-rousing imams in the Saudi daily, Al-Watan, with the perceptive and embarrassing title, “Why Don’t the Sheikhs Who Encourage the Youth to Fight Jihad Do So Themselves?”  He appealed to the youths who were aspiring to martyrdom in jihad to think carefully for themselves:

 

 

If there is a worthy deed that endangers one’s life, but guarantees paradise, like jihad for the sake of Allah, are we to suppose that young teenagers in the early stages of life should aspire to carry it out?  Or should it rather be the elderly, nearing death ... to aspire to end their lives through an honourable deed that will guarantee them paradise ... ?

 

 

A youth travelled to another country in order to kill a man accused of atheism, in order to get closer to Allah ... and thus reach paradise.  Fate had it that the [intended victim] was the first one to meet the youth in a cafe [and] welcomed him.  They had a friendly talk, and got to like one another. ... When the youth mentioned him by name, the man was startled and asked, “Why are you inquiring about this man?” The youth said that the man was an evil atheist, and he intended to kill him to get closer to Allah and to reach paradise.  Amazed, the man asked the youth, “How are you so certain that this man is an atheist deserving of death, and that killing him will bring you to paradise?” The youth responded, “Some sheikhs told me so.”  The man said, “Why don’t these sheikhs aspire to reach paradise themselves, and why are they giving up for your sake carrying out this honourable deed which brings one to paradise?” The youth was embarrassed and said, “I don’t know.”

 

 

Today, the same question that the man asked the paradise-seeking youth could be addressed to the youth who blow [Page 327] themselves up ... in order to reach paradise ... influenced by the Fatwas ... and instructions of men who have gained their trust.... These people who hold sway over the minds of the youth have deceived them into thinking that what they are doing is an act of jihad that will bring them to paradise....

 

 

Oh youth ... who seek paradise, where are your sheikhs [when it comes to] this honourable deed ... ?  Why are your sheikhs shirking [jihad] and not participating in your “honourable” mission?” 23

 

23. Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), January 1, 2005.

 

 

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS ARE ENCOURAGING

 

 

Such articles as these being published in popular magazines and newspapers in Muslim countries are bound to have an effect.  And as Muslims begin to rethink some of the dogma they have been taught in the mosques and public schools, perhaps they will also begin to question why converts must be threatened with death in order to force them into Islam, and why that same threat of death is necessary to prevent a mass exodus from this religion, and why any religion should be violent at all.  If there is the possibility of thinking for oneself, simple logic would denounce a religion that kills in order to maintain itself - and any god who rewards murderers with paradise ought to be renounced.

 

 

A recent report in US. News & World Report revealed that public opinion is heading in the right direction within the Muslim world. It was based upon a 2005 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of opinion in six Muslim countries, which indicated that “minds are being changed and in the right direction ... support for terrorism in defence of Islam has ‘declined dramatically...’ in Muslim countries, except in Jordan (which has a Palestinian majority) and Turkey, where support has remained a low 14 percent.

 

 

It has fallen in Indonesia (from 27 to 15 percent since 2002), Pakistan (from 41 to 25 percent since 2004), Morocco (from 40 to 13 percent since 2004), and among Muslims in Lebanon (from 73 to 26 percent since 2002). ...

 

 

Similarly, when asked whether democracy was a western way of doing things or could work well in their own country, between [Page 238] 77 and 83 percent in Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, and Indonesia say it could work in their country - in each case a significant increase. ...

 

 

Egypt will have its first contested election for president this year... [most conversations] over meals, tea, coffee, and dessert [are] about a small but active opposition movement in Egypt that since December has focused on ending the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.... Minds are indeed changing....

 

 

Two generations ago Americans, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of deaths, changed minds in Germany and Japan. The Pew Global Project Attitude's metrics give us reason to believe that todays Americans, at far lower cost, are once again changing minds in the Muslim world. 24

 

24. Michael Barone, “Of Minds and Metrics,” US. News & World Report, August 29, 2005, 42.

 

 

What will it be?  An escalation of a centuries-long hatred that could engulf the world in flames?  Or will it be sincere submission (jihad redefined in truly peaceful terms) to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?  If the latter, He will embrace all mankind in a relationship of justice and peace.

 

 

*       *       *

 

[Page 331]

CHAPTER 14

 

THE WORLD NEEDS A MESSIAH

 

 

THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT between Israel and her Arab neighbours, a conflict that more and more pits this tiny nation against the entire world is only symptomatic of the battle against God that rages in the human heart - and that includes Jews and Gentiles, Muslims, and non-Muslims.  There is a passion within each of us to live for ourselves, to command our own destiny.  But we did not bring ourselves into existence, and that simple fact proves, from the very beginning of life to its end in death, that we are not in control of ourselves and our destiny.  The first step toward reality is to admit this simple truth.  Until we do so, we are only deceiving ourselves with grandiose delusions.

 

 

Mankind did not create planet earth, much less the universe of which it is a minute part, nor did we evolve by chance.  Each one of us begins life as a single cell the size of a period at the end of this sentence.  How does that cell know how to build an integrated body composed of trillions of cells of many different kinds?  And to operate the multitude of incredibly complex chemical nano-machines of which it is composed? The construction and operating instructions for the entire body are written in words encoded on the DNA on every

cell.  We call these detailed, intelligent instructions “information.”

 

[Page 332]

ONLY AN INTELLIGENCE CAN CONCEIVE INFORMATION

 

 

Einstein acknowledged that matter cannot arrange itself into information and thus cannot think.  It is, therefore, not the physical brain that originates thoughts but the nonphysical mind, or spirit.  Matter can only express information that has been impressed on it.  In today’s world, information can be communicated by many means: the human voice, audio or video cassette, radio waves, television, diskettes, CDs, DVDs, etc.  Printed books are the most common way.  Never does the means of communication (such as ink and paper) originate the information.  Information irrefutably points beyond itself to a purposeful intelligence, which conceived of the thoughts and expressed them in a meaningful form.

 

 

All information can only originate from a conscious intelligence and can only be communicated in conceptual ideas.  Ideas are themselves non-physical constructs, even though they may describe physical things and processes and be c       conveyed by physical means such as audiotapes and books.  Neither the physical medium of communication, nor the physical thing or process being described, originates the information being expressed.   Obviously, any intelligence originating non-physical, conceptual ideas must itself be non-physical.  Thus, the mind of man, though during this brief life connected in some amazing way with a physical body, is also non-physical like the God in whose image it is created.

 

 

Clearly the non-physical mind (not being subject to physical laws) continues to exist and think after the death of the body, making intimacy with God in heaven or separation from God in hell conscious experiences of either transcendent joy or unspeakable torment.  This spirit being living inside the physical body is responsible to the Creator for thoughts, choices, and actions.  The Bible says, It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9: 27).

 

 

DNA is a means of communicating information to the cells.  If the information in an amount of DNA the size of a pinhead were put into print, it would take a stack of books five hundred times the distance from earth to the moon to contain it.  Obviously, the “intelligence[Page 333] that put that information on the DNA of untold “zillions” of cells is beyond any human capacity.  Only God could have done so.

 

 

The search for fossils and missing links (of which there ought to be billions) in the hope of verifying the theory of evolution is a waste of time.  The information contained in DNA could neither originate with matter nor evolve.  This evidence alone proves evolution to be the wishful dream of those determined to deny the Creator in order to escape moral responsibility to Him.

 

 

WE HAVE ALL BROKEN GOD’S RULES

 

 

As long as a cell follows the DNA’s original instructions, it is healthy. Some cells do not.  We call that cancer. It must be destroyed to cure the patient.  God said, What I commanddo ... that ye may live” (Deuteronomy 4: 1; 5: 33; 6: 1-2; 8: 1, etc.).

 

 

Man is like a cancer on this earth, refusing to follow God’s instructions for life - His law, which He has impressed in every human conscience.  Those who adopt the belief that we are the products of chance are denying their Creator and have thus ruled out any purpose or meaning to life.  They have decided to make up their own rules.  They can’t impose their will on the cells in their bodies or on the physical universe around them but insist that they can go by their own rules for their souls and spirits.  That decision, of course, puts them in conflict with others who think the same way and want to “do their own thing” as well.

 

 

One can’t even play a game without rules.  If each of the players makes up his own rules, there is no game.  Chaos results.  Who is to make the rules for the “game of life”?  That is the question!  Someone must be in charge.  Thus, the history of mankind is all about wars between nations, between rival factions within the nations, between families, between husbands and wives, between parents and children, between brothers and sisters - and religions - to see who can make and impose the rules that everyone else must follow.

 

 

Those who want no rules have themselves made a rule that there are not to be rules - and they expect everyone else to obey [Page 334] that dictum.  Those who say that there are no absolutes insist upon “absolutely no absolutes!”  The anarchist himself has a goal in life - to live by his own rules.  Buddha proposed that the motivation creating all of the problems and unhappiness of the human race was “desire.”  He tried to deliver himself from desire and thereby to reach nirvana.  But to escape desire became his all-consuming desire.

 

 

The problem between man and God is a matter of justice.  We have broken God’s laws.  God cannot pardon us justly without compromising His integrity unless the penalty He has pronounced is paid in full.  Only God could pay that penalty.  We needed God to come to this earth as a man in order to pay that penalty for mankind.  We have seen that this was the promise God made to Israel.  The world needs Him to be its Messiah, or Saviour.  There have been (and still are today) a number of men who claimed that identity for themselves.  We need not list them all, because the requirements are so stringent that only One could possibly qualify.

 

 

HOW MANY CANDIDATES FOR MESSIAH?

 

 

The Bible, and it alone, contains literally hundreds of prophecies concerning a coming Messiah - prophecies that are so definite that His identity would be established beyond any question.  These prophecies are found throughout the Old Testament, uttered by different Hebrew prophets, most of whom never knew one another and lived at different times in history, yet among whom there is no contradiction on the specific details.

