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A Turkish television show featured prominent Muslim and Jewish leaders agreeing on the coming end times and declaring an expectation to live in “love, peace, friendship, brotherhood, good faith, kindness.”
The program, from Turkish A9 Television, featured several Muslim leaders and two officials from the Sanhedrin, the traditional seat of Jewish justice.
The Muslim participants are Oktar Babuna and Adnan Oktar, both prominent Islamic personalities. The Jews are Rabbi Yeshayahu Hollander, a member of the Sanhedrin and an associate justice on the Jerusalem Court for Issues of Bnei Noah, and Rabbi Ben Abrahamson, a historian and consultant at Jerusalem’s Rabbinical Court on matters regarding Islam.
The discussion, broadcast Nov. 21, focused on the Jewish Tanakh’s description of the end times, what the Quran states and the possibility that the religions’ expected messiahs – the Mahdi for Muslims and King Messiah for the Jews – are one and the same.
The Sanhedrin calls itself a special court for matters concerning the nation. It explains that while the Israeli government is secular, the Sanhedrin is part of the “historical government of the Jewish people.”
The panel members mark the prophecies concerning the coming end times.
Said Babuna: “The wars and violence coming to an end in the time of the King Messiah. Rabbi Hollander has read the quotes about peace from the Torah. ‘I will take away the chariots … and the battle bow will be broken. … He [King Messiah] will proclaim peace to the nations.’Â Zechariah Chapter 9:10.
“So here in these quotes it is said that the armaments will be stopped. Explain it to us a little bit, interpret it for us,” said Adnan Oktar.
“Armaments will be stopped, all weapons will be taken out of use, inshaAllah. And the King Messiah, Hazrat Mahdi (pbuh) will bring peace to the nations. Peace will come to the whole world,” said Babuna.
“So in the end times there will be no more tanks, cannon balls or rifles. That is good,” Adnan Oktar said. “So it says that there will be no more military maneuvers. There will be no more wars. That is good.
“That is the promise of Allah,” Oktar said, “there will be peace in the world.”
However, two key experts on Islam and the Middle East told WND there are concerns raised by the content of the interview.
Walid Shoebat, a former Muslim Brotherhood activist who now is a Christian researching Islam, told WND the encounter “has prophetic significance. ”
“Turkey is leading Israel into making a peace treaty, which Isaiah calls ‘a covenant with death’ (Isaiah 28:15) which will happen in Egypt (Isaiah 30:1-2),” he said. “Soon Turkey is likely to confirm the Camp David Accord, which is the main concern for Israel and its neighbor Egypt and if this happens, then we need to be looking upwards, for our redemption draweth nigh.
“The Muslim world is awaiting an Islamic Messiah who will make a covenant (Ba’ya) for seven years. If in doubt, this interview will tell you that this Mahdi will come from a non-Arab region and will enter Jerusalem and make a covenant with the sons of Aaron (the Jews) as has always been stated by Adnan Oktar,” he said.
Shoebat commented further:
Whoever imagined that before Jesus’ second coming that Israel must be reestablished with its religious legal institution, the Sanhedrin, the very agency that put him on trial before a Jewish Council. Recently, the Sanhedrin, still, chose someone else besides its rightful Messiah, and have even embraced the Islamic idea, that Messiah could be the Islamic Mahdi.
On A9 TV with the Turkish influential Muslim Adnan Oktar, an ardent agent of the Turkish Islamist regime had Yeshayahu Hollander a leading justice of the Sanhedrin. During the interview, the legal justice, Hollander, quoted verses that pertain to the Millennium Kingdom of Messiah while deliberately ignoring what comes before; the Antichrist and the Tribulation Period.
The selective verses given by Hollander were completely and purposefully taken out of context. Hollander gave reconciliatory verses from Scripture as to create a peace treaty between Turkey and Israel. During the interview, Hollander of the Sanhedrin started the program by quoting Zechariah 9:10 ‘The battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace unto the nations.’
No other verses from Zechariah 9 were given. The prudent will begin to realize that Israel’s main enemy is mentioned within the context of Zechariah 9:13 the Lord declares, ‘I will rouse your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Yavan.’ In this passage, Israel is seen fighting against Ionia or Yavan, which is simply a province that was located on the west coast of modern Turkey, the very nation the Sanhedrin visited to embrace the idea of Mahdi as Messiah.
This is crucial, because the clear context of this battle is the return of Christ: ‘Then Jehovah will appear over them’ and fight on their behalf. So in the end times, at the time when Jesus returns, the Jews (Zion) will be engaged in a war with Turkey (Yavan) and then peace will reign.
Oktar in the interview comforts the Sanhedrin promising that the government of Turkey will establish peace between Turkey, Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians.
Mustafa Aykol, a Turkish newspaper columnist and frequent Erdogan defender, said his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials, AKP, is a model for Islamist parties in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. In a new book, ‘Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty,’ Aykol told Reuters that there can be liberalism within Islam and challenges the authoritarian interpretations of Iran, Saudi Arabia and militant groups.
Today, we see Egypt falling as we have stated years ago and a current civil war is on its way.
So why is the Sanhedrin desperate to make peace with Turkey? Aykol adds: ‘Israel cannot afford to lose Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan at the same time. The U.S. should be much more active in trying to reconcile Ankara and Tel Aviv. Once this is achieved, the next step should be to re-launch the Syrian-Israeli dialogue under Turkish mediation.’
Turkey is the hope of Israel, even if they have to accept Mahdi.
He explains most people know about the idea of a reign of peace during the end times.
But that peace, according to the Bible, is not based on God and will not last.
Another expert, Joel Richardson, author of “The Islamic Antichrist,” “Islam and the End Times,” and “The Mideast Beast,” recently was part of an A9 TV conversation with Adnan Oktar in which Oktar described the God of the Bible and Allah of the Quran as “the same God.”
“We both love the same prophets, we both believe in the same hereafter, we both believe in heaven and hell, we both believe in the same destiny,” he said. “Consequently, there are many aspects that we have an alliance about.”
He also said: “King Messiah has been anticipated for about four thousand years. The time has come. The founding of the state of Israel is a portent of it anyway. The founding of the state of Israel is the portent of the appearance of the King Messiah. There is an intense inclination toward religion among Jews and that also is a portent of the appearance of King Messiah.”
Oktar said the “Mahdi” will be “active in the world in alliance with Christians and put away the atheist, materialist system.”
Richardson explained as a Christian he doesn’t believe in alliances with Muslims.
“But what I do believe in is building friendships,” he said.
He told WND that the religious leaders are well-intentioned but in error.
He said, for example, the idea that the Allah of the Muslims is the same as God of the Bible is false.
“The God of the Bible is revealed in his character, the fact he’s a father. Throughout the Tanakh, God revealed is a God who draws near, hears, sees us, appears through the vessel of the angel of the Lord, wrestles with Jacob,” he said. “The god of the Quran is a purely transcendent being that never reveals himself, doesn’t relate to his followers in a loving way … calls them his slaves.”
He said it’s important that faithful Christians not start making covenants with non-Christians.
“It’s essential that Muslims recognize the fact they they need to reject the false prophet Muhammad and become followers of Jesus, the true historical Jesus of the Bible, not the false Jesus of the Quran,” he said.
While Oktar contends the Islamic Mahdi and the Messiah are one and the same, Richardson has argued in his writings that the Mahdi actually is the one known as the Antichrist.
Oktar expressed high hopes for mankind during the end times.
“We will embrace each other, we will become brothers. In the time of our prophet, Muslims married Jewish women, they ate each other’s food, they have done trade; they were living as brothers, as friends. The same days will come again. According to our belief the Mahdi that will appear will rule over the Jews with the original of the Torah, he will rule over the Christians with the original of the Gospel and he will rule over Muslims with the Quran. Love, peace, friendship, brotherhood, good faith, kindness will envelop all around.”