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My opinion is that those who profess to be closest to Jesus.....to be on the one true path to salvation, have a history of violence in the name of their religious beliefs, and a consistent lack of evidence of results to justify claims of discernment through their faith.
The southern baptist pastors in the US approved of enslavement of negroes, because "the bible said.....", and they knew that the armed rebellion in the US in 1861 was blessed by God.
More recently the lack of discernment of US christian fundamentalists is evident by their overwhelming political choice of their "man of God", George W Bush.
Their pastors chose Ted Haggard to lead their national association of churches:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=16
I'm stuck on the questions of whether Adam and Eve had navels....
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/sermons/navel.html
....and where all of the water of the "great flood" that brought about the need for Noah's ark, came from....and then went.
More questions and debate here:
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/Thre...?action=tf&f=7
....and I posted this, earlier this year:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...an#post2097348
Remember the spectacle, last year, of the president and almost exclusively, the republican members of the house and senate, converging on Washington in the middle of the night....on a weekend...to pass and sign legislation that targeted the fate of one brain dead woman, Terri Schiavo?
Remember when U.S. presidents worked tirelessly to broker peace between Israel and it's neighbors in the middle east?
Consider the first veto of Mr. Bush's presidency....ending the longest period in history where a sitting president did not veto a single bill.....Bush's first veto was to prevent the passage of a bill that would have overturned a ban on government funding of stem cell research.
Consider the present U.S. government environmental protection and global warming policy, vs. the sharp contrast of former V.P. Al Gore's efforts that promote totally opposite policies on these issues.
I believe that it does not matter what Bush, Cheney, Rove, Frist, or Hastert, actually believe in their hearts. It seems to me that they have channeled and mined the political support of folks possessed with what passes for "sound" biblical interpretation, today in America's heartland. This politcal "base" includes a signifigant minority (as high as 40 percent of total voters) of adult Americans who tend to vote in disproportionally high numbers.....always for republican candidates who "share" their "values".
If your politics are not driven by your religious belief in an impending "rapture", are you comfortable with the coincidence of how closely your opinions match those of Christian fundamentalists?
If I wasn't living in these times where this is actually happening, I could never imagine that the votes of folks who believe that Israel must occupy all of the land that the Israelites held in the middle east in biblical history, so that a series of events can transpire that will incinerate nearly all Israelis and their opposing neighbors, so that the faithful can suddenly and imminently be "raptured", right out of their clothing...up into heaven, to sit for eternity, at the right hand of God.....could have such a profound and damaging influence on the makeup of all three of our federal branches of government, now.
When I sit in our sunday church service, or at the holiday dinner table with my wife and her family, I am the sole person in those gatherings who is not comforted by an unquestioning belief in the certainty of the soon to come rapture.
You may reflexively dismiss all of this, but it already effects the quality of the air you breathe, the water you drink, and you and your childrens' future. Is this agenda even "American"? Is it any different from the beliefs that cause the effects of fundamentalist Islamic government?
If you observe the near total support in U.S. government, media, and society, for Israel's current military response in the middle east this month, even in it's disproportionate harshness, and the present environmental and energy policy (or non-policy) of the U.S. government, if you don't agree that it is driven by Christian fundamentalist political influence, what do you think drives both of these policies....considering that both have changed so much since 2000?
Quote:
http://www.johnstoncenter.unc.edu/ev...rrow_moyer.htm
There Is No Tomorrow
By Bill Moyers
The Star Tribune
Sunday 30 January 2005
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress....
.......These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "bibli-cal lands," legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow..........
........ I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That is why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. That is why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations, where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." For them a war with Islam in the Middle East is something to be welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The rapture index - "the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity" - now stands at 153.......
........So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? As Glenn Scherer reports in the online environmental journal Grist, millions of Christian fundamentalists believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but hastened as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
We're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half of the members of Congress are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian-right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who before his recent retirement quoted from the biblical Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to relish the thought.
Onward Christian Soldiers
And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelations are going to come true. Tune in to any of the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or flip on one of the 250 Christian TV stations across the country and you can hear some of this end-time gospel..........