 

 

The coming Saviour would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem, 1 do miracles, 2 be hailed as the Messiah, be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver 3 that would be cast down in the temple and used to purchase a field 4 for burying strangers, be rejected by His own people, 5 and be crucified, 6 rising from the dead the third day. 7 This author and many others have fully documented from the Bible these and other messianic prophesies in detail elsewhere.

 

1. Micah 5: 2; Luke 2: 4-7.   2. Isaiah 61: 1, 2; Luke 4: 18-19.   3. Zechariah 11: 12; Matthew 26: 15.

4. Zechariah 11: 12; Matthew 27: 5; Acts 1: 18.   5. Isaiah 53: 3; John 1: 11; John 19: 15.

6. Psalm 22; Zechariah 12: 10; John 19.   7. Psalms 16: 10; 49: 15; Mark 16: 2-14; 1 Corinthians 15: 4.

 

 

If anyone fulfilled all of these prophecies, that would be absolute proof both of the supernatural validity of the prophecies and that He [Page 335] was the prophesied Messiah.  This would be the only reliable identification.  From the list of criteria in the paragraph above, one Person immediately stands out, and He alone, having fulfilled them all.

 

 

There is no denying the fact that Jesus Christ alone (not Buddha, not Muhammad, et al.) qualifies as the Messiah, having fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies.  That still leaves one theoretical objection: who is to say that some other person may not also meet all of these criteria - next year or one hundred or even one thousand years in the future?  That remote possibility is easily eliminated.

 

 

The prophet Daniel presents a definitive prophecy that had to be fulfilled on a certain date nearly two thousand years ago.  He was told by the angel Gabriel, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people [the Jews] and upon thy holy city [Jerusalem], to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy [i.e., to complete all the Messianic prophecies].” 8 The Hebrew actually says “seventy sevens.”  These are known as “Daniel’s seventy weeks.”  These are not weeks of days but weeks of years.  Both this author and others have established that fact so thoroughly in other writings that we won’t do so again here.

 

8. Daniel 9: 24.

 

 

The very day on which the Messiah would present Himself to Israel was foretold: “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem [not to be confused with rebuilding of the Temple, which would already have been accomplished] unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks. ...” 9

 

9. Ibid., 9: 25.

 

 

Thus it would be 7 plus 62, or 69, sevens (i.e., 483 years) after the command to rebuild Jerusalem that Messiah would ride into Jerusalem and be hailed as Israel’s King.  And He would make a most unlikely and unexpected entrance: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon ... the foal of an ass.” 10

 

10. Zechariah 9: 9.

 

 

The Messiah coming to liberate Jerusalem without an army, and on a donkey?  Incredible!  Who would welcome such a figure?

 

[Page 336]

Israel at that time longed for a warrior Messiah who would lead an army to deliver her from her Roman oppressors.  How astonishing, then, that in fulfilment of prophecy, Jerusalem hailed as her Saviour a meek and humble man riding on the wobbly-legged colt of an ass!  He would not offer her deliverance from the Romans but salvation through paying the penalty for their sins.  That offer did not interest Israel at that time - but one day soon it will.

 

 

THE DATE OF MESSIAH’S FIRST COMING FORETOLD

 

 

The Bible gives the precise date that the true Messiah would be hailed upon entering Jerusalem.  Nehemiah declares that reconstruction of Jerusalem was authorized “In the month Nisan in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king.” 11 The rule of Artaxerxes Longimanus, under whom Nehemiah served, began in 465 B.C.  The twentieth year of his reign was in 445 B.C.  Thus, the Messiah was to ride into Jerusalem 483 years later on Nisan 10, A.D. 32.  That was the day each year when the Passover lambs were taken out of the flock to be kept under observation for four days.  How amazing that Jesus of Nazareth, the Lamb of God” (John 1: 29), on that very day presented Himself in the prophesied manner to Israel and was crucified on Nisan 14 at the same time the Passover lambs were being slain.  It was no coincidence, but prophecy fulfilled!  (In verifying this, don’t forget that the Hebrew and Babylonian calendars were 360 days, and don’t forget leap year.)

 

11. Nehemiah 2: 1-8.

 

 

Today, those few Jews who believe in a Messiah are still awaiting His first appearance.  Yet according to the Jewish prophets themselves, it is nearly two thousand years too late for Him to come - the first time. Israel will know at His Second Coming that He is the One they rejected when He came precisely as foretold - and will mourn and repent as never before in history (Zechariah 12: 11-14).

 

 

Jesus was enthusiastically hailed as the Messiah by crowds lining the road.  When the Pharisees demanded that He rebuke His disciples [Page 337] for calling Him the Messiah, Christ reminded them that this was the very day the Messiah was to ride into Jerusalem and that therefore, if no one else hailed Him, the stones themselves would cry out:

 

 

And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; Saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.  And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.  And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. 12

 

12. Luke 19: 37-40.

 

 

STRANGER THAN FICTION

 

 

In a seemingly impossible twist, Daniel declared that the Messiah, having just been received with great joy into Jerusalem, would be killed by those who had welcomed Him: [Then] shall Messiah be cut off [i.e., killed], but not for himself [i.e., for the sins of the world].” 13 Acting for the rest of mankind, the Jews would join with the Romans to crucify Him - exactly as the prophets had foretold.  As a result of this rejection, “the city [of Jerusalem] and the sanctuary [temple]” would be destroyed by “the people of the prince that shall come [i.e., the false prince, or Antichrist].” 14

 

13. Daniel 9: 26.   14. Ibid.

 

 

Christ, of course, knew that the acclaim He was receiving would be short-lived.  He also knew the terrible consequences that would follow.  The same ones who were hailing Him as the Messiah would four days later be in that crowd clamouring for His crucifixion - bringing God’s judgment, as Israel’s prophets have foretold.  Thus, we read:

 

 

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known ... in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace!  But now they are hid from thine eyes.

 

 

For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall ... compass thee round ... and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee ... because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. 15

15. Luke 19: 41-44.

 

 

[Page 338]

And so it was that in A.D. 70 this prophecy was fulfilled, when the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem, killing 1. 2 million Jews and selling thousands into slavery.  Hear Paul’s indictment in his first recorded sermon:

 

 

For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.

 

 

Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets; Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe. ...16

 

16. Acts 13: 27, 40-41.

 

 

The crucifixion of the Messiah was prophesied centuries before that torturous means of execution was even known on earth.  Nor is crucifixion officially practiced any more - another reason why it is too late for a first coming.  Those who follow Antichrist as the Messiah will have to deliberately ignore the obvious fact that he was never crucified nor did he rise from the dead.  King David foretold His crucifixion:

 

 

... [All] my bones are out of joint ... they pierced my hands and my feet. ... They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. ... All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD. ... 17

 

17. Psalm 22: 14-18, 27.

 

 

How many candidates meet the prophetic criteria and thus qualify as Messiah?  There are literally no competitors with Jesus of Nazareth!  He is the only One who rode into Jerusalem on that exact day, in the manner foretold, was hailed as the Messiah, and was four days later rejected by those who had just welcomed Him, crucified as the prophets had declared would happen, and rose from the dead the third day.

 

 

MORE IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE

 

 

In Chapter Eleven, we also saw that, according to the Hebrew prophets, the Messiah would be one who had been living and active “from everlasting,” God himself come to earth as a man through a virgin birth, 18 that He would be rejected by His own people and be [Page 339] crucified. 19 His death would be in fulfilment of the Passover and Levitical sacrifices in payment of man’s sins - then He would rise from the dead the third day.

 

18. Micah 5: 2; Isaiah 9: 6-7.   19. Isaiah 53: 1-12.

 

 

It was foretold that Messiah’s crucifiers would do to Him what was never done, and would not do to Him what was always done in crucifixion.  The major purpose of crucifixion was to exact a slow torture upon the victim. Only when he had suffered long enough would his legs be broken to prevent him from supporting himself, and, unable to breathe, he would die.  He would never be prematurely killed by thrusting a spear into his side, for that would end the intended excruciating agony.

 

 

But Scripture said of the Passover lamb, a type of the Messiah, neither shall ye break a bone thereof.” 20 David prophesied of the Messiah, “He [God] keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.” 21 There was no need to break his legs.  Christ was already dead, a fact that Pilate found hard to believe. 22 Jesus had said, No man taketh it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” 23

 

20. Exodus 12: 46.   21. Psalm 34: 20.   22. Mark 15: 44.   23. John 10: 18.

 

 

The Hebrew word in David’s prophecy quoted above, “They pierced my hands and my feet,” is aryeh, descriptive of what occurs in crucifixion.  Referring to His Second Coming to rescue Israel at Armageddon, however, Yahweh, the God of Israel, declares: And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.” 24 The Hebrew word here is dawkar, appropriate for the piercing of a spear.  John records, “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and ... he [John] that saw it bare record that ye might believe.” 25

 

24. Zechariah 12: 10.   25. John 19: 34-35.

 

 

Why did the soldier use the spear?  Perhaps he acted in angry frustration that they had been cheated from watching this man’s full agony.  Crucified with Him, the thieves were still alive, but He was dead already.  He had not died from weakness, but had shouted in triumph, “It is finished [the payment for our sins]!”  The Greek word He used was tetelestai.  It meant, “Paid in full,” and was marked in that day on invoices and promissory notes when totally paid: And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” 26

 

26. Luke 23: 46.

 

[Page 340]

These prophecies and the biblical record of their fulfilment are unacceptable to most Jews and non-Jews alike. Muslims reject them because they are specifically denied in the Qur’an: “They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them ... they slew him not for certain.  But Allah took him up unto Himself.” 27 Evangelical Christians reject the Qur’an’s contradiction of the Bible and accept what the Bible says because it is backed by numerous prophecies and eyewitness accounts of their fulfilment and irrefutable evidence that, according to some of the greatest legal experts in history, would constitute proof in any court of law today.

