The following is drawn from a new “Quick Study Book” I’m preparing on “What’s Right and What’s Wrong with the Islamic Antichrist Theory”. I have developed what will be a 20,000 word book (about 100 pages) in the same format as my Quick Study Book, Is Russia Destined to Nuke the U.S.? This work grew out of preparations for a discussion with Joel Richardson which took place on March 14, 2016. We taped three radio programs with Larry Spargimino of SW Radio Church in a “fireside chat” format rather than a ‘full-on’ debate. I anticipate these programs will air in early April. The information here expands on information contained in my latest book, The Next Great War in the Middle East. However, that book goes much deeper in several facets regarding the Islamic Antichrist Theory and why I believe it is not an accurate scenario of events in the last days.
THE ISLAMIC ANTICHRIST THEORY FAILS TO FIT THE FACTS
Summary
The Islamic Antichrist Theory (IAT) presents a scenario that excludes important scripture and geopolitical realities. As such, it fails to be the best scenario that fits ‘all the facts’. An Islamic Antichrist is not just an identification of the religious or racial background of the Antichrist, it is a complete ‘reset’ of the futurist scenario in Bible prophecy. It sees the last days’ events depicted by the Bible’s prophets transpiring just in the Middle East. It collapses last days wars into one conflict. It conflates the Antichrist, the Mahdi, and Gog into a single person. It assumes that most of the world is not involved in the events of the last days.
Therefore, the first and foremost issue is, “What theory best fits the facts as presented in the Bible, as presented throughout Christian history by the teachings of the most noteworthy futurists scholars, and stands the test against geopolitical realities?” The Islamic Antichrist Theory (IAT) is propagated principally by Joel Richardson and Walid Shoebat. In general, it is a well-argued and well-researched position. However, I believe a different scenario (which we can call the ‘American/Luciferian Theory’ or ALT, as an ‘alternative theory’) constitutes a better scenario to explain who the Antichrist is and from whence he draws his power. As we will see, ALT is actually an update of the conventional view and reflects the writing and thinking of many top eschatology scholars and teachers today.
As stated in the summary above, the IAT not only asserts the Antichrist is Muslim, but comes from the Middle East, specifically from Turkey, and prophetically is called the “Assyrian” which suggests he might be of Middle Eastern extraction.[i] In contrast, the conventional view proposes that the Antichrist would be a leader of the “revived Roman Empire” – and therefore, presumably a European (Lindsey, Jeffrey, Hitchcock, Ice, Salus among many others). IAT rejects this conventional view. The old Turkish caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, revives in the last days. Turkey becomes a dominant Middle Eastern power and (apparently) subdues the Shi’ites (Iraq, Iran, and Syria). Thus, IAT assumes the Sunnis prevail over the Shia. The Antichrist determines to attack Israel to eliminate it as a nation and kill or disperse the Jews, ending Zionism.
Zechariah Speaks of the Very Last Days Before Christ Returns
Both the IAT and the ‘ALT’ assume the prophecies of the prophet Zechariah are fulfilled literally. Zechariah prophesies that the LORD will bring salvation to the nation of Israel. After giving this promise, Zechariah indicates the process will NOT be painless:
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.
And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God. (Zechariah 13:7-9)
Furthermore, Zechariah indicates that this time of trial will be tumultuous and terrible:
Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.
For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
(Zechariah 14:1-2)
He also predicts plagues will beset those nations that come against Jerusalem:
And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the Lord shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour. (Zechariah 14:12-13)
The IAT believes it will be Turkey that confederates the Islamic nations surrounding Israel while ALT asserts it will be Russia who leads the nations enumerated in Ezekiel 38-39 to attack Israel. The IAT contends Islam becomes the one-world religion – but it controls only the ‘world’ of the Middle East. All ‘nations, tongues, and peoples’ that are dominated by the Antichrist are limited to those dwelling in the region demarcated (as I understand it) by the extent of the old Ottoman Empire (the Middle East, Northern Africa, Eastern Asia, the Balkans, and portions of the Eurasian steppes). The Antichrist and his kingdom are NOT global. In short, this is what the Islamic Antichrist Theory comprises.
