:: TWILIGHT OF THE GODS ::

:: 2005-12-17 ::

#16 Church for the millennium

href="http://www.stmaryslondon.com/

Remember those days as a teenager when going to church was like watching paint dry? Lucky you if you missed that experience. This church had a carol service with a difference: one worth going to. If you have a chance it is worth taking a look at; the preacher is even worth hearing.

http://www.stmaryslondon.com/

:: hagen 12:08 am [+] ::
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# 15 SO NOW WE KNOW, OR DO WE. IT CERTAINLY MAKES YOU THINK.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110805I.shtml

Author's Note: I apologize in advance for the length of this essay. There is so much utter nonsense and outright disinformation flying around about Iraq right now that it takes 3,000 words to set things straight. Call this a fact-bomb, and put it to good use. - wrp
Yes, They Lied By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t Perspective
Tuesday 08 November 2005
The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it. - Ari Fleischer, 12/4/2002
Find a defender of the White House on your television these days, and you are likely to hear them blame Bill Clinton for Iraq. Yes, you read that right. The talking point du jour lately has focused on comments made by Clinton from the mid-to-late 1990s to the effect that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat. The pretzel logic here, of course, is straightforward: this Democratic president thought the stuff was there, and that justifies the claims made by the Bush crew over the last few years about Iraqi weapons.
Let's take a deeper look at the facts. Right off the bat, it is safe to say that Clinton and his crew had every reason to believe Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction during the 1990s. For one thing, they knew this because the previous two administrations - Reagan and Bush - actively assisted the Hussein regime in the development of these programs. In other words, we had the receipts.
After the first Gulf War, the United Nations implemented a series of weapons inspections under the banner of UNSCOM, and scoured Iraq for both weapons and weapons production facilities. They lifted bombed buildings off their foundations, they used a wide range of detection technologies, and after seven years of work, they disarmed Iraq.
A good place to start any detailed discussion of this matter is with former UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who spent seven years in Iraq searching out and destroying Iraq's weapons and weapons manufacturing capabilities. "After 1998," Ritter reports in a book I wrote in 2002 titled War on Iraq, "Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed. What this means is that 90%-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, including all of their factories used to produce chemical, biological, nuclear long-range ballistic missiles, the associated equipment of these factories, and the vast majority of the product produced by these factories, had been verifiably eliminated."
The Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame scandal that has recently encompassed the White House stems from claims made by Bush in 2003 that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons program. In 2002, Ritter described the status of Iraq's nuclear program. "The infrastructure, the facilities, had been 100% eliminated," he said. "In this, there is no debate. All of their instruments and facilities had been destroyed. The weapons design facility had been destroyed. The production equipment had been hunted down and destroyed, and we had in place one of the more effective monitoring mechanisms - gamma detection - that we operated in Iraq both from vehicles and airborne, looking for gamma rays that would be emitted if Iraq was seeking to enrich uranium or plutonium. We never found anything. The fact is, in terms of the industrial infrastructure needed by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons, this had been eliminated."
Ritter went into great detail on the status of Iraq's chemical weapons capabilities during our 2002 interview. "The Iraqis were able to produce a nerve agent of sarin and tabun successfully and stabilize it," said Ritter, "but even stabilized stuff stored under ideal conditions will degenerate within five years. The sarin and tabun were produced in the Muthanna State establishment - a massive chemical weapons factory - and this place was bombed during the Gulf War, and then weapons inspectors came and completed the task of eliminating this facility. What that means is that Iraq lost its sarin and tabun manufacturing base."
"Let's also keep in mind," he continued, "that we destroyed thousands of tons of chemical agent. It's not as though we said, 'Oh we destroyed a factory, now we're going to wait for everything else to expire.' No. We had an incineration plant operating full-time for years, burning tons of the stuff every day. We went out and blew up in place the bombs and missiles and warheads filled with this agent. We emptied out SCUD missile warheads filled with this agent. We destroyed this stuff - we hunted it down and we destroyed it."
"Now, there are those who say that the Iraqis could have hid some of this from us," continued Ritter. "The problem with that scenario is that whatever they diverted would have had to have been produced in the Muthanna State establishment, which means that once we blew up the Muthanna State establishment, they no longer had the ability to produce new agent, and in five years science takes over. Sarin and tabun will degrade and become useless sludge. It's no longer a viable chemical agent that the world needs to be concerned about."
"So," concluded Ritter, "all this talk about Iraq having chemical weapons - most of it is based upon speculation that Iraq could have hid some of this from UN weapons inspectors. That speculation is no longer valid, not in terms of the Iraqi ability to hide this stuff from inspectors - although I believe we did such a good job of inspecting Iraq that if they had tried to hide it, we would have found it. But let's just say that they did try to hide it, and we never found it. So what? It's gone today, so let's throw out that hypothetical. It's not even worth the time to talk about it anymore."
On the subject of Iraqi biological weapons, Ritter said in 2002, "The two main biological weapons weaponized by the Iraqis were anthrax and botulinin toxin. Both factories have been destroyed, the means of production destroyed, and even if Iraq was able to hide these weapons, they're useless today. For Iraq to have biological weapons today, they would have had to reconstitute a biological manufacturing base. And again, biological research and development was one of the things most heavily inspected by weapons inspectors. We blanketed Iraq - every research and development facility, every university, every school, every hospital, every beer factory, anything with a potential fermentation capability was inspected, and we never found any evidence of ongoing research and development or retention."
