Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] May I say how very glad I am to be able to be with you today.
[00:00:05] And I had not expected to be in the British Isles this Autumn, but because of the home call of Dennis Clark, I was asked if I would go to the United States to do with the Intercessors for America and the International Intercessors leaders cancel the planned trip to South Africa and going to the States. I was able to come back to Britain on my way on my return to Israel. And so I'm very glad for this unexpected visit and the possibility of renewing fellowship with many dear brothers and sisters in the Lord I would like to turn you to two or three passages in the Old Testament.
[00:01:07] First of all, if you will turn to Ezekiel, the prophecy of Ezekiel and chapter 39 and I will read from verse 20, Ezekiel 39, from verse 21 and I will set my glory among the nations and all the nations shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them.
[00:01:44] So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward and the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they trespassed against me, and I hid my face from them so I gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they fell all of them by the sword, according to their uncleanness, and according to their transgressions did I unto them, and I hid my face from them.
[00:02:20] Therefore thus saith the Lord God, now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel and I will be jealous for my holy name and they shall bear their shame and all their trespasses, whereby they have trespassed against me, when they shall dwell securely in their land, and none shall make them afraid when I have brought them back from the peoples, and gathered them out of their enemies lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations and they shall know that I am the Lord their God, in that I caused them to go into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto their own land and I will leave none of them any more there, neither will I hide my face any more from them for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord.
[00:03:33] And then if you will turn to the 102nd Psalm, will you please note in that passage in Ezekiel how the Lord speaks of illustrating his power and his sovereignty, his authority in the dispersion of the Jewish people, and in their being gathered back again to their own land.
[00:04:07] And this is to do with the nations of the world.
[00:04:14] I think that's a very important point, because sometimes we have made the gospel a little smaller than it ought to be, and have made it only a matter of personal salvation. And forget that God is still the God of all history and that he is the God of all the nations and is working out his purpose amongst the nations.
[00:04:43] And if Ezekiel is right, then he will use a particular nation in the last phase of human history to illustrate and express, to manifest his purpose.
[00:05:01] Now, in the 102nd Psalm, from verse 12, we have these well known.
[00:05:08] But thou, O Lord, wilt abide forever, and thy memorial name unto all generations.
[00:05:16] Thou wilt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for it is time to have pity upon her, Yea, the set time is come, for thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and have pity upon her dust.
[00:05:36] So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory.
[00:05:49] For the Lord has built up Zion, he has appeared in his glory.
[00:05:56] It's the same thought all over again.
[00:05:59] We may spiritualize this, and it is wonderful to consider it in relation to that spiritual Israel which is the church.
[00:06:08] But there is a literal application of, of these words, and it has something to do with the name of the Lord and the nations of the world.
[00:06:22] And then, if you will turn to the 83rd Psalm, we will not read the whole of this psalm, but we will read a goodly portion, the 83rd Psalm from verse one.
[00:06:37] O God, keep not thou silence.
[00:06:42] Hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God. For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult. And they that hate thee have lifted up the head.
[00:06:54] They take crafty counsel against thy people, and consult together against thy hidden ones. They have said, come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.
[00:07:12] For they have consulted together with one consent against Thee do they make a covenant. The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagarenes, Gabal and Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre. Assyria also is joined with them.
[00:07:38] They have helped the children of Lot.
[00:07:46] O my God, make them like the whirling dust, as stubble before the wind, as the fire that burneth the forest, and as the flame that setteth the mountains on fire, so pursue them with thy tempest and take, terrify them with thy storm, fill their faces with confusion that they may seek thy name, O Lord.
[00:08:17] So it is not just a destructive judgment.
[00:08:22] But it is that these forces may be crippled, and the spiritual powers that hold them in bondage be powerful, paralyzed, that many out of them may seek his name.
[00:08:36] Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever. Yea, let them be confounded and perish, that they may know that Thou alone, whose name is the Lord, art the Most High over all the earth.
[00:08:56] Shall we just have a word of prayer together?
[00:09:00] Heavenly Father, we come to your word and we are so conscious of our need of you. But we thank you Lord, that you have provided for us an anointing in our Lord Jesus, made available to us in practical terms and realities in the person of the Holy Spirit.
[00:09:23] Heavenly Father, we take that anointing for speaking and hearing this morning.
[00:09:30] May something be done in our midst, Lord, a clarification of issues, a revelation of what lies behind the scenes. Will you give us that spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus?
[00:09:49] We ask it together in his name.
[00:09:53] Amen.
[00:09:58] I would like this morning, with the enabling of the Lord, to give you what I would call a bird's eye view of the Middle east situation.
[00:10:18] I don't have to tell you that there is a tremendous amount of confusion and perplexity about the Middle east and Israel has and is becoming a focal point of much controversy amongst the people of God.
[00:10:43] I want to address myself to this matter because I can't help feeling that many folks understanding of Israel is on very shaky foundations.
[00:11:05] I think, for instance, that some people the foundation of their support for Israel and their sympathy for Israel is sentimental whilst Israel was the underdog and the bully, whilst the surrounding neighbors.
[00:11:30] There was a certain tug at the heartstrings of many of God's people.
[00:11:36] But as soon as it becomes apparent that Israel might possess the strongest army, air force and navy, the fourth or fifth strongest army, navy and air force in the world, then Christians begin to revise their whole outlook and attitude towards Israel. They begin to feel that maybe Israel is the bully, the surrounding nations are the victim.
