 Hey, this morning, I'm gonna bring to you part three of a series I never planned on preaching. On October the 7th, when Israel was attacked by Hamas in the greatest terror attack on the nation of Israel and the greatest accumulation of death of Jewish people since the Holocaust, I really thought that the world and the nations of the earth would look differently at the Jewish people and the nation of Israel. And for a moment, there seemed to be an expression of empathy and sympathy and unity for them, much like we experienced on 9-11 here in the United States. But over the course of the last several weeks, actually the opposite has occurred. And right after October the 7th, I decided and I really felt impressed by the Lord that I needed to address not only the specifics of what took place and why, but where we are at on the prophetic timetable and how these type of events are playing into that and to cause us to be people that are fully aware and fully prepared. I entitled that message Israel, Iran and the Rising Storm. And that led to a part two and then last week, John Chastain, my good friend was here, but as he was preaching, I was in the front row thinking to myself, I have so much more that I need to cover because this is an issue that was not a singular event. But just like 9-11, I believe October 7th sets something into motion globally and spiritually that we need to be prepared for and to be aware of lest we be caught off guard. And so this is part three of this series called Israel, Iran and the Rising Storm. And by the way, I am going to prophesy today that I am going to finish this series next weekend because I wrote this message for this weekend and it requires about three hours. And I've got faith, but not that much faith. And so with all seriousness and all sobriety, I wanna bring to you part three, Israel, Iran and the Rising Storm. And I wanna begin by inviting you to open your Bibles with me to Psalm chapter two. You may not know this because oftentimes we look at the book of Psalms as poetic literature, but Psalm two as well as many of the other Psalms are actually prophetic in nature. They were written by prophets, some of them are known, some of them are unknown, David being one of those that is known, but they have end time implications. Psalm chapter two is one of those Psalms. It is a end time prophetic scripture as well as the other 150 chapters in your Bible. Oftentimes people will say, well, I'm not sure about end time prophecy. Well, then you need to realize there's about 150 chapters in your Bible you're gonna miss because God gave us the breadcrumbs throughout history of prophetic predictive scriptures about what would take place at the end of the age just before Jesus's return to the earth. And I want you to know ahead of time before we dive in here in Psalm chapter two, today I'm gonna share some things that may get me kicked off of you too. And I'm not saying that as a badge of honor, I'm just warning you upfront that you may go to look for it and I'm not sure if it'll stay or if it won't, but I'm gonna talk about some things that you probably are not gonna hear from a lot of different places, but Psalm chapter two, look with me at verse number one. It says, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, let us burst off their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. You may recall back to week number one, I talked about how much of the spiritual battle at the end of the age is zeroed in on the nation of Israel, the Jewish people and in particular the city of Jerusalem. The reason for that is, just as this particular scripture mentions, God has set his intentions and he has set his government to rule and to reign from Mount Zion, which is Jerusalem. Psalm two though gives us a picture, a prophetic picture of what will begin, but also accelerate and increase as the end of the age grows closer and as the storm, as it were, begins to increase. Literally what it's telling us, Psalm two, is that at the end of the age, the last days will be marked or will be identified as a collision, a collision of controversies, a collision of controversies. The nation's raging. Why do the nations rage? And the kings of the earth and the rulers of this world are conspiring together around one thing and here's what they wanna break. We wanna break off God's bonds and we wanna loose ourselves from God's restraints. And the Bible says in response that God sits in the heavens and he laughs. So in other words, the last days, the days in which you and I are living in that I believe are going to, we don't know how long those are going to be, but we do know from now until when Jesus returns, we're going to see a massive collisions not just of cultures, but if we're looking at this through the lens of the spirit, we're gonna see a collision of controversies, a controversy number one that God himself is going to ultimately resolve that he has with Israel. God has a controversy with the people of Israel. Hosea chapter two, he talks about this controversy. And the controversy that God has with Israel is an ancient controversy. It is a controversy based around Israel's lack of faithfulness to their covenant promises in God, where God has given them the land, God has given them spiritual promises, God has sent