Bartholomew's Notes

Last week I did a posting on the London Swinton Circle and the Springbok Club, giving a bit of background to a diary piece in the Guardian. The piece’s author, Hugh Muir, now has a bit more:

Regrettable that there is continuing fratricide in the Swinton Circle…Discussion forums glow hot, and some of it touches on our diary item on Tuesday, chronicling the personality clashes and hatreds that make its meetings so unmissable…It seems that Alan Harvey, the Circle’s London chairman and a former NF activist, is the object of most ire among the Swinton types. (“Alan Harvey is a grubby bloop,” posts one incisive supporter. “A monumental embarrassment,” complains another.) But it was he who warned the forum that their group risks excommunication from the Tory party unless it stops flirting with unsavoury neofascists. “All Tory MPs have been instructed to have no further dealings with the organisation accordingly,” he posted darkly last week.

The discussion forums that Muir cites can be seen here and here; they are somewhat esoteric unless one is familiar with the UK radical right “scene” and its various branches, but it is clear that Harvey’s main antagonists are Gregory Lauder-Frost and Mike Keith-Smith of the Conservative Democratic Alliance; the current spat flared up when Harvey objected to Lauder-Frost’s presence at a Swinton Circle meeting.

The website of the Swinton Circle has been slightly updated, and the “Forthcoming Meetings” section now says that “All London Swinton Circle activities have been suspended until further notice”, and that “Right of Admission is reserved”. As well as chairing the Swinton Circle, Harvey also runs the Springbok Club, and that organisation’s website remains the same as ever, including its reproduction of the famous 1980s “Hang Nelson Mandela” poster.

A list of recent meetings at the Swinton Circle includes various Tory, DUP, and UKIP politicians, as well as “The Rev. Dr. Alan Clifford of the Norwich Reformed Church” (best-known for screeds such as “‘Enough of Islam: the Muslim Menace”) and “Mr. Stuart Notholt, Deputy Chairman of the Campaign for an Independent Britain” (an old associate of Gregory Lauder-Frost from Western Goals).

Keith-Smith won an internet libel case back in 2006, and it seems that further writs may be in the air. In a response to one hostile poster on a forum, he tells us that

As you are probably aware I am currently suing an MEP of your very close acquaintance for Breach of Contract and Negligence. I am also negotiating with his solicitors – Messrs. Carter-Ruck – pending the probable issue of Libel proceedings. If either or both cases proceed you will be called as a witness… …together with your good friend Mr Harvey.

Lauder-Frost, meanwhile, warns that

People everywhere should be prepared to take on internet smears and libels. If we don’t clean up the WWW the enemies of common decency will destroy our society…The wheels are turning…

UPDATE: A posting by Keith-Smith on a third discussion board (very sporting seeing as it appears to have been set up for the purpose of attacking him) announces further possible woes for Harvey:

Lauder Frost is a former member of the LSC. He happened to be in London…and wanted to hear the speaker – some retired Naval officer. He phoned me and asked whether I thought it was OK for him to go given H*arvey’s antagonism and the fact that I am suing the man for libel…

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A juicy church-state story from the AP in South Korea:

Tens of thousands of South Korean Buddhists rallied Wednesday against alleged religious discrimination by the government of President Lee Myung-bak, the latest setback for his protest-plagued administration.

Discontent among Buddhists has been brewing for months over Lee’s alleged favoritism toward Christianity. Buddhists have criticized Lee, a Presbyterian, for filling most of his Cabinet and top presidential posts with other Christians.

At the start of last month an editorial in the Dong-a Ilbo editorialised that

Buddhists take these examples: The government neglected to send major Buddhist temples the congratulatory telegram from the president on Buddha’s Birthday this year, which it normally sends, and omitted temple information in the transportation information system created by the Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs, while including church information. They also point to the poster of National Police Agency Commissioner General Eo Cheong-soo and Yoido Full Gospel Church Minister Cho Yong-gi, which makes it look as though the police chief favors a certain religion…As Seoul City Mayor, Lee was criticized by other religions when he said he would offer Seoul to God, and when he became president, he was mired in controversy for discriminating against candidates of different faiths. He must declare that he will exclude any religious factors in his duties from now on and work hard to restore confidence.