That's a lot of information, so let's boil it down. Yes, Iraq was at one time in the business of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. By 1998, however, those weapons had been destroyed. The manufacturing base for the production of these weapons had been destroyed. Even if Iraq had been able to squirrel away a portion of these weapons, the basic chemistry involved means that the stuff degraded to utter uselessness within five years. Without a manufacturing base for the production of weapons material, said base having been eliminated by 1998, anything stashed away was pudding by 2003.
If Bush's people are going to argue that invading Iraq in 2003 because of weapons of mass destruction was the responsible thing to do, they must certainly acknowledge that the efforts of the Clinton administration and UNSCOM to eliminate these weapons was also responsible. The tough talk from the Clinton administration in 1998 regarding Iraq's WMD was of a piece with this process; they were keeping the heat on to make sure the threat was eliminated.
Flip to the end of the chapter, however, and you'll come across the pages being left out of the discussion by Bush's defenders. One, the stuff was destroyed by 1998, a fact that weapons inspections in 2003 could have easily established (and did establish, thanks to Bush's inspector, Dr. David Kay, who stated bluntly the stuff wasn't there, but only after the killing had begun). Two, Clinton did not invade Iraq and throw the United States into a ridiculous, endless, bloody quagmire. He managed to disarm Hussein without taking this disastrous step.
In short, the contortions that defenders of Bush are going through to justify the invasion do not hold water. Further, evidence that the Bush administration lied with their bare faces hanging out to get this war is piling up in snowdrifts.
Take, for example, the dire claims made by Bush administration officials about the imminent threat posed by Iraq, claims made as early as 2002. "The Iraqi regime," said Bush in October of 2002, "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."
If the threat was so dire, why is Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador to Washington in the run-up to the war, claiming that the Bush administration would have been happy to hold off on invading Iraq until after the presidential election? Meyer, according to the UK Guardian, "reveals that Karl Rove, the political advisor to the president, told him there would have been no problem for Mr. Bush in waiting until the end of 2003 or even early 2004 and this would not have risked entanglement in the US presidential campaign."
Some dire threat.
Finally, there is the recent report in the New York Times about an al Qaeda operative captured in 2001 who deliberately lied to US interrogators about an al Qaeda presence in Iraq. The operative, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was exposed as a liar by the Defense Intelligence Agency in February of 2002. Their report bluntly stated that al-Libi was deliberately misleading interrogators, and any information he provided was not to be trusted. By 2004, al-Libi had completely recanted all of his testimony.
"The (Defense Intelligence Agency) document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility," reported the Times. "Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as 'credible' evidence that Iraq was training al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that 'we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.'"
It makes you wonder. Why did al-Libi lie about an al Qaeda presence in Iraq? Did he do this in order to help push the US into an invasion of that country? If true, this means that Bush, by invading Iraq, did exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted him to. He gave bin Laden the war, and the rallying cry, he was looking for. That's leadership.
The stuff was destroyed by 1998. Bush and his crew were prepared to delay the invasion if it meant smoother sailing for the election, despite all their claims of an imminent threat. They used a fully discredited source to justify the invasion, even after being told the source was certainly making things up as he went along.
Tack this to the wall:
How the United States should react if Iraq acquired WMD. The first line of defense ... should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence - if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration. - Condoleeza Rice, 2/1/2000
We are greatly concerned about any possible linkup between terrorists and regimes that have or seek weapons of mass destruction ... In the case of Saddam Hussein, we've got a dictator who is clearly pursuing and already possesses some of these weapons. A regime that hates America and everything we stand for must never be permitted to threaten America with weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney, 6/20/2002
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney, 8/26/2002
There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest. - Ari Fleischer, 9/6/2002
We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. - Condoleeza Rice, 9/8/2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. - George W. Bush, 9/12/2002
Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons - the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have. - George W. Bush, 10/5/2002
And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. - George W. Bush, 10/7/2002
After eleven years during which we have tried containment, sanctions, inspections, even selected military action, the end result is that Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon. - George W. Bush, 10/7/2002
We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. - George W. Bush, 10/7/2002
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists ...The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction. - Dick Cheney, 12/1/2002
If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world. - Ari Fleischer, 12/2/2002
We know for a fact that there are weapons there. - Ari Fleischer, 1/9/2003
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. - George W. Bush, 1/28/2003
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. - George W. Bush, 1/28/2003
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. - Colin Powell, 2/5/2003
There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem too terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling. - Colin Powell, 2/5/2003
If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us ... But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct. - Colin Powell, 2/28/2003
Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. - Dick Cheney, 3/16/2003
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. - George W. Bush, 3/17/2003
Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly ... all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes. - Ari Fleischer, 3/21/2003
We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. - Donald Rumsfeld, 3/30/2003
We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them. - George W. Bush, 4/24/2003
I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now. - Colin Powell, 5/4/2003
It's going to take time to find them, but we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them or hid them, we're going to find out the truth. One thing is for certain: Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction. - George W. Bush, 5/25/2003
But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them. - George W. Bush, 5/30/2003
No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were, where they were stored. - Condoleeza Rice, 6/8/2003
Yes, they lied.

