The Strong Delusion is Here: The Word of God is Your Only Defense

GREAT DECEPTION

Earlier today, my husband and I went into our local Christian bookstore. We were looking for a Bible for his brother who is searching for the truth about the Lord. He has been calling us with so many questions, such as “Are the words in the Bible truly God’s words?”

As I began to look around, I noticed immediately that this store was peddling heresy more than truth.  There was a whole section for the “Message” which is a new age, heretical book, which is not even a “version” of God’s Holy Word.

Most of the Bibles we saw were NIV. We never use this version of the Bible. That’s a subject for another article.

We finally saw a section with KJV, NASB, NKJV and ESV Bibles from which to choose. It was a very small section, but at least it was there. A man who worked at the store approached us. He was a very pleasant person, and seemed to know a lot about the Word of God and about the various versions.

We had a good discussion with him. But then something happened which caught me off guard.  He had suggested a version of the Word of which we had never heard. He began to tell us that the reason it was so popular was because the panel of theologians who came together to write this version included Catholic priests.

I told this young man that his information was troubling to me. He looked at me as if I was speaking Greek.  I told him that Catholicism is not a “denomination” of Christianity, and I told him why.

Pope Francis

The man began to defend the Vatican, even though he stated that he was not a Catholic. He said that this pope was the best pope that Rome ever had.  There are no accidents with our God, and I realized that the Lord had send us into this store to speak with this man.

I began by asking if he had actually heard or read the words of this pope. He said he had. I asked him if he knew that the pope was part of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.  He said that those goals were for the good of the planet.

I began to realize that we were light years apart in our understanding of the Word of God.  I said some other things which are extremely troubling about this pope, and even that many people wonder if he may be the False Prophet spoken of in God’s Word.  I asked him if he knew about Bible prophecy. He said that he did. But then he truly shocked me when he acted as if it was no big deal if Pope Francis is the False Prophet.

Who is the Author of Confusion and the Father of Lies?

Of course we know that Satan himself holds both of the aforementioned titles.  Brethren, many in the body of Christ are so deluded and confused – it is truly alarming.

People might say “Well, perhaps this young man is sitting under bad teaching.” That very well may be true, but he has the Word of God just like the rest of us. He can read God’s Word and should be able to glean truth from it; if he is one who has the Holy Spirit indwelling him.

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:5-6).

Ecumenicalism

Why are so many “Christians” being drawn back to Rome?  What is it that keeps them from understanding that there is ONE way to the Father and that is through Jesus Christ and Him alone?  Why would they want to be unequally yoked together with a false religion whose leader is telling the world that there are many roads to God?

TRUTH

Brethren, we have Truth in God’s Word. We were warned to never add nor take away from these Words.   PLEASE understand that the devil is roaring and roaming about to see whom he can deceive and devour. He must know that time is short. He thinks he is winning, but we know Who wins in the end.

The sad thing is that many souls are at risk.  Tell people the Truth from the Word – unashamedly!  You may be the only person who comes into the path of a deceived soul.  They NEED to know the truth!

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,
For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak” (Ephesians 6: 10-20).

MARANATHA!

COMMON CORE: YOUR CHILD IS BEING TAUGHT TO BE AN OBEDIENT GLOBALIST

Time to remind the people of America what “Common Core” is really about; who supports it, and why it is poison to our children’s minds…….

Prayer and Proper Nutrition Cured My Husband of Cancer

natural_cures

Please know that this article is not a judgment on those who choose chemo and radiation. If anything, it shows how proper nutrition and prayer is so powerful – even to the point of clearing cancer out of a person’s body! There are studies which show that people who change their diets (the article will explain) while still getting the convention treatment for cancer do far better than those who do not make any changes in their diet. This is the route that my husband chose, and here is his story…….

In April of last year, my husband noticed that his lymph nodes on his neck were enlarged. The right one was extremely large. We made an appointment with our GP. He examined my husband and wrote up a referral to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist.

The ENT scoped my husband. Scoping is placing a tube through the patient’s nose into the throat to look for anything suspicious. The doctor told us that he saw something which looked odd. He said that a biopsy would need to be done on my husband’s voice box.
We then went to an ENT who specialized in throat cancers at John Hopkins Hospital. He also scoped my husband and showed us on a large screen a spot which he said looked like cancer. He also said that it looked like stage 4 cancer because it had spread to the lymph nodes. He set my husband up for a biopsy.

