Meet The Radical Evangelical Army Behind Rick Perry

The main divergence between the New Apostolic Reformation and other Christian fundamentalist sects is their differing views of how End Times will go down.

New Apostles reject the traditional fundamentalist belief that born-again believers will be lifted up in the Rapture.

Instead, New Apostles believe that there will be seven years of battle and calamity before the Second Coming of Christ. During those Final Days, a new generation of believers will emerge to “execute God’s judgment” and cleanse the world of demons. According to this belief, the faithful must reestablish Christian control over the world — including its social institutions — before Christ can come back.

On September 28, 2009, at 1:40 p.m., God’s messengers visited Rick Perry.

On this day, the Lord’s messengers arrived in the form of two Texas pastors, Tom Schlueter of Arlington and Bob Long of San Marcos, who called on Perry in the governor’s office inside the state Capitol. Schlueter and Long both oversee small congregations, but they are more than just pastors. They consider themselves modern-day apostles and prophets, blessed with the same gifts as Old Testament prophets or New Testament apostles.

The pastors told Perry of God’s grand plan for Texas. A chain of powerful prophecies had proclaimed that Texas was “The Prophet State,” anointed by God to lead the United States into revival and Godly government. And the governor would have a special role.

The day before the meeting, Schlueter had received a prophetic message from Chuck Pierce, an influential prophet from Denton, Texas. God had apparently commanded Schlueter—through Pierce—to “pray by lifting the hand of the one I show you that is in the place of civil rule.”

Gov. Perry, it seemed.

Schlueter had prayed before his congregation: “Lord Jesus I bring to you today Gov. Perry. … I am just bringing you his hand and I pray Lord that he will grasp ahold of it. For if he does you will use him mightily.”

And grasp ahold the governor did. At the end of their meeting, Perry asked the two pastors to pray over him. As the pastors would later recount, the Lord spoke prophetically as Schlueter laid his hands on Perry, their heads bowed before a painting of the Battle of the Alamo. Schlueter “declared over [Perry] that there was a leadership role beyond Texas and that Texas had a role beyond what people understand,” Long later told his congregation.

So you have to wonder: Is Rick Perry God’s man for president?

Read the whole thing, it’s important.  And spread it around.

Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, makes the point that this is “nothing new.”

Perry’s event is deeply problematic, as I’ve argued before. Some of his apostles, it is true, have a penchant for the most outlandish prophecy. But if you see it as a bolt of lightning through which Rick Perry has created something weirdly new, you’re missing the larger picture. He’s being more bold and unabashed in courting some of the lesser known (and therefore less politically astute) figures than some of his predecessors have been, and that might be a strategy that backfires on him. But he’s following a long legacy.

Perhaps – Pat Robertson ran for the presidency before, but  the fringe wields much more power than the past; it’s not really fringe anymore.  Also, post 9-11, apocalyptic hysteria has been ramped up for everyone, Christian and atheist included, given the world seems to be rapidly falling apart, so this type of belief will only deepen.  Finally, the candidates themselves are becoming more fanatical – Robertson was a preacher, so preaching was part of his game.  Bachmann and Perry are politicians, thereby giving them some cover of legitimacy.

Personally, Bachmann scares me more than Perry.  Even though Perry would have a better shot to win, he strikes me as another Bush – part evangelical, but steered more by Koch-style economics and wars for oil.  Perry was a Democrat fairly recently – he’s potentially posturing as much as a true believer.  Even Palin seems empty enough that she could easily be a puppet for other people, like Bush.  Whereas Bachmann seems like a believer in every part of her soul.  She is an End Timer, and might even defy the input of Koch Industries, who probably don’t want to die in a fiery Armageddon.

I’m not sure the point of saying this is “nothing new.”  I guess the subtext is – Republicans have always been crazy, don’t support Republicans.  But the other subtext is that they’ve always been this crazy, and America hasn’t burnt to the ground, so don’t worry about it.

On her post comes this comment, which shows just how serious this is.  If voting for Democrats is “demonic” and not voting for Republicans is thwarting the arrival of Jesus, then terrorism isn’t far off.  It’s getting scary out there:

Dear Sarah you are correct…there are tons of Hypocrites and false prophets…but you are incorrect in your twisted slander. With all respect you are a Modern Day Pharisee and you have stood directly against the written Word of God…and you will reap what you have sown! [Gal. 6:7,8]
To come against real Christians or a man praying not only Pharisitical…it is Demonic!
Better fall on your knees before the real God.

On the Andrew Sullivan blog (written by a guest poster) there’s a similarly dismissive post:

Well golly gosh. You mean to say supporters of one team think they’re right and supporters of another team are wrong? I appreciate that in matters of faith it is indelicate to point this out but, blimey, I seem to recall Pope Benedict also suggesting that protestants are theologically mistaken too. At some fundamental serious adherents to any sect must believe in the righteousness of their interpretation of the scriptures and, consequently, that alternative beliefs lack substance….

