MAHDI TO RETURN BY 2016, FOLLOWED BY JESUS? Mainstream Muslim Website Makes Official Announcement

It’s not only evangelical Christians who are sensing that something has changed in the world, and that we may be entering the very last days.

Muslims are also eagerly awaiting their messiah.

In the latest evidence of this messianic fervor, a mainstream Sunni Muslim website has decreed that the Islamic messiah, called the Mahdi, will appear this year or in 2016 and that the Muslim Jesus will return in 2022 to conquer the world for Islam.

DiscoveringIslam.org and the End Times Research Center have calculated that the “first phase” of the end of time will begin soon and lead to the “Day of Judgment” in seven years.

The estimates were derived from “the latest research” into numerical analysis of the Quran, Hadith, Arabic words and historical events,” according to DiscoveringIslam.org.

“The Messenger of Allah [sallallahu 'alayhi wa-sallam] informed the Companions of everything that would occur until the Day of Resurrection,” the website reports.

“Based on our numerical analysis of the Quran and Hadith, the official beginning of the End of Time and the coming of the Imam Mahdi will most likely be in 2015 (or 2016) and Jesus Christ (p) will come down from Heaven to Earth in 2022, in-sha Allah (if Allah is willing),” the website reported.

The Quran and the Bible put forth end-times narratives that are similar but opposite. The Bible’s antichrist, for instance, resembles Islam’s messiah while Muslims view the Jesus of the Bible as their antichrist or “Dajjal.” The Quran teaches that Jesus returns to earth but for a very different purpose – to “break the cross” and convert the world’s Christians to Islam.

Bible teacher Joel Richardson underscores the inverted end-time views of the two faiths in his New York Times-best-selling book, “The Islamic Antichrist,” and his documentary film, “End Times Eyewitness.”

Richardson is an expert in eschatology, or the order of end-times events, as presented in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He points to Jesus’ warnings in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 that false teachers and false prophets would arise in the last days to deceive many.

Richardson believes Muhammad is one of those false prophets. But the religion he founded, Islam, must be taken seriously because 1.4 billion people believe in its teachings, which are apocalyptic and getting more so, Richardson said. In fact, it’s impossible to understand what inspires and motivates Islamic radicals such as ISIS or al-Qaida if you aren’t familiar with their eschatology.

But it’s not just the radicals who believe in the Islamic teachings about the apocalypse, he said.

“It is frequently claimed that those who believe these things are but the tiny minority of radicals,” Richardson told WND. “But what the (Discovering Islam) article reveals, is that even many mainstream Muslims now believe that the last days are upon us.”

What is this Shemitah business all about? Sign up for WND’s free e-book primer on the significance of the seven-year biblical cycle that affects the world’s economies, the rise and fall of empires and more.

Many Muslims across the globe see the unfolding events in Syria and Iraq as proof that the prophetic traditions of Islam are coming to pass and will soon lead to the return of the Muslim Jesus and the Mahdi.

As previously reported by WND last October, an influential Turkish Muslim media personality and prolific author, Adnan Aktar, said he expects the Mahdi to appear in Istanbul.

Aktar said the Mahdi will communicate with spirit beings called the djinn, who will help Muslims prevail throughout the world.

ISIS expects a major battle to occur near the Syrian city of Dabiq between the soldiers of Allah and the “Romans,” who are seen as the leaders of the infidel Western powers fighting alongside apostate Muslims. Some analysts have said ISIS could be trying to hasten this battle by goading the U.S. into putting boots on the ground in Syria.

According to the Islamic view the soldiers of Allah will win this battle, ushering in a period marked by the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel and the dominance of Muslims globally.

Check out Joel Richardson’s two ground-breaking books, “The Islamic Antichrist” and “Mideast Beast,” which have won acclaim from Bible scholars the world over and led many to reconsider the view that the Antichrist will arise out of Europe.

“Even if none of these things are true, there is power in prophecy, and the sense of divine endorsement that this empowers many with will have horrific consequences in the days ahead,” Richardson said. “When Christians think about Jesus warning of the rise of false prophets in the last days, we often think of false voices within the church. No doubt, we have plenty of such voices, shouting ‘peace and security,’ ‘all is well,’ ‘thrive and prosper,’ etc. But rarely do many Christians think of the false prophetic traditions of Islam that are misleading a large segment of mankind.”

As novelist and filmmaker Joel C. Rosenberg recently noted, the greatest danger to the world is not merely radical Islam, but apocalyptic Islam.

“In Tehran, our own president has just agreed to allow the single most apocalyptic regime in the earth to attain nuclear weapons,” Richardson said. “Never before has the term ‘existential threat’ been so real.”

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'ISIS Destroyed Christian Civilization and the World Watches'

Israel National News reports: “Waiting in an aid line outside Lebanon's capital Beirut, Assyrian Christian Francie Yaacoub remembers the well-stocked home she left behind in Syria as she fled advancing Islamic State (ISIS) group jihadists.

