Bartholomew's Notes

Wow, it feels like a whole two months since I last noted an apocalyptic conflab among US Christians; from (as ever) WorldNetDaily (WND):

The major challenges facing American Christians in the coming months, “the Vatican, the pope and UFOs,” Islam in biblical prophecy and the Dead Sea Scrolls are among the fascinating topics slated for this weekend’s Strategic Perspectives International Conference.

It’s much the same fare as we saw in relation to the “Pike’s Peak Prophecy Summit” in August, and the line-up overlaps with that event. As before, it’s a convergence of conspiracy theories, fringe pseudo-scientific speculations (derived from pop science fiction), and “Last Days” Biblical interpretation. The conference is being organised by Chuck Missler, who I previously wrote about here. WND has some highlights:

Tom Horn, the author of “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope is Here,” will discuss “The Vatican, Pope and UFOs – How Are They Linked?”

Joel Richardson, an expert on Islam and author of “The Islamic Antichrist,” “Islam and the End Times,” and “The Mideast Beast,” will address “The Impact of Islam.”…

William Welty, the executive director of the ISV Foundation, will talk about “When God Disciplines His Own.” David McAlvany of McAlvany Wealth Management will discuss “Can America Endure The Coming Years?”

Peter Flint of the Dead Sea Scrolls Institute at Trinity Western University will link the New Testament, prophecy and the ancient writings. Dan Stolebarger, the executive director of the Koinonia Institute, will lead a call to prayer.

Horn is the originator of a number of crank tomes and DVDs with titles such as Exo-Vaticana: Petrus Romanus, Project L.U.C.I.F.E.R. and the Vatican’s Astonishing Plan for the Arrival of an Alien Savior, and his speculations have been endorsed and promoted by Missler. Meanwhile, Richardson’s “Islamic Anti-Christ” claims have brought him plaudits from the likes of Robert Spencer, and he received wide attention after he was invited onto Glenn Beck’s TV show last year.

It’s difficult to see how the “Alien Savior” and the “Islamic Anti-Christ” theories can be synthesized with any coherence, but that’s probably not important: the main point is that self-styled “prophecy experts” purport to demonstrate special insight into Biblical mysteries in ways that give a general impression that there surely must very soon be a supernatural eruption into the mundane world. Details are less important than being “in the know”.

Welty and Flint are new to me, although they both have established associations with Missler. Welty has a website here, where he promotes a Bible billed as “the first conservative modern translation into any language that uses the Dead Sea Scrolls as a base text for Isaiah, Psalms, and Proverbs”, as well as gold coins which he believes will benefit Africa. Flint, meanwhile, is unusual in that he has published actual real scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Also:

[Joseph] Farah will head a workshop on “Discerning Truth in a World Full of Lies.”

Other panelists and moderators will include Clint Robertson and Gordon McDonald.

Pre-conference workshops, which begin Thursday, include Steve Elwart on the threat from an electromagnetic pulse and Mark Gustafson on keeping the private private.

[Frank] Peretti, author of “This Present Darkness,” “Piercing the Darkness” and other major bestselling books, will be the speaker at the Friday night dinner.

Farah, of course, runs WND, where he peddles falsehoods in bad faith on a daily basis; his choice of topic is consequently risible and grotesque.

Peretti, meanwhile, made a name for himself in the 1980s for Christian novels that jumped on a bandwagon of paperbacks about Satanic conspiracies while easing a shift towards more supernatural notions of “Spiritual Warfare” against demons; Peretti said he was “alarmed” at people who were taking his work literally, but his works were eagerly seized on by neo-Pentecostal revivalist C. Peter Wagner as a template for his demon-infested worldview. Peretti’s best-seller status will perhaps help to move the kind of fringe material that Missler and Koinonia promote further into mainstream American evangelical culture.

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A press release by Don Feder (more on him here) on behalf of the World Public Forum:

(Rhodes, Greece) Dr Allan C. Carlson, International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and President of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society spoke “Family Structure, Educational Liberty and Creative Genius” at the Rhodes Forum October 2-6. Dr. Carlson, one of the foremost authorities on the history of the family and the author of 14 books, presented twice during the conference including the “Family and Education Plenary” and the “Closing Plenary.”

…The session was moderated by: (1) Natalya Yakunina, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, “Sanctity of Motherhood” Program, vice-president of St. Andrew the First-called Foundation and wife of Vladimir Yakunin, founder and president of the World Public Forum, and (2) Larry Jacobs, World Congress of Families Managing Director and Vice President of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society.

