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Millions of Evangelical Christians Want to Start WWIII to Speed the "Second Coming" ... and Atheist Neocons are Using Religion
MILLIONS OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS WANT TO START WORLD WAR III ... TO SPEED UP THE SECOND COMING
The Founding Fathers weren't particularly anti-Islam.
But millions of Americans believe that Christ will not come again until Israel wipes out its competitors and there is widespread war in the Middle East. Some of these folks want to start a huge fire of war and death and destruction, so that Jesus comes quickly.
According to French President Chirac, Bush told him that the Iraq war was needed to bring on the apocalypse:
In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”…
There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
And British Prime Minister Tony Blair long-time mentor, advisor and confidante said:
“Tony’s Christian faith is part of him, down to his cotton socks. He believed strongly at the time, that intervention in Kosovo, Sierra Leone – Iraq too – was all part of the Christian battle; good should triumph over evil, making lives better.”
Mr Burton, who was often described as Mr Blair’s mentor, says that his religion gave him a “total belief in what’s right and what’s wrong”, leading him to see the so-called War on Terror as “a moral cause”…
Anti-war campaigners criticised remarks Mr Blair made in 2006, suggesting that the decision to go to war in Iraq would ultimately be judged by God.
Bill Moyers reports that the organization Christians United for Israel - led by highly-influential Pastor John C. Hagee - is a universal call to all Christians to help factions in Israel fund the Jewish settlements, throw out all the Palestinians and lobby for a pre-emptive invasion of Iran. All to bring Russia into a war against us causing World War III followed by Armageddon, the Second Coming and The Rapture. See this and this.
This all revolves around what is called Dispensationalism. So popular is Dispensationalism that Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series has sold 65 million copies. Dispensationalists include the following mega-pastors and their churches:
They are supported by politicians such as:
- Texas Senator John Cronyn
- Former House Minority Whip Roy Blunt
- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
- And others
Dr. Timothy Webber - an evangelical Christian who has served as a teacher of church history and the history of American religion at Denver Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Vice-President at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, IL, and President of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee - notes:
In a recent Time/CNN poll, more than one-third of Americans said that since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, they have been thinking more about how current events might be leading to the end of the world.
While only 36 percent of all Americans believe that the Bible is God's Word and should be taken literally, 59 percent say they believe that events predicted in the Book of Revelation will come to pass. Almost one out of four Americans believes that 9/11 was predicted in the Bible, and nearly one in five believes that he or she will live long enough to see the end of the world. Even more significant for this study, over one-third of those Americans who support Israel report that they do so because they believe the Bible teaches that the Jews must possess their own country in the Holy Land before Jesus can return.
Millions of Americans believe that the Bible predicts the future and that we are living in the last days. Their beliefs are rooted in dispensationalism, a particular way of understanding the Bible's prophetic passages, especially those in Daniel and Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. They make up about one-third of America's 40 or 50 million evangelical Christians and believe that the nation of Israel will play a central role in the unfolding of end-times events. In the last part of the 20th century, dispensationalist evangelicals become Israel's best friends-an alliance that has made a serious geopolitical difference.
***
Starting in the 1970s, dispensationalists broke into the popular culture with runaway best-sellers, and a well-networked political campaign to promote and protect the interests of Israel. Since the mid-1990s, tens of millions of people who have never seen a prophetic chart or listened to a sermon on the second coming have read one or more novels in the Left Behind series, which has become the most effective disseminator of dispensationalist ideas ever.
***
During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism recruited evangelical religious leaders for free "familiarization" tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear and see Israel's story for themselves. The strategy caught on.
***
Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalism and its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalists and was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro-Israeli manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish state's major lobbying group in Washington, D.C., started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing, including Christian conservatives. Israel's timing was perfect. It began working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering their political voice.
***
Probably the largest pro-Israel organization of its kind is the National Unity Coalition for Israel, which was founded by a Jewish woman who learned how to get dispensationalist support. NUCI opposes "the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel."
***
In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so because such political and religious elements seem to conform to dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups, dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.
***
Dispensationalists believe that the Temple is coming too; and their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible. Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has already been determined by God.
Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.
***
As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future and provided them with lenses through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success.
***
For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The Bible's prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed. According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel's future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God's plan for the end of the age.
***
It seems clear that dispensationalism is on a roll, that its followers feel they are riding the wave of history into the shore of God's final plan. Why should they climb back into the stands when being on the field of play is so much more fun and apparently so beneficial to the game's outcome? As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, "Don't just read about prophecy when you can be part of it."
