Here is a clip from an interesting article:
The anti-Islamic rhetoric is at fever pitch today. Last June, the prophecy magazine Midnight Call warmly endorsed a fierce attack on Islam by Franklin Graham (son of Billy) and summed up Graham's case in stark terms: "Islam is an evil religion." In Lindsey's 1996 prophecy novel, "Blood Moon," Israel, in retaliation for a planned nuclear attack by an Arab extremist, launches a massive thermonuclear assault on the entire Arab world. Genocide, in short, becomes the ultimate means of prophetic fulfillment.
Anticipating George W. Bush, prophecy writers in the late 20th century also quickly zeroed in on Saddam Hussein. If not the Antichrist himself, they suggested, Saddam could well be a forerunner of the Evil One. In full-page newspaper advertisements during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the organization Jews for Jesus declared that Saddam "represents the spirit of Antichrist about which the Bible warns us."
Prophecy believers found particular significance in Saddam's grandiose plan, launched in the 1970s, to rebuild Babylon on its ancient ruins. The fabled city on the Euphrates, south of Baghdad, which included one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, owed its splendor to King Nebuchadnezzar, the same wicked ruler who warred against Israel and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C., for which impiety, according to the Book of Daniel, he went mad and ended his days eating grass in the fields.
In Revelation, Babylon embodies all that is corrupt, "a great whore ... with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication." It stands as the antithesis of Jerusalem, the city of righteousness, and Revelation prophesies its annihilation by fire. Since Babylon cannot be destroyed unless it exists, Saddam's ambitious public-works project is seen as an essential step toward prophetic fulfillment.
Charles Dyer's "The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times" (1991) elaborates the theme. Along with the emergence of modern Israel and the European Union (forerunner of the Antichrist's world system), writes Dyer, Saddam's restoration of Babylon signals the approaching end and offers "thrilling proof that Bible prophecies are infallible." "When Babylon is ultimately destroyed," he continues, "Israel will finally be at peace and will dwell in safety."
That theme resonates powerfully with today's calls for Saddam's overthrow. Indeed, the cover illustration of Dyer's book juxtaposes Saddam and Nebuchadnezzar. Hal Lindsey's Web site recently featured a cartoon of a military aircraft emblazoned with a U.S. flag and a Star of David and carrying a missile with a label targeting "Saddam." The caption quoted the prophet Zechariah: "It shall be that day I will seek to destroy all nations that come against Israel."
All of these themes converge in the Left Behind novels. As the plot unfolds, the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, becomes secretary general of the United Nations. ("I've opposed the United Nations for 50 years," boasts one of the authors, Tim LaHaye, a veteran activist on the religious right.) Carpathia moves the U.N. from New York to a rebuilt Babylon, laying the groundwork for the simultaneous destruction of both the city that in the grammar of dispensationalism represents absolute evil and defiance of God's prophetic plan, and the organization that more than any other prefigures the Antichrist's satanic world order.
To be sure, some current Bush-administration policies trouble prophecy believers. For example, the expansion of Washington's surveillance powers after 9/11 (led, ironically, by Attorney General John Ashcroft, darling of the religious right) strikes some as another step toward the Antichrist's global dictatorship. Counterbalancing that, however, other key administration positions ? its hostility to multinational cooperation and international agreements, its downgrading of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its muted response to growing Jewish settlement in Palestinian territory, and its unrelenting focus on Saddam Hussein ? strike prophecy believers as perfectly in harmony with God's prophetic plan: a plan that will bring human history to its apocalyptic denouement and usher in the longed-for epoch of righteousness, justice, and peace.
Academics do need to pay more attention to the role of religious belief in American public life, not only in the past, but also today. Without close attention to the prophetic scenario embraced by millions of American citizens, the current political climate in the United States cannot be fully understood.
Leaders have always invoked God's blessing on their wars, and, in this respect, the Bush administration is simply carrying on a familiar tradition. But when our born-again president describes the nation's foreign-policy objective in theological terms as a global struggle against "evildoers," and when, in his recent State of the Union address, he casts Saddam Hussein as a demonic, quasi-supernatural figure who could unleash "a day of horror like none we have ever known," he is not only playing upon our still-raw memories of 9/11. He is also invoking a powerful and ancient apocalyptic vocabulary that for millions of prophecy believers conveys a specific and thrilling message of an approaching end ? not just of Saddam, but of human history as we know it.