The day came for the biopsy, and after the specimen was sent to the lab, the doctor told us that Tim had Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Tim had none of the symptoms that the doctor asked him about — pain in the ears and pain swallowing. This doctor made an appointment at the center for cancer at Johns Hopkins.

OVERWHELMED

After Tim and I were ushered into a room at the cancer center, he was placed in a chair. Then a group of many doctors came into the room. One doctor scoped Tim again, and they talked amongst themselves about a suspicious spot on his larynx (voice box). They talked over us, not including us in the conversation. They spoke of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

The head oncologist said that Tim needed a radical surgery to remove his voice box. He said that this would leave a hole in his neck, and that he would have to learn how to swallow again. He also would have to learn how to talk with an electronic device implanted into his neck. They said that Tim would probably be in the hospital for over a month, and that after this, he would go through many months of chemotherapy and radiation.

They said that Tim would have burns over most of his face and scalp. And then they left. We waited, because no one said that we were done. Finally a doctor saw us in the room and asked why we were still there. He said that we would hear from them about the scheduling of the surgery. We left.

On the way home we talked about getting a second opinion. We were both in shock at what had been told to us by the oncologists. These doctors never gave us options, or talked to us as to whether we wanted to go through these invasive procedures along with chemo and radiation.

Two days later, we were notified that they had scheduled surgery that was to be less than a week away. We have many Christian friends on Facebook and told them what was happening, and we asked for much prayer. That’s when we were told by a few of our friends that there were alternatives with natural nutritional treatment. At first we were very skeptical, but then began to read the testimonies of people who had been cured by drastically changing their diet and taking certain supplements.

The first diet we came across was called the Ketogenic diet for cancer. Whenever I do research for an article, I always vet everything on credible websites. The Ketogenic Diet kept coming up as an amazing treatment for many kinds of cancer. There is not enough room in this piece to spell out the entire Ketogenic diet for cancer, but if you look this up online, you will find much documentation and testimonies. Here is an excerpt about why the Ketogenic diet is so effective against cancer cells.

FROM DR. MERCOLA’S SITE:

“To some, a Ketogenic diet amounts to nothing less than a drug-free cancer treatment. The diet calls for eliminating carbohydrates, replacing them with healthy fats and protein.

The premise is that since cancer cells need glucose to thrive, and carbohydrates turn into glucose in your body, then cutting out carbs literally starves the cancer cells.

This type of diet, in which you replace carbs with moderate amounts of high quality protein and high amounts of beneficial fat, is what I recommend for everyone, whether you have cancer or not. It’s simply a diet that will help optimize your weight and health overall, as eating this way will help you convert from carb burning mode to fat burning.” [1]

We immediately went on this diet. I went on it with Tim – mostly out of compassion. The first thing we saw was No Sugar! We wondered if we could do this, but we were determined. We saw that we needed to eat good omega 3 fats, very low carbs (no simple carbs) and lots of fruits, vegetables and nuts. We could eat salmon and chicken and lamb and some other meats – good healthy protein.

We got a notice from the hospital that Tim needed a PET scan to see if the cancer had spread. We had already been on the Ketogenic diet for over a week. We had consumed no sugar, and were following the diet to the letter. We found out that cancer cells thrive on sugar. Of course, there is glucose found naturally in the body, but consuming refined sugar just feeds the cancer cells.

We went to the hospital for Tim’s PET scan, and when he finally came out, he told me that they insisted that he drink two full glasses of glucose! I was so upset. I went to the nurses station and asked why Tim had been asked to drink so much glucose. The nurse said “That is how the cancer cells light up – because of the glucose.” I told her that he had been on a sugar free diet up to that day. She could tell I was not happy!

The results of the PET scan were good. No cancer had spread in Tim’s body other than the lymph nodes, but we already knew that.

SECOND OPINION

We went to an Oncology office in our town for a second opinion. The doctor had received all of Tim’s records from Johns Hopkins. We sat down at his desk, and he proceeded to tell us that he was shocked that Hopkins wanted to take such aggressive actions against Tim’s cancer. He showed us a chart which had exactly what Tim had on it, which had been prepared by many of the leading oncology centers in the U.S. It showed what they concurred would be the best protocol for Tim.

It said that the first option would be light chemo and radiation – no surgery. Second would be stronger chemo and radiation. Third would be surgery if the first and second failed. He set us up to see the radiation specialist in his office.

We came into the radiation doctor’s office and a young doctor met us first. He explained about the procedure. In a while, the head doctor came out and talked more about the radiation. Then we all went into another room for Tim to be scoped once again. I was standing behind the doctors, trying to see the screen. I heard the head doctor say “It must be so small.” They kept looking. Finally, they said that we should go back to the other office.