ATHEIST WAR HAWKS MANIPULATE BELIEVERS TO BEAT THE DRUMS OF WAR
Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration.
Indeed, many of the main neocon players - including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky - were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years.
The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See this and this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans - the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate.
Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that:
A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured
(the quote is by one of Strauss' main biographers).
Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver's Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:
"When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect." (this quote also from the same biographer)
Moreover, Strauss said:
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . . Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.
So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one's own soil to one's own people -- of "pissing" on one's own people, to use his Gulliver's travel analogy. And he advocates that government's should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally "not know" that Rome is burning. He advocates messing with one's own people in order to save them from some "catastophe" (perhaps to justify military efforts to monopolize middle eastern oil to keep it away from our real threat -- an increasingly-powerful China?).
What does this have to do with religion?
Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion.
As Wikipedia notes:
In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this – along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a "noble lie", intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters.
So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community?
Conservative Christians were the biggest backers of the Iraq war. And the Neocons are catering to them to try to back them into war with Iran, as well.
I've recently seen a swarm of spam claiming that all Muslims are evil, that they want to take over the world and establish a Muslim caliphate, and that they want to nuke Iran. They misquote Muslims and use false statements to try to stir up religious hatred.
They are simply promoting the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment - even if you are personally an atheist - to create and demonize an "enemy", so as to promote war ...
NOT A PROBLEM WITH A PARTICULAR RELIGION ... BUT OF IMMATURITY
Most Americans confuse Zionism and Judaism. But many devout Jews are against Zionism, and Zionists can be Christian.
And as I've repeatedly noted, fundamentalist Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all very much alike, and often willing to use violence to spread their ideology ... while more spiritually mature Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all much more tolerant and peaceful than their evangelical brothers:
As Christian writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck explained, there are different stages of spiritual maturity. Fundamentalism – whether it be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu fundamentalism – is an immature stage of development. There are peaceful, contemplative Muslim sects – think the poet Rumi the poet and Sufis – and violent sects, just as there are contemplative Christian orders and violent Christian groups (and peaceful and violent atheists).
While there are certainly some Arab terrorists, Islam cannot be blamed for their barbaric murderous actions, just as Christianity cannot be blamed for the Norwegian Christian terrorist - Anders Behring Breivik's actions. University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out:
Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations.
The 9/11 hijackers used cocaine and drank alcohol, slept with prostitutes and attended strip clubs … but they did not worship at any mosque. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. So they were not really Muslims.
And even atheists like Stalin can be terrorists, or at least genocidal maniacs.
Indeed, all religions teach compassion, love and the Golden Rule. Likewise, atheism teaches respect for the individual, the most good for the most people, and helping everyone reach their human potential.
Some within each philosophy follow these teachings, and others want to kill everyone who doesn't agree with them. The issue is not really the label of this religion or that, but of maturity and true spirituality and compassion.
Postscript 1: Neoliberals and Neoconservatives are very similar in many ways. And because Neocons are not conservative, nothing in this post is meant to criticize conservatism.
Postscript 2: Most evangelicals are not dispensationalists, and so do not want to bring on armageddon.
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Hmmm.
I'm a Christian and proud of it, but I don't want another war. Christ will return in his own time, according to God's plan. Not ours.
I know many many other Christians spread worldwide. Not one of them has ever voice anything close to this notion.
While I tend to avoid liberal commentators like the plague, the only whack jobs I hear saying anything abut wanting a war in order to hasten the return of anyone are the Iranians and the dude that is supposed to come out of a hole in the ground.
In short, GW, your full of shit.
Divine Wind stated:
That you still see the world through the filters of liberal/conservative, left/right, and democrat/republican indicates that the propaganda of the CONmedia (corporate owned news media) is still controlling you.
The only whack jobs I hear saying anything about the Iranians wanting a war to hasten the return of the Mahdi are the CONmedia, their shills, and their dupes, who are all agitating for a war with Iran.
With all due respect, "pride" and true "Christianity" are mutually incompatible, mutually exclusive. Where ever you learned to associate the two it was not in Scripture.
C. S. Louis read the Scriptures and concluded that Christ and all the apostles taught that Jesus would return within their lifetimes, whithin their generation. Louis goes on to state that Christ and the apostles were wrong, mistaken, because Jesus did not return when he said he would.
Louis' reading skills were correct, but he came to the wrong conclusion. Indeed, yes, absolutely, Christ and the Apostles taught, the Scriptures all teach that Christ would return within the apostles' lifetime, within "that generation". But Louis was incorrect to conclude they were wrong.
