The Islamic Antichrist (15 page)

WHAT ARE THE SEVENTH AND EIGHTH EMPIRES?

Before we proceed, I wish here to acknowledge someone who has greatly contributed to my understanding of this issue, my friend Walid Shoebat. He is a former Palestinian terrorist and the author of
Why I Left Jihad
. I highly recommend this book, which readers can order through his Web site at
www.shoebat.com
.

Beyond the identification of the nations of Ezekiel 38, the Book of Revelation also confirms the notion that, indeed, the region of Turkey will head the future Antichrist’s empire. Let’s examine these passages. “There I saw…a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 17:3).” Here we see the final “beast” empire of the Antichrist. The beast has seven heads and ten horns. We already know from the Book of Daniel that the ten horns represent the ten nations or kings that will comprise the Antichrist’s empire. But the seven heads stand for seven empires that have existed throughout history. All have foreshadowed the final empire to come. As usual, whenever the Bible gives a prophecy that may be difficult in its symbolism, the Bible clarifies the symbolism and explains the passage for us:

This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction. (Revelation 17:9–11)

Now the seven heads are called seven mountains. The Bible often uses mountains as a symbol representing a kingdom or an empire. But most importantly this passage gives us insight into the fact that, before Jesus returns, there will actually have been a total of eight “beast” empires. The eighth empire will be ruled by the Antichrist. How can this passage help us gain insight into the identification of the final empire of the
Antichrist? First, we see that at the time that John wrote this passage, five of the empires had already fallen. This is seen in the phrase “five have been.” These empires are generally accepted by Bible teachers as the following:

1. The Egyptian empire

2. The Assyrian empire

3. The Babylonian empire

4. The Persian empire

5. The Greek empire

After these five, the angel tells John that one empire “is.” At the time that John wrote the Book of Revelation, Rome “was.” It ruled the Middle East, Northern Africa, and much of Europe. Thus the sixth empire was the Roman empire. The next empire, of course, is the seventh, and then the eighth will be the empire of the Antichrist. So the seventh empire is the empire that we need to identify, because, according to the verse, the eighth empire will be a resurrected or a revived version of the seventh empire: “The beast who once was, and is not, is an eighth king.” Let me just paraphrase this portion for clarity: “The seventh beast [empire] that existed, but then did not exist, will come back as an eighth empire.”

So if we are now waiting for the final eighth empire, then what was the seventh? What empire followed Rome?

Because of the harsh anti-Semitic nature of the German Third Reich, some Bible teachers have speculated that Germany was the seventh empire and thus Germany will come back as the eighth.
¹¹

The most common belief, however, held almost universally by Bible teachers, is that the Antichrist’s empire will be a revived Roman empire. There are, however, some glaring problems with this theory. First, Rome was the sixth empire. If Rome was the sixth and will also be the last, then what happened to the seventh? This theory has a gaping hole. Is
Rome the sixth, seventh, and eighth empires? Not Scripture nor history nor common sense supports this notion. Second, every one of the previous six empires ruled the Middle East, including Jerusalem.
This is very important!
We must always remember that the Bible is thoroughly Jerusalem-centric. It is not America-centric, nor is it Western-centric. In the biblical view of things, Jerusalem is the center of the earth. This point cannot be underscored enough. Any theory that revolves around a revived Roman empire based in Europe—for instance on the European Common Market—is a concept foreign to the Bible. Unless the empire rules over or directly affects Jerusalem, it is actually a bit irrelevant to the biblical mind-set.

Third, if we look at the first six empires, each succeeding empire either destroyed or absorbed the empire that preceded it. There is a very natural succession. If we look at each empire, we see that they all fulfill these two characteristics: they ruled over Jerusalem and they defeated or absorbed their predecessor. The Egyptian empire ruled all of Egypt and Israel as well. But the Assyrian empire defeated the Egyptian empire and likewise ruled over a vast portion of the Middle East, including Israel. After this, the Babylonian empire defeated the Assyrian empire and became even larger than its predecessor, again, ruling over Israel. Such is the pattern with each successive empire: The Medo-Persian empire succeeded the Babylonian empire, only to be succeeded by the Greek empire. The Greek empire was in turn succeeded by the Roman empire. Which leads us to the seventh empire. Who overcame the Roman empire? In order to answer this question, we need to briefly review the fall of the Roman empire. What exactly happened?

In AD 395, the Roman empire was divided into two portions; the eastern and the western portions. The eastern portion became known as the Byzantine empire. In AD 410 the western capital city of Rome fell to invading Germanic tribes known as the Visigoths or Barbarians. The western/European
half of the empire, including its capital, had fallen, but the Roman empire nevertheless continued. How so? It simply shifted its capital and its throne from Rome to Constantinople—a thousand miles east. The western European portion of the Roman empire fell but the Eastern Byzantine portion of the Roman empire lived on for nearly another thousand years with Constantinople as its capital. The Roman empire didn’t actually completely fall until the eastern portion of the empire finally fell in AD 1453 to the Turks. The Turkish/Ottoman empire succeeded the Roman empire and ruled over the entire Middle East, including Jerusalem, for nearly five hundred years.
¹²
The Turkish empire existed right up until 1909.