Many other World Congress of Families leaders and partners participated in this plenary session, including: Christine Vollmer (Venezuela), member of the WCF Management Committee, member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and President and Founder of the Latin American Alliance for the Family (ALAFA); Theodore Baehr (USA) [this guy – RB] – Founder and Publisher, MOVIEGUIDE; Chairman, Christian Film & Television Commission; Theresa Okafor (Nigeria) – African Representative for WCF, CEO of Life League Nigeria; Director of Foundation for African Cultural Heritage (FACH); and Anatoly Antonov (Russia) – co-founder of WCF, Head of the Department of Sociology, Moscow State University, Editor-in-chief of “Population Studies” Journal. 

Jacobs observed: “Much credit for the vision and success of the World Public Forum is due to the wisdom and kindness of Vladimir Yakunin, who has invested his time and resources for the betterment of world civilizations. Mr, Yakunin has founded a unique organization that transcends the typical international conflicts on global issues and brings together people of good will from East  and West to dialogue, to listen, and to learn about the fundamental values and principles on which a society must be based.”

These “World Public Forum” events have been running for 11 years now,  and the speaker line-up is well-established and familiar. Yakunin is a member of Putin’s inner circle and a Orthodox activist; US conservatives are more than happy to buy into a narrative in which western complaints about gay rights in Russia are simply a sign of liberal western decadence and imperialism.

Journalist Kathryn Joyce has a good summary of the world Carlson would like to create:

…Carlson, who has helped craft policy for ultra-right Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska, hopes to involve the state in a pro-family welfare system, where tax laws encourage large families, and the government encourages a family-and-faith-centered legal system, which repeals “witch-hunting” child abuse laws that restrict parental discipline as well as no-fault divorce; imposes penalties for unmarried cohabitation; and reconfigures Social Security to provide support on a family, rather than individual basis, so that women are recognized not for their work as independent employees but for their roles as spouses and mothers. 

Jacobs, meanwhile, recently enthused that “Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world”, echoing Patriarch Kirill’s view that  Putin’s rule is a “miracle of God“.

However, American critics of the USA with very different perspectives have also been involved with WFP events: last year, Noam Chomsky sent a video message and Lyndon LaRouche’s wife put in an appearance.

Alongside professional conservative ideologues, the events also attract an impressive array of international academics and religious figures, ranging from the mainstream through to the esoteric UFO enthusiast Carpentier de Gourdon; one of the WFP’s co-founders is Nicholas Papanicolaou, a Greek businessman who is part of a “chivalric order” alongside Gen. Jerry Boykin and neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner.

The press release adds:

World Congress of Families VIII will be held in Moscow, the Kremlin, and Russia’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, September 10-12, 2014.

Right Wing Watch notes that planning for this was probably why Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage was recently once again in Moscow:

Once again, Brown didn’t think to announce this publicly, but on a webcast with Jim Garlow yesterday afternoon mentioned that he “just got back from Russia last night” after Garlow thanked him for changing his flight schedule to be on the program. (The exchange is about 15:45 into this video.)

Brown didn’t say what he was in Russia for, but we can guess that he was at the World Congress of Families’ planning meeting along with anti-gay activist Scott Lively. Brown is an enthusiastic supporter of the group, which pushes anti-gay and anti-choice measures abroad and has been a strong cheerleader for Russia’s recent anti-gay crackdown.

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From – once again – WorldNetDaily (WND):

He was, without doubt, the most venerated rabbi in Israel at the age of 108.

…But when Yitzhak Kaduri’s much-anticipated letter announcing the name of the Messiah he claimed to have encountered was unsealed a year after his death [in 2006], the Israeli press and world media that found him so quotable in life ignored it.

Now a brand-new book and documentary, “The Rabbi Who Found Messiah,” about his life, death and the secrets he took to the grave, tells the whole mysterious story for the first time.

And what was the name of the Messiah whom Kaduri met after years of praying and fasting? It was Yehoshua – the formal name for Yeshua, or Jesus in the Greek.

WND has been flogging this story since 2007; it’s bizarre that Christians should decide to invest so much in the notion that an aged kabbalist may or may not have been a secret believer in Jesus. The reason that WND is talking about it again now is that it has a book and DVD to sell on the subject, entitled The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of the Endtime. It’s by Carl Gallups (aka “PPSIMMONS”), who came to WND‘s attention in 2009 with a video claiming that the Bible names Barack Obama as the anti-Christ (although he’s since hinted that he was being satirical). Gallups pastors the Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Florida, and further details about the product are on his website; there is an endorsement from none other than Chuck Missler, who is close to WND editor Joseph Farah and who acts as link between Christian fundamentalism and fringe conspiracy theories about UFOs and such.