Now For Some Contrast with other Scenarios…
Friend John Price, author of The End of America proposes that the Antichrist is a Muslim, but John proposes that he obtains power from Europe. John’s position constitutes a compromise of sorts between the conventional view but revised with Islamic elements. Price regards Islam as the final global ‘one-world religion’. And he would agree with the onslaught of jihad and martyrdom of Christians as declared in the IAT perspective. For instance, John does not believe that Babylon on the Euphrates will be rebuilt nor would it be the capital of the Beast Empire as some propose (Richardson suggests that Jerusalem will be the capital of the Antichrist which some holding the conventional view also support). John believes the scope of the last days, however, is global not just regional. John agrees regarding the place of America as I describe in this article in and the book, The Next Great War in the Middle East, for which John graciously agreed to write the foreword.
Moving on to the conventional view: I should underscore that for most teachers of futurism, it has undergone considerable development since the 1970’s scenario made popular by The Late Great Planet Earth and The Left Behind Series. Most notably, I find the work of J.R. Church to be particularly helpful.
In his book, Daniel’s Predicts the Bloodline of the Antichrist, Church studies the genealogy of the Antichrist from the Book of Daniel and proposes that the Antichrist comprises a person of Greek, Roman, and Jewish ancestry – all three racial bloodlines. Going back to the Church Fathers who speculated on the origin of the Antichrist, J.R. proposed that the Antichrist would be from the tribe of Dan. “Dan is a lion’s whelp.” (Deuteronomy 33:22) We should recall the Tribe of Dan was associated with the strange ‘goings-on’ at Mount Hermon, i.e., the Nephilim. We should also make note that it was the Canaanites (the Phoenicians) of Tyre and Sidon that dominated the seas for at least one full millennium before the time of Christ. J.R. assumed Dan was the father of the Danites. The sea-worthy Danites came to inhabit many of the Greek Isles when they left their lands in Canaan refusing to fight the Philistines who troubled them. The person of antiquity to whom J.R. devoted most attention was the heroic Aeneas (Virgil’s Aeneid, named after him[ii]). Aeneas was from the peoples who would eventually become known as the Spartans, but who fled Troy after the Trojan War (and before the Danites became the Spartans) winding up in what is today’s Italy, becoming a great grandfather of the (perhaps) mythical twins, Romulus and Remus (Rome being named after Romulus). Thus, Aeneas was Hebrew, Greek, and Roman.
Author Tom Horn in his book, Apollyon Rising 2012, also contributed to a more contemporary perspective, arguing that Antichrist is the seed of Satan, incarnated by the principality or power of Apollyon or Abaddon (the destroyer) from the ‘bottomless pit’ mentioned in Revelation 9.
While the antichrist wasn’t revealed in 2012 as Horn intimated he might be, Horn’s other assertion was that the U.S.A. comprised a fulfillment of many aspects of the mythic Greek, Roman, and esoteric aspects of the false Messiah, pointing out the many Masonic and Rosicrucian elements in American architecture (in Washington D.C. in particular), and the tight connection between Freemasonry and Luciferianism that dominates the New Age teachings promulgated by Americans in the twentieth century (Baily, Ferguson, Spangler). My own books, POWER QUEST, BOOK ONE: AMERICAN’S OBSESSION WITH THE PARANORMAL and POWER QUEST, BOOK TWO: THE ASCENSION OF ANTICHRIST IN AMERICA took friend Tom Horn’s work to an even deeper level, substantiating Tom’s theses with considerable additional research. My contention has been that America plays a crucial part in the last days. Far from not being mentioned in the Bible, the United States plays a central role. Unfortunately, it is not a positive one.