Jesus' return was a spiritual return. The judgement promised was only against the non-repentent Hebrews of the 1st CAD. It occurred in 70AD when Nero (the letters of Nero's name assigned to the Aramaic alphabet add up to 666) ordered the Roman army to destroy Jerusalem, ending the Hebrew civil war. There is no "end of time", but rather then "time of the end" of the Mosaic/Levitical era...the end of the OT, and the full ushering in of the NT (both eras co-incided/co-existed for 40 years, one phasing out, the other phasing in).
May I respectfully recommend "The Parousia" by James Stewart Russell (earned his M.D. by age 18!) and my friend Brian Martin's book "Behind The Veil of Moses".
Also, the Hebrew historian Josephus book "The War of the Jews" is a masterful analogy to Revelation that will shed much light on Scripture. (the overlapping language is incredible...Josephus saw and witnessed and wrote exactly what John prophecied would "shortly come to pass").
"Millions" of christians? What a fucking total CROCK of unmitigated BULLSHIT.
Fuck you, GW, you officially jumped the shark
Deception in the last days.
Watch for it.
Deception so skillful that even the very elect might be deceived. How, then, shall we watch for it? How will we recognize the deception when we see it? Isn't that the point of deception - we don't know we are being deceived.
Instead of watching for deception, we should be boning up on truth. That will protect us from any attempts at deception. But truth according to which standard?
RichardP said:
Definitely not the standard that the CONmedia (corporate owned news media) are presenting.
Best comment.
Missed the mark Georgie, "'Some of these folks want to start a huge fire of war and death and destruction,". So the lunatics in Iran aren't the one's picking a fight? Where do you get your news, Algezera?
cjbosk asked:
The lunatics in the Israeli government in Tel Aviv and the lunatics in the US government in Vichy DC are the ones picking a fight.
This smacks of an SEO attempt to "post something controversial". (To try and get more links, comments, etc).
I know tons of Christians, and I've never heard ANY of them (over 30 years, even the most extreme ones) mention something like this.
Stupid post, GW. Quit encouraging hate-crimes against Christians.
The fact that religion exists in the year 2012 is a shame on humanity. It shows that ignorance and ape like behavior are still alive and well.
None of this is going to end well, so you all need to read:
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Wealth-Mr-Andrew-Costello/dp/1463523017/ref
AndrewCostello
The fact that religion exists in the year 2012 is a shame on humanity
If it DID Not, there would be no life left on earth..................we would have wiped each other out long ago.
Without Mores,and Values,and Law..............there would be no civilization to even be a 2012.
Mad Maxed out long ago.
Yes, because nobody could ever be moral without fear as a motivator, right? It doesn't matter if most people are following the teachings of a lunatic or a liar---as it MUST be since there are multiple religions but there can be AT MOST only one truth---just so long as they fear some eternal damnation ALL WILL BE WELL.
Of course it hasn't quite worked out that way. Having the One and Only Truth is often a powerful motivating force for violence when somebody else claims to have a different One and Only Truth.
I am not a believer, so apparently I cannot be moral. I have never murdered anyone and never stole. I didn't even cheat in school. I have given away millions of dollars to those less fortunate than me, and live a lifestyle way below that of which I am capable, but I guess that has nothing to do with any moral sense, which I couldn't possibly have because I am not religious.
I cannot walk on water and I've never raised anyone from the dead (though my spouse claims I can do the next best thing). Parlor tricks are not my forte. At the same time, I have no Master Plan that involves things like childhood cancer or tsunamis, and I'd never blow through a trailer park with 300 mph winds and wreak havoc just to display how I work in mysterious ways. I find it the height of self-absorption and absurdity when someone thinks his praying made his sports team win or allowed someone to pass a chemistry test, when god apparently was too busy granting such meaningless wishes than to attend to a four year old girl with an excruciatingly painful brain tumor. Also, I do not demand that any person love me more than any other. I'm not that vain.
Existence has no meaning, it just is. Existence needs no beginning anymore than anyone's god needs a beginning, except existence is proven by my ability to perceive it, and god or gods have no proof, only competing story lines. That I can find pleasure in existence, and even share what I have with others passing through time and space with me, is plenty good enough without sullying it up with vindictive, demanding, vain and childlike beings who possess qualities we would scorn, even imprison, if they were held by other humans.
I see no evidence of a "just and loving creator", and I have no use for any other kind. If that means I don't get to spend eternity with all the self-righteous believers who need the threat of punishment to behave morally, then all I can say is "thank god".
Andrew Costello says:
"None of this is going to end well, so you all need to read:".....