[00:12:11] Then again, there are folks who have such an exalted idea of Israel and everything to do with Israel that the bottom of their support for Israel, the bottom as it were of their whole faith in Israel, drops out when they discover that maybe Israel makes mistakes or indulges in actions that are not right.
[00:12:42] I have never been able to understand why believers in the United States and Canada for instance, or in Britain treat the government of Israel in a different way than they treat their own.
[00:12:54] No one would ever expect a British government not to make A mistake or never to have a mistaken policy.
[00:13:05] But your support for Britain and your loyalty to Britain and your love for the British people does not depend upon whether a government is free of mistaken policies or mistakes, actions that are wrong. But for some reason Christian people tend to feel that the Prime Minister of Israel has to be as the Archangel Michael, that the Chief of Staff is like the Angel Gabriel, that the cabinet sessions of Israel are continuous prayer meetings. And as I have said before, angels hover on every street corner in Tel Aviv, Haifa as well as Jerusalem.
[00:13:50] Therefore, when there is anything that apparently is wrong, some strong arm tactics on the so called west bank or something or other happens in Lebanon that seems not to be righteous or compassionate, then suddenly the bottom drops out of such believers faith in Israel.
[00:14:18] Well now I am not here to say for one single moment that I believe our government has made a whole number of dreadful mistakes or that their policies are mistaken.
[00:14:28] But whether they are right or whether they are wrong in everything they do, it seems to me that our support and sympathy, our concern for Israel must rest on a very different basis.
[00:14:49] It cannot rest on on something sentimental or somehow unbalanced.
[00:15:00] It has to rest upon the word of God.
[00:15:05] Now I want to say straight away that I believe that the issue that is at the heart of the whole conflict in the Middle east and centres upon Israel is neither political, nor nationalist, nor ethnic, nor economic, but theological.
[00:15:38] It is not, in my estimation, a political issue that lies at the root of all the 34, 35 years of conflict and controversy in the Middle East. It is not just a question of political boundaries that if in some way the boundaries of Israel could be finally settled, secure boundaries recognized by every, all the trouble would disappear overnight.
[00:16:12] It is an interesting point that when the United nations petition plan first came out in 1947, it was the Jewish settlement that unconditionally accepted it and it was all the Arab neighbors who unconditionally rejected it.
[00:16:32] And when they went to war with five fully mobilized armies armed to the teeth against a settlement numbering some 800,000 people, of whom only 60,000 were under arms, it seemed as if that settlement would be destroyed.
[00:16:56] When God gave grace to those settlers and they ended up with a territory far bigger than the original partition plan, all the problems have developed.
[00:17:13] It is an interesting thing that if the Arabs had accepted the petition plan, Israel would have been an even smaller postage stamp than she is today.
[00:17:22] The same thing happened in 1967 and it seems to be forgotten by most people here. Why didn't the PLO and Jordan settle the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees on the west bank.
[00:17:40] Why did they herd them into mud, built adobe buildings in the Jericho Valley and elsewhere and not allow them to go out? They now tell us all they want is the west bank for settlement.
[00:17:53] So it may be a Palestinian state.
[00:17:56] It is not a question of boundaries.
[00:18:02] We are told that now if Israel will only go back to the 1967 pre1967 boundaries, all will be settled.
[00:18:11] And that intransigent, obstinate, ex terrorist Menachem Begin is the problem at the heart of this whole situation.
[00:18:26] I do not think the issue is a political issue, neither is it a nationalist issue. It is not a question of Arab versus Jew and Jew versus Arab. Actually, Arabs and Jews get on very well together.
[00:18:38] They happen to be cousins and they have an understanding for each other. I personally think that if you could get rid of a lot of the superpower fishing and meddling in the waters, Arab and Jews get on very well.
[00:18:54] It is an interesting fact that over past centuries Jews have on the whole fared better in Arab countries than they have in so called Christian countries.
[00:19:08] It is not in my estimation merely a question of national, of nationalism as such.
[00:19:19] Should we say ethnic. An ethnic problem. Nor is it a nationalist question, just a question that it is. Zionism versus Palestinianism.
[00:19:31] It is another very interesting point that previous to 1967, no Arab ever called himself a Palestinian.
[00:19:39] Search through all the books and all the records, you will never find an Arab calling himself a Palestinian.
[00:19:47] Previous to 1965, if you asked anyone in Palestine, the British Mandate, who was an Arab, what he was, he would say, I am an Arab.
[00:19:59] It was pan Arabism. That was the motto everywhere.
[00:20:07] When I lived in Egypt, it was always that. It was Arab, Arab, Arab, Arab, Arab. Well then, where were the Palestinians? It's a very interesting thing that Menachem Begin was one of the men who always called himself a Palestinian Jew.
[00:20:22] And it was the Jews in the British Mandate that called themselves Palestinian Jews.
[00:20:28] But since 1965 the word Palestinian has come right to the fore and to most people in the West. Now it is a question of the Palestine state versus the Jewish state.
[00:20:42] In other words, it's a question of nationalism. And we're told that Zionism, which is a dirty word in most countries of the world, that Zionism lies at the root of this whole problem.
[00:20:55] They have dispossessed another people.
[00:20:59] The interesting thing about the PLO is that if it lays its heart bare, it is not interested in merely a Palestinian state on the west bank.
[00:21:14] Nor is it interested in a Palestinian secular democratic state which will include all of present Israel as well.
