← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust

Thread 7443

Thread ID: 7443 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2003-06-17

Wayback Archive

Faust [OP]

2003-06-17 22:31 | User Profile

**Zion's Christian Soldiers

(CBS) This week, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told President Bush that he would start to dismantle some illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank as part of an agreement with the new Palestinian Prime Minister.

That news has already alarmed those Jewish settlers -- and ultra-Zionist Israelis who believe that the Jewish State should control all of the Biblical Jewish homeland.

But they're not the only group that feels that way. So do Fundamentalist Christian Evangelicals who make up the largest single religious grouping in the United States. Correspondent Bob Simon first reported this story on October 6, 2002. What's the number one item on the agenda of the Christian Right? Abortion? School Prayer? No and No. Believe it or not, what's most important to a lot of conservative Christians is the Jewish State. Israel: Its size, its strength, and its survival. Why?

There is the alliance between America and Israel in the war on Islamic terror. But it goes deeper. For Christians who interpret the bible in a literal fashion, Israel has a crucial role to play in bringing on the Second Coming of Christ.

Last fall, supporters of the Christian Coalition gathered on the Mall in Washington to express their faith and to lobby the administration. The rally was organized by the Christian Coalition, which wants to make sure that the Bush Administration sees the struggle in the Middle East between Jews and Muslims their way - the Christian way.

At one congregation in Colorado, it’s Israel Awareness Day. But this is not a Jewish congregation. They are all Christians. Not only are they holding these pep rallies all across America, they’re also streaming here to Israel, to the dangerous streets of Jerusalem to express their undying devotion.

American Christian Zionists say they are now a more important source of support for Israel than American Jews or the traditional Jewish lobby.

“It is my belief that the Bible Belt in America is Israel’s only safety belt right now,” says Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the leaders of the Christian Right. That’s the bulk of Evangelical Christians; Falwell claims to speak for all of them.

“There are 70 million of us,” he says. “And if there’s one thing that brings us together quickly it’s whenever we begin to detect our government becoming a little anti-Israel.”

Falwell began to detect just that in April 2002 when President Bush called on Israel to withdraw its tanks from Palestinian towns on the West Bank. So Falwell shot off a letter of protest to the White House, which was followed by a hundred thousand e-mails from Christian conservatives. Israel did not move its tanks. Mr. Bush did not ask again.

“There’s nothing that would bring the wrath of the Christian public in this country down on this government like abandoning or opposing Israel in a critical matter,” Falwell says. The “Christian public” is, he says, Mr. Bush’s core constituency.

“I really believe when the chips are down Ariel Sharon can trust George Bush to do the right thing every time,” says Falwell.

Prime Minister Sharon can apparently trust the Christian Evangelicals to do the right thing too. They treated him like a rock star when they flocked to Jerusalem last fall to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

What propels them? Why do they love Israel so much? The return of the Jews to their ancient homeland is seen by Evengelicals as a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ. Therefore, when the Jewish state was created in 1948 they saw it as a sign.

Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 also deepened their excitement and heightened their anticipation. And today’s war between Jews and Arabs was also prophesied, they say. They’ve seen it all before – in the pages of the Bible.

“The Bible does not contain the word of God,” says Ed McAteer. “Listen to me closely. The Bible is the word of God.” McAteer is known as the Godfather of the Christian Right. He’s a former Colgate marketing executive from Memphis, and a founder of the Moral Majority.

McAteer believes that the current situation is the beginning of the final battle. “I believe that we are seeing prophecy unfold so rapidly and dramatically and wonderfully and, without exaggerating, makes me breathless.”

But he’s not the only one. Countless millions of Americans are reading a series of novels called “Left Behind.” These novels are topping bestseller lists all over the country and they’re being made into movies. They chronicle apocalyptic times, and the setting is the 21st century, complete with war planes and TV correspondents.

However, the plot is ripped from the pages of the Bible, so it all winds up here in Israel where, according to the Book of Revelations, the final battle in the history of the future will be fought on an ancient battlefield in northern Israel called Armageddon. It will follow seven years of tribulation during which the earth will be shaken by such disasters that previous human history will seem like a day in the country. The blood will rise as high as a horse’s bridle at Armageddon, before Christ triumphs to begin his 1,000-year rule.

