Tonight, we’re going to look at some of the things which are taking place, particularly around what’s happened in Afghanistan, right into Islam, the Middle East, and we’ll come on to Israel at the end.
I want to talk a little bit about what’s happened in Afghanistan and I had a few ideas about this this week from a prophetic point of view as well as, obviously, what’s happening politically.
The bad news is that if you look around the world. Not just in Afghanistan but, wherever you look, it seems that the bad guys are winning.
One country after another are going into some kind of dictatorship, some kind of evil regime, something which is crushing and oppressing the life of the people and that could be very discouraging.
The Bible says that, basically, this is going to happen in the last days. You’re going to see governments going from bad to worse.
One scripture in the Book of Jeremiah says:
Behold, disaster shall go forth
From nation to nation,
And a great whirlwind shall be raised up
From the farthest parts of the earth.
Jeremiah 25.32
Evil going forth from nation to nation, a great tempest stirring from the ends of the earth. Do you see that happening? It certainly is.
Timothy chapter 3 says:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
2 Timothy 3.1-5
Do you see that happening in the world today?
I remember, back in the 60s, when I was still far from the Lord – in fact, I was a bit of a Marxist. At that time, I remember sitting on a tube train, going, I think, from Hounslow to central London on the Piccadilly line, and I looked up at an advertising board and there was that verse, there, on the tube train. As I sat there, I thought ‘that sounds a bit like today’.
That must have been 1969. Well, if it sounded like today in 1969, what does it sound like in 2021?
Certainly, we can see that this is the spirit of the age. A spirit of rebellion against God. People being without love, unforgiving, violent, not lovers of good but treacherous, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, a form of religion, which is actually opposed to the truth in the Bible, opposed to Jesus Christ.
Another scripture I want to read is 1 John chapter 2 verse 18. John writes:
18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
1 John 2.18-23
This is John writing about the spirit of Antichrist which would come in the last days. Some people get a bit confused because he says it’s happening now.
From the time of the apostles onward, we were in the last days. But the last days will come to ‘the last of the last days’ as we come to the end of this age, before Jesus returns.
John speaks about the Antichrist coming, The Antichrist, and that word the is pretty much there in the scripture. That is, one person who will embody all the spirit of Antichrist, who will come just before Jesus returns, bring in the last world government which itself will be the worst of all governments.
But, before he comes, there will be many, many Antichrists, many people who have the spirit of Antichrist.
One of the features of those who have the spirit of Antichrist, John states here, is that they went out from us but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us but they went out that they might be manifest that none of them were of us. In other words, these people come out of some form of religion, even some form of Christianity, some form of belief in Jesus and will come out but they will have their own form of faith which will end up being Antichristian in nature.
I’m going to show you in a moment that this applies totally to the religion of Islam.
And John goes on to say that who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
If you know anything about Islam, you know that it denies that Jesus is the Messiah in the sense that he died and rose from the dead for our sins. Islam denies the relationship between the Father and the Son. It denies that there is a triunity, a Trinity. And it denies that Jesus is the unique Son of God, which constitutes one of the main platforms of that religion, so ‘though it has a form of religion by believing in Jesus’, if you look at what Islam actually believes, it is thoroughly Antichrist.
Islam is saying the opposite of what the Lord Jesus Christ actually taught and what the New Testament teaches about Jesus.
So, we have this parallel and something which I believe is relevant to what I’m talking about tonight, which is basically concerning the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and the significance of that in the light of Bible prophecy. Also, in the light of where we are in the world today, not just in the light of Islam taking over, but also of the West, America and others declining, which is going to be another feature of our time.
We’ve all seen the images. I guess you’ve seen it on TV this week. Images of the Kabul as the Taliban take over. Terrible images of people desperately trying to flee from the terror which they see coming with the Taliban, especially if they’re involved with the US forces or the former regime.
We see women who are terrified of what’s coming, fearful that the Taliban will again suppress women’s rights, there will be no education for girls. Women must wear the suffocating burqa which you’ve seen going around in these horrible sorts of suits in which you can’t even see their faces, you don’t know what they look like, and it totally suffocates their identity and probably suffocates them physically as well.
So, they have to wear that stuff and not being allowed out of the house unless they go with a man. They are being denied the right to work and there are already the reports of killings and violent subjugation of the people by the Taliban.
Meanwhile, at the same time, we’ve had this sort of charm offensive by the Taliban leaders telling the West ‘Actually, don’t worry about it we change, we’re nice guys now. We’re going to bring in a sort of pluralistic state, we’re going to bring in people from all different kinds and women won’t be subjugated and it’ll be totally different. We’ll represent the entire Afghan population, not just our own fanatical Islamic clique who will suppress everybody else’.