According to UCA News,

In a June 25 statement [The Religious Peace Commission] disclosed that Eo Cheong-soo, head of the national police, openly supported Protestant police personnel’s “fasting prayers for the evangelization of all the police”…a photo of Eo, a Catholic, appears on a poster to publicize the prayers along with Reverend Cho Yong-gi of the Full Gospel Church.

David Yonggi Cho is a Pentecostal minister noted for pastoring the world’s largest congregation. The AFP tells us that the rally was sparked after the police stopped and searched the car of Ven. Jigwan, who leads the Jogye order.

The protests have been supported by Roman Catholics, and there is an anti-American aspect based around beef imports. The Dong-a Ilbo, again:

The Catholic Priests’ Association for Justice took to the streets, calling for Lee Myung-bak’s resignation, and Buddhists held a service opposing U.S. beef imports…

Several anti-import activists wanted by the police are apparently staying at Jogyesa temple.

The anti-import protests have included candlelight vigils, against which one government minister, a former pastor, spoke out against forcefully in June:

Choo Bu-ghil, presidential secretary of public relations and planning, was quoted by the Christian media outlet New Power as having told a Presbyterian gathering in Seoul last week to “pray for the nation so that Satans (allegedly referring to the protesters of the candlelit rallies) do not run rampant on earth again.”

…Citing the Gospel of Matthew, the secretary said “no parents (governments) would give their children (people) poison if they asked for bread.”

Choo said, “Misleading claims and fabrication of truth are in full swing in the country. The Lee administration came to be at risk due to the malicious exaggeration of the safety of American beef and the politically motivated protests based on a false belief. We need to think about who’s going to benefit from the fabrication.”

The “Satans” comment (also translated as “a host of Satans”) was not well received. UCA News adds the detail that

The monks also noted that the deputy head of presidential security, a Protestant, said in a newspaper interview that “his dream is to evangelize all government ministries.”

Following the police car search incident, opposition leader Chung Sye-kyun offered a bit a religious advice to Lee of his own:

“President Lee should kneel down and repent.”

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

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First, it was an Uzbek billionaire. Then, it was a Nigerian homeopath. And now…some left-wing activists have followed suit in dealing with on-line criticism in the UK, not by argument, but by making libel threats against a webhost. The result – as before – is that a blog has been taken down without any actual legal action having taken place, such is the fear around British libel laws.

But also, as before, news of the take-down has travelled widely around the internet. Here’s the story:

Harry’s Place may be removed (or rather have it’s DNS disabled) after a ‘complaint’ to the company that our domain name is registered with.

We assume after threats were made on the weekend that this ‘complaint’ originates from Jenna Delich or her supporters.

Though we have not yet seen the complaint submitted, we assume it runs along the lines that pointing out that Ms Delich linked to the website of a known neo-Nazi figure and former Ku Klux Klan leader is defamatory.

…This is extraordinary since Ms Delich has not denied that she circulated links to David Dukes website. There would be no point since the evidence is in the public domain.

Nevertheless, a malicious complaint has been made to the company hosting our DNS.

The background concerns a message list for members of the University and College Union (UCU), where discussion has been going on for some time over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and whether Israeli academia should be subject to a boycott. Harry’s Place takes a “liberal hawk” line, and its writers are often keen to claim that those who support the boycott idea are motivated by anti-Semitism. Some members of the list have leaked various messages from the list to Harry’s Place, usually from certain pro-boycotters who appear to have written things which do not redound either to their ethical or to their intellectual credit. However, from one posting on the site that I can recall, some of the leaked messages were presented in a way that seemed to me unfair to their authors.

Delich’s message, though, clearly reflects poorly on her:

In support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading:

http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html

No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves.

Delich apparently pleaded ignorance when what David Duke actually stands for was pointed out to her, but obviously this was an absolute gift to Harry’s Place, which promptly posted a photo of Delich with the caption “Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich – links to far right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan”. This was ungenerous – she only did it the once, and she conceded that she shouldn’t have – but this is not a topic on which opponents are inclined to be generous. Delich showed, at best, incredible lack of discernment in linking to such a source, and the consequences are bound to be harsh. And waving lawyers at webhosts is only going to make it worse.