And the Jews? Well, two-thirds of them will have been wiped out by now. But the survivors will accept Jesus at last.

“The Jews die or convert. As a Jew, I can’t feel very comfortable with the affections of somebody who looks forward to that scenario,” says Gershom Gorenberg, who knows that scenario well.

Gorenberg is the author of the “End of Days,” a book about those Christian evangelicals who choose to read the Bible literally. “They don’t love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play, and that’s not who we are, and we never auditioned for that part, and the play is not one that ends up good for us.”

“If you listen to the drama they’re describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act.”

But if that makes Gershom Gorenberg feel uncomfortable, these Christians say it’s only because he doesn’t understand how deeply they love him.

“The Jews need conversion,” says Kay Arthur. “They need to know that the Messiah is coming. And the Bible tells us what’s going to happen.” Arthur heads an organization called Precept Ministries in Chattanooga, Tenn. She brings thousands of pilgrims to the Holy Land.

The Christian fundamentalists believe the only Israelis who are really listening to God are the hard line Jewish settlers who live on the West Bank and Gaza and refuse to move. The Christians trudge up to these settlements as if they were making pilgrimages to holy shrines. That’s because they and the settlers share a core conviction.

They believe that God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. “Every grain of sand, every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and, and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews,” says McAteer. This includes the West Bank and Gaza.

What about the three million Palestinians who live on the West Bank and Gaza? McAteer suggests the bulk of them could be cleansed from this God-given real estate and moved to some Arab country. Nothing can come between the Jews and their land.

In fact, many fundamentalists believe that when Prime Minister Rabin signed the Oslo accords and offered to trade land for peace, it was not only a mistake, it was a sin.

“They were going against the word of God. You cannot go against the word of God. And I believe that God stopped it ... by the things that happened.” says Arthur. She hints that God punished Rabin by assassinating him. “I think that God did not want that Oslo Accord to go through.”

“God save us from these people,” says political analyst Yossi Alfer, who served 12 years in Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. Later, he became Israel Director of the American Jewish Committee.

Says Alfer: “When you see what these people are encouraging Israel and the U.S. Administration to do that is, ignore the Palestinians, if not worse, if not kick them out, expand the settlements to the greatest extent possible, they are leading us into a scenario of out and out disaster.”

But many American Jewish leaders who used to shun support from the Christian Right have changed their minds. Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, accepts their support.

“On this specific issue on this day we come together. And what is the issue? The issue is fighting terrorism,” Foxman says.

That is precisely what the Bush Administration and the Israeli Government have been saying since September 11, that they are allies in the war on terror. But the Christian Fundamentalists go further. They say it is not just an alliance between nations but between religions.

“A lot of Muslims feel these days that Christians and Jews are getting together and ganging up on them,” Simon said to Falwell.

“That’s true. I’m sorry, that’s true. I hope it will cease to be so. But I think that is the fact right now,” says Falwell.

Falwell believes most Muslims want to live in peace but, he says, the lines have been drawn. Christians and Jews are on one side, Muslims on the other and, he says, those lines were drawn more than a thousand years ago.

“You wrote an approving piece recently about a book called ‘Unveiling Islam,’” says Simon to Falwell. “And you, the authors of that book wrote, ‘The Muslim who commits acts of violence in jihad does so with the approval of Mohammed.’ Do you believe that?"

“I do,” says Fallwell. “I think Mohammed was a terrorist. I read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war.”

“So, in the same way that Moses provided the ultimate example for the Jews and same way that Jesus provided the ultimate example for Christians, Mohammed provided the ultimate example for Muslims and he was a terrorist,” asks Simon.

“In my opinion,” says Fallwell. “And I do believe that - Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses. And I think that Mohammed set an opposite example.”

What frightens Alfer is that he hears much of Falwell’s world view reflected in the words of the Bush Administration.

“When we hear expressions like “the evil ones,” this kind of black and white view of good guys, the bad guys,” says Alfer.

But as long as Jews are the good guys in this representation, this is good for the Jews, isn’t it?

“It’s not good for the Jews. It’s not good for the Jews," says Alfer. We have to get God out of this conflict if we’re going to have any chance to survive as a healthy, secure Jewish state."

© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/03/60minutes/main524268.shtml]http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/03/...ain524268.shtml[/url]

**

whitehomeland

2003-06-17 23:58 | User Profile

Is any more proof that Christianity is slave morality than the fact that Christians are brainwashed into doing whatever the Jews want ?

Ariel Sharon's decision to dismantle the "illegal " Jewish settlements is a scam.

First of all, the "illegal" settlements only make up a small amount of the actual settelements on the west bank. He wanted to placate Bush by claiming that Israel would dismantle its "illegal" settlements. Ariel Sharon never said that he would dismantle the legal settlements. Then he attacked members of Hamas. He knew that by doing this that Hamas would retaliate and that he would not have to sit down with the Palestinian Prime Minister.

George bush cannot force Ariel Sharon to give up land. The Israeli lobby is too powerful in America. AIPAC (american Isreali political action committee) gives 10 million dollars every election cycle. THey make contributions to virtually every member of Congress and all of the mainstream presidential candidates(with the exception of Pat Buchanan). This is to ensure that no matter which party controlls the white house and Congress that America will sponsor Israels terrorism against the Palestinians.

Bush cannot withhold foreign aid to Israel or military equipment because then Jews in America would strike back by having their supporters in Congress try to block Buah's chances for re-election. Already Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson organized a letter campaign to the white house by Fundamentalist Christians. This is to try to get leverage on Bush so that if he tries to put pressure on Israel to make concessions, there will be pressure applied on Bush in America.

Texas Dissident

2003-06-18 00:04 | User Profile

*Originally posted by whitehomeland@Jun 17 2003, 18:58 * ** Is any more proof that Christianity is slave morality than the fact that Christians are brainwashed into doing whatever the Jews want ? **

whitehomeland,

Am I evidencing a slave morality and doing the Jews bidding by running this site and board?

Do exceptions to a rule disprove the rule?

2600

2003-06-18 00:17 | User Profile

What the hell is wrong with the dispensationalist Christians? Do they really hate the world so much that they're cheering on what they percieve as the final show-down?

And Gershoem Gorenberg feels uncomfortable...but it is only because he doesn't understand how deeply the Christians love him. Isn't that sweet? Nevermind the fact that Nathan Sharasnky, Israeli cabinet minister, claimed that the crucifixion of Christ was a privilege! Christians worship at the feet of the Jews, while the Jews openly mock and despise Christianity...but then again, who can blame them, considering how emasculated Christianity is today? Such an easy target.

Franco

2003-06-18 00:28 | User Profile

Hey, Tex --

Maybe you could talk to your pastor and get him to issue a public, printed statement about Jews/America/the West? If he did that, then maybe other pastors would join him. Start a movement, you know? 'Cause I'm guessing that your pastor ain't a PC guy, right? Perfect person to start the ball rolling, eh? :D

All we need is about 50 American pastors to speak out, and then many more will [hopefully] follow.

Texas Dissident

2003-06-18 00:46 | User Profile

Originally posted by 2600@Jun 17 2003, 19:17 * *What the hell is wrong with the dispensationalist Christians?  Do they really hate the world so much that they're cheering on what they percieve as the final show-down? **

Quite simply, they are misguided and deceived by what I believe to be a potential outright heresy. Psychologically, hard-core dispensationalism is attracting converts because of several factors. First, they have witnessed the cultural collapse and rot that has taken place here in America. A couple of decades ago they tried to reverse the tide politically with organizations like the Christian Coalition and basically failed at that. No longer having the will power or faith in God to perform the everyday, door to door work of Christ's Great Commission, they simply have given up trying to effect change here in their homeland and are now putting all their marbles into rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem so they can somehow force God's hand, have Christ return and be raptured up. That's my take anyway and I believe it is an attractive and slick sales pitch.

Of course all the various dimensions have come to a head really only quite recently after 9/11 and our subsequent American intervention in the Middle East. This is why leaders and laymen in the faith are only beginning to mount a serious counter to this rapidly growing heresy. But the good news is that it is being countered and this gives me hope.

Just because they have the numbers doesn't mean that they aren't being deceived. Look at the Mormons for an example of mass numerical deception and heresy. Don't get me wrong, one can be a dispensationalist and still be well within historical Christian orthodoxy. But it is now moving into dangerous grounds of extremism and this is evidenced by professed Christians like Richard Land and John Hagee stating that Christians should not proselytize to the Jews. This is blatantly heretical.

