During the Reformation era the Biblical Hebrews
came to be associated with their modern co-religionists.
At the same time it became popular belief among Protestant
adherents that the Jews scattered in their present
dispersion would be regathered in Palestine in order
to prepare for the Second Coming of Chirst... The
Old Testament not only became the most popular literature
for the Protestant laity, but also the source book
for general historical knowledge. This is the moment
when a process of historical manipulation began.
-- Regina Sharif, Non-Jewish Zionism
Who will the Antichrist be? ... Of course he will
be Jewish. -- Jerry Falwell
Prophetically, the only thing that could prevent
it (a Jewish holocaust) is Israel's repentance. - Dwight
Pentecost in an interview with Paul Boyer
The creation of Israel in 1948 means "a return
at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews were
driven so many hundreds of years ago... The establishment
of the nation of Israel is the fulfillment of biblical
prophecy and the very essence of its fulfillment." -- Former
president Jimmy Carter
As a Christian, I see the return of Jews to the Holy
Land but one sign of the coming of the messianic age
in which all humans will enjoy the benefits of an ideal
society. -- Former Senator Mark Hatfield
For the first time in more than 2,000 years, Jerusalem,
being in the hands of the Jews, gives the student of
the Bible a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy
and validity of the Bible. -- L. Nelson Bell, editor,
Christianity Today
The Rev. Clyde Lott, Canton, Miss., a Pentecostal
minister, interprets passages of the Bible to say that
a third Jewish temple must rise in Jerusalem before
the Second Coming can happen... Lott is producing perfect
red heifers, virginal cows "without spot" that
could be sacrificed to produce ashes for ritual use
in the future temple. For that to happen, Muslim shrines
like the Dome of the Rock would have to be knocked
down... Lott is convinced that God will attend to this
in due time. -- The New York Times, December 27,
1998
It will be useful (even necessary) for the reader
of this article to be familiar with my series "Who
Wrote the Bible," as well as "Truth
or Lies," both of which address many of
the issues of religions and how they are created
and imposed on the masses as means of control. A
good synopsis of the problem is Henry See's article
on Belief
Systems. It is also extremely useful to read
my review of Burton Mack's "The
Book of Q and Christian Origins." Mack's
conclusions regarding the importance of the "event
of mythicization of "Jesus" on
our world are quite startling considering what has
transpired on the world stage since he wrote this
book.
The question now is whether the discovery of
Q has any chance of making a difference in the
way in which Christianity and its gospel are viewed
in modern times? The question is quite serious,
because neither the university, nor among knowledgeable
people in our society, nor among the Christian
churches, have the results of biblical scholarship
ever made much of a difference. [...]
The discovery of Q effectively challenges the privilege
granted the narrative gospels as depictions of the
historical Jesus. The difference between the narrative
gospels and modern retellings of the story can no
longer lie in the distinction between history and
fiction. The narrative gospels are also products
of mythic imagination. [...]
Myths, mentalities, and cultures go together. [...]
Christian myth and Western culture go together.
[...]
To acknowledge publicly that [the American Dream]
may owe something to the legacy of western Christian
culture is, on the other hand, taboo.
The exception to this general rule occurs, interestingly
enough, when pressure on public policy and patriotism
results in exaggerated expressions of those values
for which our nation stands. We have a history of
such platitudes: new world, new land, new people,
righteous nation, manifest destiny, city set on a
hill, liberty enlightening the world, a beacon for
the homeless, one nation under God, moral majority,
defenders of the free world, and new world order.
These truisms signal a messianic mentality. [...]
The recent history of what we have done with our
technology and power throughout the world is troubling,
as are the human cries for help from around a world
grown small and yet too large to handle. The list
of concerns has run off the page, and we seem to
be overloaded with unsolvable problems and strife,
and ecological responsibility. For thoughtful people,
the issues have to do with assessing the chances
for constructing sane and safe societies in a multicultural
world while understanding the conditions for predation
and prejudice, power abuse, and violence. In either
case, it is irresponsible not to engage in public
discussion of our own system of cultural values.
[...]
In order to understand ourselves and register reasons
for our social options, cultural analysis will have
to include a comparative evaluation of mythologies.
And that means having a close look at our own mythology.
Q should help with this analysis by breaking the
taboo that now grants privilege to the Christian
myth. That is because the story of Q gives us an
account of Christian origins that is not dependent
upon the narrative gospels. ... Christian mythology
can now be placed among the many mythologies and
ideologies of the religions and cultures of the world.
The Christian myth can be studied as any other myth
is studied. It can be evaluated for its proposal
of ways to solve social problems, construct sane
societies, and symbolize human values. [...]
The effect of Christian mythology has not always
been humanizing. The Captain America Complex, a book
by Robert Jewett has traced our zealous nationalism
to its biblical roots.
Others have reflected deeply on the Christian persuasions
that have under girded colonial imperialism, the
taking of the West, the Indian wars, and the slave
trade.
Still others have studied the relationship of the
gospel story to the profile of the American hero,
the American dream, and the destructive politics
of righteousness wherever we have intervened in the
affairs of peoples around the world.
The conclusion seems to be that the Christian gospel,
focusing as it does on crucifixion as the guarantee
for apocalyptic salvation, has somehow given its
blessing to patterns of personal and political behavior
that often have had disastrous consequences. [...]
Q's challenge to Christians is therefore an invitation
to join the human race, to see ourselves with our
myths on our hands... [The
Lost Gospel by Burton L. Mack]
The reader may also want to pick up copies of Gershom
Gorenberg's book The
End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the
Temple Mount, and "Forcing
God's Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture and
Destruction of Planet Earth. by Grace Halsell.
These two books have provided much of the material
reviewed in this article.
Gershom Gorenberg is an associate editor and columnist
for The Jerusalem Report, a regular contributor to
The New Republic, and an associate of the Center for
Millennial Studies at Boston University. He lives in
Jerusalem, where he has spent years covering the dangerous
mix of religion and politics.
Grace Halsell served President Lyndon Johnson as
his speech writer for three years. She covered both
Korea and Vietnam as a journalist. She was the author
of 14 books, including "Prophecy and Politics:
Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War."
The facts that these two authors, one Christian and
one Jewish, bring forward, are that the Armageddon
theology of the New Christian Right is being propagated
by numerous TV evangelists, including Pat Robertson
and Jerry Falwell, along with Hal Lindsey's widely
read The Late Great Planet Earth, and Tim LaHayes' "Left
Behind" series, and that this theology is influencing
millions of human beings worldwide to not only believe
that the world is going to end soon, but that it is
their duty to hasten the event in any way they can.
It is in this context that we gain greater understanding
of the politics of George W. Bush, though both of these
books were written long before Bush effected a coup
d'etat in 2000.
Halsell interviewed fundamentalists, all of whom believed
that it is their duty to fulfill the biblical prophecy
of fighting World War III preparatory to Christ's Second
Coming. Most disquieting is her discussion of an alliance
of the New Christian Right and militant Zionists who
share a common belief and enthusiasm for a global holocaust.
Alarming, too, is the extent of the political influence
of the above mentioned tele-evangelists, the Israeli
lobby and the fact that the policies of George W. Bush
are largely subject to his alleged belief in the inevitability
of a God-willed nuclear war. I suspect that Bush, behind
the scenes, is not truly Christian, even in his own
mind, but rather follows the ideas of Machiavelli which
posit that a leader must appear to be religious in
order to induce the masses who are believers to follow
him. On the other hand, Bush and much of Congress may
very well believe in this Armageddon Theology.
Both Gorenberg and Halsell detail and document the
history of the alliance between militant Zionism and
Christian fundamentalism and expose the purpose of
the alliance which is the return to Israeli control
of all of Palestine and the rebuilding of the Temple
in Jerusalem on the site where the Al-Aqsa mosque and
the Dome of the Rock now stand. For the religious Zionist,
these actions are the prerequisite to the Messiah's
FIRST coming. For the Christian fundamentalists, it
is prerequisite to Armageddon and Messiah's SECOND
coming. Reclamation of Israel from the Palestinians
who have lived there for over 5000 years, and establishing
Jewish hegemony, including the use of nuclear weapons
(Armageddon) are seen as events to be earnestly desired
and supported.
Armageddon is seen by Christian fundamentalists as "nuclear
and imminent", waiting only for proper orchestration
from American political leaders. The Zionists, naturally,
do NOT include Armageddon in their messianic aspirations.
This conflict of interests at a higher level is exposed
in Gorenberg's book.
Gorenberg's book was written before 9-11 and, in
this sense, was extremely prescient. The reader who
wishes to understand what is at the root of the current
conflict that threatens to engulf our planet will find
his history of those 35 disputed acres of the Temple
Mount to be crucial. Gorenberg makes clear what is
at the root of the volatile relationships between Arabs,
Jews and Christians in Israel. He pays special attention
to carefully documenting and analyzing the actions
and beliefs of fundamentalist groups in all three religions.
Jewish messianists and Christian millennialists both
believe that building the Third Temple on the site
where both Solomon's and Herod's temples are alleged
to have stood is essential for their respective prophetic
scenarios to take place (never mind that they seem
to both be using each other and each believe that the
other is just a dumb tool), while the Muslim believers
fear that efforts to destroy Al-Aqsa mosque to make
way for the Third Temple will prevent fulfillment of
the prophecy about Islam's Meccan shrine migrating
to Jerusalem at the end of time.
Gorenberg calls Temple Mount "a sacred blasting
cap".
The problem is, of course, as I show in Who
Wrote the Bible, there probably never was a FIRST "Temple
of Solomon," and the Old Testament is NOT a
true "history of the Jews." So, the problem
is: if Islam is predicated on two "manufactured" religions,
what does that say about the faith of the Islamic
fundamentalists?
The fact is: There is an alliance between America
and Israel in the war on Islam. They are both determined
to establish Israeli control over Jerusalem and rebuild
the Temple where the Dome of the Rock now stands and
the Palestinians are in the way. This is the core issue
behind the current "War on Islam" disguised
as a "War on Islamic Terrorists" and more
recently, "War on those who hate our civilization." And
just as Christians and Jews are quite willing to sacrifice
their own people for this monstrous agenda, so are
Muslims undoubtedly raising up terrorists to do as
much damage to the "infidels" as possible
so as to save their holy site. But to really get a
grip on the explosive situation, we have to lay the
major share of the blame for Islamic terrorism in the
current day where the power has resided for a very
long time: in the West, the Christian West:
There's a new religious cult in America. It's
not composed of so-called "crazies" so
much as mainstream, middle to upper-middle class
Americans. They listen - and give millions of dollars
each week - to the TV evangelists who expound the
fundamentals of the cult. They read Hal Lindsey
and Tim LaHaye. They have one goal: to facilitate
God's hand to waft them up to heaven free from
all trouble, from where they will watch Armageddon
and the destruction of Planet Earth. This doctrine
pervades Assemblies of God, Pentecostal, and other
charismatic churches, as well as Southern Baptist,
independent Baptist, and countless so-called Bible
churches and mega-churches. At least one out of
every 10 Americans is a devotee of this cult. It
is the fastest growing religious movement in Christianity
today. -- Dale Crowley Jr., religious broadcaster,
Washington D.C.
