Saturday, August 16, 2008

Where is the God of Judgment?

Malachi 2

1And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.

2If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

3Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.

4And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.

5My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.

6The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.

7For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.

8But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.

9Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.

10Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?

11Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.

12The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto the LORD of hosts.

13And this have ye done again, covering the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand.

14Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.

15And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.

16For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.

17Ye have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?

Friday, August 15, 2008

HE LEADETH ME

He leadeth me, O blessèd thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, over troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,
Nor ever murmur nor repine;
Content, whatever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

Refrain

And when my task on earth is done,
When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won,
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
Since God through Jordan leadeth me.

Refrain

Words:
Jo­seph H. Gil­more, 1862.

Music:
Wil­liam B. Brad­bu­ry, Gold­en Cen­ser (New York: 1864)
(MI­DI, score).

It's over!

Today, President George W. Bush reminded us all that the Cold War is over.

Well, that means we can now play games in 'Peking':



It also means, we can now "bond" with our comrades the Russians, on the International Space Station:




Arsenio.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

New Indian Bible Draws Fire over Hindu References

New Indian Bible Draws Fire over Hindu References



A new Indian version of the Bible recently, published by the Catholic Church, has run into controversy over its inclusion of verses from the Bhagavad Gita, a form of Hindu chant, and references to the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

An illustration in the new version, New Community Bible, depicts Jesus, Mary and Joseph as poor Indian villagers. Mary wears a simple sari and has a bindi on her forehead alongside Joseph in a turban and loincloth.

According to the 30 Indian biblical scholars who worked for more than 15 years on the new edition, the Bible draws on "the rich cultural and religious heritage of India."

Although approved by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India and published by the Society of St. Paul, the Bible met the disapproval of Protestants and other Christian groups, who believe it diverts from biblical truth.

Pastor Vijay Thomas, who heads a Bible college in Chennai, told Christian Today, “By making it appear ‘Indian’ with references to Hindu scriptures and great poets, people will not come to the truth. This is a complete turn back from the real Bible."

Oswald Gracias, the Catholic Archbishop of Bombay, defended the Bible edition, saying, "I am sure this Bible, made in India and for Indians, will bring the word of God closer to millions of our people, not only Christians."

Accompanied by extensive commentary notes to assist readers in interpreting the verses, the edition also references Indian ancient literary works such as Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Jesus' words about storing "treasures in heaven" in the Gospel of Matthew, for example, are compared to the Bhagavadgita's teaching that "work alone is your proper business, never the fruits it may produce."

The teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, Asia's first Nobel laureate, are also referred to in the commentary.

The general editor of the New Community Bible, the Rev. Dr. Augustine Kanachikuzhy, admitted that references to Hindu scriptures had drawn complaints.

"This was expected," he said. "It will take some time for the [new Bible] to gain acceptance."

Kanachikuzy still believes the Bible to be a huge hit. "It has proved to be extremely popular among the Christian community with over 15,000 copies sold out within barely 10 days. Now it has gone for a reprint," he added.

Source: http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080811/new-indian-bible-draws-fire-over-hindu-references.htm

U.S. Cities Would be Locked Down, Quarantined Under Pandemic Flu Response Plan

U.S. Cities Would be Locked Down, Quarantined Under Pandemic Flu Response Plan

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) The federal government would need to quarantine infected households and ban public gatherings to contain pandemic flu, according to a computer simulation study conducted by researchers from Virginia Tech and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"You wouldn't go out to the movies. You wouldn't congregate with people," said researcher Stephen Eubank. "You'd pretty much be staying home with the doors and windows battened down."

The consensus among health experts is that a pandemic, or global epidemic, of influenza is inevitable. The last such pandemic, in 1918, killed between 40 and 100 million people.

Because of the belief that a pandemic cannot be avoided, researchers are instead looking into ways to limit its effects. In the current study, researchers used a computer to model the hypothetical spread of flu pandemic in the city of Chicago under various containment scenarios. They found that a vigorous early response could reduce the infection rate by 80 percent.

"Depending on how fast it is spreading, it seems as though you really need to throw everything you can at it," Eubank said.

Under the containment scenario, people infected with or exposed to the disease would be confined to their homes, and schools and day-care centers would be shut down, as would places of public gathering like bars, restaurants and theaters. Offices and factories would remain open but would operate at reduced capacity due to quarantines.

The extreme measures would need to continue for months, until a vaccine was developed.

"We are not talking about simply shutting things down for a day or two like a snow day," Eubank said. "It's a sustained period for weeks or months."

The computer model assumed widespread compliance with the response plan, but Eubank says he doesn't anticipate that as a problem.

"In the context of a very infectious disease that is killing a large number of the people, I think large fractions of the population won't have a problem with these recommendations," he said.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/z023823.html

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

SDA @ Interfaith Worship: The Christian Peace Witness for Iraq Service

Author: Ron Spear

The Eternal Gospel Church

Evangelical/Catholic Encounters

of the Worst Kind

__________

Seventh-day Adventist Participation in Interfaith Worship

Click on each Photo to Enlarge

The Churches Unite

On March 16th, 2007 an ecumenical coalition of churches organized an event, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, to protests the War in Iraq. This event began with an interfaith prayer and worship service at the Washington National Cathedral, followed by a candlelit procession to the White House and a late night prayer vigil. About 3,000 church leaders from pews and pulpits all across the United States descended upon Washington DC. to join forces with other religious groups and participated in singing, prayers, meditations, and in calling upon the holy name of God to bring true, lasting peace and unity to this nation and to the rest of the world.

Participants included: Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Mennonites, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and others.

As a minister of the Gospel for more than 50 years, I’ve longed to see our people revived and reformed. Many other faithful Seventh-day Adventists have also desired to see our people revived and reformed. But how can we revive and reform our people when we have leaders participating in these apostate worship services? What has happened to our beloved remnant church? Have we become Evangelicals in thinking and preaching? Is it possible that we have reached over the gulf and clasped hands with the Evangelicals and the Catholic Church? It was prophesied by our prophet Ellen White:

“When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when, under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near.” Testimonies, vol. 5, 451.

When did such a liberal evangelical movement begin among us in the Seventh-day Adventist Church? We turn in our history to 1955-1957, when Elder Unruh, President of the Pennsylvania Conference introduced Barnhouse and Martin, and Eternity magazine to the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. These meetings started a trend by our leaders to be accepted by the Evangelical churches.

Then appeared a book, Questions on Doctrine. This book was 90 percent correct, but 10 percent deadly. Leroy Froom, R. A. Anderson, and Elder Reed were chosen by the General Conference committee to lead out in our evangelical attempt, and were responsible for the book, Questions on Doctrine. In the papacy’s masterful attempt to bring the Protestant Churches back under their domination, next came Vatican II. Then a gold medallion was presented to the Pope by one of our General Conference leaders in the religious liberty department.

Elder Maxwell, editor of the Signs of the Times, went as an observer to Vatican II in 1962. He returned from that meeting and gave a glowing report of the papacy and how it had changed. All these coming together, Vatican II has been most successful. We now in every one of our General Conference sessions have the Vatican flag marching down the aisle with the flags of the rest of the countries.

In the recent General Conference session held in St. Louis, two priests had a booth with the other booths. They represented the Vatican. Have the Seventh-day Adventist Church really reached across the gulf and clasps the hand of the papacy with the Evangelical churches? I leave the reader to make the decision. But there is one more that must be added. The Protestant world and Catholic world have reached across the gulf and clasps hands with spiritualism, Are Seventh-day Adventists ready to do this? For many years we have been clasping hands with Pentecostal music and worship. We have sent one thousand pastors to Saddleback and Willowcreek to train in the ideology of Pentecostalism. In many of our churches around the world we have an orchestra playing Pentecostal type of music and the rising of arms and clapping of hands.

