The Fallen have no use for humanity. Those who serve them willingly are just useful idiots.
After a decisive victory by the Antichrist over the forces of Islam, the Psalm 83/Daniel 11 war, Muslim eschatology becomes irrelevant. We don’t need to worry about identifying the Mahdi because there will never be a Mahdi. In our view, Allah, Inc., created Islam for one purpose only: To build an army for a war that validates the Antichrist’s claim to be the prophesied savior of Israel.
That army will be sacrificed by its creators; its faithful jihadis willingly slaughtered by their hellish masters to put the Antichrist on the Temple Mount as Israel’s false mashiach.
If the Church is still here when this happens, how will American Christians receive such a man? Evangelicals typically view strong Israeli leaders in a very positive light. If we’re still on earth, conservative American Christians might even help elevate a man perceived as the savior of Israel to the status of a world leader—which is his ultimate destiny, of course, if only for a little while.
But the Dominionist strain of Christianity, which ignores the Antichrist in its faulty interpretation of end-times prophecy, is working toward a Christianized version of global jihad. Based on an incorrect reading of Psalm 110:1, some Dominionist teachers believe Christ is stuck in heaven until Christians make His enemies His footstool. They believe this can only be accomplished by literally taking over the world.[1]
The apostolic-prophetic movement, dubbed the New Apostolic Reformation, might just welcome a victorious Israeli military leader as Christ incarnate, a fulfillment of their expected Manifest Sons of God. Since the self-proclaimed apostles and prophets leading this movement claim the authority of their biblical forebears, which includes the men who wrote the New Testament, they believe they are free to mold Scripture as needed to make their doctrine fit current events.[2]
Now, consider the world’s reaction to the next event in the chronicle of the wars of Antichrist:
And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him.
Daniel 11:45 (ESV)
After smashing the Muslim coalition and establishing his bona fides as the mashiach of Israel, the Antichrist sets up his government somewhere between the Mediterranean coast and Jerusalem. But he meets an unexpected end, perhaps by assassination. So, how could this guy be the Antichrist if he’s killed before he commits the “abomination that causes desolation” by desecrating the Temple and declaring himself a god? We return to the Revelation of John:
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard; its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast. And they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”
Revelation 13:1–4 (ESV, emphasis added)
The apparently miraculous healing of the Antichrist’s head wound will amaze the world and convince millions, if not billions, of his divinity.
And because you’re paying close attention, you noticed the chilling parallel here with Jewish eschatology. Mashiach ben Yosef is expected to die in the war with Gog of Magog. Then one of two things happens: Mashiach ben David arrives, kills the enemy leader with the breath of his mouth, and brings Mashiach ben Yosef back to life, or Mashiach ben Yosef is resurrected, becomes Mashiach ben David, and destroys Gog to end the war.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but when Mashiach ben Yosef is miraculously healed, it will confirm that Mashiach ben David is the Antichrist.
The sad irony is that the rabbis are partly right, except they missed Mashiach ben Yosef when He arrived. He’s already been here—Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph. We’re just waiting for His return as the conquering Son of David.
In some Jewish traditions, Mashiach ben David then goes on to purify Jerusalem and Israel. If the Israeli Antichrist theory is correct, this has disturbing implications. Purification includes removing non-Jews from Jerusalem. It is not our intent to cast aspersions on our Jewish brothers and sisters, but the Antichrist’s bloody war on the saints, prophesied in Daniel 7:25, Daniel 8:24, and Revelation 13:7–10, will happen at some point. This seems to be the most likely place in the prophetic timeline.
The lessons of history aren’t always pleasant, but if we take the time to study and learn, they’re usually instructive. The final break between early Christians and their Jewish neighbors in Judea didn’t occur in the first century, as we might assume. Despite the persecution of the early church by the Sanhedrin, Jewish Christians, which is to say most Christians for the first hundred years or so after the Resurrection, considered themselves part of Jewish society. Many were still members of their local synagogues, differing from their friends and neighbors only in that they knew that Messiah had come, and was coming back.