Gallups’ version of the story includes the detail that Kaduri supposedly saw the Messiah “in a vision”, thus giving the tale a supernatural aspect that ties in with Christian hopes that Jesus will reveal himself to the Jews; but in 2005 I noted a slightly different version, in which Kaduri simply announced that the “soul of the Mashiach has attached itself to a person in Israel”. Kaduri also denounced “the current fascist regime” running Israel, called for the country to become a monarchy, and predicted that Ariel Sharon would be the last prime minister. That’s not how it turned out, but Gallups believes that Kaduri was referring to Sharon’s death; thus the return of Jesus related to when Sharon is finally released from his current lingering vegetative state. This is, of course, highly idiosyncratic and rather distasteful, and it has little to do with historic Christianity, Judaism, or anything even halfway reasonable.

Meanwhile, Kaduri’s elderly son has just had a vision of his own:

Rav [Dovid] Kaduri told the Yosef family a story that just happened. Just last night his father came to him in a dream. He described to his son the amazing reception that Rav Ovadia received in Heaven. He said that all the great leaders were there to greet him. but he himself was unable to be part of the reception…  Rav Dovid had asked his father why he was unable to attend, to which Rav Yitzchak Kaduri explained that he is on a different level in Heaven – the level of “Hassidut” – and form there he was not able to go to the level where the reception for Rav Ovadia was.

“Rav Ovadia”, of course, is the recently deceased (and somewhat unpleasant) Rabbi Ovadia Yosef; but according to Yosef’s obituary in Haaretz:

He shunned Kabbala and its practitioners, but at the urging of Shas political leader Aryeh Deri he agreed to adopt the amulets and incantations of Mekubal Yitzhak Kaduri for Shas’ election campaigns. He visibly abhorred Kaduri and his whisperings, but his acquiescence had a major part in deepening the hold of mystical kabbala culture on Israeli society.

The idea that Kaduri’s “mystical kabbala culture” could take a hold not just in Israel, but among fundamentalist Baptists in Florida and from there to a wider US Christian Right is apparently not so unlikely as one might have thought. It should be remembered that Farah is great enthusiast of “Hebrew Roots”, which seeks to appropriate aspects of Judaism within Christianity. Working with Stephen Strang of Charisma magazine, Farah has also heavily promoted Jonathan Cahn, whose book relating 9/11 to Biblical prophecy has become a bestseller.

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Once again (alas), I am obliged to quote Pamela Geller:

[T]he night before he made his announcement, Tommy tried to contact me numerous times on Skype and by phone while I was busy with other matters[*]. It was clear that it was urgent. Finally, we spoke on the phone, and it was on that phone call that he told me that he would be resigning from the EDL the next day, and that the Quilliam Foundation was going to be at the press conference — but he made that a minor point…. . Then at the press conference, both he and Kevin Carroll were the showcases of a Quilliam victory dance. They looked eerily reminiscent of the American POW’s taken by enemy combatants and forced to say things they did not believe before cameras.

…Now he is the poster boy for the stealth jihad. It seems they have taught Tommy well. His deception to friends and colleagues mirrors the Islamic teachings of kitman (lie by omission) and taqiyya. So Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll are no longer on the SION board. 

That’s a change from her initial response to the press conference.

Geller’s repudiation will please Quilliam, who found Robinson’s continuing support for her and for her sidekick Robert Spencer to be something of an awkward point as the organisation sought to rebut complaints that they had brought Robinson and Carroll into the mainstream without any real change of heart. Robinson had explained that he was “indebted” to Geller for financial support for his family while he was in prison awaiting trial for passport fraud (although at the time, Geller said she was fundraising for Robinson’s “legal defence”); Geller, perhaps correctly, identifies this as a “cop out” explanation.

So far, the SION (“Stop Islamization of Nations”) website hasn’t been updated – Robinson and Carroll are still shown in two headline photos, and according to the text:

The initial members of the President’s Council are SIOE’s Anders Gravers; Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll of the EDL; Debbie Robinson of the Q Society of Australia, Robert Spencer and me. 

…The President’s Council differs from the SION Board, which includes Swiss parliamentarian Oskar Freysinger; Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media; Ashraf Rameleh of Voice of the Copts; Ali Sina, the renowned ex-Muslim author and founder of FaithFreedom.org; Wafa Sultan, the ex-Muslim human rights activist and author; the German pro-freedom activist Stefan Herre of Politically Incorrect; the Israeli author Dr. Mordechai Kedar; the Hindu human rights activist Babu Suseelan [more on him here – RB]; and Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE).

