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A Matter of
Faith
The story that unfolds from the various
accounts of these confrontations, the Muslim version of
Armageddon, fought out in and over Palestine, where the city
of Megiddo gave Christian Armageddon its name, is one of
increased polarization between the forces of belief and
disbelief, the religious and the seculer, the Muslims and
post-Christian New Age. They will initially fight over
mountains of black gold near the Euphrates, a reference to oil
possibly, a phase we have entered into since the beginnings
of the gulf war in 1991. The Muslims
will be disunited and weak, their enemies united and powerful.
It will be a time when the word will be
stronger than the sword, and most of the
believers will also fall for propoganda. The Dajjal will
have with him a river and a fire.
His river will be hell, his fire will be paradise. It will be
more difficult to hold on to one's faith than to hold
onto burning coal. But patience will pay off.
People will eventually be divided into
two camps: a camp of faith in which there
will be no hypocrisy, and a camp of
hypocrisy in which there will be no faith. (Abu
Daud)
Then the
small but purified army of believers will gather under a black
banner from the East, and contingents from the West will join
it. The Jews will draw together from all over the world in
Palestine, the land of the Qardad Tree, the only tree behind
which they will find shelter. At the end of the long was with
no more than one survivor amongst a hundred, the Muslims will
gain victory on the battle field. Yet their time to rebuild
will not have come yet, as the Dajjal will have appeared. Here
we are given to understand that this is not just a battle
between physical forces. It requires divine intervention. It
cannot be won without true faith. For the Dajjal, the false
Messiah, will lure everybody who listens to him by his magic.
He will satisfy people's yearning for spirituality after they
have lost their souls in religion which both stimulates them
and keeps them controlled. There will be people who rebel
against it, but they will not be able to extinguish the mass
hypnosis of the cult. It will fire people on in their bestial
fight against truth and religion until they will be so
emboldened that they want to kill God. Whoever does not join
the crowd will be excluded from all benefits and not even
allowed to eat. Yet in the face of the truth, confronted with
the real Messiah, and only then, will it vanish in line with
the verdict in the Qur'an:
"Say: Truth has come and falsehood has
vanished, for falsehood must vanish."
(Surah
17, al-Isra (the Night Journey), Verse 81)
[Next: A Time for
Commitment]
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