[00:21:24] It is interested in a pan Arab nation that will include Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Syria and Lebanon.
[00:21:38] That is the real aim of the PLO and all the rest are but stages to be reached along the line of achieving that objective.
[00:21:56] Nor is the issue in the Middle east an economic issue.
[00:22:00] I don't think I need to dwell for very long upon this. But the postage stamp of land that we call Israel, no larger than Wales in size or the state of Indiana in the United States, possesses as far as we know, no oil resources of any kind and no natural gas resources or, or coal resources of any kind. It does possess mineral resources, but so do the Arab countries in even greater abundance.
[00:22:39] The interesting thing is this, that when we really take the little postage stamp of Teheratwe that we call Israel so small it cannot be called compared to the resources of the Arab world.
[00:23:00] It was Golda Meir who said in a moment of great humor, speaking to one of the great meetings of the United Jewish Appeal delegates that if she ever got to heaven and met Moses there, she would ask him why on earth when he led the children of Israel out of Egypt, he turned to the left instead of to the right and led them to the only place in the Middle east where there was no oil.
[00:23:33] It cannot be economic issues that are at the root of all the controversy and battle in the Middle east in the last 35 years. Take even the question of rivers.
[00:23:46] I sometimes when I'm in the States and Canada, not so much in Britain, but in the United States or Canada when I am driven around anywhere, we go over rivers which we could get the Thames into four or five times, let alone the little river Jordan, which after all is merely a quaggy compared with the river Thames.
[00:24:13] And yet when I turn around to my American friends and say, what was that river? They don't even know the name.
[00:24:21] Israel just hasn't even got water resources to speak of.
[00:24:26] You have the greatest river in the whole world, the river Nile, within mostly Arab territory. You have another of the two great rivers of the world, the river Euphrates and the river Tigris.
[00:24:41] If these rivers were harnessed, they could turn tens of thousands of miles into fertility.
[00:24:54] But Israel has only a little river Jordan. So it cannot be an economic issue. There's no economic prize.
[00:25:05] I say the issue in the Middle east is theological.
[00:25:10] Israel is in the front line of a confrontation between the word of God and Islam.
[00:25:20] And that is the heart of the Whole problem.
[00:25:26] Now, it is a very interesting thing, I might say in this matter, in just seeking to open it up to you, that there are only two forces in the world that have exterminated the Church of God wherever it has found it or subjected it to a form which has become a mere puppet in the hands of those ideologies.
[00:25:59] And those two forces are Marxism and Islam.
[00:26:05] Islam is quite unique in this, in that, for instance, Hinduism has never exterminated the Church of God or sought to totally obliterate the Gospel, nor has Buddhism, nor has Confucianism or Daoism, nor has even Shintoism with its militancy, nor has even Lamaism with its occult practices.
[00:26:33] But Islam in its heyday destroyed the Church wherever it found it and finally subjected what remained to a subservient role where the Church of God became anemic and spineless and full of fear.
[00:26:57] Marxism has done the same thing.
[00:27:02] Now it is well for us to remember that at the very heart of Islam is a triumphalism.
[00:27:08] Now, what do I mean by a triumphalism? I mean this. Islam believes that it has to triumph. That it is predestined by Allah to finally triumph in and over the nations of the world.
[00:27:29] The very name Islam in Arabic means submission.
[00:27:36] And it has at its heart the belief that God began to reveal Himself in and through the Jews.
[00:27:50] But the Jews corrupted the revelations that God gave to them in what we now call the Old Testament.
[00:27:59] So when God sent the Messiah to them, which he promised through the patriarchs and the prophets and they rejected him, God turned to the Christians and He began to reveal Himself in and through the Christians.
[00:28:18] But they likewise corrupted the revelations that he gave them in what has come to be called the New Testament.
[00:28:27] So God sent to them the final and greatest prophet of all, Muhammad.
[00:28:36] And he has put right the corrupted texts of both the Old Testament and the New Testament in what we now know as the Koran.
[00:28:49] The Koran is the complete, pure and absolute word of God.
[00:29:00] Mohammed is the last, the final and the greatest of all the prophets, which in the Islamic view includes not only Abraham and Moses and Samuel and David and Isaiah and John the Baptist, but also Jesus himself.
[00:29:26] Now, if you begin to understand this point, you will begin to see that for there to be the revival and recreation of a Jewish state in the 20th century century is unthinkable as far as Islam goes.
[00:29:48] For God has finished with the Jews and He has finished with the Christians. Now that does not mean that Christians and Jews are to be mercilessly slaughtered if they will be subservient to Islam, will not contradict Islam, will not, in other words, say that Muhammad is not the greatest and the last of the prophets, that the Quran is not the complete and absolute word of God, the final expression of truth given to the nations. If they will not contradict those things, then Christians and Jews are given an especial status subservient to the Muslims. They are dhimmis. They are people who have a special status as People of the Book, but they are not on the same, haven't the same status as Muslims, but they have neither the same status as infidels.
[00:30:59] If, however, a Jew or a Christian is on fire for their faith and cannot accept the central tenets of Islamic teaching, the Qur' an itself says that Jew or that Christian is only worthy of death. And any Muslim who executes him or puts him or her to death will enter paradise on his death.
[00:31:31] This explains perhaps to you the Islamic revolution that we are witnessing in Iran.
[00:31:40] Providing Jews and Christians and people of other faiths will only simply accept Islam and take a subservient role. They can survive. But the moment they begin to contradict the basic tenets of Islam, they are worthy only of death.
