Obsession

Recently I watched the documentary movie Obsession Radical Islam’s War Against the West.

This is a very important film giving you the words of many from Radical Islam documenting their hate toward Israel, America and ultimately all who don’t accept Radical Islam’s views. The striking similarity between the Nazi’s and Radical Islam and their propaganda and training of youth into violent hate is amazing. To hear a three year old tell of her training that God has said that Jews are apes and pigs or to hear an 8 year old girl talk of her desire for Bush and Blair’s death is a disturbing image of the death cult that Radical Islam teaches. While everyone should see this film and understand that much of the media of the west ignores these things there is something that connects all this to the Adventist view of the Anti-Christ and this weeks Lesson.

We teach as our Lesson Study Guide does for this week that the Papal Roman Catholic church is the Anti-Christ. As awful as it was in the middle Ages and even Roman Catholic will acknowledge their atrocities, is it really the Anti-Christ. Is the idea that Mary pleads with Jesus for people really any different from our own SDA view that Jesus pleads, “My blood, My blood” before for God. Both views are a distortion of the Love of God, but do they really prevent the believer in God from commitment to God. We view the false teachings about God as the Roman Catholic Church’s attempt to take the place of God. But false views of God also happen when any of our man made philosophies is inserted into our view of God. We have no denominations with pure doctrines without some areas of distortions about God. In time past Christian killed Jews for being “Christ killers” Roman Catholics killed Protestants as heretics, the Church of England fought the Roman Catholics and even in America, Protestants attacked Roman Catholics because of the certainty of the Anti-Christ status given by some of the Reformation leaders. None of us have a pure history free from violence and distortions about God. The Roman Catholic church is nothing like it was in the Middle Ages, frankly it does not really speak as the Anti-Christ, it speaks of Christ it points us to scriptures which teach Christ. Even when it accepts tradition it is not just any tradition that it teaches, it is to the tradition of Christians who love God.

Our beliefs have taken us to a place where we only look for certain things to happen we ignore the possibilities which are not part of our own tradition. Thus when something like Radical Islam appears we do not even see the danger; the desire it has to dominate the world and all other religions. It does not teach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It does not even teach love your neighbor. Radical Islam is far different from the moderate Islam which can tolerate other beliefs, even when the Ottoman Empire ruled over large areas it was not the rabid dominating form of today’s Radical Islamics. People like John Wesley questioned whether the Moslems of the Ottoman Empire were the (little horn) Anti-Christ, should not we consider that option ourselves.

I don’t know the future, maybe we will never be able to predict who the Anti-Christ will be but we should not be so locked into a view that exists just because of certain Reformation traditions. Just like us they looked at the world around them and created theories to explain what they saw. Time however marches on and things do change. Maybe we should open ourselves up to other possibilities as a church as well. While we should not spend our time working out theories of the Anti-Christ, we should instead dwell on knowing the real Christ, we can’t ignore the things in the world that act to prevent people from meeting the real Christ.

The SDA church leadership may refuse to consider anything other then their traditions however the members of the church are under no such burden and our own beliefs can change which in the future can influence the leaders of this church to be more open to other possibilities.

Update: Related issue;

It is interesting to see the list of the from David Wallechinsky's new book on the 20 Worst Living Dictators, notice in his list how many are Muslim dictators (9 of the 20) and how everyone on the list is part of the UN, some on the security council.