I would like to say how very glad I am to be here. It is very unusual for me to be here in the fellowship, because I normally come in the summer, and everybody is a bit too busy with the conference. So it is a joy to be here.
I would like to turn you to the little book of Nahum—however you say it—and chapter 1. I am going to read from verse 1.
The burden of Nineveh.
The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.
The Lord is a jealous God and avengeth;
The Lord avengeth and is full of wrath;
The Lord taketh vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserveth wrath for His enemies.
The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power,
And will by no means clear the guilty.
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,
And drieth up all the rivers;
Bashan languisheth, and Carmel;
And the flower of Lebanon languisheth.
The mountains quake at Him, and the hills melt;
And the earth is upheaved at His presence,
Yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.
Who can stand before His indignation?
And who can abide in the fierceness of His anger?
His wrath is poured out like fire,
And the rocks are broken asunder by Him.
The Lord is good,
A stronghold in the day of trouble;
And He knoweth them that take refuge in Him.
But with an overrunning flood He will make a full end of her place,
And will pursue His enemies into darkness.
What do ye devise against the Lord?
He will make a full end;
Affliction shall not rise up the second time.
For entangled like thorns, and drunken as with their drink,
They are consumed utterly as dry stubble.
There is one gone forth out of thee,
That deviseth evil against the Lord,
That counselleth wickedness.
Thus saith the Lord:
Though they be in full strength, and likewise many,
Even so shall they be cut down, and He shall pass away.
Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more.
And now will I break His yoke from off thee,
And will burst thy bonds in sunder.
—Nahum 1:1-13
Let me just have a word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we bow here in Your presence, and we are glad that You have brought us into Your presence. Lord, we want just to place ourselves, without reservation, unconditionally, at Your command.
Lord, we thank You that You provide an anointing for the ministry of Your Word, and into that anointing, grace, and power we stand by faith: that You will, Lord, be the grace and power in the speaking, and for the hearing, and for the doing.
Beloved Lord, we praise You that when a word comes forth from You, it never returns to You void. So now, together, we commit ourselves to You, that You will take this evening and these times together this weekend and, Lord, let it be a meeting with Yourself.
We shall be careful to give You all the praise and all the glory. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
This little prophecy of Nahum is an extraordinary and remarkable revelation. It is to do with one of the great superpowers of the day in which Nahum lived: the Assyrians, and particularly the city of Nineveh.
It is all the more amazing that something so powerful, with such a huge expanse of territory, could fall in the way it did. For the ways of the Lord are entirely beyond men.
When He sets up a dictator, nobody can remove him. It does not matter how many attempts at assassination or how many strategies are followed. You cannot remove him till God’s time comes. But when God’s time comes, he cannot live one single minute longer.
It has always been the way. Neros come and Neros go. Pharaohs come and Pharaohs go. Nebuchadnezzars come and Nebuchadnezzars go. Maybe Nebuchadnezzar got saved—that is a real possibility. But they all come and they all go.
Just as Hitler came and Hitler was gone, Mussolini came and Mussolini is gone, and Mao Zedong came and Mao Zedong has gone. They are dust—these human beings who held such power over other human beings, brought such suffering, and seemed to be invincible. They are all the dust of history.
But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not the dust of history. That is why the Lord said, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” not, “I was.” He still is.
They are not the dust of history. They, and Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and the early apostles, are all involved in a purpose—a divine purpose. With their failings, weaknesses, and even sins, somehow or other, by the grace of God, they were caught up in something that God was doing in their generation.
They are part of a divine destiny. It is one of the most amazing things in this world that God takes people like you and people like me, and brings us into a relationship with Himself and a relationship to His purpose.
I cannot remember any time like these past few years, when there has been so much conflict, so much problem, so much division, and so much of what I would call satanic rumours that have split brother from brother and sister from sister.
It is not just here or there; it is everywhere. Nor have I ever known a time when so many of those in the front line of the battle are facing enormous difficulties—some physical difficulties, some mental difficulties.
We who believe in the power of God, we who believe in the healing power of God, are still today facing enormous things—not with those who are worldly and compromised, but with those who are in the very front line of the battle.
It makes me feel that that which is restraining is being removed, and that somehow or other the enemy is coming in like a flood. It makes me wonder how near we are to the coming of the Lord.
I know believers have always thought that the Lord was coming, even in the first century. But the fact of the matter is that we have so much more that has been fulfilled in our day and generation. We are witnesses of something quite extraordinary that is happening.
It does not matter whether it is to do with missionary work, specific works of God, or those who have seen something of the nature of the church: everywhere there is enormous conflict.
That is why, when I thought about this little time together, I had, a few days ago, no idea what I was to speak about. I have learned a little wisdom over the years of my life. I was saved when I had just gone twelve, and I am not going to say how old I am, but it has been a lifetime.
A little bit of wisdom is this: there is no point cooking up a message.
It takes us many, many years to come to this simple lesson. When I was first preaching, I used to get migraines—not while I was preaching, nor afterwards, but before. The reason was that I found I got all tense and worried because the Lord did not seem to give me what I thought He ought to give me.
The Lord is wise. He knew that if He gave me something too early, I would work on it and end up with far more than I was going to say than what the Lord was going to say. So the Lord brought what I call a blanket—a fog blanket—down.
I learned, after many years, that the only thing to do is to be still. If necessary, lie down on your back. Sounds lazy, does it not?
Because if I had fasted and prayed, I always got a migraine. As Mr. Sparks once said to me, “You are too much in it.”
When you are resting in the Lord, the Lord can speak to you. But when you get all uptight, you close the very channel for the Lord.
So this time I went right through to a few days ago with absolutely no idea of what I should say. Then suddenly the Lord said, “Well.”
I thought it was the strangest thing for ages. When I opened my Bible, I found here in Nahum 1:3 this incredible statement:
The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm,
And the clouds are the dust of His feet.
—Nahum 1:3
You may find it strange that you come all this way to take some obscure little statement in the Word of God, but I think it has a lot to say to our present situation.
The Lord’s way is normally understood to be in clear shining: cloudless, pure, an open heaven, beautiful days. Thank God there are times when the Lord is working in that.
But whenever the Lord is going to do something big, He comes in a whirlwind and in a storm. A whirlwind can come and go within hours and leave a lot of destruction and damage. It is sudden, and it goes as suddenly.
A storm can come and last twenty-four hours. I have been in storms that lasted more—thirty hours. I remember one in Jerusalem that began when it was eighty-six degrees.
Suddenly, this great bank of blackness came over. I could see it out of our kitchen from the west. Then the thunder started, then the lightning came, and then cloudbursts.
I had two little Siamese kittens at that time, and I thought they would die of shock, because the thunder was like a war going on all around and the lightning flashed. Then I found them sitting in the window, enjoying every minute of it.
Then I realised they were tropical. Oh, they were used to storms. The same with the birds—the parrots and so on. They just loved every minute of it.
The interesting thing is this: thirty-two hours later—it went all through the night and all through the day—it ended at zero degrees Celsius, thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, with six inches of snow. Such a storm.
Storms are incredible. When Nahum was speaking about a storm, he was not talking about the kind you may have here so much. His whirlwind was not a tornado, but it was the Middle Eastern version of a tornado.
The storm was the kind of storm we have normally only in winter, often with snow. What is extraordinary is that you have the whirlwind, the storm, and clouds. That is not what we normally associate with the Lord’s work.
We do not think of the Lord working through a whirlwind. Yet it says, “The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind, and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.”
That simply means you cannot see Him. It must seem that He is a thousand miles away. Yet the clouds that are confusing are the dust of His feet.
In other words, He is walking. He is doing something. He is progressing. You cannot always understand it, but He knows what He is doing. The only way is to walk by faith.
Whirlwind, storm, and cloud.
I want to consider this in these few times together. Tonight, I want to consider it in relation to the nations. Tomorrow evening, I want to consider it in relation to the church. The last time, I will consider it in relation to the believer.
Tonight, we will talk about the nations.
The Lord’s purpose is fulfilled through the whirlwind and the storm. It has been so from the beginning. Certainly, it has been so in this last century.
For instance, I personally believe that this last phase of world history commenced with the First World War, from 1914 to 1918. In those four years, God came like a whirlwind.
Society had no idea what was going to happen. The Kaiser was actually on a yacht on a Norwegian fjord holiday. That is how unexpected it was. The British believed that the whole thing would blow over.