:: hagen 3:10 pm [+] ::
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#14
At last, an American preacher worth hearing. http://ship-of-fools.com/church/sermons/14_campolo.html

:: hagen 8:37 pm [+] ::
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#13
End of the world - again! An excellent review of religious attempts to end the word - wrongly.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0211/opinion/olson.html

No End in Sight

Carl E. Olson

"/ssi-hf/ftcopyright.html"
Only two more Left Behind books to go and we’ll finally know how the world ends. I can hardly wait. I feel fortunate that I live at a time when someone finally figured out what the Book of Revelation really means. That someone is Tim LaHaye, creator and coauthor of the Left Behind novels, the best-selling works of Christian fiction—ever. As a surprisingly kind story in Time (“Meet the Prophet,” July 1, 2002) explained, LaHaye “believes that the Scriptures lay out a precise timetable for the end of the world, and the Left Behind books let us in on the chronology.” Since the first book was published in 1995, the series has sold nearly forty million copies. The most recent addition, The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon, had a first printing of 2,750,000 copies. That’s a serious number of people learning the secrets of the Book of Revelation. Unfortunately for them, the secrets are stale, recycled, and false.
My skepticism results from having spent twenty-five years learning and hearing the teachings of popular “Bible prophecy experts”—more formally known as premillennial dispensationalists— such as LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, and countless others. Reading quotes by Left Behind enthusiasts who are convinced The End is nigh, I recall how many “Ends” have come and gone in my short lifetime. The “signs of the times” were many and varied: the fledgling modern state of Israel, any and every Middle Eastern conflict, the European Market, Jimmy Carter, the energy crisis, Ronald Reagan, communism, the Persian Gulf War—the list goes on. Of course, September 11 was no different. Within hours, the event was being examined by Bible prophecy teachers and enthusiasts in light of the Book of Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Matthew’s Gospel. There were the remarks, made in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Other fundamentalist leaders also took up the “I told you so” posture. Todd Hertz, in a September 19, 2001 article in Christianity Today, quotes Jack Van Impe, noted Bible prophecy guru and TV evangelist: “I have been warning the nation and the world . . . for the past two years that terrorists would soon strike America. That moment has arrived. Jesus predicted this rise of terrorism just before his return to set up his kingdom on earth.”
Of course, the inevitability of it all—“Jesus predicted this rise of terrorism”—makes such a warning a rather moot point. How does one turn back biblical fate? Paul Boyer, author of the excellent When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief In Modern American Culture and an insightful observer of the apocalyptic culture in America, says, “I suspect that with the passage of time these events will be assimilated into the prophecy popularizers’ end-time scenario, as everything is.” It will be an interesting assimilation since the exact role, if any, the United States plays in dispensationalist end-time scenarios is vague. The standard belief is that the United States—apparently of little interest to the biblical prophets—will suffer a rapid decline in fortune, the victim of a massive stock market implosion and the uncontrolled rise of hedonism and secularism. Some interpreted the September 11 attacks as key events in the fast- approaching decline and fall of the American Empire. The Los Angeles Times reported that a North Carolina pastor has linked the attacks in New York City to Isaiah 30:25, which speaks of “the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.” And the irrepressible John Hagee, a fervent premillennial dispensationalist and best-selling author based in San Antonio, flatly states: “I believe World War III actually began Sept. 11, 2001.” Of course, Hagee made similar comments after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, but that’s already ancient history.
September 11 provided the sort of horrific material that mixes well into the potent dispensational brew of sensationalism, biblical sooth-saying, and sci-fi storytelling. Dispensationalism is a theology of crisis, without much patience for peace and ordinary life. It has never been about the growth and advancement of civilization; its adherents tend to stay off to the side, looking for their chance to triumphantly announce to the masses, “I told you so!” when times turn bad.
Thirty years ago, when the world was threatened by the Cold War and the nation divided by the Vietnam conflict, an unknown youth minister named Hal Lindsey shocked the publishing industry by selling several million copies of The Late Great Planet Earth, the biggest selling nonfiction work of the decade (with sales now totaling close to forty million). At that time the forces of evil were as obvious as the printed Word of God—or so Lindsey said. They were those aligned against Israel and Christianity: the Soviet Union, Egypt, China, and “Mystery Babylon,” a one-world religion fast forming around an eclectic blend of astrology, narcotics, ecumenism, and the Catholic Church. For several years it was a winning combination.