Worship With a Bedlam of Noise

“It is impossible to estimate too largely the work that the Lord will accomplish through His proposed vessels in carrying out His mind and purpose. The things you have described as taking place in Indiana, the Lord has shown me would take place just before the close of probation. Every uncouth thing will be demonstrated. There will be shouting, with drums, music, and dancing. The senses of rational beings will become so confused that they cannot be trusted to make right decisions. And this is called the moving of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit never reveals itself in such methods, in such a bedlam of noise. This is an invention of Satan to cover up his ingenious methods for making of none effect the pure, sincere, elevating, ennobling, sanctifying truth for this time. Better never have the worship of God blended with music than to use musical instruments to do the work which last January was represented to me would be brought into our camp meetings. The truth for this time needs nothing of this kind in its work of converting souls. A bedlam of noise shocks the senses and perverts that which if conducted aright might be a blessing. The powers of satanic agencies blend with the din and noise, to have a carnival, and this is termed the Holy Spirit’s working.” Selected Messages, Book 2, 36.

Adventist Development & Relief Agency [ADRA] president, Charles Sandefur, was a participant in the interfaith prayer and worship service at the Washington National Cathedral on Marth 16, 2007. Charles Sandefur is also a member of the General Conference Executive Committee and represented the Seventh-day Adventist Church at this event.

Here Pastor Charles Sandefur stands among a diverse group of church clergymen and clergywomen. He gave a prayer during the March 16, 2007 event.

General Conference Executive Committee member, Charles Sandefur, applauds during the spiritual, ecumenical worship service.

ADRA’s President, Charles Sandefur, was on a short list of those who were allowed to march in the procession

Charles Sandefur had a front-row seat throughout the entire event.

Father Joel Nangle, Roman Catholic Franciscan Priest [white arrow] standing next to General Conference Executive Board Member, and ADRA’s President, Charles Sandefur [yellow arrow] during the Candlelight procession to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Could this be what Ellen White saw in a dream when she described how some of our people whom she knew bore the “appearance of a Catholic procession. One bore in his hand a cross” (1T, p. 578)? These candles were commemorating all those who died in Iraq. This is spiritualism in behalf of the DEAD!

Other Participants

Rev. Dr. Bernice Powell Jackson, president of the North American Region of the World Council of Churches.

Rev. Robert W. Edgar, National Council of Churches.

Rev. Marshall Dunn, Disciples of Christ.

Rev. Rex McKee, Episcopal Church.

Rev. Clifton Kirpatrick, Presbyterian Church.

Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Sister Luma Khudher, Dominican Nun, Roman Catholic.

How could this fall have taken place in God’s remnant church? Where did it begin?—It began in 1932. The General Conference voted accreditation for our colleges, which demanded that we had so many PhD’s in our schools. This has paved the way for our attempt to become Evangelicals. As a result, our schools have adopted the world’s curriculum and the attitude of many of our leaders and pastors have placed Ellen White our prophet in the 19th Century. They claim she was a nice little old lady for that time. Also, they have placed the three angels’ messages, the sanctuary message, and the 2300 day prophecy in the 19th Century. What is to be the end of all of this apostasy?

The Fatal Choice

“Unsanctified ministers are arraying themselves against God. They are praising Christ and the god of this world in the same breath...Let the son of deceit and false witness be entertained by a church that has had great light, great evidence, and that church will discard the message the Lord has sent, and receive the most unreasonable assertions and false suppositions and false theories. Satan laughs at their folly, for he knows what truth is...Many will stand in our pulpits with the torch of false prophecy in their hands, kindled from the hellish torch of Satan. If doubts and unbelief are cherished, the faithful ministers will be removed from the people who think they know so much.” Testimonies to Ministers, 409.

When the wrath of God comes down on the confused Protestant and Catholic Churches, what will happen to the leaders and pastors of the Seventh-day Adventist Church who have participated in this terrible apostasy?

“The people turned upon their ministers with bitter hate and reproached them, saying, ‘You have not warned us. You told us that all the world was to be converted, and cried, Peace, peace, to quiet every fear that was aroused. You have not told us of this hour; and those who warned us of it you declared to be fanatics and evil men, who would ruin us.’ But I saw that the ministers did not escape the wrath of God. Their suffering was tenfold greater than that of their people.” Early Writings, 282.

Sunday laws are coming

Sunday Laws hang ominously over the horizon of our confused world today. The evidence is overwhelming that America is preparing to enforce the image to the first beast of Revelation 13. How?—through these ecumenical, interfaith worship services which are a combination heathen rites and customs, devoid of the true Spirit and power of God. By our participation in these services we are helping to set up the Image of the Beast here in America.

“But what is the ‘image to the beast’? and how is it to be formed?...When the early church became corrupted by departing from the simplicity of the gospel and accepting heathen rites and customs, she lost the Spirit and power of God; and in order to control the consciences of the people, she sought the support of the secular power. The result was the papacy, a church that controlled the power of the state and employed it to further her own ends, especially for the punishment of ‘heresy.’ In order for the United States to form an image of the beast, the religious power must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends.” The Great Controversy, 443.

The Last Deception of Satan

“Satan is . . . constantly pressing in the spurious—to lead away from the truth. The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God. ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish’ (Proverbs 29:18). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant people in the true testimony—Letter 12, 1890.

“There will be a hatred kindled against the testimonies which is satanic. The workings of Satan will be to unsettle the faith of the churches in them, for this reason: Satan cannot have so clear a track to bring in his deceptions and bind up souls in his delusions if the warnings and reproofs and counsels of the Spirit of God are heeded—Letter 40, 1890.” Selected Messages, Book 1, 48.

Ellen White was chosen by God to be the prophet of this final generation. God inspired her to write 25 million words to direct His church so that it would not follow in the steps of apostasy of the Old Testament Church and the apostasy of the New Testament. Many of our people want to leave her in the 19th century when it is our duty to bring her writings to the 21st century.

Have we done worse than the Jews?

“ ‘Ye have done worse than they.’ I saw that God has given His servants the truth so clear, so plain, that it cannot be resisted. Wherever they go, they have certain victory. Their enemies cannot get round the convincing truth. Light has been shed so clear that the servants of God can stand up anywhere and let truth, clear and connected, bear away the victory. This great blessing has not been prized, or even realized.” Testimonies, vol. 1, 129.

Ellen White’s inspired writings, along with the 2300 day prophecy, the three angels’ messages, and the sanctuary message must again be brought before the church and the world. These messages make us the true remnant church of God. All the loyal and obedient pastors, teachers, laity, and leaders are challenged now to bring Ellen White the prophet of God before the church. This should be a privilege not just a duty.

Israel Became A Curse

“Israel was a cumberer of the ground. Its very existence was a curse; for it filled the place in the vineyard that a fruitful tree might fill. It robbed the world of the blessings that God designed to give. The Israelites had misrepresented God among the nations. They were not merely useless, but a decided hindrance. To a great degree their religion was misleading, and wrought ruin instead of salvation.” Christ Object Lessons, 215.

There were so many promises and blessings to Israel which are today applicable to spiritual Israel. But we must never forget that those promises were based on obedience.

“A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you this day: And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.” Deuteronomy 11:27, 28.

Obedience brings blessings, disobedience brings cursings. And today our theology has become a curse to the world. We have not obeyed God in education, in medical missionary work, in evangelism, and in the publishing work. And when we don’t obey we are under a curse.

The Finishing of the Work

Many leaders are standing in the way of God’s work. They are keeping the true message from being presented to the world. Therefore God is forced to take the reins into His own hands.

“God will use ways and means by which it will be seen that He is taking the reins in His own hands. The workers will be surprised by the simple means that He will use to bring about and perfect His work of righteousness.” Testimonies to Ministers, 300.

“As the time comes for the loud cry to be given, the Lord will work through humble instruments, leading the minds of those who consecrate themselves to his service. The laborers will be qualified rather by the unction of his Spirit than by the training of literary institutions. Men of faith and prayer will be constrained to go forth with holy zeal, declaring the words which God gives them.” Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, 424.

The reason why Seventh-day Adventists are still in this earth is because we have been preaching the Evangelical gospel and engaging in their interfaith worship services which is causing us to loose our peculiarity. The Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are determined to destroy the three angels’ messages, destroy the sanctuary message, destroy the 2300 day prophecies, and destroy our opportunity to be the Remnant people. And the end will never come as long as these encounters with the Evangelicals and Catholics continue. What we need is a powerful encounter with God and His Holy Spirit so that with boldness we can live up to the high and holy standard of God’s Word.

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Titus 2:11-14.

