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imperative the use of a unique religious calendar, it also has its own week. Unlike the Western rhythm of a week—Monday through Friday being the body of the workweek followed by Saturday and Sunday as the weekend, with Judaism and Christianity using these two days for their respective days of worship—Islam holds Friday as its sacred day of prayer. This is the day that Muslims meet at the mosque to pray and listen to a sermon.
Thus it quite plausible that the biblical reference to the Antichrist who will “try to change the set times and the laws” describes a Muslim. As we look at the full picture, only Islam fits the bill of a system that has its own unique calendar, a week based on its own religious history, and a clear system of law that it wishes to impose onto the entire earth. Surely if a Muslim ever emerges as powerful as the Mahdi, he will attempt toinstitute Islamic law worldwide—and the Islamic calendar and week as well.
    THE RIDER ON A WHITE HORSE
    The final similarity between the Antichrist and the Mahdi that we will discuss in this chapter is the fact that both the Antichrist and the Mahdi are identified with a biblical passage that describes a rider on a white horse. While this could be literal, it is most probably a symbolic picture of the two men. The amazing thing is that the origin of the biblical tradition of the Antichrist on a white horse and the origin of the Islamic tradition of the Mahdi on a white horse come from the same passage in the Bible.
The basis for the symbolic picture of both the Antichrist and the Mahdi on a white horse is the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Here the Apostle John describes his vision of the release of the events that mark the beginning of the end times. The picture is of Jesus holding a scroll—on the outside of the scroll are seven wax seals. The breaking of each seal releases a specific and distinct end-time event:
I watched as the Lamb [Jesus] opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest. (Revelation 6:1–2)
    The seals that follow this rider are:
1. Peace is taken from the earth.
2. Famine.
3. Plagues and death.
4. Persecution and martyrdom of God’s people.
5. A great earthquake.
6. The wrath of God.
    So we see that after the rider appears on the scene, the world essentially freefalls into the chaos that defines the last hour. The interpretation that many Bible scholars apply to this passage is thus: the white horse is an imitation of the white horse that Jesus will ride when He returns (Revelation 19:11). Thus the rider is an imitation Christ, an imposter—an Antichrist. The bow without arrows that the rider carries represents a false peace. The rider carries with his rise to power a false promise of peace. This is in alignment with and may be a direct reference to the false peace treaty that the Antichrist makes with Israel at the start of the seven-year period of his rule. The crown on his head obviously refers to his position of authority and leadership. And we see that the true motivation and bent of the rider is to conquer. In light of the identity and activity of the rider, then, we are not surprised to find out that the events that follow his emergence onto the world scene do not bring an age of peace, but rather an age of apocalyptic chaos. Apparently this is not a problem for Islamic scholars, who generally adopt a very arbitrary pick-and-choose approach to the Bible. For in seeing the Antichrist on the white horse with a crown and conquering, Muslim scholars see a clear picture of the Mahdi. As mentioned in the earlier chapter on the Mahdi, the early Muslim transmitter of hadiths, Ka’b al Ahbar is quoted as saying:
I find the Mahdi recorded in the books of the Prophets… For instance, the Book of Revelation says: