May 16, 2007
PROJECT STRAIT GATE will hold a vigil at your church.
Pastor George Morrison
Faith Bible Chapel
12207 W. 62nd Avenue
Arvada, Colorado 80004
303 424 2121
FAX 303 423 4317
Dear Pastor Morrison:
Project Strait Gate will hold its first Vigil for Peace With Justice outside Faith Bible Chapel on the morning of May 20, 2007. You may learn about our Vigils by touring our Project Strait Gate website. We are not mass demonstrators, but are quiet and respectful and aim our information at your attendees, not at passing traffic. Please feel invited to come out and meet us on the public right of ways, or contact me in advance if you have questions or wish to discuss any facet of what we do.
We are choosing Faith Bible Chapel because we already know it is, sadly, an apostate church by the standards we believe Jesus would judge and does judge. It may sounds offensive to you, but you have invited John Hagee to use your good name and facilities for purposes that are anathema to Jesus words. John Hagee and Christians United For Israel publicly suggest more war, even nuclear war. He has openly urged preemptive bombing of Iran, and he supports Israel’s 58 year-old sub-human occupations of its neighbors.
Project Strait Gate s purpose is to influence fellow Christ-followers to oppose continued slaughter in the Middle East based not on secular conclusions, but on Jesus’ words. If you or John Hagee can have any convincing new answer to Jesus’ many clear statements, one of which is: BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, I would like to hear it.
Only “Christian Zionists remain in support of occupation of Iraq, which has cost over 3300 of our own men, with 25,000 more wounded and maimed, not to mention the virtual destruction of our economy by inflation. We have no choice but to hold churches responsible for their role as “enablers.” Christ followers in places like Lebanon and Gaza and Iraq are among the victims.
What would Jesus say about our professional military been trained in the ugly art of mass execution and torture. Our society will live with the permanent, but there will be guilt to share with the churches who have supported would Jesus would decray. You as a Vietnam Vet must know the affects of brutality cuts both ways. Even video games, not to mention Fox Network’s “24,” depict the murder of Arabs “terrorist.” A US command Generals has protested the torture depicted weekly by TV hero Jack Bauer saying it has a bad effect of the moral of his command!
Who can deny that the Para-military executions at Columbine high and now Virginia Tech U are related to war training to kill other humans without remorse?
Abortion too is related to war. In Israel 58 year of continuous war has cause and it epidemic of abortion controlled and performed and paid for by the very government that John Hagee supports “without condition.”
It is no longer deniable that leaders…including Faith Bible Chapel are tacit enablers, if not overt supporters, war in Iraq and of Israel’s 59-year occupations of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.
The most ungodly damage is to Christianity itself. Those who make war in Jesus name making it a laughing stock religion worldwide…, many call it the religion of the warmakers. Jesus, the Peacemaker, bombed no one, and makes no room for it in his kingdom.
Three years age Faith Chapel was one of several churches that hosted the display of Bus 19, a grizzly display of a bombed out Israeli bus, touring our country to generate sympathy for Israel’s new 26 foot high wall being constructed around a million 1 million Philistines (Israel’s minority populations). Unbeknown to us at the time, Bus19 also was building sympathy for a soon to come second bombing of Lebanon that was to kill more than 1100 mostly innocent dwellers, some Christians, reduce one of the two the most Christian country in the Middle East to poverty. Faith Bible Chapel played a part in this human tragedy by supporting the propaganda Bus19.
It is true that Israeli’s also die; since September 2000, about 1021 Israelis have been kill compared to 4008 Philistines; the ratio of children is even wider, 118 Israeli to 921 Philistine children killed, about 1 to 8. Who would you judge to be the aggressor based on those numbers? Maybe you and I cannot stop the carnage but we do not have to support it. Please know in advance, one sign in front of Faith Bible Chapel will read:
APOSTATE CHURCH
Christ Followers Do Not Kill
I am sorry to say I believe that sign is appropriate, but I would welcome dialog with you personally and invite you to call me, as other pastors have done. I would like to know your personal views and if you are in any way rethinking your interpretations of “end times” prophesy and the state of Israel? The defining questions are:
1) Is Israel a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy?
2) (Assuming you say “yes”) is there anything that Israel could do to its neighbors that would cause you to change your mind about supporting it?
Race hatred in churches exists; the anti-Islam version started with distorted End Times prophecy that God holds Israelis (or any Jew) to be more precious in his sight than the rest of us, especially Muslims. You cannot teach that God granted the Philistines’ land to present day political Israel without causing belief that Israelis have a right to kill Palestinians, destroy their homes, and drive them out. Richard L. Land of the Southern Baptist Convention stated this callous judgment on other human: “It’s God s way or the highway.”
Israel’s progressive assassination finally resulted in shooting to death a 68-year old Palestinian grandmother a few weeks ago to prevent her from delivering a human bomb to an Israeli Military post. This woman s son was previously shot to death; another son crippled and in a wheel chair; the family’s home had already been deliberately destroyed, and finally this grandmother with nothing left to dream of, marching into the face of death.
The following week Israelis in tanks shelled and killed four women, wounding many others. These women were surrounding a Mosque in Jambalaya camp in Gaza to protect those inside with their bodies. Pastor, you have been in battle, you know what tank rounds full of steel darts do to the body women.
These acts are not flukes; the Israeli’s John Hagee extols routinely shoot children who throw rocks. Over 300 women and children are prisoners held without charge in Israel. Pastor Morrison, Israel could not get away with one of these acts without the unequivocal support of churches like yours.
Scripturally there is no more reason to support Israeli Jews than Muslim Arabs. According to a missionary named Paul, “All are one in Christ Jesus and heirs to the promise,” if and when each one believes. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, not a political State created by man in 1948.
It is not too late to cancel Night to Honor Israel. Why not instead have a Night to Plan for Peace. I ask you one question in closing: where in the New Testament is there a word or a line that justifies us to take the life of someone else’s child 10,000 miles from our own comfortable homes? I would welcome dialog with you personally and invite you to call me, as other pastors have done.
Toward the Strait Gate,
Endnote 1) Vigils in Motion: Announcing a Series: Vigils for Peace with Justice at Christian Coalition for Israel Night of Honor for Israel https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1294
Endnote 2) Post Election Query: Is the Christian Right seeking the Way?
https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=1079)
Endnote 3) Christian Zionism’s Roots: Audio/video (www.whtt.org/show
Endnote 1) God’s Terrible Law that Judeo-Christians Break https://whtt.org/index.php?news=2&id=998
