Occasionally we arrogant fundamentalist atheists are accused of picking on a simplistic, straw-man picture of God — some old man in the sky, Who meddles clumsily in our earthly affairs — rather than a more philosophically sophisticated view of the divine. Just to remind everyone, the unsophisticated version is alive and well, and has big plans for our upcoming elections. Here is an email being passed around among evangelicals. (Via.)
Dear friends:
Barack Hussein Obama has taken the nation by storm. From obscurity, with zero executive experience, or much of any kind, he has vaulted into the position of Presidential frontrunner. It is stunning. On the surface, it appears attributable only to his eloquent oratory and his race. But an invisible factor may be a strong spiritual force behind him, causing some people to actually swoon in his presence.
I have been very concerned that he has publicly said that he does not believe Jesus is the only way to heaven. This makes both the Bible and Jesus a liar, and it means that Christ has died in vain. A person cannot be a true Christian who believes that there are other ways of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life with God. Only Jesus has paid the price for that.
Therefore, there is, indeed, another spirit involved. And this spirit has come into our national life like a flood. Last week at Obama’s acceptance speech, that spirit exalted itself in front of a Greek temple-like stage, and to a huge audience like in a Roman arena. Omama was portrayed as god-like. His voice thundered as a god’s voice.
At the end, Democratic sympathizer Pastor Joel Hunter gave the benediction and shockingly invited everyone to close the prayer to their own (false) gods. This was surely an abomination, but it was compatible with Obama’s expressed theology, and Hunter’s leftist leanings.
God was not pleased.
And God says, “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him” (Isaiah 59:19).
Enter Governor Sarah Palin. With incredible timing, the very next day, Sarah Palin also appeared out of nowhere. Her shocking selection as John McCain’s running mate stunned the world and suddenly took all the wind out of Obama’s sails.
We quickly learned that Sarah is a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian, attends church, and has been a ministry worker.
Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing. You can tell by how the dogs are already viciously attacking her. But they will not be successful. She knows the One she serves and will not be intimidated.
Back in the 1980s, I sensed that Israel’s little-known Benjamin Netanyahu was chosen by God for an important end-time role. I still believe that. I now have that same sense about Sarah Palin.
Today I did some checking and discovered that both her first and last names are biblical words, one in Hebrew the other in Greek:
Sarah. Wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. In Hebrew, Sarah means “noble woman” (Strong’s 8283).
Palin. In Greek, the word means “renewal.” (Strong’s 3825).
A friend said he believes that Sarah Palin is a Deborah. Of Deborah, Smith’s Bible Dictionary says, “A prophetess who judged Israel…. She was not so much a judge as one gifted with prophetic command…. and by virtue of her inspiration ‘a mother in Israel.'”
Only God knows the future and how she may be used by Him, but may this noble woman serve to bring renewal in the land, and inspiration.
Jim
The author, Jim Bramlett, was formerly an associate of Pat Robertson, and more recently has been kept busy recording angels singing.
(The BSD Daemon didn’t appear in the original email; that was my addition.)
To me, the funniest part of the whole thing is that the unease of evangelicals (who claim to evaluate everything in the light of scripture) concerning Obama’s mass appeal stems not from scripture, but from the Left Behind book series. I’ve read the whole Bible (grew up evangelical, actually), and there’s nothing, not even in the transcribed-drug-trip book of Revelation that talks about some menacing end times figure with masses of adoring followers. That picture of the “anti-christ” (in Revelation, it’s always plural, “anti-christs”) is purely from popular fiction.
It’s rather telling that they can’t even tell their holy book apart from trash pulp.
Well, looks like they are, doesn’t it? And you seam to be ready to help them to understand. I lived in a communist country for a while and I really don’t want anybody, be it evangelicals o people like you, “helping” me to understand.
This makes both the Bible and Jesus a liar
That was already a fait accompli when Jesus preached to the crowd, “I’m going out for a quart of milk but I’ll be right back.” 2000 years and some people are still holding the screen door open for him.
