Shalom to you all. I am counting on the Holy Spirit to help me out with my poor English, which, as you can hear, is not my mother tongue. It is a privilege and a joy to be with you today, and to have this opportunity to share with you something which, I believe, is the key to what God is doing at the present; it is the key to all that concerns the unfolding and the accomplishment of the last chapter of God's plan of salvation. You will better understand the vital importance of this subject as we examine it together now, and, as you will see, it is all the more complex in that it is made up of so many different levels and realities.

I cannot give you a complete introduction to the subject of Islam this morning, but what I would like to do in the short time available is to be able to speak to you about the spirit and the nature of this religious system. The important thing for me is to be able to show you how Islam, Israel and the faithful Church are all connected together, because we are living in a period when we cannot talk about Islam, without including Israel. We are also living at a time when the Church of true believers must make up its mind about the position it should adopt concerning the reality of Islam…this decision must either be taken through a careful study of God's Word, or as a result of human reasoning. In reality, the western world (and, very sadly, the Church also) tends to systematically perceive Islam from a purely human standpoint. Because of this, they are incapable of touching the hearts of the nations held hostage by this spirit. Their policies and dealings with these countries merely reflect the fact that they do not understand the spiritual reality of what Islam actually is. We only need to understand Islam through the Word of God, in order to realize why Israel is so closely linked to this problem. So, let us pray now and ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts in order to receive not only the information, but also the revelation, on this subject.

" Father, in the name of Jesus, we ask you to give us your grace. In Jesus' name, Father, we ask for Your revelation. Help us to understand how You are dealing with Islam, how You are leading all things for the restoration of Israel, and what You expect of Your Bride, the Church. Father, help us to understand deeply in our hearts that we can be tools in Your hands. Help us to be tools for salvation, Lord, not only for the salvation of Israel, but also for the salvation of the Islamic countries, because we know that these nations belong to You, and to no-one else. We confess and proclaim that Jesus, the Messiah, died for these nations in order to save them and to enable them to worship the God of Israel. That is why we ask You, Father, to help us now, in the name of Jesus. Amen. "

We only have one hour to try to understand this subject, but we can do our best. I ask you all to be tolerant with me, because here in the Middle East, we have a different perception of time. So if I talk longer than I should, just put it down to the culture!

The subject that I was supposed to talk about was " What should our approach towards the Islamic nations be? " I have taken the liberty to change the title to " What does God tell us through His Word on the subjects of Islam, the Islamic nations, Israel, and the Church? " I don't know what you know about the reality of Islam, but I'm sure that since the 11th of September 2001, you have all discovered that the spirit of Islam is an incredibly violent and destructive one. Ever since 9-11, the whole world, all the church leaders and the different heads of state, have tried to persuade us that Islam is a religion of peace. I know that they all say this because they are afraid. Afraid of what would happen to their own countries if Islam's true nature were revealed. That is why people speak about Islam as if it were a peaceful religion, almost identical to Christianity and even to the Gospel. I think each one of you seated here knows that this is an incredible lie. It is more than a lie. If we understand what the true nature of Islam is, then we are guilty if we continue to pretend that it is a religion of peace. Hidden in its very nature is a terrible spirit of hate. We can safely affirm that the essence of Islam is a deep hate against God's plan of salvation for mankind.

Before we go any further, I would like to bring you back to the Word of God. One thing that we must be very clear about in this analysis is the fact that when we refer to Islam, we are not speaking about the people, the Muslims. They are not our enemies. Each one of them is loved by God, and we can be sure that He suffers just as much for the death of a Palestinian child as He does for that of an Israeli child. We are not talking here of the people themselves, but of the spirit acting behind the nations and their people. This spirit is not only destroying Israel, but also the Muslims themselves. So, when we talk about Islam, we must remember what Paul said in God's Word : " We are not fighting against flesh and blood ". It is extremely important that we understand this spirit that is inexorably destroying the Muslim nations and all that falls under its power.