The "Rapture of the Church" is an idea
popularized by John Darby, a nineteenth-century British
preacher. The word "Rapture" describes the
joy of the believers while the rest of humanity is
facing apocalyptic terror, seven years' worth, before
God's kingdom on earth is established.
Tim LaHaye - with his ghost-writer Jerry B. Jenkins
- has produced a series of books that seek to make
that terror real, to depict the "Rapture" in
the world of jumbo jets and IMacs.
LaHaye's books are REAL to people living in frightening
times. For the true believer, LaHaye's books are not
just accurate descriptions of how it is all going to
actually happen, they provide satisfyingly delicious
scenarios of being proven RIGHT. The non-believers
are treated to long and drawn-out descriptions of what
is going to happen to them on earth after the Rapture.
One of the key elements of the "Rapture" theory
is the Antichrist. This individual signs a seven-year
peace treaty with Israel - which includes rebuilding
the Temple. Jews are expected to unanimously support
this project and Muslims also will agree to move the
Dome of the Rock to "New Babylon."
The rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem is required
in the scenario because the Antichrist must desecrate
it half way through the Tribulation which is supposed
to include war, earthquakes, and locusts. All of this
is to be hoped for as a necessary preliminary to establishing
God's kingdom on Earth.
The theory demands something else: that Jews will
convert to Christianity in masses so that they can
then become "witnesses" or converters of
more gentiles. Darby's theory insists that God's promises
to the people of Israel must be read literally as applying
to literal Jews. Therefore, the Jews WILL convert (because
it is in the eschatological screenplay).
At the "End of the World," the
believers of three faiths will watch the same drama,
but with different programs in their hands. In
one, Jesus is Son of God; in another he is Muslim
prophet. The Jews messiah is cast in the Muslim
script as the dajjal - another name for the Antichrist,
the deceiver predicted by Christian tradition.
The infidels in one script are the true believers
of another. If your neighbor announces that the
End has come, you can believe him, even if he utterly
misunderstands what is happening.
It makes sense: Christianity's scriptwriters reworked
Judaism and Islam rewrote both. David Cook notes
that from the start, apocalyptic ideas moved back
and forth between the faiths; the global village
is older than we realize. Some of the early spokesmen
of Islamic apocalyptic thinking were converted Jews
and Christians; they arrived with histories of the
future in their saddlebags.
What's more, a story's end is when the truth comes
out, the deceived realize their mistake. The deep
grievance at the start of both Christianity and Islam
is that the Jews refused the new faith - so the Jews
must appear in both religion's drama of the End,
to be punished or recognize their error.
And the setting of the End is also shared. The
crucial events take place in or near Jerusalem. After
all, the script began with the Hebrew prophets, for
whom Jerusalem was the center not only of their world
but of God's, and everyone else worked from their
material. Isaiah's announcement of the End of Days
comes directly after he laments that the "faithful
city [has] become a harlot." That sets up the
contrast: In the perfected age, " the mountain
of the Lord's house shall be established as the top
of the mountains" and "out of Zion shall
go forth the law." The messiah's task is to
end the Jews' exile and reestablish David's kingdom
- in his capital.
Christianity reworked that vision. Jesus, says
the New Testament, was not only crucified and resurrected
in the city, he ascended to heaven from the Mount
of Olives - and promised to return there. Without
the Jews' national tie to the actual Jerusalem, Christians
could allegorized such verses. The Jerusalem of the
end could be built on other shores, and countless
millennial movements have arisen elsewhere. But the
literal meaning is there to be reclaimed, particularly
in a time of literalism, such as our own.
Most striking of all is Islam’s adoption
of the same setting. For Muslim apocalyptic believers,
Jerusalem is the capital in the messianic age. At
the end of time, say Muslim traditions, the Ka'ba
- Islam's central shrine in Mecca - will come to
Jerusalem. The implication is that in Islam, speaking
of the apocalypse at least hints at Jerusalem - and
a struggle over Jerusalem alludes to the last battle.
Curiously, academic experts often say that Islam
assigns scant space to apocalypse. In the religion's
early centuries, believers attributed a vast body
of contradictory traditions to the Prophet. Early
Islamic scholars winnowed the sayings, establishing
which were most reliable. Meanwhile, Islam became
the faith of an empire, and it was time to talk softly
of overthrowing the given order. So the authors of
books containing the "most accurate" traditions,
the pinnacle of the canon, said little of the End. "High" Islam
appears un-apocalyptic. [Gorenberg]
Thus, we see that, for those Christians who believe
in Armageddon Theology, the only thing to do is to
promote the well-being of Israel with money, arms,
and other kinds of support, so that the Temple can
be rebuilt; never mind that it is going to be desecrated
and that Israel is supposed, in the scenario, to be
utterly destroyed in the process of establishing God's
kingdom!
What a double-cross!
I've listened to Muslim sheikhs explain how verses
in the Koran foretell Israel's destruction, and
to American evangelical ministers who insist on
their deep love for Israel and nevertheless eagerly
await apocalyptic battles on Israel's soil so terrible
that the dry river beds will, they predict, fill
with rivers of blood. I also came to realize that
the center of my story had to be the Temple Mount.
What happens at that one spot, more than anywhere
else, quickens expectations of the End in three
religions. And at that spot, the danger of provoking
catastrophe is greatest. [...]
Melody, the cow that could have brought God's kingdom
on earth, or set the entire Middle East ablaze, or
both, depending on who you ask, has her head stuck
between the gray bars of the cowshed and is munching
hay and corncobs. [...]
Melody's birth in August 1996 seemed to defy nature:
Her mother was a black and white Holstein. In fact,
[Gilad Jubi, dairyman of the Kfar Hasidim agricultureal
school] says he'd had trouble breeding the dairy
cow, and finally imported semen, from Switzerland,
he thinks, from a red breed of beef cattle. But "red" cows
are normally splotched. An entirely crimson one is
extraordinary: The Mishneh Torah, Moses Maimonides
twelfth-century code of Jewish law, records that
just nine cows in history have fit the Book of Numbers'
requirements for sacrificing as a "red heifer." Yet
the rare offering was essential to maintaining worship
in the Temple in Jerusalem. The tenth cow, Maimonides
asserts, will arrive in the time of the messiah.
That's when Jewish tradition foresees the Third Temple
being built on the Temple Mount. [...]
Finding a red heifer is one precondition to building
the Temple. Another, it's generally assumed, is removing
the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount. [...]
The next day, a newspaper broke the story. [Adir
Zik, an announcer on the settlers pirate radio station
known for his fiery rhetoric] spoke about the red
heifer on his radio show. The madness about Melody
had begun. [...] Press photographers arrived. The
rabbi, sans calf, appeared on national TV. The Boston
Globe's man did a story, and other American correspondents
followed. ... A CNN crew made a pilgrimage to the
red heifer, as did crews from ABC and CBS, and from
Japan, Holland, France.
If much of the world's media reported on Melody
in a bemused tone, as a story about the strange things
people believe, not everyone saw the cow as a joke.
On the opinion page of the influential Israeli daily
Ha'aretz, columnist David Landau argued that the
security services should see the red heifer as a "four-legged
bomb" potentially more dangerous than any terrorist.
Landau... understood the expectations of building
the Temple that the cow could inspire among Jewish
religious nationalists, and its potential for inciting
war with the Muslim world. "A bullet in the
head," he wrote, "is, according to the
best traditions, the solution of security services
in such cases..."
Too shrill? As Landau alluded, the nameless agents
of Israel's Shin Bet domestic security force, caught
off guard by the assassination of Prime Minister
Yitzhak rabin in November 1995, had underestimated
the power of faith in the past. At Kfar Hasidim,
Melody was moved from the cowshed to "solitary
confinvement" in the school's petting zoo, where
she could be kept slightly safer from the visitors
arriving daily. A dog was posted to guard her. It
couldn't guard against sprouting white hairs. [Which
Melody did, disqualifying her and saving her from
being turned into cow toast.]
Unquestionably, the reactions to Melody seem bizarre.
But there are three very solid reasons for the fears
and hopes she engendered: the past, the present,
and most of all the future.
Numbers 19 is one of the most apaque sections in
scripture. A red heifer, "faultless,
wherin is no blemish, and upon which never came a
yoke," is to be slaughtered, and
its body burned entirely to ash. Paradoxically, this
sacrifice must be performed outside the Temple, yet
the heifer's ash becomes the key to the sanctuary:
It alone can cleanse a man or woman tainted by contact
with human death.
For, says the biblical text, anyone who touches
a corpse, or bone, or grave, anyone who even enters
the same room as a dead body, is rendered impure,
and must not enter the Temple. Yet proximity to death
is an unavoidable part of life, and sacrifice was
how Israelites served God. So to free a person of
impurity, says Numbers, mix the heifer's cinder with
water, and sprinkle the mixture on him. As Jewish
tradition read those verses, the heifer really had
to be faultless. Two white hairs would disqualify
it. The rarest possible beast was essential to purify
a priest who'd attended his own father's burial,
or to allow any Israelite who'd been in the presence
of a corpse to share in the sacrificial cult. [...]
The last ashes of the last red heifer ran out sometime
after the Romans razed the Temple in Jerusalem in
the year 70. Every Jew became impure by reason of
presumed contact with death which, practically speaking,
didn't matter much because there was no sanctuary
to enter and sacrifice had ceased being the center
of Judaism. The tenth heifer logically belonged to
the imagined time of the messiah because a rebuilt
temple also did.
Except that today, the absent ashes of the red heifer
have a new function. They are a crucial factor in
the political and strategic balance of the Middle
East.
Over nineteen hundred years have passed since the
Temple's destruction, but its location - give or
take a few crucial meters - is still a hard physical
reality. [...] In principle, Temple Mount remains
the most sacred site in Judaism. [...]
