MAY 4 2019
THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS TRIO.
BUT FIRST….
Now that we are approaching the end of human society, it may be an opportune time to reflect on what we should have done as the human race or still are supposed to do at this late hour.
It goes beyond dispute that we are on earth for a certain purpose: we were called to do something specific. When we were created and so entered into history, God charged us with a particular mandate. That mandate was to cultivate creation, to look after the earth, the waters and the air around us. God specifically instructed us to become one with the earth – ‘earth you are and to earth you shall return’ – to serve creation in all its manifestations, not only to take care of all that lives and moves and has its being around us, but also, and especially to discover who we ourselves are and why we are what we are.
When we do this we will grow emotionally in line with our task, and, by doing so, we also will increasingly mature mentally and spiritually so that we will be ready for the next phase and the next, because it is a never-ending assignment the Lord entrusted to us.
Therefore our task is two-fold: not only did God charge us to bring to fruition what in its essence was and is dormant in creation, both its human and non-human potential that is waiting to come into being, but also to preserve what is there, and to treasure and cherish what God already had entrusted to us as guardians and safe-keepers.
This dual purpose, this two-sided task of exploring and preserving holds for eternity as well: in the hereafter we simply continue what we started here, true to Revelation 14: 13, where it is promised that “our good deeds shall follow us”.
These ‘good deeds’ refer both to the positive actions and explorations we have done in creation and the intellectual and spiritual growth we have undergone. As a matter of fact only when we today are engaged with discovering what is latent in creation and in our own minds and with preserving of what is already there, then we are allowed to keep doing this into eternity, when both aspects will continue unabated but without the impediments we now experience in our sinful state.
We are called to fulfill this cultural duty while simultaneously striving for salvation, because salvation not only involves eternal redemption – honoring the Creator – but also fulfilling the creational laws. Or, as Dr. J.H. Bavinck formulated it, “personal salvation and creational redemption are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have one without the other.”
THE AMERICAN RELIGION
With that in mind I approach what in North America is labeled as Christianity, and why it has become exactly the opposite of what the Bible teaches.
Enter Dr. Harold Bloom, America’s foremost literary critic, who calls himself a gnostic Jew. In his THE AMERICAN RELIGION, subtitled, “The emergence of the Post-Christian Nation”, he identifies the American Religion as a variation of Gnosticism.
In my NIV Study Bible, in the introduction to the letters of the apostle John, there is a brief description of Gnosticism, which, it says, is “one of the most dangerous heresies”. Its central teaching is that spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil. Thus the body, anything substantial, such as creation, is evil. Salvation is escape from the body, such as going to heaven.
No wonder Dr. Bloom postulates that what commonly is called “Christianity” no longer deserves that label. He writes, “The American Religion masks itself as Protestant Christianity, yet has ceased to be Christian” Instead, “The flag and the fetus symbolize the American Religion”. He concludes his 1991 book, “The Twenty First Century will mark the full-scale return to the wars of religion.”
This prophecy is now being fulfilled: we have entered the most dangerous period in the history of the world, with two world-wars occurring simultaneously, both religious in nature: (1) The War against Creation; (2) The Middle East War.
Rapture and Zionism.
Almost all, 80% of white evangelicals – the adherents of the American Religion – voted for Trump in 2016, and his popularity amongst them remains high – in the 70s percent. Whilst other white voters may have become disheartened by Trump’s foreign policy white evangelicals have become his last, solid bastion. They are not insignificant either: they form some 25% of all Americans.
By now I hate the word ‘evangelicals’. Its root meaning is eu-angelos, which translates as “the good News”. In my opinion it now stands for the opposite. “Kak-angelist”, the bringers of Bad News, is a better designation. The Bad News consists of two teachings, which characterize these American believers: Rapture and Zionism. Both are totally unbiblical, by which I mean that there is no substantiation for these teachings in the Scriptures: on the contrary.
Based on some Old Testament passages proponents of the Zionism heresy argue that in Israel the temple will be rebuilt and then Christ will return. These beliefs clash with New Testament texts such as Hebrew 8: 13 where it says that, “By calling this covenant “new,” Christ has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.” The first covenant was based on temple worship. The second, new covenant is based on Christ who is the head of the New Covenant.
Christ is the end/fulfillment (telos) of the law (Romans 10: 4 and 2 Corinthians 1: 20), thus the Old Testament cannot be used as support for the modern secular state of Israel. As a matter of fact, the rending of the curtain between the Holy and the Holy of Holies, in the Temple when Jesus died, was definite proof that temple worship was a thing of the past.
Zionists have donated millions of dollars to this cause because they see it as a necessary precursor to the Tribulation – the Temple must be re-established for the End Times scenario to be played out. The Christian Zionist organizations believe that the Old Testament prophets, when they talk about returning to Israel, refer to the future today. The Rapture is another fabrication, completely refuted in Matthew 24: 39, which categorically states that the SINNERS will be taken out and THE BELIEVERS left behind on the holy earth.