 

27. Surah 4: 157-58.

 

 

THE CRUX OF THE CONFLICT

 

 

At the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and proving it to be true, are the numerous prophecies concerning Israel, her land, and her Messiah.  Christ’s genealogy, first advent, Second Coming, an future reign on earth are intertwined with Israel.  Muslims cannot accept the forgiveness offered by the true God, because the Qur’an denies that Jesus died for the sins of the world and was resurrected.  Moreover, at the very heart of Islam is a determination to destroy  Israel, which, if it could be accomplished, would prove the Bible false, including its promise of the Messiah.

 

 

There is no compromise in this conflict between Christianity and Islam, between Yahweh and Allah.  To “dialogue” over mutually exclusive and hopelessly irreconcilable teachings in order to arrive at an ecumenical “understanding” would be absurd and a denial of both.

 

 

Imams worldwide preach that victory over Israel, and Islam’s promised conquest of the world, will not come until Muslims return to the submissive practice of the fundamentals of their faith in full obedience to Muhammad and the Qur’an.  Heeding this call, there has been a marked rise in a return to fundamentalist Islam in the last few decades.  Complicating the controversy is the fact that Islam’s Dome of the Rock sits on the very site of past Jewish temples.  Most Israelis, whether religious or secular, are as determined to see the Temple rebuilt as the Muslims are to prevent it - even to the point of denying that a Jewish temple was ever there!  The Bible declares that it will indeed be rebuilt.

 

 

WILL THE DOME OF THE ROCK BE MOVED*?

 

[*See “HOW COULD THE RABBIS FORGET?” from the TEMPLES that JERUSALM forgot,” by Earnest L. Martin;

and Robert Cornuk’s book, “Temple” - which can be purchased from Amazon Books.]

 

Though the idea was unknown in Islam’s early centuries, Muslims today claim that the Dome of the Rock marks the sacred site to which Muhammad went, riding on Buraq, his magic beast (a creature that was a cross between an ass and a mule), during his Night Journey (Isra’) from the Al-Haram mosque in Mecca to Al-Aqsa [literally, the most distant mosque].  From there, by Muhammad’s own account, Gabrie1 lifted him to heaven, where he met, conversed with, and was honoured as the final prophet by Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, and other biblical greats (all of them Muslims, according to Muhammad).  There were, however, no witnesses to this important event, so we have only the word of Muhammad - and it conflicts with what the Bible teaches and what we know to be true both from, prophecies fulfilled and eyewitnesses.*

 

[* See Josephus’s writings (an eye-witness historian’s observations) concerning the destruction of the Temple in 70A.D., under Titus.]

 

 

In contrast to Muhammad’s alleged but un-witnessed ascension to heaven, the eleven apostles (Judas, the twelfth and false [covetous] disciple, had “hanged himself”) 28 all witnessed Christ’s ascension from Mount Olivet to heaven after His resurrection? 29 As for His resurrection, this foundational belief of all true Christians (for which there were more than five hundred witnesses other than the apostles 30) is vehemently denied by Islam. 31 Paul logically argues, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.  Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ. ... And if Christ be not raised ... ye are yet in your sins [and those who died trusting] in Christ are perished.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” 32

 

28. Matthew 27: 5.   29. Acts 1: 9-13.   30. 1 Corinthians 15: 6.   31. See Surah 4: 157-58.   32. 1 Corinthians 15: 14-19.

 

 

In further contrast, Muhammad’s successors fought among themselves, killed one another, and spread Islam by the sword.  But Christ’s disciples all died at the hands of others as true martyrs, who did not take the life of a single person with them.  And they died not only as martyrs, out of devotion to Christ, but as witnesses to the life, miracles, sinless character, death, and resurrection of Christ.  No one is fool enough to die for what he knows is a lie.  The fact that none of the disciples saved his own life by promising his would-be [Page 342] executioners that he would expose the miracles and resurrection as lies is proof of the validity of their testimony - testimony that stands as irrefutable proof today.

 

 

Neither Islam nor any other religion has even one such witness to its validity.  Christianity is opposed not only by Islam but by all of the world’s religions.  There is a choice that every person must make.  We pray that Muslims will have the courage to face the truth and make this choice on the basis of the evidence, not of emotion nor of human persuasion.  In the case of Muslims, the choice is between a cult of death and despair, and the gospel of life and joy eternal.

 

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DOME OF THE ROCK

 

 

Here is a simple test of the truth of two opposing beliefs.  Surah 17:1 is the only verse in the Qur’an that mentions Al-Aqsa, which means “the most distant place of worship [i.e., mosque].”  There is nothing in this verse, however, that even suggests Jerusalem as the destination of the Night Journey by Muhammad.  That idea was not introduced until later.  Most damaging to this theory is the fact that Surah 17: 1 was not among the verses from the Qur’an originally inscribed in Arabic inside the dome.  It was added as an afterthought only recently.  That fact is sufficient proof that this structure was not built with Muhammad’s alleged Night Journey in mind.

 

 

Mecca had been captured by Abd Allah Ibn az-Zubayr, who proclaimed himself Caliph.  Unable to approach Mecca himself, Abd al-Malik, who also claimed to be Caliph, built the Dome of the Rock to entice devout Muslims to make the Hajj to it rather than to the Ka’aba in Mecca.  When Malik recaptured Mecca in 692, he abandoned the Dome.  This bit of history shows why the present location of the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount is not the impossible obstacle to rebuilding the temple that some imagine it to be.

 

 

The Egyptian Ministry of Culture recently published an interpretation of Surah 17:1 that turns the focus from Jerusalem back to Medina: “This text tells us that Allah took His prophet from the Al- Haram [sacred] mosque [in Mecca] to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. ... But in [Page 343] Palestine during that time, there existed no mosque that could have been the mosque ‘most distant’ from the Al-Haram Mosque. ... [T]he Night Journey (Isra’) was not to Palestine; rather, it was to Medina.  It began at the Al-Haram Mosque ... and the journey ended at the mosque of As;ad ibn Zurara ... in Medina. ... The details of the journey of the Hijra [Muhammad’s escape by night from Mecca to Medina] are the very same details of the Night Journey (Isra’), because the Night journey [of Surah 17: 1] is indeed the secret Hijra.” 33

 

33. Ahmad Muhammad ’Arafa, Al-Qahira (Egypt), August 3, 2003.

 

 

Declarations such as that from authoritative Muslim sources would make it easy for the Antichrist to order the Dome of the Rock to be moved to Medina.  With the Temple Mount cleared of this rival structure, Antichrist would then order the Jewish temple to be rebuilt and command peace between Muslims and Jews and over the entire earth.  Israel would imagine that Antichrist was the Messiah she had been awaiting, inasmuch as the only two criteria (neither of them biblical) - that most Jews have for recognizing the Messiah are (1) He will rebuild the temple; and (2) He will bring “peace on earth.”  Israel as a whole will not suspect (until it is too late) that this impostor intends to put his own image in the temple - but those who have read and believed the Bible would know.

 

 

GOD’S INTEGRITY IS AT STAKE

 

 

The everlasting covenant by which God gave Israel the Promised Land calls for David’s heir, the promised Messiah, ruling an eternal [millennial] kingdom on his re-established throne over the twelve tribes of Israel and the entire world from Jerusalem. 34 Nor is it any less clear that this One, as we have seen, must be “The mighty God, The everlasting Father” if He is to be “The Prince of Peace” and reign forever over the world from David’s throne. 35 That fact, however, is unpalatable to Jews and Gentiles alike, who want the Messiah to be a good man who sets an example for us to follow, but surely not God come as a man, much less that the depths of man’s sin will be revealed in his crucifying the Creator.  The Qur’an, while admitting that Jesus was without sin, specifically denies that He is either God or the Son of God.

 

34. 2 Samuel 7: 4-17.   35. Isaiah 9: 6-7.

 

[Page 344]

In spite of Israel’s rejection of her Messiah, and the years of unbelief and rebellion against Him, God will not go back on His Word to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Christians who deny that the Jews are still the people of God or that they have any special significance are denying God’s Word.  Those who deny God’s promises of the full and final restoration of Israel to her land are denying to God the glory that is His in keeping His Word to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.  Did He not say, “I AM. ... the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations”? 36  That memorial would be worse than meaningless – it would mock the God of Israel - if Israel did not continue to exist and finally be restored fully.

 

36. Exodus 3: 15.

 

 

The nations of the world are openly defying what God has plainly and repeatedly declared in His Word concerning the land that He gave to Israel by an everlasting covenant.  In rejecting Israel, they are rejecting the Messiah and the salvation that He alone could bring and that God offers to all who will believe on Him.  They will bear the consequences of this defiance.  We turn to that judgment in the final chapter.

 

 

A CHOICE TO MAKE

 

 

God is love (1 John 4: 8), but He is also just.  Love cannot condone rebellion against the Creator.  Only because the Messiah paid the penalty in full can God justly forgive anyone.  In denying that Jesus is God and that He died for our sins, both Jew and Muslim (like most of the rest of mankind) reject man’s only hope.

 

 

Muslims, like everyone else, ought to have the freedom to consider the facts of life, death, and salvation carefully without fear that they will be killed if they decide for their own reasons to abandon Islam.  Yet that right is not allowed under Islam.  In two of many examples that could be given, Taliban guerrillas publicly slit the throat of Muslim cleric Maulawi Assadullah, June 30, 2004, for allegedly “propagating Christianity in the remote Awdand District of Ghazni province. ...” 37  In Khartoum, Sudan, a young Christian woman [Cecelia Holland] was fined [ten thousand dinars] and [Page 345] whipped [forty lashes on the back] for not wearing the hijab (headscarf). ...”  The government has imposed shari’a (Islamic law) on all citizens residing in Khartoum. 38

 

37. Reported by Barnabas Fund, July 2, 2004.   38. Ibid., June 16, 2004.

 

 

The United Nations condones Islam’s destruction of the very human rights that it claims to uphold - and honours Muslim member nations that deny these rights in spite of having agreed to uphold them.  This attitude is also a rebellion against the very conscience God has given every man.

