Text 57, 122 rader
Skriven 2004-10-23 12:28:02 av Steve Asher (3:800/432.0)
Ärende: Heading Towards The Apocalypse
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I agree with much of what is written below, but differ when it
comes to the notion that Bush and the USA are God's agents on
earth, bringing about God's dominion on earth.

Rather, they are bringing about a counterfeit of the Kingdom of
God, with a false church / religion (Mystery Babylon), and a 
false Messiah - the Antichrist. They are deluded.

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Heading towards the apocalypse

Iraq is being held in the grip of zealots, for whom the day of
reckoning has finally arrived

Adam Nicolson.

10/23/04 "The Age" -- On the day last year that George Bush announced
victory to the troops in Iraq, he said: "Wherever you go, you carry a
message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words
of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, come out, and to those in
darkness, be free'."

That comes from Isaiah, chapter 49, verse 9. It seems a
straightforward remark, almost a statement of the obvious. But to
anyone familiar with the Bible, those few words ring far larger bells.

Bush did not quote the larger context, but it is revelatory. In the
King James Bible the whole passage says: "The Spirit of the Lord God
is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me, to preach good tidings
unto the meek, he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them
that are bound. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be
joyful in my God: for he hath clothed me with the garments of
salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a
bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth
herself with jewels."

At the head of the page on which this passage is printed, the King
James translators set the rubric "The Duty of Watchmen" and a few
verses further on Isaiah says: "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, 
O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that
make mention of the Lord keep not silence: and give him no rest till
he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth."

It comes as no news that Bush is a fundamentalist Christian, nor 
that he sees himself and his America as God's agents on earth. The
Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has been reported as saying
that Bush told him: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck
them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."

What is intriguing about those "victory day" remarks is the extent to
which, in an easy but essentially private code, Bush was laying claim,
before his core audience in fundamentalist America, to the robe of
righteousness, the duty of the watchman, and the crusade to make
Jerusalem a praise in the Earth. The statement is not about oil,
regime change or WMD. It is a vision of establishing the Christian
God's dominion on earth.

The vision, of its essence, is apocalyptic and millennial. Deep in the
Jewish tradition, and radiantly powerful in Deuteronomy, Daniel and
Isaiah, is the idea that a moment of fearful justice will come, when
the wrath of the divine will descend on Earth. It knows no compromise.
Its very violence is a measure of its goodness.

That is the tradition drawn on by the blood-drenched visions of the
end of time in Revelation, the least Christian book in the New
Testament, disowned by Luther, but now the favourite text of both
North American fundamentalist Christians and equally fundamentalist
Islamic zealots, for whom it is just as holy.

In this shared vision of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic world, the
moment of utter violence gives way, in time, to the moment of utter
peace, the tranquillity of the Kingdom of God, the future dream time
of the millennium, when all striving is over and all wickedness
banished. There will be no peace until the violence is done. Peace is
inaccessible without the violence, because violence is righteousness
in action. Apocalypse is the route to millennium.

To those who see war as an occasional and necessary evil, the
developing situation in Iraq is a disaster. Violence is feeding
violence. The Abu Ghraib pictures, the rounding up and detaining of
thousands of civilians and the cockpit-shot film of an American pilot
firing missiles into the streets of Fallujah: all of that has fuelled
and will fuel decades of future rage and resentment.

The Americans have effectively created a second Palestine, in which
they are now playing the part of the Israelis themselves.

But for any Christian who is driven by an apocalyptic and millennial
vision, these events are exactly what should be happening. Terrible
and desperate violence, blood and grief are all, for them, mile posts
on the road to God's dominion. The more there are, the better it is.

They are a sign of the great battle being joined. Fundamentalist
Muslim readers of The Revelation of St John the Divine will think the
same, as will Jews reading Daniel or certain passages from Isaiah.
Every one of those beliefs has other non-millennial dimensions to it,
but the world for the moment is held in the grip of the zealots, for
whom the day of reckoning has at last arrived.

The World Trade Centre, Beslan, the bombed hotels and nightclubs, the
gunships firing into the streets of Middle East cities, the detainees
who have so far been tortured to death in Iraq: all of that is a sign
of God in action, of the watchmen doing their work, of the ornament-
bedecked bridegrooms and the jewel-bedecked brides setting about the
task that God has given them.

But they are wrong, and the vision is wicked.

- Telegraph

Copyright: The Age.

Source: "Information Clearinghouse" ...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7117.htm


Cheers, Steve..

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 * Origin: Xaragmata / Adelaide SA telnet://xaragmata.thebbs.org (3:800/432)