Bartholomew's Notes

As Alex Seitz-Wald notes at Salon, Pamela Geller “does what we all expect her to do after the Boston Marathon bombing”: which is, of course, to declare at once that the attack was “jihad”, and to abuse anyone who suggests it might be better to wait for further information:

Shame on you, carrying water for murderers (1)… Another spokesman for killers (2)… dont you care about the slaughter you abet? (3)

Etc. Geller’s confidence is based in part on an NY Post report that a Saudi national had been “detained” as a suspect, although details are currently uncertain. However, it also fits a pattern which again leads me to believe that Geller’s real target is not just Islam, but reasonable discourse and behaviour.

Of course the attack may well turn out to have been the work of Islamic extremists, but there are also other possibilities. Geller – and her close associate Robert Spencer – don’t wish merely to whip up hatred; they also wish to stigmatise the process of thinking about things reasonably.

If Islamic extremists are in due course shown to have been the attackers, Geller will present herself as someone who was willing to name the enemy while others were either weak and vacillating or attempting to suppress the truth; should she turn out to be in the wrong, she will either sniff and move on or delete anything that makes her look foolish (she took the latter course after denouncing the media for failing to expose Obama for supposedly wearing a Muslim ring).

It’s a policy that can lead to double volte faces; in March 2012, Spencer immediately suggested that a gun attack in France had been the work of “Islamic antisemitism”; when reports then suggested a neo-Nazi connection he got cold feet and deleted his post; when an Islamic extremist was later confirmed he then returned to the subject without any acknowledgement of his moment of doubt in the face of conflicting evidence.

UPDATE: Geller went on to promote a post at Frontpage by a certain Daniel Greenfield concerning  Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, the Saudi student who was injured in the attack. Greenfield poked around in Alharbi’s Facebook page, to extract a few details presented in a way to appear sinister:

Saudi Bombing Suspect: “If Today Really Was the Last Day, How Would You Spend It?”

That cheerful message was reposted by Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi from the Boston Muslim Community on his Facebook page last year. FOX News is reporting that Alharbi (harb = sword) is the “person of interest” being questioned. 

…Alharbi’s Facebook page hasn’t been updated in a while. He is a Saudi student and poses in the photo above holding a golden gun on Saudi Day.

Greenfield does provide a link to the Facebook page,  but it’s clear that’s he’s writing in bad faith; the “last day” comment was posted on 20 December, and was obviously a casual reference to the Mayan calendar; the meaning of “harb” has no bearing on anything, and the gun pose photo (which he reproduces) is obviously non-aggressive and jokey (and the apparent gun may actually be a novelty item).

Further, Greenfield ignores other details: Alharbi’s Facebook profile photo shows him enjoying himself in Disneyland, and his posts include a video comedy skit entitled “Things NOT to DO in Masjid” and a YouTube link to a TED talk by comedian Maz Jobrani entitled “A Saudi, an Indian and an Iranian walk into a Qatari bar”. There is zero evidence on the site that he’s a fanatic, and some real evidence that he’s not. Greenfield’s article is pseudo-journalism; and Geller’s promotion of it, while not surprising, is opportunistic and unprincipled.

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A press release from GOD TV (H/T Bene Diction Blogs On):

Todd [Bentley] has been touring South Africa this month and many healing miracles have been documented. These include a girl who was born deaf in both ears and mute, who spoke for the first time and a man blind in his left eye who was instantly able to see. Over 10,000 people have attended the meetings in Durban and hundreds of Muslims and Hindus have committed their lives to Christ.

I noted Bentley’s planned schedule for South Africa at the end of February. Bentley himself adds:

My wife, Jessa, was healed of a severe fever on the first day of the Great Awakening, South Africa meeting. Her healing came after a shower. The glory fell and her whole body was covered in gold. The gold was in all three hotel rooms where we stayed and now it is showing up in the meetings. It is now appearing on local muslims and hindus. After the gold came, six diamonds were discovered.

The press release includes an endorsement from Rick Joyner:

“God showed me when I first met Todd what he was called to do. He is going to lead many millions to God and he has just started. Lakeland was only a preview of what the Lord is going to do through Todd Bentley. Those who have been forgiven much, love much.”

