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The Islamic Antichrist
The Unresolved Problems with Joel Richardson's
Theory
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Shalom in Christ Jesus,
We have received many questions concerning this topic and I am very happy that Jacob has written this response as it helps to clarify Moriel's view. It is also very balanced and I encourage you to read to the end even if you do not fully agree. Even though we don't agree with all their views I believe I can say that all of us here at Moriel have been blessed by brothers Joel Richardson and Walid Shoebat's ministries. May the Lord bless you and keep you, BE/\LERT!Scott Brisk **IMPORTANT NOTE**
In the next few days the sending email address of Be Alert! will be changing.
I will keep you up to date will a series of quick "change-over" alerts to help you with the process.
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The Islamic Antichrist
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The Unresolved Problems with
Joel Richardson's Theory
MORIEL MINISTRIES - By J. Jacob Prasch - September
11, 2009
Note: This review is based
on the electronic version of Joel Richardson's book published on his website
"Joel's Trumpet".
The Internet has been abuzz
with varying views and reviews of Joel Richardson's book promoted by World Net Daily titled, The Islamic Antichrist. The book offers interesting comment and
some insightful observations but seeks to challenge and reverse the popular
teaching of Babylon the Great being related to either Roman Catholicism or a
revived Roman Empire, but instead belonging to the Islamic world.
In Joel Richardson's thesis,
Gog and Magog are neither nations nor individuals arriving from Russia but
represent the Antichrist (Gog) and the Islamic world following him. The author
identifies him with the Mahdi, the Islamic messiah cum Antichrist (not to be
confused with the Islamic doctrine of the Dajjal, the one-eyed Antichrist whom
they associate with the ancient Egyptian sun god and with Jesus), and not as
Islam understands Him (which is that Jesus was a mere prophet inferior to
Mohammed and not God).
Joel Richardson's arguments
are that Rome never conquered Babylon, that Russia is not specifically
identified as the "uttermost parts of the North", that the Gog and Magog
conflict and the battle of Armageddon are one and the same, and that Israel
will turn to their God and the Lord's Name will no longer be profaned with the
destruction of Gog. Hence, since the Antichrist will cause the Name of God to
be profaned and Gog's destruction ends this, Gog must be the Antichrist cum
Mahdi.
Let us be clear that
biblically Islam is certainly an Antichrist religion and Mohammed was a type of
Antichrist/ false prophet. By the scriptural definition of 1 John, Islam denies
the Father and Son relationship and is categorically Antichrist. Moreover,
Islamic decapitation and Sharia law plainly meet the descriptions of the ordeal
many will experience when the Antichrist will brutalize those refusing to take
his mark and so forth.
Islam has demonstrated a
capacity to deceive on two fronts - a political and economic front and a
religious front. And it has been able to mobilize global forces and governments
against Israel and the Jews. And both have been aimed, no less, at deceiving
saved Christians. This deception however has spread from the political realm
and into the church with pseudo-Evangelical figures such as Rick Warren, Tony
Campolo, Robert Schuller, and above all Emergent church guru Brian McLaren (who
celebrates Ramadan). There is no doubt these trends are of prophetic
significance and are helping pave the way for the Antichrist and false prophet.
Even in an age of apostasy and spiritual degeneration within the church, it is
still a fairly distant stretch however to believe that a purely Islamic figure
can mislead Christians into accepting him as a returned Christ.
The problem with Joel
Richardson's approach is that he is playing baseball instead of billiards. His
eye is one ball and he is ignoring all of the other balls, which are no less
important.
Joel Richardson's first
problem is that he all but ignores a fundamental principle of biblical
exegesis: the Old Testament is interpreted in light of the New Testament of
Christ. The New Testament focus (and indeed the only mention) of Gog and Magog
is the post-millennia unleashing of Satan followed by Gog and Magog where they
are identified with the nations of the earth. It makes no mention of the
Antichrist or individuals. Joel Richardson ignores this, violating a
foundational tenet of hermeneutics.
