The Barbarians Are Here with Michael Youssef

Part 2 – Michael Youssef Interview

Tim Moore: Dr. Michael Youssef was born and raised in Egypt. He became a follower of Christ at age 16. He speaks Arabic fluently and understands the cultural, political, and religious aspects of Islam. In 1987, he founded the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, and the following year began Leading The Way, a ministry dedicated to reaching Muslims with the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Dr. Youssef, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to Christ in Prophecy!

Michael Youssef: It’s a pleasure to be with you both, Nathan and Tim. Thank you for having me.

Tim Moore: Well, sir, it’s really our honor and we’re going to jump right in because we want to hear from you. I observed as I read your book again, that in 2017 your book entitled The Barbarians Are Here included endorsements by my friend Al Mohler and Colonel Allen West. But you said that at one point you might have warned the world that the barbarians are coming, but already eight years ago as we’re speaking today, it was clear that they had already arrived. What did you mean?

Michael Youssef: Well, I have been, since the beginning of the ’80s, actually, late ’70s, early ’80s, I have been speaking to power. Politicians, thought leaders in Australia, in England, in the United States. I spoke to people in the Reagan administration, I was invited to speak to them and I’ve been warning them about the rise of the jihadis. And I said, “This is not something I am saying. I am reading it in their material. I have it right here.” And at that time, nobody would listen.

Kind of the… well, I remember one person particularly later become a dear friend of mine in the Reagan White House. I won’t mention his name, he’s well known. He said, “You mean these goat herders are going to be a threat to us?” And I said, “Well, I’m telling you, I know Mr. Reagan is focusing on the Evil Empire, which rightly so. But communism is an economic theory that eventually, because there’s a pie in the sky, it’s going to collapse sooner or later.

But the inherent motivation of the jihadis, of occupying the world, of taking over the world and bringing on the caliphate and dominate the world is real motivation because it’s not going to be fulfilled in this life. It’s when they die that they will die killing people and that’s their greatest reward in so-called paradise. But at that time, nobody was listening but I kept on writing.

Out of the 57 books that I’ve written, there must be at least six or seven or eight warning about this, whether it be the third jihad book or the book that you have, “The Barbarians Are Here” and other books that I’ve written on the subject. And I’m constantly asking believers and just concerned citizens to understand the danger of jihadi ideologies and why they believe that this is the time in which they will have the third jihad and will succeed.

They failed the first jihad. They came all the way to France, but then they were stopped. Then they came in the 1400s or all the way to Vienna and were stopped. And they said, now our third jihad of taking over the Europe as a whole is here, but this time they say, we’re not going to do it with the sword, but we’re going to do it with birth rates and with investments. And so, what I said years ago in these books are now happening literally before our own eyes.

And it grieves me that all of these officials that I talked to through the years did nothing about it. And so, I turned my attention to preaching the Gospel and taking the Gospel to 260 million homes in the Arab-speaking world with Kingdom Sat, bringing the Gospel into all these homes.

Tim Moore: Amen.

Nathan Jones: I remember Gaddafi in Libya said that, “We’re not going to conquer the world with missiles and bombs. We’re going to do it through immigration.” And we’ve seen in the last few decades, mass immigration of Islamic people up into Europe. Of course, the United States is now experiencing that. You say that the influx of the large number of Islamicist is a gradual deliberate invasion. So, what is the difference between an average Muslim and an Islamicists? And why does this represent a clear and present danger to America and the West?

Michael Youssef: Well, you have to understand, while not all Muslims are Islamist, and I’m going to define that in a minute, so you’ll understand. But there are, I think most Muslims are sympathetic with the Islamist. Now, the Islamist are the people who say that we are commissioned by Allah to take over the world and bring the success of the prophet, Arabic word, caliph. Muslims like, for example, the king of Jordan, president of Egypt, they are opposed to political Islam. And they believe that it’s a religion ought to be practiced individually but not be the religion of the nation.

And the Gulf States, for example, they are United Arab Emirates, I mean so many others. And so, these countries, whether it be Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, or even Saudi Arabia, have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood who are the major force behind taking over of the West and turning it into an Islamic world. They outlawed them. And yet as one very prominent leader in the Middle East said to me, he said, “We outlawed them in our countries. How come in England, they give them satellite stations and they give them all the propaganda apparatus to come and attack us and attack the West?”

And there’s that blindness on the part, whether it be Starmer in England or Macron in France or Albanese in Australia, there’s that blindness where, I mean, the king of England just recently spoke at Oxford opening an Oxford University Oxford Islamic Center. And he said, “Oh, I wish all the British people understand how beautiful Islam is and appreciate it like I do.”

