The Meaning Of Isis

Submit.  To submit or die.  That is what the word Islam means.

The Bible talks about God calling Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans to go to a land that He would show him.  Abraham was to walk through that territory and any place he traveled would be given to Abraham and he would become the father of a great nation. Go forth from your country . . . to the land which I will show you;  And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great . . . And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. (Gen: 12: 1-5) This "royal grant" is much larger than what is occupied by the nation of Israel today. God's covenant promise to Abraham was reconfirmed by God through his son Isaac and then again through Isaac's son Jacob, who had the 12 sons who were the beginnings of the 12 tribes of Israel.

God had promised Abraham that a great nation would come from him but Abraham had some doubts because he and his wife Sarai were getting along in years.  So Sarai arraigned for Abraham to have sexual relations with their Egyptian servant Hagar.  As soon as it was obvious that Hagar conceived Sarai got jealous and had Abraham send her away. The offspring from this union was Ishmael.  God then made a promise through an angel to Hagar;  I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they shall be too many to count . . . Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael . . . he will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him;  (Gen. 16: 10-12) Those descendants would become the Arab nations who settled in the regions of central and north central Arabia.

The child that God's promise was to go through from Abraham was not Ishmael but rather it was through Isaac, the child that Sarai (now Sarah) bore some years later. When Isaac's wife Rebekah first conceived she had twins, Jacob and Esau.  Esau was the first born and the promise was to go through him but as you remember Jacob tricked Esau into selling this birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  Later on when it was time for now blind and dying Isaac to give his blessings Jacob and his mother Rebekah conspired to trick Isaac into giving the first born blessing to Jacob.  The blessing ends with the same phrase that God gave to Abraham; Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you. (Gen: 27: 29)

Esau then comes for his blessing and this is what he gets;  Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, and away from the dew of heaven from above.  By your sword you shall live, and your brother you shall serve . . . So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing. (Gen. 27: 39-41)  The descendants of Esau would become the Edomites and would settle in a land much less fertile than Canaan in territory which is now part of Jordan.  Most people calling themselves Palestinians have come from this area.

Let us now jump ahead over 1500 years.  In about 570 AD in central Arabia (Saudi Arabia) in the town of Mecca was born a man whose name was Mohammad. His parents, part of the dominate tribe of the area, left him orphaned at an early age. Eventually he was raised by an uncle and became a traveling merchant. Every year he would take a week or two and go into a cave in a mountain to contemplate. Around the year 610 Mohammad claims that he was visited by the angel Gabriel who gave him certain revelations.  At first he thinks he has been visited by a demon but after a few years he starts preaching to his family and neighbors the revelations he has received.

Eventually he gets some converts, things snowball, his revelations, teachings and examples are written down in books called the Qur'an and the Hadith and the religion he created is spread by force in the Arabian peninsula and beyond, spreading throughout northern Africa, Spain, the Balkans, Asia Minor (Turkey), southern Eurasia (all the "stan" countries), Persia (Iran), eastern China and parts of India. Islam began in the Arab world but as you can see there are many other races that claim Islam as their faith.

The basic precepts of Islam for every Muslim are very simple:  Acknowledge that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet. Pray toward Mecca several times a day.  Make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.  Give alms to the poor. Fast and make an animal sacrifice during the Islamic holy month.

To understand the roots of Islam, where it has come from and where it is going, we need to start looking at the time and place of Mohammad back in 610 AD.  The Arab people were tribal with no central leadership. They worshiped a pantheon of gods and each tribe and city had a special god that was their protector. There was a building in Mecca called the Kaaba which housed 360 of their pagan statues as well as a black meteorite which people would honor and worship by kissing it.  The head and most powerful god of the Arab pantheon was named Allah, who was the male moon god whose symbol was the crescent moon. There is a tremendous amount of archaeological evidence showing that the moon god was worshiped widely throughout the Mid-East at that time and well before.  Allah had several daughters who were considered goddesses.

Mohammad was familiar with both Jewish and Christian thought and their scriptures. He had a Jewish and a Christian wife and Mecca was the center of a trade route which saw the mingling of many cultures.  His new religion declared some things that were payback for the historic enmity between the Arab and the Jew and their offshoot, the Christians.  He taught that there were certain prophets throughout history that worshiped only one God.  These were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and others who worshiped one God and the God they worshiped was Allah.  Mohammad taught that he was the final and last prophet and as the last prophet he declared that the Jewish and Christian scriptures were corrupted and must be understood by his teachings.  Thus you see the first tenant of Islam, there is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet.

Now here is a point that I don't want you to miss and is crucial to understanding what is happening today with ISIS and all other expressions of what is now being called radical Islam.  Mohammad taught that God's promise would come through Ishmael, not Isaac and that the promise of land, not just for the Arab but for those that submitted to Islam would eventually cover the entire world.  The charge for the followers of Allah was to take the land, by force if necessary and either convert all the conquered to Islam, or have them submit to Islamic rule and pay an annual tax, or die.

