Islam was founded in the mid 7th Century AD and spread rapidly through most of the Roman Empire in the next 100 years. There is no way this hugely significant world-changing religious and political condition splitting the Roman Empire’s territory into two incompatible legs is not referenced in Daniel.
And sure enough, it is.
“But out of a branch [new dynasty] of her [Cleopatra’s] roots [legacy of rule over the Middle East] shall one stand up in his estate [political position] which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress of the king of the north,
- and shall deal against them, and shall prevail:
- And shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods,
- with their princes,
- and with their precious vessels of silver and of gold;
- and he shall continue more years than the king of the north.”
The Arabic term islām, literally “surrender,” illuminates the fundamental religious idea of Islam—that the believer (called a Muslim, from the active particle of islām) accepts surrender to the will of Allah…viewed as the sole God—creator, sustainer, and restorer of the world. The will of Allah.is made known through the sacred…scriptures.
I could surrender to that.
Even the parts in the Quran claiming new revelations altering those to Abraham, Moses, etc. are absolutely no different from Christianity’s interpretation of the New Testament.
The thing is, power corrupts. The Protestant Reformation opposed the corruption of the Catholic Church, and then Protestantism became corrupted in sectarianism and nationalism.
And at the same time Islam was defending the faith of One God against paganism, including the Christian Trinity and the idols in its churches, a new nation took over rule of the Middle East, and has remained in power ever since.
Seljuq, also spelled Seljuk, ruling military family of the…Turkic tribes that invaded southwestern Asia in the 11th century and eventually founded an empire that included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and most of Iran. Their advance marked the beginning of Turkic power in the Middle East.
This volatile mix was perfect for making a hero.
Salah ad-Din Yusuf / Joseph ibn Ayyub / son of Job, known in the Western world as Saladin, played a major role is shaping the middle east of the 12th and 13th centuries...
Saladin was the son of a prominent administrator to the Seljuk rule Nur al-Din, which put him in the position to learn the ways of warfare and leadership, forming him into the man that would go on to unit the Muslim peoples of the Levant. At the young age of 32 years Saladin had taken control of the Egyptian Sultanate and formed his own Dynasty, the Ayyubids (named for his father).
“So the king of the south shall come [from the north] into his kingdom, and [then] shall return into his own land.”
At the death of the Seljuk ruler in Anatolia (northern king) Saladin took the opportunity to expand into Syria as sole master of the Middle East. At the height of his power, he ruled a unified Muslim region stretching from Egypt to Arabia. He was successful at uniting the Muslim sects against their common enemy, the Christians, and wresting Jerusalem from the Christians in September of 1187.
After taking the city, Saladin agreed that the Western Christians be allowed to pay a small fee for their freedom, allowed to travel to the city to worship and, all Eastern Orthodox Christians were allowed to remain in the city. This act of [peace-making] would never be shown by a Christian army or that of any earlier or later Muslim forces, during the Crusades.
Back from the Third Crusade Richard the Lionheart would describe him in glowing terms.
His military genius and treatment of Christian prisoners has Saladin as one of the finest knights of his generation, the true embodiment of chivalry.
“But his sons shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces: and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his fortress.
At Saladin’s death in 1193, like Alexander he divided his empire among his relations. His sons were “stirred up” by a power struggle in which Saladin’s brother, al-˓Adil with “a multitude of great forces” emerged triumphant by 1202 and “stirred up” reorganized Saladin’s inheritance in favor of his own family / fortress. With so much stirring of the pot the Ayyubid dynasty faded away and completely disappeared in one lifetime.
And the king of the south shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth and fight with…the king of the north: and he [the king of the north] shall set forth a great multitude; but the multitude shall be given into his [the king of the south’s] hand. And when he [the king of the south] hath taken away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up;
By this stage of history we can confidently assign an Islamic identity to the king of the south and a Christian identity to the king of the north.
In 1453 Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire finally achieved to the long-cherished dream of conquering Constantinople. Employing newly invented cannon, the Ottomans breached Constantinople’s ancient land wall. This historic event removed what was once a powerful defense for Christian Europe against Muslim invasion.
“and he [the king of the south, the Ottoman emperor] shall cast down many ten thousands:
The first period of Ottoman history was characterized by almost continuous territorial expansion, during which Ottoman dominion spread out from a small northwestern Anatolian principality to cover most of southeastern Europe and Anatolia. The political, economic, and social institutions of the classical Islamic empires were amalgamated with those inherited from Byzantium and the great Turkish empires of Central Asia and were reestablished in new forms that were to characterize the area into modern times.
“but he [the Muslim king of the south] shall not be strengthened by it.
At its peak in the 1500s, the Ottoman Empire was one of the biggest military and economic powers in the world, controlling… territory that stretched from the Danube [in the northern king’s domain] to the Nile [in the southern king’s domain], with a powerful military, lucrative commerce, and impressive achievements in fields ranging from architecture to astronomy…
the Ottoman Empire succumbed to what most historians describe as a long, slow decline…
only between 5 and 10 percent of its inhabitants could read… the empire had a shortage of well-trained military officers, engineers, clerks, doctors and other professions…
For the king of the north shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after certain years with a great army and with much riches.