This Board functions in an advisory capacity, while the President’s Council is a steering committee.

In practical terms, SION appears to be simply a vehicle for Geller to show off her alliances – the text is written in first person, and in her new summary announcement that Robinson and Carroll have been kicked out she doesn’t bother to maintain the fussy distinction between her “Board” and her “President’s Council”.

Meanwhile, the EDL, under new leader Tim Ablitt, held a protest yesterday in Bradford. According to the anti-EDL EDLNews:

…The EDLers we spoke to were angry, shattered, dismayed, let down and ripped off. One member told us he has had trouble sleeping with all this going on.

Various threats were made towards Robinson by the very cult he started.

What is left of the EDL, was seen in Bradford this afternoon and barely 400 turned up to drag the rotting corpse of the far right organisation two hundred yards from the Queens to their demo point.

They got off to a bad start in failing to ingratiate themselves with the people of Bradford by forcing Bradford City FC to move their home game to last night due to the estimated 1,300 police officers required to police them.

Then this morning EDL’s new uncharismatic leader, Tim Ablitt, posted to his Facebook account that he was on his way to a ‘hell hole’, a sure fire way of attracting local support which was only in it’s tens to start with as most had to be shipped in from elsewhere.

Note

[*] Geller’s “other matters” were giving a presentation at the Synagogue of Pike County at the Jewish Fellowship of Hemlock Farms in Pennsylvania. The Fellowship reportedly “serves a diverse population from Reform to Orthodox to Reconstructionist”, and its Rabbi, Steve Nathan, is himself a Reconstructionist. Geller has been making inroads into religious Jewish groups in recent months.

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Ghaffar Hussain, head of “outreach and training” at Quilliam:

An old Chinese proverb goes ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. Tommy [Robinson] s defection from the EDL [see here], an organisation that he helped form in 2009, represents a first step in a positive direction. His defection was accompanied by regrets, apologies and clarifications, as well as a continued adherence to some positions that many may find unacceptable.

…Tommy is clearly a work in progress and, to his credit, he acknowledges that. He has taken a bold step in leaving the EDL and his immediate future is uncertain. What he needs right now to support and guidance so that he can channel his grievances in a more positive and mainstream way… Quilliam will be working with him in order to provide the guidance and training necessary, but even this arduous and challenging work can be derailed if he is not given the time and space to develop.

Pamela Geller (links added):

Why would Tommy Robinson and Kev Carroll end our association? They are dissociating themselves from nazis, antisemites and white supremacists. The media just doesn’t get it — or they don’t want to. We condemn violence and peacefully advocate for equality for all before the law.

…Our struggle in AFDI [American Freedom Defense Initiative] and SION [Stop Islamization of Nations], which continue to stand with Robinson and Carroll, is now and has always been for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law.

And from Geller’s associate Robert Spencer:

[Robinson] has repeatedly stated that he hasn’t changed his views, but they [i.e. The Huffington Post] don’t care about that — they just want to portray his move as a surrender to the jihad, no matter what. I am no supporter of the Quilliam Foundation, with which the fake moderate Ed Husain was formerly involved, but there is at this point no indication that Robinson or Carroll have given up on their resolve to resist jihad terror and Islamic supremacism.

Of course, Geller’s spin misses the point – the issue is not that she advocates violence (although that can’t be said for one or two of her other associates), but that her utterances are luridly demagogic. It’s true that she and Spencer have both claimed that they are not anti-Muslim (see here and here), but their bad faith willingness to use sensationalised, distorted, and bogus claims to whip up fear and and hatred is self-evident in virtually everything they say and do.

It is somewhat difficult to see how Quilliam can build any kind of creditable project involving Robinson and Carroll on the basis of “yes, they’re still tied in with Geller and Spencer for now, but don’t worry, we’re giving them guidance and training.”

UPDATE: Following Quilliam’s statement that they have “decapitated” the EDL, Geller and Spencer have expressed dismay in a statement put out under their ADFI branding:

This is Muslim Outreach? Tommy Robinson approaches Quilliam in earnest, puts his life on the line, becomes a pariah (and rightly so) and that’s how they declare it? Decapitation sounds like jihad, not reformation… While we supported Tommy’s distancing himself from the unsavory forces that were infiltrating the EDL, his association with the Quilliam Foundation is problematic in the extreme.