prophets, sent Messiah, and over and over and over again, the Jewish people rejected him. God allowed them to go into exile to be scattered among the nations, but God says at the end of the age, I'm gonna resolve this controversy once and for all. I'm gonna regather them from the four winds of the earth, from every nation on earth. This has never happened before in human history. We've seen it take place in our lifetime. And I'm gonna gather you back from all nations and then in that moment, all the other nations of the earth are gonna come and apply pressure in a time called Jacob's Trouble, in which ultimately Israel will turn their face towards God and will recognize and receive their Messiah, Jesus, finally and ultimately. This is God's controversy with Israel. So we're gonna see that ramp up. And there's a lot that could be said about that, but I'm gonna shift into the second controversy. Here's the other collision. The other controversy is the controversy that the nations and the rulers and the kings and the spiritual principalities and powers of this present age have with God. That's a controversy. That's what we read in Psalm chapter two. It says the leaders and the rulers and the nations are in an uproar and in a rage. And here's what their controversy is about. We wanna break off, burst off the bonds and we want to tear away the cords. Bonds and cords are restraints. So ultimately this is a replay of the Tower of Babel. God says I want you to scatter and they said, no, we're gonna gather. God says I want you to worship me. And they say, no, we wanna worship us. God says my name will fill the earth. And at the Tower of Babel, they said, no, our name is gonna be a great name. We're gonna build a city, gather. We have one language, one heart. We don't need God. We'll build our own idol, our own religion, our own kingdom. So what does God do? Scatter it. That same spirit that started at Babel is still very much at work. Paul calls it the spirit of lawlessness that leads to delusion, that leads to rebellion, that leads to wrath. So these are the two controversies. God's controversy with Israel and the nation's controversy with God. You need to know that ultimately this controversy that the world has with God is expressed in hatred. It's expressed in the hatred of both Israel, the Jewish people and ultimately the church. That's why the only two people on the face of the earth that you're allowed to hate and speak evil of and protest against are born again, Bible believing Christians and Jewish people in the state of Israel. You can protest them all you want to. You can march in the streets, call for their death, call for their destruction, call for their exclusion from society, but everybody else, you try that with anybody else and you'll be called a bigot. You try that with anybody else and rightfully so. You'll be arrested. It'll be called hate speech. You'll be fined. You'll be locked up unless it is with this group of people and the reason for that is the controversy is with God. And I've been asked a little bit over the last month or so. Okay, okay, you've talked about Israel quite a bit. Why keep talking about it and anti-Semitism? Why do we have to keep talking about it? And my response is, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Did you not see 100,000 people in Washington, D.C. yesterday calling from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Make no mistake about it, that is not a call for freedom for oppressed people as much as it is for the destruction and the genocide of a ethnic people that God has set are the apple of His eye. And as long as our cities like London, Madrid, Chicago, Dearborn, Los Angeles and any other city that you can imagine, like in Rome and in Geneva and other places across the globe that are bursting with protests and angry mobs that are spraying swastikas on Jewish businesses and murdering Jewish people and then placing stars of David on their body like they did in France and Lyon, France this last week. And as long as Jewish students can't go to university because they are fearful for their life and as long as people are loud and antagonistic of the spirit of this age, denouncing the Jewish people, then let us as the redeemed of God stand up and declare God's favor, God's faithfulness and God's promises. It's imperative church that we have a biblical lens when we look at what is taking place on the earth. Are you saying that God only loves the Jewish people? No, God loves all the nations of the world but make no mistake about it, the Bible's very clear that Israel is the apple of His eye which means the pupil and the focal point of His eye. Why? It's not because the Jewish people are better than anybody else or the nation of Israel is for some reason this ideal nation, they're not. They're dwelling in the land in unbelief. Not everything that they do is appropriate. Not everything that they do we would sign off on but God has set His covenant faithfulness on that nation and here's the promise that He made Abraham. He says through you and your seed, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's Israel, I'm going to bless you, protect you, provide for you, give you this land as an everlasting possession so that, and here's the key, so that I can bless all of the other