But the late 1980s were not kind to the movement. Longtime dispensational strongholds such as Fuller Theological Seminary, BIOLA (the Bible Institute of Los Angeles), and even Dallas Theological Seminary, long considered the spiritual and academic heart of the movement, began distancing themselves from the more popular, rigid forms of the controversial theological system. Lindsey’s thinly veiled prophecy that the 1980s would bring the Rapture and the end of the world (hence his 1981 bestseller The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon) failed to materialize. This was followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, making Lindsey’s “deduction” in the early 1980s of a possibly imminent Communist takeover appear naive and paranoid. Suddenly the world found itself relatively safe, with freedom spreading and pessimism relegated to the trash heap of history. A new age of tranquillity had arrived and dispensationalism seemed out of fashion.
But there’s nothing like a war to light the apocalyptic fires once again. Of course, it couldn’t be just any war; it had to involve the Middle East, home to Israel, the central and essential entity of the dispensational system. For Lindsey and his many imitators, Israel was not simply a lone democracy in a part of the world known for despots and totalitarian regimes—it was the “key to the prophetic puzzle.” Israel was also, Lindsey wrote, “the Fuse of Armageddon.” Its reestablishment as a nation in 1948 meant that the prophetic clock, on pause since the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah, was about to restart with a bang. The Persian Gulf War was the breath of fresh air that the gasping dispensational movement needed.
Suddenly, within a few weeks, the prophetic iron went from cool to red-hot. Who would strike it? Among many others, John F. Walvoord, former president and longtime professor (now retired) at Dallas Theological Seminary, made the most of the opportunity. Although widely respected in the dispensationalist community for his relatively sober and academic work, Walvoord had never tasted the sort of success Lindsey was accustomed to. However, his publisher, Zondervan, was up to the task. Smelling sales, the fundamentalist publishing house dusted off his 1974 book, Armageddon, Oil, and the Middle East Crisis, and republished it in 1990. Within a year it had sold over a million copies.
Although Walvoord still gave Russia her due, the focus of popular dispensationalists had turned to the Islamic world, especially Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein became the most likely candidate for the position of Antichrist; Gorbachev, Reagan, and a host of lesser-known potential “Men of Sin” were long-forgotten. “Babylon” was no longer a code word for the Catholic Church or a worldwide system of apostasy (although it would still be all of that, dispensationalists said); it really was Babylon—ancient Babylon—rebuilt and renewed by a murderous Iraqi dictator. The driving force behind the intended destruction of Israel was not communism, but radical Islam. The ancient battle between Jacob and Esau had resumed. Lindsey and others such as Grant Jeffrey, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee unearthed passages of Scripture supposedly proving this prophetic truth. Their books during the 1990s pointed to the growth of terrorist groups operating with the goal of destroying Israel and Israel’s powerful supporter, the “Great Satan,” the United States.
The horrific attacks on America seemed to validate, to a certain degree, these authors’ repeated warnings about militant Islamic groups. But popular dispensationalists are not content with validation—they apparently want Armageddon and the end of the world. It’s difficult to conclude otherwise. Just read some of the book titles of the past few years: Armageddon, Countdown to Armageddon, Israel’s Final Holocaust, Final Signs, Beginning of the End, Foreshadows of Wrath and Redemption, Apocalypse Now, The Final Battle. Instead of interpreting and analyzing current events in the light of political, cultural, and social realities—a complex and difficult task—the authors of these books interpret Scripture according to currents events, an approach that is as dangerous as it is subjective. That’s the approach taken by LaHaye, whose goal with the Left Behind books is to disseminate his understanding of the Book of Revelation to as large an audience as possible. He writes in Revelation Unveiled, “The Book of Revelation is easily the most fascinating book in the Bible, for it gives a detailed description of the future.” In his 1970s commentary on the Book of Revelation, There’s a New World Coming, Lindsey explained that modern readers could finally understand John the Revelator’s mysterious work because it “is written in such a way that its meaning becomes clear with the unfolding of current world events.” However, not just anyone can understand the Apocalypse, but only those embracing the dispensationalist system as taught by Lindsey, LaHaye, and a select group of other enlightened Bible prophecy experts. The key is the dispensational system–—without it one simply cannot “rightly divide the Word of God.”
ýThus dispensational eschatology becomes a litmus test for orthodoxy. Rejecting the system raises questions about one’s commitment to biblical inerrancy, literal interpretation of Scripture, and the belief in the pretribulation Rapture. In addition, those less than enthusiastic about dispensationalism are suspected of antagonism towards Israel. Lindsey has made it clear that those who do not embrace dispensationalism are especially vulnerable to anti-Semitism. The “allegorical” method of interpreting Sýripture—badly misrepresented and maligned by most dispensationalists—is roundly condemned for draining all meaning from the Bible. Amillennialism, generally embraced by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestants, is denounced as heretical, even demonic.