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Today’s big story, currently receiving saturation news coverage:

QUILLIAM FACILITATES TOMMY ROBINSON LEAVING THE ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE

Quilliam is proud to announce that Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, the leaders of the anti-Islamist group, the English Defence League (EDL), have decided to leave the group. Having set up the EDL, infamous for its street protests, in 2009, they wish to exit this group, because they feel they can no longer keep extremist elements at bay.

…We call all of Tommy’s former colleagues in the EDL to follow in his footsteps and also call on Islamist extremist leaders to follow this example and leave their respective groups. Tommy and Kevin believe the voice they have created can be channelled in a positive direction. Quilliam stands ready to facilitate such moves across the spectrum…

Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and Carroll subsequently gave a press conference in Bloomsbury with Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz and Usama Hasan, and Robinson has also given interviews to Channel 4 News, BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight and BBC Newsnight (there may be others). He claims that “extremists” and “Nazis” sought to take control of the EDL while he was in prison for passport fraud earlier this year, and that he now considers street protests to be “counter-productive” because Muslims and non-Muslims need to work together against Islamists; he also says that he intends to “take training” from Quilliam to “progress the voice that’s been built in a constructive manner”. Newsnight further showed that he has been meeting Muslims in recent months for a documentary (there was a shot of him with Mohammad Ansar; Ansar confirmed on Twitter that “I have spent the last 18 months working with Tommy Robinson”, although he went on say he was “was disgusted by the behaviour of Maajid Nawaz and Tommy today in London”.)

Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate has a couple of interesting specific details from the press conference:

They have attacked their former funder Alan Ayling (aka Lake) as being “tight” while US based Muslim-hater Pam Geller is credited with keeping Lennon’s family afloat while he was in prison.

Ayling was formerly described as the organisation’s “millionaire funder”, although it transpired that this was somewhat exaggerated  – he had a job in IT, and he only ever donated a few hundred pounds to the group.

Lowles adds:

The good news for Robert Spencer and Pam Geller is that the two former leaders have not turnd their back on them, yet. The Quilliam Foundation, who brokered this “defection”, were rightly less charitable towards the pair.

In turn, Geller and Spencer have commended Robinson’s move:

He has decided, and my AFDI colleague Robert Spencer and I strongly endorse his decision, that his time is better spent working for the defense of England and human rights against Sharia and Islamization in different and more effective ways.

…Now, over two years later, it is clear to all of us that the best way to proceed is to leave the EDL behind and move forward in new directions.

Geller’s relationship with the EDL has been on and off for some time, but the thuggish and often drunken antics of EDL street protests must have been awkward given Geller’s attempts to maintain links with respectable and religious conservatives. However, one struggles to see how Robinson and Carroll can maintain any kind of coherent association with Quilliam and while working with Geller and Spencer, whose anti-Islam rhetoric is lurid and conspiratorial (and that’s before we get onto the absurdities of Geller’s birtherism).

According to the IB Times, Robinson’s personal assistant Helen Gower has confirmed that

“A new group, that isn’t street-based, is going to be formed. Tommy is definitely going to be in the new group, and Kevin will be in it too.”

Newsnight mentioned that the EDL now has “interim leaders”, although further details are scare.

For its part, this is not the first time that the Quilliam Foundation has sought to woo ex-EDL members: the first attempt ended in fiasco, with two invited speakers backing out and accusing Quilliam – in salty language – of misleading them. A more successful event with two different ex-EDL members took place in July, although one of the two speakers has today claimed on Twitter that he had been “used” by Quilliam and that the press conference with Robinson was a “publicity stunt like I was”.

Interestingly, the BBC World Tonight says that Quilliam had agreed to give an interview, but had “pulled out”; on the same programme, Matthew Goodwin of Nottingham University expressed misgivings about the think-tank’s decision to give Robinson a platform. According to Goodwin:

If you took a cynical view of today you would look at the events and see a counter-extremism think-tank using this as an opportunity to boost their profile within what is already, I would argue, a very murky counter-extremism industry that is often not very transparent, that is often driven by motives that are not very clear. I was expecting today to see an unequivocal, unambiguous renunciation of the English Defence League. We didn’t see anything of that nature, which I think reflects very badly on the think-tank that was hosting today’s events.

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WorldNetDaily (WND) has a question for us:

Are You Ready for 2014 Biblical Blood Moons?

The hottest Christian book in the world right now is called “Four Blood Moons” by Pastor John Hagee.

It is creating a sensation in the publishing world and in churches.

On Passover 2014 the first of a series of mysterious astronomical events will occur that will have the whole world looking up at the night skies.

The story begins in 2008 when Hebrew roots Pastor Mark Biltz made an astounding discovery – a story broken first in WND.