Where does Islam begin? The spirit of Islam didn't appear in the 6th century with Mohamed, as you might have thought. The spirit of Islam is much older than that. I call it the spirit of Edom, according to the Word of God. Edom is the second name of Esau, the brother of Jacob. You all know the story of Esau. He was Isaac's firstborn, but he also represents the manifestation of human power. He was a hunter. He trusted entirely in his own strength, and showed no interest whatsoever in God and in His Blessing. In the epistle to the Hebrews, the writer talks of Edom as one who held God in contempt. Esau, who was the pride and joy of his father, Isaac, surrendered his birthright to Jacob in return for something to eat. This was because the things of God had no reality in his life. He trusted only in his own strength and abilities, and we know what God said in Jeremiah, chapter 17, verse 5: " Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. "

Right from the beginning, Esau was a manifestation of this curse, because he trusted only in his own capabilities. We know that just before Isaac died, Esau came to ask for his blessing, but that his father had nothing more to give him. Isaac told him: You decided to live by the sword, and you shall live by the sword. I can't give you another blessing (Genesis 27:40 : " By your sword you shall live "). And the result… Esau realized that Jacob had taken something away from him that was very, very important. He didn't know exactly what it was, but he understood that it was a sort of authority that Isaac had transferred to Jacob, his brother. This living authority was to become the lineage through which God would work out his plan. Edom (Esau) had decided to kill his brother just as soon as his father died. At this point something very important happened : in his hate and frustration at having lost his birthright to Jacob, Edom went to Ishmael and made an alliance with him. When he saw that Isaac and Rebecca were displeased with him because of the two wives he had taken from another tribe, Esau went to Ishmael and took his daughter as a wife. What is revealed here is extremely important because, before this situation, we have heard nothing about Ishmael. The only thing that is mentioned beforehand about Ishmael is that he accompanied Isaac to bury their father, Abraham. There were no problems between the two of them…no hate, no aggression, no violence. I believe that Ishmael lived in a sort of trauma, a trauma of rejection (even though, in fact, he had not been rejected). If you read his story, you can see that God was faithful with Ishmael right from the beginning. It is written that God was with him and that He promised Abraham : " I will make him into a great nation, because he is your descendant ". When you think that the Lord God came to meet with Hagar, Ishmael's mother! The angel of the Lord brought a message saying : " I shall let him live before me, because he is Abraham's descendant ". God never abandoned Ishmael, but I think that Ishmael never understood that. When he met Esau, his feelings of inferiority and rejection meant that he saw in him the reminder of his own struggle to regain his birthright. If you remember, the inheritance was given to Isaac by God, who specifically said to Abraham : " I will bless Ishmael, because he is your descendant, but as for My covenant, I will establish it with Isaac. " This did not mean that God didn't love Ishmael. It simply meant that God's plan was to establish His covenant through the descendants of Sarah.

From that moment on, Ishmael never abandoned the struggle to regain his birthright. Henceforth we see the spirit of Esau, with its violence, its hate, its desire for power and its human dependence on the power of the sword, combined with Ishmael's sense of inferiority and rejection. A spirit was born from this relationship which has evolved until today…the spirit of Edom. Right through God's Word, this spirit is clearly evident as the enemy of the Jewish nation. In order to show you that this is not just my personal interpretation, I shall give you some Bible references. Edom is the only name throughout the Old Testament by which God identifies His enemy.

We'll start with Psalm 83. In this psalm, Edom is named as the one leading the nations in rebellion against God, with the aim of taking back Israel's inheritance. In verse 3 it says : " They make shrewd plans against Thy people, and conspire together against Thy treasured ones. They have said : Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more! For they have conspired together with one mind; against Thee do they make a covenant : the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab and the Hagrites; Gebal, and Amon, and Amalek; Philistia and the inhabitants of Tyre ". Edom is the one leading the opposition. And what is their objective? Their goal is mentioned in verse 12 : " Let us wipe them out as a nation! ".

In Ezekiel 36, verse 5, it is Edom once again who is leading the struggle of opposition against God. In verse 5, it says, " Thus says the Lord God : Surely in the fire of My jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations, and against all Edom, who appropriated My land for themselves as a possession ".

In Jeremiah 49, Edom is full of hate towards Jacob. In Isaiah 34,1-17, Edom represents God's enemy. In Amos 1,11-12, Edom pursues his brother Jacob with the sole aim of destroying him forever. In Malachi 1,2-5, Edom is considered as a atheist land, a land that God has rejected and doomed forever.