The fact is that authors such as LaHaye and Lindsey teach that the vast majority of Israelites will be killed during the seven years of Tribulation sandwiched between the Rapture and Christ’s Second Coming. “There will be so much fighting” around Jerusalem, Lindsey writes, “[that] blood will flow for two hundred miles.” He acknowledges that this is hard to believe, but states that this “is exactly what God predicts, and He always fulfills His Word.” In other words, this supposed friend of the Israelites believes that God has willed the bloody death of millions of Jews—simply because He must keep His word. Prophecy isn’t for the weak of heart, but someone has to let the world know.
Dispensationalism’s popular leaders could not be more confident of their own prophetic powers. They vehemently deny this is the case, but what other conclusion can one reach after reading their books? Commenting about the Book of Revelation in The Apocalypse Code, one of his more recent works, Lindsey remarks, “I believe that the Spirit of God gave me a special insight, not only into how John described what he actually experienced, but also into how this whole phenomenon encoded the prophecies so that they could be fully understood only when their fulfillment drew near. . . . I prayerfully sought for a confirmation for my apocalypse code theory.” In the introduction to his subsequent work, The Final Battle, Lindsey makes another audacious claim:
You won’t find another book quite like this one. We will examine why and how the world is hurtling toward disaster. . . . My background as a student of prophecy allows me to place all this information in perspective in a way that is sure to lead many people to the ultimate truth about the coming global holocaust—and, if they are open, to a wonderful way of escaping it. Read this book. Learn from it. Pass it on to your friends. It may be the last chance some of them will ever have to avoid the horrible fate this book describes.
This pragmatic, matter-of-fact pessimism is both the source of dispensationalism and, oddly enough, the cause for its flourishing within so many fundamentalist groups. John Nelson Darby, the ex-Anglican priest who constructed the premillennial dispensational system in the 1830s, based it on three premises: Jesus Christ failed in his initial mission, the Church has become apostate and is in ruins, and the Old Testament promises to the Israelites have yet to be fulfilled. Inevitably and logically this meant that the Church is not connected to Old Testament Israel, nor is she even as important, at least in earthly terms. The Church is, Darby taught, a “heavenly people” meant for a Christ who was relegated to a heavenly status once he was rejected by the Jews, God’s “earthly” people. Fast forward to the future millennial reign, complete with a new Temple and reinstituted animal sacrifices. During this “Davidic reign” the Church will exercise authority from heaven—possibly in a huge, cubed New Jerusalem hovering over the earth. Meanwhile, the earth will be occupied by those non-Raptured and non-glorified believers, mostly Jewish, who accepted Jesus as Savior during the Tribulation. After all, that horrific time will be for punishing an evil humanity and will be a means of bringing the Jews back to God in an ultimate display of tough love. How odd to think that Christians who believe that the Church is composed of “Jew and Greek” alike (Romans 10:12) are sometimes suspected of anti-Semitism by those who believe that in the future, earthly millennium the Jews will be rewarded with earth while pre-Rapture Christians will achieve heaven, the grand prize.
The popularity of such a system does not exist despite its pessimism, but feeds off it, as the success of the Left Behind books seems to indicate. Once the doctrines of the utter depravity of man and his inevitable slide into ever-increasing evil are accepted, the desire for escape and the hope of God’s vengeful judgment naturally follow. Instead of being incarnational, history becomes fatalistic; instead of being sacramental, the material realm is cursed, even evil. This dualism is both startling and familiar, neo-Gnostic and Manichaean. While fighting against the “New Age” movement and its dualistic errors, dispensationalists unwittingly embrace a similar error, pitting the spiritual against the physical and the heavenly against the earthly, as though they were never reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul may have fought his flesh—his fallen, wounded nature—but he never tried to escape the physical pains his commitment to Christ brought upon him. Undoubtedly the idea of a pretribulation Rapture would have angered him: “For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29). You don’t see that on too many bumper stickers.
Even as dispensationalism’s discontinuity with centuries of historical Christian teaching is being exposed, its selling power continues to impress. The Left Behind books have mushroomed into an entire industry, replete with CDs, tapes, videos, comic books, apparel, calendars, and a thriving website community. Sales for the books increased by 60 percent after September 11. There is no doubt that apocalyptic fever is easily caught and passed along in America. So don’t be surprised if the Left Behind series extends its successful run to fourteen, fifteen, or twenty books. After all, The End is approaching, but the presses will keep on turning until the final seconds of time vanish into eternity.

