I just got done reading : The Brutal Christ of the Armageddonites – by Jon Basil Utley
It’s a great overview of / perspective on the Christian “pro-end-of-the-world” movement which has begun (in this country) to not only become fairly popular, but to be largely represented in the government and the financial elite.
This is, no doubt frightening… but again, it brings me back to one of my major complaints about most organized religion… arrogance. I can’t understand how anyone could honestly believe they “understand god” – if they actually believed in god or anything greater than themselves, they should be more humble and less righteous in their discourse on that which is so much greater than themselves… “I’ve got this god all figured out… so let me tell you about it… he just happens to agree with everything I believe and he hates anyone who doesn’t agree with him (me).”
here are a couple of quotes from the aforementioned article:
…it was erstwhile House Majority Leader Tom DeLay who argued that the Iraq war should be supported because it is a precursor to the second coming of Christ. He also tried to undermine the Bush “roadmap for peace” when he visited Israel.
“Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular ‘Left Behind’ series, spoke of Iraq as ‘a focal point of end-time events,’ whose special role in the earth’s final days will become clear after invasion, conquest, and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that ‘God is pro-war’ in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.”Such a ‘war of the cross’ should strike Christians as a contradiction in terms. A literal war in the name of Jesus – a ‘Christian war’ – is an oxymoron, like ‘hateful Christian.’ Jesus said that His kingdom was not of this world, otherwise His followers would draw swords to defend Him – and presumably the kingdom itself (John 18:36).