In fact, it was not sudden; it was prolonged. It locked them in a battle in which twenty-two million people died. The whole flower of European and British manhood died, and later on in that war, America as well.
At the end of that war, the whole face of the world was changed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire disappeared, never to come back again. The German Reich disappeared—by which I mean the monarchy—never to come back again. The Russian Tsar disappeared, as far as I can see, never to come back again.
Even China, after nearly two thousand years or more of dynastic imperialism, finally became a republic. It is quite amazing what happened in that First World War. It was a whirlwind. Was it Satan? Was it God?
Born in the midst of those four years was something that was going to dominate the whole of the twentieth century: Marxism.
If there had not been that war, all the European powers and Britain would have united together to strangle it at birth. But they were occupied; their horns were locked together in battle, and they could not attend to what was happening in Russia.
At the same time, there was a declaration we call the Balfour Declaration. It was the first time ever that anything was said about the possibility of the Jewish people becoming again a state among states.
I will not spend a lot of time on this. I only want to illustrate the whirlwind and the storm. Was the Lord in it or not?
Twenty years later there was another world war, from 1939 to 1945. In that war, what was begun in the First World War was completed.
At the end of that war, there was no more British Empire, French Empire, Dutch Empire, or Spanish Empire. The whole lot had disappeared.
Marxism stood at its climax, both as far as Russia and half of Europe were concerned, and as far as China was concerned. It was that war that resulted in the birth of Israel.
It is amazing. Was the Lord in this whirlwind?
When I watch all these demonstrations for peace here in Europe and elsewhere, I have a most uncomfortable feeling. It is not that I do not want peace, but I have this awful feeling: I have seen this before.
I remember Neville Chamberlain. I was a little boy, so I did not understand very much about what he was up to, except that I saw him in all the papers with little bits of white paper in his hand, saying, “Peace in our time.”
When he was asked about Adolf Hitler, he said, “He is a gentleman, a man who keeps his word.” Hitler wrote in his little journal about Neville Chamberlain that he was a silly old man.
What I found so amazing was that all the church leaders in Britain, of all the different denominations, including those that were mostly evangelical, were behind Neville Chamberlain. They called Winston Churchill a drunken warmonger.
They called Neville Chamberlain a great Christian gentleman and the saviour of Western Christian civilisation. I found it strange, because he went to Munich and gave Adolf Hitler Czechoslovakia.
In order to save Western civilisation, he sacrificed, in a totally unprincipled manner, a sovereign nation. I believe God saw that.
Within one year, this saviour of Western civilisation, this great Christian gentleman who said there was peace in our time, saw the whole world become locked in a war in which fifty-five million people were to die.
Would you not call that a whirlwind, a storm? Suddenly, the blunt and warmonger became the saviour of Britain and Europe, now called the greatest Englishman that ever lived. I think it is funny in a way—tragic in a way.
But I have a horrible feeling, when I hear all these things being said now, that we are seeing a repeat.
I only want to say that you have an illustration now of something: a whirlwind, a storm, and a cloud. And now what?
September 11 last year, I think, is a milestone in world history. I do not think those who perpetrated it ever thought that an American president would react.
The fact of the matter is, they believe that the West is emasculated, that it has lost its manhood. I have heard it again and again and again. They believe the West has lost its backbone and can be pushed around.
I do not think they ever thought a person would stand up and declare war on terror.
Now we have outrage after outrage: Bali, with two hundred dead; Moscow, the theatre, with nearly two hundred dead. We, of course, have lived with this for years.
I always said seventy years, but I heard Mr. Charon just a few days ago—well, about a month ago—and he said one hundred and ten years. So we are a little bit immunised to this situation.
But I think what is wonderful is that the American people have woken up. Who is going to pray for something to happen in the United States, for the Church of God to be really built, and for there to be an awakening among the unsaved?
I will talk more about the church tomorrow. But all I want to say this evening is that you have here something quite remarkable. Where are we heading? What lies ahead? What does September 11 really signify?
I do not want to bore you to sleep. It is entirely possible, of course. Some people love sermons because they enable them to sleep.
People sometimes take my tapes and write me letters saying, “I fell asleep listening to you,” which I always say is a much better thing than a sleeping pill.
