Chapter 20: The Mongols in Prophecy

I have already shown how the rise of Islam brought judgment to the church, but also how the Mongol invasion and conquest of Baghdad interrupted Islam’s expansion. Genghis Khan was the founder of the Yuan dynasty which swept across Asia, bringing judgment upon Islam. He was reported to have said:

“I am the punishment of God… If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”

So what prophetic role did the Mongols play in their conquest of Baghdad? First, some biblical background is in order.

Saul’s Eighteenth Year

Solomon laid the foundation of his temple in the 480^th year from the Exodus (1 Kings 6:1). He finished the temple itself in seven years (year 487 from the Exodus), and then it took an unknown number of years to complete the construction of the temple vessels before the glory of God filled the temple. I believe it took another three years and that the glory came down 490 years after the Exodus.

If the fourth year of Solomon was also the 480^th year from the Exodus, then Solomon’s first year was 476-477 years after the Exodus. Forty years earlier, David had become king (436-437). Saul reigned 22 years after his disqualification, so he was disqualified 414-415 years after the Exodus. We note here that 414 is the number indicating Cursed Time, as I explained in my book, Secrets of Time.

The Amalekites attacked Israel shortly after the Exodus from Egypt, because this attack occurred before Israel arrived at Mount Sinai (Exodus 17). Hence, in our study of timing, we can equate the year of the Exodus with the year that God commissioned Saul to bring judgment upon the Amalekites. God had vowed to wage “war against Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16), and told Moses not to forget this; but then God seemed to forget it for centuries.

But God had not really forgotten. He was simply full of grace. Cursed Time is a grace period that gives men and nations opportunity to repent. In the case of national curses, this grace period lasts 414 years or multiples of 414 years. In the case of Amalek, God gave them 414 years of grace before executing divine judgment upon them for their attack upon Israel (1 Sam. 15:1, 2, 3).

At the same time, God was also dealing with Saul, who was a rebellious Pentecostal king. Not only was Saul crowned on Pentecost (“the day of wheat harvest,” 1 Sam. 12:17), but he was also filled with the Spirit and even prophesied (1 Sam. 10:10). This makes him the main Old Testament prophetic type of the church.

Saul’s refusal to execute Agag, the Amalekite king, disqualified him as God’s earthly agent (judge). The prophet told him in 1 Sam. 15:23, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king.”

When Saul was disqualified, Samuel mourned for him (1 Sam. 16:1) until God told him to go to Bethlehem to find another king to anoint. He found David, son of Jesse, and when he anointed David, “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized him” (1 Sam. 16:14). This prophesies of the church being disqualified during the Age of Pentecost.

This was how the Roman church, as well as the Protestant churches and all that pertains to Pentecost, were disqualified legally from reigning in the Tabernacles Age to come. It does not mean that we ought to forsake or renounce Pentecost—or Passover, for that matter. It simply means that our Passover and Pentecost experience is insufficient, due to the corruption of human nature. We must go beyond the first two feasts, following the pattern of David.

David’s Preparation and Early Life

Saul died after reigning forty years (Acts 13:21), and David took the throne at the age of thirty (2 Sam. 5:4). This means Saul had reigned ten years before David was even born. It also means that David was just eight years old when Saul was disqualified (in the 18^th year of his reign) and when David was anointed for the first time.

This explains why David was not with his brothers when the Israelite army was confronted by Goliath some time later (1 Sam. 17:17, 18). The lawful military age was twenty. David was somewhere between ten and twenty years old when he killed Goliath.

More specifically, David was eighteen when he fled from Saul, even as Joseph was eighteen when he arrived in Egypt to be trained by the Lord through slavery. Eighteen is the biblical number of oppression or bondage. It seems that tests and trials like this occurred to biblical characters when they were eighteen, or, in the case of kings, their eighteenth year. Not only Saul, but David himself was run off his throne by Absalom in the eighteenth year of his reign.

So we can say with reasonable certainty that David killed Goliath between the age of ten and the age of eighteen. Yet it is unlikely that David was under 14, for that seems too young. More likely, he was 15, as we will see. After killing Goliath, David was immediately brought to Saul’s house (1 Sam. 18:2), and as they returned, the women sang “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Sam. 18:7). Saul was angry, and “the next day” an evil spirit caused him to prophesy (1 Sam. 18:10) and to try to kill David with a javelin!

David escaped, but Saul then became afraid of him and “removed him from his presence and appointed him as commander of a thousand” (1 Sam. 18:13). He hoped that if David were exposed to danger, he might be killed on account of his inexperience. However, David only became more successful.

We are not told how long David remained as captain of the Israelite army, but the point of this is to show how we may pinpoint these events by the events that took place later in church history. After all, church history was the fulfillment of these prophetic types, and every event in the history of Saul’s reign was repeated in church history.

The Mongols Fulfill Prophecy

The Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 A.D. serves as the fulfillment of David’s successful battle against Goliath. In this case, Islam was the “giant” threatening Saul’s army—that is, the church and the Western nations in general. The year 1258, in fact, fell on the 25^th Jubilee of the Age of Pentecost, which corresponds to the 25^th year of Saul’s reign. This was seven years after Saul’s disqualification, and therefore David was fifteen years old (8 plus 7) when he killed Goliath.