This issue presents another
consideration that Joel Richardson likewise ignores. Given the fact that by
common consensus there are two battles of Gog and Magog, and Ezekiel 38-39
points to two future events, there is every possibility of a predictive double
reference so that there is a partial fulfillment in one instance and a total
fulfillment in the second. The precedents for this in biblical prophecy,
especially eschatology, are multiple. Isaiah 9:6 predicts both the birth of
Christ (First Coming) and the government being on His shoulders (Second Coming)
in one breath. In the Olivet Discourse Jesus speaks of the 70 A.D. events first
predicted in Daniel 9 and then in the same discourse jumps ahead to end time events.
The Ezekiel 38-39 prediction that defilement and infidelity will cease will
have an obvious and definite fulfillment in the New Testament Gog and Magog.
Joel Richardson's thesis, at least as he presents it, fails because his
exegesis fails.
Another problem for Mr.
Richardson is that in examining these prophecies in light of the New Testament,
is that the New Testament in a spiritual sense identifies Rome with Babylon (1 Peter 5: 13, Revelation 17: 9, 18). The early Christians certainly identified Rome
with its Pantheon as the custodian of the false religion s having their
ontogeny in ancient Babylon. While we would never use Patristic tradition as a
basis of any doctrine or doctrinal interpretation (and we hold a rank
disapproval of the post-Nicene fathers theologically), the church fathers do
constitute an important historical source to understand the mindset of the
early church. Jerome's De Viris Illustribus, and Augustine's City of God reveal
how earlier sources viewed Rome as another Babylon. Moreover that the fourth
beast of Daniel's vision, which conquered the Grecian conquerors of the
Persians who conquered Babylon, is incontestable along with the fact that the
typological descriptions of Daniel and Revelation are the same.
Mr. Richardson's contentions
further fail to add up due to considerations of geography. As an example, with
the possible and debatable exception of Libya (Put), no Arab countries are even
listed in the nations among those involved in the Gog and Magog war in Ezekiel
38-39. His assertion that Russia is not specifically named in Scripture must be
co-equally applied to the absence of Arab Moslem nations regarding Gog and
Magog. The Armageddon conflict, however, speaks specifically of the nations
surrounding Israel and Jerusalem in Zechariah 12. His case, at least as he
proposes it, just does not fit and fails to add up. This is to say nothing of
the omission of a comprehensive theological argument to reconcile or explain
how to resolve the 7 month clean up of the battlefield unless one takes the
license to extend the task into the Millennium when in fact the bulk of
Scripture, especially in Ezekiel, rather indicate that the biosphere itself
will undergo a divinely reconstructed restoration to a pre-Adamic state without
participation of human agency.
An additional consideration
is that major areas of Arab Moslem Jordan will escape the domain of Antichrist
(Daniel 11:41). Moreover, one would be hard pressed to picture Saudi Arabia,
the seat of Islam located directly to Israel's South and an Islamic world
mainly to Israel's South, East, and West (apart from Turkey and half-Moslem
Lebanon) as being "the uttermost parts of the North". It just doesn't work.
A final problem with Joel
Richardson's scenario is that it avoids addressing central theological facts
Scripture asserts regarding Arab Islamic nations. To begin with there are the
curses found in the book of Genesis of Ishmael's seed being divided and Esau's
sword drawn against his brother.
Arab tribes fought each
other in pre-Islamic Arabia for centuries. Mohammed believed that by means of
monotheism he could bring about a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab unity called
"ummah". It failed and continues to fail to this day. Since the 8th Century
Battle of Carballah, Sunni and Shia Moslems have hated each other all the way
to the Sunni-Shia and Arab-Kurdish war in Iraq to this day. There is no
"ummah". Indeed, this is a reason why Islam must murder Christians and Jews;
without a common enemy, they will always kill each other. If Mohammed, Abu Bakir,
and Ali could not unite Islam neither will the Mahdi; the union will fail and
break down as usual just as the Fatah-based Palestinian Authority and Hamas
massacred each other in Gaza, as Iran and Iraq killed 1.5 million of each
other, as Saddam Hussein raped Kuwait, and as King Hussein of Jordan
exterminated 18,000 of Yassir Arafat's followers in Black September of 1970.
