History of Islam: Part 8

I'm Brother James, and I greet you once again in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

And I welcome you to the preaching of the cross radio broadcast.

We've given the orchestra the day off, so there's no pretty music to introduce the program.

We've given the man with a lovely deep baritone voice.

We've given him the day off, so there's no one to tell you what you're listening to other than me.

Just thirty minutes of preaching, that's all we've got.

No gift offers, no appeals, no fundraising.

We'll leave the playing of the music to those who are better equipped for that sort of thing.

We want to use all the time that we have to try our very best to teach the truth to God's people, and it becomes increasingly difficult to do that as the days go by.

So much confusion, so much falsehood, so much deception, so much risk misrepresentation being floated about today.

And so we take the time as often as God permits, as often as we trust the Lord directs, to instruct you in the right way by contrasting it with the wrong way.

And this is broadcast number eight in a series of lessons in which we are trying to teach you the truths about the Islamic religion.

Now it didn't used to be called Islam, it used to be called Muhammadanism or Muhammadism, but uh these days Islam is the socially accepted term.

We have considered thus far in our study the person of Muhammad, how he fought and waged war to spread his particular belief system.

We have considered the uh holy places of Islam, the God of Islam, the sacred book of Islam, and then the heaven and hell of the Muhammadan.

Today we want to consider the day of judgment and the resurrection according to the Muslim belief system.

The Muslims believe that the day of judgment shall be preceded by certain signs, the greatest of which will be the rising of the sun in the west, and the appearance of a beast which shall suddenly rise from the ground, and shall be so large that her head alone shall rise above the clouds.

Muhammad was big on these gigantic angels and men, these super gargantuan creatures.

The monster, they say, is described as follows She shall have the head of a bull, the eyes of a hog, the ears of an elephant, the horns of a stag, the neck of an ostrich, the breast of a lion, the color of a tiger, the back of a cat, the tail of a ram, the legs of a camel, and the voice of an ass.

End of quote.

I'd like to see that.

Well, not not the actual creature.

I I would like to see a drawing or a painting or some representation of that creature.

It's very, very difficult for me to picture that in my mind.

The Muslim believes that this beast will be of incredible swiftness, and shall bear with her the seal of Solomon, whatever that is, and the rod of Moses.

Every person shall be marked by her, and none shall escape.

Some shall bear the mark Muman, meaning believer, and the others Kafer, C-A-F-E-R, meaning unbeliever.

There will be, it is prophesied, a war with the Greeks, and Constantinople shall be taken.

The walls will fall down, while seventy thousand of the posterity of Isaac shall recite before them, there is no God but God, God is most great.

While the looting of the city is in progress, news of the coming of the Antichrist shall be announced, and the army shall turn back.

The Antichrist shall remain upon earth for the period of about fourteen months.

He will be marked on the forehead with the letters CFR, signifying unbeliever, and will capture and lay waste with his army all places, with the exception of Medina and Mecca, which will be guarded by angels.

Finally, this Antichrist will be slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud or Lud.

A very curious admixture of what the Bible had taught for centuries, and certainly we see the Bible's influence in many of the ideas and dreams and visions and utterances of Muhammad, but a strange admixture of the Bible with mere fancy.

While the armies are returning from the taking of Constantinople, Jesus shall appear again upon earth near Damascus.

Here he will reign for a period of from twenty to forty years.

We're not certain how long, during which time he will become a Muhammadan.

How about that?

Any of you believe that Jesus is going to decide to follow Muhammad?

I didn't think so.

He will also kill the Antichrist, marry and beget children, and abolish all hatred and warfare and famine from the world.

So we've got uh Jesus appearing one, forty uh twenty to forty years, two, become a Muhammadan three, kill the Antichrist four, marry and beget children five, abolish hatred, warfare, and famine from the world, six.

Six things Muhammad said Jesus would do someday, and only two of the six are correct.

There shall also be a holy war with the Jews in which they will all be slain without mercy.

Now there is the age old desire of Muhammad and his people to rid the earth of every last Jew.