But the Mount itself isn't in ruins. As Al-Haram
al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, it is the third-holiest
site in Islam. [...] A glance at the Mount testifies
that any effort to build the Temple where it once
stood - the one place where Jewish tradtion says
it can be built again - would mean removing shrines
sacred to hundreds of millions of Muslims, from Morocco
to Indonesia. An attempt to dedicate even a piece
of the enclosure to Jewish prayer would mean slicing
that piece out of the Islamic precincts.
On June 7, 1967, the third day of the Six-Day War,
Israeli troops took East Jerusalem, bringing the
Temple Mount under Jewish rule for the first time
in almost 2,000 years. Israel's leaders decided to
leave the Mount, Al-Haram al-Sharif, in Muslim hands.
The decision kept the ingredients for holy war apart,
just barely. [...]
Yet a separation made by the civil government would
not have worked without a hand from Jewish religious
authorities. From the Six-Day War on, Israel's leading
rabbis have overwhelmingly ruled that Jews should
not enter the gates of the Mount. One of the most
commonly cited reasons ... is that under religious
law, every Jew is presumed to have had contact with
the dead. For lack of a red heifer's ashes, there
is simply nothing to be done about it: no way for
Jews to purify themselves to enter the sacred square,
no way for Judaism to reclaim the Mount, no way to
rebuild the Temple. Government officials and military
leaders could only regard the requirement for the
missing heifer as a stroke of sheer good fortune
preventing conflict over the Mount. [...]
In 1984, the Shin Bet stumbled onto the Jewish settler
underground's plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
One of the group's leaders explained that among the "spiritual
difficulties" that kept them from carrying out
the attack was that it is forbidden to enter the
Temple Mount because of impurity caused by contact
with the dead - that is, they lacked the ash of a
red heifer. In a verdict in the case, one judge wrote
that if the plan had been carried out, it would have "exposed
the State of Israel and the entire Jewish people
to a new Holocaust."
The danger hasn't gone away: The Temple Mount is
potentially a detonartor of full-scale war, and a
few people trying to rush the End could set it off.
[Gorenberg]
According to Gorenberg, between a fifth and a quarter
of all Americans are evangelicals. In Latin America,
the number of Protestants subscribing to these beliefs
has climbed from 5 million in the late sixties to 40
million in the mid-nineties. "One reason
for the rise [was] the campaign of John Paul II against
the leftist faith of liberation theology. Denied a
tie between religion and hope for a better world, Latin
American Catholics have been more open to the catastrophic
hopes of premillennialism."
South Korea's apocalyptically oriented Protestants
have gone from 15 percent of the total population to
40 percent during the seventies and eighties.
The old stereotypical image of the apocalyptic believers
as tramps on street corners carrying signs saying "The
End is Nigh" no longer stands. Today's adherents
of the Rapture theory wear suits in boardrooms and
stride the corridors of power.
Reverend Irvin Baxter, a Pentecostal minister
from Richmond, Indiana, made Melody the cover story
in his "Endtime" magazine, which provides "World
Events from a Biblical Perspective," then
published a follow-up article when he was able
to come and visit himself. To his 40,000 Christian
subscribers, he explained Maimonides' view that
the tenth red heifer would be offered in the messiah's
time - and then noted that under the diplomatic
schedule then in effect for the Oslo accords, "the
final status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
is to be settled by May of 1999. It's in 1999 that
Melody will be three years of age..."
In other words, the calf, the medieval Jewish sage,
and the Israel-PLO peace agreement all proved that
the Temple would be in place for the End Times to
begin by the millennium's end.
Televangelist Jack Van Impe likewise noted that "scripture
requires the red heifer be sacrificed at the age
of three," and asked breathlessly, "Could
Melody's ashes be used for Temple purification ceremonies
as early as 2000?"[...]
[In] 1999, I [Gorenberg] dropped in at the offices
of the Al-Aqsa Association... to see Ahmad Agbariay
[who] is in charge of the association's efforts to
develop the mosques at Al-Haram al-Sharif. [...]
The Jews, he told me, "intend to build the Third
Temple"
Was there a target date? I asked.
"All I know is that three years ago they said
a red heifer had been born... and that in three years
they'd start building. Three years will be up in
August 1999." [...]
The folks with the cow have a star role on the stage
of the End. [...]
[Rabbi Chaim Richman, a proponent of Religious Zionism]
... asserts that human beings are acting to bring
the world's final redemption. Jews returning to their
land and building a state is a piece of that. [...]
Reverend Clyde Lott knows cows... Knowledge of what
rabbis want in a cow has come more recently. [...]
At the end of the 1980s, Lott recalls, "there
was a wave of prophecy preaching going through Mississippi,
and the question was when is Israel going to build
the Temple." For that, Lott knew, a red heifer
was needed. [...] The question weighed on him for
months. Until one day, when he was working in the
field and a piece of equipment broke down and Lott
got in his car to head for town, the car took him
instead to the state capital of Jackson, where he
strode uninvited into the office of Ray Manning,
international trade director for the State of Mississippi.
... The bizarre meeting eventually produced a letter
to the agriculture attache at the U.S. embassy in
Athens, responsible in his specialty for the entire
Middle East.
Manning explained that he'd been approached by a
cattle producer who'd made this offer: "Red
Angus cattle suitable for Old Testament Biblical
sacrifices, will have no blemish or off color hair,
genetically red... also excellent beef quality."
What Lott did has a logic. Cattle-raising today
is biotech. It was his life's work. But did it mean
anything? Lott isn't the only technical person pulled
to the vision of Temple-building because it promises
that a technical skill is essential to the world's
salvation. Nor is he the only one in our technological
age to read the Bible itself as a tech manual, installation
instruction for the final, fantastic upgrade of the
universe. [...]
Lott's name was getting out, people who'd never
met him were inspired by his plan, in one significant
swath of American society he was not nuts but cold
sane. [...]
The "restoration of Israel" - the term
Christians concerned with the End have used for generations
to refer to the prophesied return of the Jews to
their land - must also, he decided, be the "restoration" of
Israel's livestock industry. [Gorenberg]
In 1994, Rabbi Richman visited Lott in Mississippi
where he was shown four heifers. One caught his attention
and he examined it for fifteen minutes or so. Then
he declared: You see that heifer. That heifer is going
to change the world." It was the first cow in
2000 years to satisfy Numbers 19. Lott had "proved
he could deliver." However, Richman wanted a heifer
born in Israel to insure that it was "legally
unblemished."
Lott gave up his family farm. At a Nebraska ranch,
he began raising Red Angus bred to the highest
standards, which means, he explains, "marbling
in the meat, white flakes through the flesh...
easy calving, hardiness... longevity." To
further the effort, the Association of Beef Cattle
Breeders in Israel set up a professional board
whose members included Lott, Richaman, and several
Israeli Agriculture Ministry officials. [...]
In the spring of 1998, Canaan Land Restoration of
Israel, Inc., a nonprofit body dedicated to bringing
cattle to Israel, was established, with pastors scattered
from California to Pennsylvania as officers and advisory
board members. Lott appeared at churches, raising
funds, and on Christian TV. Donation cards, adorned
with sepia photos of grazing cows, allowed supporters
to sponsor the purchase of "1 red heifer - $1,000.00," a
half-heifer or quarter, or "1 air fare (1 cow)
at $341. A fundraising letter exhorted, "Remember,
Gen 12:2-3: "I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you, I will curse" a verse
often cited by evangelicals as a reason to support
Israel. [...]
Guy Garner ... pastor of the Apostolic Pentecostal
Church of Porterdale, Georgia [gave up his tire sales
business] to commute to Israel to handle Canaan Land's
affairs. [...] The cows, Guy stresses, are "a
giveaway to the Jewish people." The growers
get them and the calves they produce free of charge,
with just two obligations: After a number of years
they must provide Canaan Land with the same number
of young cows as they received originally. And, along
the way, Canaan Land has the right to examine every
newborn calf, and to take any it judges to be "special" -
likely to qualify as a red heifer and speed establishment
of the Temple. [...]
Yet who is supposed to reap the real benefit of
bringing red heifers to Israel? Garner's certainty
he is helping Israel is sincere. But he has humbly
cast himself as a bit character in an Endtime drama
whose script is somewhat rougher on Jews than on
born-again Christians. In fact, the Christians will
safely exit to the wings, while on stage, the Jews
will find themselves at the center of the apocalypse.... "It's
not a pleasant thing to think about, " Garner
says glumly, "but God's going to do what He's
going to do." [...]
[Lott says] "God has been waiting
for six thousand years to share with mankind to prove
to the world who He is. And he's chosen people just
like us to be a part of the greatest Endtime plan
that mankind could ever have experienced." [Gorenberg]
In 1998, Rabbi Richman broke his connections to Canaan
Land after learning that Lott had been filmed at a
Florida church talking about converting the Jews to
Christianity. Gorenberg notes that this was symbolic
of the state of the much wider alliance between the
Christian Right and Israel. It is "an alliance
in which each side assumes that the other is playing
a role it doesn't understand itself, in which each
often regards the other as an unknowing instrument
for reaching a higher goal."
Richman speaks astringently of the "doormat
theology" of Christians who see Israel as
a stepping-stone to an apocalypse from whose horrors
only Christians will be saved. ... On the Christian
side are those who want to "bless" Israel,
and provide it with what they believe is the fuse
for Armageddon. And perhaps also to convert the
Israelis, another "blessing" since only
the converted will make it through the Last Days.
[..]
In letters after the breakup [of Richman and Lott]
Richman said that "the Temple Institute has
its own plans with regard to red heifers." [...]
Prophecy, Guy Garner explains, is "history
written in advance." He's not unusual in thinking
so. [Gorenberg]
The question we need to ask is: Why does faith look
for a finale? What power does this idea hold over humanity.
Why can't modern people put the religions of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam in the museum of religious concepts
alongside Zeus and Ishtar?
Gorenberg proposes a partial answer: A true believer
in God (be he Jew, Christian or Muslim), is highly
invested in both the power and GOODness of his god.
God MUST be good. And for an individual raised in a
particular faith, who had no choice about his social,
cultural and religious conditioning, this necessity
for god to be good has very deep roots in his or her
psyche. Being convinced that the "faith of our
fathers" is GOOD is natural and powerful.
BUT, here is the rub: bad things happen in this world
that do NOT fit with the concept of a GOOD and All-Powerful
god. And so, to be a believer means to exist in a state
of dissonance that must be resolved.
Human beings struggle with this problem daily; trying
to find answers that will solve the issues of death,
disease and destruction; trying to fit their experiences
with their faith in a Good God. Gorenberg gives an
example of a clergyman who preaches endless sermons
about men whose lives were saved because they gave
to charity when the fact in the background was that
his own daughter died at the age of twenty of cancer.
