The Terrorists of Islam

Revelation

The Terrorists of Islam

May 7th, 1986 @ 7:30 PM

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
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THE TERRORISTS OF ISLAM

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Revelation 6:1-8

5-7-86    7:30 p.m.

 

 

Tonight we are going to look at one of the most tragic of all of the developments in human history.  It is a sad, sad assignment that we have, but one that is realistic now and will be increasingly so as long as time shall last.  For a background text, let us read together.  Turn to Revelation chapter 6; Revelation chapter 6.  We are speaking tonight of the terrorists of Islam; a headline in every newspaper in the world, and a discussion in every magazine that is published – The Terrorists of Islam.  Now let us read the first eight verses of the sixth chapter of Revelation, and we will read it out loud together.  Revelation chapter 6, the first eight verses, now together:

 

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see.  And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.  And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

 

Not a very pretty picture, is it?  It is one that God writes in His Book that we might know the future.  And that future for us is now.

 The Terrorists of Islam:  Islam means "submission," and it is the name that all the Mohammedans of the world apply to themselves.  All of them love to call themselves "Islamic."  A word built upon the participle that is "Islam" is "Muslim," or "Moslem"; and that’s where those words come from – a Muslim, a Moslem, all of them under the Islamic banner of religion.  There are something like two hundred fifty million Muslims in the world.  They start at western Africa, and they continue through all of the continents until you come to the Philippines in the western Pacific.  All through those thousands and thousands of miles, one nation after another nation after another nation is Islamic, millions and millions of them.

They of course are followers of Muhammad, Mohammed; and he was an autocrat, vindictive beyond description.  He revenged himself upon those he did not like, not only Jews and Christians, but his own fellow tribesmen.  He was a domineering, warring autocrat, who first prescribed war and violence toward non-Muslims.  I have here one, two, three, four, five, five sentences that I have copied out of the Koran.  These are the words of Mohammed, as he said God, Allah, told him to write.  One: "Prescribed for you is fighting."  Two: "Fight those who believe not in Allah."  Three: "Verily, Allah loves those who fight in his cause."  Four: "Fight strenuously against unbelievers."  And five: "The persons Allah loves are those who fight in his cause."  That’s one of the tenants of the Islamic religion, is to fight and to kill infidels, non-believers in Mohammed.

A second characteristic of the Islamic religion is its sensual and sexual goals.  Heaven to a Muslim is a glorified harem.  In his own Koran, and for the life that we live now, he set four as the limit of the number of wives that each Muslim could have, that is, at a time.  The Muslim is free to divorce any one of his four wives with just a word of dismissal, and to marry any other woman that would submit to him.  But he cannot have more than four wives at a time.  But he, Mohammed, was an exception to what Allah said to the faithful Islamic believers.  For example, he took and he married the wife of his adopted son.  He had no sons.  And he justified the action by a special revelation given him from Allah.  Besides that, all of his believers now were limited to four wives at a time, but he himself had many, many more wives beyond the four allowed his followers.  And in the Koran, a special dispensation was granted him; and now I have copied from the Koran:  "Oh prophet, Allah allows thee thy wives.  The slaves you possess as booty, and any believing woman who has given herself up to the prophet, if the prophet desire to wed her, a privilege for thee above the rest of the faithful."

I talked to a rich merchant in Kaduna, which is a solid Muslim city in West Africa.  And I asked him, "How many wives do you have?"  He said, "I have four."  And then by his side was a young merchant, and I said, "And how many wives does he have?"  And he replied to me, "He has one.  But as he grows richer, he will finally have four."  This is the basic idea of domesticity on the part of the Koran, of Mohammed, of the Islamic religion.  And I am saying all this to get to something else regarding the terrorist.

In the Koran, Allah is represented as a magnificent, opulent, sovereign potentate, an Arab sheik glorified and magnified to comic proportions.  That is their God.  Salvation in such a faith is expressed in the simple word which Mohammed used to designate his religion Islam, "submission."  That’s all it takes to be a Mohammedan, is to submit to the Islamic tenants.  For those who submit, a sensual, sexual heaven awaits, with a harem for each man, with – and I copied this several times in the Koran, they will use "large-eyed maids."  I don’t know why to a Muslim large-eyed maids is so sexually attractive, but that’s what you read in their holy bible.  Over there in heaven you’re going to have a harem full of large-eyed maids, not limited to four in heaven; and they are to minister to every want and wish of the recipient in glory.

