The Christian Right: Not Right, Not Following Christ

Christian Right pastors and spokesmen in thousands of churches swear that Israel has a biblical right to bomb Gaza and Lebanon. They teach that to resist Israel is to interfere with God’s Plan.  The normally Israeli-sympathetic network media is giving wings to the neo-theology of the Christian Right.  We continue to examine the scriptural error and the media’s willingness to support it.
A recent story in the Baltimore Sun reveals a rare honest glimpse of the weapons superiority of Israel over Lebanon’s rebel Hezbollah.  While The Sun report made little mention of Israel’s offensive weapons it does describe its technical superiority, and it described the so called Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah uses as “a cheap metal tube stuffed with fuel at one end and explosives at the other,” that “no one can guide or control.”
In Contrast, a story by Haaretz, an Israel leading daily, on July 22 reveals an unannounced rush deal has been consummated to provide US high precision guided missiles to Israel.  And last year, we know that depleted uranium warhead “Bunker Busters” used in Iraq and Afghanistan, were delivered to Israel.
The press appears to count every home-made Katyusha rocket that lands in Israel, but the press never seems to attempt to count the thousands of sophisticated missiles and bombs guided point blank into Lebanon’s infrastructure and homes.   Hezbollah throws up limited salvos of primitive rockets in the direction of nearby Israeli towns; Israel parks American made jets overhead assassinating and terrifying people in businesses, moving automobiles, and in their beds with missiles that have TV cameras in their warheads.  Comparing Hezbollah weapons to Israel’s is like comparing the Spirit of St. Louis to the Challenger.
Obviously the Hezbollah rebels have extraordinary courage, no match for overwhelming firepower.  Every fight has its bully; this is no secret to any parent with two kids or more.  Who can deny that the USA is the bully in Iraq or that  Israel is the bully in Lebanon?  Never mind who slapped whom first. Israel is the aggressor and anyone can deny this, but there is no logic in their arguments; to try is to lie.  The Christian Right has the newest story to defend the bully in the schoolyard:  “God told them to do it.”