Will it be so or not?
Reports coming out already suggest it won’t be. I read a report from a Christian organization reporting on what’s taking place says:
‘At this hour Christian families in Afghanistan are hiding in their homes waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. The Taliban is trying very hard to convince the rest of the world that they’ve become more moderate over the last two decades but the reports that are coming in from those on the ground tell a completely different story. Large numbers of women are being rounded up to be used as sex slaves, non-Muslims are being forced to go to their local mosques for prayer five times a day. Those who refuse potentially face instant death.’
The Afghan-based journalist Mustafa Kazemi reports that the Taliban are looking for government officials, former police and security force members, those who work for foreign countries or infrastructures in Afghanistan. He notes that journalists are also being targeted and that there are reports of the Taliban going from door to door looking for retribution on what they call ‘their enemies’.
Many Afghan families are hiding their women because the Taliban has ordered that any unmarried woman are what they call Ghanimat which means ‘spoils of war’.
They should be rounded up and the Taliban fighters will reportedly celebrate their resurgence by snatching girls as young as 12 from recaptured cities to be their sex slaves.
Commanders have ordered Imans to bring their unwed women aged between 12 and 14 to 45 for their soldiers so they may to marry because they’re viewed as Ghanimat or ‘spoils of war’.
Can you imagine anything so horrible? Treating women as things or things that they can use for their own lust and saying that they’re being doing it, as far as religion is concerned.
Javad here actually showed me a clip from an imam who said that ‘you can do all these things, you can have sex with as many women as you like, you can ill-treat children but if you then go and pray to Allah and ask him to forgive you, it’s okay and you can carry on doing it.
That’s the kind of mentality you’ve got here and it’s something which is totally alien to anything which represents truth and decency and God as revealed through our Lord Jesus.
The report goes on to say ‘Christian families are particularly vulnerable because under Sharia law. Christians do not have any rights at all. Under the Taliban, there’ll be absolutely no tolerance for the Christian faith in Afghanistan.
Anyone who’s chosen to leave Islam and embrace Christianity while the Taliban was out of power, faces potentially deadly consequences.
According to the Taliban’s ideology, Afghanistan is a Muslim majority country and non-Muslims must leave Afghanistan or accept second-class status.
For Christians coming from convert backgrounds, the Taliban will consider them apostates and subject to Sharia law which has deadly consequences.
Some known Christians already receiving threatening phone calls. In these phone calls unknown people say we are coming for you. Some Christians will try and hide their faith the best they can, but the Taliban will come up with ways to identify those who do not truly believe in Islam.
Taliban leaders are requiring everyone to go to a mosque and pray five times a day. Needless to say, many Christians are not willing to do this. This gives the Taliban a way to figure out who they are.
According to this Christian leader, life under the Taliban is already very difficult for Christians in districts where the Taliban has held power.
When the Taliban takes control of a village they reportedly require all households to go to the local mosque and pray five times a day. Those who do not attend must provide a good reason for missing a prayer, potentially outing any Christian converts.
In addition, Taliban leaders have figured out that you can tell a lot about people by searching their phones.
If anyone has downloaded a Bible on a phone and they discover it, that can mean instant death.
And one of the ways in which the Gospel has gone out particularly in Muslim countries actually is by them downloading the Bible in their language in Arabic or Farsi or whatever language it is and being able to study it on their mobile phones. This has been a particularly effective way of evangelism especially in closed Muslim countries.
It goes on to say: It’s incredibly dangerous now right now for Afghans to have anything Christian on their phones. The Taliban have spies and informants everywhere.
This is what complete and utter tyranny looks like. The Taliban is deeply evil.
Now, they’re armed to the teeth thanks to vast amounts of US military equipment that have been captured.’
You might be surprised to know that there are Christians at all in Afghanistan.
I heard a talk recently by a man called Joel Richardson, who runs a network of underground Christian communities across the Muslim world. He was saying that there has been a number of Afghans have come to faith in Christ in the last year, A lot of enquiries, a lot of people going onto the internet, a lot of people searching and finding Jesus Christ.
He’s saying that, in Iran, it’s happening even more. And in different parts of the Arab world as well, particularly in the northern parts of Iraq where the ISIS was at one point. Also, in the Kurdish areas many people are coming to faith in Jesus.
One of the things in common about all these people is that they look at Islam, they see the brutality the violence the evil that is inflicted on people and they say: ‘Enough of this!‘ And they begin to look for an alternative and find in Jesus Christ someone completely different, someone who teaches you to love your enemies, to pray for those who persecute you, who teaches you to love God, to love your neighbour and who teaches you to live by a totally different way from the Islamic way.