I find that there is something very interesting in Isaiah 63. It describes the end of time when the Messiah himself, will come and wage war against Edom. Please listen carefully to Isaiah 63, because it relates to the things happening in the world at the moment and we shall be coming back to it later on. It talks of events that we are living at present : " Who is this who comes from Edom, with garments of glowing colours from Bozrah ( Bozrah was the capital of Edom at this time ), this One who is majestic in His apparel, marching in the greatness of His strength? It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save ". In verse5, Isaiah talks of the one who has come to bring judgement on Edom. " And I looked, and there was no one to help, and I was astonished and there was no one to uphold; so My own arm brought salvation to Me; and My wrath upheld Me. And I trod down the peoples in My anger, and made them drunk in My wrath, and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth ". Why did the Messiah bring judgement on Edom? It is because the spirit of Edom has one single and unique purpose, and that is to take back Israel's inheritance.

What am I trying to show you through all this ? Well, when we think of Islam, brothers and sisters, we are not dealing with a simple religion like Hinduism or Buddhism. Islam is different. Islam's very nature is the struggle to reclaim the birthright that God gave to Israel, and the reason is twofold. What exactly is this inheritance that God gave to Israel? It is this : God called Abraham's descendants to be a place of revelation. That is Israel's calling. They are to be the place where the Lord God can first of all reveal Himself to their own nation, and then, through Israel, to all the other nations, because He is the God of the nations. But He said : " To Israel, and by Israel, shall I make My name known, and I shall draw all nations to Myself, for their salvation ". As we can see in Isaiah 60, the nations will turn to Him because they will see the light, the one and only light of salvation shining out of Israel, and this light of salvation, as we all know, is the Messiah. The question of identity has always been about the birthright and the struggle to possess it.

Islam is a demonic system which is trying with all its power to destroy God's sovereign plan, namely to bring salvation to Israel itself, and then, through Israel, to the whole world. Islam is not a religion. It can neither exist, nor survive, so long as God continues to work out His plan concerning Israel. We often forget that Islam, as a historical entity, only came into being 1400 years ago. Over these 1400 years, the Church has never really understood what Islam actually is. Not even at the beginning. When Islam first began, the Church even helped it to establish itself. If you remember, it was Mohammed who received the revelation of Islam, and yet it drove him close to suicide three times. It may seem inconceivable to us that anyone was even capable of believing that such a revelation could ever have come from God. It is utterly impossible for us to believe that someone could be pushed towards suicide following a revelation from the Spirit of God. One of the hadiths (holy book) describes how Mohammed was tempted to commit suicide because he was so deeply afraid. Arab society was both animist and polytheist at the time that Mohammed began to receive the revelation and to preach about it to his fellow countrymen. He was deeply unhappy with the fact that both the Jews and the Christians knew God and received revelations, whereas the Arabs received none. He felt that he, and his people, were rejected by God because of this lack of revelation. And yet when he began to preach the messages and the revelation that he had received, he was persecuted and rejected by his own people. Those who supported him were the Christians. He fled to Ethiopia, where he was encouraged to continue his preaching.

The Church was deeply implicated in the establishment of Islam. I can't go into all the details right now as we don't have the time, but very briefly, Mohammed realized that the Jews would never accept him as a prophet. At the beginning, he was under the impression that the message he was preaching was the same as that of the Jews and the Christians. This is why it is even written in the Koran that Mohammed told his disciples : " Go to the Jews and the Christians and they will tell you that what I preach is the truth ". He thought that it was the same revelation. When he went to Medina, he set up the first Islamic social system. He began by contacting the Jewish community, because at that time there were about 40,000 Jews living in the region. They were clear with him right from the start : " Mohammed, we're very sorry, but we could never accept you as a prophet. We are expecting only one prophet, Elijah, and when he comes it will be to save us. First of all, he won't be an Arab, and secondly, he will understand the Holy Scriptures a lot better than you do ". Once again he was rejected.

