Unbelievably, the Koran says Abraham took his son Ishmael, not Isaac, for the sacrifice. Just as bad, it says Abraham was thrown into a fire by Nimrod when Abraham wasn’t even born until centuries after Nimrod’s death!

The events of the life of Nimrod, grandson of Ham, are recorded in Genesis 10, where it says he established an empire in Shinar and then spread his rule northward along the Tigris over Assyria.

“Nimrod took over that whole Mesopotamian basin and all of that area we call Iraq, and Palestine, and Jordan, and Israel, and Saudi Arabia—all of that area,” confirms Jordan. “You see, though, the descendants of Ham (after the Flood) were to go south, and the descendants of Japheth to go up, and the descendants of Shem out that way (to the east). You say, ‘But who was to take this middle ground?’ God had a people for that.

“God raised them up; that’s what he’s doing with Abraham! You see, there’s a satanic policy of evil designed against God’s purpose in that part of the land and it’s a satanic policy to contest the occupancy of the Promised Land. Satan’s policy was to occupy the land in advance of Abraham coming into it in order to contest Abraham’s seed taking it over.”

“Satan understood from the very beginning the importance of that piece of real estate over there—that part of the earth from the edge of Egypt over to the Persian Gulf, up to the apex over there; what we call that the Fertile Crescent.”

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In Genesis 12:1, God appears to Abraham in Mesopotamia and utters the famous lines, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.”

As Jordan explains, “That’s the first time God has appeared in Genesis since the Garden of Eden. He appears personally to Abraham to call him out. It was at a time when the world deserved absolutely nothing but judgment and wrath.

“Do you know another time in your Bible where the world deserved nothing but wrath and judgment and the Lord Jesus Christ appears (from heaven) and calls out one man to send salvation and blessing to all men?

“In Acts 7, the whole world is guilty before God and the nation Israel strikes out and sends the message back, ‘We’ll not have this man reign over us,’ and Stephen looks up and sees Christ standing at the ‘right hand of the Father.’

“Stephen sees Jesus (ready) to come back and pour His wrath out, and just as the time is ripe in Acts 7, a man by the name of Saul of Tarsus—a blasphemer against God who had joined the world’s rebellion against the Savior—is made Paul the Apostle and through him forms a new agency—the Church the Body of Christ.

“You have to come all the way over to Acts to get to another crisis point like you have in Genesis 12 where God chooses ones man out to send salvation to the nations. It’s a wonderful parallel there.”

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Stephen actually makes reference to Abraham at the beginning of Acts 7 when he pleads with the Jews ready to kill him, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran,
[3] And said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee.
[4] Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell.”

What is often not realized about Abraham is that when God deals with him in Ur of the Chaldees and tells him to flee, Abraham is a sophisticated city-dweller in the midst of a tremendously advanced civilization.

Jordan explains, “We get the idea that all these cities back there in time past—well, they were all headhunters and cave-dwellers. That just isn’t true, though. Ur of the Chaldees has been extensively excavated and they had running water, indoor plumbing and all kind of things in their homes—things we only had in this country as a general rule everywhere in the last 80 years. And yet in 2,000 B.C., Ur was a prosperous, advanced technological city and Abraham was urbane and he leaves there to go across the Arabian dessert to Palestine.”

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It was only after the death of his father, Terah, that Abraham, then 75 years old, “took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.” (Gen. 12:5)

Jordan says, “It took death to sever the natural link that bound Abraham to Haran (the name actually means ‘barren’ or ‘parts’) and Abraham was never going to go into the fullness of the blessings God had for him, and He was never going to go in and occupy and have the land until he had completely severed his ties with his family back there.

“Note that when God first told Abraham to go out, he didn’t do that. His obedience was very partial and it wasn’t complete obedience. It wasn’t something where he just did exactly what God said. God gave him about three things to do and he did one of them and two of them he didn’t do.

“God is separating Israel away and God is waiting until Abraham is separated alone—

out here by himself—and Abraham had to take that step of faith to step out and be what God called him to be in order to look for the program to operate. That’s what circumcision is about!

“Later on, when God gives Abraham the covenant, he gives him the sign of circumcision, which is the seal of righteousness Abraham had by faith. Circumcision in your Bible speaks to death—death of the flesh; death to man’s ability to produce a work that God would accept, and so that’s why it’s given as a seal.”