families and nations of the earth through you. God's goal is I'm gonna break into history through one man and one nation. I'm gonna bring a savior and a deliverer that will be faithful to the covenant promises. I'm gonna reverse the curse, establish my kingdom on the earth, remove the devil, remove hate, remove sin, remove disease and bring the earth back to the place it was supposed to be before man got involved. So anti-Semitism is very real and it is a demonic manifestation of this very spirit that we're talking of. It's interesting, Eli Weissel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, not a Christian but obviously Jewish, was asked how to describe and how to explain anti-Semitism and he actually called anti-Semitism or I'm gonna use the phrase Jew hatred. He said it's an irrational disease, doesn't make sense. He says it's the unsolvable puzzle. It's the unsolvable puzzle because it is the one thing that has not been resolved. In a world that has changed in the last 2000 years, it's only anti-Semitism that has remained. The only disease that has not found its cure is anti-Semitism and it's because it's a spiritual battle and as long as there are major protests, I'm gonna keep talking about it because there are a lot of different reasons, I believe, unless you see through the lens of God's eternal purposes and the scriptures, you can't understand what's going on and I want us to be fully aware and fully prepared. Why is Israel and the Jewish people so hated? Let me give you some reasons that are connected to the controversies. The Marxists and the progressives hate Israel and the Jewish people because they stand in the way of their desire for a utopian society without God. Israel stands as a signpost of the promise that God has chosen a people and called them the apple of his eye and that it is through Israel that God had planned and has executed a redemption plan for the whole world, not through revolution and the overthrow of power structures and not by the strength of humanistic hands but through the sacrificial love of God demonstrated through the seed of the women through his covenant people, Israel. That's why the Marxists and the progressives hate, hate the Jewish people. That's why in Stalinist Russia, pogroms where they rounded up Jews and killed them were equally as damaging as what took place under the Third Reich. And we see it in our day. The progressive wing of political parties is marching even here in our own state. One of our representatives in the government who has close ties to Hamas is going uncensured and allowed to march in protest that are calling for the destruction of an ethnic group of people that they are supposed to represent in the government. So why do the secularists hate the Jewish people in Israel? Well, they hate the Jewish people in Israel because it's been said by sociologists that Israel is actually the conscience of humanity. What do you mean by that? Well, think about it. Israel, it is through Israel that the 10 commandments came into being. Judaism is the mother, so to speak, of both Christianity and even Islam. And monotheism and especially the moral law of God given to the world entrusted as a stewardship to the Jewish people, but then given to us, Western civilization has been great because we built upon the Judeo-Christian foundations of the moral law of God. Now God has a law, that's the Mosaic law, but God also has a moral law that's written on the human heart. And the Jewish people, as they are the givers of that moral law, the giver of the 10 commandments are a constant reminder to the conscience of humanity that God exists. In a world where the nations increasingly want to break off the constraints of having to serve God and do things God's way and they want to dull their own consciences to be able to rework the world into our own image instead of conforming to his, we need to get rid of and hate anything that reminds us of a creator who gave a law who will also be our judge. Hitler himself said this, conscience is a Jewish invention just like circumcision. My task is to free men from the dirty and the degrading ideas of conscience and morality. You see, if you can get people to violate their conscience, you can make them do anything you want to. It's satanic and it is demonic. That's why the secularists hate the Jewish people, but what about liberal Christians? I've been shocked, I'm telling you, I've been shocked at the response of even the church. Now there are many Jesus-loving Bible-believing brothers and sisters in the Lord that have a different eschatological perspective about Israel. And you know what, there's freedom to do that. We can have conversations and we can have debate about it. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about current and I'm talking about throughout church history a demonic attitude of hating the Jewish people. If you were Eastern Orthodox, one of your great heroes would be a man named John Chrysostom. He was called the Prince of, or the Golden Tongue, because his name Chrysostom means golden tongue, because he was one of the great preachers of his generation. In the fourth and fifth century, he called for the execution of Jews and for the burning of their synagogues. Martin Luther, the great reformer, we just celebrated it on October 31st by passing out candy to all the kids in the neighborhood on Reformation Day. Martin Luther wrote that the best thing that we could do for Jews would be to burn down their synagogues, to arrest and to extinguish their customs, their traditions, round up all their Torahs and all their writings and all their commentaries on the Torah and burn them and to remove them from society. This is Christianity. Unless you think we've gotten over that, we still have Christians, and I will say even Palestinian Christians, who refuse to condemn the acts of Hamas against the Jewish people in Israel on October 7th. Now you can say we don't believe that Israel is necessarily the apple of God's eye, but yet we hold them in a high regard because we are the spiritual descendants of them and we condemn that. That's not even being condemned. Why in the world would liberal Christians hate or at least be indifferent towards Jewish people? It's because simply we've appropriated their blessings. We've said, well, God's done with Israel, God divorced them. See, we don't allow divorce in a church, we just allow God to divorce his wife because in the Old Testament, he married Israel as his covenant wife. But yet here we are and much of the church worships a God that has more than one wife. You're not allowed to get divorced, but God can. Well, what does that say to us about the nature of God? If God will not be faithful to Israel, how do we believe that he'll be faithful to us? Because how many know? We're no more able to keep the demands of the gospel than they were. And if God's willing to divorce them over their unfaithfulness, what does that say to us? But what we have done is we have appropriated the covenant promises and say, no, we're Israel. We're the people of God. We're the apple of his eye. And you know what? Here's the wonderful, beautiful thing about being in Jesus is when we come into Jesus, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish covenant promises. We're grafted into him and we can call ourselves the spiritual descendants of Abraham with all of those blessings and it's wonderful. But it does not exclude and it does not replace God's everlasting covenant and eternal possession of the land and his promises to the Jewish people. We don't get to appropriate who they are. Now I am 3% Jewish, just full disclosure, according to 23andme. So I'm in the tribe. I don't know which one, but I'm 97% Gentile, but I'm feeling my 3% lately. Let me talk to you about another group and I want to spend a few moments on this. What about Muslims? Why do extremist Muslims, and let me put it this way, why does the system of Islam? Because there are wonderful Islamic people, Muslim people, that do not hate the Jewish people, but the system of Islam and the percentage of the two billion Muslims on the face of the earth that would identify them as jihadi Muslims, Muslims that recognize and honor the Koran's command to actually hate and execute jihad against the Jewish state. Why is it that they hate the Jewish people? Well, they do because number one, Muhammad commanded it and left it both in the hadith and in the Koran traditions of Islam about how Koran abiding Muslims must respond to Jews. Beyond the fact that in some of the hadith traditions, it was spoken that Jews are the descendants or that they were transformed into pigs and monkeys by God because of their unfaithfulness to the covenant promises, which goes right along with the whole line of the third rite that Jews are not human beings and therefore they're like rats and they carry disease and they need to be removed off face of the earth. All those Jewish tropes by the Nazis has now been adopted by the jihadi Islamic worldview. But let me read to you from an actual hadith which there's the Koran and then there's a hadith which is the oral tradition that's recorded from Muhammad. The hadith says this. It says, judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees in Palestine, this is the context. They will hide behind the stones and trees as occupiers and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. So this actual hadith has been quoted numerous times by Islamic jihad, by the leaders of Hezbollah, by Hamas, by Iran, by Syria, most recently by the president of Turkey, which is a NATO nation by the way, that this is justification for what is taking place. I've seen on our very streets of America where people interview protesters in our cities and ask them, so by saying from the river to the sea Palestine shall be free, what do you want to do with Israel? Their answer, eradicate them, extinguish them, get rid of them. Do you think that it was justified what Hamas did? Absolutely, in the streets of America and in the Christian West, what in the world is happening? I think one thing that is happening right now over the last couple of weeks that is causing eyes to open is we're seeing that Islam and Muslims who have moved into our culture do not move in because they want to acclimate to Western values. They are moving in in order to bring Islam into the West because what most people don't even know history, it's ridiculous to me how people get college degrees and can't name the first president and wanna ask them what state Utah is in, they say Utah. They don't even know, they don't know geography. And they definitely don't know history, this is part of our problem. And it's a little pet peeve, I'm not gonna go on that rant. But the problem that Westerners have is we think that people that are under the influence of Islamic ideology think like us. You and I as Westerners think through a Judeo-Christian moral lens that's rooted in the Ten Commandments and the Gospels. Islam sees through the lens of the Quran, the Hadith, and Middle Eastern culture. And so one thing that you don't know is this, is that within Islam, there is a command in the Quran that any piece of territory that ever comes under Islamic control, if it is lost, must be regained. That there is no generation that is allowed for a piece of land that one time was under Islamic domination, it has to be subjugated again. And so if you look at Spain and Portugal, you look at parts of Europe, and you look at what's happening in France, those are regions that were at one time under Islamic control, Europeans pushed them back, and now you're seeing immigration take place against. That's not by accident. It's not Neil Diamond singing, they come into America. They're trying to reconquer territory because in their minds, it's a holy war. Now what I wanna say right from the get go, is I'm gonna spend the next few minutes talking about Islam because nobody will tell you this, because as soon as you do, you're accused of Islamophobia. It's amazing how you can't say anything about that, but you can talk anti-Semitism all day long. So I'm gonna share some things with you, and as your pastor, here's what I wanna say right from the beginning, Jesus loves Muslims. Jesus died for every single person in the Middle East. His blood is effective to save every single person, whether in Iran, Iraq, or in Dearborn. Jesus was thinking about them when he was on the cross, just like he was thinking about us and the Jewish people. This is not an anti-Muslim speech, but it is necessary that you understand the ideology behind Islam, the spirit behind Islam. We're not talking about people. We do not wrestle with flesh and blood. In fact, our prayers and our intercessions need to be made for the people that are living under Islamic totalitarianism in the Middle East where they have no freedoms, women have no rights, and the gospel cannot be preached without being persecuted or thrown into prison. That's demonic. That is, there is a revival and a move of God that is sweeping across the Middle East right now, and it's powerful, and we need to pray for that to continue. But I'm talking about the ideology, because make no mistake about it, the controversies of our age, and the controversies that Psalm two is talking about are controversies that are formed by the ideologies and the idols that man makes. You see, people are shaped by the idols they worship and the ideologies they believe. Ultimately, the devil hates Israel and the Jewish people and the church, because it is through Abraham and his seed Israel that God has established an everlasting covenant, confirmed in Messiah to bless and to rescue all the nations of the earth, and the devil knows that by destroying the Jewish people, Satan and his legions are attempting to prevent the gospel being preached in all the nations of the earth and God establishing his kingdom from Jerusalem. That's what this is about. Satan has a controversy with God. He wants the earth. Now, Revelations chapter 12, you know, many people are afraid to read the book of Revelation, and I get that because it's confusing, but the Bible actually says in Revelation, blessed is he who reads the words of this prophecy. There's a blessing attached to being familiar with the book of Revelation, even though it's intimidating, and it's scary because of all the imagery. I wrote my first commentary in the book of Revelation when I was 12 years old. It was terrible. It was all wrong, but it got me thinking about it and studying it, and there's some things that are futuristic in the book of Revelation, and one of them is about Satan's hatred of the Jewish people. In Revelation chapter 12, verse 13, it says, and when the dragon, that's the devil, saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman. Now I don't have time to go into all of this, but the woman is Israel. She has 12 stars around her head. That's the woman, Israel. So the devil's thrown down to the earth and he pursues the woman who gives birth to the male child. Who's the male child? Messiah. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly away from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she has to be nourished for a time times and a time and a half, or half time, that's three and a half years, 42 months, verse 15. The serpent poured out water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with a flood. This is a picture of Satanic hatred of the Jewish people that is allegorized as a river that flows out of the devil's mouth. What flows out of our mouths? Words. What are these words? Satanically inspired lies and antisemitic tropes at the end of the age that are going to be like a river attempting to destroy and to sweep Israel away. Verse 17, it says, then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring on those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sands of