Because he felt rejected and excluded by both the Jews and the Christians alike, (although more so by the Jews ) he had to find a means to separate his revelation from theirs, and do you know how he did it? It was very simple. He said : " Alright, you don't accept me as a prophet. But I must tell you that Islam is a much older religion than Judaism and Christianity. And why? Because the most important Muslim was Abraham, although he wasn't the first. Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, because the Jews exist only since Sinai, when they received the Law, and the Christians only since the coming of the Messiah. Consequently, Abraham was neither Jew, nor Christian…he was Muslim, because the word Muslim means someone who lives entirely under God's law and sovereignty. So, in the end, Islam is much older than either Judaism or Christianity. "

The Koran develops this theme – if any of you have a copy of the Koran, I can give you the reference : Sura 30.30 – where it states that Islam is in fact, the natural religion of mankind. Man is born Muslim even if he doesn't know it, and all through his life God tries to reveal to him that he is a Muslim. Thus, Adam was a Muslim, Noah was a Muslim… Mohammed simply Islamised all the religions of the world. He re-wrote the history of the world from an Islamic point of view. He then said : " The revelation that I received from God was nothing less than the original, true religion…Islam ". He added : " God chose the Jews to bring Islam to the world, but they failed in their mission. They persecuted and killed the prophets and so God rejected them ". Muslims will tell you : Suras 2 and 4 show us that Abraham and all the patriarchs were not Jewish, but Muslim. How can you possibly say that Abraham was a Jew! It is written in the Koran that he was a Muslim. How can you say that Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon were Jews! They were all Muslims.

According to Islamic thought, all the Bible characters and prophets that you have always considered to be Jewish, are, in fact, not Jewish at all! According to Islam, they have always been Muslim! Consequently, the country we are in at the moment was only given to the Jews for a time, but because they failed in their mission and were subsequently rejected by God, He has now restored the land to its original heirs, the Muslims. In Sura 3:110, you can read that God told the Islamic people: " You are the best social order that God has ever created, because He gave you the capacity to judge others. You have been given the authority to rule over all those who do not live under the law of God ".

Through these new arguments, Mohammed effectively moulded Islamic thought and stole from the Jews their calling, their inheritance and their special relationship with God. He was able to explain clearly that God had now restored to Ishmael all that had previously been taken away. It is very important for us to understand all this today: we are not talking here of a political problem in Israel. The problem is not political. It is not an ethnic conflict either between Arabs and Jews. The origin of the situation is not there. If it were just an ethnic or political problem, it would perhaps be possible to find a settlement, but unfortunately it is not that simple.

First of all, in the understanding of Islam, there is no question of abandoning Jerusalem. Don't forget that Jerusalem was captured by Caliph Omar and taken for Islam, only 18 years after the founding of the new Muslim social order in Medina. Within just 18 years, the first little mosque was built on the Temple Mount. And do you know how this first mosque came to be built ? It's very important for us to understand this point, because, yet again, it was the Church that opened the door for it to happen. When Caliph Omar came to Jerusalem, he asked the acting bishop at that time : " Where can I have a place of worship? " Because the bishop didn't want him to worship anywhere near a church, he took him to the Temple Mount which was, at that time, a refuse dump. They had taken literally the verse from the Bible : " Your place will be left desolate and full of refuse ". So in those days, they disposed of all their rubbish on the Temple Mount. In fact, the bishop took the Caliph to this place because he wanted to humiliate and belittle him. He told him : " Listen, you can build here, if you like. This place used to belong to the Jews and they had their Temple here. Apparently, the one who manages to build here will have power ".

According to Islamic thought – and even in the understanding of the early Church – the Temple Mount was a place of power, a door between heaven and earth. To this day, a tradition of the Islamic religion says that the fulfilment of the end of time cannot be complete without the Temple Mount. Muslims believe that an angel will descend on the Mount and blow a trumpet, announcing the beginning of the last judgement. It will also be on the Temple Mount that the Islamic Messiah, who incidentally is called Yeshua, will descend, to crush the power of both the Christians and the Jews. It will be on the Mount that the last judgement will begin. The site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was extremely important to the first Muslims and to Mohammed himself, because it would be from there that he would be taken up to heaven to meet Moses, Jesus and all the prophets. If we understand all this clearly, then we can see that Jerusalem is the key to the Muslim identity.

Secondly, Jerusalem is the key to the Jewish identity too. For 2000 years the Jewish Diaspora have been saying to each other " Next year in Jerusalem ". How can anyone possibly imagine that they could ever abandon Jerusalem ! The Jews could perhaps abandon certain territories, but certainly not Jerusalem and never the Temple Mount.

