Capture of Persia (Iran) led to Islam War

Last month in explaining the cataleptic state of mainstream Islam over the past three centuries, I wrote on the internecine conflicts that bloodied the Muslim world in the 1500s.

I have discovered since that many readers were unfamiliar with the subject, and because the forces loosed then are still forging the destiny of the Middle East — far more than the current U.S. intervention in Iraq — I'll do the subject in greater depth.

For starters, a quote from William H. McNeill's "The Rise of the West," which won a National Book Award in 1961:

"The two and seventy sects which Moslem learning discerned within the community of the faithful were divided on the ancient issue of the legitimacy of the succession to the Prophet into two main groupings: the Shia, who held that the succession rightfully descended only through Mohammed's son-in-law, Ali, and the Sunni, who recognized the legitimacy of Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, and their successors in the caliphate. With the rise of numerous Sufi orders, brotherhoods, and other religious congregations, this basic divergence was vastly complicated. The sharpness of its lines tended to blur with the proliferation of heterodox religious groups that drew elements from Shia piety while remaining Sunni in admitting the first three caliphs. Confusion was compounded by the fact that although the Shia remained a minority, their practice of simulating Sunni orthodoxy while revealing hidden truths only to trusted initiates made possible the spread of a wide variety of Shia groups throughout Moslem lands. An uneasy balance among the sects of Islam had long prevailed, subject to recurrent local disturbance whenever a particularly holy man or some fanatical leader arose to preach the damnation of all who differed from his theological principles."

If you find this confusing, it is. But in the Islamic world of the 1400s, you might say the Shia tended to be pietistic, fervent — and underground — while the Sunni overlords tended to be more practical-minded and tolerant of multiple Muslim doctrines, of which "two and seventy" is only a "traditional" guess. Historians believe many Sunni rulers tolerated Shia to keep the peace.

This world exploded in C.E. 1499 when a fanatical Shia sect that lived on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea seized power in Iran. Its young leader, Ismail Safavi, began with a handful of warriors, but they were as fanatical as those of the Prophet nearly nine centuries earlier, a fervor regularly reborn within Islam.

Ismail won fantastic victories. Each victory brought more followers, and in 1500 he captured Tabriz and crowned himself shah. In five more years, he controlled the whole Iranian plateau; by 1508 he held Baghdad and most of Iraq, and in 1510 he utterly smashed the Uzbeks to the north, creating a vast, new Iranian empire.

All historic sources agree that the secret of this stunning success was the religious fanaticism of the Shia soldiery, fed by centuries of Shia preaching.

The trouble with True Believers, whatever the faith, is rabid intolerance. Ismail persecuted all Sunnis in his lands and spread Shia doctrines both by force and propaganda. Persia, or Iran, became overwhelmingly Shia and the Shia the largest religious community in adjacent Iraq.

Now, a huge revolutionary, aggressive and dissident Islamic empire emerged at the center of the Muslim world. Ismail's successes and his incessant propaganda directed beyond Iran's borders began to bring Shia sympathizers out in the open, from India to the Atlantic. Large numbers of these Shia lived in eastern Anatolia, or Turkey. These revolted against the Ottoman sultan in 1514, on religious grounds; the Ottomans had adopted Sunnism (rather unenthusiastically) in the previous century.

Also, Ismail sought to make alliance with the Mamelukes in Egypt, which would give him control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and far to the west the now-Shia Sa'di Sharifs of Morocco were forging an African empire hostile to the nominal Ottoman rule over this part of the world.

Another thing to be remembered is that the religious wars came about as a result of a close alliance between territorial lords and the various faiths The Protestant princes defended Luther’s reforms as a way of preventing the Emperor Charles V from consolidating power in Germany as Charles, as Carlos I, was consolidating royal power in Spain. The French kings, as part of a continuing strategy, aligned themselves with the enemies of Charles, since they shared military frontiers with Charles in the Netherlands. and the South, and were adversaries of Charles In Italy. For more than ten years Francis I of France tolerated Protestant doctrines in his realm. Then in 1533, radical Protestants, broke the civil peace by posting placards with violent attacks on the Catholic Church. This is where young John Calvin enters public life. His teachings are, if anything, more uncompromising than Luther’s, and lead to a split in the Protestant camp. From his refuge in Geneva, Calvin directs with the force of his writings the Reformation in Rhine Valley and France. The new surge provokes a response from the Catholics assembled at Trent and the establishment of the militant order of the Jesuits, and the ideology battle is now well joined. The aim to to capture the king, for Christendom is split, and whichever side the political ruler chooses, that religion is now the religion of the land. Political ambition and fanaticism are now joined, and war will divide Latin Europe into two new civilizations, the one permanently Catholic and the other permanently Protestant. Once Germany have been savaged in a bloody stalemate, the relgious boundaries are fixed almost beyond changing, and purely dynastic motives will dominate war. Balance of power becomes the norm.

