Another Intelligent Quote of the Day from Neotherm
End time prophecy is a marketing vehicle for the COGs. It is a means of bringing more anxiety into the lives of people who are already anxiety inundated. The hope is that they will be frightened into joining a COG and becoming a part of the tithe base. Evangelicals are little better. (I am not an evangelical.) They look into such books as Revelation to find support for the agenda of the Republican Party. It is almost as if morality for them is not defined by the Bible but by Republican dogma.They harp on God's promise to Abraham to support the Iraq War. They cite that "those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed." At the same time they ignore the unrelenting warfare between the Arabs and the descendants of Israel. They conceal that fact that Biblical prophecy describes the Middle East as a seething cauldron right up to Armageddon. John Hagee, whom I have only watched a little on television, strongly supports the President's War in Iraq based on basis of the Abrahamic "blessing scripture" but says nothing about the rest. So the evangelicals proof-text support for the War in Iraq. If we wanted to bless Israel, it would make sense for us to use our 150,000 troops to secure Israel's borders. Instead, we are trying to turn Iraq into a democratic republic. History demonstrates from the Crusasdes onward, that Iraq will never become the 51st State of the Union.I was amazed to hear a kid from Wheaton College a few weeks back say on ABC Evening News that God's creation is something that we should respect and take care of. He knew this was an unpopular statement with evangelicals. Evangelicals believe in environmental policies that favor corporations because that is the Republican agenda. Somehow evangelicals can become almost witheringly angry over abortion (I am firmly against abortion), but have no problem with sending young men and women to their deaths in the Iraq War. Both involve expending human life for no reasonable purpose. Evangelicals adopt this paradoxical position not because it is Biblical but because it is a part of the Republican agenda. Throughout, I should have said neo-conservative Republicans because there are some centrist Replublicans that I respect.This is one reason why I am a mainstream Christian rather than an evangelical.
---More of Neotherm's criticisms (and rightly so) of evangelical Christians and their approach to prophecy and their faith in public policy isssues on Gavin Rumney's Ambassador Watch blog
Labels: intelligent quote of the day
Former Talk Show Host Writes Book
Challenging the Politics of Evangelicals
Redlands, CA - A former Los Angeles-based talk show host has written a book that challenges the evangelical doctrine that attempts to influence the U.S.’s political decisions concerning the state of Israel. Joe Ortiz, the first Mexican American to host and English-language talk show on a commercial radio station, claims evangelicals who support the dispensational, premillennial doctrine have been misinformed by proponents who have misinterpreted the Bible.
Ortiz makes claims in his book, The End Times Passover that careful scrutiny of the Bible proves that the Promised Land is not in the Middle East, the state of Israel is not God’s time piece to Armageddon, that there will be no Pre-Tribulation Rapture, and that God’s true disciples will experience great tribulation.
“Right wing evangelicals who promote the Left Behind doctrine (like Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, Hal Lindsey and others), believe the State of Israel is key to Bible prophecy,” said Ortiz. “The proponents of this erroneous doctrine have unwittingly been pounding their theological hammers on U.S. foreign policy for over a century, only to drive a bigger wedge between Jews and Arabs who want peace in the Middle East.
Ortiz stated his book is not a politically-motivated treatise designed to influence people to choose sides between Palestinians or Jews. He said his is an academic polemic designed for people to recognize their role should be one of peacemakers rather than promoting military solutions to a feud that’s been going on for centuries. He said his research was based on analyzing the etymology of key words in the Bible that prove conclusively that the Left Behind notion promoted by many evangelicals begins to fall apart when examined carefully.
“It took over 20 years of research to provide conclusive answers to the premillennial, dispensational debate,” said Ortiz. The author, whose media experience includes more than 20 years of news reporting and hosting programs on TV and radio, as well as writing for a syndicated publisher in California, claims that “when those preachers and teachers of Bible prophecy read this book, they will soon realize they are promoting a militant and destructive doctrine instead of a genuine gospel of peace.”
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Friday, January 26, 2007