But it’s all dangerous now because, basically, you have an extremist Muslim group which has taken over yet another country.
We’ve seen a lot of politics going on this week. Joe Biden spoke and blamed the Afghan army for not fighting. In fact, one of the problems which we have is that the US backed administration itself was very corrupt and wasn’t paying their army.
One thing I found out was that the Afghan army, in parts, had not been paid for weeks and months. The money which would have gone to them has actually gone to the officials.
An article in the paper I read today about how the government itself has basically been installed by the Americans then left to get on with it.
It says here that the main political figures were never able to bring the country together when everyone regarded them as foreigners chosen and installed by foreign power the political class had become so removed from the country it governed that many people did not consider it Afghan at all
President Ghani, who was president who just left, liked to talk of himself as the Commander-in-Chief but the Commander-in-Chief was the US General Miller.
When president Ghani felt he’d reached the end of the road, where did he head for to the American Embassy to discuss his future.
We now hear allegations from the Afghan Ambassador in Tajikistan that Ghani left Kabul carrying bags containing 169 million dollars in cash.
Enormous sums of money were transferred to Afghanistan.
The result? Wise-spread corruption often involving American citizens.
Predictably, we’re now finding out that even the police and the military were left under-staffed with numbers on paper not corresponding to reality.
In Kandahar, I was told, a former Afghan minister said that there were supposed to be 13,000 policemen in reality there are only 900. The remainder were ghost policemen never hired in the first place, and the respective funds had been siphoned off elsewhere.
So, total corruption taking place and, not surprisingly, when they heard that Joe Biden was talking about a national army with three hundred thousand which would stand against the sixty five thousand Taliban, in fact, there was nothing like that number and those who were there, just melted away
The article says:
People in Washington must have known all of this as well. As for the Taliban, it’s not surprising they moved with such confidence and speed when they were the ones best placed to understand they were not fighting an army or a state, rather a fiction projected from Washington onto the screen of Afghanistan.
Sadly, we have a total Western failure here.
Now, there were some successes, I have to say that. Teaching the women and raising their status was something which was done, it was successful.
But, generally, because of this corruption, the soldiers didn’t stand and fight once the Taliban moved in. They just fled and that was the reason for it.
We have to say that this victory of the Taliban is an enormous defeat for the West and a boost to the Islamic cause.
You need to understand a few things about Islam and Islamic fundamentalism.
It’s not just a religion, it’s a political system.
It’s not just about getting people to believe in Allah, to get people to submit to Allah and then to become part of the Islamic state whose actual goal is to take over the whole world.
Muslims divide the world into what they call the Dar al-Islam which means ‘the house of Islam’ and Dar al-Harb which means ‘the house of the enemy’.
The goal of the jihadist is to convert the Dar al-Harb, ‘the house of the enemy’ into the house of Islam.
If you live in the house of Islam, then Muslims must rule, and Jews and Christians may keep their faith because they’re considered to be the people of the Book. Everyone else must convert to Islam.
Truly, this is the classical Islamic view of life.
When I say Jews and Christians, I mean Christians who were in historic Christian communities which existed before the Muslim conquest, like the Coptic Christians in Egypt, the Assyrian Christians in Iraq and those Christians who were part of the ancient Christian world which existed before the Muslims came and took it over.
Muslims say that because these were people of the Book, because they had a Bible, they could continue in their faith, but they have to be what is called ‘Dhimmi’, which means second-class citizens. They should pay what they call the ‘jizya’ which is a tax payable to the Muslims and when they pay this tax, they will be so-called ‘protected people’. That means they’ll be protected as long as they keep their place in society under the Muslims. They must never rule over Muslims.
Therefore, Jews and Christians can keep their communities.
That doesn’t apply of course to converts from Islam to Christianity, for, as they’re concerned, they are apostates and the only fate for them according to classical Islamic theology is to be killed according to their apostasy laws.
You have therefore, this very violent religion.
The other point is about Islam is that, if a country has been part of what they call the Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam), it must remain Islamic until the end of days.
It can’t go back to being non-Islamic. If you have any country which has once been Islamic, according to classical Islamic theology, it should always remain Islamic until the end of days.
When they say Jesus is going to come back and make the whole world Muslim. That means that if a country has once been Islamic and then becomes non-Islamic, it should go back to being Islamic.
That actually applies to Spain, and, of course, it always applies very much to Israel, because Israel is a state which is ruled by Jews over Muslims in what Muslims call the Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam).