Unleashing the Beast

T HE B EAST K NOWN AS THE A NTICHRIST / 17

virgin (Matthew 1:23). Let me point out that the word antichrist does not mean "one like Christ," but "one instead of, or against, Christ." The Antichrist will actually be against Christ and make no claims to be Christ himself. Still, the future false prophet in Revelation 13:11 may attempt to deceive the world into believing that he is Christ. Over the years I have heard men teach that the Antichrist would be a Jewish leader from Israel. I was puzzled, however, knowing that the world's 1.2 billion Muslims would never accept a Jew from Israel to rule or control the Muslim nations. After many trips to Israel, I began asking noted prophetic teachers why nobody was teaching about the role Muslims will play in prophecy. Prophetic teachers consistently spoke about Israel and the Jews, along with the Gentile dominated Common Market, now the European Union. But for years, writers and researchers of prophecy have seemed to ignore the importance of the Islamic religion in the future affairs of the Middle East and Europe. In the early 1990's, I met a young girl from Iran who shared with me detailed prophetic beliefs of Iranian Shiite Muslims that few Americans, including myself, had ever heard. After comparing her information with the prophecies of the Bible, I became convinced that the coming Antichrist will be a fanatical Muslim who will proclaim himself to be Islam's final prophet. A master of war, he will use weapons of mass destruction in order to hold entire nations hostage (see