When God Delays

“We worship the Lord. We simply love, adore, and praise God’s name—no matter what’s going on around us. We know He will march with us to the farthest corners of the earth and to the end of the age.”
― Dr. David Jeremiah

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

How many of you have heard the word Jihad before?
All of us probably 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have known that word, but we all know it today, don’t we Jihad?
Sometimes it is called the sixth pillar of Islam.
The word jihad actually means struggle and the greater Jihad is the inner struggle of each Muslim to submit to Allah.
The lesser Jihad is the outward struggle to defend the Islamic community.
One of the elements of Jihad that is most troubling to us as Christians is the death culture, the belief in martyrdom for the sake of Allah.
It is what we know as suicide bombing. It is the cornerstone to Iran’s world view.
Televised interview on Iran TV. Sheikh Naim Kassim the second in command of Hezbollah said we believe in the culture of martyrdom.
Martyrdom is a noble, great, holy and honorable thing.
He went on to reiterate that when a suicide bomber ends his or her life in a wonderful way, which is accepted by Allah.
It is the most honorable culture both in this life and in the next end of quote.
Now, the hatred that the Muslims have for the Jews needs no documentation but the settlement of Israel into her homeland in 1948 took this hatred to a whole new level.
Today, Israel is referred to by radical Islam as little Satan and America is referred to as big Satan.
While the majority of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims attempt to live in peace with their neighbors.
The number of radicals who preach violence and terror is mushrooming around the world.
Experts say that 15 to 20% of Muslims are radical enough to strap a bomb on their bodies in order to kill Christians and Jews.
If that number is accurate, men and women, that means that there are about 300 million Muslims who are willing to die in order to kill you or me over the months that this has been developing in my mind.
And as I’ve been watching it in the news, the one thing I have had the hardest time understanding is this, I know many wonderful Muslim people, they’re good citizens, they care about their families, they’re cordial to us and they accept that we don’t believe what they believe.
But how do you, how do you allow your religion to be hijacked by a few people who corrupted with their militant anger and never pushed back.
Let me give you an illustration.
All of us fight with people who get to the ragged edge of what we do.
Some of you remember a few years ago during the right to life wars here in this country.
Some well intentioned but foolish people fought the way that you fought the battle for right to life was to blow up abortion clinics.
And the whole evangelical world was painted with a broad brush of that kind of militancy.
But you know, the difference, every major evangelical leader that I know stood up and said that is wrong.
That does not represent us. We abhor that we do not embrace that.
Do not tell us that those people represent us. We would never do that.
You don’t fix one wrong by creating another one. And that’s the thing that’s been missing up until recently.
Many of you know that the Fox network finally broadcast a special where many Islamic Clerics stood up and said this is wrong and we don’t accept this.
This is not right. So on the one hand, we need to be careful as Christians that we don’t just paint all Islam over here in one broad brush stroke.
But on the other hand, we do have the right to expect from them.
What they would expect from us is if we got some radicals running around who are doing things that we’re getting credit for.
Let’s fix it ourselves and not wait for the rest of the world to have to deal with it.
Yeah, the history of Islam and the habits of Islam and the hatred of Islam.
Let’s talk for a few moments about the hopes of Islam, make no mistake about it.
Radical Islam hopes to rule the world, that’s their goal and nothing else will satisfy them.
There is a term called Caliphate.
It is a doctrine to which Muslims traditionally hold that a Muslim spokesman defined this way.
Muslims should abolish national boundaries within the Islamic world and return to an Islamic state known as Caliphate that would stretch from Indonesia to Morocco and contain more than 1.5 billion people.
The governments of the world should know that Islam cannot be defeated.
Said Ayatollah Khomeini, he said Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world and Islam and the teaching of the Koran will prevail all over the world.
Those who take the radical position of Islam have one and only one goal.
And that is the complete domination of the entire world with their ideology, their philosophy and their political world view.
Here’s another hope of Islam and this one is very pertinent to us.
This surfaced in remarks that were made by Iranian President Ahmadinejad, a disciple of Ayatollah Khomeini.
In 2005, Ahmadinejad was called before the United Nations to explain his continued determination to develop nuclear weapons.
He began his speech with this prayer Allah, the almighty and merciful hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.
Now, Ahmadinejad’s reference to the promised one was a reference to the 12th imam, a figure in Shiite teaching that parallels are Messiah, in essence, he was praying that the Islamic Messiah would return.
Now Shiite Islam believes that the 12th imam can only come back during a time of worldwide chaos and that the way they can hasten the return of their messiah is to create hell on earth in every which way possible.
