President Bush: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then ...”
"The apocalyptic view of Middle East events held by recent U.S. administrations, most evidently with President George W. Bush, really began with President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. Famously, in 1981, Ronald Reagan revealed that he believed," For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.”He later echoed this belief, stating," I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we're the generation that is going to see that come about.”
Two decades later, President Bush contented himself with advice from God. In 2003 He explained to the Palestinian prime minister," God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then ...”
Excerpt from Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and
the Plot to End the World by Michael Baigent
"Preface
The race toward Armageddon is the stumbling toward self-destruction.
Armageddon! The great battle against the Antichrist; when the red
mist of a vast firestorm is to descend from above to envelope all
living creatures in its deceptive embrace, leaving the god of war to
spit out the pips.
According to the tricky and treacherous text of the final book in the
New Testament, the book of Revelation, when the end time of the world
dawns, a scroll with seven seals will be opened. With each seal a new
horror will be unleashed against humanity. First, a great dragon will
appear; this is later identified with Satan. Next will emerge a
monstrous beast ominously rearing its seven heads and ten horns.
Finally, a servant of this beast will arrive on the stage, a"false
prophet" (16:13)—the Antichrist—who will lead his international
satanic army against the forces of God. All these satanic forces will
be gathered together"At the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon"
(16:16).
Abruptly, a white horse bearing a divine warrior will appear from
heaven, a warrior described as"The Word of God" (19:13), whom many
interpret to be Christ; he will lead the"Armies of heaven" (19:14)
in a vast and bloodthirsty battle that will erupt against a
background of terrestrial plagues and earthquakes. The three satanic
allies will be defeated: the beast and the false prophet will be
thrown alive into burning sulfur; their followers will all be put to
the sword by the heavenly rider. According to the book of Revelation,
God will take no prisoners—except, strangely, for Satan, who will
be quickly locked up in a bottomless pit. Then the calm following
this mayhem will usher in a thousand years of peace.
But in a curious and unexplained twist, at the end of the thousand
years of peace, Satan will be released from his prison for a short
time. This act of apparent mercy will immediately lead to a second
great war.
It does seem a very cruel trick for God to play upon the newly
peaceful inhabitants of the world. God appears to be toying with
Satan like a cat toys with a mouse, because this new satanic army
will also be rapidly destroyed, permitting a shiny new Jerusalem to
descend from the clouds—a new Jerusalem from which Jesus will rule
forever over a world where death is no more.
Personally, I have always wondered why, if Jesus is destined to be
victorious, he and God should put themselves to so much trouble
first. It seems to me that by delaying the inevitable, they are
actually colluding with the beast, the false prophet, and Satan. It
is also pointless, and the collateral damage so extensive.
But it does not seem pointless to approximately 59 percent of
Americans who, according to pollsters, say they believe in the coming
battle of Armageddon. And this is in addition to the millions of
fundamentalist Christians worldwide who hold the same belief. Indeed,
fundamentalist preaching has been pushing this kind of material out
for years, material that does not allow for any doubt in the literal
interpretation of Revelation. John Hagee, a prominent Texas
fundamentalist preacher and author, clearly has none: "Armageddon is
an actual battle, and the Antichrist is a living, breathing person.”
It is evident from statements such as these that fundamentalist
preaching operates in the service of fear—fear of the big battle
to come and fear of not belonging to the side of Jesus so as to
benefit from the thousand years of peace.
Fear is all to these people, and every opportunity to spread it is
taken. In January 2007 fundamentalist evangelist and former
presidential contender Pat Robertson told his television audience
that millions of people would die that year in a huge terrorist
attack on the United States. He claimed that God had personally told
him this but added, rather as an afterthought," I'm not saying
necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn't say nuclear.”Which is, of
course, reassuring.
Such an attitude is not so far away from that of the Islamic suicide
bombers who are sure that upon their deaths they will go straight to
paradise to enjoy the favors of seventy-two young girls, favors they
have missed out on in life due to their restrictive beliefs.
This battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ is, according to
thousands of Christian fundamentalist preachers, coming soon. In fact
many are convinced that our modem military involvement in the Middle
East is linked to this fiery end. In the book of Revelation, Babylon
is the source of all evil and is ultimately overthrown; Babylon, of
course, is in Iraq, which has presently fallen to U.S. forces and
their allies. To Christian fundamentalists, the connection, and the
importance, is obvious.
But the Christian fundamentalists are not the only ones to believe in
a final battle. Muslims, too, with increasing urgency speak about the
coming of their messiah, the Mahdi, who—with the aid of Jesus—will
fight against the demonic forces of the Dajjal, the Islamic anti-
christ figure. Especially important is the belief held by many
Muslims that the Mahdi will rule from Jerusalem, which the Muslims
claim as their own. Muslims who follow these beliefs expect the final
battle to come very soon, and this is affecting their politics,
which, in turn, is affecting all of our lives.