The curse of Genesis
prevents Islamic unity from developing a united empire over-running the West.
Islam needed Christianized Britain and America to liberate Kuwait and protect
Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein just as they still need the West to protect
them from their Persian Moslem brothers in contemporary Iran. Indeed, the
greatest Islamic Empire was strategically dominated by Ottoman Turks who
subjugated the Arab Moslems as serfs and slaves just as Black African Moslems
are enslaved by Arab militias today. This is the true face of Islam - a
colossal ideological and religious failure, just as it has always been and
always shall be.
It is additionally true that
the Book of Daniel indicates that the Antichrist is coming in the character of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, recapitulating the exploits that brought him to power.
When the Kings of the North (Western powers) fought the Kings of the South
(nations which are today Islamic), the Kings of the South lost and will lose
again.
Joel Richardson simply
avoids dealing with these issues. Ignoring an issue will not make it go away.
He also does not explain how Jesus' prediction that the Antichrist will come in
his own name and whom unsaved Jews will believe (John 5: 43). How will Jews be
deceived by an Islamic messiah? The issue of John 5:43 must be examined
carefully.
All in all Joel Richardson,
while raising some valid points that warrant consideration, constructs a weak
case deficient hermeneutically, geographically, and historically. His exegesis
is not solid and there are simply far too many questions he does not even
address let alone answer.
We do not maintain, however,
that there is no merit to the alarm that Joel Richardson, and similarly Brother
Walid Shoebat, is attempting to sound. Islam is most certainly an Antichrist
religion, but so is any religion that places another in the place of Christ.
Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, Sun Yung Moon's Unification Church and a host of
cults are Antichrist and the World Council of Churches dominated by theological
liberalism is controlled by an Antichrist spirit. As Moslem's await Mahdi and
Jews a Messiah, so too Buddhists await the 5th Buddha and New Agers await
Matriyeh. Could it not be that the Antichrist will be diabolically empowered to
cover all bases, of being satanically animated to represent all things to all
people?
There is, however, one
saving grace in the proposal of Joel Richardson that appears to echo the
emphasis of Walid Shoebat. The book of Acts and the Epistles mainly trace the
growth of Christianity and the expansion of the Gospel message to the
Greco-Roman world in the direction of Europe climaxing in Rome. From it, the
source of Western civilization springs politically just as it springs from
Macedonia and Athens culturally. This is the biblical record of the New
Testament.
However, the Gospel,
although having its spiritual origins in eternity, was in historical and
theological terms born not in the West but in the East out of Old Testament
Pre-Talmudic Judaism during The Second Temple Period. The strength of Joel
Richardson and of my dear friend Walid Shoebat is that they seek to redress an
imbalance, which fails to view eschatology (and biblical dogma generally) from
an Eastern as well as Western perspective.
It is a further truth that
the dangerous threatening and Antichrist nature of Islam must not be
understated as it too often has been. Here too we are also indebted to Joel Richardson.
He is drawing attention to an evil paving the way for the Antichrist more than
any other religious trend with the exception of the ecumenical/ Inter-Faith
deception. While much of Joel Richardson's arguments are implausible and
predicted on theologically abject suppositions drawn from faulty exegesis, we
must at the same time acknowledge that there is a beneficial dimension to
attributing the demonic disease of radical Islam and the need not to limit our
perception of Scripture, by reading it through a Hellenistic cultural prism.
Nonetheless, Joel
Richardson's proposition is, in my estimation, fundamentally flawed. If his
position is credible, his book categorically fails to package and present this
position and to furnish a comprehensive apologetic for it. The source
deficiency in Joel Richardson's book is bad exegesis, which bequeaths the rest
of his case a shallow and wobbly, if not hollow, foundation.
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