These dangerous beliefs are professed and pursued by two of the most prominent US government officials: Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, and Mike Pence, the US Vice-President.
Both men are obsessed with these heresies and actually happy about wars and fighting in the Middle East, because they are the key preconditions for ‘Rapture’ and Armageddon.
Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Pence are strongly of this ‘Evangelical’ orientation, while Trump worships himself, seeing himself as god. Their ‘religious’ views deeply influence their foreign policy: During his tenure as CIA director, and before that as a member of the House of Representatives, Pompeo has consistently used language that casts the war on terrorism as a cosmic, DIVINE battle of good and evil. He has referred to Islamic terrorists as destined to “continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray, and stand and fight, and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior, and is truly the only solution for our world”.
In connection with IRAN, Pompeo used identical language, implying that Iran is the cosmic ‘evil’.
This style of Apocalyptic or Rapture language has been adopted wholesale by Trump, and his Administration. “To worship our Lord and celebrate our nation at the same place is not only our right,” Pompeo told attendees at a Kansas rally in 2015: “It is our duty.” He added, “We will continue to fight these battles,” the then Congressman said at a church in Wichita. “It is a never-ending struggle … until the Rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight!”
Pompeo’s reference to Rapture is important: The Rapture is a distinctively American theology that says Christians will be taken up, or “raptured,” into heaven, at the onset of the End Times … and a number of GOP politicians allow their belief in Rapture theology to influence their political worldview. Because the Rapture is ultimately desirable — it marks the return of Jesus Christ — anything that hastens it such as war, is desirable too.
For many evangelicals, apocalyptic “good versus evil” battles, particularly centred on the “Holy Land” of the Middle East, are signs that the longed-for end may be at hand”.
And then there is the Other War, the WAR against creation, which will immensely speed up once a hot war emerges. Already up to a million species face extinction, many within decades, according to a recent UN report, and three-quarters of Earth’s land surface has been “severely altered”.
A third of ocean fish stocks are in decline, and the rest, barring a few, are harvested at the very edge of sustainability.
A dramatic die-off of pollinating insects, especially bees, threatens essential crops valued at half-a-trillion dollars annually. The Trump regime does everything in its power to hasten this extinction process, believing that it is bringing on Armageddon, the end of the world.
The American millenarian ‘myth’, then and now, was (and is), similarly rooted in a messianic belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States: ‘the New Jerusalem’ that would represent humanity’s best hope for a utopian future. This belief in a special destiny (being ‘chosen’) is reflected in a conviction that the United States must lead – or more properly, has the duty to coerce – mankind towards its universalist destiny.
Although Trump, when he was campaigning promised to end US involved in wars, his actions today speak otherwise. Such as providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, or nixing the short-range nuclear missile ban, or joining the Saudi’s genocidal war on Yemen, or threatening to topple the government of Venezuela, or stirring up trouble in the South China Sea. At every turn, Trump has backtracked on his promise to break with tradition and “stop toppling regimes and overthrowing governments.” …’ At every turn, Trump has joined the ranks of the war hawks he once criticized.
Trump is now marching in lockstep with the foreign policy establishment. In Libya, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Iran, in Lebanon, he is faithfully implementing the neocon agenda. Trump “the peacemaker” is nowhere to be found, while Trump the ‘madman with a knife’ is on the loose.
This whole is underpinned through the extensive Evangelical base that forms Trump’s key constituency.
And with the resurfacing of neoconservative policies, comes, inevitably, their ancient attitude towards Russia as an existential struggle that can have only one outcome – Russia’s collapse, leading to regime change – either via war or means short of war. All elements of western policy are geared to that one inalterable objective.
Trump’s instinct has been to cling ever closer to his loyal supporters. Almost alone among major demographic groups, white evangelicals are overwhelmingly in favour of Trump’s border wall, which some preachers equate with fortifications in the Bible.
But here is the point: There lurks a major danger in this ideologically ‘non-rational’ set-up. One that threatens us all – and may explain the Russian raising of their ‘threat status’. Trump’s instincts still remain that a channel with Mr. Putin is essential. But the demonization of Russia has not been stilled with the publication of the Mueller investigation. It will just swap to a new narrative.
The pressures on Trump from his Bolton-Evangelical team, to hasten End Time with an Apocalyptic good-versus-evil struggle, linked the Christian Zionists’ Greater Israel ambition, will increasingly mount, with Trump offering up Iran, and so advancing Rapture, and immensely pleasing Pompeo and Pence.
The major danger is that Trump is not fearful of nuclear war – at least not in the way earlier generations of US leaders were. Trump has manifested a strange and worrying fatalism about nuclear conflict.
I deeply believe that, “personal salvation and creational redemption are two sides of the same coin: you can’t have one without the other.” The American Religion is the complete opposite: destroy creation because it is evil, and flee this evil earth to become gods. Trump, Pompeo and Pence in their respective offices strive for these goals which make them THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS TRIO.