PART TWO OF "THE ISLAMIC ANTICHRIST" BY NEVILLE STEPHENS.

THE MUSLIM ANTICHRIST (PART TWO).

We saw last time that the origin of the soon-coming Antichrist will be from the ancient “Assyria” of Bible times, and not from the Revived Roman Empire as is commonly taught in most prophetic circles today.

The Bible is very specific, for after all, it is the Divinely Inspired Word of God. The geography of the Bible is a masterpiece in itself, yet us poor mortals try to indoctrinate our thoughts and teachings into Bible prophesies instead of letting the Sacred Writings mean what they say, and let Holy Writ be its own and best interpreter.

We must also remember that the Bible is predominantly a JEWISH book, and bear this in mind when we come to attempting to unravel certain difficult passages. Every author in the Bible was a Hebrew except one (and even the Gentile Luke became a Proselyte Jew), The Twelve Disciples were all Jews, and all of the Old Testament Judges, Kings, Patriarchs, Priests, and Prophets were all Israelites.

And on top of all of this, the eagerly awaited Messiah of two millennia ago when he appeared on the scene was born in Bethlehem, was baptised in the River Jordan, was raised in Nazareth, spent most of His time in Galilee of the north, was executed in Jerusalem, and never set one foot of His adult life outside of His beloved Israel after his short sojourn in Egypt as a baby!

This is vitally important!! Yeshua ministered only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). He never preached to a gentile audience, and only seemed to accept a gentile enquiry rather reluctantly during His earthly ministry devoted to the Hebrew people,(see Mark 7:25-30 re the Syrophoenician woman and the infamous “dogs eating crumbs from the Jewish table incident”)!

I heard of a lady from the USA recently who was shocked to discover that Yeshua was a Hebrew, and not an American! What is more, she refused to accept her newly found FACT,  and continued to believe that Jesus was a handsome six feet tall  American with long dark hair, ruggedly good features, beautiful blue eyes, and as good looking as any model on the front page of the latest fashion magazine!

Obviously this is a very extreme case, but it does illustrate the point perfectly. A lot of us in Britain, Europe, and America tend to read the Scriptures with a biased Westernised educated viewpoint, and we need to take off those “glitzy glasses” which only distort the real picture, to gain a true perspective on what this Eastern book is teaching us about God’s chosen covenant people, and those countries which come in to contact with her.

Who was Ezekiel thinking of when he was writing about the northern enemies of Israel? Why should we read Russia into this equation when it did not exist as such at that time. He was obviously thinking of the un-mistakable enemies of the Jewish people who existed then, and still do today, such as the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Medes and the Persians. Similarly in the South, the ancient enemies were the Philistines (now Gaza), but primarily Egypt, who are now coming into prominence once again with the fall of the Mubarak regime, and the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

You might have hated the atrocities perpetrated by such despots as Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, and Muammar Gaddafi, but Scripture informs us that it is the Lord who appoints leaders, and these dictatorial leaders ruled their respective countries with a rod type grip of iron, and kept most of the unrest at bay.

However, since their removals, these states are now being over-run by extreme Islamic organisations such as the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, both of which want the destruction of Israel and the removal of the Jewish State off the maps of the world. This is just an extension of the Shi’ite doctrine espoused by the mad Mullah’s of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority, and all of these anti-semitic countries and their proxies surround poor little Israel at present, and banging their war drums louder and louder with every passing day!

Also, another point remembering is that the Roman army under Titus which ransacked and destroyed Jerusalem in AD70 leading to the modern theory that the Revived Roman Empire will produce the Antichrist of Armageddon, was not Roman at all! Several highly respected scholars have written that by the time of the destruction of the Temple in AD70, the Roman army had as few as one in five Italians amongst their huge numbers, with most of the remainder coming from the surrounding territories. 

