Middle East Chaos

There was one announcement I forgot to make, and that is that the festival booklets have arrived. If you would like to pick those up for your children, please see me or Connie afterwards. I have all of those here for you and a list to check off for that. I apologize for not mentioning that earlier. What news items have dominated the headlines over the last few years? I'd like you to think about that for just a minute. We'll do a brief review here.

About three and a half years ago, we saw the so-called Arab Spring, when several Arab governments were overthrown in Libya, for instance. Supposedly, this was a democracy movement, although subsequent events proved that was certainly not the case. In several situations, several countries there, Islamic forces took over, like they did in Libya, which has descended into a failed state status right now.

Totally chaotic. One of the news items I sent out to you last night was about how about a dozen Libyan and national airline jets have disappeared from the Libyan airport. Nobody seems to know where they went. It's quite a number of different dangerous options those could be used for in terrorist attacks. Also, we saw in Egypt, here's Tahrir Square, which was dominating the news a lot during that period in Cairo, where the Muslim Brotherhood took over briefly before the army stepped in and ousted them.

Another news item that's dominated the news a lot has been the Syrian Civil War, taking place there, which has claimed approximately 200,000 lives so far. 200,000 lives. About a hundred times as many as died in the recent Israel-Hamas conflict. And yet, we hear a lot more about that conflict than the civil war there in Syria. In the background of the news, over the last few years, we've also had Iran pursuing nuclear arms and missiles and endless rounds of negotiation with Western nations, during which time nothing has been accomplished other than the fact that Iran has managed to buy more time to pursue their dream of nuclear weapons.

We've also been introduced to a movement in Nigeria called Boko Haram. Arabic for literally Western education is forbidden. In a broader sense, it means anything to do with Western ways is forbidden, according to the Quran. They have been made most famous by their kidnapping of several hundred Nigerian schoolgirls who they took away into the jungle. They disappeared there. In more recent months, we've witnessed history being made with the emergence of a couple of new nations in the Middle East, with the rise of the Islamic State being one of those nations there.

It's spanning much of Iraq and Syria. This red area here is what they controlled. As an outgrowth of that, Iraq, as we have known it, no longer exists in the form that we have known it from the last century or so, because it's essentially split into three countries. We still have the rump of Iraq down here, but then the Islamic State is taken over the middle part of the country and is virtually knocking on the doors of Baghdad, as you can see.

And then the northern part of Iraq is in the process of becoming a new nation, you might say, of Kurdistan. It's not officially declared, but that's the homeland for the Kurds. They've never cared much for being under Iraqi domination. So we have seen Iraq split into three different nations here, just within the last few months here. And then, of course, in more recent months, we've seen the latest outbreak of the Hamas-Israel War in the Gaza Strip.

I've sent you many, many articles about that over recent weeks, so I won't go into a lot of detail about that here. But what do all of these things have in common? And why are we seeing history written and rewritten before our eyes? Why are we seeing so much chaos in the Middle East right now? What's behind it and where is it going? And that's why I've titled today's message, Middle East Chaos.

What's happening and why? What's happening and why? Because we literally cannot understand what is taking place in so much of the world news if we don't understand what is taking place in the Middle East right now, and more importantly, why it is taking place. Because the Middle East is not the only area affected by these trends.

They're increasingly affecting the rest of the world. If you've been reading the material I've been sending you in my weekly e-newsletters, you probably recognize immediately what all of these events I've listed have in common, and that is Islam. They are all driven by Islamic beliefs that are spelled out in their holy book, the Quran. I have a copy of it here that I brought with me today.

But that's not where the story begins. The story actually begins much earlier than that. It begins about 4,000 years ago in the Bible, the biblical book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible.

It begins with a man named Abraham and some very foolish decisions that he made to have a son by his wife's handmaid, an Egyptian woman by the name of Hagar, and she became pregnant. And you may remember the story—we won't go through a lot of the background—about how Sarah, Abraham's wife, became very jealous of Hagar, and Sarah dealt harshly with her maid servant who promptly ran away into the desert. We'll pick up the story in Genesis 16 because it contains here a prophecy about the era of the peoples who were descended from Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham. At this point, Hagar is about to die of thirst in the desert where she has fled from Sarah, and an angel appears to her and tells her something about the son that she will have, a prophecy here. So we pick it up here in Genesis 16, verses 10 through 12, and I'll read from the NIV here. It says here, the angel added, speaking to Hagar, I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count. So there would be many descendants from Ishmael. The angel of the Eternal also said to her, you are now with child, and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Eternal has heard of your misery.

And notice this prophecy about the characteristics of the descendants of her son Ishmael, who is the progenitor of the Arab peoples. This verse is not translated that well in the King James or New King James, so this is why I'm reading from the NIV here. It says, he will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility towards all his brothers. And this is a perfect description of the descendants of Ishmael, the Arab peoples. To this day, they have throughout their history seldom been able to get along, except when they are united in their hatred or fighting somebody else. They are very quarrelsome people. The only time they are united is when they're hating somebody like the Israelis more, and that's when they tend to band together and be united.

The Arabs, the sons of Ishmael, have a very long history of fighting and conflict, and not getting along with others. And as we see here, they would have characteristics of a wild donkey, very independent, very independent-minded, and in constant conflict with others around them.

Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because it was the Arabs, mostly Arabs from Saudi Arabia, who committed the terror attacks of 9-11 almost 13 years ago.

They're the ones who came into Afghanistan, who took over it and established a rule there through the Taliban. They're the ones who are still holding out and fighting. They're in Afghanistan to this day. They're the ones who are forming the backbone of the newly established Islamic State. They're in Iraq and Syria. They have not been, again, united for very long, except under force of arms and hatred for common enemies. Moving to the next chapter of Genesis, we see another prophecy of the Arab peoples, Genesis 17. And this is, again, a prophecy about Abraham's descendants through Ishmael. And here is God talking to Abraham, and he says, and as for Ishmael, I have heard you, Abraham's interceding for Ishmael. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly.

He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, so Isaac would be the one to receive the birthright blessings, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year. So Isaac would receive the birthright blessings, which we understand have been passed down through basically the English-speaking nations of the world, Britain, the British Empire, and Commonwealth, and the United States have been the great recipients of those wonderful blessings promised to Abraham. However, we see here that Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arab nations, would be multiplied exceedingly, and would be a great nation in their own right.

Now we need to realize we're not talking about national borders as such, but peoples who would be a great nation or great empire there. And that is certainly the case.

So what about this promise that the Arabs would be a great nation?

That promise was fulfilled historically, beginning more than 13 centuries ago.

From the Arabs sprang the religion of Islam, beginning in the 600s AD. The Arabs took that religion and spread it to conquer about half of the known world, as shown in the orange area on this map here.

They spread all across the Middle East, spread across North Africa, even into some parts of Europe. As you can see here, they captured Spain and Portugal. The area there, they actually moved as far up as to the outskirts of France, outskirts of Paris, rather, in modern-day France.

There they spread over far over here to the east, over into what is today India, North Africa again, the entire Arabian Peninsula, which is today Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, states like that. They had a very effective evangelistic campaign. It was called Convert to Islam or Die. So that's how they were able to expand their empire so swiftly and so powerfully and so extensively during that first wave of Islamic expansion.

After several centuries, that wave of expansion more or less lost its momentum. So Islam kind of retrenched and held on to their gains there. But then in the 12th century, they started a second wave of expansion, which we see highlighted in the lighter orange or bright yellow areas here. It spread much further down into Saharan Africa. Here it spread way up into Europe, took over all Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It spread into the Balkans, spread up here into what is today Southern Russia, took over much of India. Different traders spread it down into Indonesia and areas of the islands over in this area here. And for several centuries, while Europe was in the Dark Ages, the Arab Islamic Empire was the most advanced civilization on Earth.