There was a thoughtful article in a publication recently (I wish I could remember which one!) about evangelicals in this election. It’s worth noting that contrary to popular liberal assumption, many evangelicals were undecided. The head of a popular young evangelicals magazine said that he wasn’t sure who he would vote for, that he had been courted by both sides and that he had spoken at the DNC in August at their invitation.
Elsewhere, I’ve seen publications quote statistics about hard core Democrats who are not voting for Barack Obama because they are convinced he is a Muslim, and they somehow think that it’s okay not to vote for someone because they are Muslim.
Idiocy (and racism) knows no party or ideological boundaries.
No contest on some of this stuff being crazy, but when Scientists jump into a strong reaction to religion by labeling it all evangelism/fundamentalism and not reading the literature and meeting the people, it’s just as crazy.
1) Observation and experiment must be reproducible to be accepted as Science=>single events are not accepted. Nothing is exactly reproducible=>nothing is Science. Not logic, just arguing is all.
2) A model must be quantitative to be accepted as Science. Bean-counting is the most important part of our relationship to Nature.
If you’ve never been in a situation that has distressed you enough for you to wonder whether it was a near-death or near-something experience, and wondered whether your rationalization of the moment is the truth of the matter or just a rationalization, you haven’t been through the experiment yet. What you can be sure of is that the complexity of such moments is such that you will never revisit that moment. It won’t happen again. There may be another moment that feels a little the same, but by trying you will not revisit. [You will be pleased to know that you will go through the real-death experience experiment, but not reproducibly, therefore it does not exist for Science. Therefore you will not die?]
I’m a bean-counter. I’m right there. Are there any academics who aren’t just a little Obsessive? Being obsessive and not near-sighted is difficult. … That two events are not identical doesn’t stop me from categorizing them as the same for the purposes of an observation or an experiment, but I accept that my choice of categories is my choice, and even if a particular choice looks natural, I accept that a totally different choice might be a lot better, and I may not be smart enough to pick as well as other Physicists. I’m good with Science, but some people are not bean-counting obsessives, their heads work differently and they think other things are important. The people on both sides who insist on absolutes are all living in a different world than I think I’m in. Jim Harrison’s response is part-way right, but he doesn’t go far enough.
I’m confused as hell about this because I feel as if I see both sides, through a glass darkly, as they say. I think there are plenty of Scientists who do see both sides a little, can’t see a way to construct observations and/or controlled experiments that could settle the matter, but either aren’t afraid to live with the dichotomy or are afraid to visit it. I guess not many such Scientists respond to this kind of blog entry. I’m more confused than that.
In response to #14, I hope Obama is more guided by the Gospels than by the Acts of the Apostles. The appearance to me is that he is, but it’s difficult to tell. Taking Paul to be more important than Christ when it comes to morality and to organizing a Church makes Christianity messy.
It looks to me as if Obama is the type of person who is willing to live with confusion, living the moment in a flexible way, living by moral guidelines instead of laying down absolute rules. He’s cool. This scares me a little, because Bush/Cheney has been willing to interpret even absolute rules as anything they do is OK, and Palin looks the same way. McCain is hard to read. Obama definitely looks different. He’s a smart operator, but it’s not clear whether he’s #1 or defines himself by working for others (though I think there is more evidence for the latter). It would be foolish not to be afraid of discovering that he can’t cope with the complexities of the POTUS job in the next four years, or that he interprets his moral guidelines a little too flexibly, but the other side looks worse.
Ouch. Fell out of the tree again. How stupid is that. Repeat. Hey, it’s reproducible! Science is great.
There may be a high percentage of Evangelicals among American Christianity, but Fundamentalists and Evangelicals aren’t the same thing. Fundamentalists don’t make up the majority of American Christianity; they’re just the loudest and most politically involved. Many Evangelical Christians (including myself) don’t fall in with the “Religious Right,” and are disgusted by faith used as political leverage or as a means to controlling people.
Whether Barack Obama is an instrument of evil or not is something I don’t pretend to know–I just don’t like his policies. BUT, there are a lot of Republican policies I don’t agree with either. I don’t think the parties actually fit most thinking people exactly–there’s always going to be something that you disagree with.