Joyner recently concurred with Bentley that the death of a British MP from cancer was due to the MP’s opposition to Bentley coming to the UK. Joyner is a significant link between neo-Pentecostalism and “the right” more generally, with close links to the likes of Jim Bakker, Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, and Alan Keyes.

Bentley is controversial for a number of reasons: his Lakeland revival ended with an apparent sexual indiscretion; his healing method, by his own account, on at least one occasion involving kicking someone in the face; and his claims to supernatural empowerment are not just extravagant but also rather odd, in particular involving an angel named “Emma” (Bentley was also a juvenile sex offender before his conversion, and served time in prison).

However, none of this is putting off GOD TV:

GOD TV is once again interrupting its schedule to carry Revival LIVE as it happens, this time from Durban, South Africa where Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley has seen an outbreak of miracles in his meetings. Hosted by Rory Alec, the Great Awakening Healing Revival will air LIVE on Friday April 12 through Sunday April 14 at 1pm (EST) daily with replays in prime time.

…Todd Bentley was with Rory & Wendy Alec for ‘Revival Alert’ in Jerusalem in January where he shared his heart for revival and his take on what happened five years ago at Lakeland.

GOD TV began in the UK and is now based in Jerusalem; the Alecs, however, have a background with the South African Rhema movement, and one of Bentley’s events is at a Rhema church. I wrote about the organisation here; it broadcasts a wide range of neo-Pentecostal and evangelical material. GOD TV’s Facebook page carries a number of posts about Bentley in South Africa, including a photo of a yellow smudge of some sort which “seems to reveal the outline of a glory angel alongside the lady who is worshipping”.

In the UK, the GOD TV broadcasts are being streamed to Trevor Baker’s Revival Fires church in Dudley.

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ZOA official describes Geller as “an American and Jewish treasure”

As has been very widely reported, a planned talk by anti-Islam demagogue and Birther conspiracy-monger Pamela Geller at the Men’s Club of the Great Neck Synagogue in New York State has been cancelled; this is not because the synagogue has had a moment of moral clarity, but rather due to “security concerns“:

As the notoriety and media exposure of the planned program this Sunday have increased, so has the legal liability and potential security exposure of our institution and its member families. In an era of heightened security concerns it is irresponsible to jeopardize the safety of those who call Great  Neck Synagogue home, especially our children, even at the risk of diverting attention from a potentially important voice in the ongoing debate. Accordingly,  the Great Neck Synagogue Men’s Club will no longer be sponsoring the appearance of Pamela Geller this coming Sunday, and no event will be taking place in our facility.

Details of any actual threats are hard to come by – a puff-piece for Geller by Caroline Glick mentions only “a media campaign attacking her as a bigot” (a reference to a critical article by Rabbis Michael White and Jerome Davidson), while Geller writes that “Habeeb [Ahmed, Nassau County Commissioner on Human Rights] and his accomplices ordered their minions to strongarm the shul, make calls, and get the synagogue leaders to cancel a proud Jew scheduled to speak at their synagogue.”

But an association with Geller was always going to be toxic for any organisation that seeks to maintain a serious reputation: Geller supports the English Defence League, and she claims that Obama is a secret Muslim who has forged his birth certificate (she also famously promoted the claim that Obama’s father was Malcolm X, although she denies, with some irritation, the suggestion that she actually believes such a thing herself). Geller also trivalises the Holocaust, for example by throwing a “Nazi” accusation at Elena Kagan. Etc. etc. – the suggestion that she’s “a potentially important voice”  in any serious discussion is laughable.

Naturally, Geller seeks to portray the venue’s decision to cancel as an attack on her free speech, even though the synagogue does not cite any evidence of threats – and Geller is hardly in a position to complain about “minions”, given her own history of rabble-rousing protests.