So, in the end, Michele Bachmann used to be a pretty conservative Lutheran. Which means she’s not a Roman Catholic and her church is not likely to be impressed by the Bishop of Rome. Big deal! Next: Red Sox fans disagree with Yankee fans. Amazing!

It’s no big deal if she believes the pope is the Anti-Christ.  It’s just a part of her faith!  A true WTF moment.  Taking this logic, you could say, “Michele Bachmann believes in the End Times.  So do 50 million other people, so who cares?”   It’s almost like being an apologist for fanatics, and saying let them believe whatever they want, no matter how insane that is, and no matter how close they get to the highest corridors of power.  This kind of intellectual fairness is as dangerous as the belief itself.  The same sort of balance occurs on mainstream news – the Christian right is given a voice because it indeed is the perspective of millions of people, but without the counter of – “Wait, that doesn’t make any sense…” – it becomes an normal part of the conversation, which doesn’t make any more sense than teaching Creationism as science.

This Salon piece gets at Bachmann’s End Times beliefs, but the snarkiness does not do the subject any service.

Now the question is, why is Bachmann running for president? If Michele Bachmann is a true Christian, she should rise bodily to Heaven during the Rapture, making her totally unable to govern. Is she going to pick a non-believer running mate in order to ensure continuity of government? The people have a right to know who will be president during the famines, wars, and devastation that will overtake the Earth in the years before the Second Coming!

It’s as if non-believers can’t quite feel empathy for the true believer – believers must be all slightly kidding, given how ridiculous their ideas are.  Granted, people also make fun of the afterlife with virgins of Islamic fundamentalists, but snark is only part of the discussion.     Mocking this accomplishes nothing – readers can write this off as a fantastic joke, when it’s deadly serious.  Try to believe for a moment that Armageddon is necessary with the same certainty that the sky is blue.

I’ve given up being surprised when the mainstream right can believe in the most implausible ideas imaginable.  The swift-boating of Kerry.  Obama is a socialist.  At first, I thought – that’s so blindly the opposite of reality that the majority can’t possibly believe it.  But they do – part of this is a symptom of believing in the fairy tales of organized religion – so truth can be a fiction and fiction a truth.  The next in line after Obama is a socialist is Jesus is Coming.   Mock this at your peril.

Not a joke:

Who are these Volunteer Pet Caretakers and how do I know they’ll take good care of my pets?

Most Volunteer Pet Caretakers fit this description:

• They are atheist or another non-Christian religion.
• They love animals enough to register with us even though they do not believe there will be a Rapture (or are agnostic about it).
• They are not paid, so they are not signing up simply to make a quick buck. In fact, they’ve agreed to care for the pets they rescue as their own, including being financially responsible for them.

We match Volunteer Pet Caretakers by location and the types of pets they wish to care for. Some Volunteer Pet Caretakers will care for any type of pet, while others express interest in only caring for particular animals, such as only dogs or only cats. They have agreed to seek out other Volunteer Pet Caretakers to help them with our mission if the Rapture occurs. Each Volunteer Caretaker will be given access to our database of animal shelters and other animal rescue groups so they can quickly find other animal lovers to help rescue your pets.

This one’s the joke, but they’re identical.

A Q&A with Harold Camping:

Q: Who gets to ascend to heaven?
A: Those who accept Christ as the messiah. Even Jews are invited, says Camping, but only if they accept Christ – which would seem to make them no longer Jewish.

Q: How many will be Raptured?
A: Campbell estimates 200 million. The remaining nearly 7 billion face a grisly fate – crushed in the quake, burned by sulfur, turned into pillars of salt, etc.

Q: Why May 21?
A: Camping calculates May 21 is exactly 7,000 years from the date of the Noah’s Ark flood. In his book “Time Has an End,” Camping writes. “The year 391 B.C. is the year when the Old Testament was finished, and 2,011 + 391 – 1 = 2,401, or 7 x 7 x 7 x 7.” There you have it.

Q: Any other reason?
A: Yes. Gay Pride and same-sex marriage. Camping says God will punish America and the rest of the world for Gay Pride and same-sex marriages, just as Sodom and Gomorrah were punished with fire and brimstone in the Old Testament.

Q: Will the Earth end on May 21?
A: No. The Earth will stick around for a few more months of “chaos and awful suffering” before being obliterated Oct. 21.

etc.

Spent the morning looking into books by Nephilim-heads – people who think aliens are demons. A scary lot, but a pretty inevitable jumping off point from End Times hysteria. So I bought one.

