Turkey was the center of the great Islamic caliphate known as the Ottoman Empire, which reigned over a sizeable portion of the world until it was dissolved at the end of World War I. At the present time it is controlled by a secular government and is considered the geographical, political, and religious connection between Europe and the struggling Islamic nations of the Middle East.
The country has a stable economy and one of the largest standing armies in the world. It has applied for membership in the European Union. It has a defense pact with Israel, but relations between the two countries have been severely strained since the Israelis intercepted a flotilla heading from Turkey to Gaza in 2010. The ships were supposedly only carrying humanitarian aid, but they were in fact bringing illegal weapons.
Turkey figures prominently in Bible prophecy as the land of the seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelation, and as a key ally of Magog, a powerful nation in the North that many prophecy scholars have tentatively identified as Russia. Together with other nations, these allies will engage Israel in a future war against Israel. See The War of Gog and Magog.
Source – (2012)
By Walid Shoebat
As shocking as it may be, Erdogan is being proclaimed as God amongst diehard leaders in Turkey. And if in doubt, read this (link here) Erdogan proclaimed himself as God.
Everyday I wake up I am not just shocked at what I find in my researches on Erdogan of Turkey, but amazed in awe how closer this man is beginning to mimic what the biblical prophets of old declared as The Antichrist proclaiming himself to be God in 2 Thessalonians 2.
As shocking as you just read it, wait till you read this article by Mustafa Akyol (a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse, the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News, The International New York Times and The Wall Street Journal) and be amazed that reputable writers are now documenting that Erdogan is literally viewed by many Muslims as “God”. You heard it correctly.
Aykol writes of Erdogan’s cult of personality:
“In a recent book, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The Sun of the Age,” Aykol writes “proudly gives him titles that only belong to deity which would sound bizarre, if not heretical”.
Indeed, I am not sure if Aykol is aware, to the Wahhabist Muslim this is true, but not the Sufi Muslim who believes in the Sufi doctrine of “Fana” in which man becomes God. Aykol adds:
“In 2011, an AKP deputy declared, “Even touching Erdogan is a form of worship,” and in 2014 another AKP deputy proclaimed that Erdogan “carries all the attributes of Allah in himself.”
“The Sun of the Age,” and “carries all the attributes of Allah in himself” and “Even touching Erdogan is a form of worship,” qualifies Erdogan to fit what none of us Christians who would ever doubt what was already proclaimed in the Bible:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. – 2 Thessalonians 2 1-4
AKP deputy Duzce Miletvekili Feavi Arslan proclaimed that Erdogan “carries all the attributes of Allah in himself.”
So where are the Naysayers now who for years ridiculed us saying that it is impossible for a Muslim to qualify since Muslims can never deify a man? Shoebat.com predicted this will be the outcome last year and and even explained it theologically from a Muslim perspective (read here).
We in fact even illustrated, before Erdogan’s coming out of the closet this very issue, by quoting the most infamous of Islamic Sufi writers, Rumi, when he wrote of how the goal of the Sufi is to become divine via Fana (eliminating the self to become God):
Remember the famous utterance of al-Hallaj, “I am God.” People think that to say “I am God” is a claim of great pretense and spiritual arrogance. It is actually a claim of extreme humility. “I am God” means “I do not exist.” He is all, everything is He, existence is God’s alone. I am without existence, pure non-existence. I am nothing.” “I am God” is not a claim of great pretension, it is a claim of extreme humility. There is more humility in this than any supposed claim to greatness, but people do not understand the inner meaning. When a man acknowledges his servitude to God, he is aware of his being a servant. He may see himself as a devoted servant of God, but he still sees himself and his own actions as apart from the one reality of God. He is not drowned in the Ocean of Divine Unity. Drowned is he in whom there is not separate motion or mobility. Drowned is he whose movement is the movement of the water. And so it is with the enlightenment ones, those who declares, “I am God.” Anyone who says “I am the servant of God” asserts the reality of two existences, one for himself and the other for God. But he who says “I am God” — and has realized the deepest levels of unity within his being — has seen through the illusion of his existence. He knows from the experience of unity that his own separate existence is nothing but an illusion. Knowing that, he casts its former selfhood upon the winds of oblivion. (Rumi, Hearts bear witness one to another, in The Complete Discourses of Jalal al-Din Rumi, discourse 11, p. 75, ed. Louis Rogers)
And now we understand Erdogan’s show of humility and tears when viewed by Muslims. Erdogan is a master of great deception. This is the first time in history that this connect was made. And it is not as if Erdogan is unaware of Rumi’s theology. Far from it. It was no surprise to us that the president of Turkey, Erdogan even praised Rumi’s work, revealing that he himself is not only Sufi but that he also believes in Fana “the art annihilation and becoming God himself”. Why else would Erdogan praise Rumi’s work The Masnavi, saying:
“A work can live for more than seven centuries only if it is written with love”.