Carl E. Olson is Editor of Envoy, a Catholic periodical devoted to apologetics and evangelization. His critique of dispensationalism, Will Catholics Be Left Behind?, will be published by Ignatius Press next spring.

:: hagen 7:13 pm [+] ::
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#12
Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;$sessionid$PHGJESUENTCP1QFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=%2Fopinion%2F2004%2F04%2F10%2Fdo1003.xml&sSheet=%2Fportal%2F2004%2F04%2F10%2Fixportal.html

This Vietnam generation of Americans has not learnt the lessons of history
By Niall Ferguson
(Filed: 10/04/2004)


Around this time last year I had a conversation in Washington that summed up what was bound to go wrong for America in Iraq. I was talking to a mid-ranking official in the US Treasury about American plans for the post-war reconstruction of the Iraqi economy. She had just attended a meeting on precisely that subject. "So what kind of historical precedents have you been considering?" I asked. "The post-Communist economies of Eastern Europe," she replied. "We have quite a bit of experience we can draw on from the 1990s."

When I suggested that the problems of privatisation in Poland might not prove relevant on the banks of the Euphrates, she seemed surprised. And when I suggested that she and her colleagues ought at least to take a look at the last Anglophone occupation of Iraq, her surprise turned to incredulity. Not for the first time since crossing the Atlantic, I was confronted with the disturbing reality about the way Americans make policy. Theory looms surprisingly large. Neoconservative theory, for instance, stated that the Americans would be welcomed as liberators, just as economic theory put privatisation on my interlocutor's agenda. The lessons of history come a poor second, and only recent history - preferably recent American history - gets considered.

That's why there hasn't been a month since the invasion of Iraq last year without some clapped-out commentator warning that Iraq could become "another Vietnam". For many Americans - including the Democratic contender for the presidency, John Kerry - the only history relevant to American foreign policy is the history of the Vietnam War. True, the Department of Defence has commissioned some ambitious historical studies. In August 2001, Donald Rumsfeld's office produced "Strategies for Maintaining US Predominance", which compared America's bid to establish "full spectrum dominance" with the attempts of previous empires. Most of it, however, consisted of pretty superficial economics and the conclusion was that technological change has put the US in a league of its own, so more detailed comparative study would be superfluous.

There was amazement last year when I pointed out in the journal Foreign Affairs that in 1917 a British general had occupied Baghdad and proclaimed: "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." By the same token, scarcely any American outside university history departments is aware that within just a few months of the formal British takeover of Iraq, there was a full-scale anti-British revolt.

What happened in Iraq last week so closely resembles the events of 1920 that only a historical ignoramus could be surprised. It began in May, just after the announcement that Iraq would henceforth be a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship. (Nota bene, if you think a handover to the UN would solve everything.) Anti-British demonstrations began in Baghdad mosques, spread to the Shi'ite holy centre of Karbala, swept on through Rumaytha and Samawa - where British forces were besieged - and reached as far as Kirkuk.

