Cue the biblical conspiracy theorists!
According to The Daily Beast…
Barak: Israel Willing to Split Jerusalem
We’ll believe it when we hear it from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Israeli Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak tells Haaretz that his government is willing to split Jerusalem, a reversal for a regime that had previously insisted that Jerusalem “remain the undivided capital of Israel.” Barak says, “West Jerusalem and 12 Jewish neighborhoods that are home to 200,000 residents will be ours. The Arab neighborhoods, in which close to a quarter million Palestinians live, will be theirs. There will be a special regime in place along with agreed upon arrangements in the Old City, the Mount of Olives and the City of David.”
Uh oh.
No doubt the biblical prophesy peeps are jumping up and down about this! I’m betting that John Hagee has already contacted his publisher with a new book idea, possibly called It’s Once Again the End of the World As We Know It–and I’m Excited To Sell You This Book!
And uh, is it an accident that I found this news from a website called The Daily (Mark of the) BEAST. I think not. It’s a sign!
Here’s what’s going to happen…
1. Pat Robertson will babble something mean and unintelligent about all of this being because of gays and lesbian.
2. Sarah Palin will make remarks implying that President Obama is a Muslim, and thus, a potential candidate for Anti-Christ.
3. Franklin Graham will chat with Anderson Cooper about the one occasion when he prayed with President Obama, but then confess that he still could be the Anti-Christ and blame President Obama’s father’s semen.
4. Wednesday Night church meetings at Baptist and Pentecostal churches will begin focusing on End Times theology (Cue the onslaught of hideous fear-filled book covers and bible study handbooks from Lifeway!)
5. Katy Perry will go on tour.
6. “We Love You, Israel!” lapel pins will begin showing up on people’s ties and jacket collars…
7. Christians will once again forget that a large population of the Palestinians living in Jerusalem are followers of Jesus
8. You’ll consider taking that once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Holy Lands with your favorite Christian talk radio host
9. Fox News will keep us afraid.
10. And God? He’ll remain the same.
A different kind of holy war…
I read the following editorial in Nashville’s City Paper. It’s a piece written by Teddy Bart about a Catholic Priest who is a friend of his who is apparently known for causing a ruckus in the Catholic Church…
Apparently the Pope doesn’t like being questioned. Who knew?! 
In the early ’70s, Nashville, like other American cities, was rocked and divided by civil rights protesters, Vietnam War protesters, and protesters protesting protesters. Hawks clashed with doves on the streets, in the editorials of the two daily newspapers, in political campaigns and from the pulpit. Today’s tea party rallies would barely register on the Richter scale of public temper compared to those times when the needle pulsated in the red zone.
During that time, I hosted a variety of radio and television programs for WSM radio and WSMV-Channel 4. One day, in the midst of the protest cauldron that engulfed the city, a young Catholic priest appeared as a guest on my program called The Noon Show. Tall, lanky, a native Nashvillian and product of Father Ryan High School, Father Joseph Breen replied to my questions in his typically straightforward, soft-spoken resonant voice. He said that Catholic priests should be allowed to marry. He said America’s role in the Vietnam War was wrong. He said that while he respected the pope, he is not infallible. Father Breen was punished by the local bishop for his remarks and banished from Nashville to a tiny parish with a handful of Catholics.
In 1993, he spoke out again and was reprimanded by church authorities. A little over a week ago, they came down on him again. Hard. This time for a video that was posted on his church’s website, picked up by a Catholic blog called the Creative Minority Report and posted on YouTube. The content of Father Breen’s remarks were much like those he made on my shows 40 years earlier (sans the Vietnam issue) and those he made back in 1993. On each occasion, his challenging of the Magisterium — the teaching authority of the Catholic Church — is what got him into trouble.
Joe Breen is a friend of mine. He has appeared on my broadcasts numerous times and we met socially several times. When my program, Teddy Bart’s Round Table, celebrated its 20th anniversary with a huge event, I asked Father Breen to give the invocation. And when I encountered personal difficulty, Father Joe Breen was among the first to offer his friendship and support.