The Masnavi is amongst Rumi’s most popular works, and it is in this very book that the idea of man becoming divine is adulated. He praises the Sufi declaration “I am the Truth!” saying, “Mansur’s ‘I am the Truth!’ was purest light” (Masnavi, 2.307, trans. Mojaddedi)
When Christ said “I am The Truth” He was declaring Himself to be God Almighty. Likewise in Sufi Islam, this also exists, yet mimicking Christ. In Sufi Islam for one to exclaim, “I am the Truth,” is to say “I am God!”
While some of these people who deify Erdogan are Islamists others are secular figures who praise Erdogan for making Turkey a powerful country and for crushing the “traitors” of the nation. Notably, some of these secular pundits have become pro-Erdogan only in the past few years and have outdone most Islamists in the ranks of the AKP in their zeal to defend the “founding leader of New Turkey.”
All this besides Erdogan’s metamorphosis into an outspoken Islamist calling to serve the God Allah and advance his glory via warfare and martyrdom (see Daniel 11). The most striking example of this troubling metamorphosis was the speech he made during a ceremony held March 16 in the presidential palace to award “state honor medals” to army veterans and families of fallen soldiers.
“These lands remain our home because every singly citizen of this 78 million-strong country — men and women alike, even the children and the elderly — see martyrdom as an honor when necessary. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been allowed to stay a single day here,” he said.
“Don’t even think that the struggle that began 1,400 years ago between the truth [Islam] and fallacy [other beliefs] is over. Don’t even think that those who set an eye on these lands 1,000 years ago have given up their ambitions. Don’t even think that those who turned up at the Dardanelles, and then across Anatolia 100 years ago, coming with the most powerful armies, weapons and technology of the time, have repented. No, they never did so. This long-standing struggle is going on and will go on,” he added.
Erdogan wants to declare war, again, against the “strongest fortresses” to “advance his god” (Daniel 11) while at the same time wants to “proclaim himself to be god” (2 Thessalonians 2).
Erdogan went on to say, “We have to keep toiling with this awareness, always ready for one of the two beautiful [eventualities], and take measures accordingly.” What he meant by two “beautiful” eventualities was becoming a “martyr” or “ghazi.” In the Islamic sense, a martyr is someone who sacrifices his life in the name of Allah, while “ghazi” is a title of the Muslim who advances the cause of Allah in war.
Hakan Albayrak, one of the leading activists in the 2010 Gaza flotilla, wrote a critical open letter to Erdogan March 22 in his new Islamist daily, Dirilis Postasi. Albayrak was nonetheless supportive of Erdogan, but longed for the days when he shared power with other figures, among them former President Abdullah Gul. Albayrak soon learned that even the most respectful of criticism is unwelcome. A website operated by the Sabah group, i.e., Team Erdogan headquarters, accused him and two other similarly supportive-but-critical journalists of “treachery” against Erdogan, “the leader of a struggle awaited for a century.” Erdogan in other words is an awaited Messiah.