The theory I advanced (built upon the conventional view but altering the “revived Roman Empire” to be the United States) along with my co-authors in THE FINAL BABYLON (Douglas Krieger and Dene McGriff) was that an American president would likely become Antichrist. The United States would fulfill not only the prophecies of the Daughter of Babylon but would also incarnate (the last instance or final instance) of Mystery Babylon (i.e., be ‘the final Babylon’). The U.S. would persist deep into the Great Tribulation and wouldn’t be burned or destroyed by fire by the Beast and the Ten Kings as predicted by John in Revelation (Revelation 17) until late in Daniel’s 70th Week, as part of the wrath poured out by God upon the world. John supplies these details regarding the Beast, the ten kings who empower him, and the harlot whom they burn with fire:
And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.
And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.
These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. (Revelation 17:11-18)
Unless that U.S. President was a Muslim in belief or in upbringing (draw your own conclusions here as to whom I may be referencing), our theory would be falsified if most aspects of IAT instead were correct. Our scenario was built upon considerable research into the meaning of Tyre and Sidon, the reality behind the King of Tyre, the connection to the Phoenicians (i.e., Canaanites) and the New World, the meaning of ‘The Merchants of Tarshish’ in the Bible, the connection of the Queen of Heaven, Ishtar, and Jezebel as a picture of the harlot of Babylon, and other ‘types’ in the Old Testament. That matters are not considered or are rejected by IAT.
My view as elaborated in these books (speaking now only for myself, not for Krieger and McGriff) is that the principal religion of the last days is not Islamic, but Luciferian. (Click HERE or on the image just above to see S. Douglas Woodward’s books listed on his author page at Amazon.com).
This American President might become the Antichrist but not while in office as the President. He may at that time be Secretary General of the United Nations. The United States, if it is still functional, may be operating in full cooperation with the U.N. As proposed by Tom Horn, Satan possesses the Antichrist, whoever the ‘son of perdition is’. He may also be in some sense literally ‘the seed of Satan’ (as other writer researchers today speculate). The Beast will also be empowered by a False Prophet who likely possesses satanically derived powers, and despite appearing on the surface to be a great leader in the Christian faith, may even be steeped in ‘Black Magik’ (in the diabolical spirit of Aleister Crowley).
In this respect, the Antichrist would fall right in line with the figure of Adolf Hitler whose SS was a knightly order fashioned on the Teutonic Knights and the deep occult teachings of Karl Maria Wiligut, Heinrich Himmler’s ‘Rasputin.’ Furthermore, the Antichrist will rely upon a powerbase that will comprise, at minimum, the elite leaders in the Western World, but more generally ‘the kings of the earth’ (Psalm 2 et al) which may in fact be equated with the ‘ten kings’. It is possible that the so-called Thirteen Bloodlines of the Illuminati (as documented by Fritz Springmeier and others) will be made manifest through this conspiracy. Individuals (whether truly members of an ‘Illuminati’ order or not) would be at the heart of The New World Order (NWO), globalism, the United Nations, and the key financial institutions of the world such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the International Bank of Settlements. Collectively, they comprise the very heart and soul of the Luciferian conspiracy to establish a ‘one-world’ government and a Luciferian one-world religion. The Anglo-American ‘banksters’ dominating Wall Street and ‘the City of London’ as well as the power players of International Corporations will be mainstays in the power structure of this last ‘shadow government’. They are power brokers behind the scene, pulling the strings. They are mostly invisible; and as such they are in part why Mystery Babylon is such a mystery.
The Power Elite and their Satanic Empowerment
It is my belief and the belief of many other writer/researchers, that these elites are already infused with satanic power and actively seek such power ritualistically to maintain their position and power in the world. (Again these subjects are taken up in my books, Power Quest, Book One and Power Quest, Book Two). Their widespread influence owes in no small part to unspeakable actions in which they participate.