Now with this idea of heaven, it’s going to be a sensual, sexual, haremic paradise; with this idea of heaven, Mohammed also, and the Koran prescribes also, and the Islamic religion describes also a sure way to get there, a certain ticket to heaven – and that is the way of the terrorist.  So we’re going to look at what motivates the modern Islamic terrorist.

Every major airline of the world at this moment is feeling the effect of the Islamic terrorist in the dramatic decrease in world travel.  You have a brilliant and poignant illustration of it here in our own church.  Our Sanctuary Choir had for months and months gathered together all of those who were going to the Middle East, going to sing in Israel, and I was going to preach over there, and they had us scheduled at different camps in Israel, and going to sing for the army and the Lord only knows what all if finally we had achieved it.  But because of the terrorists it finally dwindled down to so small a group until we are not going at all.  The extremist fanatical Muslim is blatantly anti-Christian, anti-Jew, anti-Semitic, and at its root is carnally anti-God, as we know God.

You have brilliant illustrations of that, tragic ones, in the taking of American hostages in Iran by the fanatical devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini.  You have illustrations of that, of these fanatical extremists of the Muslim earlier this year, this year of 1986.  Earlier this year a peace meeting between Iran and a group of third world countries fell apart before it was started.  What was the cause?  Was it some great political altercation, confrontation that developed between Iran and the third world countries?  No.  The cause was that some of the third world women refused to wear veils, all of which offended Khomeini; so the elaborately prepared state dinner went uneaten and the speeches went undelivered, and they never had the meeting at all.  You have tragic illustrations of this in the machine gun slaughter in the Rome airport a few months ago, and the tragic bombing of the TWA flight out of Athens several weeks ago.

There are two things that are inculcated in the minds of Muslims:  they are taught this from childhood; one, hatred of the West, us; and hatred for Israel.  And there are two responses to this teaching that are ever present in the Muslim world and in the Muslim mind.  One is jihad; jihad, holy war.  Terrorist activities, wars, even against one another in Arab lands, such as Iran against Iraq, military actions, all are viewed as jihads.  Muslims killed in such a holy war go directly to heaven.  That is the sure ticket to that sensual, sexual harem, is to be involved in jihad.  And if you die in it, you are doubly blessed in the certainty of your arrival in the Muslim paradise.

Let me give you an instance of the tragedy of that doctrine that if you die in jihad, in a holy war, you go directly to heaven.  In the Iran/Iraqi war – boy, that’s a war going on right now and has been going on for these last few years – in that war, boys twelve to seventeen years old from Iran are sent weaponless against Iraqi armor.  They’re often bound together in groups of twenty by ropes, to keep them and to prevent them from deserting.  They march into mine fields in the face of withering machine gun fire, to clear the way for Iranian tanks.  Even across the back of their shirts are written in Arabic that, "We are on the way to heaven."  And those boys are killed by the uncounted numbers.  And I have seen pictures of them that have been captured.  It is unthinkable and unbelievable, but that’s a sure way to send the boy to the sensual heaven of the Islamic.

I remember, long time ago, when I was a youth, I remember the Muslim Turkish war against the Christian Armenians.  And I remember something in that war:  I remember reading of a blind Muslim who was crying for a Christian to be brought to him, that he might cut his throat, so that certainly he would have an entrance into heaven.

Two days ago, Ann Landers wrote something besides some sexual escapades of our American people.  So, she’s writing in this column about:

 

Dear average American, a while back I printed a column describing what the world would be like if we had a nuclear war.  I asked my readers to clip it, write their names across the top, and mail it to President Reagan.  Within three days, the president was good enough to let me know that he had approximately one hundred thousand of those columns on his desk.

Wait, Mr. President, this is only the beginning.  There will be more.

President Reagan suggested that my readers write to Brezhnev, because, he said, ‘That’s where the problem is.’

Now Brezhnev is now gone, and for the first time in memory, the chairman of the Soviet Union is a young, healthy, contemporary man, who millions of Americans can relate to.  I am more optimistic about our chances of getting along with Russia than at any time since World War II.  But, but –

 

this dear lady writes –

but, the real threat –

 

and this is an amazing observation –

is not Russia, but the real threat is the ruthless, mindless terrorism among the Muslim countries of the Middle East.  How does one deal with people who believe it is a privilege and an honor to die in battle and that their reward for heroic suicide is eternal life?  The lady who specializes in answers wishes she had the answer.

 

Talking about herself.