[00:32:05] Now this needs. We need to go a little further into this whole matter because it might be of great interest to you to know exactly what the Koran and what Islam does teach about Jesus.
[00:32:18] It is. Perhaps it brings us to the heart of the matter because contrary to the common idea amongst Christians, Islam believes that Jesus was the Messiah promised by God to the Jewish people.
[00:32:38] Secondly, he was born of a virgin, and that virgin was Mary, who is to be honored above all women.
[00:32:47] Thirdly, Jesus lived for 33 years a sinless life.
[00:32:56] Fourthly, his ministry was a miraculous ministry. So miraculous that the Qur' an adds some miracles to the record we have in the New Testament.
[00:33:10] Sixthly, Jesus was rejected by the Jews, was crucified, but he did not die.
[00:33:21] God would not allow Jesus, because of his holiness and his sinlessness, to be devalued by the Jews.
[00:33:34] So he spirited him away from the cross. And he did not die like Enoch. He was not, for God took him.
[00:33:46] He did ascend into heaven. And lastly, Islam says Jesus will return at the end of the age.
[00:34:00] Now, I hope you have noticed that the whole truth of the gospel is there, except for the heart of the gospel.
[00:34:09] And it is.
[00:34:10] Islam says Jesus is not the Son of God.
[00:34:17] Secondly, Jesus did not die on the cross.
[00:34:23] So there is no atoning death, there is no forgiveness of sins, there is no salvation and there is no justification from sin.
[00:34:37] Thirdly, because he did not die, Jesus did not rise on the third day.
[00:34:44] And therefore, since he did not rise on the third day, there is no such thing as a new birth. We cannot be begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, because he never rose on the third day.
[00:35:02] You therefore have the whole truth and the heart is taken out of it.
[00:35:10] That is why I say to folks everywhere, any servant of God who has worked in an Islamic country will tell you there is no field in the whole world that is harder than the Islamic field fields.
[00:35:29] I have known servants of the Lord that I count some of the greatest men and women I know in the whole family of God, at least in my lifetime.
[00:35:40] And they can count on one the fingers of one hand. After sometimes 35, 40 years of service, they can count on the fingers of one hand. Those who really found the Lord and stood, How come that the Buddhist field, the Confucian field, the Shintoist field, the Lamaist field, or even the Marxist field is not as tough as the Islamic field?
[00:36:14] Another very interesting thing I have witnessed myself an observed this, that in the same way that those who've been in some way involved in the occult, in black magic or in spiritism have to have that power broken in the name of the Lord before they can be born of God. So it is with Muslims that behind the scenes there has to be a battle with those principalities and powers that grip them until the thing is broken before they can come out into the open and really find the Lord. Have you not some of you had experience with those respirators? I remember I never woke up to the thing at the beginning when people used to come say, I want to find the Lord, but I just can't find Him. I really want to find him, but I can't. I can't do it. I only woke up after a year or two that there was generally a spiritist connection. And as soon as you plowed back and found it and the thing could be broken in the name of the Lord, that person could then, just as if they were free for the first time, blossom, open up to God.
[00:37:23] I think this is a very, very interesting factor in this whole matter.
[00:37:28] Now, again, to go back again to the beginnings of Islam. It is by, if we take the official teaching theology of Islam, God revealed himself to Muhammad in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, in the south, through the angel Gabriel.
[00:37:56] Now, I don't know who revealed who actually appeared to Muhammad, but since I Think generally speaking, on good authority. We believe that Muhammad could not read or write, or if he could read or write, certainly it was not very of a very high standard. We have to ask how the Quran, which is the most beautiful classical Arabic in the whole Arabic world of literature, how it came into being.
[00:38:35] Arabs will tell you that even Arab Christians love to listen to the Koran because it is so incredibly beautiful. The language, the rhythm, where did it come from?
[00:38:51] When the angel, supposedly the angel Gabriel, revealed himself to Muhammad, he told him that at the Ka' Ba in Mecca, that great black meteorite was, which in those days pilgrims came from all over Saudi Arabia to worship. There were over 600 idols.
[00:39:11] And the angel told Muhammad that every one of them was false and every one of them had to be destroyed. And he revealed himself by the name Allah.
[00:39:23] Now, Allah comes from the same route that we get the word the Lord and is indeed used in the Arabic version of the New Testament and of the Bible in that way.
[00:39:39] But just because Allah is the name of the Lord or equivalent to the name of the Lord, it does not mean that when the angel spoke to Muhammad, it was the Lord who was speaking. In my estimation, it was a principality of extraordinary power and influence that was speaking.
[00:40:12] It is an interesting fact that one of the idols at the Kaaba in Mecca was called Allah.
[00:40:30] Now, to move on, I have to say this, that within one century of Islam coming into being, it had swept over much of the face of the earth.
[00:40:42] There were at that time, it may surprise some of you to know, many, many, many thousands of Christians in Saudi Arabia and many thousands of Jews. But when Islam had done its work, there were none left.
[00:40:58] It swept through the whole of Central Asia to North India, carrying everything before it, putting both Jew and Christian to the sword unless they converted to Islam.
[00:41:11] When it came to Egypt, the greatest center of Christianity, Christianity, in the 7th 8th century, it put everything to the soil, destroyed the great Christian centers of Alexandria and Heliopolis and other places like this.
[00:41:30] Only those families who had much property and much money could barter their lives with those possessions. And thus we have to this day a copter church in Egypt.