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Quote:
http://www.wesleyumcnaperville.org/2...1_archive.html
Sunday, May 23, 2004
“The New Jerusalem”
Revelation 21:1- 10, 22- 22:5
A Sermon by H. Jason Reed
Wesley UMC, Naperville, IL
May 23, 2004
.......Let’s start with the end time and The Rapture as proposed by John Nelson Darby and his followers. He was a British evangelist whose story begins with a vision of a two-stage return of the Christ (as opposed to one return which we confess in our creeds) experienced by a fifteen-year-old girl named Margaret McDonald of Port Glasgow, Scotland, in 1830. <b>Darby took the vision and applied it to the Book of Daniel and to Revelation. He came up with a rational timetable based on Daniel 9:25- 27 to schedule the events mentioned in Revelation. He preached his system in America in the 1860’s. His followers founded Dallas Theological Seminary.</b>
The time line runs like this. God started the countdown for the end with Daniel but paused the stopwatch with Jesus’ birth. For two thousand years the church and the world has lived in a time of God’s “dispensation.” We live in a premillennial age prior to Christ’s victory over the forces of evil at the battle of Armageddon and the initiation of Jesus’ thousand-year reign. The end of the dispensation will occur when the nation of Israel is reconstituted. Since that began in 1948, the Rapture will soon follow.
In the Rapture true believers will, based on a questionable interpretation of I Thessalonians 4:13- 18, “meet the Lord in the air” prior to an “hour of trial” mentioned in Revelation 3:10 which the Darbyites translate as “tribulation.” To fit Daniels’ prophecy, this time of tribulation will last seven years. In that period all good Christians will be up in the clouds watching the rest of get what’s coming to us.
Am I confusing you? Good. Then you’re starting to get the picture. You see, the whole thing is a proof-text fantasy. There is no sound basis in Scripture for the Rapture or the Tribulation.
But wait, there’s more. According to the dispensationalists’ scripts these events must occur in order:
· The rebirth of the nation of Israel;
· The Rapture of born-again Christians off the earth;
· The emergence of an evil Antichrist (and his one-world currency), probably from Europe;
· The Antichrist signs a seven-year peace treaty with Israel, setting in motion the seven years of tribulation ~ but the Antichrist will break the treaty after three and one half years;
· The rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and resumption of animal sacrifices there;
· The desecration of the temple by the evil Antichrist, followed by the second half of the seven-year period of tribulation;
· Jesus’ return in the ‘Glorious Appearing’ exactly seven years after the Rapture, beginning with his touch-down on the Mount of Olives, which will split the mountain into two.
<b>(Rossing, p. 55- 56)..........</b>
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Quote:
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll...EWS10/60722016
Article published Saturday, July 22, 2006
Mideast conflict studied for links to Bible
How — or whether — the 10-day-old conflict ties in with Bible prophecy is a matter of debate in Toledo and around the globe.
“We’re getting comments from around the world,” said Todd Strandberg of Omaha, who runs the Web site RaptureReady.com. “Most of them are from the United States, but for some reason, Australia is a big one.”
<b>Mr. Strandberg, who is in the Air Force, said he works about eight hours a day, seven days a week, compiling information about the End Times — the days leading up to Earth’s final battle, Armageddon — for his Web site, which has been in operation for 20 years, since the era of dial-up online bulletin boards.</b>
“I try to be practical with everything. My main goal is not to be spectacular or push the conspiracy thing,” Mr. Strandberg said. “But God says he is coming back, so sometime he is coming back.”
The latest round of fighting in the Middle East is being closely watched for any signs of Syrian involvement — a step that some feel will lead to the destruction of its capital city, Damascus, as described by two Bible prophets.
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Quote:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020701/story.html
Apocalypse Now
Posted Sunday, June 23, 2002; 2:31 a.m. EST
36% of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken literally
— TIME/CNN Poll
A TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of Americans say they are paying more attention now to how the news might relate to the end of the world, and have talked about what the Bible has to say on the subject. <b>Fully 59% say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true,<b> and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack....