Today, the United States is the principal incarnation of Mystery Babylon. It’s military is the principal ‘enforcer’ of the NWO. The petrodollar, for the time being at least, is the one-world currency and facilitates a one-world economy. In my view, the power elite of the U.S. represent the spirit of Antichrist just as much as the Islamic religion and the jihadists that the Islamic Antichrist Theory spotlights. However, the power elite of the West possesses far more power than the Muslim world. In many ways, Islam is a religion of the third world, while Luciferianism is the religion of the ‘first world’. The best-selling book The Babylon Code of Paul McGuire and Troy Anderson (which kindly quotes me on numerous occasions) tends to coincide with many of these beliefs although the book does not explicitly draw the conclusion that the U.S. is the final incarnation of the Beast system.
Connecting these lines of thought with the Bible: the U.S. represents the Daughter of Babylon described in detail by many of the Bible’s prophets, but most specifically by Jeremiah, Isaiah, Obadiah, and Zechariah. It is my view that the United States and the Russian Empire will come to blows during the War of Gog and Magog, and that this war is the next ‘great war’ in the Middle East (not the often cited war known as the ‘Psalm 83 War’). But it is not the last war of the last days.
As I have described in Is Russia Destined to Nuke the U.S.? and THE NEXT GREAT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST, I speculate (as have many other authors such as John Price) that Russia will attack and decimate the U.S. Afterwards, God Himself will judge Russia (whose leader I believe will be Gog) and destroy at least five-sixths of the militaries of Russia and its confederate nations who are Islamic. Unlike the IAT, I believe the personage of Gog is distinct from Antichrist and the War of Gog and Magog is distinct from the War known as Armageddon.
My personal view has progressed to no longer identify the U.S. as the ‘final’ Babylon; but is a catalyst that brings the world to the brink of the Tribulation period. After the U.S. and Russia are no longer the dominating powers in the world, it is likely that the Antichrist appears prominently on the scene and becomes the leader to whom all the remaining nations of the world look, to establish peace, law, and order. He may or may not have a Muslim background. If not a former American President, he will likely be of royal blood and in my view, likely from Western Europe (England, France, Italy, or even more intriguingly, from Germany). Hence, the concept of the ‘revived roman empire’ of convention may ultimately come true. The Antichrist will consolidate the remaining political, economic, and military power in the world and institute a single monetary system through the so-called “Mark of the Beast”. His domination will be substantial but probably not absolute. Powers in Asia (notably China, India, and perhaps Japan) may oppose him to some extent, but ultimately will be influenced to make war against Israel and its Messiah (the ‘Armageddon Campaign’) as the world is sent a “strong delusion” by God for its denial of His providence and His Son, Jesus Christ. The exact identification of the Kings of the North, the South, and the so-called third king or Antichrist (the ‘Three King Theory’ of Daniel 11), are a subject for another time but can be fitted into this scenario as well.[iii]
In conclusion, I argue that the conventional scenario (which reflects for the most part an updated and widely held view among many leading eschatology writer/researchers today) better fits all the facts of biblical eschatology and the realities of geopolitics than does the Islamic Antichrist Theory. The IAT may come to pass as IAT theorists proffer; however, I believe it fails to bring all the facts into alignment while this modified conventional view does.
NOTES
[i] Ancient Assyria (circa 800-620 B.C.) did include large swaths of the Anatolia Peninsula (today’s Turkey) although its “home base” was in northern Iraq, modern day Mosul. Islam would capture Anatolia in the eleventh century, but notably, Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), the capital of the Byzantine (Christian) Empire, was not conquered until 1453.
[ii] “The Aeneid (/ᵻˈniːɪd/; Latin: Aenēis [ae̯ˈneːɪs]) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans.” (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid).
[iii] Richardson holds to two kings only in Daniel 11, with the Antichrist and Gog comprising the same personage and identified in this passage as the King of the North. Conventional eschatology generally sees ‘three kings’ once the Antichrist is introduced in Daniel 11:40 and thereafter. Then the King of the North is distinct from the Antichrist and the King of the South. Exactly who these other two kings are is a matter for debate even among those who argue ‘three kings’ are being discussed in Daniel’s prophecy.
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