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WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO BRING JESUS BACK NOW? AND WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO STOP IT?

Is it possible to kickstart the End of Days and convince Jesus to return now?

There are people who think so, and they're already working at it.

Christian Zionists and Jewish fundamentalists have joined together in the first step toward what the Christians believe will speed up Armageddon - the rebuilding of the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

But besides bloody Armageddon, they are courting a holy war - because on the site of the Second Temple stands the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest of Muslim shrines.
And to rebuild the Temple, they must destroy the Dome!

When Teddy Kagan discovers an unblemished red heifer on the Florida ranch of a TV evangelist, he knows the plan is under way - and that it's up to him and others he works with to make sure the worst doesn't come to pass.

Add a polo match (Jews v. Palestinians), a kibbutz making kosher wines and a good deal of trouble besides, a Kabbala death curse that doesn't work, and a series of strange relationships into the mix, and you get a rich stew of romance, satire and suspense and a scary look at what might be the most important event of our time.

The cast of characters:

• The man who wants to know why his brother was killed
• The man who never leaves the condo with the secret room
• The Florida televangelist who runs a cattle ranch
• The manic-depressive Israeli with the suicide vest
• The retired Jewish terrorist and Kabbalist
• The Israeli cowboy on the Golan Heights
• The hippie who wants the Messiah to come now
• The mysterious rabbi who sounds like Boston
• The Israeli professor with the hidden agenda
• The Satmar rebbe who lives in the town of the talking carp
• The famous man who’s never identified
• The Palm Beach reporter who gets it all; and
• The tenth red heifer of Numbers 19

This is the second novel by Aram Schefrin, Eric Hoffer Book Award and Montaigne Medal finalist for Marwan: The autobiography of a 9/11 terrorist.

You have no idea how far it's gone ...



Friday, May 16, 2008

HAGEE, BUSH AND MCCAIN



Sarah Posner on the Huffington Post:

Hagee's Lesson Plan for Bush's Appeasement Speech

Posted May 16, 2008 | 01:36 PM (EST)

For the past two years, John Hagee, the televangelist and head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has been laying out the lesson plan for Bush's speech in the Knesset this week, in which he accused Barack Obama of appeasing terrorists like Neville Chamberlain appeased the Nazis. Since Hagee founded CUFI in early 2006, he has been beating the drums for war with Iran, and rejecting diplomacy as Chamberlain-esque appeasement.

Hagee, who endorsed Bush in 2000 with a book, God's Candidate for America, said in 2003 said that "God raised up George Bush for this time in history to crush Saddam Hussein." After he met with McCain in early 2007, Hagee declared McCain's views on Israel "on target." In other words, McCain's no weak-kneed appeaser of terrorists. If God raised up Bush, and, as Hagee has maintained, the threat from Iraq was nothing compared to the threat from Iran, then his endorsement of McCain suggests that he views the Republican nominee, once again, as God's puppet for his deranged obsession with a bloody, war-ending war.

Since the 2006 publication of his incendiary, conspiracy and fear-mongering book, Jerusalem Countdown, Hagee has been comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to Hitler and accusing those favoring diplomacy of appeasing him. Ahmadinejad is not just like Hitler, though, he's like Haman, and he's like Pharaoh, too, and all those biblical stories prove, in Hagee's mind, that confronting him is essential for the survival of the Jews -- nothing short of a military strike will do. His reference to "God raising up" Bush for "this time in history" is a direct reference to Queen Esther's confrontation of Haman. And when Joe Lieberman compared Hagee to Moses last year, he no doubt was validating the Pharaoh comparison. But was he imagining Hagee leading the Jews to the promised land of a boiling lake of brimstone?

Hagee claims in Jerusalem Countdown that an Israeli government insider came to him in April 2005 with "warning to the world" that the President of Iran "will prove to be the new Hitler of the Middle East." This information compelled him, he says, to write the book and launch CUFI. His standard talking point since CUFI's launch has been "It's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler of the Middle East."

In the summer of 2006, when war raged between Israel and Hezbollah, and McCain took to the airwaves to suggest we had entered into World War III, one of Hagee's friends in the Knesset, Benny Elon, said McCain got that idea straight from Hagee.

In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2007, and again to CUFI in July that year, Hagee said:

As you know, Iran poses a threat to the State of Israel that promises nothing less than a nuclear holocaust. I have been saying on national television, in churches and auditoriums across America it is 1938; Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler... In the Bible when Pharaoh threatened the Jewish people of Egypt he became fish food in the Red Sea. When Haman threatened the Jews in Persia in modern-day Iran he and his sons hung from the gallows that he built for the Jews.