There’s one reason my book’s not astoundingly successful – as compared to the Christianist/Alien books, which sell very well – because I realize I’m fulfilling a very small niche. A conspiracy theorist who thinks Alex Jones is full of shit, an eschatologist who doesn’t believe in the End Times, a UFO believer who’s creeped out by most UFO believers – and finally a writer for an audience who mostly think these topics are not worth considering. But then, if the Nephilim-heads are right, I’m an agent of the devil (like O’Donnell, an actual comparison I read this morning) so I shouldn’t be reaching an audience.

But there are some readers out there. Discovered on iTunes:

I still cant put this book away! Ive read it a couple of times now and its so easy to miss stuff because theres so much happening inside this book its just crazy! If youre interested in movies/books about the apocolypse to aliens to corruption or even religion you have to read this book! You wont be dissapointed! Very funny and entertaining!

Background:

By God’s grace and tremendous mercy, He is giving us advanced warning as to what He is about to do. On Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011, this 5-month period of horrible torment will begin for all the inhabitants of the earth. It will be on May 21st that God will raise up all the dead that have ever died from their graves. Earthquakes will ravage the whole world as the earth will no longer conceal its dead (Isaiah 26:21). People who died as saved individuals will experience the resurrection of their bodies and immediately leave this world to forever be with the Lord. Those who died unsaved will be raised up as well, but only to have their lifeless bodies scattered about the face of all the earth. Death will be everywhere.

“We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance,” Beck told Bill O’Reilly on November 14, 2008, just after President Obama’s election. “I feel the Constitution is hanging in the balance right now, hanging by a thread unless the good Americans wake up.”

The Constitution is hanging by a thread.

Most Americans would have heard this as just another bit of overblown commentary and thought nothing more of it. But to those familiar with the White Horse Prophecy, it was an unmistakable signal.

The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in — on the proverbial white horse — to save the country.

“When the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a single thread, they will have to call for the ‘Mormon’ Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it,” Brigham Young, Smith’s successor as head of the church, wrote in 1855.

Was it just a coincidence in wording, or was Beck, a 1999 Mormon convert, speaking in coded language about the need to fulfill the Mormon prophecy? A conversation on Beck’s radio show ten days earlier would seem to rule out coincidence. Beck was interviewing Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, also a Mormon, when he said: “I heard Barack Obama talk about the Constitution and I thought, we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread.”

“Well, let me tell you something,” Hatch responded. “I believe the Constitution is hanging by a thread.”

Yes, the Constitution is hanging by a thread – begun by the Republican party. Does Glenn Beck know this? My guess is yes, and he wants it to be that way, so he can save the day, clutching a bottle of whiskey. He is, as some say, a dry drunk.  I don’t generally like to make fun of addicts, but this is Glenn Beck, a man setting himself up to be the Great White Hope.

BTW, they spell “Armageddon” wrong.

(via)

People say that Obama’s religion should be a non-issue. Religion is a private matter.  Hardly.  It should be the first thing people ask Sarah Palin on the campaign trail.  If the Book of Revelation forms her worldview, this is more important than any position she might have on taxes.  But that won’t happen – and no politician is going to say, “I want Armageddon to usher in the Second Coming.”  That is, until the Christian right are in such numbers that admitting such a thing wouldn’t be a problem. We’re right now at a stage where politicians can say “Black is an evil color” or “Masturbation is evil” and they’re not laughed out of contention. Biblical prophesying isn’t far behind.  The anti-masturbation Christianism of Christine O’Donnell is evidence enough that she believes in the LeHaye view of the Second Coming – i.e. war is the answer. She’s an extremist – and she needs to be questioned on the depth of her extremism.  The masturbation issue is a joke and really a distraction.  If she desires world war, that’s no joke at all.

What’s so terrifying is that Jack Van Impe has a mainstream voice. This wasn’t on an obscure cable channel – it was channel 13.  And I wonder: where is the same sort of information coming from a left-wing perspective.  A Glenn Beck-style analyst – though not as stupid – talking seriously about the seriously-warped dynamic unfolding very quickly. Michael Moore is good – especially “Capitalism” – but he makes one movie a year. As much as I appreciate what John Stewart and Colbert do, their main job is to point out the stupidity and contradictions on the right, not what might really be happening. Olbermann or Maddow do not suffice.  Jessie Ventura’s show was an embarrassment. Alex Jones, no.  Neither of the last two make any sense because conspiracy theorists so often fear government for the wrong reasons.  If the U.S. government perpetrated 9-11, that’s a nightmare, but that’s several shades more demonic than cap and trade.  It shouldn’t be a conspiracy theorist’s job to see fear everywhere.