And that was the fulfillment of this prophecy about the descendants of Ishmael, that they would be a great nation with large numbers of people that was fulfilled in these two great Arab Islamic empires. Again, beginning in the 600s and then on up to their greatest extent in the 1500s there. They pioneered a number of different sciences like algebra, arithmetic, architecture, astronomy, and truly became a great civilization here. But part of the reason for the jealousy of Muslims today and the Arab peoples in particular over the success of the Western world is that they remember that they once had this tremendous great empire, one of the greatest in world history. But it came and went. It doesn't exist. Now, if you travel to the Arab world, you'll see a great deal of poverty, sickness, disease, lack of education, lack of human rights, things like that. But they think that they still have the right to be that great empire that they once were. And they're very resentful that the Western world has reached such great heights in technology and education and cultural attainment while Arab civilization has declined. And that is not the way things should be according to their holy book, the Quran. So they are very resentful toward the West because of that. Because they are the ones who are to be blessed and running the world. They also, in their holy book, incidentally, it says that not Isaac, but Ishmael was to be the one to receive all the great birthright blessings. So they're very resentful, especially toward Israel, among other reasons for that. So how did we get to the point that much of the world and nearly all of the Middle East is in chaos because of Islam? There's a lot we need to understand about it. There's a lot that you're not going to hear in the mass media. And we'll cover some of the key points today. I thought about titling this sermon another politically incorrect sermon about Islam, but I thought I'd just go with the one about Middle East chaos. But it is definitely politically incorrect. You're going to hear things. You're going to hear quotes from the Quran that you're not going to read elsewhere that explain what we're seeing in the world today. If you would like to educate yourself on this, come and check with me. I can recommend a number of books or websites about that.

They're going to a lot more detail than what I'll be covering and just hitting the high points on.

So let's start with some of the high points to frame Islam and its role in the world today.

What is the magnitude of the Islamic religion? Out of a world population of approximately 7 billion, about one in every four to five people is a Muslim, about 1.5 to 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. However, I've read some accounts that place that number as high as 2 billion. There now in comparison, the total number of Christians is also about 2 billion, approximately 1 billion Catholics, about 1 billion Protestants. So Islam, roughly the same number of Muslims as there are Christians in the world today. Muslims make up, we can see this depicted on this map, make up more than half of the population in 50 nations, more than half the population in 50 nations. Those are the ones that are shown in green on this map. And if you wonder why Muslims have so much clout in the United Nations, this is why. Because they dominate about a quarter, approximately, of the world's nations. The yellow areas on the map show areas where the Muslim population is between 10% and 50%. So up to half, 10% to half of the population in the area shown in yellow. The entirety of the Middle East, with the exception of tiny little Israel here, is overwhelmingly Muslim. And by overwhelmingly, I mean 90 to 100% Muslim there. Most of the northern half of the continent of Africa. Think of the desert areas, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, places like that, Morocco, Algeria, is also overwhelmingly Muslim too. I might mention also too that Muslims control most of the supply of the lifeblood of the world economy, which is oil coming out of the Middle East. So all of these facts together make Islam a huge and growing factor on the world scene. It's not a diminishing factor, it is a growing factor. Their influence in the world, politically, economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and so on. Does Islam affect your life? Does it? Yes, it does. Again, consider these facts. On September 11, 2001, 19 Muslim hijackers flew planes in the World Trade Center in the Pentagon and flew another jet that crashed in Pennsylvania that was apparently headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol building with a plan to decapitate the United States government to kill the President and or Congress.

They killed 3,000 Americans on that day. All of the hijackers were Muslim, 15 of them were from Saudi Arabia in the heart of Islam. And if you think back to the world before 9-11, it was quite different than the world that we are in today. That one day changed the course of human history, certainly the course of our nation's history. So how did we get to that point? What is it in Islamic teaching and history has brought the world to the point where it seems that Islam is in a war against the rest of the world? To find out why Islam is in its current state and to understand where it's going, we have to go back and look at its history.

And the story starts moving forward from the prophecies we read about Ishmael. It moves forward about 1400 years ago into what is today Saudi Arabia. Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, was born in the year 570 AD, and Mecca, one of the holy cities of Islam. Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. He was born into a poor family. And from childhood, there was one thing that was quite unusual about Muhammad, and that is that he experienced strange visions. Some researchers have suggested that perhaps he was suffering from epilepsy because accounts of those visions describe what seemed to be or could be interpreted as epileptic seizures. There's no way to know for sure, but he would go into these trance-like states after which he would wake up and describe what he had seen while he was in this trance or passed out or in the seizure, whatever it was.

At the age of 40, Muhammad began experiencing a series of what he termed visitations.

Visitations by the angel Gabriel, as he called it. Here's a Muslim interpretation that Muhammad here and the angel Gabriel visiting here is depicted in Muslim art.

He said that as a result of this experience that Allah, the Arabic word for God, Allah, had called him. He told people that he had been asleep in a cave in the mountains when Gabriel spoke to him and began revealing the words, the divine revelation of Allah, to him. He claimed that he was sent to restore the religion that had been given to Abraham and that he was the last of a long series of prophets that included individuals such as Abraham, Noah, Daniel, Jesus Christ, and others. He started reciting these visions and revelations to his followers. He started gaining a following them, started reciting what he had seen in these visions while he was passed out or in these trances, and claiming again that these were the words of Allah, which he repeated word for word and his disciples wrote them down. That became the basis for their holy book, the Quran, again. As Muhammad began to acquire greater power and more followers, he announced after several years that Allah had ordered Muslims to fight to go to war against non-believers, and it began to drive away for people who did not agree with him and arranged for opponents to be assassinated. Muhammad began to test his own power in making war. He ordered some of his followers to go out and attack caravans, which were very common around Mecca, Medina. They were successful, so successful that Muhammad himself started leading attacks on caravans, villages, and this sort of thing. As his success built upon itself, followers following him for the loot, the plunder they could get from attacking these wealthy caravans, his movement began to grow and gain more power and influence. It was around this time that Muhammad decided that the Jews were not going to convert to his new religion. There were actually quite a few Jews scattered among the towns of the Arabian Peninsula there. At first he tried to encourage the Jews to accept him as a prophet by preaching monotheism, that there is one God, just as Jews believed in one God. Interestingly enough, he at one point observed the Sabbath day, the seventh day Sabbath. He prayed toward Jerusalem, pointing toward Jerusalem. He observed the dietary laws of the Old Testament, and you still find remnants of that in Muslim custom today with their dietary laws, which are very similar to what we believe and what is taught in the Bible there. However, when he decided the Jews were not going to convert and accept him as prophet, he changed all of that. He changed his day of worship from the Sabbath to Friday.

That's why Muslims consider Fridays their holy day. He changed the direction of prayer from Jerusalem, as the Jews prayed, to Mecca there in Saudi Arabia. He adopted Friday as a pagan holiday, so he adopted that as well. He also adopted various other pagan religious rights and incorporated those into his belief system as well. Around this time, after the Jews rejected him, he began persecuting and killing Jews, going to war against them. This hatred of Israel, of Jews, the Jewish people, goes back directly to Muhammad and his ministry there, as he saw it, his mission. He first sent out assassins to target individual Jews, whom he disagreed with or who opposed him. Later, he began attacking entire Jewish settlements and towns. There was a financial as well as a religious reason for these attacks. The financial incentive was that many of the Jewish settlements were centers of the gold and silver trade. By attacking these cities, towns, settlements, he could take for himself the silver and gold that they had accumulated in these towns. After one Jewish town in particular surrendered, Muhammad had up to a thousand men beheaded there and sold the Jewish women and children into slavery, while his men polluted all the possessions of the town. Muhammad had two great weaknesses. One was women and the other was greed. By looting the different caravans, towns, and settlements, he amassed a great deal of wealth for himself, for his family and his tribes. His other great weakness was women.