And so, the most daring idea of all is to assert
that the world is broken and needs to be fixed. Of
course, God - being omnipotent and omnipresent - MUST
know that the world is broken, and being Good, he plans
to fix it someday. And so, the answer of the millennialist
is "desperately honest": there IS something
wrong with the creation of the Good and All-Powerful
God, and in the same moment, the despair about the
situation, the cognitive dissonance of the Good God
who lets bad things happen - is rejected because God
is going to make everything alright.
Naturally, your vision of the repair will depend
on what you think is broken. [...]
The picture of God's kingdom follows accordingly,
but there is also the matter of how badly broken
things are, of whether God acting through men and
women is already fixing the world, or whether there
is no choice but to wait for the Repairman to come
to smash and break down and rebuild the world the
way He always meant it to be. [Gorenberg]
Throughout their growing up years, people are told
that when something good happens, that is god acting,
and when something bad happens, that is Satan who got
in the door because the person's faith wasn't strong
enough. With that kind of conditioning, it's no wonder
that people are powerfully invested in maintaining
the "goodness" of their god. To insist that
a messiah or saviour is "yet to come" is,
essentially, a rejection of NOW, of Response-ability.
The Millennialists hang on to their beliefs for dear
life because the alternatives are to either accept
the world as it is, and reject the "good god hypothesis," or
to abandon the world completely, both of which would
bankrupt their faith.
The power of Millennialism is enormous! The problem
that the religions face, however, is how to keep that
hope burning, keep dangling that carrot, without letting
it explode in their faces.
Because, when people give signs to know when the
Time has come, and others discover that the signs have
been fulfilled and that the day is near, and others
say the day IS here, the irresistible force of enthusiasm
inevitably smashed into immovable reality: The world
doesn't end.
And it's nothing but rivers of blood everywhere.
Every time.
"God does not look on all of His children
the same way," said Dr. John Walvoord, president
of Dallas Theological Seminary, mentor to Hal Lindsey.
God, he tells me, had plans for Jews and Christians,
but not for the others - unless they became Christians.
God, he said, had a heavenly plan for Christians,
and an earthly plan for Jews.
And, I ask, the earthly plan for Jews?
"To re-create Israel." [Halsell]
What is not widely reported, but is well known among
these fundamentalists circles is that, once Israel
has done what the Christians want it to do: re-create
itself and re-build the Temple, then they are finished.
Those that do not convert will be destroyed. It's that
simple. Christians can love and support Jews NOW, encouraging
them and praising them and sending them money and everything
they need to "get the job done." But,
once that is accomplished, do not think for a minute
that this love and support will continue as long as
the Jews remain Jews.
In early 1999, members of a Denver, Colorado
dispensationalist group called Concerned Christians
were arrested by Israeli police, handcuffed, jailed
as common criminals and deported back to the States.
Israeli police accused them of planning a "bloody
apocalypse" to hasten the Second Coming of
Christ. It was suggested that they plotted the
destruction of Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine.
In a fervent wish to replace the mosque with a
Jewish temple, the Denver cult members are no different
from other dispensationalists who believe God wants
this done. As I learned from Christians on a Falwell-sponsored
tour, they hold this idea quite sacred. A retired
Army major named Owen, who lives in northern Nebraska,
seems typical.
I spent much time with Owen, a widower, who is
slightly built and about five feet, five inches tall.
He stands erect and has a pleasant smile. Well dressed
and with a full head of sandy hair, he looks younger
than his age. He had served in Europe during World
War II and later for a number . of years in Japan.
One day, as I am walking alongside Owen, our group
moves toward the old walled city. As we enter Damascus
Gate and pass along cobblestone corridors, I easily
imagine Jesus having walked a similar route. In the
midst of a rapidly changing environment, the old
walled city, guarding layer-upon layer of history
and conflict, provides the stellar attraction for
tourists and remains home for 25,000 people. As the
Palestinian Muslim Mahmud had told me earlier, throughout
its long history, Jerusalem has been predominantly
and overwhelmingly Arab.
We approach Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary,
which encloses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque
- sites which I had visited earlier with Mahmud.
Both these edifices, on raised platform grounds,
generally are called simply "the mosque" and
represent Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine.
We stand on lower ground below the mosque and face
the Western Wall, a 200-foot-high and 1,600-foot-long
block of huge white stones, believed to be the only
remnant of the second Jewish temple.
"There - " our guide said,
pointing upward toward the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa
mosque - "we will build our Third Temple. We
have all the plans drawn for the temple. Even the
building materials are ready. They are hidden in
a secret place. There are several shops where Israelis
work, making the artifacts we will use in the new
temple. One Israeli is weaving the pure linen that
will be used for garments of the priests of the temple." He
pauses, then adds:
"In a religious school called Yeshiva Ateret
Cohanim the Crown of the Priests - located near
where we are standing, rabbis are teaching young
men how to make animal sacrifice."
A woman in our group, Mary Lou, a computer specialist,
seems startled to hear the Israelis want to return
to the rites of the old Solomonic sacrificial altar
of the temple.
"You are going back to animal sacrifice?" she
asks. "Why?"
" It was done in the First and
Second Temples," our Israeli guide
says. "And we do not wish to change the practices.
Our sages teach that neglecting to study the details
of temple service is a sin."
Leaving the site, I remark to Owen that our Israeli
guide had said a temple must be rebuilt on the Dome
of the Rock site. But he said nothing about the Muslim
shrines.
"They will be destroyed," Owen tells
me. "You know it's in the Bible that the temple
must be rebuilt. And there's no other place for it
except on that one area. You find that in the law
of Moses."
Did it seem possible, I ask Owen, that the Scripture
about building a temple would relate to the time
in which it was written - rather than to events in
the current era?
"No, it is related to our era," Owen
says. "The Bible tells us that in the End Times
the Jews will have renewed their animal sacrifice."
In other words, I repeat, a temple must be built
so that the Jews can resume their animal sacrifice?
"Yes," said Owen, quoting
Ezekiel 44:29 to prove his point.
Is Owen convinced that Jews, aided by Christians,
should destroy the mosque, build a temple and reinstate
the killing of animals in the temple - all in order
to please God?
"Yes," he replies. "That's
the way it has to be. It's in the Bible."
And does the building of the temple, I ask, fit
into any time sequence?
" Yes. We think it will be the
next step in the events leading to the return of
our Lord. As far as its being a large temple, the
Bible doesn't tell us that. All it tells us is that
there will be a renewal of sacrifices. And Jews can
do that in a relatively small building."
Isn't it atavistic, I ask, to go back to animal
sacrifice? And what about a multitude concerned with
animal rights in our modern age?
"But we don't care what they say. It's what
the Bible says that's important," Owen
stresses. "The Bible predicts a rebuilding of
a temple. Now the people who are going to do it are
not Christians but Orthodox Jews. Of course the Old
Testament made out a very specific formula for what
the Jews must follow regarding animal sacrifice.
They can't carry it out without a temple. They were
observing animal sacrifice until 70 A.D. And when
they have a temple they will have some Orthodox Jews
who will kill the sheep or oxen in the temple, as
a sacrifice to God."
As Owen talks of reinstating animal sacrifice -
a step he feels necessary for his own spiritual maturity
- he seems to block from his awareness the fact that
Muslim shrines stand on the site where he says God
demands a temple be built.
That evening, after dinner, Owen and I take a long
walk. Again, I voice my concerns about the dangers
inherent in a plot to destroy Islam's holy shrines.
" Christians need not do it , " Owen
says, repeating what he told me earlier. "But
I am sure the shrines will be destroyed."
But, I insist, this can well trigger World War
III.
" Yes, that' s right. We are near
the End Times, as I have said. Orthodox Jews will
blow up the mosque and this will provoke the Muslim
world. It will be a cataclysmic holy war with Israel.
This will force the Messiah to intervene." Owen
speaks as calmly, as softly as if telling me there'd
be rain tomorrow.
"Yes," he adds, as we return
to our hotel. "There definitely must be a third
temple."
Back home in Washington, D.C.... I talked with
Terry Reisenhoover, a native of Oklahoma, who told
me he raised money to help Jewish terrorists destroy
the Muslim shrines.
Reisenhoover - short, rotund, balding and a Born
Again Christian blessed with a fine tenor voice -
told me he frequently was invited during the Reagan
administration to White House gatherings of dispensationalists,
where he was a featured soloist.
Reisenhoover spoke freely to me of his plans to
move tax-free dollars from American donors to Israel.
In 1985 he served as chairman of the American Forum
for Jewish-Christian Cooperation, being assisted
by Douglas Krieger as executive director, and an
American rabbi, David Ben-Ami, closely linked with
Ariel Sharon.
Additionally, Reisenhoover served as chairman of
the board for the Jerusalem Temple Foundation, which
has as its sole purpose the rebuilding of a temple
on the site of the present Muslim shrine. Reisenhoover
chose as the foundation's international secretary
Stanley Goldfoot. Goldfoot emigrated in the 1930s
from South Africa to Palestine and became a member
of the notorious Stern gang, which shocked the world
with its massacres of Arab men, women and children.
Such figures as David Ben-Gurion denounced the gang
as Nazis and outlawed them.
Goldfoot, according to the Israeli newspaper Davar,
placed a bomb on July 22, 1946, in Jerusalem's King
David Hotel that destroyed a wing of the hotel housing
the British Mandate secretariat and part of the military
headquarters. The operation killed some 100 British
and other officials and, as the Jewish militants
planned, hastened the day the British left Palestine.
"He's a very solid, legitimate terrorist," Reisenhoover
said admiringly of Goldfoot. "He has the qualifications
for clearing a site for the temple."
Reisenhoover also said that while Christian militants
are acting on religious fervor, their cohort Goldfoot
does not believe in God or sacred aspects of the
Old Testament. For Goldfoot, it's a matter of Israeli
control over all of Palestine.
"It is all a matter of sovereignty," Goldfoot
deputy Yisrael Meida, a member of the ultra right-wing
Tehiya party, explained. "He who controls the
Temple Mount, controls Jerusalem. And he who controls
Jerusalem, controls the land of Israel."
Reisenhoover told me he had sponsored Goldfoot
on several trips to the United States, where Goldfoot
spoke on religious radio and TV stations and to church
congregations. Reisenhoover helped me secure a tape
cassette of a talk Goldfoot made in Chuck Smith's
Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California. In soliciting
donations for a temple, Goldfoot did not tell the
Christians about plans to destroy the mosque.