No wonder Ahmadinejad is trying to foment the chaos through his nuclear program and men and women.
That’s the reason why negotiation is going to be so difficult because we have nothing that they want.
What they want is to create such terrible destruction in the world that it will cause their messiah to come back.
Because in their eschatology, they believe that’s how they can hasten the return of the Islamic Messiah Ahmadinejad is not only adamant about acquiring nuclear capabilities, he is adamant about destroying Israel never in all the history of the world that I can remember.
Perhaps dating back to Hitler has any world leader made such a bold statement. In his infamous speech.
He said Israel must be wiped off of the map.
And he warned leaders of Muslim nations who recognize the state of Israel that they face the wrath of their own people, make no mistake about it while he may not represent all of Islam.
Ahmadinejad is the leading radical in this world.
He may be the most evil man who’s ever walked on the face of this earth.
He makes Hitler look like a Sunday school boy if we don’t understand it, I promise you the Jews do all of this that we have been talking about and especially the rise of radical Islam and the ascendance of Ahmadinejad in Iran, which is the former Persia is all spoken about in the scripture.
And while we have no time today to go into all the details of it because it is a part of another message I want to read to you a passage of scripture from the book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel 38 1 to 6 says now the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man set your face against the prince of God and the land of Magog, the prince of God is the leader of Russia and the prince of Rosh.
There it is me and tubal and prophesy against him and say thus says the Lord God behold, I am against you.
Oh God, the prince of Rosh Mek and Tub.
I will turn you around and put hooks into your jaws and lead you out with all your army.
Horses, horsemen oil splendidly clothed. A great company with bucklers and shields and all of them handling swords, Persia, Ethiopia and Libya are with them, all of them with shield and helmet gomer and all its troops, the house of Tuma from the far north and all its troops.
Many people are with you now in the future.
According to the scripture, there is going to be a war called the Battle of Gag.
And may go where the Arab nations under the leadership of Russia will come against Israel and choke Israel from every single side until there will be no hope for her unless God intervenes and he will intervene in such a way that the whole world will know that there is a God in heaven.
That’s how this all goes together in the plan of the future.
But I want to take these moments. I have left and kind of can we all take a deep breath?
I mean, I’d kind of like to just take a deep breath. You know, man, this is heavy.
I told my wife, I said, I feel like I’ve been living in darkness over the last few days, just reading and I’ve left a lot out that I could have added what I know that’s helpful to us as believers is that we ask this question, how do we respond to this message?
How do we respond? And I want to give you things that I feel very strongly about and hopefully you will sense my passion and compassion in all of these.
First of all, do not compare Islam with Christianity.
John 14 6 says Jesus said to him, I am the way the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father, except through me.
There are not many ways to God there are not many religions that all get you at the same place.
There is one way to God and that’s through Jesus Christ.
But I would like just for the sake of our discussion today to give you some very clear distinctions between who we are in Christ and what Islam proclaims.
First of all, Christians do not preach the genocide of a particular race of people. Radical Muslims.
Do Christians do not call for homicide bombers to slaughter innocent people, radical Muslims.
Do Christians do not believe that they are to work for worldwide bloodshed chaos and war to bring back their messiah radical Muslims.
Do Christians desire the salvation of the Muslim people.
Radical Muslims call for Jihad against all of us that they consider to be infidels.
So whatever you do, don’t say Christianity and Islam are just two different roads to get to the same place.
They are two different roads going in totally opposite directions. Number two do not consider Allah as God.
Psalm 86 10 says you alone are God.
I had an interesting experience right after 9 11, I had a guy who used to sell me clothes.
He worked for a clothing company here.
He used to come and see me and he was a wonderful man, but he was a follower of Islam.
We had many, many discussions. He even came to church sometimes to hear me preach.
But after 9 11, he came to see me and I could tell he was very nervous about our next meeting because he knew what had happened and he was wondering how I would respond to it.
And we got along just fine until he said after all, Doctor Jeremiah, my Allah and your God are the same.
And I said, no, I said that’s where you and I are gonna have a problem.
Allah and God are not the same.
Islam does not believe in a Tribune God and Christianity does do not let anyone ever say to you that Allah is just another name for God to say such a thing is blasphemous.
Allah was selected by Muhammad from a pantheon of 360 lunar gods in Arabia, Jehovah.
God is the eternally existent and only God of the universe.
Allah had no sons, but the God of the Bible gave his only son to be the sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Allah says kill your sons and you can come to heaven.
And God said I killed my son so you can come to heaven.