Let us not be like the Jews of old who refused to acknowledge God’s call for renewal and regeneration: “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” Malachi 3:7.

—Pastor Ron Spear


Source:http://www.eternalgospelherald.com/Evangelical_Catholic_Encounters.htm

Pastor Hagee and Christians United for Israel Push for Armageddon


(Photo: Ash Laidlaw/iStock)In April 2007, Pastor Hagee's website removed a doctored photo of The Temple Mount in Jerusalem that had photoshopped the mosque out of view.


Book Excerpt - Pastor Hagee and Christians United for Israel Push for Armageddon


This article is excerpted from God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (Sausalito, CA: PoliPoint Press, 2008).


By Sarah Posner


Those nations who align with God’s purpose will receive His blessing. Those who follow a policy of opposition to God’s purpose will receive the swift and severe judgment of God without limitation. –John Hagee, Jerusalem Countdown
The carnival at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio looks, at first glance, like any other church festival, with rides, games, food, and children playing in the waning sunshine of a warm October afternoon. But look again and you’ll see some unusual twists. The festivities are ringed with twelve booths selling food, each booth meant to signify one of the tribes of Israel. The booths, visitors are told, are in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth. Under the tent, there’s no preacher, no laying on of hands, no casting out devils. This tent houses a very different kind of revival, one in which Christians are buying challah covers, tallith, kiddush cups, mezuzahs, and other Judaic items, all made in Israel. They are buying products even though, as one woman remarked about the Hebrew writing, “I don’t know what it says.” Here on John Hagee’s sprawling church property, on the weekend of Hagee’s annual Night to Honor Israel, Hagee’s followers from all over the country have come to celebrate what they call their “Hebraic roots” and to claim ownership of the world’s most hotly contested piece of real estate: not for the Jews but for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Inside the building, the entertainment is the stuff of biblical prophecy: stories of blood, gore, conflagrations, and apocalyptic showdowns between good and evil. Hagee’s injection of the charged rhetoric of biblical prophecy into contemporary foreign policy has catapulted him to the forefront of an American Christian Zionist movement that has become the darling of conservative Israel hawks in Washington and neoconservatives yearning for regional war in the Middle East. This weekend former CIA director James Woolsey is a featured speaker, and Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel will speak by video link. National and local Jewish leaders are on hand to pay homage to Hagee’s alleged support for the Jewish people and the state of Israel. The Jews have no greater friend, the audience is told, than John Hagee, even though the book he wrote, prominently advertised on the church’s parking lot marquee, predicts they will perish in a lake of brimstone at Armageddon.
The line for the Night to Honor Israel started forming outside the church even before the doors were scheduled to open. The atmosphere is festive, and people are filled with anticipation. But the party they are looking forward to is not taking place inside the church, where the Cornerstone Choir sings “Hava Nagila Texas Style!” and where, in a video montage of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock magically disappears. Rather, the anticipation is for the Second Coming, when, Hagee has said, Jesus will sit “right there on that Temple Mount” and rule the world.
In its short history, Hagee’s grassroots movement, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has become the most visible organization of American Christian Zionists. Hagee launched the organization in February 2006, just a month after the release of his book Jerusalem Countdown, which became a best seller. In the book Hagee asserts that an American and Israeli war on Iran is not only biblically prophesied but necessary to bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming, a theme that drew four hundred pastors and Christian leaders to San Antonio to the inaugural meeting of his Christian Zionist organization.
Many of the attendees were televangelists well-known for their Word of Faith preaching on TBN. Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Jesse Duplantis, and Mac Hammond were there, as was Stephen Strang, president of Strang Communications. (Strang Communications is publisher of Charisma magazine, the leading magazine in Word of Faith and charismatic circles, and the umbrella organization for numerous publishing imprints, one of which published Hagee’s book.) A strong supporter of Bush and the Iraq War, Strang has said that many times when a pastor launches a new organization, “second-tier” figures show up in support, “because everyone’s busy, and everybody’s busy with their own agenda, . . . but this, in my opinion [was] pretty top level.” Others, like Parsley and Hagin, did not attend the launch but signed on later for leadership roles in the organization. Many of them, including Strang, Hammond, and Duplantis, were on hand for the Night to Honor Israel weekend festivities in 2006; Parsley and Jakes agreed to speak at the 2007 event.
CUFI shows how Word of Faith melds with conservative evangelicalism, movement conservatism, and the GOP. Janet Parshall, the popular conservative talk radio host, was at the launch and signed on to the board of advisers. Gary Bauer, the former Bush Sr. White House aide and Republican presidential candidate, and George Morrison, the former chairman of the man-centered Promise Keepers, are on CUFI’s executive committee, as was Jerry Falwell before his death. The organization’s executive director, David Brog (who is Jewish), is a former chief of staff to Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA).
An evangelical pastor from Colorado, Morrison is a long-time ally of Hagee’s in the Christian Zionist movement. Speaking just two months after the 2006 CUFI launch, Morrison predicted that although prior efforts to create a unified grassroots Christian Zionist movement had stumbled, CUFI would gain steam because of the escalating tensions with Iran and the recent election of the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Morrison said that “almost every evangelical organization that I know of ” was present at the CUFI launch, “a tremendous turnout.” Hagee, said Morrison, “has the platform, his TV ministry, . . . he has the great respect of a lot of other leaders, so certainly, he’s in that position . . . of spiritual leadership and authority to lead the evangelical churches and help unite them” around CUFI. Hagee has claimed that he has a mailing list of two million people, and the twenty thousand “spiritual leaders” on his list all forward his e-mails to their own supporters, who in some cases have their own lists of a million people.
In its short history, Hagee’s grassroots movement, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has become the most visible organization of American Christian Zionists.
The launch of CUFI around the time of the release of Hagee’s book undoubtedly propelled sales and helped hype a case for war against Iran. By April 2006, two months after CUFI’s launch and three months after its release, the book had sold over 620,000 copies. Some of the sales are accounted for by the fact that ministries like Hagee’s will buy books in bulk, then give them as “gifts” as part of fund-raising campaigns. But even apart from sales directly to ministries and churches, the book ranked twenty-first on USA Today’s best-seller list and topped the Publishers Weekly’s religion best-seller list, Wal-Mart’s inspirational best-seller list, and the Christian Bookseller’s Association (CBA’s) best-seller list.
Hagee’s long-standing view that “Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish people” (meaning no portion of it should be turned over to the Palestinians) has made him popular with neoconservative hawks. One Jerusalem, an organization committed to that principle, has embraced Hagee’s CUFI effort. One Jerusalem was founded by, among others, Douglas Feith, who became Bush’s undersecretary of defense for policy and notoriously peddled in cherry-picked intelligence to push the case for the war against Iraq, and Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and Israeli government official. Bush admires Sharansky’s writings and awarded him a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006.
On the Saturday before his Night to Honor Israel, with his audience dotted with Christians wearing tallith and yarmulkes, Hagee hosted his Middle East Intelligence Briefing, billed as insider information not available anywhere else. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, thrilled the crowd when he pronounced Israel an essential ally in the war against Islamic fanaticism. But he bewildered it with his suggestion that to see who might be aiding terrorists they should look in their rearview mirrors when they fill their cars up with gas. (The parking lot outside was filled with gas-guzzling SUVs.) Other speakers lent a distinctly anti-Muslim shrillness to the afternoon, less a diatribe against terrorism and more an indictment of Islam. Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian who survived the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s, gave a fevered, vindictive speech about why she supports Israel. (No Muslim was ever nice to her, and Israeli soldiers saved her from starvation.)
Gabriel, author of the book Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, attempts to draw parallels between her experience in Lebanon and an Islamic threat to American democracy. When Muslims became a majority in Lebanon (“they multiply much more quickly than we do”), Christians were “attacked for tolerance, open-mindedness, and multiculturalism.” (At the same time, Gabriel derides “political correctness” as ignorant and dangerous.) Gabriel added that “because we are Christians, Muslims want to kill us.” In contrast, she went on (conveniently not noting Israeli-led atrocities against civilians during the same period), “Jews showed compassion in a way that Muslims didn’t.”