the sea. So this is a picture about the end of the age that the enemy knows that his time is limited, the devil gets angry, he's furious, and he begins to assault and attack Israel, the Jewish people. And the way he does it is through hate speech and lies and accusation. This is occupied territory. Accusation, you're not human beings. Accusation, the replacement theology. You're no longer the people of God. Accusation by the progressives. You're standing in the way of progress with your religious traditions. Accusations of the Muslims. You're not the inheritors of the covenant promises of God. Ishmael is, not Isaac. That's what the Quran teaches. So this gives us a picture of it. And it also reminds us that we're in on this as well. It says at the end of the age, the enemy's then gonna go pursue her offspring. That's the church. We're the spiritual descendants who have received from Israel the promises, the patriarchs, and even the Messiah. And I'm grateful for our Jewish roots and our Jewish ancestry. I'm longing for the day when every Jew makes Jesus their Messiah, and that day is coming, but that's something only God can do. But in the meantime, baby, I stand with Israel. And if anybody wants to get to my Jewish friends, they're gonna have to come through this Gentile pastor to get through them. So let me talk to you real quickly. Who will give me one more minute? Who will give me one minute, Rach? I've got 50 minutes. All right, thank you. I wanna show you something this morning that ties in that I don't think I've ever shared publicly, but I think I'm right. And it's Matthew chapter 13. Jesus shares a parable. And in this parable, what I think we see is Jesus teaching us about the end of the age, how all of these controversies, these ideologies and these controversies are going to come to their full maturity at the end of the age. And it's what we're seeing right now. Jesus, this says in verse 24, He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servant of the master of the house came and said to him, master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? And he said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servant said to him, then do you want us to go and to gather the weeds out from the wheat? And he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them. Then let both grow together until the harvest. And at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first, bind the weeds into bundles to be burned, gather my wheat into the barn. Now jump down to verse 37. He gives the explanation for this. Jesus does. He says, the one who sows the good seed is the son of man, that's Jesus. The field is the world, the nations. The good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy has sowed, the one who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the reapers are the angels. Now I wanna repeat something to you. Men are shaped by the idols and the ideologies that they choose to believe. In other words, controversies. I believe we are seeing the controversies of false religions, political ideologies and demonic deception and lies. Controversies that cause humanity to reject God and shake their fist in his hands. I think we are seeing it come to maturity here at the end of the age. In other words, the fruit of it's being borne out. And in particular, this is, what I'm gonna say is me, it's not Jesus. And so I think I'm accurate. I know it's not wrong. I'm just not sure it's limited to what I'm gonna present to you. But I think in part, what I'm gonna present to you is really true and really insightful. I think when Jesus is talking about this parable, it's actually more prophetic than we know. It's more prophetic than just, oh, at the end of the age, there's gonna be a harvest. At the end of the age, there's gonna be things that come to maturity. I think the birth of Islam in the seventh century was actually a prophetic fulfillment of this parable. And let me explain to you why. It was in the year 610 AD, 600 years after Jesus. During what has become known as some of the darkest ages of the church, especially dark in how the church had shifted to a replacement theology regarding Israel, almost completely by this time. And it became spiritually dark period of time about the land and about the people. It was in 610 AD that a young Arab went in pursuit of knowing God and crawled into a cave in Saudi Arabia to fast and to pray. You see, in Arabia prior to that, there were many different tribal gods that people worshiped. And in fact, in Mecca, there was a stone there in a temple that was built that around that temple were the names of 360 different tribal deities that were worshiped each day on the lunar calendar throughout the years. So Muhammad goes into the cave to pray and to seek God, try and find God. And he encounters an angel that he believes is Gabriel. And this angel does not behave the way that Gabriel does in the Bible. This angel is violent, shakes him, scares him. He literally comes home and tells his wife, I think I've encountered a demon. And he can't sleep and he can't eat. He's disturbed, he's tormented. His wife actually tells him, no, it's an angel. God's raising you up to be a prophet to your descendants of Ishmael. And you need to go back to the cave and you need to write down