Is Jesus the 12th Imam?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth, to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

In this segment, we’re going through Dave Hunt’s book A Cup of Trembling: Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy. And, Dave, we’re moving quite rapidly, if I may say so. However, as I’ve gone over the last few programs, I noticed a few things have dropped through the cracks. So I want to bring them to your attention and get your comments.

Last week, we were discussing that all the world’s religions would accept the Antichrist, and in particular, there were sects within Islam that are looking for the Messiah. You know, for example, the Shiites. What do we know about the Shiites? Two groups, actually. Two large groups.

Dave: It’s the largest—two largest groups, the Shiites and the Sunnis. Well, Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad, had been picked by Muhammad as his successor. And, in fact…

Tom: Or so the Shiites say. The Sunnis wouldn’t agree with it.

Dave: Yeah…Well, I don’t know about that. There is a little difference there. The Sunnis say, “Well, it’s not matter of succession. It’s a matter of a vote.” And the funeral had just taken place, and Ali and his followers are imagining he will be the successor. And the rest of them then [went] off, they’re having a vote, and they voted in Abu Bakr, the father-in-law of Muhammad. Now, the Shiites say, well, it should be a relative, at least. He was the cousin—Ali was the cousin of Muhammad, and son-in-law—so it ought to be…follow this line. But the Sunnis say no, we vote them in. We decide on this.

Actually, there are only four successors. They’re called the Rightly Guided Caliphs. And I don’t know who the Caliph would be today. I don’t think they have enough unity to vote in one person for all of Islam.

So there were three successors: Abu Bakr, and then the next two were murdered, and Ali became the fourth Caliph who succeeded Muhammad, and he was accused of murdering Uthman, and eventually he was murdered himself. They had some wars. Aisha, who was the favorite wife of Muhammad, was on the other side, and we don’t have time to go into all of that.

Anyway, but nevertheless, the problem is that there was a division, and the Shiites, the party of Ali, they are quite a large group. Almost all in Iran, a majority in Iraq—although they did not have control in Iraq, as you’ll…as you remember. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni, supposedly, whatever he was. But anyway, and they are looking for this Twelfth Imam. He is going to miraculously appear. Now, could that be Jesus? Well, could they anticipate and think that maybe this would be Jesus come back? Well, you know, the Qur’an says Jesus didn’t die on the cross—He certainly didn’t die for our sins. He was taken alive to heaven, and He is expected to come back.

So, Tom, as you are intimating, it wouldn’t be a big step to have them accept the Antichrist as the Twelfth Imam.

Tom: Well, many thought that the Ayatollah Khomeini was the Imam. He was “the one to come.” And, Dave, I find it interesting that they believe—those who believe that the Twelfth Imam is still to come, believe that he’s going to be not just a peacemaker, but he’s going to return to leave the forces of good against evil in an apocalyptic battle before the Day of Judgment. So, interesting connections.

Dave: Right.

Tom: So, they’re prepped. Now, well, you mentioned Jesus—the esteem that they have for Jesus. In your book you say that they even—the Qur’an even goes beyond the Bible in some ways with regard to Jesus. I find that interesting.

Dave: Well, Jesus in the Qur’an spoke as a little baby. He was still in his crib, I think, when he supposedly talked and gave prophecies, and…didn’t he restore a bird to life? I don’t remember all the details, Tom, but…

Tom: Yeah, as an infant. Again, he’s accredited with doing miracles.

Dave: …miracles…

Tom: Of course, the Bible doesn’t say that at all.

Dave: Absolutely, and some of them become a little bit ludicrous. What was the purpose for them, and so forth?