Gabriel also runs the Virginia Beachbased American Congress for Truth (ACT), whose board of advisers is stacked with inside-the-Beltway neoconservative hawks often featured in print and broadcast conservative media outlets: Kenneth Timmerman, founder of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran and author of the book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran; Harvey Kushner, author of Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States;Walid Phares, senior fellow at the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a critic of withdrawal from Iraq; as well as Woolsey himself. The founding principles of ACT sound like a Rush Limbaugh playbook, as the organization aims to “give Americans their voice back. That unique American voice, full of joy and anticipation of better days and infinite aspirations . . . muted by the scourge of political correctness. We are now a society neutered by this scourge, . . . unable to act or speak for fear of offending, or of lawsuits, or of accusations of one-sided political views. Millions either do not realize, or deny the threat of militant Islam to America, Israel and all of Western civilization.”
To Hagee’s audience, Gabriel, a regular on the conservative talk radio circuit, claims that Hamas has cells in all major American cities and that Hezbollah has eleven cells in the country, one with a general who was smuggled over the U.S.- Mexico border. She tells heartbreaking tales of her family’s dire brushes with starvation and death during the bloody civil war, but her disdain for all things Muslim and her deification of all things Jewish is hysterical and bizarre. Nevertheless, the more she implores Hagee’s audience to love the Jews because a group of Israeli soldiers rescued her from Muslim fanatics, the more they adore her. She gets a huge standing ovation (and a hug from Woolsey) after imploring the receptive audience to “throw political correctness in the garbage where it belongs!” Gabriel, an immigrant who became a U.S. citizen, once told Hagee that America’s “immigration problem” mirrors the problem Lebanon had that led to its “fall to radical Islamic forces.” Gabriel further claimed that al Qaeda and Hezbollah are working with the Salvadoran MS-13 gang in the United States. “Not only are we inviting our enemy in, but this enemy is coming into the United States, marrying American citizens who are Muslims who are sympathizers of Hezbollah terrorists, and producing more children... There is going to be a severe crisis in the near future because America has allowed a policy of open borders.”
Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee’s manifesto for war with Iran, provides a peculiar mix of biblical prophecy, purported inside information from Israeli government officials, and a mixed-up, pared-down lesson in nuclear physics. “I wrote this book in April 2005, and when people read it, they will think I wrote it late last night after the Fox News report,” Hagee has said, without a trace of irony. “It’s that close to where we are and beyond.” But the particulars of Iran’s nuclear program do not seem to interest Hagee. In many of his television and radio appearances in early 2006, he glossed over the obstacles faced by Tehran in creating a viable nuclear weapon, arguing that “once you have enriched uranium, the genie is out of the bottle.” In March 2006 he claimed that within a month, “Iran will have the nuclear — the enriched uranium to make the — have the nuclear capability to make a bomb, a suitcase bomb, a missile head, or anything they want to do with it.” So when the Iranian president announced the following month that Tehran had enriched uranium (although not enough to make a bomb), Hagee claimed — despite prevailing scientific opinion to the contrary — that the Iranians “now have enriched uranium that will lead to the production of nuclear suitcase bombs designed to destroy American cities with one blast. These nuclear weapons will also be used against Israel.” To fully emphasize the need for war, Hagee added, “the question is not if there will be a military preemptive strike against Iran. . . . The question is when.” To prime his followers for such a possibility, Hagee has argued that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons must be stopped to protect America and Israel from a nuclear attack. He has also warned of a supposed Iranian-led plan to simultaneously explode nuclear suitcase bombs in seven American cities, or to use an electromagnetic pulse device to create “an American Hiroshima.”
His rhetoric is directed not only at his audience of believers but also at a broader audience, whose justifiable nervousness about terrorism he seeks to exploit. Hagee was for months comparing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler — still a favorite rhetorical device — before Seymour Hersh informed the reality-based world that the Bush administration, too, was talking up the confrontational, Holocaust-denying Iranian president as the next führer. In early April 2006, Hersh reported that “Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. ‘That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’”
Hagee seems to delight in a coming confrontation. He argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia’s leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the book of Ezekiel, leading to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” During Hagee’s appearance on Benny Hinn’s program, Hinn, who frequently predicts the end is imminent, enthused, “We are living in the last days. These are the most exciting days in church history.” The master of signs and wonders then went on to add, “We are facing now [the] most dangerous moment for America.” At one point, Hinn clapped his hands in delight and shouted, “Yes! Glory!” and then urged his viewers to donate money faster because he is running out of time to preach the gospel.
Hagee’s book, and his discussion of it in Christian media outlets, is absolutist. He speaks not only of good against evil, believer against nonbeliever, Judeo-Christian civilization against Islamic civilization, but also of an American-Israeli alliance against the rest of the world. He plays on conservative disdain for anything European while promoting the Bush unilateralist mentality that has had catastrophic results in Iraq. He expresses contempt for diplomacy, calling the UN Security Council “a joke.” Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the Orthodox rabbi who once worked with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, said after a Purim appearance on TBN with Hagee that “Pastor Hagee has a very realistic understanding of the United Nations . . . and recognizes it as unlikely to be any more helpful in this looming tension than it has been in any other in the past.” He paints Russia and China as America’s enemies, claiming, without basis, that Russia has helped Iran build long-range missiles that could reach New York City.
In Hagee’s telling, Israel has no choice but to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities, with or without America’s help. The strike will provoke Russia — which wants Persian Gulf oil — to lead an army of Arab nations against Israel. Then God will wipe out all but one-sixth of the Russian-led army, as the world watches “with shock and awe,” he says, lending either a divine quality to the Bush administration phrase or a Bush-like quality to God’s wrath.
Hagee’s long-standing view that “Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish people” (meaning no portion of it should be turned over to the Palestinians) has made him popular with neoconservative hawks.
But Hagee doesn’t stop there. He adds that Ezekiel predicts fire “upon those who live in security in the coastlands.” From this sentence he concludes that there will be judgment upon all who stood by while the Russian- led force invaded Israel, and he issues a stark warning to the United States to intervene: “Could it be that America, who refuses to defend Israel from the Russian invasion, will experience nuclear warfare on our east and west coasts?” He says yes, citing Genesis 12:3, in which God said to Israel: “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.”
To fill the power vacuum left by God’s decimation of the Russian army, the Antichrist—identified by Hagee as the head of the European Union—will rule “a one-world government, a one-world currency and a one-world religion” for three and a half years. (He adds that “one need only be a casual observer of current events to see that all three of these things are coming into reality.”) The “demonic world leader” will then be confronted by a false prophet, identified by Hagee as China, at Armageddon, the Mount of Megiddo in Israel. As they prepare for the final battle, Jesus will return on a white horse and cast both villains— and presumably any nonbelievers— into a “lake of fire burning with brimstone,” thus marking the beginning of his millennial reign.
Postscript
In his best-selling Jerusalem Countdown, Pastor Hagee asserts that an American and Israeli war on Iran is not only biblically prophesied but necessary to bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, televangelist and CUFI founder Hagee was thrust into the spotlight after he endorsed John McCain and the presumptive Republican nominee proclaimed he was “proud” to have the pastor’s support. The extremist right-wing Catholic League, headed by provocateur and media hound Bill Donohue, seized the moment to excoriate Hagee for his allegedly anti-Catholic views. (Donohue claimed that Hagee sermonizing that “the apostate church” was the “great whore” depicted in the Book of Revelation proved that Hagee was anti- Catholic.) The media leapt on the story – which broke around the same time as the explosive sermons of Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced. But by focusing on Hagee’s supposed anti- Catholicism, the media largely ignored Hagee’s dispensationalist ideology and his deep connections to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment.