Contrary to British expectations, Sunnis, Shi'ites and even Kurds acted together. Stories abounded of mutilated British bodies. By August the situation was so desperate that the British commander appealed to London for poison gas bombs or shells (though these turned out not to be available). By the time order had been restored in December - with a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions - British forces had sustained over 2,000 casualties and the financial cost of the operation was being denounced in Parliament. In the aftermath of the revolt, the British were forced to accelerate the transfer of power to a nominally independent Iraqi government, albeit one modelled on their own form of constitutional monarchy.

I am willing to bet that not one senior military commander in Iraq today knows the slightest thing about these events. The only consolation is that maybe some younger Americans are realising that the US has lessons to learn from something other than its own supposedly exceptional history. The best discussion of the 1920 revolt that I have come across this year was presented by a young Chicago-based graduate named Daniel Barnard at a Harvard University history conference. This week at New York University it was the economics undergraduates who organised a question and answer session for three senior UN diplomats, including the current (German) president of the Security Council. Their questions - particularly about the likely consequences of a premature American withdrawal - seemed a great deal better informed about the realities of modern imperialism than the anodyne stuff routinely trotted out by the White House.

The high quality of political debate in the American universities suggests that the delusion of American "exceptionalism" may be waning. But for the time being US policy in Iraq is in the hands of a generation who have learnt nothing from history except how to repeat other people's mistakes.

• Niall Ferguson's book Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire will be published next month by Penguin. His television documentary American Colossus will be broadcast on Channel 4 in June. Adam Nicolson is away

:: hagen 4:39 pm [+] ::
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#11
The Emperor Has No Clothes

Robert C. Byrd is a Democratic Senator from West Virginia.

The following commentary was delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate on
October 17, 2003.

In 1837, Danish author Hans Christian Andersen wrote a wonderful fairy tale
which he titled The Emperor's New Clothes. It may be the very first example
of the power of political correctness. It is the story of the Ruler of a
distant land who was so enamored of his appearance and his clothing that he
had a different suit for every hour of the day.

One day two rogues arrived in town, claiming to be gifted weavers. They
convinced the Emperor that they could weave the most wonderful cloth, which
had a magical property. The clothes were only visible to those who were
completely pure in heart and spirit.

The Emperor was impressed and ordered the weavers to begin work immediately.
The rogues, who had a deep understanding of human nature, began to feign
work on empty looms.

Minister after minister went to view the new clothes and all came back
exhorting the beauty of the cloth on the looms even though none of them
could see a thing.

Finally a grand procession was planned for the Emperor to display his new
finery. The Emperor went to view his clothes and was shocked to see
absolutely nothing, but he pretended to admire the fabulous cloth, inspect
the clothes with awe, and, after disrobing, go through the motions of
carefully putting on a suit of the new garments.

Under a royal canopy the Emperor appeared to the admiring throng of his
people¯all of whom cheered and clapped because they all knew the rogue
weavers' tale and did not want to be seen as less than pure of heart.

But, the bubble burst when an innocent child loudly exclaimed, for the whole
kingdom to hear, that the Emperor had nothing on at all. He had no clothes.

That tale seems to me very like the way this nation was led to war.

We were told that we were threatened by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,
but they have not been seen.

We were told that the throngs of Iraqi's would welcome our troops with
flowers, but no throngs or flowers appeared.

We were led to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the attack on
the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, but no evidence has ever been produced.

We were told in 16 words that Saddam Hussein tried to buy "yellow cake" from
Africa for production of nuclear weapons, but the story has turned into
empty air.

We were frightened with visions of mushroom clouds, but they turned out to
be only vapors of the mind.

We were told that major combat was over but 101 [as of October 17] Americans
have died in combat since that proclamation from the deck of an aircraft
carrier by our very own Emperor in his new clothes.

Our emperor says that we are not occupiers, yet we show no inclination to
relinquish the country of Iraq to its people.

Those who have dared to expose the nakedness of the administration's
policies in Iraq have been subjected to scorn. Those who have noticed the
elephant in the room¯that is, the fact that this war was based on
falsehoods¯have had our patriotism questioned. Those who have spoken aloud
the thought shared by hundreds of thousands of military families across this
country, that our troops should return quickly and safely from the dangers
half a world away, have been accused of cowardice. We have then seen the
untruths, the dissembling, the fabrication, the misleading inferences
surrounding this rush to war in Iraq wrapped quickly in the flag.

The right to ask questions, debate, and dissent is under attack. The drums
of war are beaten ever louder in an attempt to drown out those who speak of
our predicament in stark terms.