Statements of support for Geller have come in from Helen Freedman, Executive Director of Americans for a Safe Israel (“Those of us who understand the dangers inherent in this cowardice will work even harder with Pamela Geller and the others sounding the alarm”); Steve Goldberg, National Vice-Chair of the Zionist Organization of America (“Pamela can wear the fear and hatred of the Islamic fascists as a badge of honor. Her courage makes her an American and Jewish treasure”); and Orit Arfa, Executive Director of the Creative Zionist Coalition (“Why don’t the good imams and rabbis protest the very real and frightening civil rights abuses committed in the name of Islam and which Geller exposes so courageously?”).

Meanwhile, Geller has found alternative venues:

Two courageous and magnificent Rabbis have asked me to speak on Sunday. Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky of the Chabad, Great Neck and Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg of Congregation Beth-El in Edison, New Jersey have both invited me to speak at their synagogues on Sunday.

As Charles Johnson notes, Rosenberg previously came to wider attention as the head of “Rabbis for Romney”. Geller previously cooperated with a Chabad Rabbi at a protest in Yorba Linda, California.

Geller’s talks are to be followed by a protest outside the Human Rights Commission office (which presumably will be closed for the weekend) to demand the dismissal of Habeeb Ahmed from his Commissioner post. Geller will be joined by Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom; one wonders whether the two men have patched things up since Bostom accused Spencer of plagiarism.

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More silliness from “Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet” Joel Richardson:

A significant recent archeological discovery in western Turkey may hold a prophetic hint as to the nation from which the Antichrist will someday burst forth onto the world scene.

According to a recent report by Fox News, archeologists have uncovered the ancient “gate to hell.” Not literally, of course, but rather they’ve discovered an ancient pagan temple known as “Pluto’s Gate,” the cave that was believed to be the portal to Hades, in Greco-Roman mythology.

Richardson, as I’ve noted previously, takes the view that the Bible predicts a Muslim Anti-Christ, and he believes that Turkey holds the key. He goes on:

…What is more interesting about this find as it relates to biblical prophecy is the fact that the gate was discovered in modern-day Pamukkale, Turkey, known in ancient times as Hierapolis. According to the first-century historian known as Pliny the Elder, Hierapolis was also known as “Magog.”

In fact, it was specifically this ancient Turkish-Magog connection that informed the understanding of a wide range of Jewish and Christian theologians concerning the region from which the armies of Gog and Magog would descend into the land of Israel in the last days.

Richardson piles up a ragbag of supposed authorities “who have long looked for the Antichristian armies of Gog of Magog to come from the land of Turkey”. He begins with Hippolytus of Rome (170–235), then jumps forward a thousand years to Maimonides, and then moves on to include diverse figures such as Walter Raleigh, John Wesley, Cyrus Scofield, and an author of apocalyptic paperbacks named Dave Hunt.

This, of course, shows a basic misunderstanding of the nature of scholarship, which consists of continuing critical engagement with the sources (for the most part, textual and archaeological) rather than uncritically parroting a list of names. “Gog and Magog” appear in the biblical book of Ezekiel as a type of barbarian whom the author imagined attacking ancient Israel in the near future; their location is vaguely defined as being somewhere in the north, but the fact that authors living centuries later thought “the land of Turkey” was intended is irrelevant without an argument we can follow and assess for ourselves.

But it gets worse – Richardson has conflated two cities called Hieropolis, which means simply “Holy City” in Greek. There is a city of that name in Pamukkale, and Pliny appears to reference it when he mentions in Book 2 (95) “the hole at Hierapolis in Asia, harmless only to the priest of the Great Mother”. But the supposed “Magog” refers to Hierapolis in Syria – and it’s Mabog, anyway: here’s the relevant section of Pliny (Book 5 Chapter 19):

Nunc interiora dicantur. Coele habet Apameam, Marsya amne divisam a Nazerinorum tetrarchia, Bambycen, quae alio nomine Hierapolis vocatur, Syris vero Mabog — ibi prodigiosa Atargatis, Graecis autem Derceto dicta, colitur —, Chalcidem cognominatam Ad Belum…

In English:

Now let us speak of the places inland. Hollow Syria contains the town of Kulat el Mudik, separated by the river Marsyas from the tetrarchy of the Nosairis; Bambyx, which is also named the Holy City, but which the Syrians call Mabog—here the monstrous goddess Atargatis, the Greek name for whom is Derceto, is worshipped; the place called Chalcis on Belus…

“Hollow Syria”, or Coele-Syria, refers to the Valley of Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon. And a note at an alternative translation here by John Bostock has further details about the name:

In the former editions it is “Magog;” but [Julius] Sillig’s reading of “Mabog” is correct, and corresponds with the Oriental forms of Munbedj, Manbesja, Manbesjun, Menba, Manba, Manbegj, and the modern name, Kara Bambuche, or Buguk Munbedj.

It seems that the similarity between “Magog” and “Mabog” captured the Christian imagination.

But either way, what has the Plutonium (or “Plato’s Gate”) at Pamukkale got to do with Bible prophecy? A biblical scholar named Larry Kreitzer has suggested that the site may have inspired a reference to “the lowermost parts of the earth” in the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians:

It is reasonable to assume that [the author] was aware of the close connection of the site with the story of the abduction of Persephone and that he wished to present the Christian message as somehow challenging, or transcending, the mysteries associated with the local expression of the Demeter/Persephone cult. We can also assume that he would have known of the identification of Demeter with Cybele, and that the cult of Cybele and Attis would have been familiar to the local population, given that this was originally a Phrygian religion and both Colossae and Hierapolis were in Phrygia.

However, this is all somewhat speculative, and there does not appear to have been any kind of later Christian tradition associated with the site. And although the Plutonium was seen by pagans as a passageway into Hades, it was not the only such passage. Richardson also mentions the “Abyss” in the Book of Revelation (Chapter 9), but there is no reason to suppose that the author was inspired by the Plutonium; the “Abyss” is depicted as a supernatural anomaly, opened up by an angel and not associated with any pre-existing site.

To sum up: the Bible does not point towards a site in Turkey as being particularly associated with the Anti-Christ. Ezekiel’s Magog is not Hierapolis in Turkey, or even Hierapolis/Mabog in Syria, and the Abyss in the Book of Revelation is not at the site of the Plutonium. It’s all hucksterism, here employed to play on modern American worries about the place of Islam in the world but also recycling old fears about “the Turk”.

We should recall that in 2008 Richardson claimed that Obama, as Presidential candidate, had appeared on a podium with a backdrop “nearly identical” to the Pergamum Altar. That was a farrago of nonsense, too.

UPDATE: The above refers to Richardson’s website; I now see that Joseph Farah is also carrying the article on WorldNetDaily, under the ludicrous yet predictable headline ‘“Gate to hell” Discovered in Antichrist’s Neighborhood‘.

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ANI News reports from New Delhi:

Organised and hosted by the Embassy of Kazakhstan at the Leela Palace Hotel, the [Congress of World and Traditional Religions] was attended by several dignitaries, including Member of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Bolat Zhylkyshiyev, Dr. [J.M] Dave [of Swaminarayan Akshardham]… Somaya Samir Shantila, Chairman of the Institute for the Research of Indology and Interreligious Dialogue, President of the Jamaat-u-Shabab-e Islam Salman Al Husaini Al Nadwi, President of the World Council of Cultural Heritage of Zarathushtra Dr. Homi Dhalla.

…The event was held to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religion.

I blogged on previous congresses here and here. President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who reluctantly began a third decade in power after winning 95.5% in an election in 2011, uses such events to promote his image internationally, despite severe restrictions on religious freedom in the country – and a massacre of striking miners that appears to have faded from memory.

Nazarbayev’s interfaith efforts have also won praise from another group at the intersection of religion and soft power: ahead of the 2011 election, he was awarded a “Dialogue of Civilizations” prize by Vladimir Yakunin, a close Putin confidant who co-founded the “World Public Forum”. The WFP has the oddest range of associations.

