The second horseman (as one of the four winds of heaven in Daniel 7:1) stirs up the second beast of Daniel 7, and so starts the Second of the Four Signposts as written about in Daniel Revisited. The Second Signpost is of course the invasion by Iran of the Middle East. The Second Signpost is the first half of a great Sunni-Shia War that will soon erupt in the Middle East. And according to Revelation 6:8b one quarter of the world will be drawn into the conflict, “They [MD – the horsemen] were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” (NIV)

As I show in my book, Islam is the one quarter of the earth: it is the dominant religion in one quarter of the world’s countries, is adhered to by one quarter of the world’s population, and these people and countries cover one quarter of the world’s land area.

The Islamic Realm, one quarter of the earth

As I wrote earlier in this post, we are seeing an escalation in the intensity of the Sunni-Shia conflict. But besides intensity we are now seeing an increase in scope. Thanks goes to one of our readers who pointed out this article to me, which shows that the conflict has grown geographically so that it does indeed contain one quarter of the earth.

The article quotes Andrew Hammond, Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations as saying about this conflict,

“It’s reaching places that you wouldn’t imagine. Pakistan, Britain, Malaysia, Indonesia. It’s really quite a striking phenomenon.”

Well, readers of my book would have imagined it, for Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia are all part of the one quarter of the world which is Islam. The article also talks about attacks in Nigeria. And even in those countries that are not part of the quarter – such as Australia and Britain – the Muslim communities there are seeing the effects.

I do disagree with one statement made in the article that seems to be misleading. It says, “Sunni jihadists at the heart of the current anti-Shia campaign claim Shia have to pay for the bloody repression of Sunnis by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia.”

I believe the real reason we are seeing Sunnis attack Shias is that not only have Sunnis been attacking Shias for fourteen centuries, but the recent calls by Sunni mosques and imams to jihad is striking the hearts of fundamentalist Sunnis not only in the Middle East but wherever the Muslim community, the Umma, exists. Sunnis and Shias consider each other worse than we unbelievers.

So now with ISIS being bait to pull Iran out, and starting the erasure of old political boundaries, declaring the Caliphate, and exhibiting butchery between Sunnis and Shias which is now spreading throughout the Umma, the stage is being set for the breaking of the second seal.

Categories: In The News, Signpost #2: Iran