Even in the Senate, our history and tradition of being the world's greatest
deliberative body is being snubbed. This huge spending bill has been rushed
through this chamber in just one month. There were just three open hearings
by the Senate Appropriations Committee on $87 billion, without a single
outside witness called to challenge the administration's line.

Ambassador Bremer went so far as to refuse to return to the Appropriations
Committee to answer additional questions because, and I quote: "I don't have
time. I'm completely booked, and I have to get back to Baghdad to my
duties."

Despite this callous stiff-arm of the Senate and its duties to ask questions
in order to represent the American people, few dared to voice their
opposition to rushing this bill through these halls of Congress. Perhaps
they were intimidated by the false claims that our troops are in immediate
need of more funds.

But the time has come for the sheep-like political correctness which has
cowed members of this Senate to come to an end.

The Emperor has no clothes. This entire adventure in Iraq has been based on
propaganda and manipulation. Eighty-seven billion dollars is too much to pay
for the continuation of a war based on falsehoods.

Taking the nation to war based on misleading rhetoric and hyped intelligence
is a travesty and a tragedy. It is the most cynical of all cynical acts. It
is dangerous to manipulate the truth. It is dangerous because once having
lied, it is difficult to ever be believed again. Having misled the American
people and stampeded them to war, this administration must now attempt to
sustain a policy predicated on falsehoods. The president asks for billions
from those same citizens who know that they were misled about the need to go
to war. We misinformed and insulted our friends and allies and now this
administration is having more than a little trouble getting help from the
international community. It is perilous to mislead.

The single-minded obsession of this administration to now make sense of the
chaos in Iraq, and the continuing propaganda which emanates from the White
House painting Iraq as the geographical center of terrorism is distracting
our attention from Afghanistan and the 60 other countries in the world where
terrorists hide. It is sapping resources which could be used to make us
safer from terrorists on our own shores. The body armor for our own citizens
still has many, many chinks. Have we forgotten that the most horrific terror
attacks in history occurred right here at home!! Yet, this administration
turns back money for homeland security, while the president pours billions
into security for Iraq. I am powerless to understand or explain such a
policy.

I have tried mightily to improve this bill. I twice tried to separate the
reconstruction money in this bill, so that those dollars could be considered
separately from the military spending. I offered an amendment to force the
administration to craft a plan to get other nations to assist the troops and
formulate a plan to get the U.N. in, and the U.S. out, of Iraq. Twice I
tried to rid the bill of expansive, flexible authorities that turn this $87
billion into a blank check. The American people should understand that we
provide more foreign aid for Iraq in this bill, $20.3 billion, than we
provide for the rest of the entire world! I attempted to remove from this
bill billions in wasteful programs and divert those funds to better use.
But, at every turn, my efforts were thwarted by the vapid argument that we
must all support the requests of the Commander in Chief.

I cannot stand by and continue to watch our grandchildren become
increasingly burdened by the billions that fly out of the Treasury for a war
and a policy based largely on propaganda and prevarication. We are borrowing
$87 billion to finance this adventure in Iraq. The president is asking this
Senate to pay for this war with increased debt, a debt that will have to be
paid by our children and by those same troops that are currently fighting
this war. I cannot support outlandish tax cuts that plunge our country into
potentially disastrous debt while our troops are fighting and dying in a war
that the White House chose to begin.

I cannot support the continuation of a policy that unwisely ties down
150,000 American troops for the foreseeable future, with no end in sight.

I cannot support a president who refuses to authorize the reasonable change
in course that would bring traditional allies to our side in Iraq.

I cannot support the politics of zeal and "might makes right" that created
the new American arrogance and unilateralism which passes for foreign policy
in this administration.

I cannot support this foolish manifestation of the dangerous and
destabilizing doctrine of preemption that changes the image of America into
that of a reckless bully.

The emperor has no clothes. And our former allies around the world were the
first to loudly observe it.

I shall vote against this bill because I cannot support a policy based on
prevarication. I cannot support doling out 87 billion of our hard-earned tax
dollars when I have so many doubts about the wisdom of its use.

I began my remarks with a fairy tale. I shall close my remarks with a horror
story, in the form of a quote from the book Nuremberg Diaries, written by
G.M. Gilbert, in which the author interviews Hermann Goering.

"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his
attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for
leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"...But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the
policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it
is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist
dictatorship.

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have
some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the
United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way
in any country."

:: hagen 2:42 am [+] ::
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#10
So whose afraid of a conspiracy then?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0504-06.htm">

:: hagen 7:44 pm [+] ::
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