Jerusalem must take into consideration the spiritual identities of both the Jews and the Muslims. There is no way out. We mustn't forget that the biggest threat so far to the Islamic identity has been the establishing of the state of Israel. Why is that ? 50 years ago, God decided to restore Israel in order to fulfil the last chapter of His plan of redemption. The establishing of the state of Israel challenged the authority of Islam for the first time. Due to its spiritual nature, it thinks only in terms of land and power. Even if Islam claims to be centred on God, this is not true. It's character is deeply man-centred, based on man, but claiming to act in God's name, Islam's heart has always been the power of man – the sword. It had to be challenged in a very direct way – by taking land. The land they lost was not just any land – it was the Holy Land, Israel, the land of the prophets, the land of Jesus, who is considered as the second prophet after Mohammed, and the land of Moses, who is called " Cali Mullah ", the prophet who speaks with God, the Islamic prophet.

The Jews, who had been rejected, who were considered cursed by God, the scum of the earth, had now returned to build a state right in the middle of the Islamic heartland. If Islam could not defeat and destroy the new state of Israel, then its reputation would be in tatters. The Koran teaches that Islam must always be victorious. If you don't win, then God is no longer with you. In other words, if you are defeated in war, it means that God has abandoned you and that He is no longer with you. For some reason, God had abandoned the Islamic nations. That was the message. For the Muslim nations, nothing had ever shaken their faith in Islam so much as this moment when the new state of Israel was established in the very heart of Islamic territory.

Can you remember who actually attacked the state of Israel when it was first founded ? The Palestinians ? They were not even a political entity at the time. Who exactly were the Palestinians in those days ? Whoever was living here in this land was considered to be a Palestinian, whether they were Jewish or not. They were all called Palestinians. One of my friends has a document belonging to his father, who was a Jewish lawyer called Isaac Mordecai…and yet he was a Palestinian. This document, dating from 1922, refers to the Palestinian citizen called Isaac Mordecai. As you can see, the notion of a Palestinian people, or nation, did not exist at that time. It was Egypt, Jordan and Syria who attacked – and the Islamic world was shaken to its roots, because they could not defeat Israel. The second major challenge to Islam came in the summer of 1967. It wasn't because the war was won in just six days, but because Jerusalem came back under Jewish authority. Ever since 1967, Islam has begun to show its real face and its real nature : violent, aggressive and totally committed to destroying the nation of Israel. Islam will never give up - it cannot give up.

Let me tell you, that much as I appreciate all the efforts of politicians in Israel, Europe and the United States, they will never be able to find a settlement, because there is nothing to settle. God decided right at the beginning that this land of Palestine would be His. It is very important to understand this. It doesn't belong to the Jews, it belongs to God – and He gave it to the Jews. Why ? Because He said : " I shall reveal Myself to this people on this land. I shall make this land into a place from where blessings will flow out to all nations ". God's inheritance to Israel is inextricably bound to this little piece of land, and God said : I have nothing to negotiate with anyone. Not even with the Israeli Prime Minister. Even he doesn't have any authority to give away the land, because it is God's land. And God said : I shall restore this land : Samaria, Judea…I shall restore this land. Why? Because I have a Plan : I want this land – I never abandoned My People, even if most of them didn't understand when the Messiah came. I shall never give up My plan which is for this nation, through this nation and on this land. I shall restore Samaria, I shall restore Judea, and I shall do all this because I have promised it.

In Numbers 23 v.19, it is written : " God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it ? or has He spoken, and will He not make it good ? " This applies directly to the promises that God made to Israel. However, it also applies to all the nations of the earth, including the Arab nations. God's way of looking at the Arab nations is very different to the way they perceive themselves, and, for that matter, it is also very different to the way Israel regards them. God wants to include the Arab nations, so that they become a blessing. You can read this in Isaiah 19: 23-24, where He speaks of His vision for the Middle East. He says : " In that day Israel will be the third party with Egypt and Assyria, (Assyria represents all the Arab lands surrounding Israel) a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of Hosts has blessed, saying : Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance . " Can you imagine that ! Together, they will be a blessing to the whole earth. What God has promised, He will accomplish. There is no doubt about that.