What are you going to do with two hundred fifty million people whose religion is that the one sure ticket to heaven is to die in some kind of a terrorist attack, in a jihad?  It is, I say, as bleak a prospect and outlook as you could ever imagine in the darkest hours of your mind.  And she says – now I’m just quoting her – she says our real threat to the peace of the world is not Communist Russia, but it is the terrorists of these Muslim lands, all from Africa clear to the Philippines.

Now I said there were two things that come into the mind and that are taught the devotee of Islam.  The first was jihad, holy war; the other one is dhimmi, or thimmi.  When a land is conquered, should you refuse or resist converting to Islam, you would become thimmi, a non-person with no rights.  The Muslim can decide to take your wife, your children, your business, all in the name of Allah.  You are an infidel.  In a conquered land where Islam rules, Christians and Jews can choose conversion, death or thimmi.  The perilous [protection of] thimmi is the perilous protection granted by Islamic religious leaders.

Libya’s President Kaddafi said, regarding ten million Christians who are presently living in Arab lands – and we could add to it the three million five hundred thousand Jews that live in Israel – he said, "The Christians have followed a mistaken path, and they must change their ways to the extent that they become really and truly Muslims.  They must convert to Islam."  This is the doctrine of Kaddafi and what lies back of what he does.  What he does is not politically motivated; they only have about three million people over there in Libya.  How are three million people going to conquer the world?  What motivates Kaddafi, what motivates Khomeini, what motivates the ruler of Syria is religion, Islamic fanaticism.  To terrorists, their cause is a holy jihad. They are on their way to heaven by killing infidels and banishing them from Allah’s rightful world.  Hatred is an integral part of jihad; and thimmi justifies the murderous act as against a "no-person," hateful in the eyes of Allah.

The fanatical Islamic extremist is dedicated to world conquest.  One of their never-forgotten goals is the destruction of Israel.  That’s the first thing over there.  They spend huge sums in worldwide dissemination and exploitation of hatred against Israel.  They seek a world conquered for Allah; a world ruled by the Koran.

Their final defeat and confrontation is pictured in Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39, in Psalm 83, and in Daniel chapter 11.  And now I close with a word for us who are Christians.

Paul writes in an encyclical – the reason you call it the letter to the Ephesians is because the manuscript that we have from which we translated the King James Version happened to have up there "To the saints at Ephesus" – but it’s an encyclical, it’s a letter addressed to all the churches of all time, and Paul writes to us:

 

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.

Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against –

 

and all of these names that he now names are evidences of demonic activity in the world –

principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness in high places.

[Ephesians 6:10-12]

 

We don’t war against political regimes, and we don’t war against men, flesh and blood.  Paul says we war against a demonic world, a world that is overwhelmed by and tragically destroyed by the dark minions from the depths of Satan’s hell.  And you have a tragic illustration of that in the demonic mind of the Muslim extremist.  And for him to attack an American plane and destroy it, for him to enter an airport in England or to machine gun the innocent passengers in Rome, is to him an act of devotion to Allah.  It is sad, tragic, terrible beyond description.  And that’s the world in which we live, and that’s the world we shall continually face.  May God help us and bless us, and give us strength and wisdom and devotion in the Christian faith.

I can’t continue in this.  I could just say one little closing word.  Can you think of a greater contrast known to the human mind than the contrast of Mohammed and his vengeful, murderous attitude toward those who disagreed with him, and refused his religion, can you imagine a greater contrast between Mohammed and the gentle Jesus, who laid down His life that we might be saved?  Can you imagine a greater contrast than that?  The Lord Jesus, who said, "Bless them that persecute you.  Pray for them that despitefully use you" [Matthew 5:44]; it’s a difference between heaven and hell.

Now sweet people, we’re going to have our time of prayer.  And let’s lower the kneelers, all of us, as we kneel before our blessed Lord.

How many of you face illness in your own family or in your own body?  Would you hold up your hand, "Pastor, I want to be remembered tonight"?  Thank you.  Thank you.  How many of you know others who face a severe illness and you’d like to remember them tonight?  Would you hold up your hand?  Yes.  How many of you know someone who is lost, who needs the Lord, and you’d like to name them before the throne of grace?  Would you hold up your hand?  Thank you.

Now, Brother Ed, got lots of people here tonight before the Lord, asking God’s remembrance, healing in our bodies, and saving grace in our souls.  And you men on the front can kneel with us now, and we’ll kneel here in the choir and on the platform, and Brother Ed Poole will lead us in our prayer.