Well, that is total ignorance of reality. But as we go on in the discussion, I’m going to explain why there are two Islams. There’s an Islam that was in Mecca before the prophet was kicked out and went to Medina, which is the name of this city. And then coming back invading Mecca. They’re two different–because he supposedly he was receiving revelations to say, “I’m just a good guy. I am a prophet and I’m here to affirm what Moses and Jesus have said. And I’m here to support those prophets.”

But then, because he was weak and they were strong, and they were fighting him. So when he went to Medina and he became very, very strong and got a big army and came back, all of that changed. So the other side of Islam, and they’re both in the Quran, is that no kill him, take over, murder the infidels and on and on. And so, there’s a group of people who said, “No, we believe the first part.” Others, those jihadis saying, “No, the second part where we’re going to take on the world.”

Tim Moore: You know, you talked about parallels between the West and we’re in the United States of America, but really it’s the entire West. In our situation today, the rebellion against the will of God, even the providence of God is handed down in the Scriptures. These formerly Christian nations have really forgotten their own heritage. And so, we’re kind of echoing what happened in Scripture to the nation of Israel and Judah in the era of the judges.

And later, obviously Jeremiah talks a lot about this. How do you see this parallel playing out in our day and age? And is there any way to stop it from coming to the fruition of God’s judgment falling even through nations and peoples who are evil intent toward those who are formerly Christian?

Michael Youssef: I was in London just a couple of weeks ago speaking to a group of leaders and I was explaining to them that 25 years ago I was warning, I was literally in houses of parliaments meeting with leaders, warning them against what is coming. Now it’s 25 years later, I told them, now it’s here.

Now my own personal understanding of the Scripture without doing any damage to hermeneutics is that what it reminds me of is that when Israel kept on being stubborn and Jeremiah warned them and warned them and warned them, “The barbarians are coming, the Babylonians are coming and they’re going to take you into exile.” And they wouldn’t listen. And they kept moving more and more into immorality and away from God. What happened? The exile came.

And in many ways, the warning of the West to turn to God and stop pursuing this evil of immorality and the sexual revolution and all this stuff, that in the stubbornness, God says, this exile is not going to come and take you out, they’re going to come and hold you as exiles in their own countries. And today, police in Europe everywhere and even in some parts of the states, they’re afraid of the Islamist because they have shown strength and then police back off. And so what happens to them? We won. Once we intimidate the police and the state, we won.

Tim Moore: Yes.

Nathan Jones: Dr. Youssef, I was in Colorado Springs and I saw a large college group marching down the street, pro-Palestinian, death to the Jews from the river to the sea. Why is the youth in the West so enamored by the Palestinian cause?

Michael Youssef: This is the fruit of 50 or 60 years of left-wing education system in the university campuses and in some high schools. We’ve been teaching socialism and left-wing ideologies. And so, many of those white kids, and I speak freely and bluntly because I’m an African, so many of, these are trust fund kids. They’re rich kids but they’re basically made feel guilty for their wealth.

And I just saw a demonstration in Germany by the great granddaughter of the man who invented the gas for the Nazis, for the Jews. The great granddaughter is in a flotilla going to Palestine. So these are rich kids being brought up with socialistic ideology. And this is their opportunity to show their displeasure with capitalism and the evils of capitalism. So, there is an unholy alliance between the left and the Islamist right now. We see all over the world, not just in one place, it’s all over the world.

And I call this western suicide. I mean, they’re basically committing suicide. I saw a cartoon the other day where a person sitting on a branch of a tree and he’s cutting the branch while he was sitting on it. And he said, that’s the West. I mean basically we are digging our own grave and that is the saddest part. But if this is all part of God’s plan for the End Times and the coming of the Antichrist, well, I’m trusting God.

Meanwhile we have to say what is right and what is wrong, what is truth, what’s falsehood until the day we die. But at the same time, if this is what the Lord is doing, if this is He’s permitting this to happen, just like He permitted His own apple of His eye to be taken into exile into Babylon, then we have to submit and say, “Lord, thy will be done.”

Tim Moore: Thy will be done. I appreciate you being so blunt even in saying we will trust the Lord regardless of what happens. And you point out in your book that there’s so many examples of the barbarism. I was just horrified to read again. And I’ve been very familiar about the attack on the theater in Paris, France back in 2015. It tells the truth that they have tried to cover up that there are barbarians right amongst the people and they are bent toward murder.
But you point out that most western leaders exhibit cultural and spiritual blindness as described in Matthew 13 where the Lord says that there’s blindness and this is leading the people astray. But you assert, and I love this Dr. Youssef, that we as Christians, as followers of Christ, should not fall into the trap of simply complaining about the gathering darkness of this dying world. You know, it was Adrian Rogers that said it’s getting gloriously dark. So if we shouldn’t just complain, what should we as followers of Christ do?