By this time we had been on the Ketogenic diet for at least three weeks. I asked the doctor if I could ask some questions. He told me that I could when he was finished. I told him about the Ketogenic diet and the other supplements that Tim was taking. He rolled his eyes and asked exactly what the Ketogenic diet was about. I told him first – no sugar. He rolled his eyes again. I asked if it was not true that cancer cells feed off of sugar. He said that was ridiculous.

This doctor also did not take the head oncologist’s suggestion of “light chemo” but instead insisted on heavy chemo. He told Tim that he was going to be very sick. His words were “We are really going to really beat you up!” That was not very comforting.

He left the room and we were there with the young doctor we had first seen. Tim said to him “We are going home to pray about all of this.” This doctor’s face lit up and he said “Yes! You must pray.” I asked him about what they had seen while scoping Tim. He told me that they could not find anything. We were shocked, but in a good way! Then he said “Keep doing what you are doing.”

CANCER IS BIG BUSINESS

I wrote an article months ago about how cancer is big business for the pharmaceutical companies. They make up to 85% of their profit off of chemo drugs! Why would they want a cure? Especially a cure which they could not patent. Nutritional treatment? “Bah humbug!” they say.

Did you know that oncologists and cancer centers are paid thousands of dollars by the Pharmaceutical companies? You can actually check to see if your doctor is being paid by them and how much:

Click on this link and put in your hospital, clinic or doctors’ name, and you will be able to see how much money they are receiving and from which big Pharma company:

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

There have been numerous reports of holistic doctors who have had success in treating cancer with nutrition, and many of them have been found dead – the report stating that the deaths were probably suicide. I think not.

CHEMO AND RADIATION DOES NOT WORK BY AND LARGE

There is a website called Chrisbeatcancer. He gives the statistics of the success rate of 5 year survival using chemo and radiation. It will shock you.

Study: Chemo Is Only 2.1% Effective Toward 5 Year Survival [8 Min.]

We want you to know that today, Tim’s lymph nodes are completely flat, and the last oncologist said that there is no mass on his voice box!

TIM’S REGIMEN

1.Ketogenic Diet for cancer (you will find SO much info online about this.) No refined sugar!

2. Keeping the body slightly alkaline and not acidic. (there are foods which are alkaline forming and others which are acidic forming. You can look this up too. A slightly alkaline system keeps a healthy body. An acidic system is a
breeding ground for cancer and other diseases. Buy testing strips at Amazon – they are cheap.

We’ve all heard “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Did you know that the apple is the top fruit which makes our bodies alkaline? So it wasn’t just a silly saying!

3. Sacred Frankincense Oil (food grade) a few drops under the tongue twice a day and a drop or two rubbed directly on the lymph nodes. . We buy ours from nativeamericannutritionals.com Isn’t it amazing that the Magi brought Frankincense to the baby Jesus?!

4. Juicing with beets, carrots and apples (all organic if possible)

5. We eat healthy meals every day and usually have a big salad each day.

6. No cow’s milk. Replace this with unsweetened Coconut milk or Almond milk. Cow’s milk produces an abundance of mucus in the body which is very unhealthy.

Warning:

The Ketogenic diet is a rapid weight loss diet, so be careful! Make sure that if you go under a healthy weight that you add healthy complex carbs to your diet. We get weighed every few days.

Don’t forget that all of this comes from the Lord, and Prayer is an essential part of this diet!

May the Lord use this article to help so many who trust doctors implicitly, and have never tried a nutritionally based diet to treat their cancer. Even if you are on chemotherapy now, we are reading that the people who are on the Ketogenic diet and keep their system more alkaline, and take Frankincense Oil, do better than other patients on chemo.

We would like to thank all the people who provided us with this vital information and all the intercessory prayer that went up for Tim.

Mostly, we want to give our thanks to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

MARANATHA!

[1]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/10/ketogenic-diet.aspx

THE TRUTH ABOUT ISIS: WHAT THEY REALLY WANT

Islamic_State_(IS)_insurgents,_Anbar_Province,_Iraq

From the left we hear an echoing of words spoken by Obama, that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. Why would Obama’s cheerleaders dare to differ on such an important topic? Surely he knows the truth about this ruthless and barbaric organization, right? His narrative of Islam being a religion of peace would be diametrically opposed to an ISIS-ISLAMIC affiliation.

