Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Alternet]

The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?

The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush’s Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir.The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice.Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m not sure if President Bush really said those things to President Chirac.  But if he did, I think there are some scary things with this.

I do believe that Jesus is coming again. I know it will happen, I just don’t know when. I’m a Pan-Millennialist–it is all going to “PAN-out” in the end. Jesus is coming….But He doesn’t need our help.

My problem with the Zionist theology is that people believe they change History. My understanding of Biblical Prophecy is it is going to happen without our help. Doesn’t Jesus say we won’t know the day? It isn’t our job to make sure Jesus comes again? No, it is His job. What happens in Revelation is going to happen when God decides not by our forcing it to happen. 

Shouldn’t we as believers try to change the world for good? Shouldn’t we be trying to share our faith and lead people to personal relationships with God rather than killing people? We need a strong military to protect us from evil. But I don’t think it should be used to support our theological view.  What if our theology is wrong?  I think we should let God decide when He comes because He is going to do it when He wants to anyway.

What do you think?

This week has been very difficult to say the least.  This isn’t a whining post because I have very little to complain about.  It just has seemed like there was a lot of Spiritual Opposition.  I can tell the difference.  There are many times when I just screw up and I have only myself to blame.  Then there are times when strange things happen that can only be explained spiritually.  

My dad always told me growing up that Satan would attack him through his family. I always seemed to be the one that weird things would happen to. I guess that followed me into adult life.  I just felt very stressed and had a hard time breathing this week. I had no reason for it but I just felt overly burdened.  But it isn’t my burden to carry.  Yesterday was the climax of the oppression.  I won’t go into the details but it was a tough day.  But there is always tomorrow.  I knew because of the opposition I was facing that something spiritual was going to happen.

This morning while I was making my rounds as a corporate chaplain I prayed that God would allow the Holy Spirit to work through me.  One employee I serve has been on my mind for 3 weeks.  In fact I had people praying for me 3 weeks ago as I went back to see him.  He stood me up then. Why? Because he is under conviction.  Today I was a little more direct and right in the workplace–on the floor of this plant, a young man prayed to accept Christ.  (I won’t give names or company for confidentiality reasons)

I was excited but that wasn’t the end of the day.  I walked up to talk with another young man and he just poured out his life to me.  Next thing I know he prayed to receive Christ!  God is at work in the workplace! Discipleship begins now.

So, I guess the point is for me, I know when I feel spiritual opposition, something powerful is about to happen. Do you experience the same in your life?

[Times Record News]

On the same day Erica Conner listened to visiting author Don Piper give his purported glimpse of heaven from his book, “90 Minutes in Heaven,” she got her own peek into the supernatural, she said.

It was May 17 when Conner sat in on Piper’s Wichita Falls presentation of his 1989 car wreck near Dallas where he slipped in and out of consciousness — and possibly in and out of a short stay in heaven, as he claims — that she came home to find something she’d never noticed before in the wood grain of one kitchen cabinet — a mysterious likeness of the face of Jesus. Strangely, it mirrored his image on a candle that she had sitting nearby.

The hair, the tilt of the head — it all matched, she said.

What did it mean? she wondered. She didn’t know, but felt encouraged by it all the same.

“I saw the image and went and ran five miles,” she said. “Jesus is in my kitchen!”

Read more here.

[From me]

Jesus did say He was the door

[CBS 4]

A teacher at a South Florida Catholic School is accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy. Police say she admitted to the relationship, saying she and the student had been sexually active since March 2009.

Maria Guzman Hernandez, 32, is a sixth-grade teacher at Our Lady of Charity in Hialeah. She was charged with sexual battery on a teenager just hours after she and the boy returned from a trip to Disney World over the weekend.  

The boy’s mother reportedly told police investigators and the Department of Children and Families that she knew about the relationship and approved of it.  The mother said she thought Hernandez was a ‘nice person’ and was a good influence on her son.  Police say the teen’s mother is also now under investigation and could face charges.

Read story here.

[From me]

What a twisted world we live in.  It is bad enough when teachers prey upon children but when parents approve–how sad.  Then there is Mary Kay Letourneau the woman who made headlines years ago for having an affair with a student and later marrying him.  She and her now husband had a Hot for Teacher party at a local bar in Seattle. If an adult wants to ruin their lives living in sin that is one thing.  But it is a tragedy when they bring down children.

What do you think?

[Palm Beach Post]

It’s the start of the Jehovah Witnesses’ convention season, and this year they’ll be preparing for the end of the world. Starting Friday, the Witnesses will host 14 consecutive weeks of conventions at the Christian Convention Center on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard.

Jehovah Witnesses believe that while the apocalypse will be terrible for many, it will be the beginning of a better world for the faithful.

“The fighting against nations, we’re seeing more earthquakes, you can look at the swine flu, all this, and it just points to the things that shows we are getting very close to what we feel is the end,” Ferris said.

Read more here.

[From me]

I know Jesus is coming again.  Of course I don’t believe in the same false God that the Jehovah Witnesses believe in.  But to say the Swine Flu is a sign of the end of the world is taking things a little far don’t you think?  What about those who lived during the Bubonic Plague? There have been bad things happening ever since the fruit was eaten in the Garden of Eden.

What do you think?