[00:41:44] It swept all the way through North Africa, through the great Christian communities of Libya now or in those of Cyrenaica, right through the whole coast lands, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco, until finally it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and took the whole of Spain and much of Portugal and ended up 200km from Paris.
[00:42:12] And if it had not been for the grace of God, then the Islamic forces would have taken Paris and The whole of Europe would have fallen to Islam, and everyone in this place this morning would have been born a Muslim instead of a nominal Christian. Do you understand what I mean?
[00:42:35] And I remind my friends on the other side of the Atlantic that the early pilgrim fathers would then have been pilgrim Muslim fathers, probably fleeing from their Sunni brethren. They would have probably been Shiite Muslims fleeing from Sunni Muslims to find freedom on the other side of the Atlantic.
[00:42:59] But by the grace of God alone, and not because of anything that the Christians deserved, because it was all part of God's purpose for the nations. The Christian forces in the back of Poitiers in 732 defeated the Islamic forces. Those of you who know a little bit about history, you will have heard of the name of the famous Charles Martel.
[00:43:27] Those forces retired to Spain, where they remained the Islamic forces for another couple of centuries before they were finally driven back into North Africa, where they remained until this day. But that was not the end of Islam's attempt to take the world for Allah.
[00:43:45] As late as the 17th century, it again sought to take the whole of Europe. Under the leadership of the Ottoman Turks, it swept through Greece, through Yugoslavia, through part of Bulgaria, through part of Romania, through all of Hungary, until finally it came through to Vienna. And it was only by the grace of God that the Christian forces defeated the Islamic forces in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, And the Islamic forces retired to lick their wounds and slowly stagnate over the next centuries.
[00:44:36] It was not until this century and the discovery of oil that Islam has now seen another way in which it can take the world.
[00:44:55] It seems to be almost inconceivable for Western leaders to believe that theology could be the dynamic behind national politics and policies.
[00:45:09] I suppose it's because the church on the whole in Western countries has become so spineless and so anemic that you tend to think anywhere, whether it's in the Western countries of Europe or northern countries of Europe, or whether it is on the United States or Canada or the rest of the free world. People tend to think, now that's all right if you want to keep, you know, have your religious values, go to church or sit.
[00:45:35] But I mean, you're keeping alive the traditional culture, as it were, the background, the old values. But the gospel has nothing whatsoever to do with the direction or policies of a government or of a nation.
[00:45:57] So it is inconceivable, for instance, the American State Department, and I imagine even for the foreign ministry here, to believe that theology could actually dictate the course and policies of nations in the world today, but it is doing so.
[00:46:23] There are Islamic leaders who believe that it is Allah who has finally brought to light those enormous oil reserves in Islamic lands with which they now can use political and economic clout in the world.
[00:46:54] There are two other things in connection with this which I must mention.
[00:46:59] First of all, I don't know how many of you know here that the whole Islamic world is in the grip of a revival of mammoth proportions.
[00:47:07] It has swept the whole Islamic world from the Philippines in Southeast Asia, through Malaysia, right through Pakistan, right through Afghanistan, right through Iran, right through the Middle east, right through Northern Africa.
[00:47:26] It has even reached Mauritania and Senegal and the Gambia on the western, the Atlantic coast of West Africa.
[00:47:37] This revival is so enormous that even in a so called moderate nation like Egypt, there are 7 million paid up members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
[00:47:56] And so powerful is the influence now at the grassroots level that Islamic nation after Islamic nation is returning to the Islamic legal code of the 8th century.
[00:48:11] For instance, Saudi Arabia has already gone back to it. Iran has gone back to it. Pakistan has gone back to it. Libya has gone back to it. Even Egypt has rushed through its parliament legislation to return a large portion of the Egyptian legal system to the Sharia or the Islamic legal code.
[00:48:36] In other words, even if there are leaders of Islamic nations who are not in sympathy with Islamic fundamentalism, they are having to take note of it and they are having to shape their internal policies according to the dictates of that Islamic fundamentalist revival.
[00:49:02] When I tell you that the PLO has invested in the United States and Canada, the PLO has invested in the United States and Canada and the countries of Western Europe, $900 billion.
[00:49:19] Then you begin to understand why the President of Italy had to receive a Rafa and why the leaders of France had to receive Arafat, and why the PLO has an office in London. Although it is a well known fact that assassinations were planned in that office and carried out from that office, the fact is that if the PLO alone, apart from other Islamic nations, were to withdraw its invested capital, it would turn the recessions of these lands into a catastrophe.
[00:50:01] Furthermore, witness all over the free world the building of Islamic educational institutions and mosques.
[00:50:12] You have here in London the greatest mosque in the Western Hemisphere in Regent's Park.
[00:50:23] And at the opening of that mosque, Crown Prince Fahid, now King Fahid of Saudi Arabia, said that we Muslims believe that if we can take London for Islam, we can take the whole world.
[00:50:45] The fact is that most Christians believe that Islam is a sister religion to Judaism and Christianity that it has the same monotheistic faith and therefore is in a different category to the rest. My dear friends, there could be nothing further from the truth.
[00:51:06] In Geneva, a mosque has been built with a minaret higher than the traditional Swiss Reformed cathedral.
[00:51:13] In Rome, an Islamic college has been built on the slope of the hill above the Vatican with a minaret higher than St. Peter's it doesn't mean anything to Christians. They don't worry. What does it matter if they want to turn churches into mosques as they are doing all over Britain, or whether they build a minaret higher than what does it. In one sense, I can understand it, but to the Muslim, it means a tremendous amount because it is a physical, concrete sign that Islam is above.