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Left: Christmas 2011: Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly scolds Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for not doing enough for Christians

Right: Easter 2013: Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey reportedly scolds Prime Minister David Cameron for not doing enough for Christians

The top news story in the UK today is an “Astonishing Easter Attack” on the prime minister by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey. Taking to the Daily Mail (where else?), Carey writes:

…At his pre-Easter Downing Street reception for faith leaders, [Cameron] said that he supported Christians’ right to practise their faith. Yet many Christians doubt his sincerity. According to a new ComRes poll more than two-thirds of Christians feel that they are part of a ‘persecuted minority’.

Their fears may be exaggerated because few in the UK are actually persecuted, but the Prime Minister has done more than any other recent political leader to feed these anxieties.

The Mail also has a separate front-page article about the op-ed, headlined “Cameron Accused of Betraying Christians“, although that’s not a phrase that Carey himself uses; perhaps that’s also the kind of thing that is “feeding these anxieties” and leading to “exaggerated” fears? Still, it’s a nice turnaround from December 2011, when the Mail led with “Speak Up For Christianity PM Tells Archbishop“, referring to Carey’s successor, Rowan Williams.

Carey’s talking points are for the most part well-rehearsed rather than “astonishing”:

He seems to have forgotten in spite of his oft-repeated support for the right of Christians to wear the cross, that lawyers acting for the Coalition [government] argued only months ago in the Strasbourg court that those sacked for wearing a cross against their employer’s wishes should simply get another job.

…If this is not enough, the legislation fails to provide any protection for religious believers in employment who cannot subscribe to the new meaning of marriage. There will be no exemptions for believers who are registrars. They can expect to be sacked if they cannot, in all conscience, support same-sex marriage.

Strong legal opinion also suggests that Christian teachers, who are required to teach about marriage, may face disciplinary action if they cannot express agreement with the new politically-correct orthodoxy.

I discussed the background to the case heard at Strasbourg here. Carey has been making such complaints for a while, and in 2010 he became associated with the Christian Right lobby group Christian Concern.

Incidentally, that ComRes poll does not yet appear to be on-line; it was based on a survey of “535 regular churchgoers, commissioned by the Coalition for Marriage”; Hope Not Hate has some background on this group (also known as the “Coalition 4 Marriage”) here, and I noted related activities (and a previous poll) here.

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This looks fun:

The Awakening 2013 is an in-depth Prayer and Patriotism event where people are united by our love for our country’s freedom and our faith in Christ. You can choose breakout sessions with topics from Israel to immigration, from our families to our nation’s future. We welcome all ages, denominations, and ethnicities to unite around our shared values. We will educate, motivate, and activate.

…More than 60 national religious and political speakers will bring their insight and excitement to this event. Confirmed speakers include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, and many more!

The event will take place at First Baptist, Oviedo (pastored by Dwayne Mercer), but the phrase “faith in Christ” is at this stage an empty slogan for a nationalist rally at which the faithful will spend more time pondering Obama’s birth certificate and the evils of Islam than thinking about salvation from sin.

The gig is being put on by Mat Staver’s Liberty Counsel, and the line-up is certainly unusually extensive: those sixty speakers include the likes of

– Ted Baehr, famed for his humbug criticisms of Hollywood violence;

– sometime “sovereign citizen” associate Bradlee Dean, who recently put forward the suggestion that Obama staged the Sandy Hook massacre;

– Joseph Farah, purveyor of crank theories about the Bible and anti-Obama conspiracies including  the claim that the President sent a secret message to Muslims promising to continue the Holocaust;

– Frank Gaffney, who memorably noted that the DOD’s Missile Defense Agency’s logo includes an Islamic crescent;

– English Defence League cheerleader Pam Geller (not actually known for her “faith in Christ”);

– masculinist preacher Doug Giles (an early topic of this blog, these days more famous as Hannah Giles’ father);

– neo-Pentecostal A-lister Rick Joyner, who claims to have been given a prophecy from God concerning the imminent destruction of the west coast of the USA;

– William Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition, who recently gave expert support for the “Obama wears a Muslim ring” conspiracy theory (don’t point a camera at him, by the way);

– anti-Kinsey monomaniac Judith Reisman.