Although in the Quran he would state that Allah would allow a man to have up to four wives, Muhammad himself took far more. He took a total of 22 women. The first 16 of those were wives, but he also took two others who were slaves or concubines. We'll talk about that in Islamic teaching a bit later today. He took another four who were neither wives nor slaves, but were simply devout Muslim women who gave themselves to Muhammad as mistresses to satisfy his sexual desires.

Muhammad's third wife was named Aisha. You may hear that name from time to time. It's actually a very popular girl's name among Muslims, Aisha. She was only eight or nine years old when Muhammad married her. Several years ago, a prominent American evangelist stirred up a hornet's nest when he said that Muhammad was a pervert and a child molester. That's what he was referring to.

The fact that he took a wife at eight or nine years old with all that that entails. All kinds of people apologized for this man's statements and so on, but nobody had the courage to point out that he was right. Muhammad was a pervert and a child molester for taking an eight or nine year old girl to be his wife. There. No more comments on that. After accumulating more power and wealth, Muhammad died in the year AD 632. Since he had two sons who died young, he had no living sons and thus no arrangements for a successor. Because Muhammad hadn't spelled out what was to happen after his death, Islam soon broke into two main sects, the Shiite or Shia Muslims and the Sunni Muslims. You'll hear those terms quite a bit in the news. They divided over who was to be the rightful successor of Muhammad. We see this depicted on a map here. The dark red areas are those dominated by Shiite or Shia Islam. It's heavily concentrated in three countries.

Iran, which is about 90% Shia, Islam, Iraq, which is about 60-70%, and Lebanon, with Hezbollah there, is predominantly Shiite as well. Most of the other Arab countries are Sunni Islam here.

Incidentally, the shades on this map are similar to the other one I showed you. The dark, well, you can see the scale here. The darker the green, the greater the concentration. So the dark green areas are where it's basically 50% or more Muslim. The lighter greens are showing lesser percentage of population as Muslims. Again, Iran, the dark red, is about 90% Shia Muslim there. They divided over the issue of who might be a rightful ruler as a descendant of Muhammad. The Shias, let's see, let me find this here. Yeah, excuse me, the Sunnis, who are the majority in the Muslim world, as we see in the green here, believe that any Muslim who is a sufficiently devoted follower of Muhammad could be a caliph or ruler of the Muslim world. The Sunnis, the Shiites, believe that only a descendant of Muhammad and his son-in-law Ali, who was the first caliph, may be a rightful ruler over Muslims. So they divided very early on within the first century after Muhammad's death into those two great competing spheres. I might mention also that the religion of Islam is a lot like traditional Christianity and that Muslims do not believe the same thing universally. There are different shades of belief, different levels of devotion, different interpretations of some of the instructions of Muhammad and so on.

They are divided into dozens, if not hundreds, of different sex, belief strains of Islam, much like Christianity is today. Again, Muslims are united when they are only fighting and hating somebody else more than they fight and hate each other. We see, for instance, the Islamic State right now butchering other Muslims because those are Sunni Muslims who are butchering Shiite Muslims, who they consider as non-Muslims or infidels. Unfortunately, a lot of Muslim history is Muslim on Muslim violence. Something like 90 to 95 percent of the violence going on, the deaths in the Muslim world in recent months, have been not from Israelis attacking, firing missiles into Gaza, but from Muslims killing other Muslims. About 90 to 95 percent are Muslims killing other Muslims, not Israelis. Of course, you would not realize that from the news coverage that we're seeing here.

Looking back on our map here, after Muhammad died in AD 632, his followers spread Islam with a vengeance. Again, the darker orange was the initial wave that took place during Muhammad's lifetime.

Shortly after that, they again spread out from the Arabian Peninsula here, out across North Africa to Spain and Portugal, and up to the north, encompassing all of the Holy Land, what is today Iraq, Iran, and so on, well over into what is today Pakistan, Afghanistan, places like that. So, those have been Muslims since the 600s, 700s AD. Christians, and as they went, Christians and Jews who are called people of the book, we'll talk about that a little bit later on too, were allowed to retain their religion, but they were forced to accept what is called a demitude.

Basically, that means you're a second or third-class citizen, somewhere between a free citizen and a slave. You have to submit to a very restrictive, great number of restrictions on your rights.

Christians are not allowed, for instance, to build new churches. In many cases, they can't even repair their existing churches. You have to pay tax to the Muslim rulers, things like that. Sometimes wear special clothing, not allowed to have arms to own or possess arms or carry them. They're not allowed to, at that time, ride horses or dress in fine clothing, things like that. They were definitely relegated to second or third-class status. They're a little bit above slaves. Those of other religions, other than Christianity and Judaism, were simply given the choice of you convert to Islam or you die. Period. So again, that was a driving force behind the spread of Islam during these two great waves of conquest. This map that we're looking at also explains why we see so many of the wars that are taking place around the globe today. Virtually every war that we're hearing about in recent years, I'll name just a few, Algeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, down in this area here. Up to the north, the Balkans, Kosovo, the wars between the Serbs and the Albanians, and so on. That Chechnya, which is up in this area right here.

The wars in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Wars going on in the Philippines, some of the Philippine islands, and so on. All of those, if you'll notice on the map, they're all around the edges of Islam. One historian termed this the bloody borders of Islam, where Muslims are spreading out and taking over the lands of their neighbors. We'll read a command from the Quran in a few minutes ordering Muslims to do this. That is why we see virtually every war taking place in the world right now is Muslims attacking their neighbors, trying to conquer their territory. There are a few exceptions, but very few exceptions to that rule. But what drives these actions, this violence, again? What are the basic beliefs and practices of Islam that are behind what we see in the world today, and particularly in the Middle East? Let's go over this. The word Islam literally means submission or surrender. You'll see some people say that Islam means peace. It does not.

Most assuredly does not. The Arabic word for peace is salam, somewhat similar to Islam, but different. You might think of the Hebrew shalom, which we're familiar with, the Hebrew word for for peace, the Arabic equivalent is salam. Islam does not mean peace. It means surrender or submission there. So a believer in Islam is called a Muslim or a Muslim, which means someone who accepts surrender to the will of Allah. That's what the submission and the surrender is due, the will of Allah. Muslims are required to recite what is called the Shahada, which states, there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. That is actually how you become a convert to Muslim by reciting this. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. That's very significant to a Muslim. There is no other God. The God of the Bible is not God. Jesus Christ is not God. There is no God but Allah in Muslim thinking, and Muhammad is his prophet. No one else, just Muhammad. It's very important to understand these. These words are so important that we see them inscribed on the flag of Saudi Arabia, this green flag. This is, in fancy Arabic script, this, the Shahada. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. That's what is stated, reading from right to left, on the flag of Saudi Arabia and various other Muslim countries and organizations. There is no separation of church and state in Islam. They are one and the same.

There is not freedom of religion. Your freedom is to practice Islam or die. In many Muslim states here, some of you have visited a place like Saudi Arabia and have some stories to tell about that.

To reinforce the point about the seriousness of Islam, notice the other symbol on the Saudi flag.