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Quote:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...k/4068908.html
July 24, 2006, 9:08PM
All quiet at Armageddon, but will it stay that way?
These are interesting times for End Times true believers
By ZEV CHAFETS
........"I don't know if this is the time or not," said Pastor Wilson, an American-born Pentecostal who lives in Jerusalem and specializes in keeping an eye on the End of Days. "But you can feel the breath of God from the Book of Ezekiel."
"Amen," I said, my usual response when I don't know what she's talking about.
Exactly a year ago, she and her husband, Bill, a retired brigadier general in the Georgia National Guard, took me on a tour of Armageddon. Connie read aloud obscure biblical prophecies about the apocalypse, taken from the Old Testament books of Ezekiel and Daniel and the New Testament's Book of Revelation. Later, Bill pointed out the military terrain in the Jezreel Valley, where he expects 2 billion enemy soldiers to gather against the forces of good. He wasn't sure what God's strategy would be, but applying military principles, he envisioned something like Sherman's capture of Atlanta, or so it seemed to me.
Secular liberals find this scenario preposterous. On the other hand, many of these same scoffers profoundly believe that high-octane gasoline and the profligate use of electric home appliances will heat planet Earth to a doomsday temperature last experienced 420,000 years ago..
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Quote:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/met...e.14a97df.html
S.A. pastor a champion for Israel
Web Posted: 07/22/2006 11:59 PM CDT
....He's drawn both praise and criticism from Jewish and Christian leaders for what's become his life's work.
His reach — television and radio broadcasts in 190 countries, 21 major books, plus his Cornerstone Church, with an average Sunday attendance of 8,000 to 9,000 — is undeniable.
With the release of his book, "The Jerusalem Countdown," earlier this year and fresh off a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., Hagee has intensified his efforts to keep America allied with Israel and unify Christian support for the cause.
In an interview Friday with San Antonio Express-News Staff Writer Abe Levy, the pastor addressed his pro-Israel campaign and the latest Mideast fighting.
You've visited Israel 23 times and known Israeli prime ministers dating back to Menachem Begin. You've donated $12 million in recent years for 12,000 Russian Jews to relocate to Israel. Why?
I went to Israel for the first time in 1978 as a tourist and I came home a Zionist. I felt a very special presence of the Lord there. I felt that my spiritual roots were there. On the occasion that I was praying on the Western Wall on that visit, I turned and saw a Jewish man praying, kissing the Bible, very devotedly talking to God. I knew he was praying to the same God I was, and I knew absolutely nothing about him.
So I returned home and for three years went on a study binge to discover the Jewish roots of Christianity, to discover the history of the Jewish people from the Cross until the 20th century. I read about things I had never been taught in seminary nor any secular university from which I graduated.
Five months ago, you founded Christians United for Israel with 400 evangelical leaders. <b>The group drew 3,500 people to its first-ever summit last week in Washington D.C., and met with members of Congress. You've said this summit will be repeated yearly. What else is in store for the group?</b>
We're going to have a 'call to action' e-mail and fax. Every spiritual leader in the nation, we want to be able to communicate to them every Monday morning about the issues facing America. ... We have something over 16,500 leaders on our 'call to action' list, and some of those leaders have more than a million people on their e-mail and fax address.
We're going to have a 'Night to Honor Israel' in major cities in America just like we've been having here for 25 years. That forces Christians to become educated about the concerns of the Jewish people and for the Jewish people to get to meet a new breed of Christian that's on the streets of America.
How broad-based is Christians United for Israel? Are there other Christian groups and leaders you'd like to see join that haven't?
Israel is the only thing that every evangelical can agree on. I assure you that if you get a group of evangelicals together and start talking about the moral agendas, that there will be a dogfight in 15 minutes, because there is a plethora of opinions.
And I have said to our organization, Christians United for Israel, we represent one issue: Israel, and Israel alone.....
...That's why Jesus said in (John) 4:22 'Salvation is of the Jews.'.....
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