reading

Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

Ezekiel 33:1-4

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eISBN: 9781626755062

Acknowledgements

Extracts from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

Second Publication:

First publication:

St. Matthew Publishing Ltd

1 Barnfield, Common Lane, Hemingford Abbots

Huntingdon PE28 9AX UK 01480 399098

Email: PF.SMP@dial.pipex.com www.stmatthewpublishing.co.uk

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Arab World Unraveling

Chapter 2 – Sons of Ishmael

Chapter 3 – In the Character of Esau

Chapter 4 – The Names of the Arab Nations

Chapter 5 – Egypt’s Fate

Chapter 6 – Damascus and Syria

Chapter 7 – Jordan: Ammon, Moab and Edom

Chapter 8 – Tyre and Sidon Equals Southern Lebanon

Chapter 9 – The New Amalekites

Chapter 10 – Who is Edom? Why is He Doomed?

Chapter 11 – Habbakuk’s Vision; God Came From Teman

Chapter 12–Southern and Northern Iraq: Assyria and Babylon.

Chapter 13 – Libya’s Prophetic Destiny

Chapter 14 – Gaza: The Nation not Desired

Chapter 15 – The West Bank: Judea and Samaria

Chapter 16 – What Will Happen to Israel’s Neighbors?

Chapter 17 – Tish B’Av, Israel’s Day of Sorrow

Chapter 18 – The Future of Turkey

Chapter 19 – Iran’s Demon Possession

Chapter 20 – This is Their Hour and the Power of Darkness

Chapter 21 – The Prophetic Relevance of the Story of Balaam

Chapter 22 Setting Out to Curse Israel

Chapter 23 Balaam’s Oracles

Chapter 24 – What This People Will Do to You in the Last Days

Chapter 25 – Balaam’s End

Chapter 26 – Israel’s Final Conflict and Rescue:

A Brief Look at Zechariah 12

Chapter 27 — The Climax of World History

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

About the Author Pastor Bill Randles

Foreword

Jacob Prasch

A sleeping church and a foolish world. Let us address the latter first. Bill Randles is one of those thinking authors who realize that the mainstream media spin the truth, and the politicians of all political parties invent the lies. Academic institutions lend a false credence to the demonstrable lies.

Perhaps the biggest of these obvious lies today is the insidious claim that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; a hideous proposition that no person of reasonable intelligence looking at the irrefutable evidence would believe. Yet, the biased media, godless governments, such as those in Washington and London, as well most anywhere else, and the left-leaning university establishment demand – and generally obtain – a compliant acceptance of a plain fallacy. These voices cannot point to a single Islamic country that gives Christians, or Jews, or women the same rights and freedom Moslems receive in Western countries, such as the USA, Britain & Europe, Australia, and Israel.

Absurdly, the same left-wing proponents of the feminist and homosexual & lesbian agendas conspicuously overlook the human rights record of women and homosexuals under Sharia and throughout the Moslem world in a level of hypocrisy that is difficult to rationally fathom.

Voltaire once defined history as “the lie everybody agrees upon.” However, in today’s world of unprincipled leaders like Cameron, Bush, Clinton, Blare, and Obama, and the editorialized reporting of events by CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times, and lowest-common-denominator popular entertainment like ‘The View’ and ‘Oprah,’ (or Barak Obama’s personal favorite, ‘the Pimp with a Limp’), the news has also now become “the lie that everyone agrees upon.”

Bill Randles also recognizes a trend even more disturbing, however. It is not what transpires in the secular world or its corridors of power, but what is transpiring, or perhaps better phrased as, “failing to transpire,” within what is suppose to be the Evangelical church.

We are in an age of the apostasy that scripture warned would come prior to the return of Jesus. There are many aspects of this apostasy, but one key aspect that Bill Randles is aware of is the growing obliviousness of so much of the contemporary, supposedly Evangelical, church to eschatology and the fulfillment of prophecy. Rick Warren deceives the church in direct defiance of the Olivet Discourse instructions of Jesus to be alert for the signs He gave, including the Jews returning to Israel and Jerusalem in Luke 21:24, Matthew 23:39, and in Zechariah chapter 12. Yet as these much-predicted events unfold before our eyes, and the same nations at the center of events in scripture are at the center of global events today, Satan has moved to mislead and deceive the church through such false teachers as Rick Warren and supporter John Piper, who rejects the prophetic purposes of God for Israel and the Jews. Indeed, Warren urges Christians to avoid end-time prophecy as a diversion, and in his global peace plan, works to set the anti-Christ agenda to unite with worshippers of other gods (which Paul and Moses call demons), and other faiths, be it Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or otherwise, in order to usher in global peace.