Reisenhoover had given me several names of persons
who knew Stanley Goldfoot, among them George Giacumakis,
who for many years headed the Institute for Holy
Land Studies, a long established American-run evangelical
school for studies in archaeology and theology. On
one of my visits to Jerusalem, I made an appointment
with Giacumakis, a Greek American with dark eyes
and cultivated charm.
Might he, I asked, after we had visited casually
over coffee, help me arrange an interview with Goldfoot?
"Oh, no," Giacumakis responded, dropping
his head into both hands, as one does on hearing
a disaster. "You don't want to meet him. He
goes back to the Irgun terrorist group!" Raising
his head and waving an arm toward the King David
Hotel, he added, "Stanley Goldfoot was in charge
of that operation. He will not stop at anything.
His idea is to rebuild the temple, and if that means
violence, then he will not hesitate to use violence."
Giacumakis paused, then assured me that while he
himself did not believe in violence, "If
they do destroy the mosque and the temple is there,
that does not mean I will not support it."
It was also Terry Reisenhoover who helped me get
acquainted with the Reverend James E. DeLoach, a
leading figure in the huge Second Baptist Church
of Houston. After we had talked a few times on the
telephone, DeLoach volunteered he would be in Washington,
D.C. He came by my apartment, at my invitation, and
I set my tape recording running - with his permission.
"I know Stanley very very well. We're good
friends," he said. "He's a very strong
person."
Of Reisenhoover, DeLoach said, "He's very
talented - at raising money. He's raising $100 million.
A lot of this has gone to paying lawyers who gained
freedom for 29 Israelis who attempted to destroy
the mosque. It cost us quite a lot of money to get
their freedom."
And how, I ask, did he and the others funnel the
money from U.S. donors to the aid of the Jewish terrorists?
"We've provided support for the Ateret Cohanim
Yeshiva."
The Jewish school, I asked, that prepares students
to make animal sacrifice?
"Yes," he agreed.
And Christian donors are paying for that?
"It takes a lot of training," he said.
Then, quite proudly: "I've just hosted in my
Houston home two fine young Israelis who study how
to do the animal sacrifice in the temple to be built." [Grace
Halsell]
Indeed, the Torah devotes a lot of words to animal
sacrifice, yet Judaism has survived without such barbarity
for nearly two thousand years.
Sometime during the Roman siege of Jerusalem,
Yohanan ben Zakkai escaped the city and established
a new center of Jewish learning in the town of
Yavneh. Ben Zakkai was a revolutionary posing as
protector of tradition. Before, the ram's horn
had been blown on Rosh Hashanah only in the Temple;
he ruled that it could be blown elsewhere. He did
not say the same of sacrifices. His successors
instituted prayers that took the place of burnt
offerings, in part by praying for the Temple's
restoration. [...]
In nostalgia, Jews idealized the Temple; it stood
for a lost utopia where God and human beings enjoyed
a perfect relationship, a lost childhood. Its destruction
symbolized loss of innocence. Judaism became a religion
of the intellect, with study as the central religious
act. It superseded sacrifices by remembering them.
The modern denominations of Reform and Conservative
Judaism altered their liturgy to diminish that memory.
Except that sometimes a culture's old memory can
come suddenly back to life, like a recessive gene
that has waited generations.
For its part, Christianity regarded the razing
of the Temple as proof that God had moved his covenant
from the old Israel who’d rejected Jesus to
the new Israel of the Church. Second-century Christian
philosopher Justin Martyr lumped sacrifices together
with the Sabbath, circumcision, and all the other
commandments that, he said, were irrelevant after
Jesus. Besides, Christians argued, Jesus' crucifixion
was the last atonement by blood - a thesis that both
accepted the idea of sacrifice (even human sacrifice)
and rejected it. [Gorenberg]
A pamphlet for tourists tells us:
The beauty and tranquility of Al-Aqsa Mosque
in Jerusalem attracts thousands of visitors every
year. Some believe it was the site of the Temple
of Solomon, peace be upon him ... or the site of
the Second Temple ... although no documented historical
or archaeological evidence exists to support this.
There is something to be said for this as the reader
will know from reading "Who
Wrote the Bible." Archaeologists
have been digging up the "Holy Land" since
the nineteenth century and, so far, there has been
not a shred of evidence to support the "Temple
of Solomon" story, nor much of anything else in
the Bible "as history."
Nevertheless, Temple Mount IS standing there, taking
up nearly a sixth of the walled Old City of Jerusalem.
It is certainly true that Herod built a Temple in the
vicinity that replaced the earlier temple built by
Jews returning from exile in the fifth century BC.
Those, in turn, claimed that they were building the
Temple on the spot where the former "Temple of
Solomon" had stood. As we discover in Who
Wrote the Bible., the so-called "Temple of
Solomon" was very likely a pagan Temple that had
existed for some time in Jerusalem and had fallen into
disrepair and was restored by King Hezekiah as part
of his religious reform project.
But, even the Temple Mount is a matter of stories
and not facts. Medieval philosopher, Moses Maimonides
says that not only was Adam born where the altar stood,
but Cain and Able made their sacrifices there and Noah
did the same after the flood (never mind that he supposedly
landed on Mt. Ararat in Turkey). Abraham was told to
go to "Mount Moriah" to sacrifice his son
Isaac and Mount Moriah is where the Second Book of
Chronicles informs us Solomon built the Temple. As
noted in Who Wrote the Bible, Second Chronicles is
a late rewrite of Jewish royal history and it is altogether
likely that the redactor took the name "Moriah" and
assigned it to where the Temple that was refurbished
stood in order to affirm its sanctity.
Another curious point that Gorenberg makes is the
fact that the word "Jerusalem" occurs
hundreds of times in the Bible, but NOT in the Torah.
The closest is "Salem", possibly an early,
pagan name for the city. Archaeologists tell us that
Jerusalem was a sacred center long before the alleged
time of David and Solomon. The Temple was supposedly
built on a "threshing floor," which may indicate
that the religion practiced in the region, and the
temple that actually stood there already, was devoted
to fertility gods and goddesses.
In our own more recent history, Christian Spaniards
who conquered Cordoba turned its Great Mosque into
a cathedral and the Ottoman sultan who vanquished Constantinople
in 1453 converted the church of Hagia Sophia to a mosque.
Central Asia's oldest standing mosque in Bukhara, north
of Afghanistan, stands on layers that archaeologists
have shown reveal the prior existence of both a Zoroastrian
temple and a Buddhist temple.
The temple that was in Jerusalem - which was NOT
Solomon's - was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians.
Seventy years later, the returning exiles were tasked
with building a new Temple "on the site" of
the old one. The big question is: after so many years,
did they actually build on the right spot? Did they
even know what was the place where the former temple
in Jerusalem stood? For that matter, is what is now
known as Jerusalem really the place that was known
as Jerusalem before the exile? Gorenberg points out
that it's hard to understand why any city stood there
at all. "It's on the edge of a desert;
the soil is rocky; the sole spring is grade C; the
trade routes cross to the north."
It seems that the temple built by the returning exiles
from Babylon was little more than a human-built platform
on top of the mountain, achieved by moving a lot of
earth to accommodate the crowds that came to witness
the sacrifices. It was on this earthwork platform that
Herod built the temple that remains in the memory of
the Jews.
Josephus described Herod as "brutish and a stranger
to all humanity. He married the last princess of the
Hasmonean dynasty and murdered her and her sons and
another of his sons by a different wife. But he certainly
did build the most magnificent temple that Jerusalem
had ever seen. The purpose of the temple, according
to various sources, was to make money. The building
project attracted pilgrims by the thousands - "customers
for faith, the only product Jerusalem has ever had
to sell."
Herod's temple didn't last long. It was razed in
the summer of 70 AD by Titus and sixty years later,
the emperor Hadrian rebuilt the city as "Aelia
Capitolina, dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
It is very likely that the "Wailing Wall" so
revered by Jews as the last remnant of Herod's Temple,
is actually part of the Temple of Jupiter built by
Hadrian. [see Tuvia
Sagiv]
Nevertheless, the troops of the caliph Umar, second
commander of the faithful after Mohammed, conquered
Aelia Capitolina in 638. At that time, the city's Christian
patriarch, Sophronius was asked to show him where the
Temple had formerly stood. A Byzantine account tells
us that, when the patriarch saw Umar there, he knew
the world was ending (but remember, at that time the
idea of rebuilding the temple was not part of the Christian
theology), and so he pointed out the mount which had
become a heap of rubbish.
Umar cleared away the rubbish and built a mosque that
was the forerunner of the Dome of the Rock which was
built by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan in 691, and
stands nearby. The problem is, historians can't really
explain why the Caliph wanted to create a "holy
site" there since Mecca was already "The
Holy Site" of Islam. Gorenberg suggests that the
Byzantine building indicates strong Christian influence
in its design. It does, in fact, somewhat resembles
the later Templar style of church and one might be
justified in thinking that there was a strong Islamic
influence on the Templars both in terms of architecture
as well as esotericism. A clue to this esoteric stream
is revealed inside where a mosaic inscription from
the Koran addresses "The People of the Book," an
Islamic designation for Christians, saying:
Do not say things about God but the truth! The
messiah Jesus, son of Mary, is indeed a messenger
of God ... So believe in God and all the messengers,
and stop talking about a trinity... Verily God
is the God of unity. Lord Almighty! That God would
beget a child? Either in the Heavens or on the
Earth?"
And, for the Jews, there was also a message in the
structure itself: The Dome stands where everyone knew
the Temple did, and therefore, it can be seen that
Islam is the culmination of Judaism and Christianity.
Many of the popular ideas about the location of the
Temple in Jerusalem are due to the work of Sir Charles
Warren.
Lieut.-General
Sir Charles Warren was born at Bangor, North
Wales, on 7th February 1840. His early education
took place at the Grammar Schools of Bridgnorth
and Wem, and at Cheltenham College. He then entered
the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and
from that passed through the Royal Military Academy
at Woolwich and received a commission as lieutenant
in the Royal Engineers on 23rd December 1857.
After the usual course of professional instruction
at Chatham, Warren went to Gibraltar, where he
spent seven years, and, in addition to the ordinary
duties of an Engineer subaltern-looking after
his men and constructing or improving fortifications
and barrack buildings -he was employed on a trigonometrical
survey of the Rock, which he completed on a large
scale. He constructed two models of the famous
fortress, one of which is now at the Rotunda
at Woolwich, and the other at Gibraltar. He was
also engaged for some months in rendering the
eastern face of the Rock inaccessible by scarping
or building up any places that might lend a foothold
to an enemy.