Tom: But still, people are taken…Muslims are taken with Jesus because of what the Qur’an has to say about Him, although they don’t accept His deity, they don’t accept, as you’ve been mentioning, they don’t accept His penalty—His paying the penalty for our sins…

Dave: The Qur’an calls him “Isa.” And we’re not sure why, but it could be because the Jews with whom Muhammad was acquainted, as a derogatory term, they called Jesus “Esau.” But anyway, he’s “Isa” in the Qur’an. And, sadly, some people try to preach the truth of Christ from “Isa” in the Qur’an. And now, you’re really confused.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, we have talked to—I know I have, personally, and I know you have—we’ve talked to people who are very excited that Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, is being shown in Muslim countries. Some, because the censors just said, “Let…Go ahead, let’s show it.” And others because, like Saudi Arabla, because they have pirated DVDs, so they’re showing it privately. But again, missionaries over there, at least some have reported that now Muslims are open to discussing Jesus. But isn’t there a down side to that? Couldn’t this be also a problem with regard to conditioning them, setting them up for a false Christ?

Dave: Well, you are not going to change their beliefs with a movie. So if they—they’ve got the wrong Jesus, and they’re not going to be delivered from that delusion. But mainly, they are interested in this film because it shows that the Jews killed Jesus. And they’re anti-Semitic, so this is just another burden they can lay on the Jews.

And I don’t know that they would even change their belief that Jesus didn’t die on the cross, and that He was taken alive to heaven, because (maybe this was Judas), but it shows the hatred that the Jews had for Jesus.

Now, you’re not going to get the gospel in this film. You are given the impression—in fact, Mel Gibson goes to a lot of effort as the director to make it look like the scourging that Jesus received—the beatings and so forth, that He received—were sufficient to pay for the sins of the world. And, Tom, we’ve been over that a few times in our newsletter, and we talked, I think last week or the week before, what does it mean that Christ died for our sins? He had to taste the “second death.” The second death is the Lake of Fire. This is a torment for eternity for what men have done—their sins. I believe it is more than a physical—it’s a spiritual torment, because “the rich man in hell, lift up his eyes, being in torment. He said, I thirst!” And he wants some water in his tongue, but his tongue is in the grave. He doesn’t have a tongue. He doesn’t have a body to be thirsting. And we talked about it last week, I think. The Bible says, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,” Jesus said. We talked about a spiritual thirst for God and being separated from God forever! And if God has made us for Himself, and water—why, for example—we’ve been on a few backpacking trips together. You get way up at 13,500, or whatever, 14,000 feet, and some snow there—you’re dying of thirst, but that snow doesn’t help you. And when you get down to the first bubbling stream, you know, and you drink that clear, cold water—wow! Why does it hurt so bad to be thirsty and why does it feel so good to drink that water? Because it is essential for life, and God made us for Himself, and He is essential for our life, and when we’re cut off from Him, we are cut off from the Giver of life, and we are in a state of death, which has not been finalized yet for men who are still alive on this earth, and even for those in hell.

But the scripture says, “Death and hell will be case into the Lake of Fire.” So all I’m saying is, this is the death Jesus had to endure. And you tell me that the Roman soldiers meted this out? An eternity’s worth for billions of people? They meted it out by scourging Jesus? I’m sorry. That’s not biblical. It isn’t even rational. So, someone who believes that the scourging paid for their sins, I don’t think they’ve accepted the real Christ, and I don’t think they understand the gospel.

Tom: Dave, this is another problem. But before I get into it, I want to say this: If God chooses to use this [The Passion] in somebody’s life to bring them to the truth about Himself and His Son…

Dave: Praise God.

Tom: Amen, Amen.

Dave: Praise God…

Tom: We’re excited for that. But I started off talking about the confusion among Muslims about Jesus already, from the Qur’an, from their understanding—if they have a little understanding from the Bible—and the movie presents so much extra-biblical information! Things about Jesus that, again, you can’t find in the Scriptures. So my concern here is that it further leads to a person’s confusion about Jesus—his unbiblical understanding about Jesus—and that sets them up to accept whatever, you know. Again, somebody comes along—whether it be the Antichrist or a false Christ—sets them up for delusion.