[00:51:55] I used to think in the prayer and Bible weeks that my beloved brother Dennis Clark conducted, I used to think when he went on and on some years ago about Islam and the need to rise up in the strength and power of God and withstand this principality that was invading the British Isles and elsewhere, that he had a bee in the bonnet.
[00:52:18] I used to think, well, I don't know, I think we have to be a little careful of this lest we go off the rails. Something strange.
[00:52:25] But I have come to see that with the eye of God, he saw something concerning the future.
[00:52:39] Now, my dear friends, I was in Indianapolis, and I thank God on bended knee, and I hope this videotape doesn't go there. But I thank my God on bended knee that I don't have to live in Indiana or Indianapolis, but being taken out into the country, which is as flat as a pancake for a thousand miles in all directions, taken out into the country.
[00:53:05] About 50 miles outside of Indianapolis, my beloved friends Devon Fromke and his wife, they pointed to a building and said, what do you think that is?
[00:53:17] And there, right out in the country, was the most maddening, magnificent structure it didn't take me more than a minute to recognize was a mosque.
[00:53:31] They cannot understand what on earth it's doing right outside in the country. And all I can surmise is that an Islamic educational establishment is going to be built alongside of.
[00:53:48] There are 5 million Muslim Americans today.
[00:53:55] And you have all heard of the Black Muslims.
[00:53:59] This is just one sect making headway amongst the black population of the United States and very much in the eye of all the young black folks because of Muhammad Ali and of people like Karim Abdullah, the American football star.
[00:54:22] Now, my friends, I don't know if you followed me thus far, have been able to come along with us but the fact of the matter is this. Now, to get back, as it were, to what I really want to say, and it is this, you see, in my estimation.
[00:54:47] Oh, sorry. I must make one other point. I was talking about the Islamic revival. There's one other important point I must add to that.
[00:54:55] We must add to this. Islamic revival, the Islamic revolution.
[00:55:00] Now, the Islamic revolution is, as it were, we could say almost, you could almost say the Pentecostal wing of the Islamic revival. It is the most fervent, the most fundamentalist and the most radical movement in the whole Islamic world. I have said again and again that anyone who sees the Ayatollah Khomeini and looks into those eyes and does not see a demonized human being is deceived.
[00:55:43] Within a matter of months of the Islamic revolution taking Iran, they had murdered two of the most outstanding Iranian evangelists, both converts from Islam.
[00:55:58] They tried to murder the archbishop, that godly and holy man.
[00:56:03] They killed his son.
[00:56:04] They nearly killed his secretary, Gene Wardell.
[00:56:15] That Islamic revolution may appear to some people to be just some kind of eccentricity that somehow has managed to overlive from the Dark Ages.
[00:56:26] My friends, you are witnessing the birth of something as powerful and as murderous as the Nazi movement in the beginning of the 30s.
[00:56:43] That Islamic revolution is not just for export to all Arab nations or all Islamic nations. It is for export to the whole world.
[00:56:59] Now, to come back to this point of Israel, you can, I think, see if you followed me thus far, that Israel is in the front line of a confrontation between the word of God and Islam.
[00:57:17] Because if the recreation of the Jewish state is the fulfillment of God's prophetic word, it undoes Islamic theology.
[00:57:32] As far as Islamic theology is concerned, it is unthinkable that the Jews should again become a volatile, virile nation with its own president, its own prime minister, its own national institutions, its own army, air force and Navy. In the 20th century, for there to be Jews, remnants of a once great and glorious work of God, an antique remnant, is acceptable.
[00:58:03] But for those Jews to become a viable national and sovereign entity, and furthermore, within the Islamic area at the heart of it, with the third most holy place in the Islamic sacred code, Jerusalem as its capital, it is unthinkable. It is an obscenity. My dear friends, please do not be taken in by moderate Islamic leaders like King Hassan of Morocco or King Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
[00:58:45] These men are moderate.
[00:58:49] They are prepared to take on their lips the word Israel.
[00:58:55] But if you want to hear the authentic voice of Islam, you must listen to Khomeini or Gaddafi.
[00:59:03] They are the authentic voice of Islam.
[00:59:09] You will notice that after every Islamic summit nation meeting, they make a declaration and studiously avoid using the word Israel. And we are told by the media and by experts this is just a question of Arab honor.
[00:59:30] Once really Israel begins to show that she's not so intransigent, then they will begin to recognize Israel. But my friends, the real problem is theological.
[00:59:42] Those leaders know very well that if they use the word Israel, they have gone on the blacklist of Gaddafi and Khomeini. They are as good as dead.
[00:59:52] Witness what happened to Anwar Sadat.
[00:59:54] Witness what happened to Bashir Jemael.
[00:59:58] No one who will have anything to do with Israel, let alone take the word Israel on their lips, will live for very long.
[01:00:08] It is a theological confrontation.
[01:00:14] If what I have said is true, then you can understand what God is doing.
[01:00:19] For he is drawing out the full venom of poison, as it were, from this whole system with this little nation of Israel. It is, as it were, a cold and a hot front meeting.
[01:00:37] And if what I've said is true about the state of Israel, what about its capital, Jerusalem? That is to add insult to injury as far as the Islamic world is concerned.