And that’s just the characters who have featured on this blog: other high-profile speakers include Matt Barber, Ken Blackwell, Harry Jackson, Cindy Jacobs, Jim Lafferty, Richard Land, Janet Porter, Rick Scarborough, and many, many others.

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Reuters reports:

Russian Orthodox religious activists festooned a Moscow museum named for Charles Darwin with banners and leaflets denouncing evolution theory in a display of disdain for secular education…

Footage released by Orthodox activist group Bozhaya Volya [????? ????], or God’s Will, showed activists unfurling a banner reading “God created the world” on the building’s facade while others threw leaflets bearing creationist slogans into the lobby of a popular destination for school trips and family outings in the capital…

The footage can be seen above. The stunt follows an attack on a Russian opposition party’s office, during which books were burnt; according to Radio Free Europe:

They later publicly burned all the Yabloko materials near a monument to Adam and Eve outside a Moscow metro station, calling Yabloko a party of satanists and perverts.

The report adds that a video of was posted on the website of a group called “For Russia, Putin, and People’s Front” (I think this is same as the All-Russian People’s Front), but that it had subsequently apologised.

Of course, with this sort of thing it’s difficult to judge to what extent an eye-catching stunt represents a significant movement; a statement from the Synodical Information Department dismisses the group’s antics as (via Google Translate) “profoundly alien to the Orthodox tradition” and, in a thinly-veiled reference to Pussy Riot, as “one of many political theatrical productions”.

Further background (and probably the source for the Reuters article) can be found at RT, which explains that

The ideologue of the museum stunt, Dmitriy Enteo, became famous on the back of several stunts directed at Pussy Riot and their supporters, and has admitted that he consciously uses the same art performance aesthetic, but for opposite aims.

…24 year-old Dmitriy Enteo… (real name Tsorionov)… was previously a Hindu, a Buddhist, and a devotee of trance music. The pseudonym Enteo was derived from entheogen, a member of a group of psychodelic plants, such as peyote, used by shamans.

The movement has a website here; Enteo himself has a social media presence on VK, Facebook, and Twitter. Google translate brings up headings that include “Science” (“the sun revolves around the earth -the centre of the universe”) and “Sodom”.

(H/T Ed Brayton)

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It appears to be an intractable and unsolvable dilemma, but what you are about to hear could change all of that.

So intones Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily, appearing in a trailer for a crank DVD which explains that (according to a blurb on Farah’s website) there is

…new and conclusive proof and undeniable evidence as to the proper and historical location of all the temples and why Christians, Jews, Muslims and historians all have it wrong.

The argument appears to be that the discovery will allow Jews to build a new Temple without disturbing the site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and this will bring about the return of Jesus:

There is no more highly anticipated event in the history of mankind than the return of Christ to the earth; all the maladies that beset the human race will disappear. Over the centuries there have been numerous signs that have pointed the world toward the magnificent and concluding event.

But there is a last sign, and the implications are monumental to every human being on the face of the planet. “Jerusalem and the Lost Temple of the Jews” is about that last sign.

The video has been produced by a certain Ken Klein, but it appears that only those willing to purchase the DVD will get to see the “new and conclusive proof and undeniable evidence”.

Klein, who runs a website called Ken Klein University, has appeared on WND before; in 2011 he revealed that he had filmed fallen angels, and that “you can see them in the infrared spectrum”. Further:

“Jesus’ physical body had to be tailor-made through the development of generations of specific genes that would pass down to Mary and allow for the Immaculate Conception. It wasn’t just any body that the Spirit of God could dwell in. And so Jesus body came through a very specific line of predecessors. The integrity of His physical DNA was managed through the purity of a specific line of people all the way back to Adam,” Klein said.

“I think we can expect the same thing to happen with the body that Lucifer will have to take, because we know that there will be an Antichrist who will be the embodiment of the spirit of Lucifer, who was an archangel. It can’t just be any body; it’s going to have to be an engineered body,” he said.

Klein also claims to have discovered “hidden Luciferian codes which he’s deciphered primarily from the Book of Revelation”, and he argues that “Lucifer’s creation of the dinosaurs was to overspread the Earth and make it a wilderness unfit for Adam to inhabit”.

