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The religious right's hypocrisy now on full display

Highland Deac said:
NY Times article on how some Evangelical churches are promoting the "2020 election was stolen from Trump" bogus claim. Grifting and preaching conspiracy theories for our New Messiah!

"The 11 a.m. service at Church for All Nations, a large nondenominational evangelical church in Colorado’s second-largest city, began as such services usually do. The congregation of young families and older couples swayed and sang along to live music. Mark Cowart, the church’s senior pastor, delivered an update on a church mission project. Then Cowart turned the pulpit over to a guest speaker, William Federer.

An evangelical commentator and one-time Republican congressional candidate, Federer led the congregation through an hourlong PowerPoint presentation based on his 2020 book, “Socialism — The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control.” Many congregants scribbled in the notebooks they had brought from home.

I believe God is pushing the world to a decision-making moment,” Federer said, building toward his conclusion. “We used to have national politicians that held back the floodgates of hell. The umbrella’s been ripped after Jan. 6, and now it’s raining down upon every one of us. We had politicians that were supposed to certify that — and instead they just accepted it. And, lo and behold, an anti-Christian spirit’s been released across the country and the world.” Evangelical churches have long been powerful vehicles for grassroots activism and influence on the American right, mobilized around issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Now, some of those churches have embraced a new cause: promoting Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen."

Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/crusade-challenge-2020-election-blessed-115420287.html
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There is very little that makes me more upset than churches like this not paying taxes.
 
BarcaDeac said:
the notebook and bringing your own Bible thing is weird to me about evangelicals (among a million other things). I grew up in the Presbyterian church and they had Bibles and hymnals in the pews. But evangelicals treat it like a lecture.
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Wait, then what is the sermon for with Presbyterians?
 
Shooshmoo said:
There is very little that makes me more upset than churches like this not paying taxes.
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Yep. Now, if they want to make tax-deductible contributions to organizations that actually do good works, fine. It would also be reasonable for them to have certain, limited, tax-deductible expenses (eg, the church runs a kitchen to feed the homeless, food cost is credited). But no more tax-exempt for the mere existence of the church.
 
Shooshmoo said:
There is very little that makes me more upset than churches like this not paying taxes.
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Tobacco Road said:
Yep. Now, if they want to make tax-deductible contributions to organizations that actually do good works, fine. It would also be reasonable for them to have certain, limited, tax-deductible expenses (eg, the church runs a kitchen to feed the homeless, food cost is credited). But no more tax-exempt for the mere existence of the church.
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You people say shit like this like there's any chance something like that is going to occur in your lifetime.
 
Huh? We say it like we wish it would occur. There are lots of things we discuss where we know our opinion won't be implemented. We talk about things we think the NCAA should do all the time. We also know they probably won't do any of it. Yet, there is still a sports message board.
 
Highland Deac said:
So Putin's invasion of Ukraine is all just a part of God's plan to eventually attack Israel and bring about Armageddon and the End of Days. Makes sense.

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Just thought I would chime in here with a longish post in case responding to this in case anyone is interested in biblical minutia, if not feel free to ignore. Robertson here is not claiming that Putin's invasion is under divine sanction, he is claiming that Putin's evil scheme (the invasion of Ukraine) is consistent with his (Robertson's) personal view on Christian end times predictions. To use an unrelated Biblical passage, it is fairly standard for Christians to believe that God can use the evil deeds of man to accomplish God's own good divine objectives (see Gen. 50:20).

What Robertson is referring to here is most likely Ezekiel 38 in which the Lord says, "“Son of man, set your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshek and Tubal; prophesy against him and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against you, Gog, chief prince of Meshek and Tubal. I will turn you around, put hooks in your jaws and bring you out with your whole army—your horses, your horsemen fully armed, and a great horde with large and small shields, all of them brandishing their swords. Persia, Cush and Put will be with them, all with shields and helmets, also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you."

The general gist of the rest of the passage is that in Ezekiel is that a huge army from every corner of the known world (although mostly from the north of Israel) would attack Israel after Israel had been "a land that [had] been restored from war." The passage also states this would occur in "the last years" or "last days," which is why Robertson thinks its an end times passage. What ensues in the passage is that the hordes are destroyed by the power of God, which comes with an earthquake, destruction of mountains and cities, plague, bloodshed, fire, hailstones, and burning sulfur. I don't know what Robertson thinks about this, but there are those amongst conservative evangelicals that think this is an allusion to the power of nuclear weapons.