[01:00:48] That the Knesset should have passed a law on 30 July, using words that have never before been used in any other parliament in the world, describing its capital as the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel and the Jewish people is something that Islam cannot abide and will not tolerate.
[01:01:17] If Islamic nations make a peace treaty with Israel, it is only because they are weak and Israel is strong and they will await a more opportune moment to destroy her.
[01:01:34] I can take you even further in this conflict if you want to go to the focal point of it.
[01:01:39] We have gone from the land to Jerusalem. But I can take you within the old walls of the city of Jerusalem to less than a square mile, and there I can stand you upon the Temple Mount.
[01:01:56] And there at the heart of that Temple Mount is a rock, and on it is a mosque. And that mosque is called the Dome of the Rock or the Mosque of Omar. It has been there since the 7th 8th century.
[01:02:16] It stands on the very place where traditionally, Abraham offered Isaac to God and God intervened on the very place of the threshing floor of Arauna, the Jebusite that David bought it from. When God said to him, this is the place where your son will build for me a house.
[01:02:45] According to Islamic teaching, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from that rock on his faithful steed Burak.
[01:03:00] That's why it is the third most holy place in Islam.
[01:03:06] It is also because on the beautiful, and I must tell you, there are things about Islam which are incredibly beautiful.
[01:03:17] Ethics, some literature, and certainly some of the architecture and so on and on. That freeze on those magnificent glazed ceramic tiles are all quotations from the mosque and from the Quran. And twice the word appears.
[01:03:40] God has no son.
[01:03:45] Do not say that. He needs a companion or a friend.
[01:03:49] God is God alone. Give him the glory.
[01:03:56] That is why the Crusaders called it, and all the Christians of the Dark and Middle Ages, they called it the abomination of Desolation, standing where it ought not to stand.
[01:04:11] It is a very interesting thing that on that same Temple Mount, on the southern end, is another mosque called the Mosque of Al Aqsa, which is as valuable to Islam as the Mosque of Omar. And interestingly enough, that mosque stands on the site of Solomon's portrait, where the 3,000 were saved on the day of Pentecost and where the early church met together for worship, for prayer and for Bible study every day.
[01:04:45] It is interesting that those two places constitute the heart of this huge conflict and controversy of Islam. Now, what I am saying is this.
[01:04:59] It is not flesh and blood. It is not just a question of getting rid of Gaddafi, getting rid of Khomeini.
[01:05:05] There is a world ruler of darkness, an invisible principality, a spiritual principality and power that was behind the birth of Islam and the development of Islam and has now risen up with renewed vigor to conquer the world.
[01:05:30] How can that principality get hold of Christians, my dear friends? How can that principality get hold of Christians? They are scattered all over the face of the globe, in every country. There are many countries that can't get hold of them.
[01:05:46] But Israel is a different matter.
[01:05:49] Israel is a concrete reality within its own domain, having taken its third most holy place. It is a nation like they are nations. It has a government like they have governments. It has an army, an air force and a navy, like they have army, air forces and navies.
[01:06:07] It is an entity that they can see, they can hear, they can touch, they can handle.
[01:06:16] In the 1967 war, young fellows shouted in Jerusalem, we'll get the Jews on Saturday and we'll get the Christians on Sunday.
[01:06:32] And they said the same thing in the Yom Kippur War.
[01:06:38] We'll get the Jews on Saturday and the Christians on Sunday. That is the sequence.
[01:06:50] Now, my beloved friend.
[01:06:53] The Lebanon and the tragedy of Lebanon is but one offshoot of this whole confrontation.
[01:07:03] I am not saying for One single moment that I believe that the flesh and blood leaders of Islamic nations wanted to actually dismember and destroy the state of Lebanon. But the Lebanon was the only Christian Arab state in the whole Arab world.
[01:07:22] And it was the center for all Christian work, all Arabic speaking Christian work, literature, publishing of Bibles, kolpatage work, radio work, everything.
[01:07:39] Whether the flesh and blood leaders wanted to dismember its Christian character or not, the principality behind Islam could not tolerate within its side a thorn like the Lebanon. And that explains the 10 years of chaos and tragedy that have been the lot of the Lebanese.
[01:08:05] 120,000 people dead.
[01:08:10] There has never been a session in the United nations where the whole General assembly has stood for a minute silence for the hundred and twenty thousand that have died in the Lebanon.
[01:08:27] When the Christian population of Damur was mercilessly slaughtered, men, women and children, where was the outcry in the whole world? Never. We never heard a squeak.
[01:08:39] Even the Vatican didn't send a cable or make a protest even when they tried to massacre the Christian town. When I speak, I'm not talking about nominal. The Christian town of Zachary and northeastern Lebanon.
[01:09:00] Just over two years ago there wasn't a squeak from anybody until Israel shot down two of those Soviet built helicopter gunships that were firing napalm into civilian, densely civilian centers.
[01:09:28] I say this is not just flesh and blood.
[01:09:31] This is a deliberate attempt of that principality behind Islam and behind the Islamic revival and the Islamic revolution to destroy any vestige of opposition to its rule and its triumph.
[01:09:54] When you begin to see this whole picture, then you begin to understand the Middle East.
[01:10:03] You can understand that there can never be peace in the Middle east until the principality behind Islam has received a crippling blow. It is my belief that there are millions, millions of Muslims who are destined to find the Lord, but will never find the Lord until Islam is crippled.
[01:10:27] And I believe that God will use little Israel to cripple it.
