The third amazing parallel between biblical eschatology and Islamic eschatology is the person of the Dajjal, the Islamic Antichrist figure. Despite all of the wild and fantastic descriptions of the Dajjal, if we boil down the Muslim belief regarding the Dajjal to its simplest and most important terms, we basically have a man who will claim to be divine and will claim to be Jesus Christ the Jewish Messiah. He will defend Israel against the Mahdi and the Muslim Jesus and he will deceive many people into leaving Islam.
While I certainly do not believe that there will ever come a figure into the world as described in the Islamic traditions - a great deceiver who is blind in one eye, flying around the earth on some form of giant mule - there will however come Jesus (the real one), who will in many very crucial ways, fulfill the Muslim expectations of the Dajjal.
The Return Of Jesus Christ
The real Jesus however, will indeed come as a divine defender of Israel and her people as well as Israel’s spiritual children, the Christians. If the Islamic prophecies are indeed intertwined with the unfolding of biblical prophecy, then we can see that part of Satan’s strategy is that when the real Jesus returns, there will already be a worldwide religious leader who will also be claiming to be Jesus, namely the False Prophet. If this were the case, then Muslims worldwide would accuse the real Jesus of being the Dajjal, the Muslim Antichrist/Great Deceiver. Muslims would be particularly convinced of this in light of the fact that the surviving Jews of the earth will acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah. At least six hundred years before Islam ever existed, the Jewish Prophets and the Jewish Apostles described the event of Jesus returning to Israel, defeating her enemies and finally gaining full acceptance among the Jewish people:
On that day I (The Lord) will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem. And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. Zechariah 12:10
A day of the Lord is coming... the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle. On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. Zechariah 14:1,3,4
And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.” Romans 11:26
Put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God… Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel… Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb (Jesus the Messiah), standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had His name and His Father's name written on their foreheads… And they sang a new song… Revelation 7:3-4; 14:1,3
We see that when Jesus returns to “to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem,” “His feet will (literally) stand on the Mount of Olives.” Jesus will be physically present in Israel. At this time, it is said that those Jews who are alive in Israel will see him and realize that He is “the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him.” Thus the acknowledgement of Jesus as the genuine Jewish Messiah and divine Savior will fill their hearts and, “so all Israel will be saved.”
Of course, based on the Islamic traditions, Muslims are expecting Jews to acknowledge the Dajjal as the divine Jewish Messiah, thus in the Islamic mind, the Jesus of biblical tradition will fulfill the three most primary Islamic expectations of the Dajjal. Clearly, these traditions will be used by Satan, not only to pre-empt the Muslims of the earth from receiving the real Jesus when He comes, but literally to empower them to attack Him. The plot never seems to stop thickening. Consider the following statement by the well-known Muslim apologist, Osamah Abdallah. The question posited to him was, “What do Muslims believe about the end of the World and Jesus' part in it?” His answer is astonishing as it relates to this discussion:
Briefly, Christians believe that Jesus will come down to earth and fight for the state of Israel… What seems to be quite ironic to me is that those Jews that Jesus is supposedly going to fight for don't even believe in Jesus as GOD himself nor as a Messenger of GOD… Jesus never liked the Jews... Now without being biased, we Muslims have a story that makes a lot more sense and is empty of contradictions! We believe that Jesus will come down to earth toward the end of the world time to fight the army of Satan which will be mostly from the "bad" Jews or "Zionist Jews" as we call them today, and the deceived from the Polytheist Christians or the Trinitarian Christians and the Pagan Polytheists such as Hindus, Buddhists, etc.... Some Jews and many Christians will be among the good and blessed who will fight with Jesus' side. The army of Satan will be led by a person who will claim to be Jesus Christ himself. The Muslims will call him the Dajjal or the Deceiver. The real Jesus' army will fight the Dajjal's army and defeat him. The empire of Israel will fall, and the religion of Islam will prevail. 1
Notes:
| < The Dajjal | Index | The Revived Islamic Empire > |