I was listening to some more of Steve Wohlbergs video posts on Google Video. I think that it is true to say that the SDA church seems to be the most noticeable group to have re-established the historicist interpretation of prophesy. I listened to Steve talk about the mark of the beast specifically, and I thought.. how could an obviously thoughtful and intelligent person like him believe that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast? As that would = that everyone throughout history, from near the beginning of the Christian era, right through the reformation, are all condemned to hell.. only the SDA church members are saved, because they have not broken with the tradition of having the Sabbath on Saturday.. silly.
There was also a video about Islam, and this guy has written a book about it. He claims that the rise of Islam was due to God allowing the Muslim hoard to punish the early Christian church, because it had strayed into idolatry. I am open to that idea, as it does say in chapter 9 of Rev. that they still carried on with all the bad and forbidden stuff, after that dread activity from Islam had passed. In other words the whole thing had been in control and allowed by God, for a specific purpose of trying to purify the church.
From my own recent reading of Rev.9 .. I could see the rise of Islam in Arabia and the attack on Syria, and then the rise of the Ottoman empire, that is the first and 2nd woe, but I missed the third woe altogether, and Ill have to have a look back at it.
This woe is perhaps another later woe, and is again about the rise and scourge of Islam.
There was the idea that the Book was known in the Arabian peninsular around about the time of Mohammed, but what I find more interesting is that there could have been an underlying culture, in the Arab communities, which could trace their lineage back to Ishmael and Abraham, and those religious traditions and word of mouth recitations of the old biblical stories were not lost altogether; there was an understanding that they also had a link back to the God of Abraham; which was preserved in tact by the Israelites.
So Mohammed, knowing all this, but having the lack of understanding, insight, intellect and grace, was attempting to create a religion which would bring back the Arab people to the true God. As the Christians at that time had started to slip into idolatry, that religion did not appeal to Mohammed, as he was a little repulsed by idolatry. So if we cut Mohammed some slack, and try and get to the route of what was going on in those days, we might find in the early days, an attempt at enlightenment, failed like so many other heretic sects of that era, but an attempt at religious reform.
I personally think that the core doctrine of the Koran is not in any way inspired by God. Any similarities are derived from the historic links that the early Arabs had with Christians, Jews and their own cultural memory.
