ISRP JOURNAL
By Sean Mayfield
GUEST COMMENTARY
Standing At the Crossroads of Geopolitics and Religion
By Mark Walter Evans
August 2, 2006
Cartoon by Art Young, circa 1919
There is an unpleasant explanation for the reason why Ehud
Olmert, from his bunker outside Tel Aviv, is “pouring jet
fuel” on an already explosive situation in the region. It
is something that is never addressed in the mainstream mass
media – though often, it is promoted on American “Christian”
media. It is hardly a secret in the Middle East.
Just Google: River, Egypt, Euphrates, or, the exact phrase:
“Nile to the Euphrates,” - scroll down, and study the vast
number of articles that come up; well over thirty thousand
– from all over the Spectrum, and from many points of view
– and you will begin to see another aspect to this whole
picture; perhaps not “the rest of the story,” but a big
part…
Yes, it is true that a huge percentage of the people in
the Levant – Arabs and Jews alike just want to live in peace,
and would love to see an end to the seemingly endless cycles
of war, and escalating conflict. But the hardliners on both
sides – those who are “filled with passionate intensity,”
are willing and wanting to have it out – and thus a minority
– who nevertheless control the balance of power - make it
possible for something resembling Armageddon to eventually
happen.
The oil sheiks of Saudi Arabia, and the Emirs of the Gulf
States - who underwrite the pensions that fall to the families
of the disposable “suicide bombers,” and the Mullahs of
Iran who sponsor Hezbollah, bear very certain guilt, for
their role. And the notion of “driving the Jews into the
sea” – or at least, back to Brooklyn – is an idea that resonates
with something close to fifteen percent of all the Arabs
in the Middle East.
So there are two sides to this, yes - it takes two to tango
- but the
hardliners of the Likud, Bead Artzein, and
the [Rabbi] Kook faction - the “Greater
Israel,” tradition within the Orthodox, are
ideologically behind this latest bombing and invasion of
Lebanon, which must represent their final – and last - attempt
to achieve a Jewish Empire in the Middle East. This time,
it seems, they are about to “go for broke.”
There are people in Israel to whom Ariel Sharon was a “sell-out,”
a man who fell, through “failure of nerve,” short of attaining
the Prize. There are people who still speak of Lebanon as
the Lebanon – not a sovereign nation, but as a territory
to be assimilated, and incorporated into Greater Israel.
To these folks – who are energetically supported by an “unholy
alliance” with millions of American Christian fundamentalists,
who have learned these things from their pastors, now -
the promise made by God to Abraham, in Genesis 15 : 18,
“… to your seed will I give the Land, from the brook of
Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” was made,
not to all of Abraham’s descendents, but specifically only
to Abraham’s “seed,” which they interpret as being God’s
“Chosen” seed; that is, to Isaac, not Ishmael; to Jacob,
not Esau.
It is a curious fact that the Agenda, and the territorial
imperative of the Israeli hardliners, hinging on what many
theologians consider to be a false interpretation of one
Scripture in the book of Genesis, dovetails neatly with
the doctrines that many fundamentalist Christians in America
have been taught in their Sunday schools: That the political
fulfillment of these conquests, by Israel, is a necessary
pre-requisite for the coming of the Millennium; indeed,
that LORD Jesus Christ ( seven years after the mythical
“Rapture”) will descend to rule the nations with a rod of
iron from the platform of this expanded kingdom the Israelis
are about to incorporate. At the risk of sounding portentous,
this ugly mingling of what are obviously crass imperialist
objectives, with bible prophecy, is dark, dangerous, and
yes, deliberate heresy.
The roots of this heresy - including the notorious doctrine
of a “Secret Rapture” of the church - go back to the eighteen-twenties,
to the pulpit of a charismatic young preacher named Edward
Irving, in London. Much of what he preached originated from
the pen of a Jesuit named de Lacunza. Irving died young,
but one of his converts, a British Lord, John Nelson Darby
- financed by a banker named Henry Drummond - was sent to
America, to spread the new doctrines, and make converts.
