Citizen G'kar: Musings on Earth

March 06, 2007

The Coming Rapture

The confrontation between Israel, the US, and Iran has been characterized on both sides as a battle of civilizations and the prophesized Armaggedon. Here is more about one of the leaders of the Christian Right Wing-nuts whose stated intention is to provoke a war with Iran over Israel.
AlterNet
In "Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To war" Hagee has stated that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by rebelling against God and that the Holocaust was God's way of forcing Jews to move to Israel where, Hagee predicts according to his interpretation of Biblical scripture, they will be mostly killed in the apocalyptic Mideast conflict Hagee's new lobbying group seems to be working to provoke and which John Hagee believes to be a necessary precondition for the "Rapture" that will lift Christians, but not Jews, bodily into Heaven to enjoy physical immortality amidst paradise.


Over the past year, frequent and generally favorable media coverage of a new US national political lobbying group, "Christians United For Israel", and its outspoken founder Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee's has helped cement pastor Hagee's brand recognition, as a steadfast friend to Israel and has cast a favorable light on the new CUFI lobby that is designed to flex the political muscles of tens of millions of American evangelicals, ostensibly on Israel's behalf.

Talk To Action
On July 19, 2006, at a CUFI sponsored Washington DC event called "A Night to Honor Israel", with GOP Party head Ken Mehlman and US GOP Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum ( President George W. Bush sent recorded greetings to the event ) , Pastor John Hagee declared, "The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."
Hagee's beliefs are actually part of mainstream Christian Zionist thought, which tends to hold that, after Christians are "Raptured" bodily up to heaven, most Jews ( 2/3 to be precise ) will die in a subsequent terrible conflict centered around Israel.


As recounted by Terje Langeland, reporting for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2003, one of Pastor John Hagee's CUFI board members, George Morrison, expresses his sense of how Israeli and Israeli Jews will fare in the apocalytpic scenario Hagee and others long for :


"Morrison, whose casual, folksy manner belies his apocalyptic beliefs, already sees signs that the End is approaching. The European Union, he says, might be the alliance of nations that according to prophecy will join the Arabs to wage war against Israel during the final days.


"Great wars will begin to take place," Morrison says in a matter-of-fact voice. "Those wars are going to involve nukes."


The extent of the destruction will prompt Jesus to return in order to stop it, Morrison believes. Unfortunately, he says, many Jews will be killed.


"It's another Holocaust, if you will," Morrison says."

Israel, desparate as always for allies, blindly stoke the fire of these folks hoping to ensure strong military backing from the US in what they believe is a coming battle with Iran.

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