Anyway, I do not want to bore you, but is this present situation we have been in this last year a one-off thing? Is it merely one conflict among many conflicts through which the nations have passed—a conflict that will pass away?
Or is this the beginning of a holy war? Is it the prelude to a much greater conflict? Is it possibly the fulfilment of Ezekiel 38-39?
We cannot dogmatically say that it is, but we should, as people of God, be very alive to the possibilities at this present time. We should not panic, nor should we be shocked by what will happen.
We need to have an understanding of the times in which we live, so that we can pray with spiritual intelligence and power; so that we can stand as witnesses to our fellow citizens in our different countries.
We ought to be witnesses to the fact that this Book has so much within it about our present situation, and that if people do not come to the Lord, there is no hope for them, as well as for their nations.
What will a war with Iraq unleash?
Do not think for a single moment that a war on Iraq will not unleash an enormous conflict. Once the United States, or the United States and Britain in union, or a number of other Western nations, join in an attack on Iraq, nearly every Muslim in the world will unite to fight.
Even though many know that Saddam Hussein is a dreadful man, you know very well that he butchered his own sons-in-law and many others, and that he has weapons of mass destruction. It is a known fact.
I will not go into all of that, but all I want to say is this: what will it unleash? Are we ready for it? Do we have roots that go deep enough? Can we withstand the shock?
Or do we expect to be raptured before? It would be lovely to think we would be raptured before, but I seriously suspect that we will not be raptured before this particular conflict is over.
I do not want to depress you, let alone send you to sleep. But let me say this: if President Bush withdraws from the stand he has taken on this matter, there will be a greater disaster that will bring us all into an enormously different kind of conflict.
Islam is a very strong, masculine type of religion. It believes in domination. It always pushes and pushes and pushes to see if people will withdraw, withdraw, and withdraw.
Once people withdraw, from being sweet and kind, it becomes more demanding.
That leads me to say something about this. I realise we have to be very careful, because spiritual principalities and powers are involved in this thing. But if you will bear with me, let me say something about Islam.
Islam’s goal is world domination. It has always been that. If you have ever read the book, you know that it believes it is predestined to take the whole world, including the United States, Britain, and Europe.
This is not so stupid as you might think. There are seven million American Muslims, and it is estimated that by 2004 that number will have risen to nearly fifteen million, and by 2010 to twenty million, because of Black converts to Islam.
Nor is it so foolish when it comes to Europe. Britain has nearly two million Muslim citizens. Germany has four million German Muslim citizens, mostly Turkish. Holland has eight hundred thousand. One-fifth of Paris is Muslim.
There are more mosques in the south of France than there are churches and chapels. It is not so stupid.
You may say, “Are you saying this because CNN and the BBC tell us that Islam is non-violent, peace-loving, and that bin Laden is an aberration—not real Islam?”
I think that, in seeking to protect Muslim minorities—which is right—from savage reactions on the part of other citizens in our different countries, they are doing a great disservice.
If you take the word Islam, it simply means submission. A Muslim is someone who is submitted.
Islam teaches—at least someone like Ahmed Deedat, who was called the Muslim equivalent of Billy Graham, taught—that there are three testaments: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Last Testament, which is the Quran.
It teaches that God began His revelation and work with the Jews and chose them, but that they were stiff-necked and disobedient. He gave them revelation after revelation, which was reduced to writing, but they corrupted it.
For instance, it says that the Old Testament claimed it was Isaac whom the Lord told Abraham to offer, but that it was Ishmael. It says that the Jews claimed the covenant promises were made with the seed of Abraham through Isaac, but that this was not true—it was Ishmael.
So God was so upset with the Jews that He turned away from them and rejected them. He chose a new community of people: Christians. He gave them revelation after revelation, but they corrupted it.
Finally, it says that He turned to a merchant in Medina called Muhammad. He could not read or write, and Allah sent the archangel Gabriel to Muhammad, giving him message after message that set right all that the Jews had corrupted and all that the Christians had corrupted.
This became the Quran. The most amazing thing about the Quran is that it is the most beautiful Arabic. Therefore, we have a mystery as to how a man who could neither read nor write somehow produced such incredibly beautiful Arabic.