 

 

The real issue is whether or not the Bible is God’s infallible Word.  If it isn’t, then nothing has any meaning, the universe happened by chance, and all mankind, along with it, is headed for oblivion.  One day it will all be as though it had never been, and nothing we have said or done will have been of any significance.  But if the Bible is the Word of the Creator of this universe (we have sufficiently proved that to be true through a multitude of prophecies fulfilled concerning Israel and the Messiah), then the United Nations, United States, European Union, Russia, and entire world (including the Muslim world and Israel) are all heading for judgment from God.

 

 

If one denies that the God of the Bible exists - the One who has proved Himself with hundreds of prophecies fulfilled - then indeed there is no hope.  If the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the true God, we are left without purpose or meaning to life.  To deny that God chose a man named Abraham through whom He would bring mankind back to Himself; to deny the true history of this chosen people and the land given to them, to which the Messiah came as prophesied and to which He will return to rule the world; to deny the hundreds of prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ alone - is to deny the only hope for mankind.

 

 

The choice is open to all - but it must be a free choice.  The true God does not coerce anyone.  The purpose of this volume is simply to present the facts so that the reader will have an intelligent basis for making a vital choice for [both Messiah’s millennial kingdom (Lk. 1: 32; Rev. 3: 21, R.V.); and afterwards, for all] eternity.

 

 

In the final analysis the battle over Israel is a battle for the souls and destiny of mankind.  If Islam and the nations siding with her [Page 346] should accomplish their goal of destroying Israel, then mankind is eternally lost.  That is how serious this battle is!  If the God of the Bible, whose integrity is tied to Israel’s ultimate restoration and blessing, has not told the truth about His chosen people and their destiny, then how could we believe His promises concerning Christ’s Payment for our soul’s salvation?  Prophecies that are partially true and partially false could not be trusted at all.  And no other “God” offers a solution based upon justice.

 

 

No matter what happens from day to day in the Middle East, we will all be gone in a few years, just as Arafat, one of the major players in this drama, has already left this earth.  The PLO and Israeli conflict is the least of his concerns now.  That fact calls our attention to the necessity of preparing for a death that looms ever over our heads and from which no one can escape.

 

 

Clearly, where we will spend eternity when we leave this earth and all of its positions, possessions, ambitions, and honours behind ought to be our primary focus.  And it is on this very point, the most important of all, that we find the greatest difference between the uncertain hope of the Muslim, who can’t be sure of his destiny, and the Christian, who has absolute confidence that he will be eternally with Christ in [a new] heaven [and a new earth” (Rev. 21: 1, R.V.)].  Such is the beauty and promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ - and it is based upon many infallible proofs given to us in prophecy and verified by history.  God offers salvation to all who will believe on Christ by their own free choice based upon all the evidence.  No one is forced into anything.  The true God wants our hearts.

 

 

There is a choice to make.  Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” 39 And do not forget God’s command to Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” 40

 

39. Joshua 24: 15.   40. Psalm 122: 6.

 

*       *       *

 

 

CHAPTER 12

 

SOME IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS

 

 

[Page283]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Page 349]

CHAPTER 15

 

DESTRUCTION FROM THE ALMIGHTY -

AND DELIVERANCE

 

 

IN THE INEVITABLE ATTACK, against her, as prophesied, from all the world’s armed forces united under Antichrist, Israel will not go down to destruction without using its ultimate weapons.  The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) can deliver atomic missiles with multiple warheads from submarines.  Israel has learned the hard way that it cannot always rely upon the United States - and certainly not at all upon the UN.  Continually being betrayed by her supposed friends, Israel was literally forced for her survival to develop her own nuclear munitions and delivery systems.  At the time that these were developed, Nixon was receiving Nazis as honoured guests in the White House, and Asian fascists were allied with Arabs in working for the destruction of Israel.  Something had to be done to assure her survival, and Israel had to do it alone with God’s help.  Yet most Israelis did not believe or recognise God’s hand in their affairs.

 

 

Though necessary in the present dispute with Palestinian Arabs, atomic weapons will almost certainly be called upon when the armies [Page 350] of all nations attack Israel during Armageddon.  This war is clearly foretold in Scripture, and biblical prophecy seems to indicate that it will involve the first nuclear exchange in history, unless the Lord intervenes to prevent it.

 

 

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

 

 

Since they were last defeated more than thirty years ago in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Muslim nations have spent billions of dollars for the latest military equipment, with top priority for missiles carrying a variety of deadly warheads.  In self-defence, the Israelis (in cooperation with American technology and more than half of it funded by the U.S.) have developed the most sophisticated operational missile defence system in the world: the Arrow 2.  It includes its own reconnaissance satellite and radar warning system and is superior to America’s Patriot missile defence system, but is integrated with some improved Patriot batteries deployed in Israel.  One Arrow mobile launcher can handle up to fourteen intercepts simultaneously, fire thirty-six shots before reloading, and reach a maximum altitude of sixty-two miles, which is three times higher than the Patriot.  The latter has a new, completely revamped generation, the PAC-3, but was not yet deployed when this book went to press.  The United States is hurriedly trying to make up for the time it lost on its military capability during the Clinton administration.

 

 

Since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, the terrorist group Hizballah (Party of Allah), with Syria’s blessing, has deployed some thirteen thousand missiles along the Israeli border.  Thirteen thousand missiles!  The Arrow is practically useless against these low-level, short-range rockets, most of them Katyushas.  The PLO has also smuggled missiles into the West Bank and deployed them along the new defence barrier route ordered by Israel’s High Court.  They will now be installed in the Gaza Strip, too, because of Israel’s withdrawal.  These new missiles could easily target Ben Gurion International Airport and even the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv.

 

 

Jointly developed with the United States, the best defence against [Page 351] these low-level weapons is Israel’s Theatre High Energy Laser (THEL), which is capable of intercepting and destroying incoming artillery shells. How operational this system is at this time is unknown.

 

 

THE SPECTER OF IRAN

 

 

As President Bush has been saying for some time, Iran is presently the most dangerous of Israel’s neighbours.  In military parades, it has been displaying missiles suited for nuclear warheads capable of reaching Israel and Europe.  On December 28, 2004, during a speech at Qom University, General Qassem Shabani boasted, “At present we have ... nuclear capabilities [to use] in the event of war against America. ...” Yet, at the same time, Iran vociferously denies that it even has a nuclear program and accuses Bush of lies.

 

 

Of course, Israel is the primary target of Iran’s weapons.  When an Egyptian soldier, Sulelman Khater, killed five Israeli tourists in the Sinai, Irandeclared him a hero, named a street after him, and set aside a day honouring him.” 1 They hope to create many more such heroes by leading the Muslim world in the determined destruction of Israel.  Where are the protests by “peace activists” against this barbarism? instead, the protests are against Israel for defending itself.

 

1. David Lamb, The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage (New York: Vintage Books, 1988), 87.

 

 

On January 20, 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney said, “You look around the world at potential trouble spots, and Iran is right at the top of the list.”  Sceptical that Iran is bargaining in good faith concerning its nuclear weapons program, President Bush refused to rule out war with this largely Shi’ite Muslim nation.

 

 

We know that Iran, though it speaks out of both sides of its mouth, doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons.  If they had, the Israelis would have destroyed their installations (even though deep underground and scattered) as they did Iraq’s in 1981.  This they must and will do for their own survival.  Although denying that they are specifically intended for Iran’s subterranean nuclear installations, the United States has supplied Israel with deep-penetration “bunker-busting” super bombs.  As it destroyed Saddam.  Hussein’s nuclear complex in 1981, Israel cannot wait for the United Nations [Page 352] or the United States to take action - she must destroy any nuclear capability Iran develops before it can be used against her.

 

 

The whole world knows that not only Iran’s weapons but those of all of Israel’s neighbours, because of their allegiance to Islam, are intended for her destruction.  This evil and barbaric ambition was again declared openly and without shame to the entire world at the “World without Zionism” conference in Tehran, October 26, 2005.   Addressing the thousands of mostly students attending, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, declared, “Israel is a blot that should be wiped off the map.” Washington responded that “These remarks underscore our concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions.”  Yet two days later, President Bush again insisted that Islam is a religion of peace!

 

 

These evil intentions of all Israel’s enemies all point to Armageddon.  It is Armageddon that will precipitate Christ’s Second Coming to reveal Himself to Israel in the process of rescuing her and destroying Antichrist and his army.

 

 

ANTICHRIST:

SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS RULER OF THE WORLD

 

 

The Bible foretells a coming world ruler, whom it calls the Antichrist: And in the latter time ... a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.  And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy ... the mighty and the holy people 2 ... ye have heard that antichrist shall come.” 3 He will bring peace to the Middle East and to the entire world, which is a major reason why Israel will accept him - but it will turn out to be a false peace.

 

2. Daniel 8: 23-24.   3. 1 John 2: 18.

 

 

When Christ came the first time, He warned Israel that in rejecting Him, they would open themselves to a later acceptance of Antichrist as Messiah: I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” 4

 

4. John 5: 43.

 

 

Confusion is created by the word “Antichrist.” It seems to imply that this “man of sin5 will declare himself openly to be opposed to Christ.  On the contrary, “anti” is a Greek prefix with two meanings: [Page 353]opposed to,” or “against”; but also, “in the place of,” or “a substitute for.”  In fact, he will pretend to be the Christ.  All of Satan’s power, no longer restrained after the Rapture of the church to heaven, will manifest itself through him:

 

5. 2 Thessalonians 2: 3.