UPDATE: Ministry of Truth points out that the hyphen in the photo caption may be the crucial issue:

If you’re minded to take the photograph, and its caption, entire out of its original context then you could, at a stretch, argue that the word ‘links’ may be being used as a noun in the sense of indicating an association between Delich and David Duke, rather than as a verb indicating that Delich had made a connection to David Duke’s site by sending UCU members a hyperlink…

It seems to me that there might also be an issue around whether “links to far right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan” means either (a) it’s her regular habit to make such links; or (b) she did it once recently, and her lack of discernment means she might well do it again. Interpretation “a” is indefensible, but it could be argued that it is no more defamatory than “b”, and hopefully a judge would decline to squash free speech based on such a semantic point anyway. However, we won’t ever know: if Delich (or whoever made the complaint) were serious about court action the HP authors would have been threatened rather than the webhost.

Further details here.

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I’ve devoted a lot of entries on this blog to the subject of Christian Zionism, highlighting certain questionable activities and inflammatory assertions from particular groups. However, one should also keep an eye on the other side as well; UK “liberal hawk” website Harry’s Place draws attention to the “the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement”, based in the US and run by Mark Glenn and Hesham Tillawi. According to its website:

Christianity and Islam are not at war with each other…The present conflict between the two religions is an artificial conflict that has been deliberately constructed by a third party who stands to benefit from the two religions wiping each other out. This third party is the Zionist agenda that is using a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy and done with the interests of seeing that in the end the Jewish supremacist agenda reins over the world and its inhabitants…Islam as an organized ideology is the last barrier that is standing steadfastly in the way of this nightmarish apocalyptic agenda being realized.

The page includes an old (possibly Nazi-era?) cartoon of a dragon sitting atop a globe of the world, with a grotesque Jewish head. The organisation has also taken aim at the Pope:

…We (and in particular those of us who are Catholics) completely reject and condemn the latest statements attributed to the crypto-Rabbi who currently sits in the Vatican and who dares to call himself a follower of Jesus Christ. There are a few of us out here who recognize the fact that the Catholic Church was taken over many years ago by the Jewish agenda, and that the recent statements attributed to this modern day Judas are meant to enflame those in the Muslim world and to further the ‘clash of civilizations.’…

Glenn writes for a far-right populist newspaper called the American Free Press, and apparently he runs a ranch in Idaho. He is also the author of Not My Words but Theirs: A Christian American’s defense of Middle Eastern culture and its people. A blurb for this appears on a defunct website:

Not My Words is a collection of essays written by an American Christian concerning the events surrounding September 11, and is a refutation offered against the lies that have been propagated by the Western media surrounding the Middle Eastern culture and its peoples. …if by some miracle the Arab/Muslim world is victorious…and the secular/atheistic influence of the NWO agenda is reduced, it will be necessary to credit the religion of Islam and the Arab world for not buckling under in the face of attempted extermination. And it will be we, the Christian West and Western Civilization, who will be the beneficiaries of “Islamic Extremism.”…The history of murder and calculated genocide that has been waged against the Semitic peoples of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt by a Beast that has no more regard for human life than a beast in the wild would have for its victims is impossible to deny or defend.

One of Glenn’s other books is an attack on Israel entitled No Beauty in the Beast. It’s grimly amusing to see the parallels with fundamentalist forms of Christian Zionism: John Hagee, for instance, also rails against a “New World Order” (NWO), and he believes that the enemy benefits from secular trends in the west. Some Christian Zionists have also begun using the term “Beast” to refer to Islam.

Hesham Tillawi, meanwhile, is based in Louisiana, where he heads a cable show called “Current Issues”. Through this medium, Tillawi has promoted Holocaust deniers and right-wing extremists. The ADL reports:

Former Klansman David Duke has appeared on “Current Issues” three times to peddle his brand of Jew-hatred. Duke warned that there is a “worldwide Jewish extremist media and government [effort]” to corrupt children with violence and promote drug use; to “destroy…the home and the family”; to wipe away “individual cultures and freedoms” and institute “a new age of darkness.”Another guest on Tillawi’s show has alleged that Jews are somehow aligned with demonic forces. “Call it anti-Christ, call it Satan, call it whatever,” Russian-born Jewish covert to Christianity Israel Shamir said on “Current Issues.” “This kind of force tries to defeat Christ, and it is heavily armed with tools of Jews.”