everything he tells you. And Muhammad goes back to the cave and he comes back with the Quran, which means recitations. And I believe that in 610 AD, what happened was after Jesus, the Son of Man has come, sowed good seed into the land of the Middle East, the gospel, the church. The church went dark. And the enemy came and sowed a counterfeit seed into the Middle East. And just like the wheat and the tears, you can't tell the two apart. There was a lot of similarities, monotheism and a lot of these different things, except it was a counterfeit seed. And here was how the enemy, and by the way, the Bible's very clear, beware even Satan transforms himself into an angel of light. Paul said in Galatians chapter one, if anyone preaches to you any other gospel than that which you've received from me, whether an angel from heaven or anybody else, let them be anathema. This is 600 years after Jesus. And here's what that angel replaced. It was this counterfeit narrative, counterfeit framework of the world. So what does he do? Well, number one, he replaces the Bible with the Quran. He rewrites the story of God's covenant promises made to Isaac and now changes them to be made to Ishmael. Jerusalem is no longer the center of God's redemptive history, Mecca is. And they go from worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob revealed as Yahweh to now worshiping a tribal deity named Allah. I've had people tell me, Allah is just a generic name for God. Well, many people think that, but that's not actually true. Allah was actually a tribal demon deity that was worshiped by a small group of people in Mecca and they saw it as a way to ally and to bring together all the Arabian tribes into one to form an army. And it was out of his encounters with this angel, this demon that gave him a counterfeit narrative and a counterfeit gospel that Muhammad initiated jihad or holy war against any unbelievers unto global dominance. Now, I don't have time to go into the five pillars of Islam, of confession, prayer, alms, fasting and the hajj, but there's a sixth pillar of Islam, which is jihad, declaring holy war against all infidels. Let me read to you from the Quran. Quran, Surah nine says, fight them, talking about Jews and Allah will punish them by your hand, cover them with shame, wage war on those who don't believe in Allah or the last day, who refuse to acknowledge the true religion is Islam, even they who are people of the book or Jews and Christians until they pay the poll tax without reservation and are totally subjugated. The Jews claim that Yusar is a son of Allah and the Christians say that the Messiah is the son of Allah. Those are all the claims which do indeed resemble the sayings of unbelievers of old, may Allah destroy them how they are deluded. So I could quote to you 15 passages out of the Quran that right now make it very clear that jihad is the spirit, it's the counterfeit great commission. Jesus told us to go into all the world and to preach the good news, to preach the gospel so that men might be saved from to the Jew first and to the Greek. In other words, start with the Jewish people, preach Jesus to them and then work your way out. Acts one eight, the counterfeit of that is, don't go with the sword of the gospel that saves but take up the sword of destruction against the very people that God has promised to bring salvation through to all the nations of the earth. That's what jihad is. And Psalm 83, which I don't have time to go into is another prophetic Psalm and it paints a picture of what is gonna happen at the last days. You say, well, when are the Jewish people going to receive Jesus? Well, number one, when Israel was formed in 1948, there was about 100 messianic believers. Today there's 300,000. God is working in significant ways and that's going to increase as we begin to see the pressure apply. But there is gonna come a day in Psalm 83, Zechiel 38, Zechiel 14, I'll talk about this day, on the day when all of their enemies surround them, they're gonna look up and they're going to see Jesus return as their Messiah to come and to defend them and it's going to fulfill the words of Jesus when he said, you will not see me again until the day you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And it's interesting that all those nations that surround Israel are all Islamic nations. So what do we do with that information? Well, number one, you need to be aware that I believe it's absolutely true that the reason why we're seeing all of the Jew hatred and the anti-Semitism and the protest is because in large part, and there's a lot of controversies, there's secularism, there's progressivism, there's atheism, but Islamism, and again, not the people themselves specifically, but the spirit behind Islam is the spirit of anti-Christ. And we're gonna see it more and more. So here's how we respond. Next week, I'm gonna bring a message that is gonna talk to us, okay, I know all this end time stuff, now how should I then live? How should I then live knowing what we know? When we watch the news and we see what's going on and the protests and the hatred and the violence, what do we do? We need to be people of prayer. We need to hasten the day of the Lord with the way that we live our lives. Next week's gonna be very practical. It's not gonna be