Faust

2003-06-18 05:32 | User Profile

Texas Dissident,

This an odd mix of bad doctrine and plain foolishness. The false so-called "rapture" doctrine is at the heart of the problem. The "rapture" doctrine was invented by the Plymouth Brethren in the mid 1800's and oddly has taken the Church by Storm in the last 50 years. Any way what would be the point of having a tribulation if all the "Saints of the Church" are gone, is not the point of the tribulation to test them. I think The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey played a big role in these bad doctrines to becoming so common. These nuts would be almost funny if they not causing such harm.

You are most Right!

Quite simply, they are misguided and deceived by what I believe to be a potential outright heresy. Psychologically, hard-core dispensationalism is attracting converts because of several factors. First, they have witnessed the cultural collapse and rot that has taken place here in America. A couple of decades ago they tried to reverse the tide politically with organizations like the Christian Coalition and basically failed at that. No longer having the will power or faith in God to perform the everyday, door to door work of Christ's Great Commission, they simply have given up trying to effect change here in their homeland and are now putting all their marbles into rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem so they can somehow force God's hand, have Christ return and be raptured up. That's my take anyway and I believe it is an attractive and slick sales pitch.

"THE RAPTURE MYTH" [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=8646]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=8646[/url]

The Rapture Nonsense I am sick of it! [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=1275]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=1275[/url]

Walter Yannis

2003-06-18 08:56 | User Profile

*Originally posted by 2600@Jun 18 2003, 00:17 * ** What the hell is wrong with the dispensationalist Christians? **

Judging from my experience, Dispensationalists tend to be of average or below average intelligence with only the dimmest grasp of history and essentially zero exposure to philosophy or great literature. Dispensationalism is a very reduced version of Christianity; it leaves out the Church Fathers, Holy Tradition and the great Church philosophers (especially Church Father Aquinas, sola scriptura!). Dispensationalism is a sort of Christian Crib Notes for lazy and/or unable minds.

In short, as a group they're not the sharpest tools in the shed, and they're looking for an easy way to answer all the big questions in life without the sweat.

That's all fine with me, so long as they shut up and refrain from voting. What I can't abide is having these morons using their weight of numbers to influence so profoundly American foreign policy. They're really, really dangerous. They're trying to get us into a war, unwittingly on behalf of their enemies the Pharisees and the big corporations. Their kids will disproportionately suffer and die for their foolishness, too.

As TD points out, there's a psychological dimension here, too. Dispensationalism affords its adherents a cheap feeling of superiority over others. They're "in the know" and thus members of a select group that can only be entered by a sort of secret gnosis. In addition, they will in the next life have an exulted position over the rest of us. They get to rule, or something. The "slick sales pitch" that TD discusses is aimed at folks who generally don't have much worldly success but who want to plaster over in their own minds their own mediocrity. They get to be part of something huge and that's GOING DOWN NOW all for the price of reading a couple of books written for ninth graders. They get to feel superior without having to do anything to actually be superior. Such a deal.

Walter

Patrick

2003-06-18 13:27 | User Profile

”Then he attacked members of Hamas. He knew that by doing this that Hamas would retaliate and that he would not have to sit down with the Palestinian Prime Minister.”

.....Hamas was built by Sharon that he might have the other side of the dialectical equation, much the same as America built the soviet union from the ground up; yes, it is, indeed, a ruse, but they’re playing these “Christian zioists”, (ptooe!), like a fiddle, and the deluded fools belly up for more...

”What the hell is wrong with the dispensationalist Christians?”

.....They failed to heed the warning from Our Christ’s own lips, “take care that no man deceive you.”; the antiChrist stands today in the temple, (the body of believers), where he ought not... They’ve had full sway in the RCC since Martin Luther’s day and have worked fervently ever since to infilter the protestants; even John Calvin was “one of theirs”, and his “contribution”? The stamp of approval for usury... The antiChrists write the very Sunday school literature for the poor deluded wretches caught up in “church”, as they playact their way through glorifeid fellowship each week with no focus on Our Father, nor the true spirit of His only Begotten Son...

”Just because they have the numbers doesn’t mean that they aren’t being deceived.”

.....Quite the contrary; because they do have the numbers is proof of their deception... the majority will always be wrong...