Hagee later apologized for any perception that his statements were anti- Catholic, and Donohue issued a statement that the Catholic League considered the matter closed. After that controversy died down, Hagee continued business as usual—preaching about the end-times, endearing himself to Israel’s most hard-line right-wingers, stoking fears of a nuclear Iran, and planning CUFI’s next summer summit in Washington, which will feature leading neoconservative pundits and elected officials.
Pastor John HageeBy PRA’s Right Web
PRA’s Right Web, an online resource, profiles key individuals and organizations promoting militarist policies in the Middle East. http://rightweb. irc-online.org. This profile is an excerpt.
Like many Christian fundamentalists, Pastor John Hagee sees the return of Jews to the Holy Land as fulfilling biblical prophecy. This idea traces back to the 1600s but gained prominence with the creation of Israel in 1948.1Hagee and many other Christian Zionists read the Book of Revelation and other prophetic biblical texts to suggest the creation of the state of Israel started a countdown to the second coming of Jesus in the apocalyptic End Times.2
In Hagee’s view, the End Times usher in a global struggle between the armies of good and evil in the battle of Armageddon, located in what is now a valley in Israel. Unlike most fundamentalists, Hagee predicts a specific imminent scenario. According to the BBC, in his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, Hagee argues that Russian and Arab armies will attack Israel and that God will step in to destroy them. This event will spur conflict between China and Satan’s earthly agent in the End Times—the Antichrist, who will be masquerading as the head of the European Union—over the fate of Israel, which in turn will lead to the second coming of Christ.3 According to Hagee, President George W. Bush’s support for Israel, which Hagee says “fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state,” will also play “a pivotal role in the second coming.”4
A CNN poll found that “59 percent of American evangelicals believe Israel is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”5Only a handful of evangelicals, however, believe in the theological assertion shared by Hagee and Christian author Tim LaHaye that there will be a “Rapture,” in which godly Christians will be drawn away from earth into a protective embrace while God punishes the nonbelievers during the Tribulations. Rapture belief can promote a provocative encouragement of strife in the Middle East as a way to hasten the End Times fulfillment of prophecy.6Hagee and many other believers in apocalyptic Christian prophecy support Israel's control of the ancient Holy Land because they expect Jesus to return to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem once Jews have rebuilt the Temple of Solomon—requiring the destruction of Islamic shrines and mosques currently on that site.7
Since the 1990s, some apocalyptic Christians have viewed Islam as the false religion supported by the Antichrist in the End Times.8 The resulting Christian Islamophobia intersected with the “clash of civilizations” thesis of Samuel P. Huntington and provided support for the Bush administration’s backing of aggressive Israeli policies toward its neighbors. The Christian Right, neoconservatives, and militarists found themselves in an uneasy coalition under the Bush administration— all promoting a confrontational and apocalyptic view of strife in the Middle East.9
In a 2006 interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio, Hagee said that there was “no room for compromise” with “radical Islam.” When Gross asked about “Islam in general,” Hagee responded, “Well Islam in general—those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.”10 In a March 2006 interview with the right-wing Human Events, Hagee predicted that by May 2006 Israel would militarily engage Iran, the country that he blamed for attacks on targets in the Western world. Asked if the United States should support Israel against Iran, he said, “Iran is a threat to western civilization ... not just to Israel. Iran with nuclear weapons will be the world's worst nightmare. America and Europe will be blackmailed to bow to the Islamofacist agenda. The attack on 9/11 proved Islamics have the will to kill us, they are now searching for the power to kill us... nuclear power.”11
In early 2006, Hagee founded Christians United for Israel to promote his vision of Middle East politics. He called upon Christian leaders from across America to join him in launching this new initiative. Over 400 Christian leaders answered the call and Christians United for Israel was born.12
Hagee’s controversial views go beyond the Middle East. In a widely viewed video, Hagee argues that Adolf Hitler merely built on the work of the “Roman Church,” which he called “the Great Whore,” in spilling the “blood of saints,” who Hagee claimed are mainly Jews.13
When Bill Bennett, the former Ronald Reagan cabinet member who is now a right-wing radio broadcaster, asked John McCain about Hagee’s views [since Hagee had endorsed him], McCain said, “Well, obviously I repudiate any comments that are anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic, racist, any other. And I condemn them and I condemn those words that Pastor Hagee apparently—that Pastor Hagee wrote. I will say that he said that his words were taken out of context, he defends his position. I hope that maybe you’d give him a chance to respond.” He then added, “I will say, I’d like to say on his behalf, he’s been a very strong supporter of the state of Israel and when we were doing the No Surrender tour [a weeklong pro- Iraq War tour and campaign rally with stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina], he came and spoke on behalf of not surrendering in Iraq.”14
Hagee controls a formidable media empire. According to his CUFI biography, “John Hagee Ministries occupies a 50,000 square-foot production center which houses both radio and television studios, 100 telephone prayer partners, and a vast distribution center. Currently, Hagee telecasts on eight major networks, 162 independent television stations, and 51 radio stations throughout the globe broadcasting in over 190 nations.”15
The ministry, which is incorporated as the nonprofit GETV,16 has spurred accusations of inappropriate enrichment of Hagee and his family.17 The San Antonio Express-News reported that GETV’s 2001 tax statement showed the nonprofit organization earned more than $18 million that year and that Hagee’s compensation package amounted to nearly $1.25 million.
End Note
1 Donald Wagner, “Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Rootsof a Political Alliance,” Christian Century, November 4,1998, http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/zionism/wagner-cc.html.2Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of ChristianNationalism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006); Chip Berletand Nikhil Aziz, “Culture, Religion, Apocalypse, and MiddleEast Foreign Policy,” Right Web, December 2003,http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/848.html.3 Richard Allen Greene, “Evangelical Christians Plead forIsrael,” BBC, July 19, 2006.4 Glenn Greenwald, “Some Hateful, Radical Ministers—White Evangelicals—Are Acceptable,” Salon.com, February28, 2008.5 CNN, “Christians, Jews in Holy Land Alliance,” August 20,2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/17/jews.christians/index.html.6 Barbara A. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hopein the Book of Revelation (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2004).7 Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism andthe Struggle for the Temple Mount (New York: The Free Press,2000).8 Paul Boyer, “John Darby Meets Saddam Hussein: ForeignPolicy and Bible Prophecy,” Chronicle of Higher Education,supplement, February 14, 2003, B10-B11.9 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and theRemaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997). Oninfluence: Duane M. Oldfield, “The Evangelical Rootsof American Unilateralism: The Christian Right’s Influenceand How to Counter It,” Foreign Policy in Focus, InterhemisphericResource Center, March 2004,http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004evangelical.html;Donald Wagner,“Evangelicals and Israel;” William Martin, “The ChristianRight and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy,Spring 1999; Sarah Posner, “Lobbying for Armageddon,”AlterNet, August 3, 2006, http://www.alternet.org/story/39748.On apocalypticism: Michael Northcott, An Angel Directs TheStorm.Apocalyptic Religion & American Empire (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004); Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and Empire:The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis,MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2002).10 Terry Gross, "Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism,"National Public Radio, September 18, 2006,http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6097362.11 Robert Bluey, “John Hagee: Iran Poses Grave Threat toWestern Civilization,” Human Events, March 16, 2006.12 Christians United for Israel, “About CUFI,” http://www.cufi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_AboutCUFI.13 “John Hagee Compares Roman Church to Hitler,” YouTube,http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uViQ0hVV57Q.14 ThinkProgress.org,“McCain Defends Hagee: ‘He Said ThatHis Words Were Taken Out Of Context,’” March 11, 2008,http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/11/mccain-hagee-hewitt/.15 “Pastor John Hagee,” CUFI, http://www.cufi.org/site/Page-Server?pagename=about_pastor_john_hagee.16 “John Hagee Ministries/ Global Evangelism Television,”MinistryWatch.com, http://www.ministrywatch.com/mw2.1/F_SumRpt.asp?EIN=741986308.17 Analisa Nazareno, “Critics Say John Hagee’s CompensationIs Too High,” San Antonio Express-News, June 20, 2003.


