Sunnis, nearly 90 percent of Muslims worldwide, have traditionally derived religious authority from the caliphate. The first caliph was appointed by the companions of Muhammad at his death because the prophet didn’t leave a male heir. Shias, however, follow the bloodline of Muhammad, believing that his true heir descends from the prophet’s cousin and son by marriage, Ali. To Shias, and more specifically Twelver Shias, the Mahdi is the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who went into hiding in AD 873 at the age of 4.
Or so it’s claimed. His father, Hasan al-Askari, lived his life under house arrest. He was apparently poisoned at the age of 28, probably by the Abbasid caliph, and died without a male heir. That might have been the end of Shia Islam right there. But one Abu Sahl al-Nawbakhti of Baghdad saved the day by claiming that al-Askari did, in fact, have a son who had gone into ghaybah—“occultation,” or “hiding.” Like King Arthur, who returns at the hour of Britain’s greatest need, the Twelfth Imam will emerge from occultation at the end of the age to usher in an era of peace and justice—and, of course, establish Islam as the global religion.
In short, the Mahdi’s appearance will either be the arrival of a “rightly guided” Sunni Muslim leader, a mortal man who will rule for a time and then die, or the return of a Shi`i Imam who’s been supernaturally preserved for more than eleven hundred years.
This is a key distinction: For Shias, the Mahdi must reappear as one specific person. In Sunni theology, “the mantle of the Mahdi can be appropriated, in the right context, by a charismatic leader megalomaniacal enough to believe Allah is directing him to wage divinely-guided jihad.”[1] Unlike Sunnis, Shias don’t believe that human action can affect the timing of the arrival of the Last Hour. The Mahdi will appear when Allah wills it and not one heartbeat sooner. In fact, Shias believe they’re not even supposed to fight for victorious global jihad until the Twelfth Imam returns.
Furthermore, there are reasons to believe that Shias, especially in Iran, may not be all that eager for the Mahdi’s return. The ayatollahs rule about 40 percent of the world’s Shia Muslims. The return of al-Mahdi would undercut their authority, sort of like the Sanhedrin’s reaction to Jesus. When Mahdi returns, they’re suddenly unemployed. There go the nice cars, pretty wives, and big houses.
One Israeli scholar puts it bluntly:
Shi`ism in general, and post-revolutionary Iranian Shi`ism in particular, is not only not messianic or apocalyptic in character, but is in fact the fiercest enemy of messianism to be found anywhere in the Muslim world or Islamic history.[2]
That may be a surprise to Americans who’ve heard conservative media pundits claim for years that Twelver Shias want nothing more than to trigger the Apocalypse by destroying Israel. Derek was guilty of that myself; during his run as a secular radio talk show host in 2006–07, he regularly referred to the president of Iran as “Mahmoud I’m-in-a-jihad.”
But since Shias believe the Mahdi and Isa are prophesied to lead Muslims in prayer at Jerusalem, the ayatollahs have a good reason not to turn the Temple Mount into a radioactive crater. The Mahdi wouldn’t like it.
That’s not to say Iran isn’t a threat to Israel and the West. Iran is a state sponsor of terror. Americans should never forget the 241 soldiers killed at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.
Regardless of how the end times unfold, it’s a safe bet that the Temple Mount will be the site of violence in the future. Zion is at the center of the spiritual war, and its significance is recognized by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. And Sunni Muslims, whose long history of radical Mahdist movements lives on in movements like the Islamic State, generally believe the Last Hour can be triggered, which explains the bloody trail of destruction across Syria and Iraq.
Scholar Dr. Timothy Furnish summarizes the geopolitical threat posed by Sunni Mahdism:
First, a civilization laden with eschatological expectations AND a historical track record of militant movements motivated by messianic leaders, infused with intolerance toward its own schematics, convinced of ongoing problems with demonic entities and witches and in thrall to a literalist reading of a violent religious text might not be amenable to rational actor theory in international relations.
Second, political consolidation and/or jihadist movements led by self-styled Mahdis should be considered as real possibilities in the twenty-first century, especially as we approach key dates such as the hundred year mark from the dissolution of the Ottoman caliphate (2024) or the year 1500 of the Muslim calendar (2076)–since Mahdism, historically, clusters around such important dates which spark attempts to create rival caliphates, often violently. The vast geographic breadth, and surprising depth, of Mahdist belief in the Islamic ummah evidenced in this Pew data makes Mahdi-inspired movements, including jihads, quite plausible in the near future.[3]
Most analyses of end-times Bible prophecy don’t consider the influence of the apocalyptic worldview of Sunni Muslims on how those prophecies might be fulfilled. Those that do often take a flat view of Islam, lumping Sunnis, Shias, and their various sects and subsects together, ignoring the fact that many Muslims, especially in the West, don’t take the Quran and the hadith literally.