And it is precisely because of this promise that the Enemy is trying, by every means possible, to sabotage the relationship between Israel and the Arab nations. God promised : " I will make Israel and the Arab nations together into a blessing for the whole earth " . You can read that in Isaiah, the most important of the prophets. The Enemy is trying to transform the relationship between Jews and Arabs into one of escalating hate and destruction, so as to take away all credibility from what God has said and what He has promised. God has planned a wonderful future for the Arab nations, but according to His terms, not theirs. This is very important. He is not at all impressed by nationalism. He is deaf to all the historic claims to land. That is not how God reasons. He wants to give a place for the Arabs to live, to give them peace and salvation – but under His terms. And His terms are : this land is the inheritance of My people. I want to bless all the nations by blessing Israel, by bringing Israel to the point where they fully understand that I am with them, that I am their God.

In Jeremiah 3:19, God says : " How I would set you among My sons, and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of the nations ! You shall call Me, My Father, and not turn away from following Me". God wants to reveal His Fatherhood to Israel, and through her, to all the nations. That is the heart of it all. The inheritance of Israel, and God's plan to bless the nations through her, is summed up in Jeremiah 31, where it talks of a new relationship that will exist between God and His people, because of the Messiah. They will know Him deeply and personally in their hearts, not just through books and ritual observances. This is the inheritance that God has given to Israel, and to all the nations through her.

As you can see, it's not a question of being " for the Jews " or " against the Muslims ". This is futile. It has nothing to do with God's Word. If God wants to bless Israel and restore her first of all, in order to then extend that blessing to the Arabs and the Islamic nations for their own good, then He must first of all defeat their pride. The whole Islamic system must be humiliated and discredited, so that Muslims open their eyes and wake up. We must stand with the God of Israel in prayer and intercession for the Islamic nations, full in the knowledge that the blood of the Messiah was given for them also.

How could it be possible ! A true believer could not hate the Muslims if he has really understood that the Messiah died for them ? He could not hate them if he has fully recognized the fact that God gave up what was most precious to Him, in order to save them. If we truly understand this fact, then the Church will begin to pray : " Father, deliver these nations from this demonic system ". The Church will not be affected by all the trends that say : We must try to understand the Islamic religion, we must talk with Islam. This has nothing to do with the Word of God.

As you know, Islam does not believe that the Messiah is the Son of God, nor that He came on earth in fleshly form. God's Word tells us : " For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. " We must be very clear about this. When dealing with Islam, we are not simply referring to another religion – it is the spirit of the Antichrist. What's more this spirit enslaves people, it destroys nations, it prevents them from seeing the Messiah and it stops them from coming to the God of Israel, the Father of all who believe, whether they be Jews or Arabs. The Church must stand up to make all this very clear. That is the challenge. On the one hand we must love the Arabs with all our hearts, and yet at the same time we must reject and oppose the Islamic system with all our strength and might. There must be no compromise.

God's plan for the Islamic nations is very clear. He wants to bless them, but it will never be through a human solution to the problem. The Church ought to be much more committed to intercession, and should not be afraid to stand up before the world and explain what the Word of God says : " We do not believe that Islam saves people. On the contrary, it destroys them ". If you openly profess this in your country, you will be persecuted. I truly believe that, for the good of these blind and imprisoned nations, the Church has no other choice today but to stand up, in the name of the Messiah, and proclaim : " There has been given no other name ". It is for the salvation of the Muslims as well as of the Jews.

Let me tell you this. The Word of God teaches us that a commitment to love the Jewish people can be very, very costly. If we accept to go outside the gates and carry their shame, the price will be a heavy one. But then, in the face of the Jewish people, we must also carry the shame of the Messiah and must say to them : " We believe in your Divine calling and we love you with all our hearts, but what you must understand is that we believe in Jesus, and that He is Israel's Messiah ". We cannot escape the shame of the Messiah, whether it be before the world or before Israel. Whoever takes his stand with the Messiah will feel the pressure from both sides. It may well cost us our lives. Those who are afraid of this position will be incapable of bearing a strong and effective witness. It is written : " They will overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony ". ( Revelations 12:11 ) What must that testimony be ? We have no other except : " There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved ". This is the testimony that was given by the first Jewish apostles, Peter and John. There is no other name ! Whether it be for Israel, for the Muslims or for the rest of the world – there is no other name !