We also see a trend among professing Evangelicals, including Stephen Sizer, Gary Burge, and Colin Chapman, to turn their backs on the persecuted church in the Islamic countries, and rather single out Israel criticism and opposition when Israel is the one nation in the Middle East protecting the human rights and religious freedom of its Christian population.

Meanwhile, the popular media and corrupt Western politicians and academics spoon feed the public the obvious lie that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, demanding in the name of political correctness that they cannot point to a single Islamic nation that will grant Christians and Jews the same rights that Moslems are granted in the West; neither can they deny the staggering numbers of Moslems living in the West who openly admit their desire for Islamic Sharia over democracy.

God has a controversy with the Islamic Arab world and with Iran. In the books of Daniel, Isaiah. Jeremiah and in others we encounter the divine judgment that the Islamic world is going to encounter in retribution for Islam’s persecution of Christians and hatred of Israel and the Jews.

An avalanche of divine destruction is coming to the Islamic world, and God has promised that He will raise His hand against these countries and their governments. As Bill Randles additionally recognizes, however, “Judgment Begins In The House of God, and if the Righteous are scarcely saved, what shall become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

You will profit by this timely book.

Introduction

I offer this book, A Sword On The Land...The Muslim Nations In Prophecy, out of a desire to interpret the handwriting on the wall for our times. Those who know the Bible understand the metaphor, but for those who don’t, it comes from the book of Daniel, in the last days of the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonians were besieged by enemies, but they were so confident in their ability to prevail, they spent what proved to be their last evening as an empire in a drunken, raucous, licentious party! But the party was interrupted by a disturbing sight, for a hand appeared, writing on the wall of the royal party hall the cryptic words: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uppharsin! Those at the party could see the hand writing, but couldn’t interpret the meaning of the words.

I liken our current generation in the West to that final Babylonian party. We have become so proud of our technology and innovation that we have indulged in a long (post-World War II to present), riotous, cultural party, casting off our former religion, experimenting with drugs (legal and illegal), psychology, Eastern religions, atheism, and sexual immorality. Many modern people are oblivious to the manifold dangers we face and completely caught unaware of the ruin, temporal and spiritual, that looms before us.

But in our lifetime, a hand has written on our own wall, (9-11 for us Americans). A good many people now know there is something that portends woe; they know something isn’t right in our societies, but they have no one to interpret it for them. What is the meaning of the sudden explosion of Muslim violence upon the world scene? What does the “Arab Spring” portend? What on earth is going on?

God is certainly working in all of these circumstances, but what is He saying?

What I am trying to do in this book is to answer some of these questions by drawing people’s attention to the ancient prophecies, which are literally being fulfilled before our eyes.

My hope for my Christian brothers and sisters is that they be ready for the coming of the Lord. Also that they be equipped to witness to this generation, combining scripture with current events. People know that events are heading towards some kind of an apocalyptic climax and need to be shown the way of salvation before it is too late.

I also pray that this book gives some answers to any non-Christians who are wondering what is going on. I want you to see that God’s Word is true. Ancient prophecies are being fulfilled to the letter in today’s current events. Those who are shown these things may well be compelled to consider the rest of the Bible, seeing that it is indeed a supernatural book.

Finally, I want to reach out to any Muslims who happen upon this book. The same Hebrew prophets who predicted these occurrences in such accurate detail also pointed to the Messiah, the Savior of the World, the Lord Jesus Christ. They also prophesied centuries before His coming, how Jesus suffered, died for our sins, and rose again, as the token that He truly was sent from God to be our Savior! This same Jesus is coming again, to judge the world in righteousness, but whosoever “calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Dear Muslim people, consider these prophecies and call upon the name of Jesus, for He is merciful and will abundantly forgive us of our sins.