What is it? A sword. They mean that seriously. This Shahada also appears in a more basic form on a flag that you may have seen on various news reports and photographs. The black flag of the Islamic State. You may have wondered what do those symbols mean. Same thing. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. This is a simplified form of the Shahada. It's starting to show up everywhere in the news, including riots in Europe. As we see here, two of them. This man is wielding a flag to try to beat a police officer with. Here's another one over here, slightly out of sight. Here's another Islamic flag with the Shahada. There's not enough of it to read in the fancier Arab script. Starting to show up there in Europe. Starting to show up in the United States. One of the articles I sent you last night was about a rally in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. There were a number of these flags flown there as well. Here we see it in Iraq, courtesy of the Islamic State.

Here it is being waved. You can't see the rest of the picture, but there's a man standing here waving this flag over a group of Iraqi soldiers who are about to be led away to be executed.

So it is showing the supremacy of Allah over all other gods. These are Sunni Muslims. Again, they believe the Shiites are infidel, so they feel no guilt, shame whatsoever in taking them out and slaughtering them. This is what is taking place after this photo was taken.

So where do Muslims get their ideas, their beliefs, that drive this kind of violence, this type of thinking? For the most part, they come again from the Quran, as we'll see here in much of the rest of the sermon. There is another set of works called the Hadith.

H-A-D-I-T-H. You may hear that word from time to time, the Hadith or Hadiths.

These are sayings and actions of Muhammad that are not recorded in the Quran but are considered authoritative. To use an equivalent of the Bible, we have the Gospels that record the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. And there's the Book of Acts, which describes what other things that went on that are not in the Gospels. That would be a rough equivalent to Islam with the life and teachings of Muhammad recorded in the Quran. And then the Hadiths would be kind of the acts of other things that Muhammad said and wrote and actions of his life that are not recorded in the Quran. That's a much larger set of works and I don't have a copy of that. So I'll go through now.

Let's focus on what the Quran itself says that drives these different beliefs and actions. I'll go through these rather quickly so you may just want to write down the references there. The verse references. These are called surahs, which is the equivalent of chapters in our Bible. There'll be a chapter and a verse number. You can look these up online. There are several versions of the Quran online. There are different translations. So I'm reading from the Daywood translation into English. There are several others. So what you read online may differ a little bit from this. But this is considered one of the most authoritative translations of the Arabic Quran into English here. So let's go through some of the teachings about Islam. One of the primary ones, a clear teaching of Islam, is that Islam is to be the only world religion. It's to be the only world religion and that it will win out over all other religions. And eventually the entire world will come under Islamic rule. We see several surahs that state this. Surah 61 in verse 9. Again, I'll read through these fairly quickly. It is He, Allah, who has sent for His Apostle, referring to Muhammad, with guidance and the true faith, so that He may exalt it above all religions, much as the idolaters. Now idolatry is referred to in the Quran as talking about worship of any god other than Allah. It's not talking about bowing down to an idol, it's worship of any other god. You need to understand the way they use some of their terminology will be slightly different than we do in English. So idolaters would be anyone who worships a god other than Allah, which would include Christians and Jews. So that He may exalt it above all religions, much as the idolaters may dislike it. So in other words, accept Islam or tough luck. Another clear command, Surah 2 in verse 193. God, Allah, commands Muhammad, fight against them until idolatry, again, worship of any god other than Allah, is no more. And Allah's religion, referring to Islam, reigns supreme. So they are commanded to fight until Islam reigns supreme over the world. Again, idolatry is any religion other than Islam.

In Islam, if you do not worship Allah, you are an idolater, and you are subject to the penalty for idolatry, which is death. Plain and simple. In Islamic theology, I mentioned too that the world is divided into two spheres, called dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. Loosely translated, dar is a word it can mean place, it can mean land, it can mean house, property, it's a fairly broad term.

But generally it's translated as the land of Islam and the land of the unbeliever, or the land of struggle. Now what does this mean? Well, in Islamic theology, Islamic thinking, they believe that, and this is what we see playing out around the world right now, that all non-Muslim lands, as we just read in the previous two quotes from the Quran, must eventually come under the domination of Muslims. They must. They must become dar al-Islam. The world must eventually become dar al-Islam, the land of Islam. Islam must rule the entire world, as we read there. So the rest of the world is considered dar al-harb, the land of the unbeliever or the land of struggle. What this means is that Muslims must attack dar al-harb, the land of the unbeliever or the land of struggle, to overcome those lands and convert them to dar al-Islam.

And this again is why I showed you on the map earlier and referred to the bloody borders of Islam. This is what they are doing. They are following the Islamic theology of converting dar al-harb, the land of the unbeliever or land of struggle, into dar al-Islam. They are commanded to do this in the in the Quran. Let's see, I'm getting ahead of myself just a little bit here.

Yeah, I mentioned here too that our Western leaders, Western government, just simply do not understand. Well, it's hard to say whether they don't understand or they simply disbelieve this. And you can read this in a number of different sources, a number of different books. This isn't my private interpretation of it. Muslims themselves say it in Arabic. They don't come out and say it bluntly in English. But if you go to different sources that translate the Arabic, you will see this. So our Western leaders don't understand this. And this is why we do things like send John Kerry, Secretary of State, over to Israel to demand that the Israeli government give in and negotiate with the Palestinian authority or with Hamas to institute cease fires and just give them land, give them the West Bank, give them more land out of Gaza, give them this or that.

And then we'll have peace. Well, no, we won't. They will not have peace. I had many, many quotes from the Hamas Charter, which I didn't have time to include in the sermon today, and from Hezbollah, the terror group in Lebanon, stating that we won't stop until Israel is destroyed. They're very blunt about that. And speaking to their own people, our own government refuses to accept what they say themselves. What they state is their own goals, their own aims. And we instead try to force the Israelis into negotiations when they explicitly reject a negotiated settlement there because the land of Israel is Dar Al-Harb, and they must convert it to Dar Al-Islam. And another outgrowth of this is that, and this is why so much of the Muslim world is so hostile toward Israel, is that it is considered an abomination in Muslim thinking for land that was once under the control of Islam, as modern-day Israel was during the period of the Crusades, for instance. But then, after the state of Israel was reestablished, this land that had been Dar Al-Islam suddenly became Dar Al-Harb, went from the land of Islam to the land of the unbeliever. And it is Islamic thinking that is just an abomination. So they believe that all land that once any land was ever Muslim land, it must be reconquered and regained for Islam. That is why there is so much. One thing that Muslims are united on is that Israel must be extinguished as a state. You may also read from time to time Muslim references to Andalusia. How many of you have heard that term? It is not one we hear very often, Andalusia. What does that word refer to? It is a Muslim word for Spain and Portugal. As we saw on the map earlier, at one time, back in the six, seven hundreds, they conquered Andalusia and for several centuries it was under Muslim rule. They are determined to recapture Spain and Portugal. They label it Andalusia. They don't use the terms Spain and Portugal. So this is not just Israel that they think of this. Any land. This is why we had the wars in the Balkans that I mentioned back about 20 years ago during the Clinton administration between the Serbs, on one hand who are Christians, and the Albanians who are Muslims.

