entire months, and from time to time he made his wife, his children, and his servants visit him, and he entertained them with strange accounts of nocturnal visions and apparitions, with which he declared that he was favoured. At length, on the twenty-third night of the month of Ramadan, he beheld, as he assured his wife, the following vision. A voice called him by his name, a bright light from heaven illumined the whole country, and the Koran, the last revelation of God to men, descended from heaven, complete in all its parts. It was borne, said he, on the hands of the archangel Gabriel, and such was the splendour and brilliancy of the messenger, that it was more than the eyes of Mahomet could bear, so he besought him in future to appear in human form. This Gabriel promised that he would do, having saluted Mahomet as the Prophet of God.' After which he commanded him to read through the Koran, which he had no sooner done than Gabriel carried it back to heaven, promising to bring it back again, as it should be needed, chapter by chapter."1 On one memorable occasion, in the year 621, Mahomet pretended that the angel Gabriel brought him a miraculous beast, called El-Borac, on which he mounted and ascended to the seventh heaven, where he conversed face to face with God, and was proclaimed greater than all the prophets and all the angels of God. When he entered the first heaven, Adam came and made obeisance to him, and recommended himself to his prayers. In one of these heavens he tells us he saw Issa, or Jesus, but he does not say in which. He also mentions to have seen a miraculous cock, which was several thousand miles high, and which 1 Mahometanism in its Relation to Prophecy, ch. iii. crowed so loud as to be heard by the whole universe. In the third heaven he met the colossal angel, whose height was equal to one hundred and forty thousand years of the swiftest travelling. He says that when he reached the seventh heaven, Gabriel was not allowed to accompany him farther, but he himself, holier than the highest angel, climbed the tree sedra, and so ascended through a boundless ocean of light to the very throne of God Himself, on the steps of which he beheld these words: "La Allah illa Allah, va Mohammed rasoul Allah;" the meaning of which is, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." He was no sooner admitted to the presence of the Most High, than God, placing one hand on his breast, and the other on his shoulder, revealed to him all truth, and declared to him that he was the most perfect of all creatures, and that he should be honoured and raised above all other men, and that he should be the redeemer of all those that believed in him, that he should know all languages, and that the spoils of all the conquered in the world should belong to him alone. What more can we desire to be convinced that Mahomet was eminently the king of a shameless face, understanding dark sentences, described by Daniel, and that he was the Man of Sin, spoken of by St. Paul, "whose coming is according to the working of Satan, in all powers and signs and lying wonders, and in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish?" or, in other words, that he is the real, the true, the great Antichrist predicted in Holy Writ? It has been sometimes urged by commentators, 1 2 Thess. ii. 9. who do not admit that Mahomet is the Antichrist of prophecy, that whereas it was foretold in Holy Scripture that Antichrist should perform great wonders, by which he was to deceive mankind, Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of miracles. We e answer this in the words of Mr. Phillipps: "It is true that Mahomet did not pretend to the gift of miracles, if by miracles be understood the power of healing diseases, of raising the dead to life, or such other miracles as have always been wrought in the Church of God; and Mahomet was right in not pretending to such a gift, inasmuch as he had none such, and had he pretended to it, his imposture would quickly have been found out; but he did lay claim to wonderful and supernatural communications with God, and these were assuredly to be called 'lying wonders,' as St. Paul had termed them. They were surely wonders in every sense of the term, and they were lying wonders, because they were false, vile impostures, and diabolical deceits."1 SECTION VI. 6th Mark.-The Antichrist must be the author of a great apostasy from the Christian faith. Mahomet has been the author of a great apostasy from the Christian faith. The Apostles St. John and St. Paul assure us, that from the very beginning of the Church there existed many who, by despising the authority of the Church and separating themselves from her bosom, set in action the mystery of iniquity, which was to be completed by the Antichrist. The ground being thus prepared for the great apostasy, through the agency of heretics-the true types and forerunners of the Antichrist-the 'Mahometanism in its Relation to Prophecy, ch. iii. impostor Mahomet arose, and, animated by a diabolical spirit, consummated the impious work which it was written that the Antichrist should do. He did not content himself with rejecting one or another article of the Christian faith, as his precursors had done, but he set himself to establish a new religion in the place of the religion of Christ. The impostor thus makes God speak to him respecting the Koran, and the doctrine which it contains: "There is no doubt in this book; it is a direction to the pious who believe in the mysteries of faith, and who believe in that revelation which hath been sent down unto thee. As for the unbelievers, it will be equal to them, whether thou admonish them, or do not admonish them." And again: "This book, the verses whereof are guarded against corruption and are also distinctly explained, is a revelation from the wise, the knowing God." "This book have we sent down unto thee, that thou mayest lead men from darkness into light."3 Such throughout is the language of the Koran. And wonderful to say, the men who were the first to aid Mahomet in the compilation of his impostures were Jews and Nestorians; that is, those "who had not believed the truth of Jesus, and those who had consented to iniquity;" in other words, those who had refused to embrace the doctrine of the Messiah, and those who had perverted it. And those who flocked to his standard and embraced his impious doctrines were, as he himself assures us, the Christians, both clergy and laity, of the Asiatic provinces, in which he first exercised his diabolical apostleship. 1 Koran, ch. ii. G 2 Ib. ch. xi. Thus he fulfilled in himself what the prophet Daniel predicted of the Antichrist, that he would "throw down of the strength, and of the stars, and tread upon them."1 The impostor stood up against the hosts of heaven, the saints of the Most High, and trampled them under his feetsuch of them as lay within the territories of the Greek empire, were especially given into his hand. Of the eastern clergy and laity, he cast some to the ground, by compelling them to renounce the Christian faith; and as to those who still adhered to the religion of truth, he stamped them, as it were, under his feet, with all the tyranny of brutal fanaticism. The diabolical spirit which animated the impostor Mahomet was transfused into his followers, who, after his example, did all they could to make the Christians apostatize from the faith. Not content to number them among the infidels, they used every means to deprive them of the inestimable blessing of religion, and to enchain them under the shameful yoke of the Koran. "This is to acquaint you," says Abubeker, in his circular letter to the Arabian tribes, "that I intend to send the true believers into Syria, to take it out of the hands of the infidels: and I would have you to know that the fighting for religion is an act of obedience to God." How these principles were reduced to practice may be learned from the chieftain Caled's language to the prostrate Greeks. "Ye Christian dogs, you know your option the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. We are a people whose delight is in war rather than in peace; and we despise your pitiful alms, 1 Dan. viii. 10. |