World Leaders Failure To Understand Islamic End-Time Beliefs Cripples Approach To Terrorism

By Jack Minor

While world leaders are currently attempting to come to a solution regarding ISIS in light of the attacks in Paris, their strategies will all be doomed to failure if they continue to refuse to understand the nature of Islamic end-time prophesies regarding their messiah, a leading expert on the subject said in Jerusalem last week.

Joel Rosenberg is a former US and Israel political advisor as well as a New York Times best-selling author. Last Wednesday, Rosenberg spoke at the Jerusalem Leadership Summit where he warned that millions of Muslims were looking for their messiah in much the same way Christians are looking for the return of Jesus Christ.

“If you look at some of the polling that’s been done about the attitudes in the Muslim world, you see that 90% or more are moderate, really peaceful people,” said Rosenberg, during his lecture at the Inbal Hotel, noting that only between 7%-10% of Muslims claim to express approval of radical Islam.”

“However, in a world of 1.6 billion Muslims, 10% is 160 million people. That’s half the population of the United States; if you grouped them in one country...you have one of the largest countries on the planet.”

Although political leaders, including Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, go to extreme lengths to avoid using the term Islam to describe terrorist attacks, including Fort Hood and the recent attacks in Paris that left scores of people dead, Rosenberg said one can debate whether those who practice Islam are peaceful, but it is foolish to try and claim that those conducting these attacks are not motivated by something within Islam.

“You cannot say that those in the 160 million category are not driven by Islam,” Rosenberg said.

“They say they are. You can call it a ‘perversion,’ but you have to understand why they would say that Islam motivates them. Whether that’s pure Islam or not, I’ll leave that to the Islamic scholars.”

While many in the West, including most Christians, fail to realize is that, just like the Bible with its prophesies in Daniel, Revelation and other books, Islam also has its end time prophesies and many of them have an eerie parallel to what the Bible predicts during the Tribulation.

Just like many Christians, those who subscribe to what Rosenberg refers to as Apocalyptic Islam also believe we are in the End Times.

A Pew poll conducted in 2012 asked respondents about the imminence of two events that, according to Islamic tradition, will take place before the Day of Judgment: the return of the Mahdi and the return of Jesus. In nine of the 23 nations where the question was asked, half or more of Muslim adults say they believe the return of the Mahdi will occur in their lifetime, including at least two-thirds who express this view in Afghanistan (83%), Iraq (72%), Turkey (68%) and Tunisia (67%).

Muslims expect that during the End Times, there will arise a Muslim leader called al-Mahdi, meaning "The Guided One". He will be the leader of all the Muslims and will wage jihad against the rest of the world and bring the entire world under Islam. Muslims expect his kingdom will be world-wide and his accomplishment will surpass all the great empires in history. Thus, he will be an unparalleled ruler over the whole world.

Some refer to this belief as Mahdism. Several prominent Muslim figures including now deceased Osama bin Laden and former President Ahmadinejad of Iran had made speeches concerning this belief. Ahmadinejad had even done so in a speech before the UN.  Ahmadinejad has made no secret he may one day seek the office of President again.  Except this time he will have the ability to accomplish his dream of "wiping out the Jews" with nuclear weapons that the US is now helping Iran achieve.

While Muslims claim to revere Jesus in an attempt to reassure American Christians that both religions are similar, what they fail to mention is that they believe that when Jesus returns he will be subservient to the Mahdi as his deputy. Then Jesus will force all Jews and Christians to convert to Islam or die.

Apocalyptic Muslims believe they must commit acts such as what we are seeing by ISIS and Iran to help bring in the Mahdi’s global Islamic caliphate or kingdom. Rather than the Great White Throne Judgment, Muslims believe they will face the Mahdi who will judge them based on their ability to carry out his orders.

Some Christian prophecy experts believe Islam will play a larger role in the end times than many currently believe, including possibly an Islamic Antichrist that parallels the Islamic expectations regarding the Mahdi. For a more thorough of examination of this perspective we recommend the following link which gives a chart matching Bible Prophecy in light of Islamic prophetic expectations.

What happened in Paris should serve as a wake-up call that the enemy is not just interested in territory, but truly believes they are bringing in events to herald the arrival of their messiah. This is why the world needs to acknowledge who the enemy really is. Until the western governments acknowledge this, they are guaranteed to lose the fight against radical Islam.