If you are reading it, God is the one who put it in your reach, that you might see and consider that the Bible is unlike any other book, describing in detail, the end from the beginning, that you might believe and be saved. Finally, fulfilled prophecy is unique to the Bible; there is no other “holy book” of any other religion that can make this claim,

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 the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: (Isaiah 46:9-10)

What we are seeing today, geopolitically, among the Muslim nations of the world is exactly what Bible prophets told us to expect centuries ago, in the times leading up to the final appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My method is simple: I examine the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel Zechariah and others, but update the ancient names into the modern ones. The

prophecies hold their relevance. For example, there is no longer a nation called “Edom,” but there are many, many prophecies concerning the end times, yet unfulfilled, which concern Edom. These prophecies refer to the people who inhabit the present geographical location of Edom. So also for Ammon, Moab, Kedar, Dedan. This is the way I have approached these prophecies.

Others have done perhaps a better job of this. I know Arnold Fruchtenbaum has written articles on the Arab States in Prophecy, and Walid Shoebat wrote a book, God’s War On Terror, which does this kind of work also. This is my own humble contribution to the body of literature on this subject.

I have not written to show that the Antichrist is Muslim, (I don’t believe he is), but to highlight one huge part of much of Biblical prophecy and to prepare people for the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The premise for this little book is simple: update the names of the ancient peoples and regions in the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, and see how relevant these prophecies are to our modern day. I realize that many of the prophecies have been fulfilled already, in history, and in fact fulfilled prophecy is a confirmation that the Bible is the Word of God.

But the interpretation of Bible prophecy is a bit more complicated than prediction/fulfillment. Much of the prophecy of the Bible has a multiple and multilevel fulfillment, which intensifies as we come into the eschaton. Rather than a straight line between prediction to fulfillment, picture a corkscrew of repetitious fulfillment leading to the consummate fulfillment. For example, consider the prophecy of Daniel about the “abomination that makes desolate”:

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:27)

Jesus alluded to this in Matthew 24, telling us to understand it, and to realize that when it happens, it should be a sign to us of His soon coming.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) (Matthew 24:15)

The problem was that the “Abomination that makes desolate” had already happened, in the days of the Maccabees, more than a hundred years earlier. Daniel had predicted the sacrilege committed by Antiochus Epiphanes, who offered a pig on the Holy Altar of the Temple, but Jesus warned us to be on the alert for it!

There are some who say Jesus was warning us of 70 AD, and in part he was, but he used Daniel’s prophecy as a reference. In 70 AD, the Temple was abominated again, as it was in 120 AD, (the Romans built a shrine to Jupiter on the Temple mount). The Temple Mount was further abominated by the erection of the “Dome of the Rock” and the “Al Aqsa Mosque,” which also is an “abomination that makes desolate.”

Finally, Paul warns of the same kind of sacrilege when he tells us of the Antichrist, and the ultimate “Abomination that makes desolate”:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (2 Thess 2:3-4)

There is a sense in which some prophecies occur over and over again. “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen.” Indeed it did, and it was recorded in Daniel 5 on the night of the “hand writing on the wall,” but it happens over again. There is a sense in which Babylon falls, religiously, economically, and even geographically at the end of time. Economic Babylon must fall again (Revelation 18), so must religious Babylon (Revelation 17), as also political Babylon (Revelation 19). Though Babylon fell long ago, it must fall again in the end times to fulfill the prophecies.

We live in interesting times, for geographically, Babylon is here again (southern Iraq), as is Persia (Iran). Israel’s traditional cousin enemies, Ammon, Moab and Edom are here (Jordan), so is Rome (the European Union). Syria has a role to play, especially Damascus, so do Dedan and Keder (Saudi Arabia), Sheba (Yemen), Libya, Egypt, Tyre and Sidon (southern Lebanon). Gomer and Togarmeh are back (Turkey), as is Cush (Somalia, Ethiopia).

There are others, but suffice it to say the ancient nations of the time of the prophets are back in the world’s headlines. This is significant! God is so orchestrating things that all of these ancient entities are in the news constantly, and they cannot be ignored, even though people would love to.

Of course, much attention has been given, and rightly so, to the chief actor in the drama, who was not even a factor a mere 80 years ago: that is, Israel. The re-emergence of Israel on the international scene is the key reason people should sit up and take notice that the end of this age is at hand, and that this is not just a drama, but sober and shattering reality.

Jerusalem is in the news and is the topic of discussion of the world’s deliberating bodies, such as the U.N., the European Union, Russia, and the United States. If any of the so-called “Quartet” could just deal with the problem of Israel, and especially of Jerusalem, they would be considered a hero. How does the world wash its hands of this pesky problem?

The reason it is such an intractable problem is because of the vehement opposition of the above-mentioned ancient biblical nations. These nations all have a unifying factor that they never had before, and they have leverage also that never existed before.

