Is There A Spirit Of Antichrist In Islam?

All right. Now, let's look at another main manifestation of the spirit of Antichrist. And this is one it's extremely important for us as Christians to be well informed about at this time. That is Islam, which is the name for the religion of Mohammed. Islam means perfection, completeness, fulfillment.

Mohammed arose in the 7th century of this era in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed to be a prophet, claimed to receive in a cave from an archangel the revelation of the religion which then became Islam. And he claimed that his religion, Islam, was the true fulfillment of the Old and the New Testament. He claimed that the Christians and the Gospels had perverted the real truth, but he, through Islam, was restoring it. That's the basic claim of Mohammed. He first believed that because he rejected idolatry and because he rejected the claims of Christianity, the Jewish people would follow him. But he was disappointed. And when they didn't follow him, he turned against them and became a persecutor of them.

Now, let's consider the teachings of Islam. Personally, this is my own opinion, at the present moment, I think Islam is the most sinister, powerful force opposing the truth of God at work in the world. It's a tragedy that so many Christians in the West have totally misunderstood and underestimated Islam. If it once gains power, it will, first and foremost, suppress the Jews, and second, suppress the Christians.

In Muslim countries throughout the centuries, Christians and Jews have been given the title “Dhimmi,” which means second-class people. It rather suits Islam to have some of them around, but to keep them in such a low and debased condition that the superiority of Islam is manifest to everybody. Ruth and I were in Pakistan in 1985, preaching the gospel there. One of the first things that happened was we were taken to visit the Christian community in Karachi. I still remember the awful sense of physical sickness when I saw the squalor, the poverty, the debased condition. They had open sewers running in the streets. They just went to the toilet out in the open. And this was the picture of Christianity presented to the people of Pakistan. It suited them, you understand. They didn't want to eliminate them totally. They just wanted to demonstrate the total superiority of Muslims over Christians.

For instance, Muslims will never clean latrines. So all cleaners of latrines in Pakistan are Christians. That's basically the Pakistani vision of Christianity. And this is just one of countless examples of how the Jews and the Christians have been a totally suppressed, inferior minority in Islamic countries. The oath of a Christian is not accepted in Islamic courts. The evidence of a Christian against a Muslim is not accepted. It's true that Islam has not been guilty of anything so terrible as the Holocaust, but it has a long record of 13 centuries of suppression and contempt for Christianity. It's hard for you who are not familiar to realize with what total contempt they view Christians.

You see, the things that we, through Christian inheritance and tradition, regard as excellent, like mercy and forgiveness, to Muslims, they're just weakness. You see, at the present time, the situation in the Middle East, Western politicians, even if they're not Christians, have got a Christian viewpoint. They have a background. They talk about mercy, peace, forgiveness. To the Muslims, that's nonsense. In the Muslim thinking, revenge is a sacred duty. I just want to bring out the totally different spirit that there is, ‘cause it's not always obvious.

Now, as I've pointed out, Islam again has the marks, most of them. It started in association with the Old and the New Testament. It claimed to be the outworking of that revelation of God. But it denies certain basic fundamentals of the Christian faith. It denies the atoning death of Jesus on the cross. Mohammed taught that Jesus didn't die. An angel came and spirited him away from the cross before he died. Because there is no death, there is no atonement, and because there is no atonement, there is no forgiveness. And no Muslim has the assurance of sins forgiven at any time.

Second, and this they deny with fanatical intensity, that Jesus is the Son of God. You can talk to the Muslims about Jesus as a prophet, and they'll give you careful attention. In fact, the Quran acknowledges Jesus as a prophet. When you, even as a savior, even as a Messiah, but when you say he's the Son of God, you bring out the most intense, bitter opposition. In the famous mosque on the, that's called the Dome of the Rock, that's built on the side of what was the temple of Solomon at one time, in the Arabic inscriptions around it, twice it says,

“God has no need of a son.”

Until you've encountered this, you have no idea of the intensity of the opposition to this. And then, as I've said, it denies the Father-Son relationship within the Godhead.

So, interestingly enough, you see, both these two religions that we've looked at, Judaism and Islam, originate in the Middle East. They will, if you go on a tour in Israel and you have a guide, they'll probably tell you at some point that the Middle East is the origin of the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It's my guess, and I just offer this as something for you to think about, that the spirit of Antichrist will succeed in the professing Christian church in eliminating Jesus. It will ultimately, we'll have a Christianity without Jesus. It'll be a moral system, a legal system, a system full of all sorts of pageants and religion, but without Jesus. And you see, once you've eliminated Jesus, you've opened the way for a synthesis of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

I am inclined to think, this is just a personal opinion, that the Antichrist will head up such a religion, uniting Judaism, Islam, and apostate Christianity. I think we're a very long way toward it. When you consider that both the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have, in recent years, conducted in Christian churches ceremonies where Islam and Islamic priests and all sorts of Hindus, American Indians, were all welcomed as brothers together. See, you can just read that in the newspaper, but that is the spirit of Antichrist. Its purpose is to eliminate Jesus. He's the stumbling block. The cross is the stumbling block. Do away with Jesus and the cross, and Christianity can merge with all sorts of religions. And I personally think we're far on the way toward that. That's my personal opinion. And I think we have to be very cautious in our attitude and our approach to these things, because I think the spirit of deception is at work.