Biltz had been studying prophecies that focus on the sun and moon, even going back to the book of Genesis where it states the lights in the sky would be “be for signs, and for seasons.”

The “mysterious astronomical events” are actually un-mysterious lunar eclipses, during which the moon in certain parts of the world (although not apparently in Israel) will appear to have a red or orange hue. Hagee and Blitz want us to believe that this is what the Israelite prophet Joel was referring to in an eschatological passage concerning the “Day of Yahweh” (start of chapter 3 according to Hebrew chapter divisions; end of chapter 2 according to Greek):

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.  The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.  And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.

The passage is quoted by Peter in the Book of Acts as an explanation for the events of Pentecost. It’s very clear from the meaning that the moon turning to blood is supposed to be a dramatic supernatural disturbance rather than a regular astronomical phenomenon, and there’s no indication that four in row corresponding with Jewish festivals thousands of years in the future are of any significance whatsoever. However, Blitz and Hagee are impressed by the fact that the three occasions on which lunar eclipses have occurred on the first day of Passover in the past 500 yeards have come in years of special significance for Jewish history: 1492 (when Jews were expelled from Spain); 1948 (the foundation of Israel); and 1967 (Six-Day War).

Looking forward, Blitz notes:

When checking the schedule for eclipses, Biltz found two – one on Passover the next on the high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the seventh Hebrew month. Two more take place in 2015, also on biblical “feast” days.

I discussed Blitz’s theory – and his claim that this is not “date setting” because the Feast of Trumpets is based on “sighting” the new moon rather than predicting the exact moment – here.

What’s amusing in all this is the shameless way that John Hagee – who claims to be a “prophecy expert” – has jumped on Blitz’s bandwagon. Why didn’t Hagee realise the the significance of the “blood moons” himself in any of his previous “end times” potboilers if he  has such insight into the meaning of the Bible?

Hagee’s book is published by Worthy Publishing, which was founded by former Thomas Nelson head Byron Williamson in 2010; plans to publish it were announced back in April:

“Worthy is honored to publish Pastor Hagee’s remarkable new book, which will speak to an upcoming astronomical phenomenon already predicted by NASA and astronomers worldwide,” said Byron Williamson, president of Worthy Publishing. “Pastor Hagee’s widely viewed weekly television program reaches 99 million homes and his message touches more than a million followers via email, Facebook and Twitter.”

For some reason, the book – which is just the latest addition to a massive heap of “End Times” paperbacks – is described by Worthy as “unprecedented”.

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The Los Angeles Times has an obituary of Pastor Chuck Smith, who has died aged 86:

He was a biblical literalist who believed staunchly in hell, Armageddon and the sinfulness of homosexuality. But from the pulpit, and in person, he emanated a disarming warmth. His church became famous as a sanctuary for a generation of counterculture refugees. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a big, benevolent smile.

…Smith’s movement contributed to the ascent of the modern megachurch, and he was a mentor to generations of younger evangelists, including Greg Laurie of the Harvest Christian Fellowship.

…He repeatedly predicted the end of the world, and his zeal for the notion seemed undiminished when it failed to materialize. “Every year I believe this could be the year,” he would say. “We’re one year closer than we were.”

Franklin Graham has released a statement describing him as his “friend”, while Rick Warren posted a picture to Twitter of himself and Smith together – the two men shared platforms from 2009, despite a 2006 statement issued by Smith’s church grouping that “the teaching and positions of Rick Warren have come into conflict with us at Calvary Chapel.”

The Times obit includes a quote from sociologist Donald E. Miller, whose Reinventing American Protestantism has been much appreciated by insiders and outsiders alike. However, Miller’s account should be read alongside Gershom Gorenberg’s The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, which notes Smith’s date-setting and support for Israel’s ultra-nationalist  right; apparently, at one time Smith predicted that the Rapture would occur in 1981, seven years ahead of the return of Jesus (like Hal Lindsey and others, he believed that 1988, as “one generation” after the founding of modern Israel, was of special significance).

Smith also invited Stanley Goldfoot to Calvary Chapel; Goldfoot, as the head of Lehi intelligence in 1948, had been involved in the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, and he later co-founded the Temple Mount Faithful. Gorenberg wrote: “Marginal in Israel, Goldfoot was now treated like a prophet by thousands. For years he listened to the tape of his talk  over and over to hear the applause.” Smith and Chuck Missler (discussed here) also funded an absurd attempt by Lambert Dolphin to find the Ark of the Covenant under the Temple Mount.

