One of the reasons I love history is because I get to know how the story of a particular person or event ends.  It’s satisfying.  When we consider the story of our times, I know how that one is going to end too.  But the problem is to figure out just where we are in the timeline. 

The current rash of beheadings by Muslim terrorists around the world may—may—give us a clue as to the time and place we find ourselves.  We are well acquainted with the hostages ISIS has beheaded and published on YouTube.  Then there are the scores of Christian children in Iraq who have been beheaded in front of their parents when the children refused to denounce Jesus.  Then there was the beheading of a woman at her workplace by a Muslim terrorist in Moore, Oklahoma.  And there were twelve people beheaded in Afghanistan this past week.

What’s going on?  Beheading has been around as a form of execution for centuries.  David cut off Goliath’s head.  Church tradition reports that the apostle Paul was beheaded.  Anne Boleyn lost her head when Henry VIII found another woman he preferred as a wife.  American POWs were beheaded by the Japanese during World War II.  It’s been common.

But Muslims, under the direction of the Quran, have used beheading as an instrument of terror, not just to execute criminals or enemy prisoners, but widely employing it to slay innocent civilians in the towns and cities they have captured.  In the current spasm of violence that engulfs the Middle East, beheading has come to mean Christians who refuse to bow the knee to Allah.

There is a statement about beheading in the book of Revelation, chapter 20, verse 4.  In John’s vision, Satan has been let loose near the end of the age from the bonds that limited his control over the earth and permitted the rapid spread of the gospel.  John says, “I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image.”

It is interesting that beheading should be mentioned here in this description of the last days of the world as we know it.  Christians have died as martyrs in great numbers over the last two thousand years.  And most of them have died by means other than beheading.  Why are the beheadings of Christian believers specifically mentioned here, at the conclusion of the Bible?  Could it be that when John wrote the book of Revelation about 90 AD, he was envisioning this time--our time--when so much Christian blood is being spilled in such a shocking and horrific manner?   And when beheadings have become the symbol of Christian martyrdom?

I don’t know.  Only God does.  But this I do know: Islam is under assault by the very thing they are trying so hard to blot out.  John reports that the martyrs are killed not just because they confess Christ, but “because of the word of God.”  If there is one thing that Satan and his agents hate and fear, it is the word of God.  The Bible says that word is “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both the joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

As I pray each day I lift up to God by name friends of mine who wield that “sword.”  Some are in Muslim infected France and Spain and England and Germany.  Some are in North Africa.   Some are here in America laboring among Muslims in our large American cities.  Some are in India, and some are scrambling to translate the Bible into the language of a Muslim nation that has systematically rooted out every Christian in their country.  So they think.  I pray for pastor Abedini who languishes in a prison in Iraq.  And for others who work among Muslims in Israel and another who is the pastor of a church surrounded by Muslims.

These are missionaries.  For the most part they are very ordinary people.  Their efforts seem so small, so inconsequential.  But they are lovingly sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with one and then another.  And the power of the word of God is liberating one soul here, another there.  One day Islam will come crashing down, and many of the enslaved Islamic peoples will be set free by the grace of Christ.

No wonder they behead Christians!

Dr. Rick Perrin is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Chairman of the Board of World Reformed Fellowship..  He writes a weekly blog called ReTHINK which may be accessed at www.rethinkingnews.wordpress.com. He may be contacted directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..