That goes back to that wave of Islamic invasion when they advanced all the way to the gates of Vienna in Austria and almost took over Europe. But they were defeated there. They retreated back to the Balkans and that area was in conflict for centuries. Didn't start back in the 1990s under the Clinton presidency. No, there were Serbs killing Albanians and Albanians there in Kosovo killing Serbs for centuries. We came in on the wrong side. We came in on the wrong side and helped Muslims defeat the Serbs who were Orthodox, Western Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, I believe, Christians there. So this again all ties back to this concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb that Muslims must eventually conquer the world and convert the entire world to Dar al-Islam. I went a little bit further than I intended to on that, but how is this accomplished then? How is the Dar al-Harb to be converted to Dar al-Islam? Well, that is through a jihad, jihad or holy war. It is a requirement of Muslims, not an option. So look at a number of scriptures about this. Surah 9 in verse 5, when the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters again, anyone who doesn't worship Allah, wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie and ambush everywhere for them. Again, that's Surah 9 verse 5. Another one, verse 73, same chapter, prophet make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them.

Hell shall be their home, an evil fate. One of the great differences between Islam and Christianity or other religions is the absolute cruelty that we see practiced there.

So let's see. Yeah, sorry, skipped ahead of some things here. Yeah, what I wanted to point out here is that here Muhammad is justifying the brutality of his religion by saying that Allah revealed him personally that people of other religions belong in hell, where they're going to be tortured for all eternity. They have a concept of hell very similar to the traditional Christian non-biblical, but traditional view of hell there. So therefore, according to Muhammad, any barbaric act you commit against the enemies of Allah is justified and they deserve it because they're going to hell anyway.

So if you can do anything, any type of cruelty, any torture, any punishment is admissible, permissible in Islam because if it works, you have saved them by converting them to Islam. And if it doesn't work, well, they're going to hell to be tortured for all eternity anyway. So they're just simply getting what they deserve. So this is the thinking that is summarized in this particular verse here.

Another one is Surah 9 verse 123. This is one I referred to earlier about the bloody borders of Islam. Believers make war on the infidels who dwell around you. In other words, your neighboring countries deal firmly with them. Know that Allah is with the righteous. So again, this explains the bloody borders of Islam that we talked about earlier where Muslims are constantly pushing out against their neighboring countries there. In Islam, you don't love your neighbor, you make war on your neighbor. You don't treat your neighbor as you would yourself, you deal firmly with them, which means anything that you can do to convert them to Islam is permissible under Islam, under the Quran. I might mention also here in this context that in Islamic thinking they believe in a version of heaven called Paradise. I covered that a lot in the earlier series of sermons that I gave on there. But in their thinking, the only sure way to enter Paradise, you can never be sure that you are on the right side of Allah, except for one way. There's only one guaranteed way to enter Paradise, and that is by dying in jihad against others. You may have wondered how Muslims are able to recruit suicide bombers. Well, it's very simple because that is their guaranteed ticket to Paradise, and there are 72 virgins there. Because as soon as they detonate themselves in an explosive vest or car or truck bomb or whatever, they are guaranteed instant access into Paradise with their 72 virgins waiting there to be their sexual partners for all eternity.

That is why they are so glad to blow themselves up that way, because they are dying in jihad. So they are guaranteed entry into Paradise. The Quran also says that Allah will punish those who do not wage jihad. Surah 9, verse 39 says, if you do not go to war, Allah will pernish you sternly and will replace you by other men. In other words, if you are a Muslim and you do not wage jihad, you're going to hell, and Allah is going to pick somebody else to replace you who will wage jihad. That's what the verse is telling us here. The Quran also commands using terror and cruelty.

We talked about that just briefly, but let's explore that idea a little bit more with verses from the Quran. It commands using terror and cruelty and the waging of jihad.

Let's notice Surah 8, verses 59 and 60. Let not the unbelievers think that they will ever get away they have not the power so to do. Muster against them all the men and cavalry at your command so that you may strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them who are unknown to you but known to Allah. Now, we've been so shocked at the absolute brutality that we're seeing out of the Islamic State with photographs like these. These are the men with the AK-47 as one of the Islamic State fighters and others on the other side. They're a group of prisoners who former military Iraqi army soldiers who have surrendered changed into civilian clothes and they're marching them out for this. Probably saw some of the photos of this. March them out, into the desert, lined them up, machine-gunned them. What are they doing? They're simply practicing what the Quran tells them to do, which is to strike terror into the hearts of your enemies.

Another surah, Allah revealed his will to the angel saying, I will be with you.

Give courage to the believers. I shall cast terror into the hearts of the infidels.

And then he kills them specifically how to strike terror into their enemies. Strike off their heads.

Strike off the very tips of their fingers. That's surah 8 and verse 12. So what the Quran tells them to do, they do. When it tells them, as it says here, to cut off their heads, they cut off their heads.

When it tells them to cut off their hands, they cut off their hands. Didn't bring any photos of that to illustrate it, but that's what they're told to do. There are photos on the internet, if you're interested, I don't recommend it, but you'll find photos of that, of that as well.

Maybe you have watched it and I don't recommend it. There are videos on the internet. You can search for them of these beheading videos, this type of thing. This was very, very popular several years ago in particular, when they would post a lot of these on the internet. Not quite so much nowadays because they realize it's kind of giving them a bad name. But you may have, if you, you can go on and listen to the soundtrack of this as well, and you will hear them saying a couple of words very clearly in Arabic, Allahu Akbar, or Allahu Akbar, which means Allah is the greatest. Allah is the God that is greater than all other gods. Allahu Akbar, that's what that means. You'll see it in all kinds of videos from the Arab world. You will also, in the videos several years ago, when this one was taken here of an American hostage, as he's being beheaded, you hear a lot of chanting in Arabic, in addition to Allahu Akbar. And you may have wondered what this chanting is in Arabic. What are they chanting? They are quoting Scripture, which says, behead your enemies.

That's what they're doing. They're simply quoting the verses from the Quran that tell them how to deal with their enemies. Behead them. Strike at their necks. Strike off their heads.

Strike terror into the hearts of your enemies. They're simply doing what the Quran tells them to.

Another verse here... Actually, before I get to this, I want to make another point here that in regarding Sharia law, you've heard that term. It is law according to the Quran, where the Quran dictates law and punishment and rights and that sort of thing. One of the things that...

Well, actually, it is in this verse here. Let me read this. Those that make war against Allah and his Apostle Muhammad and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides. In other words, you cut off the right hand and the left foot or the left hand and the right foot. They shall be held up to shame in this world and sternly punished in the hereafter. I might mention here an interjection about Sharia law that here notice that Allah commands the torture and the crippling and the maiming of prisoners.

They take this literally. They crucify people who can find these photos on the internet. Here are two, again, captured Iraqi soldiers, or Syrian, I believe in this case, who are crucified. You can see they've actually rigged up a portable crucifix made out of steel pipes here and have executed these two men. And you can see the crowd standing there snapping pictures with their cell phones and video cameras. These are the tame photos I could show to illustrate this. I did this because it's showing them from the side or the back and doesn't show the wounds and injuries to their heads and torsos and so on. Crucifixion is a horrible form of torture and execution. They practice it with relish. As we see here, crowds get it around to watch to video it. I mentioned also that here, cutting off their hands and feet from opposite sides. In Sharia law, a common punishment for stealing, for theft, is to cut off a hand. Which hand do they cut off? Why? They always cut off the right hand because in the Arab world, the left hand is what you use when you go to the bathroom. In Arab lands, they don't have a lot of toilet paper. If you get my drift, use your left hand. So for someone who has had his right hand cut off, he has to go through the rest of his life eating with the same hand that he uses to take care of himself after he's used the toilet. If you get my drift, it won't be more explicit than that. You might contrast that with God's approach to stealing. What's the punishment for stealing in God's Word? Well, you restore several times over, depending on the circumstances of what you steal. You are not crippled and maimed for the rest of your life because God's Word allows room for repentance and changing and recognizing your guilt and your sin and turning and changing your life.