But the truth is this: ISIS is not only part of Islam, but is the resurrection of their prophet Mohammad’s words from the Qur’an. ISIS IS fundamentalist Islam in its truest sense. To say that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam is either the height of naiveté, or intentional misinformation so as to deceive the masses.  With Obama, I believe the latter.

From theatlantic.com What ISIS Really Wants:

I would go so far as to say that Islam has been reestablished” by the caliphate.

The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it. [1] – source 

More from theatlantic.com:

What is the Islamic State?

Where did it come from, and what are its intentions? The simplicity of these questions can be deceiving, and few Western leaders seem to know the answers. In December, The New York Times published confidential comments by Major General Michael K. Nagata, the Special Operations commander for the United States in the Middle East, admitting that he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. “We have not defeated the idea,” he said. “We do not even understand the idea.” In the past year, President Obama has referred to the Islamic State, variously, as “not Islamic” and as al-Qaeda’s “jayvee team,” statements that reflected confusion about the group, and may have contributed to significant strategic errors.” -source

What to Do About ISIS?

The group seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing. -source

The ONLY Way to Destroy ISIS:

One way to un-cast the Islamic State’s spell over its adherents would be to overpower it militarily and occupy the parts of Syria and Iraq now under caliphate rule. Al‑Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive, cockroach-like, by going underground. The Islamic State cannot. If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate. Caliphates cannot exist as underground movements, because territorial authority is a requirement: take away its command of territory, and all those oaths of allegiance are no longer binding.

Former pledges could of course continue to attack the West and behead their enemies, as freelancers. But the propaganda value of the caliphate would disappear, and with it the supposed religious duty to immigrate and serve it. If the United States were to invade, the Islamic State’s obsession with battle at Dabiq suggests that it might send vast resources there, as if in a conventional battle. If the state musters at Dabiq in full force, only to be routed, it might never recover.
Abu Baraa, who maintains a YouTube channel about Islamic law, says the caliph, Baghdadi, cannot negotiate or recognize borders, and must continually make war, or he will remove himself from Islam.” -source

Is this why Obama speaks of “containing” ISIS yet never “destroying” them? He know their tactics and their rules. He knows that they would never go underground and hide as would Al-Qaeda. They MUST continue to make war openly and to their own peril. For them to die is victory in the name of their prophet. Obama knows that a ground war could take ISIS out – completely. But the big question is: does he want to do that?

If we had identified the Islamic State’s intentions early, and realized that the vacuum in Syria and Iraq would give it ample space to carry them out, we might, at a minimum, have pushed Iraq to harden its border with Syria and preemptively make deals with its Sunnis. That would at least have avoided the electrifying propaganda effect created by the declaration of a caliphate just after the conquest of Iraq’s third-largest city. Yet, just over a year ago, Obama told The New Yorker that he considered ISIS to be al-Qaeda’s weaker partner. “If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” the president said. -source

From Daniel Pipes – a Christian Post piece:

Dr. Daniel Pipes is president of Middle East Forum, and is brilliant in his grasp of the events in that region. This is taken from his piece entitled

“Sorry Mr. President – ISIS is 100% Islamic”:

In a televised address on how to address the Islamic State Wednesday evening, President Barack Obama declared the organization variously known as ISIS or ISIL to be “not Islamic.”

In making this preposterous claim, Obama joins his two immediate predecessors in pronouncing on what is not Islamic. Bill Clinton called the Taliban treatment of women and children “a terrible perversion of Islam.” George W. Bush deemed that 9/11 and other acts of violence against innocents “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

None of the three has any basis for such assertions. To state the obvious: As non-Muslims and politicians, rather than Muslims and scholars, they are in no position to declare what is Islamic and what is not. As Bernard Lewis, a leading American authority of Islam, notes: “It is surely presumptuous for those who are not Muslims to say what is orthodox and what is heretical in Islam.”

Indeed, Obama compounds his predecessors’ errors and goes further: Clinton and Bush merely described certain actions (treatment of women and children, acts of violence against innocents) as un-Islamic, but Obama has dared to declare an entire organization (and quasi-state) to be “not Islamic.”

The only good thing about this idiocy? At least it’s better than the formulation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (known as CAIR) that has the nerve to call the Islamic State “anti-Islamic.”

