ISIS: A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER Pastor Charles Columns Sep 03 2014 | 12:48pm WAT Webster defines the Hydra of Greek mythology as “a many-headed serpent, each head of which when cut off was replaced by two others.” The secondary dictionary meaning of hydra is “a diverse evil not to be overcome by a single effort.” Jihadist Islam is that modern day hydra! When Joel Richardson ministered recently among us, he pointed out that within 4 years after Muhammad’s death nearly 335,000 Christians had been slaughtered, and in 10 years the number rose to one million! Thus the Islamic die was cast from the beginning! In a booklet available from CBN, “ISLAM – Religion of Peace or War?”, the following alarming statistics are given concerning Islam – “Their brutality knows no bounds. Since the beginning of the Islamic conquests until now, those slain by Muslim forces are as follows: over 51 million Christians (many place the number at 60 million) were slaughtered. 80 million Hindus were killed in Jihad against ancient India. Jihadists killed 10 million Buddhists in Turkey, Afghanistan, along the Silk Route, and in India. And upwards to 125 million Africans were slain, as Islam ran the wholesale slave trade in Africa, in which 11 million slaves were shipped across the Atlantic and 14 million were traded to Islamic nations in North Africa and the Middle East. It is estimated that for every slave who reached the selling block, another five died in the initial raid or from illness and privation.” And now a modern-day hydra has risen in the Middle East, a serpent with many heads; among them: the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS (ISIL), the Islamic Caliphate of Iraq and Syria. Over these past days we have witnessed the satanic activities of the Jihadist ISIS (ISIL) army – the beheading of innocent Christian children in Iraq, the impaling of human heads on poles that everyone might see and fear, and now the recent barbaric beheading with a knife of an American reporter with others likely to follow. A recent newscast had this admonition on the bottom of the screen: “WAKE UP!” (A word to the church!) And all of this barbarism has been done in direct compliance with Muhammad’s strategies outlined in the Quran – “The penalty of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle – they will face being killed or crucified, or having their heads and feet cut off from opposite sides, or they shall be banished from the land…” (Surah 5:33). “And when you meet those who misbelieve, non-Muslims, while fighting in Jihad, cut off their heads until you have massacred them…” (Surah 47:4). “I will put terror in the hearts of non-Muslims. So cut off their necks and cut off every finger tip. Do that because they opposed Allah and His Apostle. And Allah is intent on punishing anyone who opposes Him and His Apostle.” (Surah 8:12-14). How totally unlike the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ! There is now very little question but that out of Islam is coming the last days kingdom of Antichrist. And Islamic eschatology is clear – the Islamic rampage of slaughter is intended to throw the Middle East (and the world itself) into an absolute chaos, but out of the debris of that chaos will come the Promised One, the Man of Peace originally spoken of by Muhammad in the Hadith and recently spoken of by Iran’s former president Ahmadinejad before the United Nations in 2012: Imam Al-Mahdi who will usher in a seven-year peace agreement, along with the Islamic Jesus, Isa Al-Maseeh. And the Islamic end-result will be that “Allah will cause to perish all religions except Islam”. After my book, “Are These The Last Days?”, was published this past Spring 2014, the Islamic Caliphate actually emerged in Syria and Iraq. I had predicted: “the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920’s ended the Islamic Caliphate. But the present passion of radical Islam has been to see the Caliphate restored under the Mahdi” (p.167). And we are now seeing this actually unfolding! At first ISIS (ISIL) was treated haphazardly, but only this past week has the tone of our government ominously changed. The bottom line is clear that air attacks may slow ISIS (ISIL)’s advances, but this satanic army will not be permanently stopped. They are terrorists on a world-wide mission – for Allah and his prophet Mohammad. And our own homeland is in the gravest of dangers. THE GOOD NEWS! In the Greek myth, the many-headed serpent, Hydra, was eventually slain by Hercules. And in the sovereign purposes of Jehovah, our true God, the good news is that the Islamic beast and his false prophet, the Islamic Isa, and their slaughtering armies will be destroyed by the splendor of Jesus’ coming (see II Thessalonians 2:8; cf Revelation 19:19-21 and Daniel 7:16). And the good news is also that the coming of the end-times does not depend on the activities of the beast or his satanic kingdom. Our sovereign God is in charge, and He is moving the players on the chess board as HE wills – restraining and accelerating them at His will. Consequently, the fore-front end-time issue is not the beast, but the reaching of all the world with the Gospel – the task Jesus gave into the hands of His Church when He left us, which when completed will bring back the King! (Matthew 24:14)! And the best news of all is that Jesus wins; Satan loses! As the final outpouring of the Holy Spirit continues to fall from heaven, the broken branches of Israel will continue to be grafted back into their olive tree, and millions more of the orphaned sons of Ishmael will come into relationship with their true Father in heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ, and the grand harvest of the nations will be reaped (see Revelation, chapter 7)! OUR END-TIME MANDATE Jesus commanded us to “Be on guard! Be alert and pray… keep watch… keep watchbecause you do not know when the owner of the house will come back… do not let him find you sleeping… Watch!” (Mark 13:32-36) We are to be awake, alert, watching, praying! We are to pray for the Middle East and for the salvation of Israel and for the reaching of the Arab world and for the salvation of the USA and for the evangelizing of the unreached nations of the earth! And we are to be practically given to world-evangelism, starting from our own neighborhood and going out to the far ends of the earth – praying, sending, giving, going and preaching with signs following! HALLELUJAH! WHAT AN AMAZING HOUR IN WHICH TO BE ALIVE! LET OUR VOICES INDEED SOUND THE
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 08:44:32 +0000
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