From ramblings such as these, I think we can proceed on the assumption that Klein – a former professional American football player, apparently –  is unlikely to have anything sensible to say about the archaeology and location of the Jewish Temple, let alone be able to produce “new and conclusive” evidence about the subject.

And Klein’s religious teachings are obviously marginal to any kind of historic Christianity; how can Joseph Farah maintain his position as a significant player operating between the US Christian Right and wider conservatism when he’s aligning himself with such material?

The answer, of course, is that Farah will promote any kind of apocalyptic theory: Klein’s product joins a lineup that includes Thomas Horn and the “Final Pope“; Jonathan Cahn’s Harbinger polemics;  the Muslim Anti-Christ” theories of Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet Joel Richardson; and several other “Last Days” scenarios besides.

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Odd Oklahoma draws attention to a video posted in November 2012 by “Rabbi” Ralph Messer, showing Messer in conversation with Jim Barfield (misspelt “Jim Berfield in the accompanying blurb). The two men have a lot of common: both are known for their eccentric appropriations of Jewish tradition, which they have fashioned into weird idiosyncratic forms of religion that depart from both Judaism and Christianity and which go under the name of “Hebrew Roots”.

Messer (background here) achieved notoriety last year, when he involved scandal-hit evangelist Eddie Long in a bizarre ritual that involved Long (the “fresh sperm” preacher) being wrapped in a Torah scroll – the incident included a commentary by Messer in which he claimed that a Torah scroll cover is a “foreskin” (it’s not).

Barfield, meanwhile, is a retired fire marshal who came to attention in 2009 when he claimed to have solved the secret of the “Copper Scroll”, a document found among the Dead Sea Scrolls which purports to record the burial place of some treasure. Barfield believes that it points the way to ritual items from ancient Israel’s First Temple, including the Ark of the Covenant; as I noted at the time, credulous hacks lapped the story up, with puff pieces on local media and in the Jerusalem Post. Barfield also reportedly gave a presentation to a group of Oklahoma state senators, who agreed to support his efforts with funding and letters to Israeli officials.

In Israel, Barfield made links with the late Vendyl Jones and the self-styled “Sanhedrin“; however, interest waned when he failed to deliver the goods. Barfield’s explanation for his failure was that Israeli archaeologists had failed to dig deep enough at the correct spot, although the archaeologist Robert Cargill visited the site and found “virgin rock”.

It’s not clear how old the newly-posted video is; Barfield appears with short hair and a goatee, but in 2009 he had long white hair and a generous beard, both reflecting supposed “Nazarite” vows. The video itself has little that is new: Barfield imagines the treasure being found, and Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians attacking Israel in order to get a hold of it; this unlikely casus belli moves Messer’s audience  to righteous anger as Barfield explains the need to support Israel. The segment ends with Messer and his followers contemplating “a new Empire and a Temple which the Messiah throughout eternity on earth will rule and reign with kings and priests”.

Footnote

Odd Oklahoma also notes that in 2012 Barfield spoke at a Sukkot event called “TabernaclesTx“, where he revealed the “unusual and even miraculous events that have made it possible for him to have reached the level of success that he has enjoyed”. Here he was joined by speakers including Carl Baugh, who looks for Noah’s Ark and who runs the “Creation Evidence Museum”, and Richard Rives, who runs Wyatt Archaeological Research.

Wyatt Archaeological Research is named for the late Ron Wyatt, who claimed to claimed to have seen the Ark of the Covenant, and to have found pre-flood wood without tree rings, sulphur balls from Sodom and Gomorrrah, and a sample of Jesus’ blood, which contained 23 chromosomes from Mary and one from God; Rives himself makes videos for WorldNetDaily, in which he slams Christian traditions as pagan and exhorts Christians to follow Jewish cultural forms.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah also promotes “Hebrew Roots” teachers such as Michael Rood and Jonathan Cahn; Cahn, with Farah’s assistance, has come to wider attention due to a best-selling apocalyptic paperback called The Harbinger, and he presents himself as being an expert in “Hebrew Mysteries”.

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