There isn't any way in the world to give five minutes credibility to the United Nations when those people either know or could know that the fundamental hope for the future held by the adherents of the Islamic religion is to exterminate the Jewish race.

There isn't any possible way to take seriously a group of people who continually and constantly whine about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and yet at the same time embrace and welcome into their membership followers of Muhammad, when if the followers of Muhammad had their prophesied end time hopes fulfilled, what Hitler did on a small scale they would do on a universal scale.

Now the Holy Bible says that God, that God will preserve his chosen people, the Hebrew people, and give unto them an earthly kingdom.

Muhammad said that there would be a holy war with the Jews, and every one of them would be slain without mercy.

So again, I say to you what I've said so many times throughout the course of this study, you cannot reconcile Biblical Christianity and the fundamental principles of the Mohammedan religion.

You cannot put the two together.

The Mohammedan believes that Gog and Magog shall appear and lay waste the earth, making these personages rather than uh locations or tribal groups.

A smoke shall fill the whole earth, many Arabs shall return to the worship of their idols, the destruction of the sacred temple Kaba, C A A B A will take place, a vast amount of gold shall be discovered near the bed of the Euphrates River, beasts and trees and stones shall talk to men, a fire shall sweep the province of Yaman, Y A M A N, the coming descendant of Muhammad shall govern the Arabians.

So these are the major signs according to Islam that shall precede the end of the world, as we know it.

Besides these major signs, there are also eight minor signs by which the coming of the day of judgment may be foretold.

Number one, faith among men shall decay.

That's easy enough.

Number two, mean persons shall advance the high estate in office.

That's always been the case.

Number three, great sensuality shall reign among men.

Likewise, that's no new thing.

Number four, great mob violence and treason in state, business as usual.

You see, all those first four things are just the result of the fall of man.

They've been happening since Cain and Abel.

Number five, war with Turkey.

We've had that sign a number of times, haven't we?

Number six, great and widespread distress and disaster.

Men passing graves say, Would I were there also.

Number seven, the provinces of Iraq and Syria shall refuse to pay their tribute.

And by that we can only assume that means give money to Muhammad.

Number eight, the buildings of Medina shall reach to Ahab.

And we're not certain where this Ahab uh is supposed to be.

The resurrection is vividly described in the Quran, and I quote from one rendering, uh uh let me give you several uh passages from the Quran.

Quote When the trumpet shall be blown with one blast, and the earth shall be borne away, and the mountains two, and both shall be crushed with one crushing, on that day shall the inevitable happen, and the heaven on that day shall be cleft asunder, for on that day shall it wane, and the angels shall be upon the sides thereof, above them eight shall bear the throne of the Lord.

I continue to quote from the Quran On the day when ye shall be sent forth, no hidden thing of thine shall be concealed.

Does man think that we shall not be able to collect his bones?

Able we are to rearrange even his fingertips?

Verily the day of decision is an appointed time, and the day when the trumpet shall be blown, and ye shall come in troops, and the heavens shall be opened, and shall be all doors, and the mountains shall be moved, and shall be like a mirage.

The day when the spirit in parentheses Jesus and the angels shall stand in ranks, they shall not speak save to whom the merciful permits and who speaks aright.

Verily the earthquake of the hour is a mighty thing.

On the day ye shall see it every suckling woman shall be scared away from that to which she gave suck, and every pregnant woman shall lay down her load, and thou shalt see men drunken, though they be not drunken, but the torment of God is severe.

The day the heavens shall be cleft asunder, with the clouds and the angels shall be sent down descending.

The true kingdom on that day shall belong to the merciful, and it shall be a hard day for the disbelievers.

Woe on that day for those who say that the judgment day is a lie, but none shall call it a lie save every sinful transgressor, who in our signs are read to him says old folk tales.

When the heaven is cleft asunder, and when the stars are scattered, and when the sea is gush together, and the tombs are turned upside down, the soul shall know what it has sent on or kept back.

Nay, but ye call the judgment day a lie, but over you are guardian angels, set who write down they know what you do.