Russia and Austria both supported rebellious nationalists in the Balkans…And the British and the French were eager to carve away territory…in the Middle East and North Africa.
- And in those times there shall many [an alliance of nations] stand up against the king of the south:
- also the robbers of thy people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision [of becoming masters of the holy site of Jerusalem]
Among Muslims, the Temple Mount is called Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). They believe it was here that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to the “Divine Presence” on the back of a winged horse—the Miraculous Night Journey, commemorated by one of Islam’s architectural triumphs, the Dome of the Rock shrine. A territorial prize occupied or conquered by a long succession of peoples—including Jebusites, Israelites, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, early Muslims, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans and the British—the Temple Mount has seen more momentous historical events than perhaps any other 35 acres in the world.
In fact the robbers are not the Muslims, but the Christians. He who controls Jerusalem controls the peace process between Arabs and Jews, and is viewed as the Savior From Death of World War and Restorer of World Peace. Just like Augustus of Rome. In other words, the false christ, AKA Antichrist is a Christian.
Ultimately, the [Ottoman] empire lost nearly a half a million soldiers, most of them to disease, plus about 3.8 million more who were injured or became ill. In October 1918, the empire signed an armistice with Great Britain, and quit the war…the empire was dismantled by treaty and came to an end in 1922.
So the king of the north shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities: and the arms of the south shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.
Continuing chronologically, this has to be the British Empire between WWI and WWII.
But he [king of the north] that cometh against him [arms of the south] shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him: and he shall stand in the glorious land [Palestine], which by his hand shall be consumed.
This can only be Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, a British army officer who commanded the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine from June 1917 until the end of the First World War.
The zenith of Allenby’s tenure in command of the EEF came with the Battle of Megiddo, launched on 19 September 1918. Following a hurricane bombardment, British and Indian infantry punched a hole through the Ottoman positions on the coastal plain north of Jaffa…By the end of the month the EEF had effectively pushed Ottoman forces out of the Levant…The British military historian Basil Liddell Hart (1895-1970) declared that Megiddo was among “the most completely decisive battles [consumed] in all history.”
At the Third Battle of Gaza (31 October – 7 November 1917) the EEF destroyed the Ottoman defensive position in southern Palestine…Allenby pursued them northwards…resulting in Jerusalem’s capture on 9 December. The entry of Allenby into the holy city was a carefully stage-managed event, filmed for the world’s cinema audiences to aid the Allied propaganda cause.
He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom, and upright / equitable / equal to him ones with him; thus shall he do:
If we acknowledge the singular identity of a spirit taking up residence in multiple bodies, we can easily associate “he shall also” with another one of the famous British heroes of WWI who served in the Middle East at this time. Lawrence of Arabia is certainly equal to Allenby in significance, and important enough to include in an overview of history.
Today, T.E. Lawrence remains one of the most iconic figures of the early 20th century. His life has been the subject of at least three movies—including one considered a masterpiece—over 70 biographies, several plays and innumerable articles, monographs and dissertations. His wartime memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, translated into more than a dozen languages, remains in print nearly a full century after its first publication. As Gen. Edmund Allenby, chief British commander in the Middle East during World War I, noted, Lawrence was first among equals: “There is no other man I know,” he asserted, “who could have achieved what Lawrence did.”
and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her: but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.
It now appears that he was actually married.
The news will shock many and surprise Lawrence scholars. The ascetic soldier and writer has often been described as a homosexual. He is thought to have shunned close human relationships…
a former senior civil servant from the Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir which was part of the British raj until independence in 1947…said he was told by…the brother of the bride. ‘It was kept fairly secret,’…
Ali said that he was told that the woman, called Akbar Jehan…was a Shia Muslim. ‘It was the Shia practice to have short-term marriages that are very quick to arrange and dissolve. The exact details are a mystery and very few people knew about it…
I doubt that this rumor is credible enough to count as validating prophecy, but Lawrence is certainly important enough to include in an overview of history.
After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease;
King George V summoned Lawrence to Buckingham Palace on October 30, 1918…to bestow a knighthood on his 30-year-old subject. Believing that the British government had betrayed the Arabs by reneging on a promise of independence, Lawrence quietly told the befuddled monarch that he was refusing the honor before turning and walking out of the palace.
without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him.
Part of the enduring fascination has to do with the sheer improbability of Lawrence’s tale, of an unassuming young Briton who found himself the champion of a downtrodden people, thrust into events that changed the course of history. Added to this is the poignancy of his journey, so masterfully rendered in David Lean’s 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, of a man trapped by divided loyalties, torn between serving the empire whose uniform he wore and being true to those fighting and dying alongside him. It is this struggle that raises the Lawrence saga to the level of Shakespearean tragedy, as it ultimately ended badly for all concerned: for Lawrence, for the Arabs, for Britain, in the slow uncoiling of history, for the Western world at large [for mishandling Arab affairs].
Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land:
That sure sounds like Lawrence had plans to return to Arabia and lead as successful a revolt against the British as he had against the Turks.
but he shall stumble and fall, and not be found.
Lawrence was speeding through the English countryside when he died in a motorbike accident at the age of 46 in 1935.
That sounds suspicious.
Kingdom Come 