(More on Shamir here) Tillawi believes that Zionists control the US media and government, noting various Jews in public positions. Of course, he doesn’t consider the possibility that public perception may be skewed against Palestinians thanks to the antics of the likes of him, rather than because of some conspiracy.

Last October, the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement held a conference called “No More Wars for Israel”, in southern California; apparently it included a video message from Mahmoud Ahmadinejhad. And a few days ago Glenn and Tillawi were at a conference organised by Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM), which also featured Ramsey Clark. According to a website run by JAM’s organiser, Kaukab Siddique:

Mark Glenn’s topic was “Islamic ‘extremism’ may Save Western Civilization.” Note that the word ‘extremism’ is within quotes. He said that America has abandoned the original teachings of Jesus [pbuh] and has espoused the most shameful sins of paganism. The stern Islamic resistance to the rampant corruption of America is a blessing for true Christians. Mr. Glenn thinks that very little of genuine Christianity has survived in America owing to the steady attack on Christian values by Zionist-Jewish media. Mr. Glenn is the father of many children and notices with horror the daily attack on family values and on the sacred teachings of Jesus.

Other speakers included Holocaust-deniers such as Mark Weber, Director of the Institute of Historical Research; Siddique also has links with David Irving.

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We all know about complaints that the Muslim authorities at the Dome of the Rock have been reckless in damaging Jewish archaeological remains at the site; now it’s the turn of the Israel Antiquities Authority be on the receiving end of a similar charge, from a Christian group. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Last week the High Court of Justice issued a temporary restraining order halting construction work by a Jewish organization in a Franciscan monastery on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion adjacent to the Cenaculum, the Latin term for the room where the Last Supper was held.

…David Bartholdy, spokesman for Tancredi, a Catholic organization that petitioned the High Court, said the construction infringed on Christians’ freedom of worship.

“This is a holy place for Christians of all denominations…Work being done there is causing serious damage to a monastery with important historical and religious value. Construction workers have already uprooted ancient floor tiling, scraped off a layer of plaster from the walls, broken down antique, chiseled doors, and all this under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority.”

“The construction work going on at the site raises the suspicion that someone is trying to Judaize a Catholic site and prevent freedom of religious expression.”

The Catholic Cenaculum is upstairs of a room containing a tomb which is venerated by religious Jews as belonging to King David, and the building is owned by the State of Israel. In 2005 there was a plan for Israel to hand over the Cenaculum to the Vatican in return for a synagogue in Toledo.

Also in 2005, Bartholdy was himself accused of trying to displace a Jewish organization, as was reported in the right-wing Arutz Sheva:

…a man named David Bartholdy has been making plans to build a multi-million dollar Catholic complex on Mt. Zion – displacing a long-time tenant, the Diaspora Yeshiva, in the process. He has lobbied many governmental offices on behalf of the project, which he calls the “Celestial Psalms Track” and which he is confident can earn $5 million a year.

The Yeshiva produced a press release, complaining about Bartholdy’s alleged methods:

According to Rabbi Herman, Senior Director of the Diaspora Yeshiva, the Catholic Church wants more than to acquire the Last Supper room from the State of Israel. While the Vatican has been preparing to take custody of the Last Supper Room, the Order of Franciscan Friars in Jerusalem, which administers the Custody of the Holy Land, plans to take control of the public walkways throughout the Crusader Era Complex. It is rumored that Mr. David Bartholdy of Haifa, has been fronted bribe-money by a Friar Pierre Patista, a top Franciscan official in Jerusalem, to make his way through the Israeli bureaucracy. So far, he has succeeded.

In a November 2 radio interview on Israel National News, Rabbi Herman said, “We know about a lot of envelopes of 10,000 dollars more or less being passed around amongst people. I know two people who’ve come to us and have told us [that] one was offered 300,000 dollars, one more than that, to help try and persuade the Yeshiva to vacate their properties in the King David’s Tomb area so that the Church can totally take over.”