But conspiracies do happen – and the left are too “reasonable” to believe in conspiracies.  It takes a somewhat religious mind to look for hidden machinations.  Christianists see hidden machinations where there are none – Jack Van Impe sells his socialist takeover DVD.  And the ardent secularism of the left actually does have some problems.  The science-based reasoning of the left never allows in far-out theories, even if some of those theories (like 9-11) have people wielding peer-reviewed scientific papers.  On Disinfo, there’s a post called Conspiracy Phobia on the Left.  It says:

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

So who’s going to answer the call and become the liberal Glenn Beck? And to repeat – I don’t mean something as stupid and off-the-wall as Beck, but someone who’s willing to take on the many conspiracies that have always existed.  Someone who will paint an honest view of what’s happening with the Fed, the failures of capitalism, the war machine, and so on.  It needs to happen – because the right has the loudest voice in this arena, and so millions of disaffected people are going to look to them and only get filled with misinformation.

After watching Van Impe, an old episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” came on (at 3 AM, really sleepless) and I felt a little better.  No, there’s no one standing there with a chalkboard connecting disparate dots, but weird ideas do have a voice in the mainstream. This was about Dr. Crusher (who I met recently – she’s in a theatre group with my dad) who finds everyone she knows disappearing because the idea manifested in her thoughts.  Not quite a political statement, but interesting.  It made me appreciate Harry Potter as well – if you’re a right wing Christian, the success of pagan Harry Potter must look like the kind of nightmare that Jack Van Impe looks to me.  There’s a kind of battle of pop culture happening. I’ve spent a lot of time criticizing pop culture, but I at least see how it can be helpful when not too anesthetizing.  So the far right isn’t necessarily going to win this battle, but they’re definitely having far too many successes.

Tom Tomorrow’s got a good cartoon about how stupid the religious debate is in this country.  But that doesn’t mean religion should be pushed aside as not mattering.  More, it should show people how something that shouldn’t matter at all is guiding some politician’s every decision.  And voters should run from these politicians like they’re wielding a weapon.

This excerpt is taken from this post:

A man looking not much younger than Kenny stood. “Sir, if I may argue our side of the issue –”

“Your side? You are accursed! Or are you a believer, confident you shall live past your hundreth birthday?”

“It merely happens that I respectfully disagree –”

“Respectfully? You are fortunate you remain on this Earth, for God willed that your young compatriots become examples for the rest of this nation.”

“But, sir, that is precisely our point. What kind of a loving God is so capricious that He would –”

“Demolish this building!” Tison roared. “Rebuild it as a temple to the Lord. Delight in His ways. Seek His face. Follow His statutes. Never again disobey His commands. And henceforth this land shall be known as Osaze, `loved by God.’ Lest you fear that his wrath evidences something other than His love, imagine what He could have done in the face of this ultimate insult.”

“Now we His servants shall travel throughout Osaze, teaching the whole counsel of God to the wicked and the undecided and the unbelieving. Woe to anyone who attempts to hamper this effort! While the Lord has not told us when He will restore the life-giving waters, He hereby confirms His immediate judgment of sin. There shall be no more even temporary tolerance of disbelief. Those who choose their own way will continue to perish by their hundreth birthdays, and anyone who dares blaspheme before that shall immeidately surely die.”

As Rayford followed Tsion and the others out, the entire auditorium was filled with weeping and men and women pleading for forgiveness and mercy.

It’s amazing how singularly fucking dangerous this is.  It’s God as fascist dictator.  The Left Behind series is a holocaust fantasy about persecuting non-Christians.  No wonder fundamentalist Christians protest mosques or want to go to war with Iran.  Non-Christians don’t deserve to live.

Even people who like the books see that it has very little in it about the Christian faith:

Although the main characters in the book become Christians, very little is said about actually following Christ in life. Little is said about any real conversion with regard to living lives of love and service. Nothing is said in this series about embracing the way of the cross as those who are left behind face the years of Tribulation. To be sure, there is some discussion of martyrdom, but it is along the vein of soldiers in Afghanistan giving their lives to the cause. Instead of leading lives that are renewed in daily following Christ, these so-called believers seethe with anger and wish constantly for the privilege of being able to kill the Antichrist.

In other words, this is a book about war, not peace. Meanwhile, Tim LaHaye gets a seat at the table with potential presidential candidates.

The message that I don’t understand is this – why on earth is LaHaye upset that Obama is ushering in the Apocalypse?  No End Times means no Second Coming.  The same problem occurs in the books.  The Tribulation Force tries to stop the rise of Nicolae Carpathia, the Anti-Christ.  Why stop the Anti-Christ if he’s a necessary part of the Revelation story?  Furthermore, why fear that Obama’s the Anti-Christ  – same issue.  It’s adding a whole new layer of stupidity to this death cult.

Plainly, the Left Behind series has no common sense. And it’s 70-million strong.