By Charles E. Carlson - July 26, 2007At first blush, one could hardly characterize the show of power exhibited by John Hagee’s Christian Zionists at his brash Washington Israel Summit in D.C. last week as a dike about to break: 4500 Christian Zionists filled the Washington Convention Center. Senators and Congressmen kowtowed to the crowd for four days. Senator Lieberman likened Hagee to Moses, a “leader of a multitude.” John Hagee was the dealmaker of the hour for Israel, their political rock star, a political money machine. The mere 15 resistors standing outside would not seem to have made much difference.
But a closer look by religion writer Abe Levy reporting in the San Antonio Express-News, Hagee’s hometown newspaper, shows that the Christian Zionist dike is holding back a surging sea of truth and truth-telling. There are cracks. Cracks Hagee will not be able to contain since they are coming from the very people Hagee claims to be saving from holocausts and persecutions.
The first cracks in this Judeo-Christian dike are a few vocal, and significant, Jews and Rabbis critical of Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) movement. They are speaking up now in increasing numbers, sometimes from the Temple lectern on Friday nights. Orthodox, Conservative, Hasidic, and Reform Jews are saying they don’t like what they’re hearing from Hagee, and they don’t trust him.
Levy writes: “This issue deeply divides Jews, some of whom, while they praise Hagee’s work to eradicate anti-Semitism, see him as using them as pawns to fulfill Christian prophecy, including the annihilation of most Jews.” Levy continued: “Many of them believe they are living in the final days described in prophetic books of the Bible and that standing with Israel assures them of being on God’s side when it is all said and done.”
The issue is bigger than Hagee, however, who is as cocky and self-assured as Donald Trump yet worth more if financial truth be known. The issue is the entire morally corrupt Judeo-Christian movement whose leaders, according to Levy, now boast a 100 million membership in the USA alone, and who believe they can make their membership do their bidding.
It is the secular Israeli Zionists who control ‘political Israel’ that love Hagee, as do the US neocons and US political pragmatists who accept Hagee’s offerings without looking at the logic hand that presents it. It is the secular Israeli Zionists who are counting on Hagee and mega-pastors like him to deliver US voter and taxpayer support for their political agenda in Israel, not to deliver the words of Christ to Christ-followers from the pulpit each Sunday. It is the secular Israeli Zionists who need the 100 million Judeo-Christians in the USA to advance their agenda before the US government, and John Hagee and those who appear on his stages are more than willing to play along. Non-Zionist Jews, both religious and otherwise, are distancing themselves from the Judeo-Christian movement because they see it as false, silly, embarrassing, and dangerous. Professing followers of Christ need to do the same. This is Project Strait Gate’s purpose.
It was at the Washington DC gig where John Hagee actually admitted — perhaps for the first time — that his actions are not driven by his religious beliefs, but by his political motives. In so doing, he not only denies Jesus Christ by his words, but followers of Christ now have every reason — in fact, a duty — to question what he is up to using Christ’s church and teachings to effect his personal political will within his congregation and under false pretenses.
Levy quotes CUFI’S executive director David Brog: “We come here and make it very clear that end-time theology has absolutely nothing to do with our support for Israel,” he said. “We’re supporting Israel because Israel is threatened like no other time in all of her history.” [Ed: So, for that matter, is Zimbabwe.]
Wow! That should be news to the 100 million trusting Americans who have been told by their respective pastors and celebrity Christian media that it is their solemn duty and obligation to support the state of Israel for biblical reasons; reasons we have discovered are not found in the Christian Bible.
Hagee spokesman Brog speaks for ‘Christians’, but is himself a practicing Jew. He says Christian Zionists are not motivated by end-time prophecy, despite their belief in it. Instead, Brog said, “Jews who partner with CUFI are recognizing their shared dedication to moral lifestyles, the same sacred texts and the same God and a common goal of peace by combating the modern threat of global terrorism.”
In other words, Brog now tells us Pastor Hagee has abandoned his belief that God told him personally to stand for Israel for biblical reasons. CUFI’s excuse for its existence now is that Hagee and his lobby group share Israel’s “moral lifestyle.” But this is the exact opposite of what Hagee, and thousands like him at pulpits all over the USA, have preached thus far, and for which Hagee was showered with tens of millions in donations. Hagee’s followers do support Israel for religious ‘biblical’ reasons that they learned from Hagee were inviolable. Hagee’s followers have told us so at many encounters during vigils held at four A Night To Honor Israel extravaganzas. Two of Hagee’s followers took the trouble to write and call us to explain it, and try to convince us again, this very week.
The next crack in the leaking Christian Zionist dike will break it: When tens of thousands of God-fearing Judeo-Christians from thousands of churches nationwide who allow themselves to be classified as “Christian-Zionists” without thinking once about the horrors they are advocating realize they’ve been conned by political Israel’s agents, they will leave CUFI, Christian Zionism, and the hundred-year-old movement called “evangelicalism” in droves.
Levy quotes Dr. Don Wagner of North Park University, a dignified scholar and author who fears for Israel’s victims and says so: “I continue to be concerned about this militant crusader projected into the world that’s categorically the opposite of the message of Jesus as I understand it,” said Don Wagner, a founder of The Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism. Pastor Art Preisinger, also a member of Wagner’s group, wrote in a searing article after observing A Night To Honor Israel at Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, “[t]here was not a shred, a trace, a scintilla of Christianity in the proceedings. It could well have been sponsored by the PTA or the Rotary Club . . . to promote this under the aegis of ‘Christian’ is, frankly, fraudulent.”