On the completion of his term of service at Gibraltar
he returned to England in 1865, was appointed Assistant
Instructor in Surveying at the School of Military
Engineering at Chatham, and a year later his services
were lent by the War Office to the Palestine Exploration
Fund.
The object of the Palestine Exploration Fund was
the illustration of the Bible, and it originated
mainly through the exertions of Sir George Grove,
who formed an influential committee, of which for
a long time Sir Walter Besant was secretary. Captain
(afterwards Sir) Charles Wilson and Lieut. Anderson,
R.E., had already been at work on the survey of Palestine,
and, in 1867, it was decided to undertake excavations
at Jerusalem to elucidate, if possible, many doubtful
questions of Biblical archaeology, such as the site
of the Holy Sepulchre, the true direction of the
second wall and the course of the first, second,
and third walls, involving the sites of the towers
of Hippicus, Phaselus, Mariamne, and Psephinus, and
many other points of great interest to the Biblical
student.[...]
It was Warren who restored the ancient city to
the world ; he it was who stripped the rubbish from
the rocks and showed the glorious temple standing
within its walls 1,000 feet long, and 200 feet high,
of mighty masonry : he it was who laid open the valleys
now covered up and hidden; he who opened the secret
passages, the ancient aqueducts, the bridge connecting
the temple and the town. Whatever else may be done
in the future, his name will always be associated
with the Holy City which he first recovered.' [...]
It was on his way to Kimberley from Cape Town via
Port Elizabeth ... that he had the late Mr. Cecil
Rhodes as his traveling companion. As they were driving
over the brown veldt from Dordrecht to Jamestown,
Warren noticed that Mr. Rhodes, who sat opposite
to him, was evidently engaged in learning something
by heart, and offered to hear him. It turned out
to be the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
In the diary of this journey, also published in 'Good
Words' of 1900, Warren relates ` We got on very well
until we arrived at the article on predestination,
and there we stuck. He had his views and I had mine,
and our fellow-passengers were greatly amused at
the topic of our conversation-for several hours-being
on one subject. Rhodes is going in for his degree
at home, and works out here during the vacation.'
Sir Charles Warren was later appointed
Metropolitan Police Commissioner in London,
a post he held at the time of the famous Jack the
Ripper murders. Warren never made any statements
about who he thought the killer might be but in
a report to the Home Office on Oct 17 1888 he wrote "I
look upon this series of murders as unique in the
history of our country."
Michael
Hoffman wrote in 1996:
The most recent Palestinian uprising, this past
September, began in the wake of the opening of
Jerusalem's "Hasmonean Tunnel," which
runs adjacent to the Haram al-Sharif, Islam's Third
Holiest Shrine, is the former site of the Temple
of Herod, destroyed in A.D. 70 by Roman legions
commanded by Titus.
Though the media repeatedly discounted it at the
time, the Palestinians were enraged due to their
fear that the opening of the Tunnel was the beginning
of the end for the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the start of
the rebuilding of the Third Temple, which is the
fabled goal to which most of the esoteric secret
societies of the West and most especially the orders
of Freemasonry, are oriented (indeed, masonic iconography
is obsessed with a rebuilt Temple).
The establishment media, in a remarkable demonstration
of the uniformity and power of their monopoly control
of large scale communications, were able to stifle
any substantial reporting in September, providing
evidence that Palestinian fears on this subject had
some justification.
In what James Shelby Downard terms a "cryonic
process" (after the method by which Walt Disney's
mortal remains are supposedly preserved)--the freeze-wait-thaw
operation--the truth about the intense concentration
of the resources of both esoteric Zionism and esoteric
Freemasonry on this "Temple Mount" complex,
was frozen while the riots raged. When they subsided,
a waiting period ensued as the crisis left the front
pages and moved slightly to the rear of the consciousness
of the group mind of the masses. After the waiting
period, came the thaw, when the truth was taken out
of the deep freeze and presented to the public. [...]
The opening of the tunnel in September, 1996, with
its ritual bloodshed, a precursor of the sacrificial
blood ordained to flow if the Temple is rebuilt,
was orchestrated in 1867. It was then that the future
General Sir Charles Warren, England's Commissioner
of Police and co-conspirator in the occult ritual
murder known to history as "Jack the Ripper," had
been dispatched on yet another masonic mission, to
lay the groundwork for the rebuilding of the Temple
of Jerusalem. And so it was that in 1867, one of
England's most important Freemasons, a member of
its "research lodge" (Ars Quator Coronatorum), "rediscovered" the
claustrophobic, 500-yard tunnel.
The "implements" of the old
Temple, according to the Talmud, were hidden on the
Temple Mount before the destruction of the Second
Temple. With Warren's Tunnel now open, the "treasure
hunt" begins, as the establishment media admitted,
between the lines, during its mid-October "thaw."
In the second week in October, Zionist zealots
involved in crimes of terrorism linked to the hoped-for
destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque, suddenly entered stage
center from their establishment-imposed positions
of obscurity. In the processing of the group mind,
chronology is everything. Hence, mid October was
the time designated for slowly pulling the curtain
back and revealing the actual game afoot . At this
juncture the establishment media unveiled Mr. Yehuda
Etzion, head of Hai Vekayam, spearhead of the drive
to rebuild Herod's Temple upon the ruins of Islam's
revered Al-Aqsa mosque. As if on cue, seven Hai Vekayam "activists" were
arrested by Israeli police when they tried to force
their way onto the Dome of the Rock in October.
Also on cue, a petition was presented to the Israelis
in October, dotting every "i" and
crossing every "t" of every Palestinian
fear about what the Zionists intend with their "tunnel." The
petition, put forth by the Temple Mount Faithful
organization, a group financed by deep-pockets Judeo-Churchian
fundamentalists in the U.S. and shadowy, international
Zionist and masonic moneybags, calls for the removal
of the mosque from the Temple Mount. James Shelby
Downard and I have a term for that call: Truth or
Consequences via Revelation of the Method. For more
on that, interested persons may consult my Truth
or Consequences lecture, available on audio-cassette.
[Michael
Hoffman]
With all the things that have happened since 1996,
with all that Halsell and Gorenberg have uncovered,
Hoffman doesn't sound so nutty, now does he? Fact is,
after his expedition, Warren wrote a book entitled "The
Land of Promise," a book arguing that Britain's
East India Company should colonize Palestine with Jews.
The idea was quite popular in England for two reasons:
1) it promoted British imperial interests and 2) it
fit Bible prophecy. These two factors would motivate
the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in favor of a Jewish
Homeland.
Certainly, the British had territorial interests
in Palestine, but one cannot ignore the issue of religion
and millennialist aspirations about the British. Yes,
Imperial logic would say that Britain should take Palestine
because it was the gateway to the Ottoman empire and
to Africa as well, but notice what Gorenberg writes:
On November 2, 1917, two days after General Edmund
Allenby's Egyptian Expeditionary Force took Beersheba
from the Ottoman Turks and prepared to march north
toward Jerusalem, the British government announced
an entirely different rationale for the campaign:
Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter
to British Zionist leader Lord Rothschild, informing
him that the cabinet had approved "a declaration
of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations: His
Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment
in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people..."
Five weeks later, Allenby's army took Jerusalem.
For two days after the actual conquest, the general’s
arrival was meticulously planned. ... Christian armies
were returning to the city for the first time since
the Crusades. Allenby arrived at Jaffa Gate riding
a white horse, with the pomp of a king. Then, before
he entered the Old City, he dismounted and walked.
A standard account of the general's reason: His Savior
had entered this city on foot, and so would he. [Gorenberg]
Allenby's action makes sense of the Balfour Declaration:
Conquering Jerusalem had to not only be considered
strategically, it had to be accomplished "according
to prophecy." The British logic was rooted in
their fervor for the Old Testament and the hope for
the millennium. That logic was derived from the cultic
teachings of the Christadelphians and John Darby's
premillennialist Plymouth Brethren, as well as the
hopes of mainstream Anglicans. It was their desire
to convert the Jews and return them to their homeland.
Barbara Tuchman writes of these passions about the
influential Earl of Shaftesbury, that "despite
all his zeal on the Jews' behalf, it is doubtful
if Lord Shaftesbury ever thought of them as a people
with their own language and traditions... To him,
as to all the "Israel-for-prophecy's sake school,
the Jews were simply the instrument through which
Biblical prophecy could be fulfilled. They were not
a people, but a mass Error that must be brought to
Christ in order that the whole chain reaction leading
to the Second Coming ... could be set in motion."
Neither Balfour nor Lloyd George was a millennialist,
but they were products of an England suffused with
such belief, and of the ardor it produced for the
Old Testament. Balfour defended his declaration to
Parliament by arguing that Christendom must not be "unmindful
of the service [the Jews] have rendered to the great
religions of the world." Lloyd George
commented that when he discussed Palestine with Weizmann,
Zionism's apostle to the British government, Weizmann "kept
bringing up place names that were more familiar to
me than those of the Western front." The two
statesmen could regard restoring the Jews to their
land as a British task because English millennialism
had made this a reasonable project, even for those
who weren't thinking about the millennium. Except
that once England actually ruled Palestine, the simple
commitment of the Balfour Declaration slammed into
the real world. [Gorenberg]
August 16, 1929, the day that the Palestine Mandate
burst into flames, predictably, as Gorenberg notes.
The day before, on the anniversary of the destruction
of the Temple, hundreds of Jews had demonstrated along
the Western Wall, demanding rights to the spot. A surviving
photograph of the demonstrators is interesting because
it shows some of them in shorts and regular shoes.
Why is this interesting? Because as a sign of mourning
on such days, religious Jews do not wear leather shoes
on a fast day. This means that the protesters were
not demanding rights to the Western Wall for religious
reasons, but for nationalistic and territorial reasons.
They raised the Zionist flag and sang the Zionist anthem.
So, the next day, Muslim protestors came and beat
up the pious Jewish worshippers who had nothing to
do with the demonstration of the day before. The following
Friday, tensions had increased to such an extent that
Arabs began assaulting Jews in the old city, armed
with clubs and knives. Within an hour, the attacks
had spread to other areas of the city and the British
police force was so undermanned it could do nothing.
The violence spread and on the second day (24 August),
in Hebron, rioters moved from house to house murdering
and looting. Sixty-seven Jews were killed, including
a dozen women and three children. Most of the town's
Jews were saved by their Arab neighbors.
