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Christian Right:
Not Right,
Not Following Christ
Forward: This feature deals with the split in Christianity, a split which has caused those of the 'Christian Right' to adopt Zionism, press for war, worship a foreign nation and promote policies directly in contradiction to the Beatitudes, Christ's words and in the United States, American interests, laws and Constitution. Zionism is a political movement, not a religion centered on the nation state known as Israel rather than the biblical nation
of Israel which encompasses the Israelites, Hebrews and pharisaical evolution of a faith and the culture it embraced, not land or a country. Nation states as Israel is today did not exist until the sixteenth century, AD. Zionism's supporters hail from various forms of evangelical and fundamentalist Christian faiths and various factions of the Orthodox, Reform, Kabala and Conservative Jewish faiths.
Neither the Torah nor the Bible support Zionism. It is a political ideology which uses Torah, Bible quotes and the Biblical footnotes added beginning in 1908 to justify its existence; in practice it uses Talmudic laws and reasoning. The Talmud is a commentary on the Torah, similar to the footnotes in Bibles, both of which are not God's words but man's interpretations. Zionism's existence continues to divide
these two ancient faiths while dictating foreign policy and international realities. The following will help you understand how the Christian Right, aka Christian Zionists or Dispensationalists think and why those whom follow Christ consider this new ideology (begun in 1830), dangerous, a cult and an apostasy from the faith. This article is written from a Christian perspective. For a study in how Zionism deviates from the Jewish faith
written from the Jewish perspective,
Click Here
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Christian Right:
Not Right,
Not Following Christ
By Charles E. Carlson
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Christian Right pastors and spokesmen in thousands of churches swear that Israel has a biblical right to bomb Gaza and Lebanon. They teach that to resist Israel is to interfere with God’s Plan. The normally Israeli-sympathetic network media is giving wings to the neo-theology of the Christian Right. We continue to examine the scriptural error and the media’s willingness to support it. |
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A recent story in the Baltimore Sun reveals a rare honest glimpse of the weapons superiority of Israel over Lebanon’s rebel Hezbollah. While The Sun report made little mention of Israel's offensive weapons it does describe its technical superiority, and it described the so called Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah uses as “a cheap metal tube stuffed with fuel at one end and explosives at the other,” that “no one can guide or control.” (1)
In Contrast, a story by Haaretz, an Israel leading daily, on July 22 reveals an unannounced rush deal has been consummated to provide US high precision guided missiles to Israel. And last year we know that depleted uranium warhead “Bunker Busters” used in Iraq and Afghanistan, were delivered to Israel. (2)
The press appears to count every home-made Katyusha rocket that lands in Israel, but the press never seems to attempt to count the thousands of sophisticated missiles and bombs guided point blank into Lebanon’s infrastructure and homes. Hezbollah throws up limited salvos of primitive rockets in the direction of nearby Israeli towns; Israel parks American made jets overhead assassinating and terrifying people in businesses, moving automobiles, and in their beds with missiles that have TV cameras in their warheads. Comparing Hezbollah weapons to
Israel’s is like comparing the Spirit of St. Louis to the Challenger.
Obviously the Hezbollah rebels have extraordinary courage, no match for overwhelming firepower. Every fight has its bully; this is no secret to any parent with two kids or more. Who can deny that the USA is the bully in Iraq or that Israel is the bully in Lebanon? Never mind who slapped whom first. Israel is the aggressor and anyone can deny this, but there is no logic in their arguments; to try is to lie. The Christian Right has the newest story to defend the bully in the schoolyard: “God told them to do it.”
Why do the Christian Right pastors and spokesmen in thousands of churches swear that Israel is right? Because God ordained Israel’s acts, they tell us, but not one can present a credible argument from scripture. A real life example of “God told them to do it” comes from our local Christian Right community. Darien Bennett is one of several pastors at upscale Scottsdale Bible Church, a success story with a membership of 6000. Bennett received substantial airspace to promote his views on Saturday, July 15, Channel 5’s, 10:00 PM news.
Bennett was clearly supportive of the bombing of Lebanon because it fits his biblical view of “Armageddon,” the “rapture” and the “end times.” Pastor Bennett let it be known to CBS listeners that he believes the invasion of Lebanon might well be part of the end time scenario involving God and Magog of Ezekiel (Chapter 39 of Ezekiel), who are destined, he expounded, to do battle with the Israelis in the “end times.” No contrasting view was presented.
Pastor Bennett displayed a large study bible open to the book of Ezekiel, from which he made reference to the Lebanese cities of Tyre and Sidon which he says God prophesied to be destroyed in the book of Ezekiel. (Sidon and Tyre are the 3rd and 4th largest cities in today’s Lebanon.) Bennett let it be known he sees the destruction as likely signs that God’s march toward Armageddon is by way of Gaza and Lebanon. His unspoken message came across loud and clear on Channel 5: “Israel’s war is God’s war and let no man stand in the way.”
Darien Bennett told this writer in a phone interview that the Arab states including Lebanon are warring groups opposing Israel, all of whom will be exterminated in the final battle after the “rapture” of the “saved.” He considers it possible that Armageddon is in progress, and which he believes will end when “God’s wrath” descends on all those on the other side who he says “will be slaughtered.” Asked if he thinks Jesus will personally lead the war at Armageddon with a big sword, Bennett was not sure in what form God will lead the charge but he
asserted that God will lead because it “says so in the Bible.”
It would be hard to overstate Bennett’s devotion to Israel. He volunteers without reservation that “Arabs live to destroy Israel and kill Israelis.” He generalized unabashedly, “these people hate the Jews.”