as informative. I promise you, I've dumped a whole history class on you and you've been so gracious. But there's one more controversy this morning that I wanna bring to your attention. God has a controversy with Israel. He's gonna settle it. The nations have a controversy with God. God's gonna settle it. And then there is the controversy with you. Who is king of your life? If Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, God in the flesh who 2,000 years ago stepped out of heaven into history and died for the sins that you and I could never pay for. And then was raised on the third day as it is told us by eyewitnesses in scripture, who is right now seated at the right hand of God the Father, waiting for the moment when he is told to return. If he is not Lord of your life, then God has a controversy with you and you have a controversy with God. Are you someone that has bowed the knee and said, Jesus, you are the son of God. You are the Jewish Messiah and you are my king. I'm not gonna shake my fist in your face and say, God, I don't wanna do it your way. I don't want your bonds on me. I don't want your limitations on me. I don't want you telling me how I'm supposed to live my life. Have you bowed the knee to the giver of life? The Bible says the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. You know what's interesting to me? Marvel and Hollywood spend billions of dollars trying to paint a picture of an apocalyptic future when the Bible's already done it. You know what the Bible says? I read the last chapter of the book of Revelation and it says when it's all said and done Jesus is reigning and ruling. He's gonna wipe away every tear. All nations are gonna come and worship before him. He's gonna usher in a period of peace and love and joy. He's gonna take the enemies, gonna put him away. The devil's gonna be locked up. There's not gonna be any more deception. There's not gonna be any more hatred. There's not gonna be any more disease. There's not gonna be any more death. There's just gonna be shalom and peace because the prince of peace rules and reign. I read the last chapter and we win. The question is, the question is who side are you on? Are you shaking your fists with the nations or are you bowing your knee to the Lord Jesus? I want you to stand with me wherever you're at this morning. And if you would bow your heads in this moment, please. I wanna ask you today, have you bowed your knee to Jesus? You say, well, I believe in Jesus. Have you confessed to him as Lord? Have you received him as your personal Lord and Savior? You know, when Jesus comes, when he returns and it will be soon, when he returns, we're either going to dread his return or we're going to meet him in the air and be changed and transformed and so shall we be with the Lord forever and ever. That's the promise for all those who belong to him. Do you belong to him or do you have a controversy with him? Today, if you're listening to me and you have not made Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior, then you're still in your sins. But today he offers the gift of eternal life and salvation if you'll invite him into be your Lord and Savior today. So all across this room and every room, if today you say, Pastor Lee, I am not right with God today. I wanna make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. I'm tired of playing games. I wanna be ready when Jesus comes. Pray for me, include me in this prayer today. I wanna get right with God. Maybe you're a prodigal today. You've prayed a prayer, loved God, but walked away and you've been living in the world and today, you know, I need to repent, I need to get right and I need to serve God today. I'm coming home. You say, Pastor Lee, I know I'm not right. I wanna lead you in a prayer, whether it's the first time or it's a recommitment, but I want you to take a step of acknowledging Jesus. Today, if you say, include me in this prayer, I want to make Jesus the Lord of my life. I want you to just raise your hand wherever you're at and say, include me in that prayer. I'm getting right with God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm looking all over the, raise it high. I don't wanna miss anybody. Thank you, I see your hands. Yes, sir, all over the room. You can put your hands down. Thank you, we're so proud of you. Here's what we're gonna do. The Bible says if we believe in our heart on the Lord Jesus and we confess him as Lord with our mouths, we will be saved. So I'm gonna lead you in a prayer. I want everyone in the room to agree with me and pray this out loud. Say, heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I confess Jesus is Lord. He died on the cross for my sins. He was buried and on the third day he rose again and he's soon to return. Jesus, come into my heart, forgive me, save me. Sit on the throne of my life. Be my King and my Lord. I turn my back on the world and the lies of the enemy and I choose to serve Jesus. Thank you for loving me, saving me in Jesus' name. Amen, amen, amen. If you prayed that prayer, you're a brand new creation. Heaven is your home. Jesus is your Lord. The church is your family and the future is everlasting. And we're so proud of you. I wanna invite our prayer team to make their way up to the front. Here's how we're gonna dismiss you.