How Roman Catholic Neocons Peddle Natural Law into Debates about Life and Death



Photo: Sue Smith/iStock)While Roman Catholic neoconservatives interpret the natural law tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas in a way that challenges stem cell research, you could read the same tradition as supporting stem cell research


By Frank L. CocozzelliThe Public Eye, Summer 2008


As the rightist philosopher Richard Weaver famously said, “ideas have consequences.” And I can tell you from personal experience some of the consequences of at least one idea, that of “natural law.”
I have a form of LMG muscular dystrophy. When I was first diagnosed in 1985, I walked with a slight limp. Today I am bound to a wheelchair, a virtual quadriplegic. Nevertheless, I am a practicing attorney. Monday through Friday my wife wakes up at 5 a.m. and gets herself ready for work. An hour later she wakes me up, then dresses me for court. Since my body does not mostly move of it own volition, she must roll me back and forth to get my pants on, lift me onto a slide board to get me into my wheelchair, lift my arms to get my shirt on and then knot my tie. After she gives me breakfast, she attends to getting our kids ready for school. She does all this before working an eight-hour day. I usually leave for court shortly thereafter, driven either by my father or my uncle.



“DECEIVED ON PURPOSE.”


09:50:10 am, Categories: By Len MP3


“DECEIVED ON PURPOSE.” – Is there an agenda to bring New Age deceptions into the Evangelical Churches?A Book Review and Critical Overview of the Issues…



Of all the subtle deceptions that satan uses to deceive and mislead people in the world and in the churches, none is more subtle (or dangerous) as the humanistic “New Age” philosophy and religions of today. How wonderful and logical it all seems on the outside; yet how fully and utterly antichrist and anti-Christian it is all just beneath the surface. … take a closer look … Grabbling mightily with these very issues, former New Ager and author, Warren Smith, writes two fine books that sheds much light on the new age agenda that is infiltrating the churches throughout America and much of the Western world as well. His first book was called, THE LIGHT THAT WAS DARK, and chronicles the spiritual journey of himself and his wife as they learn what real spiritual warfare is over the souls of men and women in the context of the supernatural and the many new age religions scattered throughout America. His second (and even more important) book is titled, DECEIVED ON PURPOSE, and is a well researched indictment of just how definite and unmistakable New Age ideas and philosophies have crept into MANY mainline and evangelical churches today. Believe me: this book is a real eye-opener.
Being very cognizant of new age buzz words and concepts, Smith, after becoming a convert to historic and biblical Christianity, could very easily discern a hidden agenda on the part of bestselling author and pastor, Rick Warren, who it turns out is a disciple of the heavily new age influenced, Dr. Robert Schuller and his worldwide “Hour of Power” television ministry. Knowing that many evangelicals outright reject many of the teachings of Robert Schuller, Rick Warren picks up the teachings of one of his major mentors [Schuller] in a somewhat new mode and then gives them a “more Christianized” fresh-face approach in an effort to make these ideas and concepts more acceptable to the evangelical communities at large. Well, did Warren succeed in this subtle deceit? Yes. Enormously so, … and he also made a fortune and built a hugely influencial ministry in propogating these “new and fresh ideas.” … and WHAT ARE? these “new and fresh” ideas and approaches to ministry and the Gospel? . . .
We find out in the book, Deceived on Purpose, that Schuller has been for a long time now very much involved in and often taught new age ideology openly in his church and ministry . One teaching in particular, A Course in Miracles, is completely full of and riddled from top to bottom with new age doctrine. This course teaches what the Bible calls ‘another Jesus,’ - a “Jesus” that is “the Christ” in everyone. Schuller fully endorses the basic new age ideology that, “God is in everything and everyone.” For example, the Course in Miracles study books and guides (which are also regularly endorsed by people like Oprah Winfrey and other propagators of New Age thinking), teaches in Lesson #29 that it requires the participants to go through their day affirming that “God is everything I see.” Lesson #61 requires participants to repeat over and over the mantra, “I am the light of the world” (no reference is made to the Lord Jesus, the TRUE Light of the world, in this regard, only “the Christ in you”)! Lesson #70 requires participants to say and believe, “My salvation comes from me.” – This, of course, is total heresy and utterly contradictory to both the Gospel and all sound, biblical doctrine and truth. Along with all this, Schuller also has often exposed his television audience and congregation to numerous known new age teachers such as Bernie Siegal, Gerald Jampolsky, and others, presenting them as being tantamount to “Christian believers” in very deceiving and misleading ways.
Why so much emphasis on Schuller? Because if you know all of Schuller’s false teachings and twistings of Biblical truth, you know where Rick Warren gets much of his inspiration and ideas. He was a graduate of Schuller’s Institute and has numerous past connections to his so-called “rethinking of Christianity” agenda. Rick Warren bought into most all of Schuller’s basic ideas and then wrote ‘The PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE,’ - a bestseller that has literally swept thru thousands of churches and ministries worldwide. Are the churches in trouble and in peril? I think, frankly, that would be an understatement.
Another disciple of Schuller, by the way, is Bruce Wilkinson, who wrote the runaway bestseller, ‘The Prayer of Jabez.’ He also uses new age terms and makes them popular and seemingly acceptable within a ‘christian’ context. Words and concepts such as “Enlarge” and “Emmergence” are major new age buzz word which turns a person’s attention to their own agendas instead of seeking God’s plans. Wilkinson has spoken at Saddleback Church for Rick Warren and then later at Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral. What are some of the ideas and doctrines that are being espoused here that are not according to sound, biblical, Christian doctrine and Faith.? – That is what we now want to examine further…
Rick Warren also makes reference to Bernie Siegal in chapter three of his book as Warren Smith further exposes Rick Warren’s clear and unmistakable new age connections. Then, a little later in his commentaries R.Warren adds a confusing, even somewhat insulting twist in interpreting the lives of the patriarch, Job, and Isaiah, the prophet. Just to show how far off base R.Warren often is, Smith quotes from this chapter of the PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE: the quote states that “the lives of Job and Isaiah were without purpose and without God.” Is THAT Truth? Far from it. Their lives were FULL of God’s calling and God’s purposes, but Pastor Rick Warren tells us that “their lives were without purpose and without God.” (!) Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
The author also exposes the use of many new versions of the Bible by Rick Warren in his PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE books and study guides. Sometimes Warren uses a verse from one or another version that seems to be more suited for his interpretation or spin on any particular subject. The version that is clearly the most controversial would be THE MESSAGE Bible. Smith, forinstance, compares the MESSAGE Bible Version and the KJV Bible in their translation of the very well known LORD’s prayer found in the Gospels. This is very interesting because in the Message version, instead of saying “ let Thy Will be done: in earth, as it is in heaven” [as translated in the KJV and many other Bible translations), the MESSAGE has it translated: “as above, so below.” Smith notes that this is (again) a definite new age buzz term and expression that all new agers would immediately identify with. Also exposed is the belittlement of the King James Bible. In fact, Rick Warren tells his readers “to get rid the King James Bible.” This simply makes me want to keep mine above all the others.
Warren Smith encourages his readers “to be Bereans,” - to be careful to verify the truth of ideas and doctrines based upon sound Biblical context. How the people of God need to be and to do just that. Smith continually alerts his readers of the changes in ideology among many of the leaders of evangelical Christianity. As a man who came out of the darkness of great deception and has seen first hand the new age philosophies and religions, he is well informed and able to inform others of just where and how these new age ideas have crept into the Christian community and various ministries. He exposes his readers to numerous new age ideas and concepts that most of the body of Christ are woefully ignorant of, both in terms of what they mean and as to the origins, - which is usually Hindu, Buddhist, occultic, or “New Age.” This book is a MUST READ for many Christians who have simply been entirely naive of these creeping (and often subtle) deceptions.
I must add also that it is certainly no great surprise that this book has been published by a relatively small publishing company (Mountain Streams Press). While it is well-written, well-researched and very convincing, it deals with a subject matter most publishers would, for the most part, simply want to avoid. Despite being confined to small distribution channels, I was gladdened to see that it is now in its third printing. I believe that Warren Smith has many important things to say in this book and that Christians need to evaluate the teachings of Rick Warren and others to see if they are consistent with the Scriptures. "In these times of heightened danger and treacherous deceptions, we must always go to the Lord and look to the Holy Spirit for truth and direction. Christians following deceived leaders will only end up deceived themselves. We must always measure everything carefully by the true Word of God and what is known to be sound doctrine.
In closing, I would like to share my favorite passage in this fine and challenging book that is found on page 147. It seems to sum up the real message of Christ and Christianity very simply, clearly and concisely:"Finally, after all we had been through, I was starting to see that the heart of the gospel is not so much that God helps those who help themselves, but, rather, that God helps those who can't help themselves. It was not in affirming our strength but in recognizing our weakness that we had finally learned to ask the Lord for help. It was His grace, not our own self-sufficiency that had saved the day."
Some additional works that have only recently been published on this same subject are:
For Many Shall Come in My Name, by Ray Yungen
The Truth War, by John MacArthur
The Beautiful Side of Evil, by Johanna Michaelsen
Inside the New Age Nightmare, by Randall Baer
Redefining Christianity, by Bob DeWay
and
More than a Purpose, by Marshall Davis
Here also are a few videos over at youtube that can be very helpful in order to get a clearer perspective on these issues:
Be sure to listen to this one first:
Pastor John MacArthur on the Purpose Driven Life:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI9EzMWZoag&feature=related
Rick Warren - Religious Pluralism - These Bridges Are False! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptGh_xU2PCc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdhDnPeIOn0&feature=related
BEWARE of the subtle infiltrations and deceptions of the New Age Agenda: it is now more prevalent and “acceptable” than ever before. Remember: Jesus said, “MANY *would come in His name* and deceive MANY.” – that was certainly a righteous and accurate warning.