I continue to quote from the Quran And what shall make ye know what is the judgment day, a day when no soul shall control aught for another, and the bidding on that day belongs to God, when the sun is folded up, and the stars fall, and the mountains are moved, and the she camels shall be neglected, and when the beasts shall be crowded together, and the asses shall surge up, and when souls shall be paired with bodies, and when the child buried alive shall be asked for what sin it was thus slain, and when the pages shall be spread out and the heavens shall be flayed and all hell set ablaze, then the soul shall know what it has produced.

One thing is clear when you spend time reading the Quran is that not much is clear in the Quran.

But that's the material on the judgment day.

Now, just a few words or or notes on the status of woman in the Mohammedan world and in the Mohammedan religion.

It's an amazing thing to me to see American single women who were not raised and brought up in the Islamic religion convert to that religion.

Actually, they are converting to the Americanized, sanitized, uh, conveniently packaged form of Islam.

No woman who values freedom and appreciates freedom would voluntarily submit herself to the Middle Eastern form of Islam.

If she knew if she knew what it meant to be a Muslim woman in Iran, she would never, never embrace such a system or situation.

It's probably a great understatement to say that Mohammedans did uh something to improve the position of women in the East, but it's uh also a great understatement to say that their position to this very day is not very high.

In the first place, Muhammad stopped the Arab custom of burying female infants alive, which had been practiced for centuries.

For that we give him credit.

Scholars believe that this custom arose because of the extreme poverty of many families and the fact that a girl represented only an expense.

Sometimes they dug a pit behind the house, and if the baby turned out to be a girl, they bury her at once.

Another manner and a more cruel one was to wait until the child was about six years old, and then dig the pit and entice her near it, when her father approaching from behind would push her headlong into the deep hole and fill it immediately with sand.

So compared to that you'd have to say that Muhammad did the women a favor.

Another improvement which the Muhammadans made was in the property rights of women.

Before the time of Muhammad, no woman might hold property in her own name.

This he altered, giving women equal rights with men on that score, long before the Western world had done as much.

The Arabs and the Jews had always denied the right of women to inherit property, thinking that all wealth should go to those who were able to bear arms.

Muhammad changed this custom, giving women the right to inherit a part at least of her husband's father's possessions.

The general principle now is that a male shall have twice as much as a female.

Women being considered only property like cattle or horses or camels were customarily inherited by the eldest son when his father died, which led to many complications of an incestuous nature, and Muhammad abolished this custom.

Mohammedanism is frequently accused of having set up the system of unlimited polygamy, allowing no limit on the number of wives and concubines which a man may have.

This was indeed true of the race before Muhammad's time, but he set the fixed number of four as a limit to the number of wives which any man might lawfully take.

He, of course, didn't abide by that himself, but after all, that's one of the perks of being the man in charge if you're unrighteous.

Jesus Christ did always those things which pleased the Father.

He fulfilled all the law.

He never broke one of God's commandments, much less violated his own.

But when Muhammad determined that four was the most uh wives anyone could have and be right in the eyes of God, uh you have to wonder what though no one certainly was would dare say so out loud, you have to wonder what went through the minds of his followers as they counted the number of women going in and out of his tent.

In early times it was the principle that a man must spend the night with each of his wives in a fixed rotation, regardless of his inclination.

This also Muhammad changed, allowing the man to make his own choice as it suited his pleasure, or the demands of family discipline.

You would expect that from what we've learned thus far in our study of the man.

Thou art to me henceforth is my mother's back, often declared the Arab to his wife, and with that simple formula she became divorced, and was turned out often to starve or live as best she might.

For adultery the punishment was uh barbaric, some would say.

The guilty couple were buried alive behind walls of masonry and left to a slow and lingering death from lack of food.

So that's a horrible thing, yeah, but uh it would probably cut down on the rate of uh activity and encounters outside the bonds of marriage, wouldn't you say?

A man may still divorce his wife practically at will, but he must continue to provide for her if she be with child or giving nurse to a child, and the man must now uh return to her all or a considerable portion of her dowry.