In Islam, under Sharia law, the punishment is to cripple and maim you so that you are permanently made an outcast for the remainder of your life. Very different approach to the law.

Very different. The thief has permanently crippled and marked as a thief for the rest of his life. You see somebody without a right hand in the Islamic world. You know what happened to him.

He's marked as a thief for the rest of his life. No room for mercy, no room for forgiveness or repentance. Instead, there is just vengeance and utter humiliation in crippling somebody for the remainder of their lives in a most cruel way. This is a totally different concept from what we see in the Bible there again. These things do not happen in a vacuum. They came out of a desert environment, a cruel and harsh environment, where people were bloodthirsty and cruel to survive. We see that reflected in a lot of these commands.

Let's ask another question here. What about Christians and Jews? I mentioned earlier the concept of the people of the book. I used to believe this. I went for a number of years hearing about the people of the book, the people of the book, that Muslims respect and honor Christians and Jews because they also view the Bible as inspired. Thus, Christians and Jews are people of the book and to be honored and respected for that. Is that true? First, we need to understand that when they say the Bible is inspired, yes and no. They believe the Bible was inspired as it was originally revealed, but that Christians and Jews came along and changed it. That originally the Bible, as it was written, agreed 100% with the Quran. Which it doesn't.

You can go back and refer to my earlier sermons where I pointed out a lot of differences between the Bible and the Quran. But what they say is that Christians and Jews perverted and corrupted God's revelation. Otherwise, it would agree 100% with the Quran. So what do they really say about the people of the book, about Christians and Jews? Surah 98 in verse 6. The unbelievers, and again what is an unbeliever? Somebody who doesn't believe in Allah. The unbelievers among the people of the book, Jews and Christians, and the pagans shall burn forever in the fire of hell.

They are the vilest of all creatures. So when you see or hear that Muslims respect and honor Christians and Jews don't believe it, it's a lie. What are many lies?

Earlier I mentioned the Hadiths, the recorded other sayings and actions of Muhammad that are not written in the Quran. I would like to read one that helps explain some of the irrational Muslim hatred toward Jews. This is one of the Hadiths here about the Jews. It says, Allah's Apostle, referring to Muhammad, said, the hour, a Muslim term for the last judgment, the hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.

There's a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him. What this is saying is that Jews are so contemptible that even the stones of the earth will cry out in the last judgment to Muslims who are determined to slaughter Jews, the stones will cry out and say, there's a Jew hiding behind me, come kill him. So to a Muslim to read that Muhammad says that Jews deserve to be slaughtered and will be in the last day, and they're so contemptible that the earth itself will cry out and reveal the hiding of the Jews. So it's no reason then, no stretch of the imagination, why Muslims are so determined to slaughter Jews and to bring up their children, and hating Jews, training them to be suicide bombers from childhood, training them in summer camps, not to make crafts, not to hike, not to enjoy nature, but how to operate hand grenades and machine guns, and how to infiltrate and blow up buses and kill Jews, which is what they do in their summer camps in Gaza. Got interrupted a bit by the war this time, but that's what they've been doing there for years. So I realize this is utterly irrational, but you find this throughout the teachings of Muhammad and the Quran. What about women? What is the status of women in Islam?

Let's notice Surah 4 in verse 34. Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other. Good women are obedient. As for those women from whom you fear disobedience, this is referred to as talking to husbands, as for those women from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them, forsake them and beds apart, in other words, don't sleep with them, go to separate bedrooms, and beat them. Spelled out in the Quran. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Of course, implicit in this is if they do disobey you, beat them some more. Beat them some more. That is the Muslim teaching about women and the rights and rules of women in society. So Muslims are allowed to beat their wives, not just with hands or feet. Either one Muslim cleric got in some hot water several years ago when he ruled that men could beat their wives with a stick, so long as the stick was no bigger around than your thumb. He got quite a backlash when this leaked into the Western media, and he was surprised because he thought he was very generous toward women. You can't beat him with a baseball bat. You can only use a stick as bigger out as your thumb. He was surprised at the outcry. Surprised at that. He thought he was being very generous. And of course, Muslims are allowed to have up to four wives at one time. You're familiar with that. It's in the Quran. I didn't have time to include the reference here. But in practice, because it is so easily for a Muslim man to divorce his wives, they can in reality have virtually as many wives as they want. If you get tired of one, just divorce her and get another one. So long as you can afford to support them, you can have essentially as many wives as you can afford there. In Islam, this has been referred to in a few of the articles. I've sent you a practice called temporary marriage. This has been occasionally mentioned in the press, but not very often. According to this, a male and a female, a man and a woman, can arrange a temporary marriage.

They actually sign a contract which lasts anywhere from an hour to a few days, a few weeks, a few months, maybe even a few years, in which they are temporarily married. They can have sexual relations during that time. But once the period of that contract expires, whether it's an hour or a few hours or a day or months or weeks or whatever, that relationship is simply over. So what this means, and I think this is probably... I haven't been able to find how this practice got started or institutionalized, but it's accepted by virtually all Muslim scholars. So it's not outlandish or out of the mainstream there. My guess is it probably started as a means to legalize prostitution.

That you can patronize a prostitute, what you do is write out a contract for a temporary marriage for an hour, and you can patronize them. And it's perfectly okay in Islamic teaching there. That's my guess. But this is something, again, not publicized much in the West, but it is fairly common in the Islamic world. What about slavery? What about slavery? The Quran commands slavery.

Much of the slave trade, if you've studied history about this during the... here in the United States between in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, much of that came from Arab Muslims who attacked Africa, went from Egypt, Algeria, Libya, those countries, down into sub-Saharan Africa, enslaved the inhabitants, and sold them to white slave traders. That was a large part of the slave trade, but it was all okay because it had the Quran seal of approval. Surah 47 in verse 4 says, for instance, when you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield, strike off their heads, and when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. What this is saying is, if you defeat your enemies, you can either kill them or enslave them. You know, your choice. No big deal, no real difference. Either kill them or enslave them. It doesn't matter because both are sanctioned in the Quran, and that again is exactly what we've seen in many cases. They have no compunction whatsoever about kidnapping Western journalists, as happened with the two American journalists who were recently beheaded there. You can go back and read the quotes from the Muslims justifying that, and they said, well, they didn't have any agreement for protection, so they were fair game. So yeah, we made them prisoners. Yeah, we killed them. Well, it's a big deal. They didn't say it, or they didn't quote, that the Quran tells them to do this. But it is perfectly acceptable. Slavery is, and slavery is very widely practiced to this day in the Muslim world. Again, you won't hear about it because it's politically incorrect, but it is. It is a fact. The Quran also allows taking women prisoners for purposes of sexual slavery. It explicitly says that. Here are a few verses, Surah 33 and verse 50. We well know the duties we have imposed. We is Allah speaking we, and in the royal we sense. We well know the duties we have imposed on the faithful, faithful Muslims, concerning their wives and slave girls. We grant you this privilege of slave girls so that none may blame you for raping the women prisoners that you take, is what it's talking about. Another one, Surah 23 verses 1 through 6. Blessed are the believers, the Muslims, who are humble in their prayers, who avoid profane talk and give alms to the destitute, who restrain their carnal desires except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them.

So it's explicitly stated that Muslim men have the right to rape their slave girls, the captives that they've taken here. When we hear of things like the kidnappings of the several hundred Nigerian schoolgirls, we're horrified that anybody could do that. Just horrified we consider it utterly barbaric, and it is. But the fact is, it's not barbaric to those who did it.

They're just simply doing what the Quran tells them they can do.