The Judeo-Christian cracks and leaks will break into a capsizing torrent.
Hagee cannot abandon the phony theory that holds his movement together, so he will continue to talk out of both sides of his mouth, as he is doing through Brog, who tells one story to the press and the increasingly suspicious moral Jews, while Hagee preaches the other, the ‘holy Israel’ view to keep the unsuspecting Judeo-Christians in the fold. According to Hagee, every Christian Zionist must believe the political state of Israel is an act of God, the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and that he or she must support Israel as a conduction of their faith, and believe their individual salvation depends on it. In other words, Judeo-Christianity has switched Gods, cleverly pawning Israel off on us — a political state — in place of the divinity of the words of Jesus Christ in our lives and actions, and the reason why we are followers of Christ. Geography as God.
Levy quotes a Hagee follower: “We know we’ll get blessed because we’re blessing Israel,” said Jean Ann McNally, the CUFI co-state director for Tennessee. “We’re not here to lose.”
Project Strait Gate volunteers have interviewed hundreds of Evangelicals at vigils in front of churches across the land, and we have yet to meet one who was not been taught this false and un-Christ like theme. We’re sure Jean Ann McNally is unaware that she is being blessed, according to CUFI, for assenting to Israel’s “moral lifestyle.”
But Israel does not have and never has had a “moral lifestyle” by Christ followers’ standards. To the contrary, most Israelis live a secular lifestyle with a high incidence of abortion, perversions, and war. Females are drafted with the benefit of free abortions to keep them fit for fighting. Israel is about 85% secular and denies any acknowledgment of Christianity’s holy New Testament, the only record of Jesus Christ, and Christianity’s universal call for peace. Israel thrives on the perpetual wars it makes because the USA finances them and, with enormous Christian-Zionist lobbying support, provides this chunk of sand with the defense industry it needs to continue warring. Therefore, regardless of how Hagee twists it or shrouds it under an empty Bible cover, we do not and cannot share “the same God” with political Israel and we never have.
Hagee has only one characteristic to share with Israel: a common commitment to war that has dominated its 59-year history. It’s made Hagee a household word as a result; however, the Israeli military kills someone every day, and has never been at peace. It doesn’t want it. The entire Judeo-Christian movement has abandoned Jesus Christ as Lord, replacing Christ’s divinity and message with the interests of political Israel.
David Brog told reporter Levy that Hagee’s critics do not know their own faith: “I think (Hagee’s critics) are misunderstanding Christian theology. God has no set time for the Second Coming. And there’s nothing you or I can do about it.”
For Brog to tell distinguished Professor Wagner, Pastor Preisinger, or this writer that we don’t understand what Jesus expects of his followers is more than a little amusing. One of Project Strait Gate’s signs held up for A Night To Honor Israel attendees reads: “IRAQ, WWJD?” Every church-going child knows this means, “What would Jesus do?” It is Brog and Hagee’s organization that waves the apocalyptic flag of the Second Coming, and urges it with a call for pre-emptive war and nuclear holocaust against a country that poses no immediate threat to the USA. One does not need to see the inside of a seminary to know that what CUFI wants is what Jesus would not do to Iran. Nor Iraq.
This writer, however, is sincerely grateful for John Hagee, who will be the apex for the final and total downfall of Judeo-Christianity and its false premises. The incongruity of Judeo-Christianity and its radical warring mouthpiece is an association that will fail, as all false ideas must, eventually.
Perhaps the few 15 “resistors,” as Levy labeled us, who stood outside Hagee’s obscene grab for global political power were privileged to see the “turn” as we stood in front of the convention center in Washington DC on July 17, 2007. We did. But it will only turn fully with God’s help and guidance if those who say they follow Christ act like something is wrong. That is why Project Strait Gate volunteers held over 60 vigils at churches and ‘Christian’ meetings around the USA.
Our next vigil will be in Oakland, California on Sunday, July 29, 2007.
One of the few resistors at our DC vigil was a man named Peter Sharp who drove from Minnesota to participate. To close this epistle of hope I quote Peter’s poem that he delivered to me last night, July 23, 2007:
Whatever
Be careful you’re not making an idol out of the modern state of Israel
Evangelical christian-zionist whatever:
What are you going to say to Him, when God returns?
We justified all our warmaking in your name, dear Savior.
Have you ever thought that, maybe…
just maybe You’re the new reincarnation of an old medieval crusader?
And aren’t we good little servants
Following your word to the letter.
Especially our version of prophecy,
Which we think is your Scripture itself; if not even better.
Look at how many books and movies we’ve sold.
Our interpretation has got to be true.
No matter the price paid by the many; and not only a few.
If it really gets bad, Lord, we’ll be raptured out of here
Seven years to the day; before the end truly comes due.
My friends, I used to believe exactly the same way.
That a new Temple and sacrifices are still part of God’s plan.
But how could He ever accept them again?
Would He trample on the blood of his own precious Son?
And will the New Testament, itself, become outmoded and done?
No!! Then, won’t you rethink your speculative end times opinion.
P. M. Sharp
Copyright ©2007 P.M. Sharp
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