There were approximately twelve legions of the Roman army which were involved in the attack on Jerusalem. Each legion comprised of 5000 soldiers, but of these 60,000 warriors, only eight per cent were actually Italian! It is estimated by accredited historians that there were approximately 55,000 enemies of Israel that fateful day in AD70, comprising mainly of Syrians, Arabs, and other recruits and mercenaries from other Eastern countries, who actually delighted in the annihilation of their sworn Jewish enemies.

So much so, that according to Josephus in his “Wars Of The Jews”, that even when Titus demanded the withdrawal of his troops after certain victory, these anti-semitic terrorists just continued with their bloodthirsty tactics of death and destruction to the Hebrews, irrespective of disobeying orders from their Roman paymasters, and risking the death penalty for disobeying orders!

Seeing that it was still possible to save the Temple from complete destruction, Titus gave orders to rescue the Holy Structure, according to Josephus, but his orders were ignored by in excess of fifty thousand blood thirsty Jew-hating warriors wanting the complete annihilation of the Hebrews. It was not by the commands of Rome that the Temple was burned to the ground, but by the pure anti-Semitic hatred from the eternal Ishmaelite enemies of the chosen Israelite people!  

The Assyrians have always played a mega part in the downfall of Israel and Jerusalem in the past, and they will also be Satan’s tool in the future to again attempt to bring doom and destruction to God’s ancient covenant people.

There are still many prophesies from the Tanakh yet to be fulfilled, but there are two major predictions from the Old Testament in particular which need our careful attention from the books of Micah and Isaiah.

First of all, let us deal with the section of Scripture from Micah.5:5-15. Here we see a description of a war still future very similar in nature to the eschatological military campaign in the same area east of the Euphrates river described in Rev 16:12, and very much involving the Assyrian and his armies.

In Numbers 24:23, 24 “Ships from the coast of Chittim will afflict Assyria and Eber”. And again in Daniel 11 when the Antichrist is attacked, these ships from Chittim are very much in evidence, giving very strong evidence as to the northern identity of this invader (read Daniel 11:30 and whole chapter). See also Ezra 6:22-7:1 where the King of Assyria and their King of Syria are heavily linked.

Assyria represents the Mesopotamian power. Rome was never a Mesopotamian power, its main geographical theatre being Europe, not Western Asia, whereas Bible prophecy focuses its attention on the northern Mesopotamian power.

The Assyrian power of the end times receives even more treatment in Isaiah. Through the description of his destruction in Isaiah 11:4, he appears again in Paul’s picture of the Antichrist in his second letter to the Thessalonian church. The apostle here quotes directly from Isaiah 11:4 when describing the destruction of this man of perdition. “The lawless one will be at once revealed. Then the Lord Jesus will come in all His splendour, He will breathe upon him and destroy him, and take away all his power. The coming of the lawless one will be accomplished through the power of Satan” (2 Thess 2:8). Paul has in mind the Assyrian material presented by Isaiah, and in this “evil one” he sees the final Antichristian figure.

We have no difficulty in recognising Paul’s quotation of Isaiah 10:22,23 in Romans 9:27,28 that “the remnant will return”, as a prophecy of the future restoration of Israel. Therefore, there is no good reason to overlook his quotation of the destruction of the Assyrian as the destruction of the eschatological Antichrist.

The secret of much good Bible study is in discovering the links between the Old and the New Testaments. Most mistakes occur when the connections are broken, especially when the Old Testament is neglected. When Jesus explained the Bible to His disciples, He “began with Moses and with all the prophets, expounding the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27).

However, much of traditional Christian orthodoxy is based on a Greek philosophical reading of the New Testament severed from the Old, and we in the West are very much guilty of this erroneous approach to our study of Holy Writ today, and of Bible prophecy in particular.

Why do we not let the Bible mean what it says? If it prophesies that the future Antichrist and the King of the North is to be an “Assyrian”, why do we try to wrestle with the Scriptures to make them fit with modern interpretations of a gentile coming out of the Revived Roman Empire? It is far better, and consistent, to let the Sacred Writings mean what they say, and we will continue with this approach in our third instalment to come shortly.

Neville.

PS. Part one of this series is a little further down this blog.