I was wondering what your perspective is on this.

- The most common belief however, held almost universally by Bible teachers, is that the Antichrist Empire will be a revived Roman Empire.

There are however some glaring problems with this theory:

Firstly, Rome was the sixth empire.

• The Egyptian Empire
• The Assyrian Empire
• The Babylonian Empire
• The Persian Empire
• The Greek Empire

If Rome was the sixth, and will also be the last, then what happened to the seventh? This theory has a gaping hole.

Is Rome the sixth, seventh and the eighth empires?

Neither Scripture nor history nor common sense supports this. Secondly, every one of the previous six empires ruled the Middle East, including Jerusalem. This is very important. We must always remember that the Bible is thoroughly Jerusalem centric. It is not America centric, nor is it Western centric. In the biblical view of things, Jerusalem is the center of the earth. This point cannot be underscored enough.

Any theory that revolves around a revived Roman Empire based in Europe - for instance on the European Common Market - is a foreign concept to the Bible.

Unless the empire rules over or directly affects Jerusalem, it is actually a bit irrelevant to biblical mind-set.
And the third crucial point is that if we look at the first six empires, each succeeding empire either destroyed or absorbed the empire that preceded it. There is a very natural sucession. If we look at each empire, we see that they all fulfill these two characteristics: they ruled over Jerusalem and they defeated or absorbed their predecessor. The Egyptian Empire ruled all of Egypt and Israel as well. But the Assyrian Empire defeated the Egyptian Empire and likewise ruled over a vast portion of the Middle East, including Israel. After this, the Babylonian Empire defeated the Assyrian Empire and became even larger than its predecessor, again, ruling over Israel. Such is the pattern with each successive empire: The Medo/Persian Empire succeeded the Babylonian Empire only to be succeeded by the Greek Empire. The Greek Empire was in turn suceeded by the Roman Empire. Which leads us to the seventh empire. Who overcame the Roman Empire?

In order to answer this question, we need to briefly review the fall of the Roman Empire. What exactly happened?

In 395 A.D., The Roman Empire was divided into two portions; the eastern and the western portions. The Eastern portion became known as the Byzantine Empire. In 410 A.D. the western capital city of Rome fell to invading Germanic tribes known as the Visigoths or Barbarians. The western/European half of the Empire including its capital had fallen but the Roman Empire nevertheless continued.

How so?

It simply shifted its capital and its throne from Rome to Constantinople – a thousand miles east. The western European portion of the Roman Empire fell but the Eastern Byzantine portion of the Roman Empire lived on for nearly another thousand years with Constantinople as its capital. The Roman Empire didn’t actually completely fall until the eastern portion of the Empire finally fell to the Turks in 1453 A.D. Likewise it was the Islamic Caliphate of Umar Ibn al-Khattab that took Jerusalem in 637. Thus we see that it was the various manifestations of Islamic Empire culminating with the Ottoman Empire that suceeded the Roman Empire and ruled over the entire Middle East, beginning with Jerusalem for over thirteen hundred years.

The Turkish Empire existed right up until 1909.
Thus we see that the only empire that fulfills the patterns necessary to be considered the seventh empire is the Turkish/Ottoman Empire. This of course corresponds perfectly with Ezekiel’s list of nations with such a heavy emphasis on Turkey.

The Turkish Empire was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate. It was not until 1923 that the Islamic Caliphate was officially abolished. Today the Islamic world is awaiting the restoration of that Caliphate. I believe that the Bible teaches that someday soon the Turkish Empire will be revived.

The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, then he was not, and yet came again. Revelation 17:8

At that time, we may expect to see the Islamic Caliphate restored. Eventually this position will possibly be given to a man whom the Muslim world would refer to as the Mahdi, but whom people of understanding would identify as the man known biblically as the Antichrist.

People have to stop taking Islam seriously. It is not a real religion. If a Sumatra head hunter told you his religious beliefs would you have any respect for them? Would you find them logical? Islam is the same

Islam should be studied be it is a serious enemy. The threat and Jihad of Islam should be taken seriously. But its beliefs are illogical and idiotic and come from a false prophet

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Warning Against False Prophets

Matt 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Matt 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Matt 7:17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

Matt 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither [can] a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

Matt 7:19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Matt 12:33 Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by [his] fruit.

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