The unification factor is Islam: a violent, pagan religion for whom the mere existence of Israel as a Western, Jewish nation in the Middle East is an affront! All of the above nations hate Israel because of Islam.

The leverage factor is that in most of these nations, God has seen fit to put much of the lifeblood of the modern world in their power, i.e., pure and easily accessible crude oil. And the Arab nations especially are using this as leverage to promote Islam and attack Israel. These things will lead to the end of the age.

What I seek to do in this little book is give a modern framework for understanding the entities discussed in the prophecies. I know there are many who will accuse me of applying ancient and already fulfilled prophecies to modern situations. Judge for yourself; be a Berean.

As I have said, the prophecies of the Bible have multiple fulfillments in some cases. They apply to the immediate situation in which the prophet lived, obviously, else how could anyone judge the prophet as God commanded them to do? But they look further down into history, all the way to the end of the age.

True it is that “Babylon has fallen,” but not in the dramatic obliteration that Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted it would, at least not yet. Damascus was indeed taken over, as predicted by the prophets, but it has not yet “ceased to be a city,” as Isaiah predicted. There is much that is future about these prophecies.

I don’t claim to be a Greek or Hebrew scholar – I am a pastor who is concerned that God’s flock be awake and alert to the times, and an evangelist who would love to see God’s people “interpreting the handwriting on the wall” for the many, many concerned people who know something is going on, but who don’t quite know what it is.

On another note, I am not being in any way exhaustive in this study, for I hope others will take what I have gleaned from good men such as Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Jacob Prasch, Bob Westbrook and Walid Shoebat, and bypass my limited scholarship.

These are the last days.

You know what I find ironic about our times? When I became a Christian in the late 1970s, the evangelical world was gripped with an eschatological vision: Jesus was coming and we couldn’t wait for the day! Every once in a great while, something would happen in the world scene that was so clearly prophetic, there would be a buzz surrounding it that would last for about six months. Just once or twice a year, but people would encourage each other on the strength of that event for the next six months or so.

But now, thirty years later, every single day the newspapers pour out events, which are clear fulfillments of prophecy, and yet for the most part, evangelicals don’t even notice it. These are unprecedented times, wisdom is crying out in the streets, a great big hand is writing on this decadent culture’s wall, but much of the church has been lulled into a profound slumber.

I dedicate this book to the reawakening of the Pentecostal and evangelical church, and to the multitudes out there who may not even be Christian, but like Rahab the harlot, they have a sneaking suspicion that something is desperately amiss! Maranatha!

Chapter 1 - The Arab World Unraveling

The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly. The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and not rise again. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. (Isaiah 24:9-11)

We are currently witnessing an unraveling of the already fragile modern order of the Arab world. Current Arab nations were formed by the victorious allies of World War I, France and Britain, after they had defeated the Ottoman Turks, who had sided with the Germans in the conflict. Diplomats pored over maps, border lines were drawn, sometimes by straightedge, and nations were mapped out, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, “Palestine,” Iraq and Lebanon.

During the post-war period, North Africa and the Arab Middle East came under the rule of either the British or French mandates. The Arabs, chafing under the yoke of being ruled by the “Christian West,” formed dissident groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which nurtured the ideal of a return to Allah as the only way to reverse the current humiliation.

On a more secular note, the Arab world churned with a swirling political maelstrom of Arab versions of Communism, Socialism and, in the thirties, even Hitlerism. Eventually, a special kind of Arabic fascist party was formed and took rule in both Syria and Iraq, which was called the Ba’athist party.

After World War II, an exhausted Britain and France began to undertake a “colonial retreat,” which ultimately led to Arab independence and national self-determination. Two parallel movements have since been brewing in the Arab world, one secular and the other religious: Pan-Arabism and Islamist fundamentalism.

The period of the late 1940s through the 1960s proved to be turbulent years through the Arab world. Algeria threw off the French in a bloody Islamist-inspired war for independence. Egypt experienced a military revolt, by which Gamal Nasser replaced the decadent King Farouk as the nation’s leader. All over the Middle East, similar things were occurring during the ‘de-colonialization’ period.

The new Arab leaders were secular for the most part. They were Muslim in name, but knew enough to keep movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood suppressed and on the run. Any dissent at all was brutally crushed. In nations such as Egypt, the people were kept distracted from their misery by a constant barrage of state-run, media-based conspiracy theories, blaming all problems on either the Jews or the Western powers.