The interesting thing about the Quran is what it says. What does Islam teach about Jesus? You must know this so that you are not deceived in any way.
Islam teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin. That is more than many so-called Christians teach. It also says that He was born sinless, without sin, and that He never sinned at any point in His thirty-three years of life.
Islam says that He was the Messiah. It not only affirms His Messiahship and His miracles, but the Quran adds at least two miracles that we do not find in the New Testament.
One of them is a little stone bird that Jesus was supposed to have touched, which then flew away, when He was a boy.
It is very interesting. Islam teaches that Jesus was rejected by the Jews and that He was crucified. Then it believes that He will return. Muhammad will follow Him, but He will return.
So many Christians, when they speak with a Muslim who knows something about the Quran, say, “Oh yes, we believe that Jesus was the Messiah. We believe that Jesus is coming.” They think this is amazing and that they have been completely misled on the whole question of Islam.
Now you will notice something very interesting. You have the whole gamut of truth: from the birth of Jesus, the sinlessness of Jesus, to the coming again of Jesus. But He did not die.
He was crucified, but He did not die. Therefore, since there was no death, there was no resurrection. In other words, the heart of the gospel is torn out: the atoning death of the Lord Jesus and the forgiveness of sins.
That, they say, is what the Christians corrupted. Since Jesus did not rise again, there is no such thing as a new birth. You have all the truth, and the heart is torn out.
I do not know if you are following what I am trying to say. I know it is a bit difficult. What is Islam’s view of the end times? Listen very carefully, because now we are coming to September 11.
They believe that in the last phase of world history there will be a war that will cover the earth between what they call the house of peace, in which only Muslims are found, and the house of war, in which all Jews, Christians, and heathen are found.
They believe that faithful, devout Muslims will kill all those Christians, Jews, and heathen who will not convert to Islam.
I do not know how CNN or some of the others can say this is a peace-loving religion. It is absolute nonsense, really.
One of the Hadiths, a later commentary from very early sages who were co-workers with Muhammad, says that Muhammad himself was involved in the slaughter of the Qurayza tribe, which was a Jewish tribe.
It says that for twenty-two hours he decapitated men, women, children, and babies, and that as a result of his faithfulness to Allah, he got arthritis in his arm, which he suffered with for the rest of his life.
So when people say, “But Christianity is violent,” and today they say, “So is Judaism, because look at Israel,” the interesting thing is this: Jesus never slaughtered anyone, nor did Paul, nor the other apostles.
It is absolutely true that the Crusaders did in the name of Jesus. The Catholic Church did in the name of Jesus in the Inquisition, and the Russian Orthodox Church did in the pogroms. That is absolutely true.
But it is not true that original Christianity, for want of a better term, was spread by the sword. It is true that in Norway, for instance, St. Olav went to the Vikings with a sword in one hand and offered them either life or death—the water being for christening.
A very successful form of evangelism. Anyone who did not see fit was, of course, decapitated and killed.
What I am saying is very simple: Islam began in violence, and it spread through violence. The whole of North Africa was affected.
Most people do not know that Egypt was the great centre of Christian education in the known world at that time. It was totally destroyed. Tunisia, as we know it today, was also the other great centre of Christian evangelism—Carthage—and it was totally destroyed.
People were given the choice of life or death: either you become a Muslim and live, or you die. So many of the Copts died in faithfulness to the Lord. Others converted.
It is now some thirteen hundred years later, and quite a few Muslim Egyptians actually have Christian forebears.
I only want to get across to you that you have here something quite amazing. You have a prediction that is not just a small thing in the Quran. Two or three times it is stated that in the last stage there will be an enormous battle between Islam and the rest of the world.
Allah has willed that Islam will win, and when it ends there will only be Muslims.
If you are still alive and listening, the point is that you have one great name in the last century. His name is Khomeini, the Ayatollah, which means “Oracle of God.”
Khomeini was a remarkable man. He was the first one to interpret present events in an Islamic way. He said that the world had passed into the last phase of world history and that, therefore, we have to expect enormous conflict.
He said that this great war, which the Quran talks about, would soon be upon us. This is why the Shah exiled him.
Khomeini said, “Why is there an Israel?” He said, “Allah has willed Israel to be and used Satan to produce it.” Therefore, he called Israel the little Satan, and he called the United States the great Satan.
This teaching permeated through the whole Islamic world. He said that Allah had judged the lukewarmness of the Muslim masses by allowing Satan to produce Israel.
But he said that when the Islamic masses were challenged by the presence of Israel, they would devote themselves to Allah, and Allah would empower and energise them to come against Israel, liberate Jerusalem, and liquidate Jewish people.
Then they would go on to take the world. I will not say anything more about Ayatollah Khomeini except this: Osama bin Laden was not a Shia Muslim; he was a Sunni Muslim. But he was enormously influenced by Ayatollah Khomeini.
He believed that what Khomeini said was proven: that Israel had to be destroyed, and then the United States must be destroyed.
The interesting thing in this whole situation is that Osama bin Laden began to do something. He was wealthy enough to do it, so he set up the al-Qaeda network.
Al-Qaeda is operative tonight in sixty-five different countries. It is far from destroyed.
So now you have something quite amazing. Osama bin Laden obviously believed that this war predicted in the Quran was upon us. My question earlier was: is this the beginning of a holy war? Is it, in fact, the war that Muslims believe is coming?
If you are still with me, I do not know if my time has gone, but let me just say one more thing about Islam. Islam has had two wars and lost both of them. It has one yet to come which, we are told, it will win. That is the Quran.
What were these two wars?
The first was the Battle of Tours, in 732, I think—I may be mistaken in saying thirty-two—but it was in the eighth century of this era.
When the Muslim forces came to Tours, two hundred miles south of Paris, they were so well equipped and so powerful, such an incredible fighting force, that the whole of Europe—Christian Europe, so-called—quaked.
When the battle came, in the most incredible manner, God gave the victory to the Christians. Perhaps you have heard of the man Charles Martel. He led the Christian forces, and they routed the Muslim forces.
The result was incredible. Because of the Muslim idea that Allah wills everything, good and bad, when they lose a battle they are completely disoriented. They do not know what to do. “Why has Allah done this? Why has He willed this? What have we done? Why did we not get the victory?”
They withdrew completely to Spain, where they stayed for another two hundred years. Finally, they collapsed in Spain in total racial depression, if you understand the term, and went back to North Africa to lick their wounds for the next few hundred years.
If they had won the Battle of Tours—most people are so bored with history, partly because they had the most boring history teachers, and so they nearly feel nauseous when they hear history—but think for a moment.
Do you realise what would have happened if the Muslims had won that battle? The whole of France would have become Muslim—not one-fifth of Paris, but the whole. The whole of Germany would have become Muslim.
There would not have been a Martin Luther. It would only have been a question of time before they got to Italy and strangled the Vatican. Some might have thought that a good thing, but I am just saying they would have got there.
It would only have been a question of time before they crossed the Channel and took the United Kingdom—Britain. Then listen carefully to me: it would not have been Baptists, Presbyterians, and nonconformists who were pushed out of Britain by persecution and came over here to found the so-called colonies.
It would have been Shia Muslims fleeing from Sunni Muslims. That means the whole of the United States and Canada would have been Islamic. People do not understand the lessons of history.
Mark Twain said, “We learn from history that we never learn from history.”
So it is very simple. In other words, they came right near to what would have been the Islamisation of the world.
Believe it or believe it not, many hundreds of years later the second great battle came. It is called the Battle of Vienna, in 1683.
Under the Ottomans, Islamic forces swept through Greece and Turkey. They took the great cathedral, Santa Sophia, and turned it into a great mosque. They went to Bulgaria, through Romania, through Hungary, through Yugoslavia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and then they came to the gates of Vienna.
Everyone believed they should have won. But the Christian armies were divided and fragmented. Yet God, in mercy, gave them the victory in the Battle of Vienna.
The Ottomans, the Muslims, withdrew, and they slowly deteriorated and stagnated in luxury and licence. The Ottomans became what was called “the sick man of Europe,” a term used of them over a hundred years ago.
Until they discovered oil, which was the most amazing fulfilment of God’s prophecy concerning Ishmael: that he would become great, powerful, and wealthy.
It is amazing that nearly all the oil in the world, except here in the United States, is in Muslim hands. With that oil came untold riches and the beginning of a revival in Islam.
Now Islam is coming to its place, and nothing can stop it, because there is something appointed in this by God.
I hope I have managed to say where we are now. Islam has brought Khomeini; Osama bin Laden believes that Islam is poised now to destroy Israel.
Once Israel is destroyed, it will go through the whole Islamic world like a power that will cause them to unite and take the rest of the world.
So now I come to the end of this: we should not be afraid. God is in this whirlwind.
He is in this storm. His way is here. He is going to use this very thing to fulfil His own purpose.
I know it may sound very wrong to put it like this, but I personally believe that God is hastening the coming of the Antichrist and a world government in order to get it over with.
You know, it says in Scripture that He will shorten the days for the elect’s sake.
I believe that the Lord is in this world. Thank God He has woken up the American people by all this. There is a whole different atmosphere in the United States over this matter.
There are a lot of weaknesses and all the rest of it, but at least a large number—a majority, I think, of Americans—are alive and awake to the fact that something is happening that they had not seen and had not understood.
We should not be afraid. We know the One who has all authority and power in heaven and on earth in His hands.
It is no good getting neurotic. Christians are generally speaking pretty neurotic already, and it is a shame to get a neurosis as a result of this. The fact of the matter is, it is going to test whether we have living faith. Otherwise, we are going to be nervous wrecks.
Unfortunately, you here in this great continent have not suffered terrorist bombs and terrorist outrages basically until this thing. There have been a few things before, but what happened on September 11 was a wake-up call for the whole American and Canadian people.
If people thought they were escaping problems by coming here, there is no such thing. Now the whole world is unsafe. So you can choose which unsafe area you wish to be in.
The fact of the matter is that we are now in a conflict that is only just beginning. If President Bush takes this thing soon and is strong and powerful, it will be a message written that will be understood by the Islamic world.
But if he withdraws, Islam will believe it is on a winning ticket and will take more and more and more.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, the Lord does have His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.
In the prophecy in Zechariah 12-14, we are told there will be many wars with Jerusalem as the focal point—not one war, but a whole number.
We have already witnessed, without calling the intifada a war, six wars in fifty-four years. Generally speaking, in Israel, these last two years are considered a war. That means seven wars.
Every one of them has the status and future of Jerusalem at its base.
We have to be sorry for the Palestinians and for all that they have suffered. I mean, they have suffered. They have not helped themselves, I might say, in some cases, because they have become part of this whole terrorist structure—not all, not by any means all. I have many Palestinian friends.
But the fact of the matter is that we have a terrible situation where it is a no-win situation from one point of view. Israel cannot take the kind of action that America took when she bombed Afghanistan, because then the whole United Nations would go berserk.
It is very funny in one way. America drops bombs on a wedding in Afghanistan, and then, in a very embarrassed way, has to say, “Well, no, look, we do not believe it happened.” Then they say, “Well, it did happen,” and they say, “Yes, yes, yes, we are investigating it.”
The same thing happens with us, only we are not allowed to get off the hook like that. We have very real problems every time.
War is a terrible thing, and there is no justice in war. But sometimes the only way to peace is through war.
So, dear folks, I believe that the Lord is in this whirlwind and in this storm. He is going to pursue the whole thing until He has fulfilled His purpose in every single part.
I said that it will bring the Antichrist. I have no doubt about it—no doubt about it at all.
Can you believe how we are losing our personal rights? Any of you who flew to the United States will know exactly what I am talking about: searched around, have your shoes taken off, things stuck up between your legs. I mean, it is quite abominable, really.
They lost our luggage—not we lost our luggage; they lost our luggage. Now we find, though we are not supposed to know this, through sources, that our bags were deliberately held back, along with a majority of others that came from Athens via Frankfurt, for security reasons.
They opened our cases without our permission, got into our cases, and changed everything around. Then they telephoned us and asked if we could tell them two items in our cases.
In other words, we had to give them permission to open our cases, but they had already done it.
Phones can be tapped. As a result of this war on terror, a whole lot of things have to be sacrificed in the interests of safety and security, which is totally understandable.
But do you see what I mean by this being a preparation for the coming of a world government? Very, very interesting.
Especially now when they begin to ask you for bits of paper and so on. It will not be long before we get the mark here and on the hand, so we can be identified as those who are not terrorists.
It is interesting, is it not? Also, I think the Lord is in this whirlwind to bring Israel to salvation.
I do not believe that they will be saved at the coming of the Lord. I believe they will be saved before He comes. The reason I say this is because the Lord has never saved anyone by sight. He saves by faith.
I believe there will come a day when the Spirit of God will be poured out upon the Jewish people, and in that time they will look unto Him.
That is how the Hebrew is everywhere else in the Old Testament. It is nearly always translated “toward” or “unto,” not “on.” But it has been understood to be “on.”
I can give you many examples of this all through the Psalms and elsewhere, where we speak of “My eyes are toward the Lord; my heart is toward the Lord.” It is the same word.
Then you have it in Zechariah 12: “They shall look unto Me.” To look unto and to look on are two different things.
When you look on the president of the United States, it means you see him physically. When you look to him, it means you recognise who he is—his authority and his character.
So I believe we have tremendous things here. Do not be afraid.
I will finish by reading just two Scriptures. You can think about them and reflect on them.
One is in Isaiah. It is Isaiah 46, from verse 8. I will just read it. I am not going to make any comment other than one point.
Remember this, and show yourselves men;
Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.
Remember the former things of old:
For I am God, and there is none else;
I am God, and there is none like Me;
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done;
Saying, My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure;
Calling a ravenous bird from the east,
The man of My counsel from a far country;
Yea, I have spoken, I will also bring it to pass;
I have purposed, I will also do it.
—Isaiah 46:8-11
Would you have thought that the Lord’s purpose could ever be fulfilled by bringing a ravenous bird from the east? Isaiah 46—I am sorry, I did not make it clear.
Would you ever have thought that the Lord could be in such a thing as bringing a bird like this as a symbol of the dark powers—powers of darkness? It is very interesting, is it not?
It was a reference, of course, to Babylon. The man of counsel was Cyrus. So you have two incredible things: the Lord says, “I will use Babylon, with all its wickedness, cruelty, and savage way, to fulfil My purpose; and I will use Cyrus of Persia to fulfil My purpose.”
The other Scripture I only mention. It is in Matthew 24:8, and it speaks of, “This is the beginning of travail.” Jesus, describing the whole phase of world history leading up to His coming again, says, “This is the beginning of travail.”
In some modern versions it is translated like this: “These are the birth pangs.”
What of? Not of Antichrist—the birth pangs of the coming kingdom.
Those of you ladies who have had children know that the first pains begin very quietly. Then you have quite a little distance, and another; then a shorter distance, and another. It is amazing how I know these things—from my mother.
Then they come quicker and quicker, more powerful and more powerful. Exactly where we are.
To put it another way, the Lord is in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. Birth pangs.
I had a very large head, and my mother took altogether twenty hours to get me into this world. When I finally came into it, she told the nurse that I was not her son, because my eyes would not open.
They did not open for the whole week, and she was sure I had no eyes. She thought, “He has no eyes behind those lids.” My mother was quite an extraordinary lady.
She went out to have a little meal, a celebration, because I was taking such a long time coming. Then all of a sudden it began.
Unfortunately, I was born in the greatest blizzard for one hundred years, in which twenty-two people died. Of course, the car was caught up, and Mother was delayed.
That is where I learned all about birth pangs—how they came more and more quickly and everything else. But the end was a birth.
Finally, Mother accepted me. I was not, apparently, muddled with somebody else. I was her son.
My grandmother, God bless her, said to Mother, “Don’t worry. He may look ugly now, but maybe he will get handsome.” That is true. That is true.
Birth pangs are not a joyride. Those pangs are painful. Who wants to endure them? But the end is birth.
The Lord Jesus said that all these things—wars, rumours of wars, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, plagues, famines, earthquakes, and all the rest of it—these are the birth pangs of the coming kingdom.
May the Lord bless us and help us. Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we do pray that You will open our hearts and our minds to be able to have an understanding of the times in which we live.
We do not know, Lord, how long we have before You take us to be with Yourself. But we want to be faithful, and we want to be those who are witnesses to Your grace and to Your power.
Lord, we pray that You will challenge us this night, and make what is happening here in this great land and throughout the whole world help us to understand, God, Your purpose in it all.
Help us to walk through it, we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.