Dave: You were generous—you called it “unbiblical information.” It’s really unbiblical errors. Lies. Things that are not true and were put into the movie. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. Well, Dave, you have another statement in the book that I find rather stunning, it’s true. For all of the things that we’ve talked about with regard to the Antichrist, last week, and we may have mentioned it the week before, this is what you write: “It is inconceivable that a world so divided could be suddenly, or even gradually, united by a mere man, no matter how talented, charismatic, or empowered by Satan.”

So you’re saying just the Antichrist on-present, okay, or on-scene, it is, with all that he can do, still is not going to convince people with…that have had religious ideas that are committed to it, that have the zealousness we’ve seen among fundamentalist Muslims, and so on. Not going to be enough.

Dave: Well, you can’t even unite the Muslims together. You can’t unite Americans. You’ve got Democrats, Republicans, you’ve got all kinds of political ideas. So many divisions in the church, even among the Catholics, who claim to be united and complain about the divisions among the Protestants—they’ve got plenty of divisions as well. To say nothing of all kinds of other ideas that separate people—Communists, and so forth. How are we going to unite them all? It could only be something supernatural. And we’ve mentioned it many times. There’s only one event that could do that, and that would be the Rapture. And if—I don’t know how many would vanish. There are…

Tom: Well, just, for maybe some listeners who just joined us, Dave, and don’t understand the term, just give us a brief definition of…

Dave: Well, there are about 2 billion professing Christians in the world, in general, in round figures. Christ said to His disciples, John 14: “I’m going away to prepare a place for you, and if I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself. I’m going to take you to my Father’s house of many mansions—this is to heaven. And Paul said, “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, the trump of God. The dead in Christ will arise first; we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with Him to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.” So this is how He’s going to take us to heaven. This is what we call the Rapture—an ecstatic catching away of those who truly belong to Christ.

Well, how many will that involve? I believe this is going to happen. The Bible says that we have so many prophecies fulfilled in Christ that this promise is going to be fulfilled as well, okay? Well, there are about 2 billion professing Christians. Wouldn’t you say that 1 out of 25 percent are true Christians—true followers of Christ, that would believe in the Rapture? That would be 100,000. One out of 20, 5 percent, that would be 100 million;  2 ½ percent, one out of 40, would be 50 million. Well, 50 million people suddenly vanish from this planet, and we can’t even imagine what it would be. They disappear off of elevators, desks next to you in your—at your work; out of automobiles, and they crash. And I mean, if there are a fraction as many Christians as claim to be Christians, in Southern California, for example, and it happened during rush hour, those freeways would just be a mess of wreckage. It would take them weeks to extricate everything. But forgetting that, the terror that this would raise in people…

Tom: Dave, what about countries that don’t have even a small percentage of born-again Christians?

Dave: Well, of course, the news will spread, number one. And the world will be terrified, whether it was from your country, or whether you witnessed it, this is in the news now, and you’ve got 50 million people, let’s say—even if you had 10 million, who have vanished from this planet! Where did they go? Who took them? Why didn’t they take me? Is this some…I mean, we have the movies now. We have the whole ideas of UFOs and so forth. Are they snatching people, taking them off to some slave planet? You know, we’ve talked with New Agers, and they’ve given us a number of scenarios that all those—when the time comes for us to “take this quantum leap into the new…higher consciousness,” those who haven’t been doing their yoga, haven’t been practicing their eastern meditation, that are not spiritually prepared, they will be instantly removed to a nonphysical dimension, where their Karma has to catch up with them until they’re allowed back.

Or, we’ve talked with UFO cult members, and the, you know, the “space brothers,” as they call themselves say, “When we take over this world to establish the new order, all those who are rebels in their hearts, and they’re not willing—and we know who is and who isn’t—we will take them off in UFOs to a slave planet, where we will reprogram their minds before we let them back.”

I don’t know what the explanation would be, but you could be sure the computers are going day and night at the United Nations—they’re trying to figure out what happened, but the world is terrified. “Why didn’t they take me?” And I believe that…or, ”Are they coming back for me?”, you know.