There’s a vast difference between Allah and God thirdly don’t confuse Jihad with salvation.
Titus 35 says not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, he saved us.
So do not compare Islam with Christianity.
Do not consider Allah as God, do not confuse Jihad with salvation and do not connect the Koran with the Bible.
The Koran is not a part of the Bible.
It is not just another Bible on par with the scripture. Psalm 119 89 says forever.
Oh Lord, your word is settled in heaven.
There are many who say that we should consider the Koran on the same level as the Bible.
Actually, the Muslims believe that the Koran is the mother of all books and that the Bible is subservient to the Koran, but such is impossible.
The Bible was given by inspiration to over 40 authors over a period of 1400 years with a consistent message from Genesis to revelation of redemption through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Koran is a self contradicting book supposedly given by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad.
Since Muhammad could neither read nor write the sayings were translated and collected from the memories of those who had heard him and knew him.
Let me just give you a good way to figure out why these are different. Read.
The Koran then read the Bible.
And you will be able to tell immediately the difference both between the quality and the nature of those two books ran is not the Bible nor is it on par with the Bible.
So do not compare Islam with Christianity. Do not consider Allah as God.
Do not confuse Jihad with salvation. Do not connect the Koran with the Bible.
So what should I do? Pastor? How do I respond to all of these threats?
Well, let me just tell you about the rest of you. I’m for a strong defense.
I am for a strong defense and I believe we ought to keep vigilance at the very top.
We’re dealing with a different kind of enemy that we’ve never dealt with before.
Terrorism is not like any war we’ve ever fought.
And if we allow weakness to enter into the political arena where we try to negotiate with terrorists, we will be the victims and not the victors.
There is no negotiating with these people because we have nothing. They want what they want is us.
And if we do not understand that we will pay the price for our ignorance.
Even the people in the Middle East know that the West hasn’t gotten it yet.
We’re standing here trying to act as if this hasn’t happened, put it out of our mind and off of our memories so that we don’t have to deal with it.
And God knows we don’t want to have to think about it all the time and I promise you, you won’t hear this in this church very often.
But the first thing we need to do is be strong.
But folks, we’re Christians and hear me now, we can’t hate because we are hated.
That is not an option for us.
And sometimes when I hear the rhetoric of my brothers and sisters in Christ, it stabs me in my heart because if we’re not careful, we will become like them and God has called us to entreat them to salvation.
And I wanted to give you some good news today as we close.
God is doing an incredible work in many of the Islamic nations. Did you know we have pastors there?
Did you know that turning point is on the air in every Arabic country, we got a letter from the Arab Emirates country and in the letter, they told us about how Christ had come into their heart and what turning point meant to them.
And they had some Arabic on the bottom of the letter.
And on the back, it said, if you send us any materials, please do not let it be known that they’re religious because it could cost us our life.
The radio and television is going everywhere.
So I thought I’d end this message on radical Islam with my fifth point.
And that is do not conclude that all Muslims will be lost because they will not be some of them.
In fact, many of them today are coming to Christ.
And as the time of our Lord returns, we will learn more and more about salvation among the Islamic nations.
Second Peter 39 says the Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
Let me tell you people born into Islam are part of the any and part of the all.
But I want to tell you something, men and women Jesus Christ died for every single one of these people.
He died for every person who lives in Iran, including Ahmadinejad and in our determination to do all we can to protect ourselves and to be safe and to fight terrorism.
Let’s don’t become so hard edged about it that we forget that Jesus Christ died for these people and pray for our missionaries who are in harm’s way, telling them about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And if I read the scripture correctly, I tell you that there is going to be a great harvest of souls from among the Islamic people who finally understand the despair in their own hearts and turn to Jesus Christ and find in him the one they’ve been looking for all along.
So we have a sense of two things.
Number one, we don’t have to be afraid because all of this is pointing to the time when the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back to take us to be with himself.
And I believe we should lift up our heads because our redemption is drawing on how is that all going to happen.
And we’re going to understand that one of these days we’re going to hear the shout and the trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ will be raised up and those of us who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them.
And so shall we ever be with the Lord? Hallelujah, amen.
Don’t complain about this don’t say, I wish they weren’t happening, it is happening.
And God has called us for such a day.
He’s put us in the midst of this culture and he wants us here because He knows we have the answer to offer to a world that’s looking for hope.
So let’s be God’s people. Let’s be strong.
And at the same time being passionate, they used to say about a man.
I know he was velvet steel. That’s a great thought, isn’t it? That’s what we need to be.
Velvet steel for God.