MY BOOK FOR $12.81!!
http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Wealth-Mr-Andrew-Costello/dp/1463523017/ref
Unfortunately, atheism and many of the pushes against religion are, in effect, opposition to Christianity (Marx, Nietzsche, Dawkins, etc.).
Your words remind me of those of Rabbi Joshua Hammerstein who expressed his fear and loathing of Christianity by stating that a football success by Tim Tebow would be bad for the Jews.
Said Hammerstein:
“People are always looking for signs of God’s beneficence, and a victory by the Orange Crush over the blue-clad Patriots, from the bluest of blue states, will give fodder to a Christian revivalism that has already turned the Republican presidential race into a pander-thon to social conservatives, rekindling memories of those cultural icons of the ‘80s, the Moral Majority and ‘Hee Haw.’ The culture wars are alive and well, and if the current climate in Washington is any indicator, the motors are being revved up for what will undoubtedly be the most cantankerous Presidential campaign ever. When supposedly well-educated candidates publicly question overwhelmingly scientific evidence on climate change and evolution and then gain electoral traction by fabricating conspiracies about a war on Christmas, these are not rational times…”
The Jewish rabbi pontificated that if Tebow had won the Super Bowl, “against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants…”
The original source has been pulled from Jewish Week.
It is no accident that during the same year that Congress passed both Warburg’s Federal Reserve system of money-out-of-thin-air and the Income tax bill to force American to pay the banking cartel’s usury, i.e., 1913, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was set up as society’s thought police using not only surveillance and blackmail, but media defamation.
Your comment says everything about you...and it ain't good.
Perhaps good idea to start WWIII in the US? Bible belt, perhaps? At least there are junk food outlets close by for refreshments. <sarc/off>
yeah, anyone who thinks killing and being a christian has not developed any further than the days of the crusades which were again fought in the name of god... didn't do much good then to get a fake man to come back and it won't by killing lots of people this time either
"fought in the name of God..."
That's the operative phrase. NO ONE can do ANYTHING in the name of God unless it is to love, forgive, and be humble.
In the name of God? Hardly. In the name of Roman Catholicism. I suggest you start to educate yourself...
That is right. Christians of the past were not christians.
It is well known nowadays but in the days they lived, they thought they were Christians.
In a similar vein, Jesus did not know he was a Christian, he thought himself as a Jew. It is only later that it was known he was a Christian.
Etc...
AnAnonymous said:
Made me laugh.
It was only later that it was known he was a Galileean US citizenism citizen.
It was impossible for Jesus to be a US citizen. US citizenism did not exist in his times.
AnAnonymous said:
Made me laugh.
If US citizenism did not exist in his times, then US citizenism is not eternal, and there can be no eternal nature of US citizenism.
China existed in his times, so regulatory capture of Christianity in its early years by the Councils of Carthage and Nicea are ancient examples of the eternal nature of blobbing up Chinese citizenism, by way of Carthaginian Chinese citizenism and Nicean Chinese citizenism. Such is the way of Chinese citizenism, going around in circles like a running dog tied to a stake in the ground.
The roadside along the road to Damascus is littered with the coprolites of Chinese citizen citizenism.
Perhaps this article does contain some fallacies, however this is why I generally dislike all religions, but growing up in rural America, Christianity especially gets to me.
The power of Western Civilization was its belief in The Ten Commandments, mutual trust in the integrity of individuals, where a handshake was as good as a written contract. But atheism and oppostion to Chrisitanity has washed away this trust. Time Magazine about 40 years ago quoted a Reformed Rabbi as saying that the bulk of the Jews in the West, who now control finance, believed in the holy nothingness.
Are Christians and Americans so self-inflicted with blindness that they don’t recognize the Jews behind the curtain of world government?
It was Mr. Ben Hecht, after the terrorist Stern Gang stormed Deir Yasin in Palestine in 1948 and butchered everyone in sight, mostly women and small children and tossed their corpses into wells, according to Time Magazine, who inserted a full-page advertisement in leading American newspapers addressed to these Zionists, entitled “To the Terrorists of Palestine.” It stated:
“The Jews of America are for you. You are their champions. Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British railroad train sky high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at the British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.”
This was the same man, highly commended by Bernard Baruch, who said of Christ:
“What I’d have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed to the lions. They never could have made a savior out of mincemeat.”
And these propagandized Christians think they can replace obedience to God by a political pact with Zionists who reject Christ and Christianity and maneuver, with the neocons, the Second Coming!
God help us!
You are as delusional as it gets.
Funny you say that - my neighbour was in Palestine after WWII and he was very candid about the atrocities committed by the Zionist terrorists. So not delusional. You seem to be in denial of the facts though.
