part0022

We know a great deal about the Antichrist and his actions from the Bible. In this section I will examine those characteristics and actions of the Antichrist that we can be relatively sure will occur. I will show how the Islamic Antichrist theory fails to explain these actions in a way that is logically consistent.

There are several places in Scripture that make it clear the Antichrist will claim to be God (i.e., 2 Thessalonians 2:4, Daniel 11:36). This seems very unlikely to occur with the Mahdi since in Islam the belief that a man can be God is considered blasphemy and is the primary reason Islam is opposed to Christianity .

No matter how many signs and wonders the Antichrist does, he would have a very difficult time convincing the Muslim world that a man, any man, is in fact Allah. At the very least, one could say there is no hint in Islamic tradition that the Mahdi is anything other than a man, not even a prophet. Therefore, if anything like this does occur, it would be inconsistent with the writings of the Quran and the hadiths .

In the Bible it seems clear that the Antichrist will sit in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, (2 Thessalonians 2:4). It is not just that the Antichrist “allows” the Jewish temple to be rebuilt; he actually plans on using it for the declaration of his deity. This is so contrary to Islamic doctrine I am surprised the point is not raised more often. Nothing could be more offensive to a Muslim than a man sitting in the Jewish temple, claiming to be God. One of the main reasons the Jews don’t consider rebuilding the temple today is because such a move would spark a war with Islam. This action would be a tacit acceptance of the Jewish version of history and religion. Many Muslims, especially those in Israel, deny that the Jewish temple ever sat on the temple mount.

Daniel 9:27 says that the Antichrist will allow the daily sacrifice, a Jewish ritual performed twice a day, to begin again. And even though he stops this sacrifice after three-and a-half years, the Islamic Antichrist proponents still need to explain why a man who is supposed to be intolerant of other religions, especially Judaism, allows Jewish people to sacrifice animals on the temple mount in Jerusalem. Islam denies the need for daily blood sacrifices to atone for sin, yet Jews believe that the daily sacrifice must start again if they are to truly obey the Mosaic covenant. The Muslims who currently control the temple mount won’t even allow Jewish people to pray on the temple mount, so can you imagine a man, who is supposed to be such a champion if Islam, allowing animal sacrifices to the Jewish God to start again ?

The idea that the Jews will accept the Antichrist as their Messiah seems to be clear from several passages in the Bible:

In this passage Jesus is talking to the Jewish leadership and saying that though they rejected Him, they will accept “another.” This one “who comes in his own name” is widely considered to be a reference to the Antichrist.

“Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.” (Matthew 24:23-25)

Here Jesus says that a person claiming to be the “Christ” (the Jewish Messiah) will “deceive many.”

The idea that a Muslim man who promotes Islam will be considered to be the Messiah by the Jews is preposterous. Jewish expectations are that the Messiah will be from the line of David (who was of the tribe of Judah). The Encyclopedia Judaica says: “The rabbis agree he is of Davidic lineage (based on Hos. 3: 5 and Jer. 30: 9).” [74] The Jewish Encyclopedia adds that being from the Davidic line is “essential to the Messianic mission.” [75]

Even if the Jews would be able to bend on the idea that the Messiah would be an ethnic Jew, they would certainly never bend on the concept that he must be a religious Jew. There is no imaginable scenario in which the Jews would accept as their Messiah a man who promoted Islam as the true religion.

While reading reviews of Walid Shoebat’s book God’s War on Terror, I came across an interesting story from someone who asked Walid Shoebat about this issue when he visited their church.

“He [Shoebat] also taught in our Sunday school class and I asked the question, ‘Why would the Jews accept a Muslim as their Messiah?’ His response, ‘That’s a stupid question!’”

The point is that despite the Islamic Antichrist proponents telling us that the Antichrist will be a champion of Islam, most of what we know about the Antichrist from the Bible suggests that he is uniquely focused on Jewish rituals and customs. He makes Jerusalem his capital city and chooses the Jewish temple of all places to reveal himself. All of this seems logically inconsistent with the Islamic Antichrist idea.

Sometimes it is overlooked that the deception of the Antichrist is primarily intended to deceive those who claim to be Christians, not the unsaved world. Considering that Islam is so feared and hated by the Western world, it seems unlikely that the Antichrist would choose a religion that has become such a “boogeyman” to win the hearts and minds of these people. I will not say that such a scenario is impossible, as I do in the case of the Jews, but I will say that of all the religious systems the Antichrist could choose to win over Christians, Islam is probably the worst.