Wealthy Pastors Promote Reconciliation, Renewal in Middle East

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 9:34 AM on April 28, 2007.

note: the following is satire. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

As the Minnesota Monitor reported on Friday, April 27, 2007, "Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, will be a special guest of Pastor Mac Hammond of Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park for 'A Night to Honor Israel'. The [Minnesota] event will join together two of the highest-paid pastors in the country, both of whom have faced criticism for their large salaries and benefits in their respective states.' " Texas megachurch Pastor Hagee, who comes from a long line of fundamentalist preachers concerned with furthering an idiosyncratic agenda on resolving conflicts in the long troubled Mideast region, founded the nonprofit organization "Christians United For Israel", in early 2006, to promote his boldly visionary Mideast renewal plan to Americans, and especially American Jews, and to lobby politicians who can help bring the project to fruition.

Previous journalistic coverage of Pastor John Hagee has noted the pastor's "Prosperity Gospel" teachings and, under those, Hagee's exhortations, to his San Antonio, Texas, Cornerstone Church congregation members, to hold dollars bills or other paper US currency up to the heavens in a ritualistic flourish one ethnographer has stated bears some resemblance to the practice, by South Pacific Island Cargo Cults of the mid 20th Century, of building earthen airplane "landing strips" as magical enticement to lure planes stuffed with modern consumer goods to land and disgorge their riches. Stated one member of Hagee's church, "Pastor Hagee's told us all about the plot, by those environmentalists, to create a United Nations satanic one world order by whipping up people's fears with all that "Global Warming" hooey, but those environmentalists have got one thing straight, God sure does love green. The paper kind, that is. And lots of it."

Rumors in advance of the Minnesota event hold that the two pastors will tout an ambitious extension of the "prosperity Gospel" approach, a plan for civic and urban renewal in the Middle East facilitated by regional or even global armed conflict and nuclear war, that the pastors believe will solve current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians, and among various Mideast ethnic and religious factions, over land in and around Israel, as well as religious conflicts for the foreseeable future or even for all eternity, through an aggressive regional depopulation plan for the mass death of Jews and Muslims and the subsequent conversion to Christianity, on pain of death and enforced by the word of God, of all surviving residents in the region.

One adherent to CUFI's eschatological, or "End Time", views who chose to remain anonymous for this story stated, "Well, I'll be safely Raptured, up in Heaven with my loved ones, watching as the whole glorious event unfolds, and when Jesus appears, at Armageddon, to pull out the guts of unbelievers and melt their eyes out of their eye sockets, he'll set up his thousand year kingdom on Earth and everything old will be new again. I can hardly wait, but I guess I'll have to although CUFI might help quicken things a bit. John Hagee says it'll be like childbirth, and from my understanding of the Book Of Revelations that's right - painful, and awfully bloody, but something beautiful is gonna come out in the end."

Attempts to reach representatives of CUFI, about an alleged pyramid scheme to sell new Mideast land deeds in advance of the "second Holocaust" that many Apocalyptic Premillennial Dispensationalist Christians expect will break the current deadlock in the Mideast peace negotiations, have so far been unsuccessful. Another, currently unsubstantiated, rumor that has circulated widely in the American evangelical community alleges that John Hagee, whose business acumen has helped give rise to a flourishing publishing, Judaica, and broadcast business, has been in negotiations with wealthy Texas investors on turning his celebrity status towards the branding of "all you can eat buffet" and Kosher Texas barbecue restaurant franchise chains envisioned for a post-Apocalyptic Mideast, after regional restaurants have mostly been vaporized. Some also speculate that Hagee may be attempting to breed a special red, "sacrificial" heifer for the dual purposes of serving both as a sacrificial offering that will sanctify the builders of a new Jewish temple, and as a marquee icon for a new line of supersized char-burgers.

Pastor John Hagee's latest bestselling book, "Jerusalem Countdown" seems to indicate the onset of the expected Mideast civic renewal process will be expedited, as the image of a nuclear mushroom cloud on the front cover of Mr. Hagee's latest, bestselling book "Jerusalem Countdown" obliquely hints at , by regional vitrification via thermonuclear weapons donated by the United States, Russia, China, Israel, and other philanthropic nations.

Email correspondence from CUFI has indicated that all cash donations, and many in-kind donations, given to the lobbying philanthropy are tax deductible pending IRS approval of the organization's 501c(3) status but that donations of nuclear devices, for CUFI's Mideast renewal plan, would not be tax deductible according to the current US tax law. However, the question may not have been definitively resolved and an IRS spokesperson consulted on the matter stated "frankly, I've never thought about it and to my knowledge private US citizens cannot legally purchase or own such devices but, oddly enough, I can see no good reason such donations would not , in principle at least, be tax deductible although we currently have no formula for yearly depreciation rates on weapons of mass destruction."

note: the preceding is satire. Any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

Tagged as: christian, israel, hagee, cufi

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.