Iran recently presented a ballistic missile with the Hebrew inscription "Death to Israel." This hatred is just unbelievable. Have you ever wondered why Islamic nations hate Israel so much?
My current belief is that it goes back to what the mother of Ishmael told him which forever put a people in a position of envy with Israel.
I could not prove it. But the Bible says first Abraham the prophet produced a son from his wife's maid servant Hagar.
God rejected this son as the heir that He promised to Abraham which was Isaac who was born miraculously rather than by natural scheme.
"Do not forget EVER." perhas Hagar told her boy,
You were the son of Abraham promised by God. You came from the prophet who walked with God." This sense of enmity between the descendents of Ishmael and the twelve tribes of Israel lasts and encreased through the centuries.
Ethnologically, I would not be prepared to prove this, tonight. If it is true, it is a matter of spiritual as well as cultural conflict.
Mohammed, is after all, something of an Arab Moses like law giver. But then again the Iraniahs are Persian not Arab. So I could be mistaken.
I asked myself this question for the first time years ago when a Muslim classmate said to me that he hates Israel. I asked him why and he couldn't really answer me, he just said he hates Israel.
There are other peoples who hate the Jews. And some of them have nothing to do with being Iranian.
The dislike of the Jews through history has to do with their right cohesion and tendency to rise economically above others in this
right cultural cohesion. "They are not like us. They are not one of us but prosper over us" is the thought which keeps country after country from wanting to chase the Jews away from themselves.
But the Bible gave me the answer. Revelation 17:16-17 says that the Antichrist and his kingdom will hate and destroy Babylon the Great and that this hatred has been placed in their hearts by God Himself. I am convinced that the Antichrist and his kingdom are Islamic and that Babylon is Israel. But why does God put hatred in the hearts of Muslims to destroy Israel? It is because of the history of Israel. Israel persecuted and killed the prophets and the first Christians. They shed a lot of righteous blood, and that is why God wants to punish them.
It is not a good interpretation that Israel is the judged Babylon of Revelation.
Islam is a strongly monotheistic faith that would never teach that God is a man.
The Antichrist will proclaim himself to be God from the temple of Jerusalem.
Whatever you do not like about Islam, it is unlikely that Antichrist would be a monotheist in that sense as the Quran teaches.
The thought of God being a human is totally foreign to Mohamed's teaching.
Islam would more LIKELY be opposed by the Antichrist who
" . . . opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or an object of worship, so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth, saying that he is God." (2 Thess. 2:4)
The destruction of Israel will be tremendous, according to Revelation. It will be a total destruction with a lot of deaths. I believe the fulfillment of this prophecy is at hand. Are we witnessing it?
There is no such total destruction fo Israel. though Israel does suffer calamity, she is repentant and vindicated.
Look at the blessing Jesus promises her in His second coming.
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I desired to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not!
Behold your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, You shall by no means see Me form now on uintil you say, Blessed is He who comesin the name of the Lord." (Matt. 23:37-39)
This is discipline yet final redemption.
This is not the smoke of her desrtruction rising forever and ever as the judged Babylon
(Rev. 19:1-3).
Does this sound like the blessing promised in
Matt. 23:39 to a repentent Jerusalem ?
" . . . I heard as it were a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, Hallelujah! The salvation and the glory and the power of our God. For true and righteous are His judgments, for He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, amd Je avenged the blood of His slaves at her hand. And a second time they said, Hallelujah! And her smole goers up forever and ever." (Rev. 19:1-3)
Rather, through the judgments of Israel, finally God gathers the scattered Jews to bring them BACK to Israel in His second coming.
"And He shall send His angels with a loud trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the extremities of the heavens to their extremities." (Matt. 24:31)
See also and compare to
(Deut, 30:3-5; Isa. 43:5-7, 49: 9-13,22-26; 51:11, 56:8; 60:4; 62;10-12;27:13; Ezek. 34:13; 37:21; 28:25).