As Donald Wagner writes:
“… [an early] Darby disciple, William E. Blackstone… organized
the first Zionist lobbying effort in the U.S. in 1891 when
he enlisted J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Charles B.
Scribner and other financiers to underwrite a massive newspaper
campaign requesting President Benjamin Harrison to support
the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine…”
“Darby’s ideas became a central feature in the teachings
of many of the great preachers of the 1880-1900 period,
including evangelists Dwight L. Moody and Billy Sunday,
the major Presbyterian preacher James Brooks, Philadelphia
radio preacher Harry B. Ironsides, and Cyrus I. Scofield.
When Scofield applied Darby s eschatology to the Bible,
the result was a superimposed outline of premillennial dispensationalist
notations on the Biblical text, known as the Scofield Bible…”
In 1908, several Anglo-Zionist friends of that noted Baptist
Sunday School teacher, John D. Rockefeller (who subsequently
promoted it, big time) persuaded the Dons of Oxford to publish
the Scofield Annotated Reference Bible. On both sides of
the Atlantic there were men of finance, with interests in
Oil, whose quick minds recognized within the subtext of
Scofield’s spin on Bible Prophesy, a subtle subterfuge,
and justification for the future grab of a vast terrain
of Mid-East Oil. In this scenario, the Zionists would become
the marcher lords, in Palestine. The Dons of Oxford, who
had spawned Cecil Rhodes, and soon became partial beneficiaries
of his Trust, were quite willing to sponsor the“low church”
revisions, and alterations to traditional Church of England
doctrine that the “notes” of Scofield presented, because
the Prize of Oil beckoned in the desert.
Wagner
writes, "...Gradually, the Scofield Bible
became the only version used by most evangelical and fundamentalist
Christians for the next 95 years…".
"… It is interesting to note that the popular edition
of the Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1917 coinciding
with the Balfour Declaration and in the words of Lord Cecil,
'the rebirth of a nation’; the youth edition of Scofield
with the War of Independence in 1948; and the 'new' edition
of Scofield with the occupation of Jerusalem and the West
Bank in 1967." [Chapter
2: The Historical Origins of Christian Zionism]
This is the subtle root of why the “Rapturists” & the
“Christian-Zionists,” who have been brainwashed by decades
of preaching emanating from this corrupt fountain, justify
every dark deed that is done by the Israeli Defense Forces.
By all means read the article, “Why
Judeo-Christians Support War.” The roots of
what is common in the ideologies of the Darbyites and the
Likud reach back into the past. But 1977 was the year of
their “coming out.” Google: Likud, Christian, Right.
And, in concert with the current agenda of the Oil Cartels,
they anticipate the whole Middle East to be largely depopulated
of its troublesome natives, and be turned, conveniently,
into a pumping station for Big Oil, which Israel will then
control a cut of. Something in it for you - something in
it for us - but a formula for Genocide. To accomplish this,
Iran must be drawn out, and baited into a confrontation.
Persia, after all, is one of the players in the Gog/Magog
War against Israel… (Ezekiel 38:5)
 After
the mess is all over, those Palestinians who survive will
be “transferred” to their new “state” beyond the Euphrates,
in what is left of what is now Iraq. I kid you not. Such
things are on the table at the State Department, and are
being seriously advocated and promoted, behind closed doors,
no less, by members of the Jewish lobby (AIPAC) in Washington.
Such things are
well known throughout the Middle East.
The Israelis have technology that is exotic, and under-reported.
- Lazar-guided “vacuum-bombs,” such as were successfully
experimented with, and fired from F-16’s - and which utterly
imploded and disintegrated whole apartment buildings in
Beirut - during the
first invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis,
in 1982. Something tells me that Damascus and Amman and
Riyadh, and no doubt, Mecca and Medina have already been
”wired for sound” by the Mossad, with Neutron-disintegration
bombs, which can turn cities back into the dust of which
they are made – And that these devices may, at the “correct”
historical moment, be detonated by merely flicking a few
switches in that big bunker on the road south of Beth Shemesh,
and - Poof – there will go Damascus -turned back into desert
sand. But, conveniently, fulfilling the prophesy in Isaiah,
17: 1, “Damascus
is taken away from being a city...”