Smith kept producing apocalyptic paperbacks; in 2007 he brought out The Final Act; the blurb and endorsements will be wearily familiar to anyone who knows the Christian paperback prophecy scene (links added):

What exciting days we are living in! Like observers invited backstage before a play, we can see the director positioning the players and making sure the props are in order. We can feel the excitement in these minutes before he signals for the curtain to rise. This analogy is apt, for God is positioning nations and current events before our very eyes.

In The Final Act, Pastor Chuck Smith sets the stage for God’s prophetic plan, providing insight into current world events leading up to one climactic battle that will usher in eternity.

Explaining the rapture, the rise of the Antichrist, and conditions that favor the Lord’s soon return, The Final Act is a compact, hard-hitting expos on the last days of human history.

“This unique dramatic treatment is both true to the scripture and practical, both hallmarks of all Pastor Chuck’s teaching. I found it very interesting!” Tim LaHaye

The Final Act is a powerful, provocative end times primer.” Joel Rosenberg

“The Final Act will inform your mind and move your heart to be ready when the curtain goes up.” Mark Hitchcock

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Morgan Guyton (Associate Pastor at Burke United Methodist Church) has an interesting article at the Huffington Post on the theology of Rafael Cruz, father of senator Ted Cruz. I blogged on Rafael in July, after Andy Miller of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition wrote about meeting him at an anti-Islam event organised by Frank Gaffney: he is the director of Purifying Fire Ministries, the narrator of a Spanish audio Bible, and a member of the Tea Party speaker circuit

Guyton draws attention to a sermon  preached by Cruz on 26 August 2012 at Larry Huch’s megachurch New Beginnings in Irving, Texas. Huch is part of a movement that emphasizes the “Jewish roots” of Christianity. This does not just mean understanding the Jewish context of Jesus and the creation of the New Testament, or repudiating anti-Semitism: Jewish cultural forms are appropriated; Christianity becomes a set of esoteric “mysteries” that are unveiled in reference to Judaism; and the stories of the Hebrew Bible are used to create a pastiche of Israelite theology that is then applied to the USA. The most successful exponent of this kind of thing is Jonathan Cahn, whom I’ve discussed a number of times.

Guyton has transcribed part of Huch’s introduction:

It’s not a coincidence that in a few weeks, we go into what’s called in the Bible Rosh Hashanad [sic]… It will be the beginning of the spiritual year 2012. The number 12 means divine government… The rabbinical teaching is… that in a few weeks begins that year 2012 and that this will begin what we call the end-time transfer of wealth. And that when these Gentiles begin to receive this blessing, they will never go back financially through the valley again. They will grow and grow and grow. It’s said this way: that God is looking at the church and everyone in it and deciding in the next three and a half years who will be his bankers…

This is certainly a bold attempt to reconcile Christian apocalypticism with both Dominionism and the Prosperity Gospel, and Cruz warms to the same theme:

Priests were anointed primarily to minister the glory of God. They were anointed to pray for the people, to offer sacrifices, to care for the temple, to be God’s representatives before the people… Kings were anointed to take dominion. Kings were anointed to go to war, win the war, and bring the spoils of war to priests so the work of the kingdom of God could be accomplished. The king needed the blessing of the priest in order to be successful in battle… The priest also needed for the king to be successful in battle because the priest needed the spoils of war in order to repair the temple, in order to carry out the ministry that God had entrusted him.

Guyton is not impressed: he notes that the Bible “expressly forbade the Israelites from going to war for spoils”, and that Cruz appears to have mis-translated of the Book of Revelation:

Revelation 1:5-6, which says, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father–to him be glory and power for ever and ever!” In Rafael’s translation of the Bible, it says “kings and priests” instead of “a kingdom and priests.” In the Greek, the word is basileian (accusative singular) and no manuscript variants are indicated, but never mind that.

Given the warning in the final verse of Revelation, that’s bad news for Cruz.

Guyton notes that Cruz is also an enthusiast of a “Black Robe Regiment” of soldier-pastors inspired by the Revolutionary Era; the idea has been promoted by the pseudo-historian David Barton and by Glenn Beck.

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From the Sunday Times:

Pupils ordered to wear hijab out of school

A STATE-FUNDED school in Blackburn has become the first to force its pupils to wear a hijab both in and out of class.

Rules at Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School require its 800 pupils “to wear the hijab [Muslim headscarf] outside the school and home”, “recite the Koran at least once a week” and “not bring stationery to school that contains un-Islamic images”, such as pictures of pop stars.