Len & Lynne Hummel

Clearlight Christian Ministries* Jeremiah 9:23-26 ** Philippians 1:6, & 9-11 *


Who Was Edward M. House?


by Robert Higgs

Edward M. House, a man now almost completely forgotten, was one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century. Given that most high school seniors do not know that the War Between the States was fought sometime between 1850 and 1900, we cannot reasonably expect many people to recognize his name today, much less to know anything about him. I suspect that scarcely anyone except a smattering of history teachers and a few history mavens can accurately state why House was an important figure in U.S. history. Yet he arguably had a greater impact on the past century than all but a handful of other actors.
Political history tends to be written primarily with reference to formal state leaders – pharaohs, caesars, kings, prime ministers, presidents, and their most notable civilian and military officers. Yet probably at all times and places, much less prominent individuals have exerted potent influence out of the limelight or completely behind the scenes. I have long been interested in what we might call the general theory of gray eminence and in leading examples of the genus. The typical American now knows little or nothing, for example, about Bernard M. Baruch, John J. McCloy, Clark Clifford, and David Rockefeller, although each of these men played a powerful role in shaping the world in which we now live. I do not mean to suggest that all such unofficial movers and shakers are rich and use their wealth as the key that admits them to the inner sanctums of official power. Some, such as House, were not outrageously rich, and some who were, such as Baruch, had great influence not simply because of their wealth, although having great gobs of money at one's disposal certainly never hurts when one sets out to cultivate so-called statesmen.
Edward Mandell House (1858–1938) grew up in Houston, Texas. His father, Thomas William House, an English immigrant who had made a fortune as a blockade runner during the War Between the States, died the third-richest man in the state in 1880, leaving to his children an estate valued at $500,000. Edward managed his share of the inheritance astutely, even though he spent much of his time engaged in politics―never running for elective office or seeking an appointive one, but helping other men to gain office and make policy. Though a sickly man and certainly not a flamboyant one, he had a flair for making friends who appreciated his discretion, respected his views, and valued his counsel. This talent for winning friends and influencing people would remain the basis of his remarkable achievements in politics throughout his life. He was, in today's lingo, a very smooth operator, appreciated all the more because he clearly had no desire to displace the king he had just helped to place on the throne. The power he sought was the power behind the throne.
By 1910, House was seeking a new, wider stage for his political activities. He had played an important part in getting four governors elected in Texas and in guiding their policies in office―the first of them, Jim Hogg, had given him the entirely honorific title of Colonel, by which he was known thereafter―but he was losing interest in the local scene.
After maintaining a residence in Austin since 1886, he took an apartment in New York City in 1902. He also spent a good deal of time in the summers at a rented house on the shore near Boston, and in Europe. Wherever he went, doors were opened to him, and he and his wife Loulie entertained actively in return. The range of his friendships, acquaintances, and social connections was extraordinary. His biographer Godfrey Hodgson reports:
His diary records meals with Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as with the virtuoso pianist Ignazy Jan Paderewski, who became president of Poland. He mingled with politicians, generals, bankers, academics, journalists, and society hostesses in New York, Paris, and London. He knew J. P. Morgan Jr. well enough to call him "Jack," and he dined with Henry Clay Frick in the house that became his great art museum. (Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand, p. 9)1
Not a bad showing for a man who had left Cornell before graduating and whose annual income ranged only from $20,000 to $25,000 (approximately $450,000 to $560,000 in today's dollars).
In 1911, he spied what he took to be a potentially rising star to which he might hitch his idle political wagon, a man with no prior experience as a politician until his election as governor of New Jersey in November 1910. Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) had been, except for a brief stint as a fledgling lawyer, a lifelong academic; he spent his life prior to 1910 as a student, professor, and university administrator, serving from 1902 to 1910 as president of Princeton University, an office in which he gained a well-deserved reputation for his self-righteous refusal to compromise. After Wilson's election as governor, a number of Democrats began to tout him as the party's next candidate for the presidency, and in the winter of 1910–11, House decided to join this movement, "to do what I could to further Governor Wilson's fortunes" (56).
House played an important role as campaign strategist and intra-party peacemaker in 1911 and 1912, and he deserves part of the credit for getting Wilson first the nomination and then the presidency. Of course, the principal person responsible for Wilson's election was Theodore Roosevelt, whose insatiable craving for power had led him to bolt the Republican Party and run as a Progressive Party (Bull Moose) candidate, thereby splitting the opposition to Wilson and ensuring a Democratic victory. House played a more important role after Wilson's election, because the president-elect had little interest in the nuts and bolts of party politics, including the distribution of patronage and the selection of men for cabinet and other high-level positions, and he left these decisions largely in House's hands. Wilson offered House himself any cabinet position he wanted, except secretary of state, which had been reserved for William Jennings Bryan, but House declined, preferring to work in the shadows as the president's most trusted advisor.
In this capacity, House quickly developed an extraordinarily intimate relationship with the president as political advisor, personal confidant, and frequent social companion. He engaged actively in the extended politicking that ultimately led to passage of the Federal Reserve Act, and in the ticklish matter of U.S. relations with Mexico, then in the throes of violent revolution. As war clouds began to gather over Europe, House, with Wilson's approval, undertook to head off hostilities by bringing about an understanding among the three greatest powers, the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, making them jointly the guarantors of world peace. He met with Kaiser Wilhelm II and with British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey, among others, to work up interest in the plan, but this attempt at preemptive reconciliation obviously never came to fruition.
During the war, House actively engaged in efforts to bring the fighting to an end. He shared Wilson's view that the most desirable outcome would be one that left the postwar world drastically reshaped in a way that eliminated or greatly diminished militarism, promoted national self-determination, spread democracy, left the United States standing astride the international political system, and brought about Wilson's recognition as the world's savior. In short, House shared Wilson's peculiar megalomania and undertook to make its main objective a reality. At the same time, House, ever the practical deal-maker and compromiser, understood that the United States could not simply impose its will on the world and that the Americans would have to yield other powerful nations, especially Great Britain and France, some of the prizes they sought to gain from the war. As Hodgson writes, both "Wilson and House were willing to bargain territories and populations for the particular peace they wanted" (106), even if they had to sacrifice "national self-determination" along the way.
After the war began in 1914, Wilson proclaimed that the United States would remain neutral in word and deed, but Wilson and House's natural inclination was to favor the British, and as various provocations by both sides ensued, the president and his right-hand man dealt with them in a fashion that tilted the United States increasingly toward frank support of the Allies and opposition to the Central Powers. As early as the Lusitania's sinking in May 1915, House advised Wilson that Americans could "no longer remain neutral spectators" (109), but Wilson moved toward war more hesitantly. When secretary of state Bryan refused to abandon honest neutrality, sensibly holding the British starvation blockade of Germany to be as reprehensible as the German torpedoing of (arms carrying) passenger liners, he was pushed out of the government and replaced by Robert Lansing, From the outset, however, Lansing was allowed little real discretion, and House acted as the de facto foreign minister. A joke went around in Washington:
Question: How do you spell Lansing?
Answer: H-O-U-S-E.
House began to preach "preparedness," which meant building up a great U.S. army and navy. Hodgson writes: "While the president dreamed of saving the world, House was beginning to contemplate the implications for the American state of being a world power. In this activity between 1915 and 1917 it is not fanciful to see a first, sketchy draft of what would become the national security state" (113). Although House continued his efforts to bring the warring parties to a truce, he admitted early in 1916 that "in spite of all he was doing, a break with Germany could not be averted but only deferred" (115). According to French foreign minister Jules Cambon, House told him in February 1916 that U.S. entry into the war on the Allied side was inevitable and awaited only a serviceable incident that would cause the American people to rally behind the president's call for war (116). Needless to say, a peacemaker who is already resigned to war can scarcely hope to bring about peace, and indeed House's efforts failed to halt the massive, pointless bloodletting in Europe.