Michael Youssef: Well, for us to light the candle, I always say, instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle. My old friend Dr. John Stott who went to be with the Lord 2012, for years he and I have been very close friends since ’71 and he would say, “When we see darkness, we need to ask where is the light?” And so when we see darkness, we say, where is the Church? And the Church is asleep.

I mean, look at so many of the megachurches now, they’re falling into the universalism. All the biggest ones saying, well, God loves everybody, everybody’s going to make it in the end. That’s universalism. I thought it was only in the mainland denominations where I grew up and fought hard. But now it’s invading so-called evangelical churches. The hyper-grace, the prosperity gospel, all of these false teachings that are invading our churches, that ought to be, to not only be repented of and turn to the drawings when you start with the Church.

So you ask me, what do we need to do? And that is why I started this program. I’m going to be on the road, Awake America campaign. I want to wake the church up to fidelity to the Word of God and fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happen, God in His mercy is going to send an awakening because an awakening is an invasion of Heaven coming to Earth. It’s not something that we can gin up. It has to come from the Holy Spirit. But repentance and a lifestyle of repentance on the part of the believers is really where we need to start.

Nathan Jones: We can understand that the secular world would obviously be open arms to Islamic ideology because they believe that everything is relative and one truth is the same as another. But why is the Church seem to be so blind? I mean, we’re seeing Chrislam and we’re seeing a merging and opening of bringing imams into the pulpit. Why is this happening in the Church?

Michael Youssef: Well, it’s happening in the Church because the Church itself become an apostate. The Church leaders have turned their back on the Gospel. The Church leaders have turned their back on the truth of the Word of God. This is where it all started. I have seen some megachurch pastors on television saying, “Well, you know, there’s some good Indians and there’s some good Chinese and there’s some good Buddhist and some good Hindus.”

That has nothing to do with our good people. It has to do with the truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father but by me.” We lost that and that’s what we need to find again. That’s what we need to rediscover again. And that’s the burden of my heart. However years or days the Lord gives me, I’m going to be 77 next month, whatever days He gives me, I’m going to be sounding that alarm to the Church of Jesus Christ and calling him back to Christ and back to the truth because that’s where things will happen. Until the Church wakes up, we are in trouble.

Tim Moore: I so appreciate your passion for waking the Church up. We share that. We know that many Christians sometimes seem to voice at least that they are growing weary of the struggle. I can tell you even in political campaigns where the enemy will come again and again and again and again just on a political issue until he wins, and eventually the electorate just gives, gets weary and gives up. But we are told in Scripture that we must remain alert and be ready and stay actively engaged. And so, your effort to convince followers of Christ to do that is so powerful.

You know, you also said in your book, Dr. Youssef, you said, “I don’t blame the barbarians,” back to speaking about those barbarians among us, “for doing what barbarians do. I hold the Church responsible for not doing what the Church was established by God to do.” So obviously preaching the Gospel, encouraging the saints, and standing for truth even as darkness rises all around us.

Michael Youssef: Absolutely. And you know, you’re very much on the End Times and I’m with you on that. And here’s what my personal view is. When I see people in the West, in America, if they see rain, they stay home and watch church on television, you know? And then I see thousands and thousands of Muslims are converting to Christ at the cost of their own lives.

I begin to think at least and it doesn’t matter what theological background you come from, you have to think, is God gathering His remnant? Is God gathering the Church? Is God bringing His Church together for His return? But meanwhile, we’re not going to give up and we’re going to put on white robes and head for the mountains and wait for Jesus. But we’re going to, He said, occupy till I come. And that word means work hard until I come.

Tim Moore: You know, we talk about the Signs of the Times, Dr. Youssef, and you talk as well about that in your newer book, the Is The End Near? and so many signs seem to be pointing to the Lord’s return. What other signs do you see pointing to the nearness of the Lord’s return?

Michael Youssef: Well, you know, in that book you refer to, Is The End Near? I did not want to get into the debate and the argument between different theological backgrounds, whether reformed and the dispensationalist. I didn’t want to get into all this. I wanted to go to the Scripture and hear what Jesus says.

And Matthew 24 and 25, which is the heart of that book where Jesus talks about labor pain. So you talk about earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars, all those signs, six labor pains that our Lord gives us in Matthew 24. If you think of a labor pain, labor pains do not come in the beginning of the pregnancy or even during the pregnancy, but toward the end, before the baby is born, oh, we have 15 grandchildren and we love every one of them.

And so, when we see the things that our Lord talked about, we see Him coming at a faster and faster intervals. You know that the baby is about to be born. Now, whether it be tomorrow or next year, whatever time, that’s not for us. But we need to be watching for that because that motivates me to get up early in the morning and work as hard as I can because I want to take as many people to Heaven with me as the Lord will allow me.