“The Islamist scene, however, has become a bit more complicated as of late, with “Erdoganism” morphing into an ideology unto itself, disillusioning veterans of Turkey’s Islamist movement” writes Aykol.
ERDOGAN IS LURING ISRAEL
With Erdogan and Israel, it is as if the devil possessed the man telling him to lure the Jews in readiness to rebuild them a temple. The other shocker was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s silence during the recent Israeli election campaign, despite controversial remarks about the Palestinians, and the reopening of a synagogue in Edrine might signal a change in in his methods with Israel. Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s devoted adviser, even published a moderate and thoughtful analysis March 24 about the Israeli election results attempting to convince his readers that the only way for Netanyahu toachieve his goal of a secure Israel is through a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians. Erdogan wants to be the peacemaker and divider of God’s land (Joel 3).
Even after the Israeli elections, a lavish ceremony was held March 27 in the city of Edirne, in northwestern Turkey, to re-consecrate the city’s Great Synagogue. In its glory days in the early 20th century, it was the largest synagogue in the Balkans and the third-largest in Europe. The impressive building, designed as a replica of the Leopoldstaedter Temple in Vienna, was renovated by the Turkish government at a cost of $1.7 million. Just a few months ago, in November 2014, the governor of Edirne province, Dursun Ali Sahin, caused a controversy when he called for the synagogue to be confiscated from the Jewish community and turned into a museum because of what he called “the rumblings of war from the [Israeli] criminals, who are destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque and killing Muslims there.”
Erdogan aiding in building a temple for the Jews in Edrine is no accident, Erdogan himself wants to sit in a Jewish Temple and in Hagia Sophia, the Temple of The Word of God.
The ceremony was intended to be an expression of Turkey’s tolerance and openness toward the Jews, who had long ago left Edirne. Representatives of the Jewish community were invited to attend, along with top-level Turkish officials, as would be expected according to protocol. A number of them actually showed up. Even Israel’s chief rabbis were invited, but at the suggestion of the Foreign Ministry, they chose to remain in Jerusalem. Israeli diplomats serving in Turkey, however, attended the event.
Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, who had apologized to the Jewish community on behalf of the Turkish government for Sahin’s remarks, called on all Jews who so desire to come and live in his country. Arinc was trying to supplant any expressions of anti-Semitism, which has been rearing its head in Turkey and which, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, is directly connected to public statements by senior politicians about Israel.
This makes it impossible to ignore that the message being conveyed by the ceremony at the Edirne synagogue was not simply one of inclusiveness and brotherhood toward the Jews, but also one of reconciliation, or at least of “good intentions” by the Turkish government toward the State of Israel.
Erdogan being declared as “God”, preaching on war and martyrdom, while preparing peace with Israel and the Jews is some Antichrist deadly combination.
It is now no wonder why Erdogan of Turkey introduced the latest state-of-the-art innovation to Turkish politics, resorting to a tool usually found only in science-fiction books: The hologram which reflected Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s image as he addressed his worshippers in İzmir. Erdogan through trickery, wants to be an omnipresent type of leader and is luring the entire Muslim world.
Turkey will lure Israel with a 7 years covenant of death (Isaiah 28:14-22) and a treaty will be signed in Egypt thinking it preserved the Egypt-Israel Camp David accord. By this “peace” Turkey “will deceive many” and “Islam” will appear as “a peaceful religion”, so by peace the Antichrist will deceive many.
In the meanwhile, please consider the serious issue on Christian persecution which will increase as we see these events unfold. we operate a very effective mission in rescuing fellow Christians. We are a unique organization (Rescue Christians) who rescue Christians, predominately in Pakistan that live under the Muslim yoke baking bricks in kilns under the heating sun. Christians in Pakistan are also burned in furnaces. To see an example out of the thousands we rescue, click here, and listen to the amazing testimonies first hand on how you can help and make a difference, now in this life and for eternity.