Which, doubtless, will play BIG in Peoria...? After all
- these things are known
and believed religiously, to be God’s Will,
by millions of Christians in America, who, like the plebeians
of ancient Rome, conditioned and fed on bread and circuses,
see the conflict in the Middle East as if it were a big
Football match, and will always
root for Israel.
...As American Christian fundamentalist pilgrims, and local
Jewish Orthodox in Jerusalem, told me back in 1984, over
and over again, “ The next items on the prophetic calendar
are Isaiah 17 and Ezekiel 38, & 39...”
This next war will fulfill Prophesy, the Dominionist radio
preachers in America never tire of hollering. And they are
correct on that point, though morally, I believe they are
on shaky ground; both because the power brokers among them
(as “God’s little helpers”) and the power elite with whom
these cadres are allied, have done their damnedest to bloody
well make this next war happen, and also because they, collectively,
are already complicit in the blood-guilt that the on-going
war in Iraq has engendered, because they fully approve of
the Crusade aspect of Bush’s War On (of) Terror, casualties
be damned. On this point, check out the book [published
in 1983] by the late Grace
Halsell, “Prophesy and Politics
– Militant Evangelicals on the Road to Armageddon.”
Alas, many of the rank-in-file of the Church-in-America
consume scraps of prophesy as if they were T.V. dinners.
To such, these matters are largely rendered of their intrinsic
and very real horror, tragedy, and human pathos – they have
become, sadly, little more than entertainment. Let’s face
it; Americans are voyeurs – who view the world from the
safety of their own living rooms, on the FOX Channel on
television.
This sector of the American Church is largely guilty of
complicity with the crimes of Bush. But are not each one
of us, as Americans - Secular, Christian, and Jewish alike,
individually responsible, in part - if only because of our
silence and apathy - for this horrific, lurid, expanded
war that is about to be loosed, if Bush Inc. and Israel
are allowed to continue on this hubristic, tragic, and imperialist
course? Indeed, a Day of Reckoning surely shall come. Alas,
there is no time for the men who are in the White House
to read, understand, or glean any lessons from, “The Guns
of August.” As the Bible says, truly, “Pride goes before
destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall…”
The existence of the “unholy alliance” is well known -
what is less well known, and what requires further analysis,
are the details of the points of Ideology and Geopolitics
which the Likudniks and the Fundies have in common, and
the threads which bind them.
For further information on the historical roots of Anglo-Zionism
– and the whole field is not without a certain degree of
romance & poetry – read the book “Bible And Sword,”
by Barbara Tuchman.
Further information may also be accessed at these urls:
http://www.bahethcenter.org/english/studies/studies/
sm.htm
http://www.cc-vw.org/articles/history1.html
The imperialist, “Nile–to the-Euphrates” agenda of the Likud
hard-liners, the “Kook” faction in Israel, and their Right-Wing
American Fundamentalist allies is, today, the stalking horse
of Oil Imperialism. It must be exposed for the abomination
that it is. It certainly does not represent what is best
in Judaism - or Christianity - which is, explicitly, to
keep the Shema, to “ love your Neighbor as Yourself.” ...what
it does represent is what is worst about Anglo-Dutch / American-Zionist
Cartel-Imperialism.
The “Christian Zionists” may think that Israel is doing
God’s Will, but they are sadly deceived. Once World War
III begins – and it has already begun - there will be, as
the old Black Gospel song puts it, “no hiding place down
here.”
Although it is easy for the Secular to dismiss all Bible-believers
( & Koran wavers, too) as madmen, in the face of such
collective madness, it is fair to say that not all evangelicals
who believe in the future inevitability of the Gog/Magog
War of Ezekiel 38 & 39, are crazy. Some are quite perceptive.
Here, for example, is a website with an intriguing, radical
analysis: ANTIPAS
MINISTRIES and two articles, which especially
focus on these issues:
THE
CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS, GOG, MAGOG, AND CHEVRON OIL
SOWING
THE SEEDS OF THE GOG/MAGOG WAR
Return
to ISRP Home
|