Bartholdy is working with Keresz-Groag, an architectural firm that specializes in revitalizing historic urban sites, and the Israel Lands Authority. The Ministry of Tourism has set its sites on Mount Zion for its lucrative tourist income.

Arutz Sheva makes much of Bartholdy’s emphasis on possible tourist revenue from the site, and the theme of treasure to be gained by control of the area is one that has been around for a while. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor writes in his guidebook The Holy Land (p. 111):

…no one thought of locating [King David’s] tomb there until the very end of the C10 AD. It won little favout among the Crusaders, and both Jews and Muslims remained highly sceptical until the C15 when the legend of treasures buried with the king…gripped the imagination, then it became important to get the Franciscans out of the building which they had restored in the early C14.

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Max Blumenthhal has a profile of Jerome Corsi at the Nation, noting his history of rather unpleasant statements and associations, such as hanging out with “white nationalist” James Edwards and dispensing observations on Free Republic such as:

Isn’t the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA–…RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters–it all goes together,”

One minor point in Blumenthal’s essay is something I wish I had spotted myself:

…as Bush’s popularity waned during his second term, Corsi’s star dimmed. He tried to reignite it by co-authoring a book with “prophecy expert” Michael Evans, Showdown with Nuclear Iran, calling on the United States and Israel to attack Iran “before it’s too late,”…

Mike Evans is a prominent Christian Zionist leader, and he has featured on this blog a number of times in the past, most recently just last month.

Corsi has some other friends on the Christian Right: as well as being a “protégé” of Chuck Colson (albeit in Colson’s pre-“Born Again” days), in 2007 he was at the “Southern California Strategic Perspectives Conference”, as was reported by Koinonia House:

This year’s conference will include insights from a number of fascinating speakers – each with their own unique perspective on what is happening in the world today. Our very own Dr. Chuck Missler, the founder of Koinonia House and Koinonia Institute, will be joined by Tim LaHaye, Joseph Farah, Dr. Jerome Corsi, Walid Shoebat, Ron Matsen, and more!

Missler is perhaps most famous for his argument that the failure of creatures to emerge from a jar of peanut butter refutes evolutionary theory; Matsen is a pastor at Calvary Chapel. LaHaye, Farah, and Shoebat need no introduction. I blogged on a subsequent Koinonia conference here.

(Hat tip: Frederick Clarkson)

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Neo-Pentecostal leader C. Peter Wagner, June 2008:

“This commissioning represents a powerful spiritual transaction taking place in the invisible world. With this in mind, I take the apostolic authority that God has given me and I decree to Todd Bentley, your power will increase, your authority will increase, your favor will increase, your influence will increase, your revelation will increase.

“I also decree that a new supernatural strength will flow through this ministry. A new life force will penetrate this move of God. Government will be established to set things in their proper order. God will pour out a higher level of discernment to distinguish truth from error. New relationships will surface to open the gates to the future.”

Well, one “new relationship” certainly did “surface”: Todd Bentley’s website, 15 August 2008:

From the Board of Directors

…we have discovered new information revealing that Todd Bentley has entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff. In light of this new information and in consultation with his leaders and advisors, Todd Bentley has agreed to step down from his position on the Board of Directors and to refrain from all public ministry for a season to receive counsel in his personal life.

Divorce is also pending.

Stephen Strang, editor of Charisma magazine, adds some commentary:

Many of us who long for revival saw the hungry people coming to Lakeland and witnessed the powerful anointing. We recognize that God can use flawed people (because He uses us!), yet we had major questions about Bentley. But rather than censoring him, we wanted to help correct the problems.

Now is the time for Bentley to be corrected. But it would also be good for Arnott, Ahn and Johnson, as well as other leaders such as Wagner, to issue a statement to the body of Christ to help the tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands who were affected by the outpouring understand what is going on spiritually.

Because all of these men endorsed the revival, it might even be appropriate for them to issue an apology. Some of Bentley’s critics say an apology is necessary.

In fact, Strang was also quite enthusiastic, and his “major questions” seemed more like minor concerns at the time:

I’m concerned when I hear references in Lakeland to the “healing revivals” of the 1940s and 1950s– especially with A.A. Allen and William Branham. That’s because those revivals did not really touch the mainstream of America and in those two instances the ministers fell into disrepute before they died.