In the end, though, neither U.S. presidents nor Islamist apologists fool people. Anyone with eyes and ears realizes that the Islamic State, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda before it, is 100 percent Islamic. And most Westerners, as indicated by detailed polling in Europe, do have eyes and ears. Over time, they are increasingly relying on common sense to conclude that the group is indeed profoundly Islamic.” [2] – source

Enter: Political Correctness

Centuries have passed since the wars of religion ceased in Europe, and since men stopped dying in large numbers because of arcane theological disputes. Hence, perhaps, the incredulity and denial with which Westerners have greeted news of the theology and practices of the Islamic State. Many refuse to believe that this group is as devout as it claims to be, or as backward-looking or apocalyptic as its actions and statements suggest.

Their skepticism is comprehensible. In the past, Westerners who accused Muslims of blindly following ancient scriptures came to deserved grief from academics—notably the late Edward Said—who pointed out that calling Muslims “ancient” was usually just another way to denigrate them. Look instead, these scholars urged, to the conditions in which these ideologies arose—the bad governance, the shifting social mores, the humiliation of living in lands valued only for their oil.

Without acknowledgment of these factors, no explanation of the rise of the Islamic State could be complete. But focusing on them to the exclusion of ideology reflects another kind of Western bias: that if religious ideology doesn’t matter much in Washington or Berlin, surely it must be equally irrelevant in Raqqa or Mosul. When a masked executioner says Allahu akbar while beheading an apostate, sometimes he’s doing so for religious reasons. -source

Progressives must follow and support the narrative which claims that beheadings and burning people alive in cages cannot be a part of Islam – it is unthinkable! What they fail to understand is that most Muslims do not follow their book (Qur’an) to the letter.  ISIS members are pure Islamists and followers of their prophet, Mohammad. These men are fighting a Holy War against civilization. Their prophet spoke of Holy War against the enemies of Allah in the jihadist passages of the Qur’an. ISIS follows these passages no matter what the outcome.

The Truth About Islam

I wrote this article almost two years ago. I took many of the “jihadist” passages straight from the Qur’an, to help people to understand that political correctness in the case of Islamic Terrorism will only get you killed:

The Truth About Islam

Why the World Does Not Understand ISIS

Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

The Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), follows a distinctive variety of Islam whose beliefs about the path to the Day of Judgment matter to its strategy, and can help the West know its enemy and predict its behavior. Its rise to power is less like the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (a group whose leaders the Islamic State considers apostates) than like the realization of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million.

We have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State in at least two ways. First, we tend to see jihadism as monolithic, and to apply the logic of al‑Qaeda to an organization that has decisively eclipsed it. The Islamic State supporters I spoke with still refer to Osama bin Laden as “Sheikh Osama,” a title of honor. But jihadism has evolved since al-Qaeda’s heyday, from about 1998 to 2003, and many jihadists disdain the group’s priorities and current leadership.

Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam. -source/

Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it. We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.

Control of territory is an essential precondition for the Islamic State’s authority in the eyes of its supporters. This map, adapted from the work of the Institute for the Study of War, shows the territory under the caliphate’s control as of January 15, along with areas it has attacked. Where it holds power, the state collects taxes, regulates prices, operates courts, and administers services ranging from health care and education to telecommunications.

In November, the Islamic State released an infomercial-like video tracing its origins to bin Laden. It acknowledged Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi, the brutal head of al‑Qaeda in Iraq from roughly 2003 until his killing in 2006, as a more immediate progenitor, followed sequentially by two other guerrilla leaders before Baghdadi, the caliph. Notably unmentioned: bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, the owlish Egyptian eye surgeon who currently heads al‑Qaeda. Zawahiri has not pledged allegiance to Baghdadi, and he is increasingly hated by his fellow jihadists. His isolation is not helped by his lack of charisma; in videos he comes across as squinty and annoyed. But the split between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State has been long in the making, and begins to explain, at least in part, the outsize bloodlust of the latter.

Maqdisi taught Zarqawi, who went to war in Iraq with the older man’s advice in mind. In time, though, Zarqawi surpassed his mentor in fanaticism, and eventually earned his rebuke. At issue was Zarqawi’s penchant for bloody spectacle—and, as a matter of doctrine, his hatred of other Muslims, to the point of excommunicating and killing them. In Islam, the practice of takfir, or excommunication, is theologically perilous. “If a man says to his brother, ‘You are an infidel,’ ” the Prophet said, “then one of them is right.” If the accuser is wrong, he himself has committed apostasy by making a false accusation. The punishment for apostasy is death. And yet Zarqawi heedlessly expanded the range of behavior that could make Muslims infidels.

The Islamic State awaits the army of “Rome,” whose defeat at Dabiq, Syria, will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse.” -source

The Army of Rome……..?

MARANATHA