They're simply practicing that. And I'll let you in on a secret here. The world, you know, has been hoping we've been sending drone flights over there, trying to find, looking for this group of about 300 schoolgirls, thinking and hoping that they're all together, maybe being held for ransom.

They're not. And anybody who knows anything about Islam can tell you that. They're not. These girls are gone. They've already been sold off as sex slaves, are given away in marriage to their captors there. You've heard reports of some of them converting to Islam there, which is probably they did that for their self-protection. Because again, they could be just as easily killed as becoming slaves there. So some did convert to Islam, but again, they're in for a miserable, miserable life there. But you can bet these girls are not together waiting for the West to come together and pay a ransom. No, they've already been sold. They've already got their money.

They sold them off as sex slaves. So they're probably scattered throughout Africa, perhaps other parts of the Muslim world. We just don't know. They will not be rescued.

They're gone. Their lives are doomed.

So these are some of the beliefs that drive Islam that are totally contradictory to the true God and the Bible. Islam is not going away again. There are one and a half to two billion Muslims in the world. But how am I? Let's change gears here. We've read a lot about Islam, about the quotes from the Quran that tell us what is driving your thinking here. But let's now take a look at how this might play out and the developments in the Middle East and what that means for the world ahead. Do we see some of this reflected in Bible prophecy? I do believe we do.

What I'd like to do in our time remaining is to take a look at a prophecy in Daniel 11 verses 40 through 45. This is a crucial prophecy because it triggers a sequence of events that lead directly to a worldwide bloodbath and to the return of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let's read it here and place it in its historical context and what we know about Islam now. At the time of the end, the King of the South shall attack him.

This gives us a clear time marker at the time of the end, the end of man's age of rule over the earth before the return of the Messiah. At the time of the end, the King of the South shall attack him, and the King of the North, the one who is being attacked, shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships, and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through. So clearly at the time of the end, another round of turmoil is going to engulf the Middle East. This is describing, as we go on, a full-fledged invasion of the Middle East. What prompts this invasion, as we see here, is that this King of the South, as it's termed, attacks or pushes at the King of the North. Daniel 11 uses these terms, King of the South, King of the North, several different times. I won't go through a whole lot of background to that, but these refer to a series of leaders to the South and to the North of Jerusalem.

There, Jerusalem being the focal point of Bible prophecy there. So it's referring to leaders of areas there. Now, in ancient times, when Daniel wrote his prophecy, this prophecy begins with a King of the South and King of the North, who were outgrowth of the Empire of Alexander the Great.

After he died, his empire was broken up into four, among his four generals, one of whom became head over Egypt, the King of the South, and one of whom became the head or ruler over Syria, the King of the North. So those empires fought back and forth, competing against each other, for several centuries there. That's what much of Daniel 11 is about. You can read about this in our Bible reading program, or the Middle East in Prophecy booklet. It goes into a lot of details about that, which I don't have time to go over that now. But could these terms be talking about the kings of Syria or rulers of Syria and Egypt now in the end time? Well, no, not really, because those two countries are fellow Arab countries. They've actually been united under Nasser back in the 60s, I believe it was. So they're not enemies. They are not candidates for this. But what happened is, as this prophecy progresses along, the King of the North, Syria, was absorbed into the Roman Empire and became a part of that. Again, I don't have time to go into all of that, but the King of the North, as we understand it with other prophecies from Revelation and other prophecies in Daniel, will be a revived Roman Empire, a new superpower that is going to emerge out of Europe. And we see that in its early stages right now with the European Union. They're originally the common market before that, where they have combined under a common European constitution, common European economic policies. They're working on a common military command and control right now.

So they are in the process, early stages, of forming a new global superpower. And they vow that their goal is to replace the United States as the next superpower in the world. And what we're seeing, believe me, what you're seeing in Ukraine right now is certainly making a lot of European leaders think long and hard about this, because they have now seen, in the last month, they have seen Russia invade Ukraine. Flat-eyed invade. They just reached a peace agreement, which remains to be seen how long that will last. But they are seeing Russia flex its muscles again. And that is no doubt going to spur these Europeans to think long and hard about, do we need to form a military force to combat this type of aggression? Or Islamic aggression? A lot of Europeans are rightfully very worried about what's taking place with the Islamic State right now, because they've... Well, I'll show you some quotes about this in just a minute here. So that will be the end time king of the north, as we understand it. What about the king of the south? Well, the king of the south in ancient times was referring to Egypt, the land of Egypt. Or by extension, you might extend it over to North Africa.

There. I believe what this is talking about is an end time caliphate. A caliphate, and there's...

Don't know if you've had time to read in your latest good news. There's an article in here about the caliphate. I would highly recommend that you read that. A very good article on that, going through the history of that. And I don't have time to cover that again today.

But a lot of good information there about the caliphate. And a caliph. I think the... I personally think the way things are shaping up is that the end time king of the south will be a caliph, somebody who rises up to unite Muslims into a new, yet another superpower there. Except this one coming out of the Islamic world. It's also interesting that Muslims do believe in what they call the Mahdi, M-A-H-D-I. M-A-H-D-I. A Mahdi, who will be kind of an Islamic messiah, who they believe will arise in the end time in a period of turmoil and chaos, which is exactly what we see in the Middle East these days, and who will rise up and who will unite all Muslims and will lead Islam into its rightful place as the one and only true religion of the world. Many Muslims firmly believe that. So will that individual be this end time king of the South? I think probably so. There have actually been a number of people who have arisen in the Muslim world. Let's see. Don't recall how many. I think it's about a dozen or so. The last one was in 1979. Not that long ago, who rose up and took control of the of the Kaba, the place of the Islamic Hajj there in Mecca, where Muslims are required to go. Took it over. There was a gun battle there. 300 people were killed. He and his followers were executed. But this is not an outrageous idea. Again, there have been about a dozen of them throughout Muslim history of these men who proclaimed themselves to be the Mahdi who would rise up and unite Muslims across the world. So let's see. Got a hit of my notes here again.

So this is a very real Islamic expectation of an end-time Mahdi. Now, we have no idea who such an individual might be, but there are several precedents and a number of possibilities for somebody to rise up and do this. The leader of the Islamic State has already declared himself the Khalif. And more and more terrorist groups are uniting under the banner of the Islamic State.

Might he proclaim himself to be the Mahdi? Possibly. Will this, is his movement the king of the south or this caliphate of the end time? I don't think so. To be blunt, he is so brutal. Their methods are so brutal that I just don't see them being able to gain the kind of large following that is indicated in Bible prophecy there. But I do think what it is doing is setting a precedent for it. It is showing this is a very real desire among millions of Muslims to establish an Islamic State, to unite all Muslims worldwide under one Muslim leader, to establish Sharia law throughout all Muslim lands, and to unite Muslims to conquer the rest of the world there. So I do think that is what is being set up at this point. Moving ahead a little bit now. Excuse me, going back to Daniel 40. Let's pick this up again with some more details. At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, the king of the north, and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships, and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through. Now why would the king of the south, the lands that are to the south of Jerusalem, lands that are at the heart of the Muslim world, attack the king of the north? Why would they do that? What is their motivation? Well again, as we've read, it is the destiny of Islam, as Quran says, to rule the entire world. Now, so it's bound to happen sooner or later, as far as the Muslims are concerned. Now as we again, referring to back to the map we've seen earlier, Muslims at various points of control, Spain and Portugal, and much of Eastern Europe. So they are determined to reconquer those territories for Islam. Let's look at a few quotes here that reflect this Muslim desire to conquer Europe. The first one is from Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed because he was too moderate several years ago. There's a quote, I don't have the year for this, but he said, there are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe, without swords, without guns, without conquest. The 50 million Muslims of Europe, and it's many more than that now, will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades. Another quote here, this is from a Muslim cleric and a member of the Palestinian parliament, of the Palestinian authority.

Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was. Constantinople was the head of the Eastern Roman Empire for about a thousand years, as was prophesied by our prophet Muhammad. Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs, this is a common Muslim way of referring to Jews, the brothers of apes and pigs, yeah, they're beloved people of the book, in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam. This capital of theirs, referring to Rome, will be an advanced post for the Islamic conquest, which will spread through Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, referring to North and South America, and even Eastern Europe. So this is what Muslims themselves say about their designs on Europe. Another one, this is the Jordanian minister for a religious endowment. Islamic lands that were occupied by the enemies will once again become Islamic. Furthermore, we will reach beyond these countries, which are lost at one point, those that were reconquered by Christianity. We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once, and as it will be conquered again, America will come to its end, and they have begun to realize that their end is near. So Muslims do state, and I've got at least that many other quotes from various Muslim religious teachers and leaders. They do clearly have designs on taking over Europe, so it's not something that they see that is centuries off in the future. It's something they have a current desire to do. They're openly talking about it now.

Here are some news photos from a Muslim demonstration in London. These are genuine photos. They're from a news service that I used to buy news photos for our publications.

Notice what some of these signs say. Islam will conquer Rome. Jesus is the slave of Allah.

Islam will dominate the world. Freedom can go to hell. Sharia is the true solution. Freedom goes to hell. Europe is the cancer. Islam is the answer. Jesus will rise the sword of Islam. They believe that Jesus will return as a Muslim to slaughter Christians and convert them to Islam.

Notice a sign in the bottom right. May Allah curse the pope. Trinity of evil. Pope go to hell.

Again, may Allah curse the pope. Some other signs. Butcher those who mock Islam. Behead those who insult Islam. Europe you'll come crawling when Mujahideen come roaring. Europe, the sign says, Europe will pay Fantastic Four are on their way. The Fantastic Four refers to the suicide bombers who blew up the subways and double-decker buses in Europe several summers ago. Kill those who insult Islam. So again, these are signs from Muslim demonstrations in London. There. So this is not... they're not talking centuries off in the future. They're talking now. This is what their desires are. So continuing on. So whatever this attack or pushing at by the king of the south is that we read about there in Daniel, it does trigger a massive retaliation from the king of the north. Possibly it's a series of terrorist attacks. We don't know. We just saw they plan to conquer Rome. They plan to reconquer Spain and Portugal. They plan to reconquer Eastern Europe. They plan to convert it all to Islam. Will they do it by terrorist means? Probably.

Probably that will be a component of that, and that is what might constitute the attack.

We just don't know. Europe is undergoing a slow-motion invasion of Muslims from all over the world. Or not all over the world, but from the Middle East and North Africa right now. I've sent you a number of articles on that. But regardless, and we have seen terrorist attacks. We've seen them in London. We've seen them in Germany. We've seen them in Spain that have killed hundreds of people. But regardless, what happens is it instigates whatever this is, instigates a European counterattack into the heart of the Muslim world, as we read here.

He, this is referring to the king of the North, then shall also enter the glorious land, we're talking about the Holy Land, and many countries shall be overthrown, but thee shall escape from his hand. Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of Amman, those referring to the Jordanians today. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. So he will invade and take over Egypt. He shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt. Also the Libyans and Ethiopians shall follow at his heels. Let's look at this on a map. What it's describing here is the Sintime King of the North will come down, take over Egypt, take over Ethiopia down here, probably Sudan, this was not a separate country in the time of Daniel, take over Libya over here, will invade Israel, but will not invade Jordan. So this King of the North comes down and invades this area. Why?

Probably for the same reasons the United States attacked Afghanistan after 9-11, because that's where the attackers were. We went in to take them out and defeated the Taliban within just a few months of fighting there. So this is probably what is being described prophetically here. So continuing on here in our prophecy in verse 44, But news from the east and the north shall trouble him, again the King of the North. Therefore he shall go out with great fury to destroy and annihilate many. And he shall plant the tents of his palace between the seas and the glorious holy mountain. The seas probably, let me go on, then I'll show you a map. Yet he shall come to his end and no one shall help him.

So the seas and the glorious holy mountains probably referring to the Mediterranean Sea and the Temple Mount there in Jerusalem. And it says also there that news from the east and the north shall trouble him. Well, what is to the east and the north after he has invaded North Africa and Egypt and Israel? What's to the north? Well, you have Syria, Lebanon, Turkey.

Over to the east you have Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, all these various stand countries that are Muslim. And see, you have massive populations of Muslims in those areas who, if they saw their holy land being invaded by what they would term a new crusader movement, what are they going to do? Well, they're going to unite and counter-attack.

So I think that is what is being referred to when it says news from the east and the north shall trouble him, the king of the north, and therefore he shall go out with great fury to destroy and annihilate many. So he's responding probably to this attack or counter-attack from Muslims in all of these other countries over to the north and to the east of the holy land there. So I think that is what is being described. Now, are we seeing the setup for this right now? Well, in a preliminary form, yes, I think we are, with the establishment of a caliphate there in Iraq and Syria, with a man declaring himself the new caliph, the leader of Muslims and calling on Muslims throughout the world to come and join his new nation. I've sent you some quotes about that there. So this is, I think, what is exactly being set up. Again, I don't think this is it, but I think it is setting the stage for it and again demonstrating the Muslim desire for this to happen here.

Again, Arab nations, as we've talked about, have long been divided among themselves.

But Daniel's prophecy mentions three specific things, any one of which could trigger Muslims into uniting, as we see described in this prophecy. One is the king of the north's invasion of North Africa. The other is his invasion of the Holy Land or of Israel and taking over Jerusalem, which is the third holy city in the Islamic trilogy there. And also, well, yeah, that's two of them, his invasion of the Holy Land and his taking over of Jerusalem. In the present world climate, it is hard to envision how a European move on that scale or magnitude or those areas would not trigger a huge Muslim uprising throughout the Islamic world.

So you can see some of this spelled out in our booklet, The Middle East and Bible Prophecy.

It goes into more detail than that. But basically what we see from this point on is that we have a European-centered power, the king of the north occupying the Holy Land and Jerusalem in a large swath of North Africa, and then news from the east and the north trouble him, so he goes out to counter that there. So also to the east and the north beyond, but off the map, we also have Russia with a large Muslim population as well. China, a large part of western China, is also Islamic. We have many other forces there that somehow come together in some configuration of a 200 million man army that is described in Revelation. A 200 million man seems absurdly large compared to the scale of today's armies, but keep in mind again there's one and a half to two billion Muslims in the world. So a 200 million man army is only about a tenth of the world population of Muslims as it is right now. So it's certainly within the realm of possibility.

So the bottom line is that all of these lead ultimately into what is commonly called the Battle of Armageddon. There are outside Jerusalem when these two global superpowers, one from the Muslim world and or China, Russia, and one from Europe come together and clash just before the return of Jesus Christ. So this is an overview of what is taking place in the world, the Middle East chaos, what is happening, and why and how I think it likely fits into our scenario, our understanding of Bible prophecy. So I hope this does help us to better understand exactly what is taking place, why it is significant, and how it might fit into our understanding of Bible prophecy. And I hope that will also help and encourage you in your own life knowing that our Messiah's return is closer than ever. And I can see I've gone a bit over time. Unfortunately, I won't have time for discussion here. Got a little long winded on some of these explanations, but if you do have more questions about that, please feel free to catch me afterwards.