I hope readers of this post will find some cause for reassurance in this piece:
A Conservative for Obama
My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.
sirs,
might i offer that this is simply a marginal minority? according to the estimable pew research forum religious landscape survey the majority of those who follow in the path of jesus christ do not adhere or avow such positions.
yours truly,
c.v. snicker
FWIW,
if you anagram ‘Sarah Palin’ you get ‘Piranha Sal’ 😉
“Idiocy (and racism) knows no party or ideological boundaries.”
This is true as far as it goes. However, short and tall knows no gender, there is certainly an overlap, but no one would argue that there are more tall women than tall men or short men than tall women.
Of course, I meant short women than short men at the end . . . . . 🙁
I really should quote the final paragraph of Wick Allison’s piece (linked above):
Thanks Ole Phat Stu, and it’s also been told that another anagram for her name is “A sharp nail” … FWIW.
BTW I think it’s odd, for all the “scrutiny” of Sarah Palin, that almost everyone has forgotten about the Alaskan Independence Party – even if she wasn’t a member, her husband (very active in her governance we have learned) was, and she addressed them approvingly at one or more conventions.
You’ll forgive me if I am amused by some of the stereotypes & assumptions I find on this blog. As an undergraduate, I attended a church where the entire elder board was composed of M.D.’s (instructors at a major teaching hospital) and Ph.D.’s in mathematics, science, & engineering. Oh, we did have one architecture professor.
This church was (and still is) theologically a very conservative Evangelical church. Politically, well, the leadership avoided politics in the pulpit. (A partial exception was made on the abortion issue.) And the congregation contained a significant minority of tree-huggers & bleeding hearts.
I loved it. Here was church that taught the Bible with more care & rigor than most professors brought to their classes.
The point, I guess, is that Evangelicalism is not by nature anti-intellectual. (The host of universities founded by Evangelicals provide an illustration of this point.) This point is unlikely to be obvious to a certain demographic.
About 2/3 of the people I work with (nurses at a metropolitan hospital in the bible belt–mostly female) are planning to vote Republican because of Palin. This scares the everlovin’ crap out of me. She’s nothing but a smoke screen and they don’t get it!
Couldn’t resist fact-checking the ‘palin’/’renewal’ suggestion…
Turns out, no bull, “palin” in greek means “more of the same”. How ironic is that?! LOL
http://devel.searchgodsword.org/lex/grk/view.cgi?number=3825
i just came up with a great nickname for
Palin:
the drilla from wasilla
I usually go through your blog during meals and posts like this one makes me choke on my food 🙂 sometimes. I think you should have a system/label for identifying posts about ludicrous things to prevent any accidents 😉
Funny that at such a ‘scientific’ website, the lack of truth and fact-checking abounds so unscientifically.
Do people even realize that by smearing Palin they actually are driving more voters in her direction?
Charlie Gibson has done a lot damage with his stupid questions and heavily-edited-for-broadcast interview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hpwM4Jjyrs
As a thinking voter, I will look at the facts and make my decision, not be led down the path of hate by small-minded condescension.
Remember science fans, in 2000 and 2004, the electorate has been just about evenly split between dem and repub. This year it looks to be about the same. But if Obama loses, it will be solely due to racism.
I just don’t understand people’s view of Pastor Hunter… To me, he was being just like Jesus. If you remember, Jesus even went to the Pharisee’s house, knowing they were trying to find a reason to trap Him. Jesus loves EVERYONE, and for a man of God to refuse to pray somewhere because they don’t share the same beliefs, that isn’t reflecting the love of Jesus. Pastor Joel not only respected the audience’s values, he modeled Christ’s behavior.
Harkin, where here is “smearing” of Palin? First, remember that a “smear” is by definition false. Second, the subject of this thread was a Palin supporter, a real one, showing some of the mentality that actually goes into such support. I don’t know why some people are so defensive of these people they support, considering all the incredible flack and put-downs of Obama, Hillary, etc. that were put out or still out there.
perhaps I’m missing the point, but I found this funny (the top half of letter)
political references toward religion parallels, good cheap laugh / made my day