Jewish fundamentalists, by contrast, do not think of a battle to
come, but it is hard to see how their end times can appear without
one. For they hold that when the Messiah comes, he will rebuild the
Temple, referring to Solomon's Temple, the very first temple,
according to the Bible, to serve the ancient religion of the
Israelites in Jerusalem, a temple that was pillaged and destroyed by
the Babylonians in 586 B.C. And with the Messiah's coming, they hold
that Jerusalem will be wholly Jewish. There will be no room on the
Temple Mount for any Islamic structures, nor will there be room for
the Islamic population within Jerusalem, indeed within all of Israel -
- which they define as stretching as far as western Iraq. They
believe that the signs of the coming of the Messiah have already
appeared; it will not be long now. The thousands of years of waiting
are about to end. Of course, there are those who wish to hurry the
time along and remove the mosques from the Temple Mount in advance of
the Messiah's arrival. The anti-Islamic position of these groups is
inflexible and runs very deeply. Their true relationship with
Christianity is prickly and kept rather close, for they all depend
upon the constant flow of funds donated to them by Christian
supporters, but the tensions are there to see. For them, there is no
need for compromise or tolerance; God gave Israel to the Jewish
people, and that is all that needs to be said.
At its heart fundamentalism is a relentless progression deeper and
deeper into intolerance and ignorance, which, unless opposed, will by
default achieve its aims. Judged and measured against their own
pronouncements, we must conclude that the fundamentalist religions of
all denominations are opposing the free will and vibrancy of human
life—they are, paradoxically, performing the very task they
attribute to the feared Antichrist: they are attempting to convert a
distorted view of reality into such a skillfully packaged shape that
it might be taken as truth.
Fundamentalist religions are humanity's greatest enemy. Blunt
speaking, certainly, but time is short, and I see no reason not to
call it as I see it. The fact we all have to face is that the
fundamentalist religions leave no room for human frailty, for
compassion, for forgiveness, or for creative freedom of thought. They
are trying to return us to that time of darkness we thought was left
far behind, where blind belief was considered more important than
farsighted discovery, where the dogmatic was more valued than the
tolerant and the false was more important than the true.
We simply cannot permit that future to occur; we must oppose that
future with all the strength at our disposal. If, like those
countless victims of the Nazi Holocaust, we are ever again asked to
step into a cattle wagon for a trip to the Promised Land, we must
remember that the correct response is always, emphatically," No!
Never again!"
But we need to move quickly for the fundamentalists are on the march;
step by step they are encroaching upon the peaceful and tolerant high
ground with their perverted idea of a heavenly realm filled with
comfortable seats from which those who have been"saved"can eat
their popcorn and watch the slaughter below. It all sounds like some
deranged fantasy based on a dim memory of the Roman arena, for there
is much blood in the message and so very little mercy.
Again Christian fundamentalist preacher John Hagee does not mince his
words on this issue:
The first time He came to earth, Jesus was the Lamb of God, led in
silence to the slaughter. The next time He comes, He will be the Lion
of Judah who will trample His enemies until their blood stains His
garments.
It seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that, like those who once
packed the Roman Colosseum to watch Christians or Jews thrown to the
wild animals, Hagee cannot wait to take his seat before the carnage.
Hagee's position closely resembles that of Islamic fundamentalist
commentators for whom, of course, Jesus is an Islamic prophet. the
Egyptian Sa'id Ayyub, writing in 1987, insisted that in the final days,
"All of the books will be burnt at the end of the road. Those who
sucked at deceit, spying, and hypocrisy will be burnt beneath the
feet of the prophet of God, Jesus, and the army of Islam—[Jews and
Christians] ... will be trampled under after the dawn.”
We have good cause to be deeply worried about these people and those
who read and believe their words. We must never let them near to the
seats of power, else we will wake up one morning in a world where
madness is called sanity and true sanity is viewed as a heresy to be
ruthlessly destroyed. But, ominously, we can see this world creeping
closer and closer.
The apocalyptic view of Middle East events held by recent U.S.
administrations, most evidently with President George W. Bush, really
began with President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. Famously, in
1981, Ronald Reagan revealed that he believed," For the first time
ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the
Second Coming of Christ.”He later echoed this belief, stating," I
turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs
foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we're
the generation that is going to see that come about.”
Two decades later, President Bush contented himself with advice from
God. In 2003 He explained to the Palestinian prime minister," God
told me to strike at al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he
instructed me to strike at Saddam.”
He seems to speak like Moses or Joshua; perhaps he really did believe
that he was leading us to the Promised Land.”
Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to
End the World by Michael Baigent
HarperOne (September 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0061363189
ISBN-13: 978-0061363184
Product Description
Will current generations live to see Armageddon? Are there really sinister forces at work, encouraging its imminent arrival? If so, who exactly are they? In his latest investigative book Michael Baigent takes us to the assembly hall of the UN, the boardrooms of major businesses and powerful lobbying groups, the cabinet meetings of world leaders, the ranches of cattle breeders, the churches of the faithful, and the narrow winding streets of modern Jerusalem, revealing to us the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures behind a perilous messianic agenda. By unveiling truly bizarre alliances, revisiting centuries-old ghostly events still haunting the birthplaces of religion, unraveling complex threads of history to discern the difference between myth and prophecy, and providing a thorough explication of the religious texts underlying all of this madness in the context of the times in which they were written, Baigent presents a very different view of the past, present, and future than that perpetuated by many loose interpretations of scripture. What are faith force multipliers? Which members of the U.S. military top brass have fought to employ them? Which world leader belongs to a secret messianic society called the Hojjatieh? What is the Chalcedon Foundation? And what is the correlation between its tenets, those of sharia law, and the fulfillment of end-time prophecies? The answers to these questions and others will intrigue, mystify, and enrage you, whether you're a person of faith or a staunch secularist. But the author's goal is not simply to shock the reader-it is to help diffuse the time bomb that has been set by the hard-liners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the end, Baigent asks these questions to deliver an urgent message: that spiritual yearning is actually a deep and personal issue of awareness, one that can bring hope and tolerance to the world, rather than the self-superiority and control that are born of fear and conflict.
Reaping the Whirlwind, September 1, 2009
By Paul Hosse (Louisville, KY. USA)
This review is from: Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World (Hardcover)
The one thing these religious extremists have in common is the belief that they and they alone are the keepers of the"True Faith"And it is their God given duty to bring about their version of the end times (of course, the rest of us are generously given the option of converting or facing God's wrath by their blood soaked hands). All this brings me to a highly engaging and eye opening book by Michael Baigent entitled," Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions And The Plot To End The World" (you may remember Mr. Baigent as the co-author of the hugely popular"Holy Blood Holy Grail"And"The Messianic Legacy"). Mr. Baigent gives us an excellent historical overview the three main religions and their claim on Jerusalem. He then leads us through their Byzantine world to induce the coming of the Messiah, but which Messiah? Is it the Messiah Ben David or the Twelfth Iman? Or is it the Second Coming of Jesus? Finally, Mr. Baigent details the objectives of each and finally, what we can do.
Exposes a truly deadly mind-set, November 30, 2009
By Derek Grimmell (Clinton, IA USA) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World (Hardcover)
Baigent has written neither a history book nor a religion book. Rather, he has sounded a warning cry about the manner in which extremists of three faiths have very specific plans to attempt the destruction of the world. Baigent's information is relatively easy to corroborate, but he has"connected the dots" in an attempt to warn everyone else that these people genuinely believe in their lunacy and genuinely intend to carry it out.
The three groups of extremists begin with the Jewish extremists who are determined to expand the state of Israel to its Biblical dimensions, which some (basing their thinking on the book of Joshua) regard as extending into modern-day Iraq. They are also determined to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, and as a first step they want to demolish the Dome of the Rock, which is merely the third holiest shrine in all of Islam. Baigent records how a rabbi present in 1967, when the Israelis reclaimed Jerusalem, insisted that Moshe Dayan take the opportunity to blow up the Dome of the Rock then and there, and how Dayan courageously refused. But the extremists are determined to destroy it. The only problem: They can't attack the Dome without risking a sinful intrusion on sacred ground, and they lack the means of cleansing themselves of this sin.
Enter the red heifer. A pure red heifer with no more than one black hair is required for the ritual to purify those who would assault the Dome. An evangelical Christian cattle rancher in the American South has been working with Jewish ultra-orthodox rabbis to breed such a red heifer. They have almost succeeded on two occasions. The Christian extremist is helping because Christian extremists believe that the Temple must be rebuilt in Jerusalem in order for the Apocalypse to come and Jesus to return. They expect that this will bring on a global catastrophe, a war that will surpass all past wars, but they don't care; they believe they will be magically raptured up to Heaven before the shooting starts, where they can sip tea with Jesus and watch us sinners getting slaughtered.
The key message of this book is not the details of the thinking of the lunatic fringe. Baigent wrote this book in an effort to shake everyone else out of their slumber. He is trying to warn everyone else that these people are determined to take actions that could easily lead to a global nuclear war. He warns us that they genuinely believe that they will somehow prosper in a global catastrophe, and are determined to bring it on. They are really, truly, as deluded and as dangerous as Charles Manson ever was with his Helter-Skelter plot, but with vastly greater resources in their hands.
Measured against his intent, Baigent has done a good job of making the true situation clear and compelling. He has sounded the warning and done it well.
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