In your article “The Four Horsemen, al Mahdi, and the Magnetic Polar Reversal” you state that the antichrist might come out of the religion of Islam. Even though I think it’s highly possible my problem is this. If the Gog/Magog war precedes the Tribulation like you believe (and so do I) and the Moslem armies are destroyed, wouldn’t that make Islam become irrelevant?
I can’t see anybody from that point forward thinking that the religion of Islam has any credibility left. Why would Allah cause his believers to be annihilated only to come back and see the Jewish temple rebuilt? I could see all Islamic peoples losing faith and seeing the true power of the God of Israel. That’s the point of the war, to make everybody see that the God of Israel still exists. This doesn’t mean they come to see Christ as savior, only that the God of Israel is the true God.
I’m still leaning toward the false prophet coming out of the House of Israel and the Antichrist coming out of the Gentile Romans. How do you think it might work out that the Mahdi might be the Antichrist or that this figure embraces Islam considering they lose the war? I would think this would put Judaism at the top of its game.
It’s true that God uses the battle of Ezekiel to reveal Himself to the world, and does so by destroying the Moslem armies. And for a time there seems to be a genuine peace in the Middle East.
But by the middle of Daniel’s 70th week, Jews and Christians, the most avid followers of the one true God, will become the most hated people on Earth. This turn about is caused by someone who claims to be God but in fact bears an astonishing resemblance to the descriptions in Islamic prophecy of al Mahdi. Whoever he is, he convinces the whole world to follow him, everyone but Jews and Christians, that is.
And so in a few short years, the followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob fall from being “at the top of their game” to being the enemy of mankind, and their God is viewed as the source of all the world’s evil. Such is the deception that characterizes the times of the end.