Father Breen was told by the Bishop of the Nashville Diocese, David Choby, to retract and apologize for his video statements. Breen relented, wrote letters of apology to the pope and members of his parish and announced his retirement at the end of next year.
I don’t blame him for submitting to the demand of the higher authority. He has suffered enough for verbalizing the notions of his conscience. While pedophile priests are coddled, protected and shielded from criminal prosecution by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, this good man is punished for speaking his mind and his heart. His crime is thinking. His sin is being fully human.
Breen’s saga reminds me of the travails of the 17th century Jesuit priest, Baltasar Gracian, whose life is a fascinating study in survival. Though it cost him greatly, he spoke and wrote that mankind could prosper by education and enlightenment. His writings were confiscated and burned by the church. Refusing to submit, he challenged people to think for themselves. He was banished to a remote outpost in Spain, where he was told to never write, question or speak his views again. He was considered a heretic. But he did write again, using pen and ink smuggled to him by sympathetic townspeople. He died believing he had failed in life. Today, the sayings of Baltasar Gracian are considered among the most profound and enlightened philosophic thoughts about how to live a meaningful life.
I hope Joe Breen knows how many people his service has helped. Maybe he will even put his thoughts down on paper.
If he does, my advice is to hide the pages in a safe place.
Here’s the interview that Father Breen is receiving criticism for…
Thoughts?
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Did this pastor really go to Heaven?
Crazy Pastor Jesse talks about his visit to Heaven in the clip above (found at Christian Nightmares).
The clip reminded me of snippet from a chapter called “Jesus® Will Make You Weird” from Jesus Needs New PR–you know, when Jesus Needs New PR was going to be a book.
Just remember, I wrote this like three years ago…
While some might think the South is the place to go to find God’s wackiest people—and indeed they do manage to live quite well amongst the heat and humidity of organized fundamentalism and confederate-induced pride—the often coveted climate of California also lures a crazy number of JESUS® freaks.
About seven years ago, when I first heard about the charismatic ministry of forty-something Roberts Liardon from a friend of mine, I thought perhaps my friend was exaggerating. I mean, my friend was the same guy who had once tried to convince me to join one of those “businesses cults”; you know, the kind of self-employed business that um, resembles ancient Egyptian architecture and always try to convince you they’re not Amway.
“Man, I’m telling you,” he said, “my business mentor started selling housecleaning products to his friends and neighbors two years ago, and he’s making close to a million a year.”
What I find bizarre is that his rich mentor never quit his day job as a car salesman.
Naturally, when he told me about the ministry of Roberts—a man who was named after Oral Roberts, the televangelist who, in the 1980s, told his followers that he wasn’t leaving his Oklahoma prayer tower until he received a six-figure amount in donations—I thought my friend might be adding more than a little color to the story. But he wasn’t—not at all. Roberts Liardon might very well be crazier than Tom Cruise circa 2006.
The self-proclaimed “internationally recognized speaker and respected leader and author” Roberts believes that God called him into ministry when he was just eight years old. That’s not too big a deal, really; I’ve heard quite a few of stories about people being very young when they receive callings from God, but I must admit, I’d never heard anyone claim that they were called into full-time ministry while engaging in a water fight with Jesus in Heaven.
But that’s the way Roberts explains it in his book I Saw Heaven.
In Heaven, he claims to have spoken to Jesus, who was, as he writes, “about six feet tall, with sandy-brown hair, not real short and not too long.” Roberts’ writes that Jesus came and abducted him in 1974 and took him through the Pearly Gates. For those of you who have small children, don’t worry; according to my sources, Jesus no longer abducts eight-year old boys and girls. This is on account of the Amber Alert system that the United States implemented a few years back. I can only imagine that the alert system would most definitely be a big pain in the butt when it comes to Jesus’ old habit of taking small kids on strange trips to far off places.