One historian records that Jews went well beyond
self defense. In one instance, in retaliation, Jews
broke into a Mosque and destroyed holy books. A Palestinian
version of the events tells us that the people of Palestine
reacted to the provocation of Jewish religious extremists
at the holy site, which seems to be what actually happened.
In a week and a half of terror, 133 Jews and 116
Arabs were killed. From any point of view, the event
was a turning point in the struggle for control of
Palestine. The fact is that there was, at this early
stage, a great opposition of Palestinians to the creation
of a Jewish state in Palestine, and it's easy to understand.
Palestine was basically "given to the Jews" by
Britain. But, many in Britain began to think that the
Balfour Declaration's promise of a "national home" for
the Jews had been a mistake.
The facts are: two national groups were struggling
for one piece of land. One of the groups had been there
for a very, very long time, and the other group intended
to come and take over what they were convinced was
theirs either by right of the British mandate, or by
right of their god. The British plan to settle the
Jews in Palestine was a disaster and they ran with
their tails between their legs, leaving the Palestinians
and the Jews to duke it out on their own.
But the fight was not equal. The desire among the
Christian West for the Jews to remain in Palestine,
to re-create Israel, to re-build the Temple, and to
fulfill prophecy was behind the Jewish presence. The
Palestinians didn't have a chance from the beginning.
Avraham Stern was a rebel even among rebels,
too extreme for the average extremist. A Polise-born
Jew who admired Mussolini, he'd been a member of
the Irgun Tzva'i Le'umi (National Military Organization),
the right-wing Jewish underground in Palestine.
In the late '30s, Palestine's Arabs revolted against
British rule; attacks on Jews were common. The
Irgun rejected the mainstream Haganah policy of
restraint and launched revenge attacks on Arabs:
gunfire at a bus here, a bomb in a market there,
the murder of innocents as payment for the murder
of innocents. From there it went on to battling
the British, who sought to satisfy the Arabs by
restricting immigration even as desperate Jews
were trying to get out of Europe. But when World
War II broke out, the Irgun declared a truce: Fighting
Germany was more important than driving out the
British. Such zigzagging wasn't for Stern: In spring
1940, he and his followers left the Irgun to create
a more radical group that would keep fighting the
British. They robbed banks, tried to assassinate
mandatory officials. In Hebrew the group was called
Lehi... the English called it the Stern Gang, even
after police ferreted Stern out in a Tel Aviv apartment
in 1942 and shot him dead. The group's ne leaders
included Yitzhak Yezernitzky, who later changed
his name to Yitzhak Shamir and decades later became
Israel's prime minister. [...]
In a newspaper called The Underground, Lehi published
its eighteen principles of Jewish national renaissance.
Number 18 read: "Building the Third Temple,
as symbol of the era of the Third Kingdom." After
Israeli independence, the group's veterans republished
the principles, with an emendation. Now number 18
said: "Building the Third Temple as a symbol
of the era of otal redemption." Historian Joseph
Heller explains that "Third Kingdom" sounded
too close to "Third Reich" -
a sensitive point since Lehi was stained by having
unsuccessfully offered its services to the Axis against
Britain in 1941.
The emendation make the point clearer: "They
were a messianic movement, especially under Stern," says
Heller. [Gorenberg]
Gorenberg tells the story of David Shaltiel who was
commander of the Haganah, the Jewish militia-turned
army. Shaltiel had been raised in an Orthodox home
in Hamburg. He claimed that, at the age of thirteen
he walked out of the synagogue on Yom Kippur and ate
pork and waited for God to strike him down." When
nothing happened, he was finished with religion. Shaltiel
went on to join the French Foreign Legion and later
became and arms buyer for Haganah in Europe. In 1936,
the Gestapo arrested him in Aachen. He is said to have
been Dachau and Buchenwald and "another sixteen
prisons". Somehow, he was released before World
War II began and returned to Palestine where he became
a Haganah officer.
In November of 1947, after WW II (which must certainly
have profoundly affected Shaltiel), the United Nations
(which also was profoundly affected by WW II, as was
the entire world) voted to partition Palestine between
a Jewish and an Arab state. You might even say that
this vote was a direct result of the events of WW II
and many people have suggested that there was Zionist
complicity in the murder of millions of Jews for the
express purpose of generating guilt and sympathy for
the Jewish people, to put them in a position of unassailable "moral
right" to Palestine.
In any event, the Arabs were opposed to partition
(not a surprise) and were battling Jews even as the
British pulled out leaving Palestine in a shambles.
On May 28, 1948, two weeks after the Zionist leadership
proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel,
the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem fell to Jordanian forces.
At dawn on July 17, a U.N. cease-fire was due to go
into force. Shaltiel, the guy who had ceremonially
eaten pork on Yom Kippur so many years ago, now decided
that - before he had to stop fighting upon the execution
of the cease-fire - he was going to be a hero and re-take
the Old City as his last Hurrah. The Old City didn't
have any strategic value, but apparently, its symbolic
significance was enormous to the Jews. Shaltiel had
the help of the Irgun and Lehi forces, as well as a
special explosive charge designed by a physicist.
So confident of victory was Shaltiel that he had a
lamb ready to sacrifice on Temple Mount.
Shaltiel died in 1969 and no one knows if he expected
the resumption of animal sacrifice as a regular practice,
but it is certain that he thought that sacrificing
a lamb was the proper way to celebrate the re-taking
of Jerusalem. Shaltiel probably would not have contravened
David Ben-Gurion's orders not to damage any of the
Muslim shrines had he been successful in his bid to
re-take the mount, but the same cannot be said for
the commander of the Lehi forces, Yehoshua Zetler.
If the attack was successful, he had definite plans
to raze the Muslim shrines on the Mount and he equipped
his men with the explosives to do it.
As it happened, the offensive failed. The special
bomb made a black mark on the four hundred year old
Muslim walls, but didn't even crack them. At 5:00,
the cease-fire went into effect.
Yisrael Eldad wrote pornographically of his feelings
about that night, later published in a memoir:
And the heart imagines: Perhaps it will break
out tonight...
If only they had a sense of history. Oh, if only!
And precisely on this night, the night of the first
destruction, the night of the second destruction,
precisely on this night if only they burst through
and got there - for they are capable of bursting
through and getting there... There are enough arms,
and there are young men, and there is Jerusalem,
all of her desiring it, ready for a dread night like
this, if only they would burst through, if only they
would get there.
To the Wall, to the mourning, to what has been abandoned.
To break through and set it all aflame. In fire
it fell and in fire it will rise again. To raze it
all there, all the sanctified lies and hypocrisy.
To purify, purify, purify.
(Speaking of sanctified lies and hypocrisy, the Old
Testament has to be the mother of them all.)
But it didn't happen: the Jewish State was born without
the Old City which remained in the hands of the Palestinians
who had lived there for 2000 years. Many of them are
probably descended from original Jews who converted.
In his 1996 book "Beginning of the End: The Assassination
of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist", Texas
pastor John Hagee recalls sitting with his father when
news came over the radio that Israel was a new nation.
His father told him: "We have just heard the most
important prophetic message that will ever be delivered
until Jesus Christ returns to earth." For
the millennialists, the Balfour Declaration had been
exciting, but Israel's "birth" produced absolute
frenzies of apocalyptic ecstasy. The prophecies of
the Last Days were coming TRUE!
Except for stories I'd heard in my childhood Sunday
School, I knew little or nothing about a Jerusalem
where people live everyday lives - where they are
born, got to school, get married, have children,
at times laugh and celebrate, at other moments
cry and mourn. Then, one day, moving to Jerusalem,
I began to experience the realities of a people
who have always lived there.
I walk the cobblestone streets with an Arab Muslim,
Mahmud Ali Hassan, who was born in Jerusalem, bought
his first pair of shoes, got his first shave from
a barber, was fitted for his first suit of clothes,
was married, saw all his children born and watched
them grow up - all in the Old Walled City.
With Mahmud, I walk along narrow corridors within
one of the few remaining examples in the world of
a completely walled town. The walls stand partially
on the foundations of Hadrian's Square, built in
A.D. 135. they include remains of earlier walls,
those of King Herod in 37 B.C, and Agrippa, A.D.
41, and Saladin, 1187. And finallyt the walls were
rebuilt by the Turkish Muslim, Suleiman the Magnificent,
in the sixteenth century.
"This Old Walled City throughout its long history
has been predominantly inhabited by Arabes," Mahmud
tells me. "And Arab markets, Arab homes, and
Arab religious sites make up about ninety percent
of the Old City.
"As Arabs, we are descendants of an indigenous
people, a people who never left Palestine, continually
having lived within these old walls," Mahmud
continues. "I can trace my forebears back more
than ten generations. And in the case of my father
and his father and his father, our famili8es have
lived in the same house for the past three hundred
years." [...]
"This is one of the oldest cities in the world, " Mahmud
reminds me. "Arabs called Amorites
came here four to five thousand years ago. they established
this site as a religious foundation to honor their
god. And these early Arab worshippers of a god they
called Shalem gave us the name of our Holy City,
Jerusalem. Then came others of our forebears, the
Canaanites from Canaan. They made Jerusalem an early
center of worship of the One God. the Canaanites
had a king named Melchizedek, and it is written that
he also was a priest of God Most High.
"All this early history predates the arrival
of the Hebrews by many centuries... And when a tribe
of Hebrews, one of many tribes in the area, did arrive,
they stayed for less than 400 years. And they, too,
like many before and after, were defeated. And 2000
years ago, they were driven out."
From Al-Aqsa, we walk a short distance toward the
magnificent Dome of the Rock, one of the most beautiful
shrines in all the world - often compared in its
beauty with the Taj Mahal.[...]
"As Arabs, as Muslims, our quarrel has never
been with Jews as Jews, or with the great religion
of Judaism. The places that the Jews and Christians
revere as holy, we revere as holy. The prophets the
Jews and Christians revere as holy, we revere as
holy. My point is that everyone in history has borrowed
from what went before. No one or no one group has
exclusive rights here. There were countless batttles
over Jerusalem. And the Hebrews were in power here
only sixty years." [Halsell]
A late 1998 Israeli newsletter posted on a "Voice
of the Temple Mount" web site says its goal is "the
liberation" of the Muslim shrines and the building
on that site of a Jewish Temple. "Now the time
is ripe for the Temple to be rebuilt," says the
Israeli newsletter. The newsletter calls upon "the
Israeli government to end the pagan Islamic occupation" of
lands where the mosue stands. It adds, "The building
of the Third Temple is near."
There remains but one more event to completely
set the stage for Israel's part in the last great
act of her historical drama. This is to rebuild
the ancient Temple of worship upon its old site.
There is only one place that this Temple can be
built, according to the law of Moses. This is upon
Mt. Moriah. It is there that the two previous Temples
were built. -- Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Plane
Earth
An anti-Semite "is someone who hates Jews
more than he's supposed to." -- TV Evangelist
Jomes Robison.
The Christian Church, throughout most of its history,
has been anti-Semitic. With the reformation, however,
many Christians turned from anti-Semitism to a new
kind of discrimination rampant in the world today:
philo-Semitism. This is a stance which views the Jews
as practically necessary AS Jews, because they have
a role to play in the salvation of Christians! This "love
of Jews" includes in its parameters the complacent
sureness that the Jews ARE different and are destined
for extinction once they have performed their assigned
task.
Certainly, there are personal and political differences
among Christians which make a generalization inaccurate
and perhaps even dangerous, but the fact remains that
many fundamentalists who are leading the "let's
help Israel every way we can" and "let's
go after the Muslims" charge of the present day
have an established history of having taught their
followers that Jews were behind all of the world's
troubles.
It was after the full horrors of Nazi Germany had
been revealed that Western Christianity realized that
promoting anti-Semitism a la The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion could be seen as sympathizing with the Nazis.
So, those fundamentalist who were blatantly anti-Semitic
backed up and regrouped.
With the birth of Israel in 1948, the anti-Semitic
Christians changed their tactics. They were still anti-Semitic
(still ARE), but they acted differently on the outside;
they became "loving" and "grateful",
benign and patronizing toward Jews. Thank goodness
the Jews were NOW doing what they were supposed to
do: regather in Israel so Jesus could return and blast
them all to smithereens!
As this new appreciation of the Jewish role merged
with dispensationalist beliefs, Western Christians
became fiercely supportive of the new Jewish state.
Nothing must come between Israel and its destiny! Anybody
could criticize any other nation in the world, but
NOT Israel. Criticizing France, Germany or even the
U.S. was just "political." Criticizing Israel
was criticizing God Almighty.
At the same time that millennialists proclaim their
love for Israel, they frequently reveal that they have
no liking for Jews at all.
Standing, overlooking the Megiddo valley, Clyde,
a traveling companion, explained to me that this
was the site where Christ would lead the forces
of good against evil. "Two-thirds of all the
Jews will be killed," Clyde said,
citing Zechariah 13:8-9. Pausing for some math,
he comes up with nine million dead Jews. "For
two hundred miles, the blood will reach to the
horses' bridles."
When I express concern over this scenairo, Clyde
explains, "God is doing it mainly for his ancient
people, the Jews. He's devised a seven-year Tribulation
period mainly to purge the Jews, to get them to see
the light and recognize Christ as their savior."
But why, I ask, would God have chosen a people = "God's
favorite" as Clyde says - only to exterminate
most of them?
"As I said, God must purge them," Clyde
says. "He wants them to bow down before His
only son, our Lord Jeus Christ."
But a few will be left? To bury their dead?
"Yes," Clyde tells me. "There'll
be 144,000 who are spared. Then they will convert
to Christ." [Halsell]
Only 144,000 Jews will remain alive after the battle
of Armageddon. These remaining Jews - every man,
woman and child among them - will bow down to Jesus.
As converted Christians, all the adults will at once
begin preaching the gospel of Christ. Imagine! They
will be like 144,000 Billy Grahams turned loose at
once!" -- Hal Lindsey
As long as they don't convert, Jews are "spiritually
blind." -- Jerry Falwell
Traditionally, Jews have been liberal and supportive
of liberal agendas. Having known discrimination and
racism, they were allied with liberal agendas. However,
in 1967, after Israel seized Arab lands that it did
not want to relinquish, the Jewish state moved rapidly
to the conservative right. American Jews, formerly
liberal supporters of the rights of others were persuaded
that their number one priority was to support Israel.
Under this influence, they also moved rapidly to the
right.
The Israeli Right and The Christian Right became strange
bedfellows, each with a doctrine centered around Israel
and a cult of land. Nathan Perlmutter of the ADL explained
why American Jews support the Christian Right in America:
First he says, he feels himself a somewhat typical
American Jew in that he weighs every issue in life
by one measure: "Is it good for the Jews? This
question satisfied, I proceed to the secondary issues."
American Jews support Jerry Falwell because he supports
the expansionist aims of Israel. Perlmutter knows that
evangelical-fundamentalists interpret Scripture as
saying all Jews eventually must accept Jesus or be
killed. But, meanwhile, he says, "We need all
the friends we have to support Israel... If the Messiah
comes, on that day we'll consider our options. Meanwhile,
let's praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."
Irving Kristol urges American Jews to support such
as Falwell telling them that "in the real world" Jews
are better off to back the Right, those that are strongly
pro-Israel. To be sure, he adds, yes fundamentalists
preachers will say that God does not hear the prayer
of a Jew. But "after all, why should Jews care
about the theology of a fundamentalist preacher when
they do not for a moment believe that he speaks with
any authority on the question of God's attentiveness
to human prayer? And what do such theological abstractions
matter as against the mundane fact that the same preacher
is vigorously pro-Israel?"
Douglas Krieger, an evangelical lay leader of
Denver, Colorado, closely connected with Terry
Reisenhoover in raising money to eradicat the Al-Aqsa
mosque and the Dome of the Rock to rebuild the
Temple in Jerusalem, early on urged Israel to work
with and totally embrace evangelical-fundamentalist
issues in exchange for their support of Israel.
In a lengthy anaysis paper prepared for Israeli
and American Jewish leaders, Krieger points out that
as a consequence of its wars of aggression, Israel
faced two choices: to seek peac by withdrawing from "territory
acquired by war," or to continue reliance upon
even greater military strength, i.e. the Christian
Right controlled U.S.
If the Israelis took the second choice, which Krieger
urged them to do (as a millennialist he very much
wants them to re-take all of Palestine and re-build
the Temple), then the Israelis and American Jews
would face the danger of an outbreak of anti-Semitism.
Because of Israel's military seizure of Arab lands, "a
rise of anti-Semitism could possibly surge in the
West." This could be prevented, however, Krieger
said, through its alliance with the New Christian
Right. He pointed out that Israel could use the evangelical-fundamentalists
to project through their (the Jews') vast radio and
television networks an image of Israel that Americans
would like, accept and support.
Moeover, Krieger said, "The Religious Right
could sell the Americans on the idea that God wanted
a militant, militarized Israel. And that the more
militant Israel became, the more supportive and ecstatic
in its support the U.S. Right would become.
Militant Zionist Jews and fundamentalist Christians
have therefore formed an alliance that embraces the
same dogma. This dogma has nothing to do with spiritual
values or living a good life as either a Christian
or a Jew. The alliance is about political power and
worldly possessions. It's about one group of people
physically taking sole possession of land holy to three
faiths, occupied for two thousand years by a people
that certainly resist their lands, their rights, and
their lives being taken from them. It is a dogma centered
on a small political entity - Israel. Both Israeli
leaders and the Christian Right make ownership of land
the highest priority in their lives, creating a cult
religion - and each group is doing so cynically, for
their own selfish reasons, expecting the other to be
destroyed by their own hubris.
Dispensational beliefs reduce "the complex
and diverse societies of Africa, Asia and the Middle
East to walk-on roles as allies of Gog in God's
great end-time drama... the consensus was clear:
prophetic imperatives required the elimination
of Arabs not only from (Jerusalem) but from most
of the Middle East... They stood in the way of
God's promises to the Jews." -- Paul Boyer,
When Time Shall Be No More
The Evangelical New Right ... systematically seized
control of the leadership of the southern Baptist
Convention, the largest Protestant denomination ...
altering long-held theological positions for political
advantage. -- Sidney Blumentahal in The New Republic
I do not know how many future generations we can
count on before the Lord returns. -- James Watt,
U.S. secretary of the interior speaking before the
House Interior Committee, in an apparent refutation
to arguments for conserving natural resources.
President Reagan represented a dispensationalist view
that since "Christ is at the door," spending
on domestic issues should not be taken too seriously. "Most
of Reagan's policy decisions," said James Mills,
a former California state official, were based on his "literal
interpretation of biblical prophecies." This led
to Reagan's idea that there was "no reason
to get wrought up about the national debt if God is
soon going to foreclose on the whole world."
George W. Bush apparently has the same view.
Reagan's support of gung-ho neo-conservatives can
only be understood in the light of the president's
millennialist thinking. "Why waste time and money
preserving things for the future? Why be concerned
about conservation? It follows that all domestic programs,
especially those that entail capital outlay, can and
should be curtailed to free up money to wage the War
of Armageddon.
The Dispensationalists who preach Armageddon Theology
are a relatively new cult - less than 200 years old.
There are four main aspects of their belief system:
1) They are anti-Semitic. They profess a fervent
love for Israel. Their support of Israel does not,
however, arise out of a true love for the Jews
and their sufferings. Rather, their "love
and support" is based on their wanting Israel "in
place" for the "Second Coming of Christ," when
they expect most Jews to be destroyed.
2) The Dispensationalists have a very narrow view
of God and the six billion people on the planet.
They worship a tribal god who is only concerned with
two peoples: Jews and Christians, who said tribal
God intends to pit against one another for His favor.
The other five billion people on the planet are just
not on this God's radar except to be killed in the
final battle.
3) The Dispensationalists are certain right down
to their bones that they understand the Mind of God.
They provide a scenario, like a movie script, theat
unfolds with time sequences, epochs or "dispensations" all
ending happily with an end-time escapism called the
Rapture - for a chosen few like themselves. They
appeal to those who want to feel that they are on
the "inside" of a "special group" with
secret, profound knowledge. This desire for certitude
causes millions of the followers of Dispensationalism
to trust their leaders to an extraordinary degree.
4) Fatalism is the fourth aspect of Dispensationalists.
The world, they say, is getting steadily worse and
we can do nothing, so there is no point in doing
anything. The teachers teach about the wrath of a
vengeful god and declare that God does not want us
to work for peace, that God demands that we wage
a nuclear war: Armageddon that will destroy the planet.
The frightening by-product of these beliefs is that,
since the Cult is in Power in the United States, it
is so easy to create the very situations which are
described, thus ensuring the fulfillment of the ideas
of the Dispensationalists: the Cult that wants to Create
Armageddon and needs 5 billion people on the planet
to go willingly to the sacrificial altar, and the Muslims
have been chosen to be first.
This is the the Most Dangerous Cult in the World |