Bennett claimed he had met Arabs in their homes in Gaza, and when pressed for a reaction to them as mankind, he describes them as “fools”…. because “they cannot compete militarily” and “God loves Israel and God does not love them because they oppose Israel.”
Are his words contrary to what Jesus taught about love and peace? “Who would Jesus kill?”, I asked. Pastor Bennett responded without hesitation: “Jesus is the God of the Old Testament too, when you read about Jehovah you’re reading about Christ, and He killed a whole lot of people.”
Pastor Bennett and thousands like him impute the wrath of the Old Testament God to Jesus, while ignoring Jesus’ admonitions to be peacemakers. His answers are among two or three you can expect to hear from Christian Zionist pastors if you raise the question of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” demanding love and peace of all neighbors. Pastors of the theological ilk of Darien Bennett normally skirt Jesus’ words and dive into some account from one of the many Hebrew Old Testament bible slaughter stories.
A major part of Christian-Zionism is the art of dehumanizing Arabs, even Christian Arabs who are being killed in Lebanon alongside of Muslims. Pastor Bennett ignores “love your neighbor…even love your enemy” and justifies what would pass for his bitter animosity toward Arabs by using words like “kidnappers” and “terrorists” freely in his interview with me. “Politically”, he states with authority, “the USA is on Israel’s side and always will be.”
There is nothing unique about this one Christian Zionist’s interview and TV promotion. Darien Bennett is one of a type of thousands of preaching and influencing ministers in evangelical dispensational( Christian-Zionist) churches. By definition Christian-Zionism is justification of the Israelis’ deliberate daily assassination of families on its way to the occupation of most of the Middle East, to which Pastor Bennett thinks Israel is entitled, based on his study bible interpretations. With the exception of American Zionist based Judaism, and the
network media, the so-called Christian Right may be the only organized, continuing and unswerving support for continued bloodshed in the Middle East. (3)
Tens of thousands of preachers who think like Pastor Bennett carry, preach from, and lean on the Scofield Reference Bible, which has been edited as a manual to justify Israel’s concocted right to take the land of the Philistines by force. The bombing on Beirut is justified by Pastor Bennett by 2500 year-old prophetic references to the destruction of ancient cities of Sidon and Tyre, cities in today’s Lebanon.
God planned this war all along according to Pastor Bennett, and Ezekiel's prophesy in the 39th chapter, makes it is all part of the “End Times,” as the world is approaching the Armageddon experience. In his eyes God hand on Israel is now destroying Sidon and Tyre, with Beirut thrown in for good measure. He is sure no Christian would want to defy God by siding with anyone but Israel.
Pastor Bennett plays biblical scrabble supported by sophist logic to arrive at his conclusions. For instance his use of the book of Ezekiel to promote the idea of God’s wrath on the present inhabitance of Lebanon and God’s love of the current state of Israel requires him to cut and paste phrases and verses from all over the bible, and scrabble together the bits and pieces into a story line. The story line is the End Times and Armageddon.
Fortunately for mankind the book of Ezekiel is not a license for the present day state of Israel to kill its neighbors. It is a 2500 year old prophesy leading up to the first coming of Jesus, according the traditional belief of Christ followers, through the restored monarchy of King David and his descendants, who constantly fell in and out of trouble with God on the genealogical path to a Messiah. Ezekiel explains why he is a preaching thorn in the side of his Israelite (not Israeli) people, who were then in captivity in Babylon. His warning to
the Israelites was that God hated their incredible evil acts and would further punish them if they didn’t shape up, and he suggested God would send a messiah to them if they would only follow him.
The Scofield Reference Bible, 1967, confirms this in introducing the book of Ezekiel: “Broadly speaking, the propose of Ezekiel’s ministry is to keep before the generation born in exile (in Babylon) the prediction of a national restoration, or the execution of justice upon its oppressors, and the national glory of the "Davidic monarchy.”
From the entire book Pastor Bennett scrabbles out a few verses about the predicted destruction of Sidon and Tyre that took place thousands of years ago and applies them to the present day Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The prophet even named the destroyed of the cities would be Babylon, which apparently happened. Pastor Bennett stated to me that Sidon and Tyre are already ruins, but he conveniently uses them again for the target of the new Israeli destruction.
Some Christian-Zionists leaders as well as Israeli secularists have also quoted the beautiful Christian book of Isaiah as justification for Israel to destroy the state of Syria. We will no doubt hear a lot more of this as the administration and Israel scheme together for an excuse to bomb Damascus. “Unfulfilled” prophesy of the decimations of Damascus, Syria, is buried in this old book of Isaiah, which the Israelis would be quite happy to fulfill:(Chapter 17) 1 Behold, DAMASCUS is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap. The
fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from DAMASCUS, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.
Some Israeli-Zionists already claim this is an excuse to invade Syria. A contemporary Israeli book talks of Israel’s destiny to nuke Damascus. If the USA gives Israel the green light to nuke the millions in Damascus the Christian-Zionists would flock to Isaiah 17 to proclaim it is God's will. More deadly Christian-Zionists scrabble, which would seem nonsensical if it were not so evil.
Damascus is incidental in the book of Isaiah, which is and always has been a warning to a corrupt Israelite people leading to a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, Christianity’s Lord Jesus Christ. The ancient Israelites rejected this prophesy, just as Isaiah predicted, and just as the modern Israelis reject Jesus today.
But Frederick Handel did not ignore the meaning of Isaiah when he wrote his magnificent “Messiah” using many verses and phrases taken from this wonderful prophesy of hope, which is sung and heard by millions every Christmas. (Isaiah 53): “He was despised, rejected, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief”
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