The focus of any revival or ministry must be on Jesus and on changed lives, not on revival itself or on the ministries involved. I was glad to hear an emphasis on Jesus when I was in Lakeland. My spirit sensed that there was a genuine flow of the Spirit in the services.

However, criticisms are beginning to come about the revival—not so much from the secular media, but from leaders in the body of Christ who are unwilling to publicly criticize but who feel there are extremes (from their perspective) that could derail the revival.

(Hat tip: Ed Brayton)

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The Swedish Local reports on a controversial religious group:

A southern Swedish religious congregation based at a cowboy-themed conference centre has been accused of harbouring a violent and extreme religious sect.

…A show aired on Tuesday by public service broadcaster SVT contained interviews with former Kingdom Center members who accuse the group of being a sect, guilty of performing violent exorcism ceremonies and using child labour, Expressen reports.

…The cowboy-theme park may look like a line-dancing paradise, but according to defectors, life under parish pastor Christer Segerliv is far from heavenly.

Segerliv denies the claims, and in fairness it should be noted that there is often some hostility towards American-style Christian groups in Sweden (noted in Simon Coleman’s study of Ulf Ekman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity). And Kingdom Center certainly is American-style, looking more like a Tex-Mex restaurant than a church and with Segerliv apparently known as “the Sheriff of Lone Star”. The Center’s website has some background:

Pastor Christer Segerliv is under the covering of Pastor Sunday Adelaja, pastor of the Embassy of the blessed Kingdom of God in Kiev, Ukraine and travels with him frequently around the globe. Kingdom Center is also connected to the emerging Cowboy Church movement in America, one of the leaders in this movement is Pastor Coy Huffman (Kingdom Cowboys).

The Associated Baptist Press reported on “Cowboy Churches” just a few weeks ago:

…boots placed at the back of the worship space as receptacles sometimes replace collection plates and offertories. Baptisms often take place in horse troughs. And, of course, country/Western, Southern gospel and bluegrass music often feature prominently in worship services.

…The cowboy-church movement has its roots in Pentecostal ministries from the middle of the 20th century, but has spread significantly among evangelicals — and especially Southern Baptists in rural areas — in the last 10 years.

…Cowboy-church leaders from other states have, with Texas leaders’ help, recently organized an American Fellowship of Cowboy Churches…There are also cowboy churches popping up under the Cowboy Church Network of North America, which was started in 2004. It became affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board in 2005.

The reporter seemed surprised that the movement had reached Canada, let alone Sweden.

Sunday Adelaja, meanwhile, was featured on this blog here. Adelaja, a Nigerian immigrant who has been phenomenally successful in Ukraine, apparently has hundreds of Ukrainian pastors under him, and he enjoys some support from politicians. During the “Orange Revolution” he and Ted Haggard collaborated on a CD on the subject which was distributed in the USA by Focus on the Family.

Segerliv also founded a school, which in July won an appeal against a decision to close it down.

(Hat tip: Cult News Network)

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WorldNetDaily puffs another apocalyptic book, under the headline: “Surprise! Russia not about to invade Mideast, says new prophecy theory”:

Even though Russia has advanced south into Georgia, a best-selling new Bible prophecy book says suggestions this signals an imminent march into the Middle East are mistaken. Instead, says Bill Salus, author of “Isralestine,” the world is about to be surprised by a different kind of devastating regional war involving Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Conflict in the middle east? Who could have guessed it? Salus explains:

“The stage is not adequately set for the highly publicized Ezekiel 38 and 39 Russian-Iranian nuclear-equipped consortia of nations to invade Israel. Psalm 83 comes first, and then Ezekiel 38 follows on its heels like a Goliath shadow. There are two distinct invasions of Israel, one building upon the other, with both occurring sequentially in the Middle East.”

Psalm 83 is a prayer by Asaph for God to destroy Israel’s enemies, who are plotting together. The New Jerusalem Bible notes that the Psalm “enumerates ten traditional enemies of Israel whose hostility was maintained to a late date, see 2 Ch 20:1seq; Ne 2:19; 1 M 5:3seq”. However, while Biblical scholars see the “late date” as some time during the Biblical period, Salus, like many other Anglo-American Biblical literalists over the past few hundred years, reads such passages as prophecies referring to our near future.