Tim Moore: Amen.

Nathan Jones: Amen. Well, Dr. Youssef, we have a opportunity for missions like never before. I don’t have to go to Iran or Turkey or whatever. The Muslims are coming here. How can a Christian witness to Muslims? Because I know many Christians are very intimidated by Islamic evangelism.

Michael Youssef: They really are and number one, they’re afraid. So, we need to let that fear go and believe that fearing God actually encourages us to become courageous, not fearful. So when we fear God, we want to witness to the Muslims, what are they going to do? I mean, in a country like this, so in the Middle East it can kill you. But here we have the opportunities and the media and every way that we can reach out to Muslims and bring them to Christ, this is an opportunity we must never miss.

If they’re here, God brought them here for a purpose and that is for the Church to shine its light and to reach out with the love of Christ. And I have heard one testimony, I’ve heard a thousand testimonies of how many people who have searched long and hard and dissatisfied and either the Lord appeared to them in a dream and then they watch our channel Kingdom Sat, in Arabic, and they will say, “They are talking about the one I saw in my dream.”

And then they come. They get thrown out of their homes; they get thrown out of their jobs. They get, I mean, I can tell you story after story, would take me hours. And yet the courage and the strength of their faith is so challenging to me personally. And so, yeah, God has His elect and He is going to bring them together and He is bringing them together right now.

Tim Moore: I was inspired by the courage shown by the Egyptian Christian young men who were massacred, who were martyred by ISIS there on the shores of Libya. And it is a powerful challenge even to those of us in the West. Do we love our Lord enough? Not just to lay down our life, but to go next door and witness to our neighbor or to talk to a Muslim colleague at work or something of that nature.

Well, Dr. Youssef, you do have such a powerful ministry and voice outreaching, not only here in America but around the world and to Muslims in particular. How can our viewers connect with your ministry or watch the materials that you regularly are sharing?

Michael Youssef: Well, they can go to LTW, that’s L for Leading The Way, ltw.org. And they’re going to get everything they need, opportunities to pray for our field team because those people are on the line because they get a call and they don’t know if that call is somebody watching the television saw the number, call them, whether they’re going to kill them or they really genuinely want to be converted.

So pray for our field team around the world, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa and the whole Arabic-speaking world. Pray for our producers and programmers for Kingdom Sat, and pray for the distribution of that little navigator, which is reaching some of the remotest areas of the world.

And we’re so grateful for the partnership with you and opportunity to see that the Gospel is preached in every way that we know how possibly through communication and using the media.

Tim Moore: Well, Dr. Youssef, we very much appreciate and praise the Lord for your determination to serve Him faithfully, to equip the saints and to speak truth boldly. And you certainly do that. And so, we pray His continued blessing on you and your ministry until the trumpet sounds. Thank you again for joining us on Christ in Prophecy.

Michael Youssef: Pleasure. Absolutely. To God be the glory.

Tim Moore: Well, we so appreciate you being here.

Closing

Tim Moore: You know, folks, there was a time when the unfettered immigration of people from parts of the world that do not share a Judeo-Christian worldview was seen as a problem in just a few big cities. But today there are large Muslim enclaves in places like Michigan, Minnesota, and even Texas. And loud advocates for Sharia law and in Islamist ideology now serve even in the United States Congress.

Nathan Jones: Oh yeah, some of those who have immigrated to the United States are not only ungrateful for the opportunities they’ve been given in this land of the free, they also actively oppose everything America stands for. And they shamelessly echo the talking points of terrorist groups like Hamas from their positions of power.

Tim Moore: We need to be engaged in speaking truth, opposing deception, and offering real hope to those who are ensnared in Satan’s web of lies.

Nathan Jones: And if you’d like to get a copy of Dr. Youssef’s book, The Barbarians Are Here, just call the number on the screen or visit our online store. We’ll be glad to send you a copy.

Tim Moore: As we record and anticipate airing this program in the late summer of 2025, there is growing fear among counter-terrorism officials that another October 7th style attack on Jews is growing more likely somewhere in the world. The heightened antisemitism and animosity toward Israel that is evident is following the same pattern that was apparent in Germany almost 100 years ago. How long will it be before radicalized individuals or groups act out on the hatred that has been stoked in their hearts?

Nathan Jones: And like the prophets of old, we cry out how long, O Lord, or how long before you once again step forward to rescue your people? That cry isn’t motivated by doubt but by a deep and abiding confidence that God will be faithful to all His promises. And Jesus did promise that He is coming soon to rescue those who are His from the wrath to come. So we pray that you are His and that you are eagerly anticipating the Rapture.

Tim Moore: Well, that’s all the time we have for today. Until next week, look up and be watchful and know that our redemption is drawing near. Godspeed!

End of Program