But on the contrary, Roberts enjoyed his trip tremendously; and upon arriving in heaven, a place he describes as looking darn near extraordinary, Jesus led him through the Pearly Gates, up the golden streets, then to a crystal clear river where, “He dunked me!” the evangelist writes. “I got back up and splashed Him, and we had a water fight. We splashed each other and laughed.”
Is it just me or is his personal account of meeting Jesus sound a lot like that ABC special news report on Michael Jackson, where the singer is seen waving happily at the camera from the top of a tree? I mean, it certainly causes me to wonder if Roberts actually didn’t go to heaven, but instead, was at Neverland Ranch with Michael, not Jesus. I mean, I know it’s farfetched to think anyone would mistake Michael for Jesus, but the singer himself has certainly done it on several occasions throughout his career so it’s feasible that Roberts might have, too.
But interestingly enough, Roberts’ story gets weirder. After the water fight, Jesus led him to three large storage houses (yes, Jesus has sheds in his backyard), where according to Roberts’ book, the following occurred:
We walked into the first [shed]. As Jesus shut the front door behind us, I looked around the interior in shock!
On one side of the building were exterior parts of the body. Legs hung from the wall, but the scene looked natural, not grotesque. On the other side of the building were shelves filled with eyes, green ones, brown ones, blue ones, and so forth.
The building contained all of the parts of the human body that people on earth need, but Christians have not realized these blessings are waiting in heaven. There is no place else in the universe for these parts to go except right here on earth; no one else needs them.
Jesus said to me, “These are the unclaimed blessings. This building should not be full. It should be emptied. You should come in here with faith and get the needed parts for you, and the people you will come in contact with that day.” [pages 42-43.]
The unclaimed blessings are there in those storehouses—all of the parts of the body people might need: hundreds of new eyes, legs, skin, hair, eardrums — they are all there. All you have to do is go in and get what you need by the arm of faith, because it is there.
My favorite part of Roberts’ excerpt is his description of how the “legs hung from the wall.” I like that part because it seems that as soon as he wrote that line, he realized the insanity of what he’d written. But instead of hitting backspace or delete like most writers do when they’re words and/or thoughts overtly frighten us for no apparent reason, he instead tries to comfort us with this sentiment: “But the scene looked natural.”
Now, whether or not you agree with Roberts’s “scene” analysis being natural is contingent on your thoughts about the movie Silence of the Lambs and whether or not you feel that hanging body parts are ever natural.
So… what do you think? Does God give people promotional tours of Heaven?
Jesus walked on Mars!
Look! A giant boot print. On Mars. And praise the Lord, it’s left all those scientific smarty-pants scratching their heads and wondering HOW in the world could a boot print so huge end up on Mars. Well, I know how…
Jesus. That’s who!
If Jesus can walk on water, he can walk on Mars.
New images of an ancient crater on Mars look just like a bootprint — and the high res pics have failed to solve the age-old mystery for planetary scientists.
If anything, the high-resolution images of the “Footprint Crater” — otherwise known as Orcus Patera — have puzzled Mars-watchers even further as to how the Red Planet was originally scarred with the 240-mile-long depression.
The picture was taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter and released by the ESA late last week.
It sits between two volcanoes, and while the name “patera” is traditionally given to irregularly shaped volcanic craters, scientists know at least enough about the Orcus Patera to know it wasn’t formed by a volcano.
I’m sure, all of the world’s biggest brains are right now busy performing experiments and coming with convoluted theories about why this boot print doesn’t to Jesus.
But remember Louie Giglio’s “Laminin” sermon from Passion 2005, Passion 2006, and Chris Tomlin’s Tour in 2006 and early 2007?!
Yep, if Jesus can put the Gospel Message way out there where it remained hidden for centuries upon centuries and can only now be seen with the world’s strongest telescopes, then he can totally leave his boot print on Mars.
He’s Jesus. Sure, I would have expected it to be a sandal print or a foot print, since it was Jesus, but Mars looks like it has some rough terrain, so Jesus in boots makes sense.