I believe that at that moment the Antichrist will arrive. I think that Satan’s always had a man ready. I think Hitler was almost as close as you could come. There have been others. And we don’t even know who this man might be, but Satan’s got somebody, and he will empower him when Satan takes over this person, and he is able to do miracles—seeming miracles—through him.

Then, that is the only thing that will unite this world. I mean, they’re terrified. “How are we going to combat this power? What is this power? What’s going on? They could come back and take more of us.” And whether he says he knows who did it, and he’s in touch with an intergalactic community, and it was some rogue civilization that snatched them, you know, for themselves, and he’s going to get them back, but you take his mark, and that will be the pledge that you will not be taken if they should come back.

I don’t know. But, Tom, this is going to unite the world as nothing else could. Now, what about these non-Christian countries? I think—and I can’t be dogmatic—I think the babies have gone. I believe if babies there die, they go to heaven. And I don’t think that Christ is going to leave them. There are statements that Christ makes that I do not understand. He said, “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father in heaven.” He said, “Let the children come unto me. Forbid them not, of such is the kingdom of heaven.” I believe that a baby that dies in infancy—well, David said, remember when his baby died, he said, “He won’t come back to me, now, he’s dead. But I will go to him.” So he believed that that baby was in heaven.

So, Tom, this could…I mean, this would really terrify the world.

Tom: Absolutely, because now, it’s not just a matter of “those people out there,” or “those people over there,” it hits home for those who are experiencing a situation like that.

But, Dave, the Rapture is a fact of the Bible, even though there are some Christians who don’t believe it—don’t believe that it’s true, but I think we can make a case and prove it from the Scriptures. So that’s a fact of the Bible.

When you begin to talk about scenarios, like UFOs and things like that, I know, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for example, that was one of the ideas there, that the people who were lost in the Bermuda Triangle, or whatever, or who disappeared, they were then returned on this vehicle. But that’s Hollywood. That’s science fiction, on the one hand. On the other hand, there’s a basis for the idea of alien beings that—it’s in our schools. It begins with evolution. It begins with a teaching, a doctrine, in effect, that the world has accepted, which lays the groundwork for some of what we were just talking about.

Dave: Good point! So the evolutionist says, “Well, it happened by chance here. It could happen by chance elsewhere…

Tom: That is, life being formed.

Dave: Right. Thank you. And you know that Robert Jastrow, founder and director for many years of the Goddard Space Institute, sent Pioneer and Voyager, and so forth, out there, he said, “Some of these beings out there could be as far beyond man on the evolutionary scale as man is beyond a worm. And when we see them, they will seem like gods to us.” He even said, “Some of them could have evolved beyond the need of bodies, and they could be what old-fashioned religious people call ‘spirits.’” So now, we have SETI (I don’t think it’s called that anymore—Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence); now we have space scientists who are trying to get in touch with nonphysical entities. What a setup for demons, ok?

But the point you’re making, Tom, is that the world is prepared for this idea that they’ve been snatched by some extraterrestrial intelligences, and we’re going to have to make peace with them.

Tom: You know, it’s also fascinating—not just based on the segment that we have in the program in which we look for…I can’t say I look for bizarre things, because most people think there’s no problem with it, but there are, in fact, bizarre ideas that are going on in the world. Last week we talked about a Hindu temple outside—in Omaha Nebraska, in which, you know, they’re worshiping—here, in the 21^st century—they’re worshiping an elephant in Omaha, Nebraska, or outside of Chicago, and so on…

Dave: Hanuman the monkey god…

Tom: Right. So who’s to say, today, what people will accept and what they won’t accept? It seems anything goes.

Dave: Tom, in the pressure of millions who have vanished from this earth, the terror that that will create, anything could be accepted. And I don’t believe anything else could unite the world, and I think it’s at that time that this man, the Antichrist, arises—we’ve talked about it—he is going to impose a covenant upon this earth that will involve rebuilding the Jewish temple, and ultimately, he’s going to put himself in the temple and demand to be worshiped as God. Nothing else could set the world up for that.