But the appeasers, Hagee goes on, don't just want to appease Iran:

Beyond that threat from Iran there's another more subtle threat that concerns me. I am concerned that in the coming months yet another attempt will be made to parcel out parts of Israel in a futile effort to appease Israel's enemies in the Middle East. I believe that misguided souls in Europe, I believe that the misguided souls in the political brothel that is now the United Nations and sadly -- and sadly even our own State Department will try once again to turn Israel into crocodile food. Winston Churchill said and I quote an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile in the futile hope that it will eat him last -- end of quote. In 1938 Czechoslovakia -- Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland land was turned into crocodile food for Nazi Germany. The Nazi beast smelled the weakness in the appeasers, ate the food and marched and devoured most of Europe and systematically slaughtered 6,000,000 Jewish people. We are again hearing calls to appease the enemies of Israel.

McCain compared himself to Churchill -- although without, as Bush did, explicitly comparing his opponents to Chamberlain -- in a creepy March 2008 ad. For Hagee, he's right on target, and there's no secret about who's in his crosshairs.

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Posted by Tweet Petite at 6:49 PM

1 comments:

USpace said...

The terrorist monkey can not be negotiated with. The only reason to talk to Ahmadamadmonkey in say maybe Switzerland is to provoke him by debating his ideology and criticizing the hatred. Force him to say lots of stupid and insane things which would be widely publicized thus educating more people to his ideology's insanity. This, I am quite sure, Obama would never do.

Ouch, Obama and the poor little Dems were hit a little too close to home by what GW said. It's one of the best things Bush has ever said. Bravo! And he didn't even have to mention the Dhimmicrats or any body's name.

So sure, then he folded in Saudi Arabia, but what he said in Israel almost makes that OK.
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
appease the appeasers

don't embarrass them
by calling them appeasers

.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe said
have a sit down with Hitler

he should have been sweet-talked
he had goodness within

.
Appeasement Talk Bothers Appeasers

Help Halt Terrorism Now!

USpace

:)
.

12:49 AM

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THE FACTS BEHIND THE NOVEL



From Rod Dreher at the National Review:

April 11, 2002 8:30 a.m.
Red-Heifer Days
Religion takes the lead.

Could this little calf born last month in Israel bring about Armageddon? The concept would have struck many people as absurd the last time such a calf was born, in 1997, and probably makes most readers laugh today. Big mistake: Never underestimate the power of religious faith to shape events, especially in the Holy Land. Especially right now.

Our eschatological heifer story begins on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where tens of millions of Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe the central events of each tradition's Last Days will play out. The site, the Biblical Mount Moriah, was the site of the Hebrews' First Temple, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, and the Second Temple, which the Romans leveled in 70 AD. Muslims, believing the site to be the place from which the Prophet Mohammed ascended into Heaven atop a steed, began in 685 to build the Noble Sanctuary, a 35-acre site in Jerusalem's walled Old City, containing the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al Aqsa mosque.

To Jews who adhere to ancient tradition, whose number include religious Israeli nationalists, the long-awaited Messiah will return to become the king of Israel and high priest of a rebuilt Temple, which can only be on Temple Mount. For Christian fundamentalists, Jesus Christ's return at the height of the battle of Armageddon, in which forces of the Antichrist clash in Israel with a 200 million-man army from the East, will require a Third Temple from which the Lord will begin a millennial reign. And for Muslims, an Antichrist figure called the Dajal will be a Jew who will lead an all-encompassing war against Islam, which will culminate in the return of Jesus (as a Muslim prophet), the Kaaba, or Sacred Rock in Mecca, transporting itself to Jerusalem, and final judgment in the valley just below the Noble Sanctuary.

"What happens at that one spot, more than anywhere else, quickens expectations of the End in three religions. And at that spot, the danger of provoking catastrophe is greatest," writes Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg in The End of Days, his 2000 book about the apocalyptic struggle over the Temple Mount.

So how does the calf recently born in Israel figure into things? As Gorenberg explains, the ashes of a flawless red heifer — an extremely rare creature — were required by the ancient Hebrews to purify worshipers who went into the Temple to pray. In modern times, rabbinical law forbids Jews from setting foot on the Temple Mount, thus violating the site where the Holy of Holies dwelled, until and unless they are ritually purified. Without a perfect red heifer to sacrifice, the Third Temple cannot be built, and Moshiach — the Messiah — will not come. Writes Gorenberg, "[Israeli] government officials and military leaders could only regard the requirement for the missing heifer as a stroke of sheer good fortune preventing conflict over the Mount."

In 1996, thanks in part to a cattle-breeding program set up in Israel with the help of Texas ranchers who are fundamentalist Christians, a red heifer was born. There was immense excitement among messianists of the Israeli religious Right, and their American Christian counterparts. The world media covered it as a joke, but it wasn't funny to David Landau, columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz. He called the red heifer "a four-legged bomb" that could "set the entire region on fire." Muslim leaders worried about the red heifer too, as they would see an attempt by Jews to take over the Temple Mount as a sign of the Islamic apocalypse.