In 1916, when Wilson ran for reelection, House played a much greater role than he had played in the campaign in 1912. He had "no official role in the campaign, yet he planned its structure; set its tone; guided its finance; chose speakers, tactics, and strategy; and, not least, handled the campaign's greatest asset and greatest potential liability: its brilliant but temperamental candidate" (126). After campaigning on the slogan "He kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won a closely contested election.
Shortly after beginning his second term, however, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war. We may properly attribute a substantial share of the credit (or blame) for this action to House's subtle and persistent efforts to move the president toward it during the preceding two years. As House confided to his diary, he had worked from the start of his relationship with Wilson to influence him in a certain direction: "I began with him before he became President and I have never relaxed my efforts. At every turn, I have stirred his ambition to become the great liberal leader of the world" (139). In Wilson, a man whose grotesquely swollen conception of his own importance had few equals, House's teachings had encountered a highly receptive pupil.
Once the United States became a declared belligerent, the prospect of an Allied victory increased greatly, and House occupied himself actively not only in engineering a way to end the fighting, but also in planning the contours of the postwar world. Like Wilson, House "believe that the war had been imposed on the peoples of Europe by the monarchies and their aristocracies" (150), and therefore both men maintained that a postwar settlement should include, among other things, the destruction of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires and the creation of a number of new, democratic states in central Europe. To fill in the details of this vision, Wilson asked House to assemble a group of experts. The resulting project was known as the Inquiry, and the plan it created became the basis for Wilson's Fourteen Points and for his principal proposals at the Versailles conference. The Inquiry ultimately placed 126 scholars on its payroll. Although each of them had substantial credentials, hardly any of them was expert on European politics – a shortcoming that helped to doom the president's dealings with the likes of David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau at Versailles. Indeed, as one ponders this big committee's hubristic attempt to redraw the map of large parts of Europe and other regions, such as the Middle East, F. A. Hayek's idea of the "pretense of knowledge" springs to mind:
Few [members of the Inquiry] had any detailed knowledge of, for example, the disputed frontiers of Romania, Hungary, or Bulgaria, still less of the history and ethnography of Poland or the Ottoman Empire. One who was assigned to work on Italy confessed later that he was "handicapped by a lack of knowledge of Italian." . . . [W]hen it came to what we would now call the Middle East, the Inquiry more or less gave up. (160)
Is it any wonder, then, that the arrangements made at Versailles for the Middle East proved to be the source of what has aptly been called "a peace to end all peace" and that almost a century later the world continues to pay a horrible price for the statesmen's bungling in 1919?
House contributed probably more than anyone else to the formulation of Wilson's Fourteen Points, which served as the understanding that led the Germans to silence their guns in November 1918. On the night of January 5, 1918, Wilson and House sat down together at 10:30 to sketch out a major speech by Wilson on his vision for a postwar settlement. Two hours later, they had, as House wrote in his diary, "finished remaking the map of the world" (165). When Wilson delivered his speech, however, he "conspicuously ignored complexities the Inquiry had recognized" (167). (Of course, politicians always ignore complexities; if they didn't, they wouldn't last long as politicians.) Later, after the Treaty of Versailles had been hammered out―and Wilson's amateurish attempt at direct diplomacy hammered pretty severely in the process―the Germans justly complained that they had been hoodwinked into the Armistice by Wilson's promise to make the Fourteen Points the basis of a postwar settlement. As Englishman Harold Nicolson wrote,
It is difficult to resist the impression that the Enemy Powers accepted the Fourteen Points as they stood; whereas the Allied Powers accepted them only as interpreted by Colonel House. . . . Somewhere, amid the hurried and anxious imprecisions of those October [1918] days, lurks the explanation of the fundamental misunderstanding which has since arisen. (190)
And what a momentous misunderstanding it was! Even James Brown Scott, a legal expert in the U.S. delegation, said of the ultimate treaty that "the statesmen have . . . made a peace that renders another war inevitable" (243). In light of this history, we might credit House with having made an important contribution to ending the fighting in 1918―and to establishing the preconditions for its resumption in 1939.
House and three others joined Wilson himself to compose the five-man American delegation to the high-level negotiations at Versailles that began in December 1918. House shared Wilson's vision of a League of Nations, and at the conference he did as much as anyone to make this vision a reality, albeit one born with a congenital defect, owing to the ultimate U.S. refusal to join it. Twenty-six years later, the creation of the United Nations, a second try at the establishment of an international peace-keeping league, may therefore be traced in part to back to House.
When Wilson departed France in mid-February 1919, he left House at the conference "to act in his place and with his full confidence" (215). In the president's absence, House proceeded to do what he had been doing successfully for decades: he made deals, compromising where necessary to gain the other parties' agreement and creating the best possible arrangements he could make in an extremely complex and challenging situation. Although House kept Wilson informed as he went along, the president seems not to have fully comprehended what House was agreeing to in France. When he returned to Versailles in mid-March and absorbed the details, he reacted with dismay to what he viewed as the betrayal of his high ideals for the settlement. Although House continued to negotiate specific matters at Versailles, he never again acted as the chief U.S. delegate, and the intimate relationship between House and Wilson quickly dissolved: "their friendship never recovered from the events of February and March 1919. It ended in bitterness and mutual incomprehension, with grave consequences for both of them and ultimately―it really is no exaggeration to say―for the peace of the world" (217). After the Germans signed the treaty in June, House saw the president off for his return voyage to the United States. Their conversation on that occasion was the last they would ever have.
"Wilson's entourage [consisting of his wife Edith, his personal physician Admiral Cary T. Grayson, his press secretary Ray Stannard Baker, and the kingmaker Bernard Baruch], then and for the rest of their lives, interpreted House's entirely intelligible and honorable diplomatic maneuvers as the blackest treason" (225). Edith Wilson, whom the widowed president had married in 1915, had disliked House from the beginning. She evidently resented him because of the intimacy he shared with her new husband. After the president became incapacitated by a major stroke in September 1919, Edith, besides acting as de facto president of the United States for much of the remainder of his term, made sure that no communication from House reached the bedridden Wilson. For years the two men had been so close that Wilson trusted House to speak for him, confident that his own thoughts would be expressed precisely. "Mr. House," the president had once said, "is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one" (6). But now House found himself completely cut off. It is a dangerous thing to disappoint a vainglorious and vindictive man, but no less dangerous to vex his ruthless, scheming wife.
House lived another twenty years after the war. He continued to circulate in the highest circles in the United States, especially among the movers and shakers of the Democratic Party, and in Europe, but he never again exercised the kind of influence he had exercised from 1912 to 1919 by virtue of his close association with Woodrow Wilson. He went to considerable lengths to tell his side of the story and to vindicate his actions, while Edith Wilson and the other members of Wilson's entourage continued to demonize the erstwhile gray eminence and to blame him for the president's postwar failures. House still traveled in style and socialized with European aristocrats and American plutocrats. He was, in Hodgson's expression, "a grandee on a world scale" (263). He never publicly criticized Woodrow Wilson, and even in private, where he did criticize, he always professed loyalty. When Wilson died in 1924, House wished to attend the funeral, but Bernard Baruch told him that he would not be admitted. After advising Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1920s and early 1930s, House became a peripheral figure in the Brains Trust in 1932 and 1933 and contributed to Roosevelt's election as president. Only in his final few years did he finally withdraw into his private affairs.
He never became bitter. In old age, he developed greater infirmities and grew tired of living, but he was satisfied that he had played a significant role in great events. As he said, "My hand has been on things" (272). Indeed, it had been―to a degree that, in our day, very few Americans appreciate.
Henceforth, all parenthetical page numbers not otherwise identified may be assumed to come from this source.

August 12, 2008

Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs86.html