Why do the Christian Right pastors and spokesmen in thousands of churches swear that Israel is right? Because God ordained Israel’s acts, they tell us, but not one can present a credible argument from scripture. A real life example of “God told them to do it” comes from our local Christian Right community. Darien Bennett is one of several pastors at upscale Scottsdale Bible Church, a success story with a membership of 6000. Bennett received substantial airspace to promote his views on Saturday, July 15, Channel 5’s, 10:00 PM news in Phoenix.
Bennett was clearly supportive of the bombing of Lebanon because it fits his biblical view of “Armageddon,” the “rapture” and the “end times.” Pastor Bennett let it be known to CBS listeners that he believes the invasion of Lebanon might well be part of the end time scenario involving God and Magog of Ezekiel (Chapter 39 of Ezekiel), who are destined, he expounded, to do battle with the Israelis in the “end times.” No contrasting view was presented.
Pastor Bennett displayed a large study bible open to the book of Ezekiel, from which he made reference to the Lebanese cities of Tyre and Sidon which he says God prophesied to be destroyed in the book of Ezekiel.  (Sidon and Tyre are the 3rd and 4th largest cities in today’s Lebanon.)  Bennett let it be known he sees the destruction as likely signs that God’s march toward Armageddon is by way of Gaza and Lebanon.   His unspoken message came across loud and clear on Channel 5: “Israel’s war is God’s war and let no man stand in the way.”
Darien Bennett told this writer in a phone interview that the Arab states including Lebanon are warring groups opposing Israel, all of whom will be exterminated in the final battle after the “rapture” of the “saved.” He considers it possible that Armageddon is in progress, and which he believes will end when “God’s wrath” descends on all those on the other side who he says “will be slaughtered.” Asked if he thinks Jesus will personally lead the war at Armageddon with a big sword, Bennett was not sure in what form God will lead the charge but he asserted that God will lead because it “says so in the Bible.”
It would be hard to overstate Bennett’s devotion to Israel.  He volunteers without reservation that “Arabs live to destroy Israel and kill Israelis.”  He generalized unabashedly, “these people hate the Jews.”  Bennett claimed he had met Arabs in their homes in Gaza, and when pressed for a reaction to them as mankind, he describes them as “fools”…. because “they cannot compete militarily” and “God loves Israel and God does not love them because they oppose Israel.”
Are his words contrary to what Jesus taught about love and peace? “Who would Jesus kill?”, I asked. Pastor Bennett responded without hesitation: “Jesus is the God of the Old Testament too, when you read about Jehovah you’re reading about Christ, and He killed a whole lot of people.”  Pastor Bennett and thousands like him impute the wrath of the Old Testament God to Jesus, while ignoring Jesus’ admonitions to be peacemakers.  His answers are among two or three you can expect to hear from Christian Zionist pastors if you raise the question of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” demanding love and peace of all neighbors.  Pastors of the theological ilk of Darien Bennett normally skirt Jesus’ words and dive into some account from one of the many Hebrew Old Testament bible slaughter stories.
A major part of Christian-Zionism, like its parent world Jewish Zionism, is the art of dehumanizing Arabs, even Christian Arabs who are being killed in Lebanon alongside of Muslims.  Pastors often ignores “love your neighbor…even love your enemy” and justifies what would pass for his bitter animosity toward Arabs by using words like “kidnappers” and “terrorists” freely in his interview with me.  “Politically”, he states with authority, “the USA is on Israel’s side and always will be.”
The pastor I interviewed is one of a type of thousands of preaching and influencing ministers in evangelical dispensational (Christians-Zionist) churches.  By definition Christian-Zionism is justification of the Israelis’ deliberate daily assassination of families on its way to the occupation of most of the Middle East, to Christian Zionists thinks Israel is entitled, based on his study bible interpretations.  The so-called Christian Right is, with the exception of American Judaism and the network media,  the only organized, continuing and unswerving support for continued bloodshed in the Middle East. (3)
Tens of thousands of preachers preach from, and lean on the Scofield Reference Bible, which has been edited as a manual to justify Israel’s concocted right to take the land of the Philistines by force.  The bombing on Beirut is justified by Pastor Bennett by 2500 year-old prophetic references to the destruction of ancient cities of Sidon and Tyre, cities in today’s Lebanon.
God planned this war all along according to their grafted together theology, and Ezekiel’s prophesy in the 39th chapter, makes it is all part of the “End Times,” as the world is approaching the Armageddon experience.   In his eyes God hand on Israel is now destroying Sidon and Tyre, with Beirut thrown in for good measure. He is sure no Christian would want to defy God by siding with anyone but Israel.   Televangelists and Celebrity Christians plays biblical Scrabble which they support with sophist logic to arrive at their unwavering support for Israel.  The use of the book of Ezekiel to promote the idea of God’s wrath on the present inhabitance of Lebanon and God’s love of the current state of Israel requires cut and paste construction from all over the bible, with scrabbled together the bits and pieces into a story line. The story line is invariably the End Times and Armageddon tale…”coming very soon.”
Fortunately for mankind the book of Ezekiel is not a license for the present day state of Israel to kill its neighbors.  It is a 2500 year old prophesy leading up to the first coming of Jesus, according the traditional belief of Christ followers, through the restored monarchy of King David and his descendants, who constantly fell in and out of trouble with God on the genealogical path to a Messiah.  Ezekiel explains why he is a preaching thorn in the side of his Israelite (not Israeli) people, who were then in captivity in Babylon.  His warning to the Israelites was that God hated their incredible evil acts and would further punish them if they didn’t shape up, and he suggested God would send a messiah to them if they would only follow him.
The Scofield Reference Bible, 1967, confirms this in introducing the book of Ezekiel:  “Broadly speaking, the propose of Ezekiel’s ministry is to keep before the generation born in exile (in Babylon) the prediction of a national restoration, or the execution of justice upon its oppressors, and the national glory of the “Davidic monarchy.”
A few verses about the predicted destruction of Sidon and Tyre that appears to have taken place thousands of years ago is not applicable to the present day city by the same name, nor to the namesakes of the ancient Israelites, nor to Israeli invasion of Lebanon.  The prophet even named the destroyers of the cities to be Babylon, which apparently happened.  Pastor Bennett, used this argument on TV stated to me privately that Sidon and Tyre are already ruins, but he conveniently uses the new Tyre for the target of the new Israeli destruction.
Some Christian-Zionists leaders as well as Israeli secularists have quoted the beautiful Christian book of Isaiah as justification for Israel to destroy the state of Syria.  We will no doubt hear a lot more of this as the administration and Israel scheme together for an excuse to bomb Damascus.  “Unfulfilled” prophesy of the decimations of Damascus, Syria, is buried in this old book of Isaiah, which the Israelis would be quite happy to fulfill:

(Chapter 17)

1 Behold, DAMASCUS is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.  The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from DAMASCUS, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.

One Israeli-Zionists religious novelist ahs already claim this is an excuse to invade Syria.  A contemporary Israeli book talks of Israel’s destiny to nuke Damascus.  If the USA gives Israel the green light to nuke the millions in Damascus the Christian-Zionists would flock to Isaiah 17 to proclaim it is God’s will. More deadly Christian-Zionists scrabble, which would seem nonsensical if it were not so evil.  Damascus is incidental in the book of Isaiah, which is and always has been a warning to a corrupt Israelite people leading to a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, Christianity’s Lord Jesus Christ.  The ancient Israelites rejected this prophesy, just as Isaiah predicted, and just as the modern Israelis reject Jesus today.
Frederick Handel did not overlook the real meaning of Isaiah, at least to Christians, when he wrote his magnificent “Messiah” using many verses and phrases taken from this wonderful prophesy of hope, which is sung and heard by millions every Christmas. (Isaiah 53):

 “He was despised, rejected, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief”

“All we like sheep, have gone astray, and turned, every one, to his own way”

“And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Other familiar lines, beautiful and inspiring for those who follow Christ, are found in the first versus of Chapter 40.  Isaiah the Prophet promised that the fallen monarchy of King David would be restored, and all Christians believe that from his chain of linage a carpenter of Galilee named Joseph became the adopter-father of Jesus Christ.  The Christian purpose and message of this book was to foretell the Messiah whom the Jews of today ignore and denounce; it was not a declaration of war on the 4 million Arabs who are trying to live in Damascus, as Israelis and Christian-Zionists would have it.  How can any leader who calls himself a Christian forget the meaning of Isaiah?
Pastors by the thousands use dispensational scrabble to pick, choose and patch together scriptures to achieve a pre-conceived purpose placing Israel on the throne next to a second place Jesus.  Sadly they have chosen war, not peace, as a goal.  The Christian Right cannot be Christian because it is biblically un-Christian.
The press’s involvement in false prophesy
The most bazaar element of this one assistant pastor’s story is that the non-Christian, secular, pro-Israel press, which would claim to be fired by justice and logic, gave his distorted story credence and validated it by coverage on the 10:00 PM, NBC News without challenge.  NBC did not show the crushed and burned homes and bodies of the Lebanese.  Obviously, the media wants the pastor’s story to be heard, which is more evidence that the press is covering for the crimes of Israel, and does not flinch at promoting Christian-Zionism to do so, no matter how un-Christian the doctrine.
How can any one fail to notice that the captured French Israeli corporal was not “kidnapped” as if he was a little girl with a lollypop grabbed at the day school; he was an Israeli soldier on active duty in an ongoing war in Gaza…he was likely nabbed on Gaza turf. He is a prisoner of war by any measure and his Hamas captors acted humanly not to kill him. Hezbollah holds two Israelis, both soldiers, and they could obviously have done the same.
Hezbollah is no more or less than organized, displaced Palestinians and sympathizers in Lebanon who have formed a resistance to the ongoing 55 year-old imprisonment and exiling of their kin in places like Gaza.  Dr. Hamza describes some 500,000 Palsitinian refugees living in Syria in Camps…most probably would privately support Hezbollah.  Yet “Hezbollah” has been framed into a hate word.  “You certainly can not side with Hezbollah, can you?”
The answer is, “Yes,” against Israel’s brutality, I can side with Hezbollah, and I do.  Israel holds some 8000 Palestinians captive, who were mostly captured on their own home ground and who have been removed to Israel and are held without trial.  But the press does not make this 8000 to 1 comparison.  It labels democratically elected Hamas “terrorists’ but supports Israel’s claim to have a right to assassinate and replace the government elected by the imprisoned Philistines of Gaza city.  This is rarely mentioned on CBS, which does not seem to notice cluster bombing of civilians by Israel, but denounce the primitive rocket attacks of the resistance.