To read the whole article click below.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15221
The anti-Islamic rhetoric is at fever pitch today. Last June, the prophecy magazine Midnight Call warmly endorsed a fierce attack on Islam by Franklin Graham (son of Billy) and summed up Graham's case in stark terms: "Islam is an evil religion." In Lindsey's 1996 prophecy novel, "Blood Moon," Israel, in retaliation for a planned nuclear attack by an Arab extremist, launches a massive thermonuclear assault on the entire Arab world. Genocide, in short, becomes the ultimate means of prophetic fulfillment.
Anticipating George W. Bush, prophecy writers in the late 20th century also quickly zeroed in on Saddam Hussein. If not the Antichrist himself, they suggested, Saddam could well be a forerunner of the Evil One. In full-page newspaper advertisements during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, the organization Jews for Jesus declared that Saddam "represents the spirit of Antichrist about which the Bible warns us."
Prophecy believers found particular significance in Saddam's grandiose plan, launched in the 1970s, to rebuild Babylon on its ancient ruins. The fabled city on the Euphrates, south of Baghdad, which included one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, owed its splendor to King Nebuchadnezzar, the same wicked ruler who warred against Israel and destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C., for which impiety, according to the Book of Daniel, he went mad and ended his days eating grass in the fields.
In Revelation, Babylon embodies all that is corrupt, "a great whore ... with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication." It stands as the antithesis of Jerusalem, the city of righteousness, and Revelation prophesies its annihilation by fire. Since Babylon cannot be destroyed unless it exists, Saddam's ambitious public-works project is seen as an essential step toward prophetic fulfillment.
Charles Dyer's "The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times" (1991) elaborates the theme. Along with the emergence of modern Israel and the European Union (forerunner of the Antichrist's world system), writes Dyer, Saddam's restoration of Babylon signals the approaching end and offers "thrilling proof that Bible prophecies are infallible." "When Babylon is ultimately destroyed," he continues, "Israel will finally be at peace and will dwell in safety."
That theme resonates powerfully with today's calls for Saddam's overthrow. Indeed, the cover illustration of Dyer's book juxtaposes Saddam and Nebuchadnezzar. Hal Lindsey's Web site recently featured a cartoon of a military aircraft emblazoned with a U.S. flag and a Star of David and carrying a missile with a label targeting "Saddam." The caption quoted the prophet Zechariah: "It shall be that day I will seek to destroy all nations that come against Israel."
All of these themes converge in the Left Behind novels. As the plot unfolds, the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, becomes secretary general of the United Nations. ("I've opposed the United Nations for 50 years," boasts one of the authors, Tim LaHaye, a veteran activist on the religious right.) Carpathia moves the U.N. from New York to a rebuilt Babylon, laying the groundwork for the simultaneous destruction of both the city that in the grammar of dispensationalism represents absolute evil and defiance of God's prophetic plan, and the organization that more than any other prefigures the Antichrist's satanic world order.
To be sure, some current Bush-administration policies trouble prophecy believers. For example, the expansion of Washington's surveillance powers after 9/11 (led, ironically, by Attorney General John Ashcroft, darling of the religious right) strikes some as another step toward the Antichrist's global dictatorship. Counterbalancing that, however, other key administration positions ? its hostility to multinational cooperation and international agreements, its downgrading of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its muted response to growing Jewish settlement in Palestinian territory, and its unrelenting focus on Saddam Hussein ? strike prophecy believers as perfectly in harmony with God's prophetic plan: a plan that will bring human history to its apocalyptic denouement and usher in the longed-for epoch of righteousness, justice, and peace.
Academics do need to pay more attention to the role of religious belief in American public life, not only in the past, but also today. Without close attention to the prophetic scenario embraced by millions of American citizens, the current political climate in the United States cannot be fully understood.
Leaders have always invoked God's blessing on their wars, and, in this respect, the Bush administration is simply carrying on a familiar tradition. But when our born-again president describes the nation's foreign-policy objective in theological terms as a global struggle against "evildoers," and when, in his recent State of the Union address, he casts Saddam Hussein as a demonic, quasi-supernatural figure who could unleash "a day of horror like none we have ever known," he is not only playing upon our still-raw memories of 9/11. He is also invoking a powerful and ancient apocalyptic vocabulary that for millions of prophecy believers conveys a specific and thrilling message of an approaching end ? not just of Saddam, but of human history as we know it.
To read the whole article click below.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15221
Two grown men believing their fighting for God... 