That’s too simplistic. And with all due respect to prophecy teachers who believe Islam is the soil from which the Man of Sin will spring, a Muslim Antichrist is far too obvious. That’s not a deception that would “lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”[4] A more plausible end-times scenario will be much subtler, one that draws in Jews and Christians (if the Church is still here when the Antichrist steps onto the world stage).
In broad terms, the beliefs of Jews and Christians about the end times are closer to those of Shia Muslims than those of Sunnis, at least about the influence humans can have on the timeline of the Apocalypse. Since Christians and Jews share the prophecies of the Hebrew prophets, it follows that there are some similarities in their beliefs. But it’s in the differences, and the failure of most Christians to understand the basics of Bible prophecy, that danger lies.
At this point, we need to address a question that’s probably occurred to you: If our theory is correct, that Islam is an unholy alliance between fallen angels worshiped as gods in ancient Mesopotamia, then why did these spirits allow sectarian disputes to divide their new religion? Wouldn’t a united front against the growing Christian faith have been more effective?
Considering how quickly Islam overran most of the Eastern Roman Empire, a more effective approach is frightening to think about. A united front certainly seems to have been the goal of Allah, Inc.; by defining Islam as a sort of “super-tribe,”[5] with fellow Muslims in it, regardless of race, ethnicity, or language, and the rest of the world outside it, the principalities and powers behind Muhammad created a fighting force that Christendom struggled for centuries to counter.
Of course, it also meant that when political Christendom put on the blinders of modern secular philosophy after the Enlightenment, Islam remained frozen in the tribal worldview of seventh century Arabia, which in turn was pretty much unchanged since the time of Abraham. What seems barbaric to the twenty-first century Western mind was not all that unusual in seventh-century Arabia, or in the days of the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs. For example, 1 Kings 11:15 tells us that David and Joab “struck down every male in Edom,” and about two centuries later, King Amaziah of Judah ordered his troops to throw ten thousand Edomite prisoners off a cliff.[6]
There are a few possible explanations for the divisions that emerged in Islam less than twenty-five years after Muhammad’s death. The Sunni-Shia conflict may reflect competition between the members of Allah, Inc. Or it could be that the internal conflict was encouraged by spirits faithful to God in the same way that the Enemy has spread dissent among the faithful from the beginning. (Except that, unlike the Muslim sectarian dispute, Protestants and Roman Catholics haven’t been killing each another in large numbers—at least not for the last three hundred years.)[7]
Another possibility is that the Fallen instigated the civil wars to keep control of the growing Islamic empire in the hands of men motivated by wealth and power rather than true seekers trying to find spiritual truth. Men and women on that path might stumble onto genuine divine revelation, the way many Muslims today are finding Christ through dreams and visions.[8]
Of course, by making the acquisition of wealth and power a sign of Allah’s favor almost from the start, the spirits behind Muhammad guaranteed that the new faith attracted the right kind of followers—men enticed by the prospect of plunder—and the whole world outside the umma (the “supertribe”) was fair game. So, while the ruling elites of Shia Islam appear indifferent to the Mahdi’s return, Sunnis expect the imminent fulfillment of the riches and pleasures Muhammad promised his followers fourteen hundred years ago.
But the key issue is understanding what the spiritual directors of Allah, Inc., hoped to achieve through the twisted prophecies they revealed through the hadith.
The supernatural war is for control of Zion. Consider: While Mecca and Medina are the holiest sites in Islam, they play virtually no role in Muslim prophecies of the end times. Damascus and Jerusalem are far more important in Islamic eschatology. That’s not a coincidence. Damascus is where the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, was brought into the faith and began his mission.
And Jerusalem, of course, is the site of Yahweh’s mount of assembly. That’s been the goal of the Fallen since the beginning.
[1] Dr. Timothy R. Furnish, “A Western View on Iran’s WMD Goal: Nuclearizing the Eschaton, or Pre-Stocking the Mahdi’s Arsenal?” Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis (January 2011), 4.
[2] Ze’ev Maghen, “Occultation in Perpetuum: Shi`ite Messianism and the Policies of the Islamic Republic,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Spring 2008), 237 (cited by Furnish).
[3] Furnish, Ten Years’ Captivation With the Mahdi’s Camps: Essays on Muslim Eschatology, 2005–2015, 11–12.
[4] Matthew 24:24.
[5] Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar, 3.
[6] 2 Chronicles 25:12; 2 Kings 14:7. The incident possibly took place at Petra, which is called Sela (“Rock”) in the Old Testament.
[7] Referring to the Thirty Years War. Not to overlook the conflicts between the Irish and English in the seventeenth century, but the wars in Central Europe were considerably bloodier, with some eight million dead.
[8] Veronica Neffinger, “Muslims Coming to Christ in Great Numbers Through Dreams and Visions.” Christian Headlines.com, March 15, 2017 (https://www.christianheadlines.com/blog/muslims-coming-to-christ-in-great-numbers-through-dreams-and-visions.html), retrieved 1/25/19.