Whenever Israel incinerates a Gaza family in their home they are usually identified with a “suspected” terrorist, a Hamas official, or are someone thought to have fired homemade rockets.  But the press has never, not once, investigated these reports to find out if the characterizations are truth or propaganda.  The dead are forgotten before they are in the ground, and the label becomes permanent because there is no one to protest!
We hear on CBS the accusations that the rockets used in Lebanon are from Iran.  So what?  The rockets fired by the Israelis are made in the USA and are fired from American-made planes and helicopters, and the media never points this out.  This lack of balance indicates our media is covering for the Israelis’ acts.
A profound and almost humorous example of the Media covering for Israel’s sins also occurred on July 14 when, during a Fox 5 News live broadcast from Gaza reporter David Lee Miller and his film crew came under Israeli fire from an Israeli outpost they used for background.  . The film clip went around the Internet. The panicked film crew had to dive for cover behind their van (with press in big letters on it), leaving the camera behind.  Needless to say everyone was upset, but not too frightened to cover for Israel.  The New York based anchor apologetically justified the Israeli attack on his own journalist, postulating that the Israelis’ gunmen might not have known the reporters were press and might have mistook the “camera as a weapon.”  One of the junior news’ staff members openly scoffed at his boss’s characterization…”I bet he will learn not do that again.”
The most damming evidence of unchallenged media support for the nonsensical and truly unsupportable claims coming from the Religious Right is that CBS does not ask traditional Christians to respond with our understanding of what Jesus would say about Gaza and Lebanon.
The media has now become totally silent on the subject of Israel’s invasion of the 1.25 million Gazans, packed together like fish in a barrel where they are systematically starved by day and terrorized by night in a cage half the size of Manhattan Island. Foreign press crews tell us the assassinations and starvation are going on day by day…and are unnoticed in the USA because the media does not show us.
CONCLUSION:
Restoring an Affordable Policy of Peace: This author stated:
Mr. Bush has already spent all his political power and will be lucky to ride out his term in one piece. The Warmakers need a proxy front man to start the next war, and provide an excuse for the USA to be drawn into it.  That proxy is Israel; US citizens pay the bills.
The 20 odd year old World War On Islam can currently be defined as the systematic bully assassinations and starvation and theft of three populations, the people of Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon.  We are told there will soon be at least two more, Syria and Iran.   We Hold These Truths wants to do our part to stop it.
The real propaganda root of the war problem is the combined propaganda power of the much-deceived Christian Right, and the outright Zionist controlled news media.  We will not soon change the institutional news media any more than we will suddenly find an “honest Congress.” Both are pipedreams in the foreseeable future, but what can be changed and countered is the power of the churches to do wrong while dreaming and claiming to follow Christ and do right.
The Christian-Right-Zionists trade on a deadly game of scriptural scrabble that kills every day in the Mideast.   Those who are Jesus followers can be rescued from their leaders because they will recognize truth and can respond to common sense.  Many evangelical Christian churchgoers and pastors are not Christian Zionists, they are simply involved in the culture of the mega church. This writer was one of these and was corrected by someone with a well-studied view of scriptures, coupled with a modicum of good judgment.  I am not the only one.
Every pastor needs to be told that those who support un-Christian serial killings in the name of God have the blood of the innocent on their hands. Most of the Christian Right is not right about preserving life, therefore, it cannot be Christian. Religious leaders bear an added responsibility for veracity because they are trusted; therefore, they need to be called to account directly in front of their congregations. This is the mission of Project Strait gate. Join it.