The Christ in Prophecy Journal

Witnessing to Muslims in Light of Islamic Eschatology (Part 3 of 7)

Islamic Eschatology

In Part 1, we began to get a handle on the history of Islam and its founder. Now we’ll look at history and be amazed at how fast Islam has spread across the world. Let’s continue this academic presentation by evangelist Nathan Jones!

Video Presentation

Islam’s Divisions

Three main divisions and some 150 sects are incorporated into Islam.19 The first division is the Sunnis who number about 80% of the Islamic population. Sunni means the trodden path or tradition. They desire to live a life in the pattern of Mohammad. They elect leaders. And, they follow the Islamic code to the best of their ability.

The second division consists of the Shi’ites. They number much smaller than the Sunnis. This division bitterly broke away after the death of Ali, the fourth caliph, meaning the successor to Muhammad, because they believe that a descendent of Mohammad must be their leader.20 The Shi’ites believe that authority derives through Mohammad’s family line alone through Ali’s descendants and that this family line of imams, or leaders, are viewed as almost sinless and can be the only interpreters of the Koran.21

The third division is called the Sufis and they are the mystics. They believe God must be experienced.

Islam’s Spread

A mere few decades after Mohammad had died, the warriors of Islam blitzkrieged across the Middle East and conquered Northern Africa, conquering those lands in Allah’s name. With the strategy of marching an army into a town and declaring, “We will kill you unless you convert,” formerly Christianized lands evaporated overnight. Islam spread so fast that their armies were on the doorsteps of France in AD 732 and Vienna in AD 1529.22 Islam has consistently through the centuries yearned to fly their flag over all of Europe.

Today, Islam stands out as the second fastest-growing religion and is well on its way to becoming the largest religion in the entire world, second only to Christianity in all of its forms. Some 20% of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, claim to be Muslims. In the last 50 years alone, Islam has grown 500% as its birth rate dwarfs the birth rates of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews.23 Islamic dominated nations now number 65. Some 1,400 mosques have been built in the United States, with 90% of those funded by the militant jihadists Wahhabi Sunnis based in Saudi Arabia. This has led one Egyptian expert on Islam to note, “the spread of Islam today is greater than it has been at any other point in history,” so much so that: “Islam is no longer over there in the Eastern hemisphere. Now it is on our doorstep.”24

Islam grew so quickly across the world that the Catholic Church had to concede that there are now more Muslims than Catholics.25 Islam achieved this by employing two primary growth strategies.

The first strategy, and the one most people recognize in the West, is the strategy of Jihad. Jihad, as stated earlier, means “the struggle” or “the strive to do the will of Allah.” In its essence, jihad is the armed struggle for Islam against the infidels and apostates. In 1938, the Islamic Brotherhood’s Hassan al-Banna explained that in jihad a true Muslim will “love death more than life.””26

There are 123 verses in the Koran that talk about jihad, leading a member of the Islamic Liberation Party to note at a London rally in August 1994: “There are 123 verses in the Koran about killing and fighting. Ours is not a passive religion.”27

Some Muslims will claim that the earlier verses in the Koran are more peaceful and those are the ones Islam truly follows. But Islam teaches that later verses abrogate, or replace, earlier verses. The reason why these verses called for peace was that, in the beginning, Mohammad was attempting to get Christians and Jews to join his cause. They refused, so in response, he fostered a virulent hatred of both. So, the later verses which talk about killing Jews and Christians are the actual verses Muslims are supposed to follow and teach due to the practice of abrogation.

Sura 9:5 provides an example of the Koran commanding the death of the infidel:

“Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them and seize them and beleaguer them and lie and wait for them in every stratagem.”

Sura 2:191-192 teaches that a Muslim must kill the unbeliever:

“And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter… if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.”

Sura 9:29 teaches that conquered infidels can be allowed to live as long as they become second-class citizens and pay a special tax:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His prophet, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, the Christians, until they pay the Jizya, a tax, with willing submission, and find themselves subdued.”

The Hadith, in Book 041 Number 6985, also commands the killing of the Jews:

“The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves… behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: ‘Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.'”

Well, what fuels jihad? The answer, the promise of Paradise. The only assurance a Muslim has been given that they will make it into Paradise is by killing the infidel. Sura 47:4-7 teaches:

“When you meet unbelievers smite their necks, and then when you have made wide slaughter among them tie fast… And those who are slain in the way of god, he will not send their works astray, he will guide them and dispose their minds alright, and he will admit them to paradise that he has made known to them.”

The Muslim is also taught never to make a covenant or an agreement or a treaty with an infidel, as Sura 4:89 commands:

“They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.”

These are the marching orders for Muslims as taught by the Islamic holy books.

Islam’s second growth strategy involves immigration. When unable to defeat a people group or nation militarily, then the second-best strategy is to defeat them by moving one’s population into an enemy’s land. As Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya once said:

“There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists; we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 plus million Muslims in Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”28

Jihad and immigration — these are the two main strategies Islam is using to take over the world for Allah. As one expert on Islam notes, “For Islam, the idea of mission is not to seek to bring about the mere intellectual and religious conversion of people; instead, it is more concerned with the territorial expansion of Allah’s kingdom.”29

These strategies for territorial expansion are being played out today, just as they were some 1,400 years ago when Islam was founded. Population statistics project that Muslims will exceed 50% of the world’s population by the end of the twenty-first century.30 Such staggering numbers have led historian Robert Payne to warn an apathetic West that Muslims “are ruthless and at ease in a world where we are increasingly restless and incapable of decision, therefore, sooner or later we shall have to learn to live with them.”31

In the fourth part of this series on Islamic eschatology, we’ll see how Islam views Christianity.

End Notes

19. G.J.O. Moshay, 7.

20. Michael Youssef, America, Oil & the Islamic Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), 94.

21. Ibid., 96.

22. Hitti.

23. Nathan E. Jones, “The Mysterious Role of Islam in the End Times,” Lamplighter, https://christinprophecy.org/articles/the-mysterious-role-of-islam-in-the-end-times/.

24. Ishak Ibraham, Black Gold and Holy War (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983), 8.

25. “Muslim Demographics,” FriendofMuslim YouTube channel, https://youtu.be/6-3X5hIFXYU.

26. Erick Stakelbeck, The Brotherhood (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013), 74.

27. Paul Fregosi, Jihad (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 18.

28. “How Islam is Taking Over the World: Islamization Explained.”

29. Elishua Davidson, Islam, Israel and the Last Days (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1991), 82.

30. “How Islam is Taking Over the World: Islamization Explained.”

31. Robert Payne, The History of Islam (New York, NY: Dorset Press, 1959), 14.

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Dr. Nathan E. Jones

As the Internet Evangelist at Lamb & Lion Ministries, Nathan reaches out to the over 4.5 billion people accessible over the Internet with the Good News of Jesus Christ. He also co-hosts the ministry's television program Christ in Prophecy and podcast The Truth Will Set You Free.

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