SID: Hello. Sid Roth here with Joel Richardson and the wealth of information. I see why God has hand-picked this man to give us a revelation of End Times. But there’s going to be a false unity that will occur in the last days we read about. And you told me the most amazing statement about a Hasidic rabbi in Israel. Tell me about that.
JOEL: Well I recently have been in dialogue, not only with some of the representative rabbis from the Sanhedrin, which is a body of 70 Hasidic rabbis in Israel, but also a very influential Turkish Islamic Muslim leader, named Adnan Oktar. I recently had the chance to visit with him in Istanbul, and amazingly, you have this Muslim that is actually calling for the Jewish temple to be rebuilt. He calls it “Solomon’s Mosque” or “Solomon’s Palace.” Shortly after I visited with Adnan in Istanbul, some of the representatives from the Sanhedrin met with him, and after meeting with him one of the things that they came out in a joint statement was a call for the Temple Mount to become a house of prayer for all nations. And, you know, when you listen to their dialogue, the rabbis regularly refer to God as Allah, and they speak about worshiping the same God all under one Abrahamic umbrella. So there’s an emerging unity. You know, they have their clearly defined parameters, but they see each other as brothers who all worship the same God.
SID: And obviously, by the description of Allah, that is not the description of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I’m talking about that Hasidic rabbi. What did he say to you?
JOEL: Well not to me specifically, but Menachem Froman, very influential rabbi in Israel, the founder of the Tekoa settlement, he’s written a letter to the government of Turkey, and he’s asked for a meeting between the religious leaders of Israel and the government leaders, political leaders of Turkey to come together to form and forge a Middle Eastern peace treaty that they could then submit to the surrounding nations. And what he has said is that Turkey is the only hope for Middle Eastern peace, that Turkey is the premier bridge nation, the only nation that can mediate between the Islamic world and the State of Israel.
SID: And that’s probably why you talk about keep your eyes on Turkey.
JOEL: For over 500 years it ruled the Middle East, right up until 1924. Now in 1924, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secular reformer of Turkey, abolished the Office of Khalif, which is essentially the pope of the Islamic world. But he’s actually more than that. And so the Khilafat, the government of the Khalif was abolished, and since that time, the Islamic empire has essentially been dormant. The Bible predicts this. It calls this “the fatal head wound that the beast would suffer”, the beast being the empire. And now that empire is reviving, and everything looks like Turkey will emerge once again as the leader of the Middle East.
SID: You know, when you put End Time prophecy together with the Islamic world, as opposed to the European world. It just makes so much more sense.
JOEL: Absolutely. And you know, sometimes it’s as if they’re reading right from the script of the Bible. And Adnan Oktar, this Muslim leader that I met with, after I had been teaching for some time that the Bible predicted that Turkey would emerge as a regional leader, suddenly he comes out and he’s calling for what he calls a Turkish-lead Islamic union. And there is these massive movements throughout the Middle East calling for a neo-ottoman empire in the Middle East. We’ve been concerned that Al Qaeda would revive a Khilafat, but Turkey may very accomplish what Al Qaeda could not do.
SID: And you have another interesting revelation from the prophet Micah about the Assyrian.
JOEL: This is one of the most basic prophecies about the Messiah. In the Bible, in Micah 5, you have the prophecy of the Bethlehem-born Messiah. We all know this one. But if you read a little further it says that one of the primary things that this messiah does, it says, “When the Assyrian,” that’s the Antichrist, “When the Assyrian invades our land and tramples into our borders that the Bethlehem-born Messiah would deliver us from the Assyrian.” Now you have to ask yourself, if you’re a believer who takes the Bible at a face value approach, you take it for what it says, if the Antichrist is called “the Assyrian” then is it more reasonable to conclude that the Antichrist will come from the former region of the Assyrian empire, or is it more reasonable to conclude that the Antichrist will be Nicolae Carpathia from Romania, or that he’ll be from Germany, or London?
SID: Now of course, we’re hearing all of this stuff, which is kind of heavy. But there is so much exciting things going on by the supernatural power of the living God. Jewish people and Muslims are having supernatural experiences with the Messiah of Israel. Tell me about some Muslims.
JOEL: Amen. First let me say this. Yeshua, a Jewish man, will soon come back and he will take over the earth. This is the yearning of mankind. Righteousness will cover the earth. Before he does this, this is all we’re talking about. We’re talking about the End Times, we’re not talking about the end of the world. We’re talking about the beginning of the good stuff. We’re talking about the day when all the things that we groan about, the child slavery, the sex slave trade, the unrighteousness of the earth, the unrighteous leadership will be eliminated. Before he does that, the Lord right now is reaching out and He’s drawing Muslims to Himself all over the Islamic world. Reports are coming in from missionaries, and one of the primary ways that Muslims are coming to become followers of Yeshua is through supernatural dreams and revelations. Yeshua himself is personally evangelizing Muslims. He hears their cry and he’s calling them to himself.
SID: Briefly tell me one Muslim story.
JOEL: You know, I just heard one recently. I believe it was Joel Rosenberg, not to be confused with Joel Richardson, was telling a story of a woman who was praying. She read the scripture that says, “Behold, I stand on the door and knock. If you open the door I will come in a sup.” She was praying about that scripture. She heard a knock on the door. She opened the door and there was a man in a white robe with holes in his hands, and she said, “Come on in.” And Jesus himself came in, sat down, ate with her and taught her the truth about himself and the scriptures, and she became a follower of Jesus.
SID: But based on your research, this is not just an exception. This is happening to many Muslims.
JOEL: Reports are coming in, again, from across the Islamic world. Missionaries are reporting this. I have a friend in Berlin right now who just, about two weeks ago, he was able to lead nine Turkish Muslims to the Lord in one meeting. He prayed for them. They had various sicknesses. They were healed. Jesus healed them. They could not deny the power that he had in Yeshua, for Yeshua. They came to faith. He preached the crucified Christ of the Bible, not the false Jesus of the Koran.
SID: And the amazing thing is when these Muslims come to know God they have such a love for the Jew and Israel. This is where Romans 11:11 says that, “The gentile will provoke the Jew to jealousy.” What greater gentile than an Arab coming to faith.
JOEL: Exactly. What a testimony when these Muslims who were raised on anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism that is in their holy book, the Koran, and they have this hatred for the Jews. Suddenly, they fall in love with Yeshua. They read the scriptures and they realize the Jews are God’s people, that Isaac is my brother, and they come to love Israel. They come to love Jews. This I believe is one of the primary ways that the Lord is going to use the gentile world to provoke His people, the Jewish people, to jealousy, that they will turn to Him.
SID: That kind of a transformation could only come through knowing the Messiah of Israel.
Do you need that kind of transformation? I believe you do. It’s time to tell God you’re sorry for mistakes you’ve made in your life and you believe the King of the Jews, Jesus the Messiah, washes away your sins. Ask him to be your Lord and ask him to live inside of you right now.