That all changed during the rebellion against Rome led by Simon bar Kokhba.
The Bar Kokhba revolt began in AD 132. Bar Kokhba was hailed as the mashiach by the prominent Rabbi Akiva, still considered one of the most heroic and beloved figures in Jewish history. Bar Kokhba was born Simon ben Kosiba; bar Kokhba (“son of the star”) was a messianic claim based on his supposed fulfillment of the prophecy of Balaam, son of Beor:
I see him, but not now;
Numbers 24:17 (ESV)
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of Sheth.
Christians in Judea wouldn’t acknowledge a mortal man as the Messiah and refused to fight for bar Kokhba. He punished them with confinement and death. And that led to a break between Jews and the church that hasn’t healed to this day.
In the aftermath of his disastrous rebellion, he was derisively called bar Koziba (“son of the lie”). Despite some stunning early success against Rome, once the emperor Hadrian got serious and sent his best generals to put down the rebellion, more than half a million Jews were killed. Judea was depopulated, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the land was renamed Syria Palaestina—Palestine. The net result of bar Kokhba’s rebellion was the end of hope for an independent Jewish state in the Holy Land for nearly two thousand years.
In recent years, a surge in Zionist sentiment among Israelis is rehabilitating the reputation of Simon bar Kokhba, who’s celebrated as a national hero. Bonfires are lit on Lag Ba’Omer to celebrate his short-lived Jewish state, and Rabbi Akiva’s definition of the mashiach is still the standard by which many Jews evaluate claimants to the title.
Anyone who’s visited Israel can understand the national pride Jews feel. They have survived against tremendous, almost unimaginable odds since declaring independence in 1948. The desert blooms, and Israelis are justifiably proud of their achievements in academia, medicine, and high technology.
But this nationalist sentiment will be manipulated by the supernatural Man of Lawlessness, who will twist it to deceive Jews into following him as their mashiach. He may even cite the example of bar Kokhba as he marks Christians still on earth for destruction.
This is not a criticism of Jews. God knows that there are far too many examples of Christians who’ve been deceived by the Enemy into persecuting Jews in Jesus’ name, forgetting that the founder of our faith is the only Jew who ever fulfilled the Law perfectly. Prophecy tells us that the faithful will be persecuted during the period called the Great Tribulation. The Antichrist is of his father, the father of lies, and he will use any tactic that works. Hatred of outsiders is time-tested. Those fooled into supporting the Antichrist’s reverse pogrom will believe they’re doing God’s work—until “Mashiach ben David” stops the daily sacrifices, sits down in the Third Temple, and declares himself to be God.[3]
And then Jews will realize they’ve been had.
Summing up: Muslims are waiting for the Mahdi, but what he looks like depends on whether you ask a Sunni or a Shia, and which sect they belong to within those sects. Sunni Islam, specifically radical Mahdism, is probably the tool Allah, Inc., will use to lure Jews and Christians, if the church is still on the earth, into fighting for the Antichrist.
It’s easy to tell ourselves that we won’t be fooled, that we’ll see through the Enemy’s deception. Jesus warned against that kind of spiritual pride. As He told the people of Judea two thousand years ago, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.”[4]
But the victory of Allah, Inc., will be short-lived. Reckoning is coming. As Paul wrote, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”[5]
And payback is nothing less than the death of the gods.
[1] This is the so-called Seven Mountains Mandate, which teaches that Christians are commanded to conquer the seven “mountains” of culture or societal influence: Arts and Entertainment, Business, Education, Family, Government, Media, and Religion.
[2] For good biblical analysis of the apostolic-prophetic movement, see the books A New Apostolic Reformation? A Biblical Response to a Worldwide Movement and God’s Super-Apostles: Encountering the Worldwide Prophets and Apostles Movement, both by Holly Pivec and Douglas Geivett.
[3] 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
[4] John 5:43.
[5] Romans 12:19, quoting Deuteronomy 32:25.