From the day of Pentecost in 33 A.D., when the Pentecostal Age began, add 25 x 49 years, and we get 1225 years. Add this to 33, and we come to 1258 A.D., the year Baghdad fell to the Mongols.

Is this mere coincidence? No, for we read in history how Genghis Khan came to power in 1206 and conquered his first nation (Western Xia) in 1209. The year 1209 was 49 years earlier. In other words, from 1209-1258 we see the history of the church’s 25^th Jubilee cycle from beginning to end, and it is marked by the rise of the Mongols until their crowning achievement—the capture of Baghdad.

Here is the historical record:

“Mongol leader Genghis Khan commanded some initial raids against Western Xia before launching a full-scale invasion in 1209. This invasion marked both the first major invasion conducted by Genghis and the beginning of the Mongol invasion of China.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_conquest_of_Western_Xia

After making Western Xia a vassal state, he conquered China and then moved west. Genghis Khan died in 1226, but his family continued the war in his place.

“The Siege of Baghdad, which lasted from January 29 until February 10, 1258, entailed the investment, capture, and sack of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, by Ilkhanate Mongol forces and allied troops….

“The Mongols executed [the Caliph] Al-Musta'sim and massacred many residents of the city, which was left greatly depopulated. The siege is considered to mark the end of the Islamic Golden Age, during which the caliphs had extended their rule from the Iberian Peninsula to Sindh, and which was also marked by many cultural achievements.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_%281258%29

The fall of Baghdad gave the West a reprieve of sorts from the Islamic threat. In another account, we read,

“Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258. It was then the biggest, richest city in the world. It was where the Caliph lived. He ruled the Muslim world, at least in name. Baghdad has fallen to a non-Muslim army only one other time: in 2003 to the Americans.”

https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/the-fall-of-baghdad-to-the-mongols/

From a prophetic standpoint, the Mongols played the role of David killing Goliath, as applied in that particular time period. “Saul” had reigned 25 Jubilees, and “David” was fifteen. Just as the killing of Goliath helped the Israelites in ancient times, so also did the overthrow of Baghdad assist the church in its 25^th Jubilee.

God’s Gift, the City of Peace

The meaning of Baghdad is “God’s gift,” but its official name was Madiniat al-Salaam, the City of Peace, which is also the meaning of Jerusalem. Both cities, in fact, turned out to be carnal cities, not fulfilling the mandate of peace, but (as we read of Jerusalem itself) becoming “the bloody city” (Ezekiel 24:6). In fact, it was for this reason (legally speaking) that the earthly Jerusalem was rejected in favor of the heavenly city.

The Islamic City of Peace is mentioned here:

“When the Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur, founded a completely new city for his capital, he chose the name Madinat al-Salaam or City of Peace. This was the official name on coins, weights, and other official usage, although the common people continued to use the old name. By the 11th century, ‘Baghdad’ became almost the exclusive name for the world-renowned metropolis.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad

The main difference, perhaps, between Baghdad and Jerusalem is that the name Jerusalem is plural—or rather, a dual—while Baghdad is singular. In other words, there was only one Baghdad, but there were two Jerusalems, one heavenly, the other earthly, so that the fulfillment of God’s promises to the city could be fulfilled even after the glory departed from the earthly city, never to return (Ezekiel 11:23).

Rev. 11:8 identifies the earthly Jerusalem with Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon itself. Baghdad, too, is a type of Mystery Babylon, the great harlot that is the prophetic rival of the bride of Christ. In that sense, Baghdad is represented by Goliath, the oppressor. Even as Babylon fell after 70 years (604-534 B.C.), so also Baghdad fell to US troops in April 2003, which was 70½ years after Iraq had become an independent nation in October of 1932.

The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 granting Iraq full independence, was to take full effect when Iraq joined the League of Nations. This took place on October 3, 1932.

Babylon as a Monetary System

The original city of Babylon was a center of trade and finance. Modern Mystery Babylon is a worldwide banking and financial system based on debt and usury, using fiat money. Today we see the Babylonian system entrenched in the West, and it is presently being overthrown by the kings of the east, who are re-introducing a gold-backed monetary system that President Nixon destroyed in 1971.

Chinese currency is called renminbi, or yuan. China is in the process of setting up a gold-backed yuan, which, when completed, will rival all fiat currencies that rely totally upon faith in the value of currencies created out of thin air and backed by nothing. “Goliath” today, in fact, is the monetary system, because the giant’s name comes from the Hebrew word galah, which is often translated “DISCOVER” (credit card).

We only need to look at the tall buildings where these financial headquarters are located to see that they are “giants” in the land.

The conflict today between Babylon and the kings of the east was foreshadowed by Genghis Khan and his sons, who invaded Baghdad in 1258. How? Because Genghis Khan was the first ruler of a new dynasty known as the Yuan Dynasty. Chinese currency goes by two names: the yuan and renminbi.

“Genghis Khan (1162–1227) and his sons set the foundation for the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) by defeating the Western Xia and conquering Central Asia, Mongolia, and the Hexi Corridor.”

http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/china-history/the-yuan-dynasty.htm

The Mongols, of course, had no idea how they were fulfilling prophecy, nor could they conceive of the way they were establishing prophetic precedents for the financial overthrow of Mystery Babylon more than seven centuries later. But that is the unique character of prophecy and the divine plan, and when we study history, we can see God’s hints from the past and understand how He is working in the present.