Living Word Hosts ‘A Night to Honor Israel’
Monday, April 30, 2007 at 12:49 pm
- 12 Comments
Living Word Christian Center was the site of what Pastor Mac Hammond said would be the first annual “Night to Honor Israel” in the Twin Cities on Sunday. The event was created by Christians United for Israel, an organization led by Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio.
The event contained several calls to action regarding the political process. Both Hagee and Hammond referred to CUFI’s grassroots efforts to rally American Christianity to support Israel through rapid response alerts, focusing e-mails and phone calls on elected officials across the country.
Hagee proclaimed that Jews and Christians worship the same God, while leaving out the detail that Muslims, while they refer to that God as Allah, believe in the same God of Abraham as Christians and Jews. He also joked with his audience, saying “if you know anything about the Jewish community, you know they have lots of committee meetings.” Later, he related a story of a similar event in 1981 at his church where a bomb threat was called in. When he informed the attendees of the threat, the Christians in the audience left the building quickly, but the Jews in attendance stayed put “as if I had said there would be kosher hot dogs available afterward.”
Speakers also included Billye Brim, who said in September 2005 that she believed Hurricane Katrina was sent as punishment for U.S. support of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Brim said last night that biblical prophecy showed that Russia will unite with Arab nations against Israel, and that Israel should not give up land to the Palestinians because so many of the sites named in the Bible are in Judea and Samaria, in the modern-day West Bank. Rani Levy, who operates a tour company in Israel and has worked with Brim and the Hammonds for several years, said that Palestinian statehood represents an existential threat to Israel, and that the United States should relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in recognition of that city’s importance and as a symbolic statement.
CUFI began in February 2006 as a network of megachurch pastors seeking to rally grass-roots support in America for Israel. According to the group’s website,
Within a few short months, CUFI emerged as one of the most important Christian grassroots organizations in America. In four short months we rallied over 3500 constituents to Washington D.C. for the first Summit in July 2006. Thousands more are expected this July and tens of thousands have signed up to participate in CUFI’s e-mail network. CUFI has only just begun.
CUFI’s board of directors includes such notables in the evangelical movement as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer. Critics of the group have noted its vilifications of Islam, including an apparent case of photo-scrubbing on their website involving the Dome of the Rock, a Mosque located atop the ruins of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. According to Sarah Posner, who wrote in August of last year,
Hagee wields “a very large megaphone” that reaches “a very large group of people,” said Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, who has studied the Christian right for 30 years. With CUFI, the pastor has exponentially expanded the reach of his megaphone beyond his television audience. Thanks to the viral marketing made possible by the hundreds of evangelical leaders who have signed on to his new organization, his warmongering has rippled through megachurches across America for months. Hagee calls pastors “the spiritual generals of America,” an appropriate phrase given his reliance on them to rally their troops behind his message.
Congresswoman Betty McCollum, D-Minn., declined an invitation to attend, calling Hagee’s views on Islam “repugnant”. Former U.S. senator and Republican Rudy Boschwitz and state Sens. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, and Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, were in attendance.
12 Comments
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
Marriage of convenience Evangelical Right/Christinan Fundamentalists and Zionists make strange bedfellows. On one hand Evangelicals are trying to herd the Jews into Israel so that the conditions for Jesus to return will be fulfilled and the “repture” will happen where people either become Christians or will be killed. On the other hand, the Zionists are using the Evangelical support (fully knowing this final desire of the Christian fundamentalist) for their own prophesies to get fulfilled – the coming of the Messiah. I guess none of them are fooling anyone but themselves with this marriage of convenience.
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
It’s more than just the religious aspect for some Zionists There are many hardcore Zionists in Israel and in the Diaspora who are that gung-ho not just for religious reasons, but in support of the State of Israel itself. It’s an extraordinarily complex debate within the Jewish community today.
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 3:22 pm
Pappas in attendence? I’m appalled to learn that senator Sandy Pappas attended such a radical venue. Like McCollum, Pappas should disown that visit in public if she wishes to continue to be seen as a moderate face in Minnesota politics.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 6:23 am
Do some research I have to make a correction to your incomplete ramblings. My God is NOT the same god that the muslims worship. When was the last time you heard of a “fanatical evangelical Christian” flying a plane into a building, all in the name of Jesus? Read the Bible, then the koran. Sorry, not the same God.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 9:24 am
Read it again … Marriage of convenience
Evangelical Right/Christinan Fundamentalists and Zionists make strange bedfellows. On one hand Evangelicals are trying to herd the Jews into Israel so that the conditions for Jesus to return will be fulfilled and the “RUPTURE” will happen where people either become Christians or will be killed. On the other hand, the Zionists are using the Evangelical support (fully knowing this final desire of the Christian fundamentalist) for their own prophesies to get fulfilled – the coming of the Messiah. I guess none of them are fooling anyone but themselves with this marriage of convenience.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 4:07 pm
Do abortion clinic bombers count as “fanatical Christians”? Every religion has its zealots who twist their holy documents into something they’re not in order to justify the horrors those zealots wish to commit.
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 9:29 am
Marriage of convenience Evangelical Right/Christinan Fundamentalists and Zionists make strange bedfellows. On one hand Evangelicals are trying to herd the Jews into Israel so that the conditions for Jesus to return will be fulfilled and the “repture” will happen where people either become Christians or will be killed. On the other hand, the Zionists are using the Evangelical support (fully knowing this final desire of the Christian fundamentalist) for their own prophesies to get fulfilled – the coming of the Messiah. I guess none of them are fooling anyone but themselves with this marriage of convenience.
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 10:10 am
It's more than just the religious aspect for some Zionists There are many hardcore Zionists in Israel and in the Diaspora who are that gung-ho not just for religious reasons, but in support of the State of Israel itself. It's an extraordinarily complex debate within the Jewish community today.
Comment posted April 30, 2007 @ 10:22 am
Pappas in attendence? I'm appalled to learn that senator Sandy Pappas attended such a radical venue. Like McCollum, Pappas should disown that visit in public if she wishes to continue to be seen as a moderate face in Minnesota politics.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 1:23 am
Do some research I have to make a correction to your incomplete ramblings. My God is NOT the same god that the muslims worship. When was the last time you heard of a “fanatical evangelical Christian” flying a plane into a building, all in the name of Jesus? Read the Bible, then the koran. Sorry, not the same God.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 4:24 am
Read it again … Marriage of convenience
Evangelical Right/Christinan Fundamentalists and Zionists make strange bedfellows. On one hand Evangelicals are trying to herd the Jews into Israel so that the conditions for Jesus to return will be fulfilled and the “RUPTURE” will happen where people either become Christians or will be killed. On the other hand, the Zionists are using the Evangelical support (fully knowing this final desire of the Christian fundamentalist) for their own prophesies to get fulfilled – the coming of the Messiah. I guess none of them are fooling anyone but themselves with this marriage of convenience.
Comment posted May 1, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Do abortion clinic bombers count as “fanatical Christians”? Every religion has its zealots who twist their holy documents into something they're not in order to justify the horrors those zealots wish to commit.
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