(Photo: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images) John Hagee of Christians United for Israel speaks during a visit he led of evangelicals to the Israeli settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank in April. They received an enthusiastic welcome, not only because of the millions of dollars they have given the settlement, but because of pastor Hagee’s firm opposition to returning the land to the Palestinians in peace negotiations.
Book Excerpt – Pastor Hagee and Christians United for Israel Push for Armageddon This article is excerpted from God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters (Sausalito, CA: PoliPoint Press, 2008).
Those nations who align with God’s purpose will receive His blessing. Those who follow a policy of opposition to God’s purpose will receive the swift and severe judgment of God without limitation. –John Hagee, Jerusalem Countdown
The carnival at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio looks, at first glance, like any other church festival, with rides, games, food, and children playing in the waning sunshine of a warm October afternoon. But look again and you’ll see some unusual twists. The festivities are ringed with twelve booths selling food, each booth meant to signify one of the tribes of Israel. The booths, visitors are told, are in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Sukkoth. Under the tent, there’s no preacher, no laying on of hands, no casting out devils.
This tent houses a very different kind of revival, one in which Christians are buying challah covers, tallith, kiddush cups, mezuzahs, and other Judaic items, all made in Israel. They are buying products even though, as one woman remarked about the Hebrew writing, “I don’t know what it says.” Here on John Hagee’s sprawling church property, on the weekend of Hagee’s annual Night to Honor Israel, Hagee’s followers from all over the country have come to celebrate what they call their “Hebraic roots” and to claim ownership of the world’s most hotly contested piece of real estate: not for the Jews but for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Inside the building, the entertainment is the stuff of biblical prophecy: stories of blood, gore, conflagrations, and apocalyptic showdowns between good and evil. Hagee’s injection of the charged rhetoric of biblical prophecy into contemporary foreign policy has catapulted him to the forefront of an American Christian Zionist movement that has become the darling of conservative Israel hawks in Washington and neoconservatives yearning for regional war in the Middle East.
This weekend former CIA director James Woolsey is a featured speaker, and Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel will speak by video link. National and local Jewish leaders are on hand to pay homage to Hagee’s alleged support for the Jewish people and the state of Israel. The Jews have no greater friend, the audience is told, than John Hagee, even though the book he wrote, prominently advertised on the church’s parking lot marquee, predicts they will perish in a lake of brimstone at Armageddon.
The line for the Night to Honor Israel started forming outside the church even before the doors were scheduled to open. The atmosphere is festive, and people are filled with anticipation. But the party they are looking forward to is not taking place inside the church, where the Cornerstone Choir sings “Hava Nagila Texas Style!” and where, in a video montage of Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock magically disappears. Rather, the anticipation is for the Second Coming, when, Hagee has said, Jesus will sit “right there on that Temple Mount” and rule the world.
In its short history, Hagee’s grassroots movement, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has become the most visible organization of American Christian Zionists. Hagee launched the organization in February 2006, just a month after the release of his book Jerusalem Countdown, which became a best seller. In the book Hagee asserts that an American and Israeli war on Iran is not only biblically prophesied but necessary to bring about Armageddon and the Second Coming, a theme that drew four hundred pastors and Christian leaders to San Antonio to the inaugural meeting of his Christian Zionist organization.
Publiceye.org
The opinions and views articulated by the author do not necessarily reflect those of Israel e News.
Sarah Posner is an investigative journalist covering the
activities of conservative Evangelicals.