Salus’s book is Isralestine: The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East. A blurb can be found on Amazon.com:

…As per Psalm 83, destinys [sic] design for this great army is a head to head confrontation with a formidable Arab confederacy consisting of Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Saudi Arabians and Egyptians. This Arab coalition has been developing in its fledgling stages since 1948 and will climax and officially confederate in the very near future. The Israeli Defense Force will decisively defeat this offensive and prove to be the exceedingly great army of Ezekiel 3710. They will expand their territory, become regionally superior, take prisoners of war and exploit the resources of these conquered Arab nations. In that condition they will become one of, if not the wealthiest nations on earth. It is from that position of empowerment that the Jews will dwell securely in the Middle East. Subsequently the world stage is set for the Russian Iranian led coalition of nations, which will form against Israel as prophesied in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. This nonfiction thriller is carefully designed to cautiously navigate the reader through the end times calendar.

Salus also provides a modest profile (link added):

Bill is the up and coming talent, whose author styling appeals to scholars and laymen alike…Bill Salus is an expert at explaining the prophetic relevance of current Middle East and world events. Readers appreciate his unique insights, and sensible, rather than sensational approach to understanding the Bible. He allows prophecy to speak for itself, rather than modernizing it into newspaper exegesis… After the events of September 11, 2001, along with the encouragement of Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum the founder of Ariel Ministries, Bill embarked upon a tireless path of discerning prophecies that apply today…People all over the world are learning through his steadfast efforts, that prophecy is not just for the scholarly, but also for every common man, woman, and child…EXPERIENCE 1992 to present Author of Christian Prophecy Books and Devotional Articles 1972 to 1992 Professional Musician EDUCATION Degree in Business Administration Cypress College…

Fruchtenbaum is a Messianic Jewish speaker and writer; like Hal Lindsey, he is a graduate of the Dallas Theological Seminary.

Salus had the good idea of putting a website address on the cover; alas, however, it has a “.net” suffix when it should be “.org”. The actual website is here. It carries several endorsements: as well as Fruchtenbaum, support comes from David Reagan of Lamb & Lion Ministries, Tom Horn of RaidersNewsNetwork, Terry James of Rapture Ready and – curiously – from Penny Usherwood, Post Grad Professor in Middle East History and Current Events at Cal State University (“Thanks to unprecedented research by eschatology expert Bill Salus, and an amazing prophecy that has been hidden from most until now, the world is in for a surprise that could effect every man, woman and child. Groundbreaking!”).

Salus’s approach dovetails to some extent with that of Joel Richardson and Walid Shoebat, who warn of a “Muslim anti-Christ” and of an Islamic “Beast empire”. However, he also has a slightly different perspective:

The Hebrew prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah declared approximately 2600 years ago, that their God Jehovah would someday destroy “all the gods of the earth”. Perched atop a lofty god-list inclusive of Satan, Shiva, Vishnu, and hundreds of other imposters, sits Allah. Part two of this three-part study explores the two primary prophetic episodes that extinguish Allah, and expire Islam. In essence we will discover how Allah surrenders his Akbar (i.e.- greatness)…Prior to issuing this decree against the false gods, Zephaniah 2:4-10 describes the I.D.F. takeover of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as parts of Northern and Central Jordan. As my book Isralestine, The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East points out, additional Arab soil is annexed by the I.D.F. at this time.

Amazon says the book is published by “HighWay”, but in fact it comes to us through Tom Horn’s Anomalos Publishers. Anomalos’s other authors include Hilmar von Campe, whom I introduced here.

There appears to be some confusion over how to spell Salus’s name: the book calls him “Bill Salus”, but in some places – such as this RaidersNewsNetwork article – he is “Bill Salhus”. This is the same Bill Salhus who works as a mortgage broker with a firm which offers 40-year mortgages, so presumably we don’t need to worry about the end of the world until at least 2048.

Appropriately, Amazon has a special offer if you buy the book with The Temple At The Center Of Time.

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OneNewsNow has a scandalous revelation:

Truly shocking. Of course, OneNewsNow would ever stoop to such a thing…

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