Thus we see that the only empire that fulfills the patterns necessary to be considered the seventh empire is the Turkish/Ottoman empire. This of course corresponds perfectly with Ezekiel’s list of nations with such a heavy emphasis on Turkey.

THE COMING RESTORATION OF THE CALIPHATE

The Turkish empire was the seat of the Islamic caliphate. It was not until 1923 that the Islamic caliphate was officially abolished. Today the Islamic world awaits the restoration of that caliphate. The Bible teaches that someday soon the Turkish empire will be revived:

The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the Book of Life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, then he was not, and yet came again. (Revelation 17:8)

At that time, we may expect to see the Islamic caliphate restored. Eventually a man might rise to this position whom the Muslim world would refer to as the Mahdi, but people of understanding will identify him as the man known biblically as the Antichrist.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE DARK NATURE OF MUHAMMAD’S REVELATIONS

W
e begin our further critical examination
of Islam with the person of Muhammad and his revelations, for this is where it all started. If we expect to accurately discern the spirit of Islam then we must begin at the foundation; we must examine the seed. Muhammad is the founder of Islam and Muslims believe he is the sole human instrument that “received” the words of the Qur’an directly from Allah. This chapter will review the nature of Muhammad’s spiritual encounters that led to his career as a “prophet” and birthed the religion that now has the attention of the world.

THE BIRTH OF THE QUR’AN

Muslims believe that when Muhammad received the revelations that make up the Qur’an, he received them word for word, directly from Allah. Consequently, in the Muslim mind, Allah actually authored the Qur’an. The Qur’an is thus intended to be read as if it were Allah speaking directly in the first person. Muhammad is viewed as merely the human messenger, or the apostle of Allah (
rasul-allah
). As one Muslim theologian has said, “The prophet was purely passive—indeed unconscious: the Book was in no sense his, neither its thought, nor language, nor style:
all
was of God, and the Prophet was merely a recording pen.”
¹
This stands in distinction to the Christian view of the nature of inspiration of the Bible. Christians understand that while God indeed
inspired
the authors of Scripture to convey His thoughts
and words, each individual author brought to the Scriptures his own style and personality. God used the human agents as His vessels, but He did not override them. As we will see, this was not the manner of Muhammad’s revelations.

Karen Armstrong, a popular and highly sympathetic writer about Islam and Muhammad, gives this account of the manner of Muhammad’s initial encounter with what Muslims believe was Gabriel (Jibril) the angel in the Cave of Hira:

Muhammad was torn from his sleep in his mountain cave and felt himself overwhelmed by a devastating divine presence. Later he explained this ineffable experience by saying that an angel had enveloped him in a terrifying embrace so that it felt as though the breath was being forced from his body. The angel gave him the curt command: “
Iqra
!” “Recite!” Muhammad protested that he could not recite; he was not a
kahin
, one of the ecstatic prophets of Arabia. But, he said, the angel simply embraced him again until, just as he thought he had reached the end of his endurance, he found the divinely inspired words of a new scripture pouring forth from his mouth.
²

Armstrong mistakenly, however, does not mention that it was not actually until the third time that the “angel” had strangled Muhammad, demanding that he recite, that he finally did so.
³
This encounter stands in stark contrast to the gentle nature of angelic and divine encounters found throughout the Bible, where the angels (or the Lord Himself) almost always begin their conversation with the comforting phrase, “Do not be afraid” (Genesis 15:1, 26:24, 46:3; Daniel 8:15–19, 10:12, 19; Matthew 28:5, 10; Luke 1:13, 26–31, 2:10; Revelation 1:17).

We should not be surprised to find out, then, that after Muhammad’s terrifying and violent encounter with the spirit in the cave, he believed that demons possessed him. Muhammad became so distraught that he grew suicidal. From Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Ishaq’s famous early biography of Muhammad,
Sirat-Rasul
, we read:

So I [Muhammad] read it, and he [Gabriel] departed from me. And I awoke from my sleep, and it was as though these words were written on my heart.… Now none of God’s creatures was more hateful to me than an [ecstatic] poet or a man possessed: I could not even look at them. I thought, “Woe is me poet or possessed—never shall Quraysh [a tribe of Muhammad’s day] say this of me! I will go to the top of the mountain and throw myself down that I may kill myself and gain rest.” So I went forth to do so and then, when I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying “O Muhammad! Thou are the apostle of God and I am Gabriel.”
³

The reference to “poet or possessed” comes from the notion that Arabs who were contemporaries of Muhammad believed that poets created their poetry under the inspiration of demons. At-Tabari, one of Islam’s most highly respected early historians says, “The pre-Islamic Arabs believed in the demon of poetry, and they thought that a great poet was directly inspired by demons…”
⁴

After the terrible experience, Muhammad returned home to his wife Khadija, still terribly disturbed by the encounter.

Then Allah’s Apostle returned with the Inspiration, his neck muscles twitching with terror till he entered upon Khadija and said, “Cover me! Cover me!” They covered him till his fear was over and then he said, “O Khadija, what is wrong with me?” Then he told her everything that had happened and said, “I fear that something may happen to me.”
⁵