Let me break down a few terms. "Son of man" is a term that is used sometimes in the New Testament to refer to Jesus; in the Old Testament it is used in two contexts. Sometimes it is used to refer to a prophet who is, unsurprisingly, human, and sometimes it is used to refer to a messianic figure in heaven who is enthroned with God but who has at least the appearance of being human. In the context of this passage, Ezekiel is referring simply to himself.

Before I define the next set of terms, please put this in your biblical trivia basket: Noah (the guy with the ark in the flood in Genesis) had three sons: Ham, Japheth, and Shem. The Israelites considered themselves, as well as most of the tribes in their area and into Arabia, as descendants of Shem (hence the term, "Semite" or "Shemite").

"Magog" "Meshek" "Tubal" "Gomer," and "Togarmah" are tribes/lands/people found in Gen. 10 when the nations are divided following the events of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel. The Bible does not explicitly state where these places are, however they are generally viewed as being to the north of Israel somewhere in the region of the Black and Caspian seas. All of these are listed as descendants of Noah's son Japheth who is generally associated with the area of Asia Minor and Europe. In fact, the only two sons of Japheth that are not part of the enemy army in Ezekiel 38 are "Tiras" and "Javan", which are generally associated with Greece. This is why Robertson is connecting the events in Russia and Ukraine to this passage.

It's pretty clear what "Persia" refers to and the writer is probably conflating "Persia" with the Gen. 10 son of Japheth "Madai" which may refer to Media (a tribe that was very close politically and geographically with the Persia of Ezekiel's day). In the past most scholars thought "Cush" referred to a kingdom in modern day Ethiopia, but my understanding is that identification is now considered less clear. "Put" is generally understood to refer to an area encompassed by modern day Libya. Both "Cush" and "Put" are mentioned as descendant's of Noah's other son, Ham, and in fact are 2 out of Ham's 4 sons. The other two sons of Ham are Canaan and Mizraim; Canaan would have been the father of tribes immediately adjacent to ancient Israel while Mizraim is a term often used for Egypt in the Old Testament.

So, since most of the sons of Japheth and half the sons of Ham are involved in this battle, and since most (not all, but that is a subject for a different tangent) of the known world for an Israelite would have been descended from either Japheth, Ham, or Shem, the general gist of the passage is that this is a battle between Israel/Shem (championed by God) and the world.

As far as I can tell, there is no historical event in the past that this passage neatly fits into. The only thing that comes remotely close is the invasion of Judah by Antiochus Ephiphanes, a Greek king after Alexander the Great (which would have also been after the death of Ezekiel), but for various reasons the fit is really not that good at all.

Since there is no clear fulfillment of the passage in the past, modern evangelical Christians try to take this passage and apply modern nation-states to the nations in Gen. 10 and thereby develop some kind of end times predictive system that will manifest in the modern world. As all reading on this board can probably already predict, none of these end times predictions have really held up over the years, but due to intense interest by evangelicals over their belief in the return of Jesus these kinds of predictions will not go away until they are satisfied that Jesus has returned.

Like many evangelical Christians, I have my own half-baked and kooky ideas about this passage, which is a fun one to speculate on, but I will spare you all.
 
WakeForestRanger said:
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If fascism does come to pass in this country in the next few years, would anyone be at all surprised to see some televangelists or megachurch types blessing Trump's "Soldiers of the Lord" or "Patriot Militia" in a manner similar to this? I mean, this picture is basically many Trumpers wet dream - Jeezus, guns, preachers, and white militia types all killin' libruls and unworthy minorities for the Lord.
 
I mean...the KKK is a Christian organization.
 
wakephan09 said:
But anti-Catholic!
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If you read about the KKK in the 1920s, when it was a true nationwide organization and at its height of power (4 to 5 million paying members), their stance on issues like immigration, separation of church and state, teaching the Protestant Bible and banning the teaching of evolution and certain books in schools and so on, is almost exactly what Trumpite Republicans stand for today - the similarities are just uncanny. And so was the gross hypocrisy of their leaders, like D.C. Stephenson of Indiana. But of course no one prominent in the news media is apparently willing to call attention to the similarities.
 
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Tobacco Road said:
Huh? We say it like we wish it would occur. There are lots of things we discuss where we know our opinion won't be implemented. We talk about things we think the NCAA should do all the time. We also know they probably won't do any of it. Yet, there is still a sports message board.
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Trust me -- I know it's not going to happen in this dumbass, backwards country.
 
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