Actually, he has spoken nothing but truth, something which you never knew and was never a part of that lying counterfeit soul your father gave unto you which shall go into the lake of fire.
Happy Purim or whatever you call your one less day to live, one day closer to the lake of fire.
Onward Christian Soldiers?
I believe any time someone is attempting to disparage religion they need to first declare their own. So GW where do you stand? Otherwise
Millions of Evangelical Christians Want to Start WWIII to Speed the "Second Coming" ... and Atheist Neocons are Using ReligionThis headline is simply another DNC agenda.
Isn't it funny though that now we get 24 hour coverage of so-called "bad Assad killing his people", gory footage and screaming women...when during the Iraq war when exactly the same thing was happening, killing 100,000 by conservative counts and all we saw was...American Idol?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/middle_east/nb09ak02.html
g.wash. when you are spouting off the fundamentalist beliefs. dont forget the most doctrinaire prejudiced judgemental preachy pig headed one of all in progressive liberalism.
Further proof that critical thinking is in short supply (even on ZH).
Thanks for your post Karl Rove.
My impression is that some of those posting comments in this thread think that George Washington thinks that Christian theology in general supports a nuclear attack on Iran. Or perhaps they just pretend that they interpret GW´s article in this way?
However, I think that it is pretty obvious that GW limits the link between Christian theology and nuking Iran to just Dispensationalist Christianity. It is true that Dispensationalist style Christianity constitutes a very large portion of late 20th and early 21th century American Christianity. But that does not mean that you can equate Christanity with Dispensationalism. There are other forms of Christianity, such as Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity or old-style, traditional Lutheran Christianity.
I think that some of the readers failed to read the entire posting (or failed to grasp it).
EXACTLY!!!
But you're WRONG that (all) dispensationalists (much less all Evangelicals) believe what you think they believe, and when it comes to actively trying to influence world events to bring about violence, you're talking about an extreme minority who would horrify any genuine orthodox (again, small 'o') believer in his right mind.
"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand."
Mark Twain
Let's boil this down. Men in power manipulate the masses with whatever form of mind control and/or propaganda work the best. Since religion is ingrained into the psyche of the people, it is used as an effective tool.
Religion is an effective tool to control the masses. Especially the ones that teach you to bend the knee to the rulers. Constantine knew this and he created the first unified Christian church at the council of Nicea (Catholicism). He made sure the Bible included verses to enforce his dominance over the people.
Let people believe what they want to, as long as they:
1. Do no harm
2. Do not try to push it down my throat
3. Don't govern me with religious edict (extension of #1)
Religious zealots that do not abide by these rules can take a long walk off a short pier.
Do what you wanna
Do what you will
Just don't mess up
Your neighbor's thrill- FZ
WE JUST ELECTED BARAK OBAMA PRESIDENT. I really find it hard to believe...and frankly don't see in the historical record...where "religious nut-ology" suddenly appears. George W. Bush? The Episcopalian? With his wife? The Methodist? hahahahaha. ridiculous. the numbers of the folks you folks are talking about are pretty small. and their media outlets? oh....yeah..."right up there with Time Warner Communications." hahahaha. pathetic. the problem with the USA is outright ATHEISM/NIHILILSM run amuck. This site and "GW" here is a case study in it. When you actually see the "empty cities of America"...ones that used to be habtitated by millions btw...you understand "Nietze was wrong at every level." It's just that the American variant of nihilism has to do with money..."masquerading as Darwin" no less! ZERO IS ZERO. And that's all there is to..."the meaning of it"! Governments that rely on "the Nihilists of Finance" to go hog wild with the public monies get EXACTLY what is to be expected: NO ECONOMY. To prove my point no less than me..."Mr. Humble"...will grant all of thee "Velociraptors in Attack Mode" this simple query: "California is the richest state in the Union by far and one of the richest places on the planet: will that State go bankrupt in...the next six weeks?" Please keep your answers to less than paragraph form. Indeed...a simple yes/no is acceptable.
yes/no
Thanks for sharing GW. Always enjoy reading your articles.
Oh good conspiracies on all sides. Illuminati, Christians, Jews, Arabs something for everyone. I will pop some corn and watch the fireworks.
GW=maroon...
GW: problem is most people including christians do not really understand or practice what god preaches; hence, do not live a life according to god. 99.9% value material possessions more than anything else even though god clearly states in Mark 10.25 "it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of God".
It’s always best to be accurate ….
Mark 10:25 (KJV)
(25) It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Watchman
(25) It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Now explain what that means, and we will see how accurate you are.