‘We left behind a house full of everything. Why do we now have to stand at the church door?’ she asked quietly as she waited to receive aid at the Assyrian diocese of Sid al-Boushriyeh, reports AFP.

She is one of hundreds of Assyrian Christians who have arrived in Lebanon in recent weeks after ISIS jihadists stormed their villages in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakeh.

Members of Lebanon's Assyrian community, many of them related to those who fled Hasakeh, are doing their best to welcome the new refugees, but the displacement has left them traumatized.

Yaacoub, in her fifties, now lives in a small house with her son, husband and five other Assyrian refugees. Her family fled their village, Tal Nasri, during a terrifying ISIS bombardment last week.

‘We left in our pajamas. My son walked barefoot, we left without our shoes on,’ she said. ‘The shells were falling all around us...We had to flee because the safety of your children is the most important thing.’

Yaacoub's family was not alone - thousands of Assyrians have been forced to abandon their villages along Hasakeh's Khabur river since ISIS jihadists began an attack there in February.

The group has seized at least 11 of the 33 Assyrian villages in the region, and kidnapped more than 200 members of the ancient Christian sect, which numbered around 30,000 in Syria before the war…”

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UN Report: ISIS May Have Committed Genocide

Israel National News reports: “Islamic State terrorists may have committed genocide in trying to wipe out the Yazidi minority in Iraq, the UN said Thursday in a report laying out a litany of atrocities, according to AFP.

ISIS ‘may have committed all three of the most serious international crimes - namely war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,’ the United Nations human rights office said in a statement.

The agency published a horrifying report detailing killings, torture, rape, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers by the group.

All of these crimes, it said, were violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and some may amount to ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘war crimes.’

The report, which is based on interviews with more than 100 witnesses and survivors of attacks in Iraq between June 2014 and February 2015, especially highlights brutal ISIS attacks on ethnic and religious groups, including Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen, Kurds and Shia.

ISIS, which controls a swathe of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria, launched ‘a series of systematic and widespread attacks’ on the Yazidi minority's heartland in the northern Nineveh province last August.

According to the report, the attacks appeared intended ‘to destroy the Yazidi as a group,’ which ‘strongly suggests’ ISIS is guilty of ‘genocide’ against the Yazidi.

In numerous Yazidi villages, men and boys over the age of 14 were rounded up and shot, while the women and girls were abducted as the ‘spoils of war.'…”

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Malaysia Under Pressure to Implement Sharia Law Including Impalement and Crucifixion

ChristianToday.com reports: “Calls by Malaysia's Islamist opposition party for strict Islamic law that includes amputations and stonings is symptomatic of a drift to more conservative Islam in politics and could further strain relations in the multi-ethnic country.

The push by the Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) for the laws, known as hudud, also threatens to split a fragile opposition coalition that has been challenging the long-ruling Muslim party and its allies.

The disparate three-party opposition alliance that includes PAS won the popular vote for the first time in Malaysia's history in a 2013 election.

While the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and its partners still won the most seats, they are more determined than ever to hold on to power which they have enjoyed since independence in 1957.

In February, the opposition alliance's leader, Anwar Ibrahim, was jailed for five years on a sodomy charge he said was cooked up to finish him politically and foil the opposition challenge…’

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The Drop Box: The Compelling Story of Saving Babies

The Drop Box, released by Focus on the Family and showing in various cinemas nationwide, is a stunning, compelling true story about Pastor Lee Jong-rak of South Korea who saves babies.

Together with his wife - and with the help of other loving Christians - Pastor Jong-rak works tirelessly day and night to take care of the abandoned babies that are dropped off in what is called "The Baby box" - a drop box where birth-mothers can place their babies and know they will be cared for and loved.

Jong-rak's journey begun through the birth of his own and his own handicapped son who, in essence, becomes the icon and centerpiece of the entire story.
Many of the babies who are dropped off are handicapped in some way of other, whether Downs syndrome, physical handicaps, or premature, they share complex issues.
But those issues do not hinder the outpouring of love and care Pastor Jong-rak and his team give them.

Pastor Lee with children. They quickly become members of a large family where love reigns.
Focus-on-the-Family partnered with Kindred Image and Arbella Studios to bring us The Drop Box with the purpose of not only sharing a beautiful true story, but of hopefully touching hearts to the core to choose life and to care for children.

The film highlights the need for global orphan care, adoption, and post-adoption support.
The Drop Box also shines a light on the deep love of God, the love that never forgets any child, the love that compels those who are open to it to act radically so others may see the Light.
Pastor Jong-rak is such a person - one who acts with radical love, no matter what it costs him.

Look for the film in a local theater, and be sure to bring a large box of Kleenex. You'll need them. The film is not the best cinematic production - some cartoon drawings interspersed in the documentary and a lot of sub-titles to read - but the story is so powerful, so life-changing, you hardly notice.

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