In the early 300's the Roman emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as an official state religion for the purpose of uniting the far flung empire.  He didn't ban all the other forms of religion and the worship of their gods but he heavily supported the Christian religion making it the dominate religion.  Mohammad would in effect do the same thing for the Arab people.  He didn't come up with a new god that the people were not acquainted with.  Allah was already recognized as the chief deity.  Most Arabs would pray toward the Kaaba in Mecca several times a day and would make an effort to make a pilgrimage there sometime in their life. Killing an animal like a sheep as a sacrifice to their god was already practiced and most people gave alms to the poor.  The annual month of fasting that Mohammad instituted would begin and end on a crescent moon, thus honoring Allah, an obvious connection to Allah as the moon god.

And because Mohammad was the last prophet, what he taught and did became the basis for a new legal system that would be imposed on all the conquered peoples.

Today there are 4 streams or factions of Islam.  They all recognize Allah as the only god and Mohammad as his prophet but are divided on their interpretation of the Qur'an and the Haddith and on which successors to Mohammad were most legitimate. The Hanbali school of law is the strictest, meaning that it follows most closely the literal meaning of the Qur'an and Haddith.  This is the one followed in Saudi Arabia and is also the one accepted by most Islamic terrorists.  They believe that any land once ruled by Islam still belongs to Islam but also that the ultimate goal is for the entire world to become ruled by the same brand of Islam that Mohammad and his armies followed.

They view the world as being divided into two;  Dar al-Islam, which means the house of Islam (land now ruled by Islam) and Dar al-itarb, which means the house of war (any other land, including our dear USA that eventually will become ruled by Islam).  And for the ISIS's and other militant groups it isn't just good enough to already be Muslim.  One now has to accept the Hanbali brand of Islam or die, no matter if you are man, woman or a child.

The goal of ISIS on the road to world domination is to create an Islamic caliphate covering all the territory once ruled by Islam or currently heavily populated by Muslims.  Recently the head Turkish imman revealed a map listing 13 Islamic states that will form this caliphate.  They are named Andalus (Spain), Maghreb (north western Africa), Alkinana (north eastern Africa), Habasha (central Africa), Orobpo (the Balkan region of Europe, Romania and Austria), Anathol (western Turkey), Qoqzaz (all the land between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea), Kordistan (eastern Turkey, western Iran), Sham (Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan), Iraq (Iraq), Hijaz (Saudi Arabia), Yaman (Yemen and Oman) and Khurason (all the stan countries plus India and western China).  The plan is to eventually eliminate the Christian states and end up with 10 states, all headquartered in Turkey.

At one time this all seemed so far away to us living in the U.S.  The average American is not aware of the violent conflicts that exist between Muslims and other religions in places like India, Africa and Asia.  We are not aware that Muslim populations have skyrocketed throughout Europe and that they establish communities that do not intermingle or assimulate with the general population and have their own Islamic laws.  We are not aware of the many mosques being built in our country which are paid for by Saudi Arabia, many of which teach the Hanbali school of thought.  We are not aware that cities like Dearborn, Michigan are heavily populated and run by Muslims, that although Islamic law is not officially on the books there it is still being enforced in the Islamic community.  And now 13 years after 911 we forget that 19 of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.

However, now that Americans have been beheaded with the public warning that our homeland is next there seems to be a greater awareness that we are not facing a threat from an isolated bunch of loony radicals. Our politicians, dumb as they are toward Islamic thought, have always thought that land for peace would be a good deal for Israel.  Western thought could not fathom the idea that land for peace was always a ploy, a tactic toward the eventual goal of reclaiming Islamic lands and enforcing the edict of their prophet, to destroy all the Jews.

Let me end by retelling a story that I heard in church last Sunday.  Our pastor received an email from a missionary family from our church who are ministering in northern Africa.  They said it was the beginning of the Muslim holy month and the talk of the town was all about sheep.  Every family needed to purchase at least 1 sheep to sacrifice and people would say, "Have you got your sheep yet?", or "Where did you get your sheep?" or "How much did your sheep cost?"  The missionary family was actually quite sad for the people because their faith was so works based.  Theirs is an angry god who requires animal sacrifices and in return gives no assurances to the people that they could ever do enough to enter paradise.

Our pastor then read from the book of Hebrews which talks about Jesus being the lamb who was slain for our sins.  and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. (Heb. 9: 12)

We are not to hate anyone but we need to be aware that the world is rapidly changing and that traditional Islam is on the move and gaining steam and with each success there will be a switching of alliances from the moderate to the radical.  The foundations of our laws, based on Judeo Christian thought, have been crumbling for decades and what is to replace it?  If it is not rebuilt something else will replace it and everything we hold dear as Americans will be doomed.  Wake up America!