The ST begins by describing the school as being the first to “force its pupils”; the authors could have chosen to begin with “require its pupils” (as in second sentence), or even to refer to “the first school that only accepts pupils who wear a hijab at home”; I suspect that the word “force”, which has a connotation of coercion and violence, has been chosen deliberately for polemical reasons.

The school’s rules are available on a pdf that has been uploaded to the TES website, and include the following:

Spiritual Conduct Outside of School

In their normal life, students are expected to:
1. Perform 5-times Salaah punctually at home.
2. Wear the Hijaab outside of the school and home.
3. Recite the Qur’aan at least once a week.
4. Desist from listening to any form of music or nasheeds that are not compliant with the Deobandi Hanafi Tablighi School of Thought.
5. Desist from unislamic communication and relationships.

But here’s the odd thing: the url for this includes the element “A1%20posters%20Aug%2009” – which strongly implies that the ST‘s scoop is based on information that has been in the public domain for at least four years. That doesn’t mean that the rules are not of interest or uncontroversial – number 5 may just mean “avoid bad company”, but it may also suggest separatism. That would make it more significant than the ST‘s sensationalising  hijab hook, which is clearly an attempt to bandwagon on a story from last week about a non-Muslim teacher reportedly being told to wear a hijab at a Muslim school.

The article was co-authored by Richard Kerbaj, who specialises in stories about Islamic extremists (not without controversy), along with education editor Sian Griffiths and Georgia Graham. I asked Griffiths via Twitter whether the story was based on the pdf; she responded:

Er, no, I hadn’t even seen that pdf until now. Multiple sources including rules displayed in school last week

Fair enough, and it’s reassuring to know that there’s more to the story than “journalists find something on internet”; but the existence of “multiple sources” does not change the fact that the story is not about a new development.

The article continues:

…Concerns were raised about the Tauheedul charitable trust in a dossier given to the Department for Education by Haras Rafiq, a former government adviser on the prevention of extremism, in 2011. Despite it, the trust was granted approval to set up three free schools

In his dossier, Rafiq said Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, a Saudi cleric who is alleged to have referred to Jews as “pigs” and the “scum of the human race”, had made a visit to the school. “I raised concerns in June 2011 with the Department for Education,” said Rafiq. “Despite presenting them with my findings, they decided to brush them to one side and go ahead and reward them with not just one school but three free schools.”

Of course, without access to the “dossier”, it’s impossible to assess properly the significance of al-Sudais’ visit to the school, or Rafiq’s implication that extremism has been unduly dismissed by the Department of Education. It is valid to raise concerns; but it’s frustrating not to be given sufficient information so that we can make our own informed assessment about what’s been going on.*

The Sunday Times also has another story in the same edition, also co-authored by Griffith and Kerbaj (this time with Isabel Oakeshott):

…Michael Gove, the education secretary, has warned that “potentially extremist parents” could be flooding the governing bodies of some schools that have large numbers of Muslim pupils.

He has set up a “counterextremism” unit in his department to weed out educational institutions and practices that do not conform with British values. The unit includes two former intelligence officers with expertise in counterterrorism, two academic experts and senior civil servants.

So the story about Tauheedul also just happens to complement a government talking point. Very handy.

The the presence of “two former intelligence officers” in the unit was used to justify a sensationalist headline about “Ex-MI5 agents target school Islamists”.**

*UPDATE: The National Secular Society has a quote from the school headmaster that Terry Sanderson seems to have acquired himself:

Patel confirmed that Sudais had been asked to address the school three years ago. “The girls wanted to see this guy with 5m followers. They had seen him on YouTube. He stayed 20 minutes.”

**UPDATE 2: There’s also something odd about the “counterextremism unit” aspect of the story, given the well-publicised existence of just such a unit within the Department of Education for several years; the Telegraph noted in June 2011 that:

…A “preventing extremism unit,” which will include experts in counter-terrorism, has been established at the Department of Education to stop unsuitable providers setting up Free Schools – a key part of the government’s new education strategy.

Applicants will need to demonstrate that they would support UK democratic values including support for individual liberties within the law, equality, mutual tolerance and respect.

More recently, the TES further reported in July this year:

School inspectors in England have been ordered by the government to carry out emergency inspections of private schools amid fears that they are fostering religious extremism, TES has learned.

…A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “There is no place for extremism in any school. Our Due Diligence and Counter Extremism Division, established in 2010 under the government’s Prevent strategy, works to ensure that children and young people are safeguarded from extremist views in or out of school hours…”

So why is the Sunday Times reporting the existence of the unit as if it’s something new? And where has the specific detail about “ex-MI5 agents”, rather than just “experts in counter-terrorism”, come from?

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