One of my habits since getting my Kindle is to peruse the Amazon.com website in search of books that I might be interested in reading. One of the reasons that I do this is that there have been a lot of books that I have found that were free or very low priced. I have found a couple of books that I have enjoyed that were free when I "purchased" them that later were on the site for a price.
One of the features of the Amazon website that I like is the recommendations that it makes for you based on your past purchases. Another feature that I like is that when you are looking at a particular page, it also shows other books that people ended up buying that looked at that page.
It is through those recommendations that I discovered the book "The Islamist Antichrist" by Joel Richardson. I have to confess that I first saw the title on Amazon that I misread the author's name. For some reason, I read the name as Joel Rosenberg.
I had seen some of Rosenberg's works such as Epicenter, Inside the Revolution, and The Last Jihad. I had not read any of Rosenberg's previous efforts, but thought that The Islamist Antichrist was an update on his works. Since I have an interest in biblical prophecy, I downloaded the book.
It was not until I had read the forward of the book that I discovered my error in misreading the last name of the author. Still, it was a subject that I had a great deal of interest, so I proceeded to go ahead and read the book. I am glad that I did.
As I have said, I am fascinated by book on biblical apocalyptic prophecies. Richardson compares the end times prophecies found in the Bible and Islamic scriptures. He makes the argument that the Mahdi in the Koran that ushers in a turning of the world towards Islam has remarkable similarities to the individual identified as the Antichrist in the Bible.
In addition to identifying the Mahdi as the Antichrist, he identifies the False Prophet of the Book of Revelation as the Muslim Jesus in Islamic eschatology. In Revelation it says that the saints were beheaded for their belief in Jesus as Savior. This is another evidence that Richardson cites as a reason he believes that Islam will be the world religious system used by the Antichrist. All told, he identifies at least 22 similarities between Islamic and Christian eschatology.
Richardson also attempts to answer some of the potential criticisms of his analysis. He gives his thoughts on how Christian's should respond, which in reality should be the response of all Christian's regardless of whether or not you agree with his conclusions. The first response is to pray. Second, is to reach out to Muslims, and really all unbelievers, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Lastly, he encourages Christians to develop a heart prepared for martyrdom.
I really did enjoy reading the book. The evidence presented is enough to make one think. I won't go so far that to say that I necessarily agree with his conclusions, but they do have merit. If you have an interest in end time prophecies, I would recommend that you read Joel Richardson's book.
Sounds interesting. I went through a long phase where I read just about everything I could on eschatology, but it hasn't interested me too much in recent years. I guess I'm more at the point where I just try to do the right things for today and let tomorrow be whatever it is. Maybe it's just apathy. I'm not sure the world is a scarier place than it was at many points throughout history, but Christians certainly no longer command the worldwide respect level of the 20th Century.
ReplyDeleteShark, It seems these days, that in this politically correct world that we are living in, everyone is off limits except for Christians, and of course, the Jews.
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