Which is uh curious.

Women are now also entitled to claim a divorce when their husbands ill treat them or fail to support them, are or are impotent or for any other cause of a like serious nature, but if she divorces her husband, the rule of the return of the dowry does not apply.

After the divorce, women must wait three months before they marry again, which uh make you wonder what the divorce was all about, wouldn't it?

Or a longer period if they are with child.

A man may divorce and remarry his wife three times, but after that she must marry another man and receive a divorce from him before she can make the fourth venture with her former mate.

Sounds kind of like movie stars.

Mohammedans are allowed to beat their wives if they deem it necessary.

The Quran saying in this regard, quote, the honest women are obedient and careful in absence of their husbands, but those whose perverseness ye shall be apprehensive of, rebuke, remove into separate apartments, and chastise them.

I wonder if that's promoted in By the Islamic movement in America.

You heard that on the news lately?

Join the religion of Islam.

We're a religion of peace and love, and our Quran will let you beat your wife.

If a woman is accused of adultery, four witnesses must be brought before she is judged as guilty, and men are urged to beware of accusing their wives falsely.

A woman is allowed to remarry after her husband's death, but she must wait four months and ten days.

Mohammedans are often accused of denying that women women have souls, but this isn't true.

They believe that women have souls, though of a somewhat different order than those of men, and they may not rejoin their husbands again in heaven unless their husbands specifically desire them to do so.

The Quran states that all women will be made young again before they are allowed to enter the heavenly kingdom, and that they will be rewarded for their virtues and punished for their sins exactly as men are.

Muhammad declared, however, that on his famous journey through the afterworld, he looked into hell and found the majority of those suffering sinners to be women.

As was said, Muhammad had a he had a real hang-up about the uh the female uh gender.

Uh so what do you do with this?

This is this is as far as we're gonna go in this uh study.

What do you do with it?

You can't deny the tremendous uh influence of Islam in the world today.

You can't deny that every world leader and every true preacher of the gospel must in some way, shape, or form deal with the Islamic religion and culture.

I would say to you, according to the Word of God, that you are number one to remember that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, that Christ died for all men, and that Jesus Christ the Lord desires to see every man, woman, boy, and girl know the forgiveness of their sins and receive eternal life, and that would include Arabs and Muslims just as surely as it includes uh people that uh that you go to church with.

So when the Lord uh commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, when the Bible says that God commendeth his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, that that certainly includes the Arabic people and those of the Muslim faith and religion.

Secondly, you must keep in mind that just as the case is when you are talking to a Jehovah's Witness, a Mormon, a Roman Catholic, or a Baptist, any Muslim you speak to, when you present them with some fact which they find distasteful, is going to say, Oh no, no, you're misrepresenting us.

That's not what we believe.

So to argue their beliefs with a member of any of these groups is not going to get you anywhere.

That's why the Lord told us to preach the gospel.

Never mind what a person believes or says they believe or says they don't believe, or believes but deny they believe.

You can argue those things all day and all night, and it'll never get you anywhere.

Our responsibility and our duty is to tell every man, woman, boy, or girl that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of Lords, that He is almighty God who was manifest in the body of human flesh, born of a virgin, he lived a perfect, sinless life, and then died on the cross to pay for every man's sins, and that three days and three nights later he rose from the dead, and this living, risen, glorified, all-powerful Jesus Christ can and will save their soul if they will repent of their sin and trust Him.

And that He is the only way.

There's no other way, there's no other salvation, there's no other Savior.

Only Jesus Christ can save that sinner, only Jesus Christ can forgive those sins.

Now that's what we are supposed to do.

Not argue religion, not argue denomination, not argue theology or theory, but give the gospel to the lost and allow the Holy Spirit of God to do with it as He will.

You might find stony ground, thorny ground, good ground.

Who's to say?

But sow the seed, preach the word, be instant in season and out of season.

Remember, a sower, a sower went forth to sow.

That's what he does.

Thanks for tuning in today.

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Until next time, and throughout eternity, may Jesus Christ be praised.