[01:10:34] If what I believe, and I honestly admit that it's speculative, I don't want you to take it as dogmatic, but I honestly myself believe that we are heading up for a conflict. And I have been saying it since 1974.
[01:10:55] And nothing that has happened in these last years has altered my conviction that we are steadily moving toward that conflict described in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.
[01:11:08] It would never surprise me if Marxism and the Islamic Revolution, mutually opposing forces, were to marry, to enter a wedlock united in their ferocious hatred of Israel.
[01:11:35] If that happened, then I think this talk about the hordes gog and Magog, which is not the name of a war, but is a Hebrew term that describes any anti God antichrist forces north, south, east and west, but which are energized by the uttermost parts of the north.
[01:11:57] Now, I am told by learned divines that when Ezekiel prophesied the outermost parts of the north, which he mentions three times in that prophecy over the two chapters were the Caucasian mountains or Armenia.
[01:12:12] But I have to take note of another thing, and that is that Ezekiel clearly says that he did not prophesy for his own day, but for the time of the end.
[01:12:24] And if it is the time of the end, where are the uttermost parts of the north?
[01:12:28] In the time of the end? Any one of us can take a map and put our finger on Jerusalem and go directly north. And you will come to Armenia. But go on past Armenia on the Turkish Soviet border and you will come to Moscow.
[01:12:44] You don't have to go into fanciful interpretations. The Rosh is Russia, Meshech is Moscow. Tubal is Tobolsky.
[01:12:58] I find it a very, very interesting thing that God says, I will put a hook in your jaws o Gog and Magog, and I will turn you and drag you down to the mountains of Israel.
[01:13:20] That doesn't sound to me as if the Soviet Union is rubbing its hands and waiting with anticipation to get into some fray in the Middle East.
[01:13:38] I understand that Mr. Brezhnev was responsible for the invasion of Afghanistan against the advice of the new Soviet leader, Mr. Andropov.
[01:13:51] But I will tell you this, that Mr. Brezhnev's intelligence was of kindergarten stature compared with Mr. Andropov.
[01:14:01] Don't be taken in for one single moment about this nice liberal gentleman who has finally come to the seat of power in the Kremlin. Any man who can mastermind the KGB since 1967 till one year ago is no liberal.
[01:14:26] A man who can crush Jewish descent and Christian descent by hounding them into forced labor camps and into mental hospitals where, through injections their minds are destroyed, is no liberal.
[01:14:46] The man is the greatest demonic intelligence that so far come to the leadership of the Kremlin.
[01:14:57] I do not believe for one single instant that Yuri Andropov is waiting to get into the Middle East.
[01:15:07] He will get others to do his dirty work for him.
[01:15:10] He is not waiting to move into the Middle East. He will do everything to keep out of getting into the Middle East. But God says, I will put a hook through his jaws and will turn him when he doesn't want to be in it. I will Turn him and drag him down. We can wait in these next years to see that whole force unwillingly involved in a conflict in the Middle East.
[01:15:41] Now, those of you who have a rural background will know very well that you don't put hooks through jaws of valuable animals.
[01:15:49] I don't know if you've even noticed this little point.
[01:15:54] You don't put a hook through a jaw of a valuable animal, do you? If you've got an ox or a bull or a cow, you don't put a hook through its jaw. If you want to get it somewhere, you'll entice it. But if it won't be enticed, you give it a kick. But, I mean, if you don't kick it, you'll at least give it a few prods in the back to get it moving. The only time you'd ever put a hook through an animal's jaw is when it's for the slaughterhouse.
[01:16:22] And that is exactly what the prophet Ezekiel meant when he said, I will put a horse hook through your jaws, O gog admiration. And I will drag turn you and drag you down to the mountains of and I will give you to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.
[01:16:52] It would never surprise me if we live to witness the overthrow of Marxism and the overthrow of Islam and a period of unparalleled opportunity for the church to preach the gospel and declare that Jesus is Lord. Now someone will say, yes, well, don't you believe in an Antichrist? I most certainly do, and that is my conviction. And I may be wrong, very wrong. So please, I'm just speaking from the heart in this matter, but I would imagine that the Antichrist will come from secular humanism far more insidious, far more powerful and universal than anything that is at present in the world.
[01:17:49] So, my dear friends, I believe that altogether apart from whether Israel's policies are right every time, or whether she is righteous and compassionate in every single action, or whether at times she makes mistakes, or even more is involved in things that are really questionable, the overall picture is another picture.
[01:18:19] God has said of his people, I will lead the blind by a way that they know not in paths that they have not known will I lead them.
[01:18:31] I will make darkness light before them and the crooked places straight.
[01:18:39] These things will I do, and I will not forsake them.
[01:18:46] I believe we are witnessing that nation walk back in blindness and disobedience, not really knowing who is behind it or what he's doing, but somehow, intuitively, many of them, even the most agnostic, somehow intuitively recognizing that there's more than flesh and blood to Israel's her recreation, her development, her survival and her triumph.
[01:19:16] I believe that in the end we shall witness the greatest miracle of all that will make all the other things pale into insignificance when the natural branches are restored back into their own olive tree.
[01:19:35] That will, in my estimation, make the recreation of the state of Israel an anemic shadow in comparison.
[01:19:48] Or the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 or the other triumphs of Israel. They will pale into income significance when the Spirit of God melts the Jewish heart, takes away the hardening which has befallen them in part, tears away the veil on the mind, and they recognize the Messiah.
[01:20:14] Thank you.