These Middle Eastern leaders feared fundamentalist Islam; after all, they had much bitter experience to guide them. Nasser’s successor in Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by his own troops, who had been infiltrated by agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mubarek, his successor, wasn’t about to let that happen to him.

King Hussein of Jordan killed 20,000 supporters and members of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) in one month when they tried to foment a rebellion on his soil in 1970. In another brutal example, when the Muslim Brotherhood inspired an uprising against the rule of Syria’s Hafez Al Assad in the city of Hama, Syria in February 1982, Assad wasted no time crushing the revolt, killing tens of thousands of Syrians and bulldozing much of the old portion of the city as an example to any other potential revolutionaries.

Saddam Hussein brutally suppressed all domestic Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups, as did the Shah of Iran. The Assads of Syria knew they had to be ready and willing to brutally crush any Islamist uprising without hesitation. The Saudis have been no less ruthless in their rule.

Through brutality, these leaders repeatedly have crushed the aspirations of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, because they knew better than anyone who they were dealing with. Egypt jailed and tortured hundreds, if not thousands, of those who were inspired by the writing of Hassan Al Banna and Sayyid Qutb to wage a Jihad violently, politically or otherwise, in order to restore the Caliphate and bring the world under Sharia.

In May of 1948, an event occurred in the heart of the Middle East that galvanized the Arab world against a new common enemy. In fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible and against all world expectations, the nation of Israel was reborn in one day.

“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion travailed, she also brought forth her sons. (Isaiah 66:8)

From that moment to today, the Jews, who had also, according to the ancient prophecies of scripture, been scattered around the world, began to come back into the Holy land.

Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither. (Jeremiah 31;8-10)

Within hours of the announcement, the combined armies of five Arab nations gathered with the openly stated intent to drive this infant nation of holocaust survivors into the sea. Armed only with the remnants of surplus, cast off rifles and a few armored personnel carriers, Israel resoundingly defeated the massed Arab foes.

This humiliation became known among the Arab people as Al Naqba, “The Calamity,” and to this day, that day is marked in much of the Arab world by mourning and demonstrations.

Since that day, in four separate wars, the combined might of the Arab world, superior in arms, personnel, and resources, has been unable to accomplish its great boast to erase Israel, wipe it off of the map, and push it out of existence into the sea! This impotence has been a constant source of humiliation and an affront to the religion of Islam. It was after the 1973-1974 Yom Kippur War that the conviction began to become widespread in the Arab world that only by an Islamic revival, a return to fundamentalist Islam, could Israel ever be annihilated. This concept is the fuel that ignites our current crisis.

Since then, Saudi Arabia has spent its billions in oil revenue to propagate its own nefarious brand of Islam. The Saudi royal family are the custodians of the sect known as Wahhabism: a puritanical, violent, holier-than-thou but with hand grenades, version of the religion. Through its Saudi financed madrassas, Wahhabism is inciting mass hatred and murder among the poverty-stricken Muslim masses in Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, and throughout the world.

The Saudis have made a domestic devil’s bargain with the Islamists, as far as the Arabian Peninsula is concerned. The Royal family will bankroll madrassas, “charities,” mosques, and terrorist groups anywhere in the world. They will arm and train them, to go anywhere, as long as the “Kingdom” is left alone. However, trouble is brewing in Saudi Arabia also, for example, all but one of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis.

Up until recently, most of the leadership in the rest of the Arab world has been secular and has resisted Islamism in their respective lands. The terrorists hate with a passion these secular rulers of the Arab countries, and they also hate the debauched and hypocritical Saudis, perhaps even more than they hate America.

What we are seeing in the Arab world is the breakup of this devil’s bargain. The popular uprisings are not the Middle Eastern version of the democratic revolution of Jefferson, Madison and Washington part two. They are instead the popularly approved removal of the restraining forces on something even more brutal than the Mubareks, Attaturks, Assads or the Shah of Iran. These leaders are falling to the forces of the Islamic revival.

Such brutal leaders held back something even more savage than themselves, for they have restrained true Islam. Yes, the postwar Arab leaders were brutal, utilitarian and self-serving; they did what they had to do to keep their restive populations distracted and subdued. They knew what they were dealing within Islam.

What we are seeing in the Arab world right now is the removal of those restraints, the release of the long pent-up pressure, the opening of the floodgates again to the true followers of Mohammed.