 

 

And then shall that Wicked [one] be revealed ... whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. ... And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 6

 

6. Ibid., 8-12.

 

 

Israel will be without excuse.  Nor will there be any excuse for the rest of the world as it follows Antichrist as world leader.  There are hundreds of prophecies concerning the Messiah so that He could be definitely identified when He came and thereby prevent anyone from being deceived by a counterfeit.  But in contrast to Christ, whom the world continues to reject, this is the man the world will look up to and want to follow.  Indeed, he will not only be followed because no one can oppose his power, but he will literally be worshiped:

 

 

And they worshipped ... the beast [Antichrist], saying ... who is able to make war with him? And ... power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.  And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 7

 

7. Revelation 13: 4-8.

 

 

ANTICHRIST AND THE REBUILT TEMPLE [*]

 

[* See CHAPTER 35 from “the TEMPLES that JERUSALEM forgot”by Dr. EARNEST L. MARTIN at THE END.]

 

 

Unquestionably, the Jewish Temple will be rebuilt on its ancient site.  This is the clear teaching of Scripture. Daniel declares that the Antichrist will enforce upon the world a seven-year “covenant” that will entail the rebuilding of the temple and re-institution of animal sacrifices: “... and in the midst of the week [i.e., final seven-year period marking ‘Daniel’s seventieth week’] he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” 8 He could hardly cause sacrifices to cease that hadn’t been resumed, and sacrifices could only be offered in the Temple, so it must have been rebuilt at this time under the terms of his covenant.”

8. Daniel 9: 27.

 

[Page 354]

Antichrist will control the world, force everyone to accept the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple, and pose as Israel’s friend and protector.  In reality, however, he is planning to put his image in the Temple and will demand to be worshiped as God by all mankind. 9 And indeed, He will be worshiped by all, as quoted above.

 

9. Revelation 13: 8-9.

 

 

Many Christians enjoy speculating about Antichrist’s possible identity and when he will appear.  It is wasted effort.  He can only be revealed in his time.” 10 That phrase clearly indicates that no one can discover the identity of Antichrist; it must be revealed - and that will not occur except at a special time.  Paul tells us that the Antichrist, pretending to be God, will sit “in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God 11 - further proof that the Temple will indeed be rebuilt.

 

10. 2 Thessalonians 2: 6.   11. Ibid., 4.

 

 

In spite of the many prophecies concerning Antichrist setting up a kingdom that Christ will destroy at His Second Coming, there are professing Christians who reject the Rapture [of Lk. 21: 36 and Rev. 3: 10] and are convinced that the church must take over the schools, media, government, and entire world.  They [i.e., post-Tribulationists] teach that the church must set up the kingdom of God on earth, and only then will Christ return not to take them to heaven, as He promised, but to rule the kingdom they have established in His name.  They warn those who think they will be taken to heaven in the Rapture before Antichrist comes that they would not be prepared to face him and could be deceived into thinking he is Christ.

 

 

The response to that error is simple: those who are waiting for Christ to catch them up to meet Him in the air and to take them to heaven could never be deceived into accepting a “Christ” who meets them with his and their feet planted on earth.  Tragically, those who deny the Rapture and are working to establish an earthly kingdom to present to Christ will find that they have been preparing a false church and the world for Antichrist.  His kingdom must be established first, because only after Christ has destroyed that kingdom will He sit on David’s throne to rule the world:

 

 

And then shall that Wicked [i.e., antichrist] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him whose [Page 355] coming is after the working of Satan ... with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. ... 12

 

12. Ibid., 8-10.

 

 

 

A GLIMPSE OF THINGS TO COME

 

 

God gave Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon and the first man in history who could be called a “world ruler,” a vision of the four world empires that would exist in the history of mankind.  The vision took the form of a huge image of a man with a “head of fine gold ... breast and arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, and his feet part of iron and part of clay.”  Daniel first revealed to Nebuchadnezzar the dream that he had forgotten, then by inspiration of God interpreted it for him:

 

 

Thou, O king, art a king of kings ... thou art this head of gold.  And after thee shall arise another kingdom [Medo-Persian] inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass [Greek], which shall bear rule over all the earth.  And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron [Roman]. ... 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 the strength of iron. ... 13

13. Daniel 2: 31-43.

 

 

As the image foretold (by its two legs), the  Roman Empire was divided into two parts.  This happened politically and militarily when its emperor, Constantine, established Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) as his new imperial capital, leaving the Bishop of Rome in charge of the West.  Politically and militarily it deteriorated but was held together religiously by the world Church of its day, the Roman Catholic Church.  It was divided religiously in 1054 when, in a dispute over who should be in charge of the Church, Pope Leo IX in Rome excommunicated Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, dividing Roman Catholicism in the West from Orthodoxy in the East, a division that exists to this day.

 

 

What about the other great kingdoms: the Ming and other dynasties in China, Genghis Khan’s far ranging empire, the vast Mayan, Aztec, and Incan kingdoms of Central and South America, the Muslim [Page 356] rule we have referred to from France to China?  They did not succeed one another, were all destroyed, and none of them will rise again.  The ten toes of the image indicate a revival of the Roman Empire, which, was divided but never destroyed, and has lain dormant for centuries.  The ten toes, Daniel explains, are “ten kings” who can only arise in the last days because their destruction very clearly comes from the Messiah in the process of setting up his [millennial and] eternal kingdom.

 

 

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed [“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.” - Isaiah 9: 7] ...: it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and [a disjunction] it shall stand for ever.

 

 

Thou sawest ... a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet ... and brake them to pieces.  Then ... the iron, the clay, the brass, the Silver, and the gold ... became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away ... and the stone that smote the image ... filled the whole earth. 14

 

14. Ibid., 34-35, 44.

 

 

The ten toes/kings clearly represent a revival in the “1ast days” of the Roman Empire in a new form.  The Antichrist will be so powerful that he will unite and deceive the entire world with a false peace that will eventually explode into Armageddon.  Israel and the world would not be deceived if they paid heed to biblical prophecies.  But they have turned their backs upon God and His Word.  The problem is so simple: one Person is missing from today’s halls of government.  He has been put out of America’s education system.  He is locked out of the United Nations, He is deliberately excluded from all Middle East peace negotiations.  Across any arguments that may be made must be written in blod, bleeding letters: THEY HAVE FORGOTTEN GOD!  In a frightening warning, the Bible declares: The wicked shall be turned into Hell [Sheol,” R.V.], and all the nations that forgot God.” 15

 

15. Psalm 9: 17.

 

 

Yes, there is much talk of “god.”  Any god will do, except the God of the Bible.  He alone has proved His identity with hundreds of prophecies fulfilled.  No one is offended by references to a “Higher Power,” or “Mother Nature,” or even “Allah.”  But the God of Israel is still denied - even by most of His “chosen people.”

 

[Page 357]

The leaders of today’s world will not allow the true God to interfere in their affairs.  One cannot help remembering the Columbine (Colorado) High School student massacre that took place on April 20, 1999, near Denver.  It was the worst school shooting in American history.  Newspapers carried an interesting exchange of “letters”:

 

 

Dear God, Why didn’t you save the school children in Littleton, Colorado?

 

Sincerely, Concerned Student.

 

 

Dear Concerned Student: I am not allowed in schools.

 

Sincerely, God.

 

 

THE COMING WORLD GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION

 

 

It is only a matter of time until, as the Bible declares, the entire world, persisting in its rejection of God, of Christ, and of His Word, will be united both politically and religiously under Antichrist.  Multinational corporations have put the entire international structure for Antichrist in place.  The remarkable prophecy in Revelation 13 of one evil man controlling mankind with a number could not have come true without today’s technology.  To past generations, it didn’t make sense.  There is no question that we are moving in the direction     of a cashless society, and there are many sound reasons why personal business will be transacted through a computer chip just under the skin in the forehead or in the hand, as Scripture implies. 16

 

16. Revelation 13: 15-18.

 

 

Christ foretold today’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when He declared, And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. …” 17 There was no danger of all flesh being wiped out with bows, arrows, swords, and spears during the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 - not even with the most powerful conventional weapons at any time prior to the 1940s.  This prophecy could refer only to current WMDs (a recent term), which proves false the claim of some that Nero was the Antichrist and that everything Christ spoke in Matthew 24 was fulfilled at that time.

 

17. Matthew 24: 22.

 

[Page 358]

Those who teach this Preterist/Reconstructionist view even dare to say that Christ returned in A.D. 70 in the person of the Roman armies to destroy Israel.  Therefore His promise to the church, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” 18 The coming of the Roman armies was a judgment upon Israel, but it certainly did not fulfil Christ’s promise of coming for those who believe in Him to [resurrect and] take them to His Father’s “house [of] many mansions” in heaven. 19 Christ did not take anyone alive to heaven in A.D. 70.  That promise can only still be future - the promise of the [First Resurrection’ or] Rapture.

 

18. John 14: 3.   19. Ibid., 2.

 

 

THE KEY TO THE PUZZLE

 

 

It will take more than mere technology however, to unite Muslims and atheistic Communists and the whole world (Saudi Arabia, North Korea, all the Russian republics and China, for example) in one religion under one man, whom all will worship.  The Bible gives the secret of unification in an event called the Rapture.  Christ told His disciples that He was going to His Father’s house to prepare an eternal abode for them and would return to take them there. 20 That is a straightforward promise of miraculously and instantly transporting from this world [and from the underworld of the dead in “Hades” (Matt. 16: 18; Acts. 2: 27, R.V.] to heaven those who believe on Him.

 

20. Ibid., 14: 1.

 

 

The Apostle Paul describes what could only be the same catching away of believers from earth to heaven.  Christ himself comes, bringing with Him from heaven the souls and spirits of those who had died believing in Him as their Saviour, to be reunited with their resurrected bodies.* The living believers are transformed and all true followers of Christ are caught up together with Him into heaven before God’s judgment is poured out upon earth:

 

[* This is a common error, regarding what Scripture says, will take place at the time of Death and at the “Resurrection from the dead”! 

No disembodied “soul” can ascend from “Hades” into heaven (John 3: 13), before being reunited to a resurrected and immortal

body!  Christ’s body did not leave Joseph’s tomb at any time before His soul was reunited to it!  For more a detailed

exposition on the Intermediate State, see R. Govett’s “Hades,” and many other writings at the  following website:

www.themillennialkingdom.org.uk]

 

 

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the [Page 359] Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 21

 

21. 1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18.

 

 

Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep [i.e., die] but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 22

 

22. 1 Corinthians 15: 51-53.

 

 

We don’t know how many true Christians there are on earth.  There may be more than 100 million.  For even half that many individuals to suddenly vanish would terrify those left behind far beyond anything we could imagine.  The fearsome questions on everyone’s mind would be, “Where did they go?  Who took them?  Why didn’t they take me?  Are they coming back to get me, too?

 

 

The United Nations and governments of every nation would be meeting in emergency session.  No one will believe that this event was the Rapture.  Those who “refused to receive the love of the truth” will be given “a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth. ...” 23 In the midst of this chaos, a man steps forward who claims to know where the missing have been taken and promises to recover them.  Perhaps he says they have been snatched by some space-travelling, rogue civilization and taken to a slave planet and he is negotiating with an intergalactic council to recover them.  Such a lie would be very believable in light of the movies, books, and TV shows concerning UFOs and extraterrestrial civilizations that are popular today.

 

23. 2 Thessalonians 2: 10-12.

 

 

Whatever explanation Antichrist offers, the entire world realizes that it is facing, a common enemy capable of snatching people at will from earth.  Driven by desperation, the world unites behind the one man who seems to hold the only hope for survival.  Furthermore, he comes with “the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish. ...” 24 The world is convinced of Satan’s lie, having rejected God’s truth.

 

24. Ibid.

 

 

We are told that “the dragon [Satan] gave him his power, and his seat [as world ruler], and great authority.”  The world will not know [Page 360] this fact, but it wouldn’t matter if they did.  They will be ready at that time to follow Satan himself.  Indeed, the whole world will worship “the dragon which gave power unto the beast [Antichrist].” 25

 

25. Revelation 13: 4.

 

 

SATAN IN CONTROL

 

 

Without any Christians left on earth* to influence society morally, evil (posing as good) will take over to an extent that is beyond present imagination.  Those not raptured who never heard the gospel of Christ will be given the opportunity to believe.  Many will receive Christ, reject Antichrist, and be put to death for their new-found faith. They will be resurrected at Christ’s Second Coming at the end of the Great Tribulation.  John saw it all in the vision he was given:

 

[* NOTE: This statement fails to make any distinction in Christian behaviour! 1 Thess. 2: 10; 2 Thess.1: 11, 12, R.V.

Christ will judge those “worthy” to escape the end-time tribulations!  See Rev. 2: 23; 3: 2-4, 10, R.V.]

 

 

I saw under the altar [in “Hades]* [under heaven] the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?  And ... it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their ... brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. 26.

 

26. Ibid., 6: 9-11.

 

[* See Acts 2: 27, 31, 34. cf. Luke 16: 23, 30, R.V.  The souls of the dead, are presently held in “Hades” until the time of their Resurrection.  Matt. 16: 18, R.V.  cf. Psa. 16: 10, Septuagint (LXX).]

 

 

These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 27

 

27. Ibid., 7: 14.

 

 

And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. 28

 

28. Ibid., 12: 11.

 

 

And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived [i.e., were resurrected] and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  But the rest of the dead [who had not believed in Christ but had followed the Antichrist] lived not again until the thousand years were finished. 29

 

29. Ibid., 20: 4-5.

 

 

Following and worshiping Antichrist, the world will be in complete rebellion and God will begin to execute judgment upon the rampant evil.  Christ foretold this period of time with these words: “For then shall [Page 361] be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” 30 The Book of Revelation gives the details of God’s wrath being poured out upon this earth.  It will be a terrifying time for earths inhabitants, yet they will not back down from their defiance of the Creator: “[They] blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.” 31

 

30. Matthew 24: 21.   31. Revelation 16: 11.

 

 

TWO-THIRDS OF ALL JEWS WORLDWIDE KILLED

 

 

When God judged the gods of Egypt with the plagues recorded in the Book of Exodus, even though most Israelites were not serving Him, the land of Goshen, where Israel lived was spared from the worst judgments. 32 It seems logical and biblical that the small part of “Palestine” occupied by Israel could very well be spared from most if not all of the plagues that this world will suffer at the hands of God during the Great Tribulation.  The land of Israel (though following Antichrist like the rest of the world) will be the only safe place for a Jew to inhabit.  That distinction would anger the rest of the nations and raise speculation about some “secret weaponIsrael might be aiming at her enemies.  During the Middle Ages, when Jewish communities escaped the plague because the followed the sanitation laws of Moses, they were accused of putting a curse on the Gentile communities, which then launched pogroms against the Jews.  So her escape from God’s wrath that will be poured out upon earth would only add to the world’s hatred of Israel.

 

32. Exodus 8: 22; 9: 26.

 

 

Most Jews today still live outside of Israel.  If Israel indeed escapes the judgment being suffered elsewhere, many Jews would surely feel compelled to return to the Promised Land. Yet Scripture is clear, without telling us how it happens, that two-thirds of all Jews on earth will be slain. 33 The Bible describes this as “the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.” 34

 

33. Zechariah 13: 8-9.   34. Jeremiah 30: 7.

 

 

The history of Israel, as we have seen, is a history of unbelief and rebellion.  No matter how much evidence God has given to them (delivered from Egypt, the Red Sea opening for them and drowning the pursuing Egyptians, God speaking with an audible voice from [Page 362] Mount Sinai, water from a rock, manna from the sky for food, His miraculous protection repeatedly throughout the ages, etc.), they have persistently rebelled against Him and continued largely in unbelief for centuries.  This history, recorded in advance through prophecy, is not foretold by anti-Semitic haters of Jews and Israel but in the Hebrew Scriptures by Israel’s own prophets, whom they have largely rejected or ignored.

 

 

In what Christ described as “great tribulation,” 35 God’s judgment will fall from heaven upon this earth in His final attempt to bring the world to repentance.  Antichrist will double-cross Israel, and that tiny nation will begin to feel the anger of all mankind focused upon it, blaming it for everything.  It will be hell-on-earth for all Jews everywhere.

 

35. Matthew 24: 21.

 

 

God is finally going to prove Himself to Israel beyond any doubt, breaking their hard, stubborn hearts.  The one-third who survive will all repent and believe when they see the crucified and resurrected Christ intervene to rescue them from the world’s attacking armies.

 

 

Mankind is proud and rebellious.  God is going to reveal Himself in terrifying demonstration of His power to the entire world.  The Great Tribulation will reach its climax in an event called Armageddon.  Though it has been exploited in Hollywood movies and sensational books, the Bible foretells Armageddon, and the Bible has proved itself true.  Of course, most of the world will not believe until the events are upon them, and even then they will defiantly shake their fists at God.  The description of God’s wrath poured out upon this earth is chilling.

 

 

FALSE PEACE, THEN DESTRUCTION

 

 

Many prophecies in the Old Testament have two applications.  There was a fulfilment near at hand, and one that was deferred to the last days.  Here are the words of two different Hebrew prophets who never knew one another.  They each referred to a destruction that came in their day; but their separate prophecies also agreed concerning a destruction from the Lord that would be worldwide [Page 363] and that was not fulfilled in the past but could come to pass only in the last days:

 

 

Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.  Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt: And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.  Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.

 

 

For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.  I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.  Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger. 36

 

36. Isaiah 13: 6-13.

 

 

Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. 37

 

37. Joel 1: 15.

 

 

Two of the most electrifying prophecies in the Bible are found in Ezekiel Chapters 38 and 39.  They concern a people who are attacked by the armies of the world and rescued by God’s intervention.  Their identity and the delusion that has overtaken them are clear.  They “dwell safely ... without walls ... bars nor gates ...[a] people that are gathered out of the nations. ...” 38 This can only be Israel, a people that have been scattered among the nations and have come back to their own land as they have been doing today.  They will mistakenly feel secure from any possible enemies, having believed Antichrist’s promise and guarantee of their safety.

 

38. Ezekiel 38: 11-12.

 

 

We can thus say on the authority of God’s Word that Israel will enthusiastically remove the wall and fence she is erecting to protect her from terrorists.  Israel will have been deceived by Antichrist with a false peace that is intended to destroy her, but he himself will be destroyed by Christ.  Of this one, who pretends to be the true [Page 364] Messiah, we are told: “He shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes [Christ]; but he shall be broken without hand.” 39

 

39. Daniel 8: 25.

 

 

Israel has shown a naive eagerness to believe any promise of “peace” and has often been deceived.  Arafat deceived Israel times without number, and now Israel seems willing to be deceived by Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor as Palestinian Authority Chairman via the January 9, 2005, election.  Israel’s Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres, enthusiastically described Abbis as “A moderate man. ... Let’s give him a chance.” 40 Presumably it is his “moderation” that causes him to deny the holocaust and to call Israel (in his campaign speeches) “the Zionist enemy.”

 

40. January 11, 2005 edition of http://www.csmonitor.com.

 

 

The Israeli withdrawal from the settlements has caused a particular T-shirt to be the most popular in Gaza.  It displays the “Palestinian” flag emblazoned with the “peace” slogan: “Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.”  Mahmoud Abbas, supposedly Israel’s new partner in peace, has taken up the chant in public.

 

 

In contrast toArafat, with whom he would not negotiate nor receive into the White House, President Bush has opened his arms to Abbas and welcomed him to Washington.  Yet everything that Bush found objectionable in Arafat is echoed in Abbas.  He was Arafat’s partner in terrorism even before 1965, when he and Arafat co-founded Fatah, the PLO’s largest terrorist arm, with the blood of thousands of victims on its hands.  Within Fatah is the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, one of the most vicious terrorist organizations.  As though to welcome their co-founder’s elevation to head the PLO and Palestinian Authority and to show that nothing had changed with the death of Arafat, four days after the “election” of Abbas, a group of terrorists from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of Fatah stormed Israeli base at the “Karni” Gaza crossing, killing five Israelis. 41 During his campaign speeches, Abbas had the flag of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade slung around his neck, showing his sympathy and identity with them.

 

41. USA TODAY, January 14, 2005, 7A.

 

 

Abbas campaigned in Jenin with members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.  Before the elections, Abbas met in Damascuswith some of [Page 365] the region’s most implacable terror groups, including Hamas [and] Islamic Jihad. … Abbas’ ‘foreign minister,’ Nabil Sha’ath, declared that between the Palestinian Authority and the other groups, ‘there are no differences over the objectives [i.e., destruction of Israel]’” 42

 

42. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jeff/Jacoby abbas.php3

 

Israel is desperate for peace.  After sixty years of war, she would agree to almost anything.  The Antichrist will not only “guarantee” peace, but will [may well] command the rebuilding of the Temple.  It will be an offer that Israel, in her unbelief and continued rebellion against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” will not be able to resist.

 

 

EZEKIEL CHAPTERS 38 AND 39

 

 

The majority of Christians do not believe that Ezekiel 38 and 39 describe Armageddon but that they refer to some lesser war.  Most Bible commentators interpret this passage as a preliminary attack by Russia and Muslim nations (either just before the Great Tribulation or in the midst of it) against Israel, during which they will be destroyed miraculously by God. The destruction described is so complete, however, that it would be unimaginable for anyone ever to attack Israel again.  Who would dare to do so?  That is one of the major problems in denying that this war is Armageddon.

 

 

Referring to Antichrist and the armies of the world attacking Israel with him, God says, I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me [and] my fury shall come up in my face. ...” 43 Clearly this is a special event in which God has a climactic purpose.  The description of what will happen at Armageddon is terrifying.  The language could not possibly refer to a preliminary war but only to the grand finale!

 

43. Ezekiel 38: 16-18.

 

 

God declares, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; so that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things ... and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down ... and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD (Ezekiel 38: 19-23).

 

[Page 365]

My presence?  Yes!  God himself is coming to this earth and everything - animate and inanimate, and every person - will tremble like leaves on a tree, shaking in a violent storm!  What the Bible describes as “judgment from the Almightyis going to fall upon those who have attacked Israel.  The invading armies will be miraculously and totally destroyed by Jesus Christ, whom Israel will at last recognize as the Messiah who was pierced for their sins: They shall look upon me [says the God of Israel] whom they have pierced. 44 In the throes of this cataclysm, God will prove Himself to all creation as Sovereign.  Clearly, what is being described could not be a preliminary war.  This can only be Armageddon itself.

 

44. Zechariah 12: 10.

 

 

ARMAGEDDON!

 

 

The language in Ezekiel 38 is apocalyptic.  This war will be Satan’s most vicious and final attempt to destroy Israel (and mankind made in the image of God).  Antichrist will lead the armies of the entire world against Jerusalem.  The Messiah will intervene to rescue Israel and mankind and to stop the weapons of mass destruction from wiping out the human race - weapons that have been launched against Israel (not only atomic but chemical and biological), and hers launched in retaliation.  Antichrist and his armies will be destroyed. Otherwise, as Christ warned, “there should no flesh be saved.” 45

 

45. Matthew 24: 22.

 

 

As we have seen, God has two purposes at Armageddon: He is going to demonstrate His power by punishing the world in righteousness; and He will prove Himself to His people, the Jews, worldwide, breaking their stubborn hearts once and for all.  Thereafter they will never rebel against Him again.  This is the Day of the Lord referred to in Chapter Eleven - the day of Israel’s redemption:

 

 

If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.  I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh. ... 46 For, behold, the LORD will ... render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.  For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all [Page 367] flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many. ... For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. 47

 

46. Deuteronomy 32: 41-42.   47. Isaiah 66: 15-18.

 

 

Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words, and say unto them, The LORD shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD.  Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.  And the slain of the LORD shall be at that day from one end of the earth even, unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground. 48

 

48. Jeremiah 25: 30-33.

 

 

There are many similar prophecies.  Some of the language is derisive in describing man’s rebellion: The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” 49 The scene turns to heaven: He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.” 50 The fact that a derisive laugh will come from God is terrifying evidence that His patience is exhausted.  Judgment will fall!

 

49. Psalm 2: 2-3.   50. Ibid., 4.

 

 

This prophetic Psalm is about Jerusalem, the Messiah who will rule there, man’s opposition to God’s will, and God's punishment because of this rebellion.  God has warned the world, Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.  Blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2: 12).  But mankind as a whole refuses to bow the knee to the Creator and to His Son and stubbornly rushes on to judgment.

 

 

The architects of the road-map to peace (and the world that supports it, including Muslim nations and Israel) have two choices.  Either they repent of their opposition to God’s promises to Israel and accept His forgiveness on His terms or they remain in defiance and go willingly and knowingly to judgment.  God is finalizing the fulfilment of [Page 368] prophecy in our day.  He has made Jerusalem a cup of trembling to her neighbours and a burdensome stone to the entire world.  And exactly as He said, He is also going to bring all nations against Israel to punish them there for scattering His people and dividing the land (Joel 3: 2).  That this is the way the world is going seems indisputable.

 

 

SALVATION OF ISRAEL

 

 

There are no chapter divisions in the original Bible manuscripts.  Ezekiel 39 is a continuation of chapter 38.  Again the language is clear: “So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more ... the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.” 51 The language here, as earlier, could not apply to some preliminary event but only to the climax of God’s dealings with the world and with Israel.

 

51. Ezekiel 39: 7, 22.

 

 

Israel has obviously at last been driven to repentance by the terrifying judgment of God, cries out for the Messiah to rescue her, and is transformed by His appearance in response to her desperate plea for help, never to be in God’s disfavor again: Neither will I hide my face any more from them: for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the LORD GOD.” 52  Only Armageddon could have brought Israel to her knees and caused every Jew left alive on earth to cry out in humble submission and willingness to accept the true Messiah.

 

52. Ibid., 29.

 

 

God declares: Then shall they know that I am the LORD their God, which caused them to be led into captivity among the heathen: but I have gathered them unto their own land, and have left none of them any more there.” 53 Not one Jew will be left anywhere on earth outside of Israel; all will have been miraculously brought back to the Promised Land.  This can only be what Christ refers to in Matthew 24 - the final gathering of every physical descendant of Abraham-Isaac-Jacob left on earth back to Israel for the Messiah’s millennial reign at His Second Coming to rescue Israel in the midst of Armageddon: They shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds [Page 369] of heaven with power and great glory.  And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shal1 gather together [back to Israel] his elect from the four winds. ...” 54

 

53. Ibid., 28.   54. Matthew 24: 30-31.

 

 

NOW MUCH TIME TO JUDGMENT DAY?

 

 

As already mentioned, President Bush has Christian friends and advisors (such as Condoleezza Rice) who tell him that Israel has been replaced by the church and that therefore Joel 3: 2, which pronounces judgment upon those who divide the land, no longer applies.  To maintain that idea, hundreds of biblical prophecies that foretell a final restoration of Israel in her land would have to be denied or spiritualized.  Consider only  one of those prophecies:

 

 

I will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am the LORD ... I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. ... A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you ... so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the LORD. 55

 

55. Ezekiel 36: 11, 24, 26, 38.

 

 

How far in the future are these prophesied events?  Isaiah’s prophecies end with Israel restored to her land and the Messiah reigning in peace over the entire world.  We seem to be experiencing right now the very things that Isaiah foretold would lead up to the final restoration.  The language, which we have earlier quoted in part, is riveting:

 

 

Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things?  Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.  Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the LORD: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God.  Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her. … 56

 

56. Isaiah 66: 8-10.

 

 

Surely a nation born in a day can refer only to the rebirth of Israel in 1948.  It was an event unprecedented in the history of mankind.  And, as Isaiah describes, it was also a birth that was not completed in [Page 370] a moment.  It has been in process for the more than a century and has been coming to a climax over the past sixty years.  God is causing to bring forth,” the womb is open, but Israel will not be fully birthed until she possesses all of the territory that God gave to her, as described in Genesis 15: 18-21.  That miraculous birth now being in process, God will not shut the womb.”  This rebirth cannot continue much longer without a full deliverance of Israel.

 

 

As soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.  The greatest travail in Zion’s history was without doubt the Holocaust.  Had it not been for that horror and the momentary twinge of conscience among the nations of the world, the United Nations would never have voted for partition of Palestine.  That vote gives Israel a legitimacy which the UN votes against today, the Arabs still deny, and which, bit by bit, the “peace process” has been taken away.

 

 

There are eyewitness reports that many Jews went to their deaths in Nazi gas chambers singing psalms of faith in God.  Surely, in their distress, many must have believed in God’s promise of the Messiah and understood what it meant to them personally for eternity.  No doubt many cried out to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and found mercy according to His promise: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 57 There was no miraculous intervention for the victims of the Holocaust - but there will be at Armageddon.