As it turned out, during the three years of waiting for the heifer to reach the ritually mandated age of sacrifice, white hairs popped out on the tip of her tail. This bovine was, alas, not divine. But now there's a successor, and rabbis who have examined her have declared her ritually acceptable (though she will not be ready for sacrifice for three years). She arrives at a time when Israel is fighting a war for survival with the Palestinians, who are almost entirely Muslim, and a time in which Islam and the West appear to be girding for battle with each other, as Islamic tradition predicts will be the state of the world before the Final Judgment.

"These kinds of circumstances are exactly what people are waiting for," says Richard Landes, a Boston University history professor and director of its Center for Millenial Studies. "We could be starting a war. If this is a real red heifer, and strict Orthodox rabbis have declared her worthy of sacrifice, then a lot of Jews in Israel will take that as a sign that a new phase of history is about to begin. The Muslims are ready for jihad anyway, so if you have Jews up there doing sacrifices, talk about a red flag in front of a charging bull."

Landes says there is immense anger among Israelis, both religious and secular, at the ingratitude of Muslims, whom the conquering Israeli army allowed to occupy and control the Temple Mount in 1967. Add to this the fury of a nation under attack by Islamic suicide bombers, and, says Landes, "it's entirely conceivable that this [red heifer] could trigger a new round of attempts to blow up the Dome of the Rock."

This is something the Israeli security forces have long been vigilant against. But with their attentions drawn elsewhere by the war with the Palestinians, it's possible that a radical group could slip the net. And it's possible that religious extremists elements within the Israeli army could help them.

"This idea is nothing to laugh at," says novelist Robert Stone, whose novel Damascus Gate centers around a similar conspiracy. "There have been at least four actual plots to clear the space where the Temple had stood. Some of them went surprisingly high into the army and police."

Timothy Weber, dean of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Ill., has written extensively about the worldview of apocalypse-minded American Protestants. He tells NRO that "Bible teachers are foaming at the mouth over what's happening now in Israel."

"It really does play into the longstanding scenario that dispensationalists have believed would happen in the End: a growing disdain for Israel, Israel's isolation from the rest of the world, and mounting pressure on the Jewish state," Weber says. "This all leads up to the emergence of an Antichrist, who will step up and bring peace to the situation, and Israel and the world will welcome him as a solution to an apparently unsolvable problem."

The unshakable belief in particular prophetic visions — Jewish, Christian, or Islamic — makes the art of political compromise impossible when it comes to Jerusalem. Says Weber: "There's no way to negotiate these ideas. If you believe that this is in the prophetic cards, that this is history before it happens, that this is how God is going to manipulate events to bring about the final phase of human history, then you cannot negotiate land for peace, or anything else."

Put another way: You don't have to believe that a rust-colored calf could bring about the end of the world — or that 72 black-eyed virgins await the pious Islamic suicide bomber in paradise — but there are many people who do, and are prepared to act on that belief. This is a stubborn reality that eludes many of us in the modern, secular West, particularly those who work in the media, and who are therefore responsible for reporting and explaining the world to the masses.

"Sometimes you look at religion events and you want to laugh out loud, because they're so bizarre," says Terry Mattingly, a syndicated religion columnist and scholar of media and religion at Palm Beach Atlantic College. "If your worldview is essentially materialist, then to be 'real' something has to present itself in a form that makes sense in a laboratory, or on Wall Street, or in the New Hampshire primary, and anything that can't be explained within those templates doesn't count. Thus we can't seem to understand why people behave in ways that don't serve their self-interest."

Boston University's Landes agrees, saying that the American cultural elite tend to disdain religion, when in fact it is a major factor in modern history. "When 9/11 happened, one of the questions people asked were, 'Is it religious, or is it political?' People are more comfortable explaining it as politics. The very fact that people asked that question shows how little they understand," he says.

"Since September 11, we have all been brought to the point of recognizing the pervasive power of religions to shape all kinds of events," Weber adds. "We are dealing with ancient religious convictions and memories, and they are driving forces in the modern world. The secular press just doesn't get it, but it seems to me there's no other way to understand this."

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USEFUL WEBSITES

The following websites provide information generally useful to readers of this book:

Virtual Tour of Jerusalem
The Endtime News Digest
History of Israel
Historical Maps of Israel
More maps
Hasidic Judaism
Temple Mount Tour with the Temple Institute
The perils of Jewish messianism
Redheifer.org
FRONTLINE: Apocalypse
Signs of the End of Times
Arutz Sheva on the red heifer
Here it all is in a nutshell
The 1996 Kotel tunnel incident
Recent news developments
Tunnel vision
THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Ohr Somayach
Here's a really good example of the problem we've got
The fastest growing cult in the USA
The Jewish Press loves Hagee
The Conservative Christian Zionist