Islam today has understood full well that it can deceive and manipulate the nations of the West with the following strategy : If you threaten their homes, their belongings, their families and their lives with a permanent state of fear, then they will do whatever you want. Islam's identity is a spirit of violence, so it will not hesitate to intensify this violence. And not only here in Israel. My friends, the events we witnessed on the 11th of September 2001 are just the beginning. Islam has understood that by launching attacks on the world, people will cooperate out of fear. Don't forget that before 9/11, George Bush had never mentioned the possibility of a Palestinian state, and yet just two weeks afterwards, he began talking about it. Before 9/11 very few heads of state supported Islam, and yet since then, many more have been doing so.

Islam has learned throughout history that the more it applies violence, the more people will be afraid and submit. Gaining in strength, it says : " There are two principal sources of provocation for us : one is Israel. So long as you support Israel, we the Islamic nations cannot be friendly with you. We might, therefore, have to demonstrate our frustration to you ( because, of course, our actions are merely an expression of this frustration ), or even get angry, unless, of course, you would like to demonstrate your goodwill by doing something about this thorn in our flesh.

Europe is a clear example of this. The European countries are becoming more and more blind, and, I'm afraid, the United States too. I pray that it will not happen, but perhaps the violence and the danger will lead them to even further turn their backs on Israel and God's plan.

The second source of provocation for Islam, is the Church of God making an increasingly faithful stand on the Bible. Once Bible-believing Christians begin to clearly proclaim that Islam is a lie, that they announce their testimony that Jesus is the only name by which mankind can be saved– no other – and say that Muslims need to hear the Gospel and need to be saved, then the Church will become a provocation and a source of problems to the Islamic world. When that happens, Islam will tell our governments : " These people are bothering us. We strongly advise you to deal with them. ". This scenario may very soon become reality. Islam will tolerate neither Israel, nor the Church which remains faithful to the Scriptures.

Islam's bullying tactics towards the West are becoming stronger, and so are its threats. At first, Muslim terrorists hijacked planes, then in 1974 came the discovery of the bargaining power of oil. And yet it seemed that the western world still hadn't suffered enough. The pain was obviously not sufficient– and so there was 9/11. And then Islam said to the world : " Listen, if things go too far we won't be able to stay calm any more. We'll become angry and shall no longer be able to obey international law. We just want you to know that we are capable of hitting you wherever you are, and wherever you expect it the least ".

I am not a prophet, but I think that if Islam concludes that the West is not willing to cooperate, there is a very real possibility that the suicide bombing we are seeing so frequently here in Israel may well become a gruesome reality in Europe and America too.

Let's come back to the Church. What must our stand be? Above all we must believe that God's Word will come to pass, just as it is written. God, Himself, will uphold us throughout the battle. So long as the Church does not understand God's Will, then its own struggle, Islam's struggle and Israel's struggle will all be futile. So long as they all act in their own strengths and follow their own ideas, they will only bring down greater judgement on themselves and greater suffering for all involved. Their disobedience will not stop God from accomplishing His plan. He will bring it to pass. He will permit greater judgement and suffering. All those who accept God's Way and choose to walk with Him, will experience this suffering. God does not wish it to be so, but there is no other way.

We must pray that Christians will wake up and be ready to give up their lives fearlessly. Those that make this choice must be ready to go outside the gates and share in the shame of the Messiah without any compromise. There must be no compromising towards Islam, no compromise either towards the spirit of humanism in our nation and no compromise in our message to Israel. Another thing, my friends. I know that many Christians are unwilling to bring the message of the Messiah to Israel. Let us not forget that the Bible says : " To the Jews first ", not last of all. The Lord said it, and so did Paul and Peter. Although we must love the Jews, with the attitude of putting them first, we must nevertheless stand firmly with the Messiah, and not leave Him conveniently in the background as soon as we are in the presence of Jewish people. If we do this, it simply reveals that we are not really outside the gates. There is no safe place today for the Bride of the Messiah to stand.

Someone asked me today : " Where are we at the moment in God's Time ? " Of course only He knows this, but we can all see the signs and I believe that we are not far from the end. Each year in our time is like 100 years in the past, and I think that we have less than 30 years now. Things are going so fast ! The Messiah is standing at the door, but He is waiting for His Saints to stand up and be willing to sacrifice their lives. He wants us to stand with Him for Israel, for the Arab nations and for the whole world, proclaiming that no other Name has been given but the Name of Jesus. Amen !