 

57. Romans 10: 13.

 

 

Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? ... shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb?  This is language of assurance.  We have come a long way in history. Israel has been brought to birth once again in her own land; she is surrounded by enemies who are all united to destroy her; the technology and weapons are at hand to fulfil prophecies that could not have been understood in prior generations.  Many prophecies are being fulfiled before our eyes.  God is not going to shut all down and wait a few more centuries.  The day is at hand when Israel will be brought fully to birth!  Now is the time for all mankind to make an eternal choice.

 

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW COULD THE RABBIS FORGET?

“There is a closing comment on the matters of the Temple that I wish to make.  I want to express some conciliatory remarks regarding the plight that modern scholars have had in trying to locate the original Temples of God that Solomon, Zerubbabel, Simon and Herod built.  I do not want to appear unduly critical of their efforts to understand the past history of Jerusalem.  After all, I finally came to see the problems involved in this issue barely six years ago, in 1944.  So, some consideration and allowance should be given.

 

The consideration is needed because it does not make sense to most reasonable people that the whole nation of Israel would come to an ignorance of forgetting the original location of their Holy Temple in Jerusalem (which was situated at one of the great capital cities of the world and in the mainstream of civilised society throughout all recorded history).  It appears preposterous in human terms to believe that Israelites would ever forget where the original Temples were built.

 

Perhaps Professor George Adam Smith can sum up the primary problem that all historians have faced in this matter.  Paraphrasing him in regard to this article concerning the Temple in the Encyclopedia Biblica, he stated that it was inconceivable to him, and to all other scholars, that the location of such a majestic and important building as the Holy Temple of God (revered and loved by all Israelites in the world since the time it was built by Solomon) could have been lost to their knowledge.

 

The earlier Temples were no ordinary buildings.  The Sanctuary represented the very heart and soul of the nation of Israel.  It made no difference if the people of Israel were righteous or heretical, religious or secular, young or old, man or woman, whether they lived within Israel or lived far from Israel in the Diaspora, that Temple was the very centre of their lives and the prime focus of their spiritual existence.  It was as important to them throughout all periods of their history and in all areas where they lived as our capitol building is to us in the United States (indeed, their Temple was infinitely more important than our capitol building because of its supreme religious significance and the divine attachment which Israel had for that Holy Place).

 

It truly seems incredible to anyone with common sense that a few years of captivity within the Babylonian period, or the three years of desecration in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, or any other periods of time when the Temples were not operating normally, would have allowed the whole nation of Israel (including every man, woman and child) to go into a state of complete ignorance and to forget where the original Temples had been located for almost 800 years of time.  There is hardly a person in the world that would not think it to be inconceivable that Israel could ever forget the site of the Temple.

 

But strange as it may seem, the whole nation did in fact forget!  That’s right.  All of them forgot - whether it is their scholars and educators, their leaders and elders, and it includes all their distinguished Rabbis for the past 800 years.  All of them forgot.  But wait a moment.  Not only did all Israel forget, all the peoples of the surrounding nations also forgot.  All the Arabs and even later, all the peoples of Islam forgot.  And too, all Christians in the world forgot.  In fact, everyone on earth (including me) forgot.  And what is the outcome?  Jews and Arabs are today fighting over places in Jerusalem whose locations are based on fictitious traditional conclusions and not solid historical facts.  One should wisely ask: Is there a purpose why God let all the people on earth decline into a state of ignorance over these matters?  Why did God let Israel and the world forget such a well known religious and significant site that was located on one of the most prominent and conspicuous centres of civilisation in history since Abraham’s time?  Jerusalem was never in the outback!

 

One of the main reasons why this forgetfulness is rampant among both Jews and Arabs is the universal penchant for Jewish scholars to call Herod’s Temple the “Second Temple” - as though it were a mere adaptation of the same Temple that was built by Zerubbabel after the Babylonian Captivity.  This is manifestly wrong.  In fact, it could be reasonably argued that Herod’s Temple was the ‘Sixth Temple’ from that of Solomon, NOT the ‘Second Temple’?  That’s right.  The ‘Sixth.’  Note these facts.  If one counts Solomon’s Temple as the ‘First Temple,’ Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it.  What then becomes of the ‘Second Temple’?  Note carefully that in Jeremiah we read that a newHouse of God’ (a temporary Temple because it had the Altar of God) was raised up in Mizpah the year after the former Temple of Solomon was demolished. Jeremiah 41: 4-5.  Then, after the Babylonian Captivity, a further Altar was raised up in Jerusalem which was also called the ‘House of God’ (compare Ezra 3: 3 with 3: 8).  This was also recognised as a ‘Temple.’  This Temple (the ‘Third Temple’) existed about eighteen years before the foundation of the actual building called the ‘House of God’ (the ‘Fourth Temple’) was begun (compare Ezra 3: 6 with all of Haggai).  This fourth House of God’ lasted until the time of Simon the Hasmonean who then built the ‘Fifth Temple,’ and he was followed some 46 years before Jesus began his ministry with Herod building what can legitimately be called a new Temple (or the ‘Sixth Temple’).

 

Strangely, the Jewish authorities over the past 1600 have been accustomed to call Herod’s Temple the ‘Second Temple,’ as though it were a mere extension of the Temple built in the time of Haggai after the Babylonian Captivity.  They must have done this for nostalgic reasons, because from a historical and architectural point of view such a belief cannot be reasonably sustained.

 

How Quickly People Forget

 

What we have seen in this book is clear historical proof that people can forget very easily and quite quickly, even forgetting things dealing with the most sacred parts of their religions.  While it is almost impossible to believe that the Jewish people (especially the Rabbis) could forget such a significant site as the Temple, they did indeed forget.

 

Firstly, I have clear historical documentation which I will soon post on the ASK Web Page on the Internet (www.askelm.com), that shows that every Jewish person in the world was fully aware a generation before the time of Maimonides (1134-1205 C.E.) that the holy site of their former Temples was over the Gihon Spring in south-western Jerusalem.  But, a generation after the time of Maimonides there was NOT a Jew in the world who remembered this historical fact.  Indeed it was Maimonides (the great rational philosopher) who turned the whole Jewish nation to falsehood regarding the site of their holy Temples.  The account is interesting indeed.

 

Secondly, I will also reveal on the ASK Web Page on the internet how (and why) the Jewish people in the 16th century followed the advice of Rabbi Isaac Luria (the Ari) and wrongly selected the ‘western wall’ of the Haram esh-Sharif (formerly Fort Antonia) as the ‘Western Wall’ of Herod’s Temple.  Truly, there was NOT a Jew in the world who paid the slightest respect to thatWestern (Wailing) Wall’ before the 16th century.  By following the false advice of Rabbi Isaac Luria, the whole of the Jewish nation has selected a wall to revere that was formerly a part of the Roman fortress that their ancestors in the first century held in highest contempt and disdain.

 

Thirdly, I will also soon reveal on the ASK Web Page the full relationship of the true location of the site of the Temples over the Gihon Spring with the area on the southern spur of the Mount of Olives where Jesus was crucified (and the place of His resurrection at the site of the Pater Nostra Church).  This new information will show even more relevance and significance to Jesus being the Christ [the Messiah of the Jews and Muslims].  This new historical material will make the messages of the Holy Scriptures come alive with truth as never before understood.  Keep your eyes turned to our Web Page.

 

Now in the Time for the Truth to be Restored to Israel

 

Though I am by race a Gentile and have no religious or emotional attachment to Judaism (or even to the ‘sacred sites’ in Jerusalem), it is a privilege for me to have this opportunity in this book - [The TENPLES that JERUSALEM forgot] - to bring to the attention of my Jewish and Muslim friends that their earlier and original Temples have been found once again.  This historical and geographical research should be able to help those in Israel and Palestine to realise that they are fighting over (and now negotiating over) regions of Jerusalem that have no relevance whatever to the sacred occurrences once associated with Abraham, Jacob, David, Ezra and Nehemiah, or any other biblical personage.  Perhaps this new knowledge may help negotiators to re-evaluate their religious and political positions regarding these important geographical matters.  This information may be helpful in getting the antagonists to put down their weapons and turn them into plowshares.  I hope so.

 

 

The truth is, it is time that the Jewish and Islamic authorities abandon their erroneous designation of the Dome of the Rock as the site of the ‘Second Temple’ and establish an identification of the various Temples (all six of them) to accord with the historical facts.  This teaching of the Rabbis that their ‘Wailing Wall’ is a wall of Herod’s Temple is thoroughly erroneous.  They are ignorant of the truth in this regard.  This is one of the reasons why the whole nation of Israel and all Islamic authorities have forgotten even where the Temples stood in Jerusalem.  Their ignorance they now express needs to be brought to the attention of our Jewish and Muslim friends.

 

 

Now is the time to remove this profound ignorance and forgetfulness.  It is now time to remember - to remember what the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls are showing us.  What we now know from these new archaeological and biblical discoveries is this: Though the whole world over the past generations has forgotten where the original Temple of Solomon, Zerubbabel and Herod were built just above the once fresh and pure waters of the Gihon Spring located on the southwest ridge of Jerusalem.  The Temples have been found.  No longer are they: ‘The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot.’*

 

 

[* NOTE. Chapters 24 - (“Critical Problems Facing Simon The Hasmonean”); chapter 25 - (“A New Temple Had To Be Built”); chapter  26 – “The Dead Sea Scrolls And The New Jerusalem of Simon”); chapter 27 - (“Resistance To Simon’s Rule”); chapter 28 - (“Simon’s Building Projects”); chapter 29 - (“The Temple In The Book Of Enoch”); and chapter 30 - (“Rebuilding The Temple”) as proof.  All of the above chapters need to be studied to obtain a fuller understanding of the  author’s writing shown above.]

 

SEE the D.V.D’s which accompany this writing.