EXPLORING NON-JEWISH ZIONISM

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Why Israel Sought the Alliance

with the New Christian Right 145

What Israel Gains from the Alliance:

Money 161

More Land 168

Christian Grassroots Support 178

JerUSAlem: Mixing Politics and Religion 185

Epilogue 195

PROPHECY AND POLITICS

Prologue

I grew up in a small, windblown town on the high, dry plains of West Texas. It was said that out there one could look farther— and see less than almost anywhere.

I was carried in my mother's or father's arms to church, twice on Sundays, and to Wednesday night prayer meetings. Absorbing biblical terms and concepts as part of my thought process, I was indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as effortlessly as breathing the clear, dry Texas air. The word of God, I was taught, comes to us through the Bible, free of all mistakes in translations and free of all typographical errors. Every "i" has been dotted and every "t" crossed. I heard repeatedly that the Bible is inerrant, infallible. As a child, I did not know the meaning of the words but they became lodged deep in my memory.

One summer, when I was nine, I visited my maternal grandparents in Arlington, Texas. Located between Dallas and Fort Worth, Arlington in that era was a quiet village of so few people everyone knew everyone else.

A "great revivalist"—as my Grandmother Shanks identified a peripatetic preacher otherwise known as Brother Turner—came to town, put up his tent and preached for a week. Grandmother and I attended every night. Brother Turner preached fire-and-brimstone sermons, telling us that the world is divided into the wicked and the good, the wicked doomed for hell and only the born again Christians escaping everlasting fire. "Repent or perish!" he warned.

All of us listening to him were spellbound. Having no radio, television or public cultural events, we depended to a great extent on revivalists such as Brother Turner to bring us knowledge and understanding.

Each night, I experienced a sense of excited, growing anticipa-

tion. Then came the final night of the revival. Brother Turner held a large Bible in his left hand, quoted directly from God and in conclusion asked those who had not confessed Christ publicly to come forward. Mrs. Triplett, who played the piano, struck the notes for the well-known hymn, "Just As I Am."

We stood to sing. Grandmother and I held a hymnal, but we knew the words by heart:

Just as I am/ without one plea

But that thy blood/ was shed for me

And that thou bidst me/ come to Thee

Oh Lamb of God, I come

I come . . .

No one came forward. Brother Turner asked us to be seated. And he asked Mrs. Triplett to continue playing while we all bowed our heads. After asking those who knew they were saved to raise their hands, he called on those who had not raised their hands to come forward and be saved.

Everyone seemed to be thinking of me in those moments. Everyone was softly singing:

Just as I am/ and waiting not

To rid my soul/ of one dark blot . . .

Suddenly, as if propelled by forces outside myself, I rose from the wooden bench and moved forward, alone, to where the evangelist was standing. He put his arms around me. And soon my grandmother, neighbors and friends were there to embrace me. I felt myself shaking uncontrollably. Tears were streaming down my face.

Grandmother wrote my parents that I had been saved. And at summer's end, I returned to Lubbock.

In Lubbock, in the years I was growing up, being saved was a prime topic of conversation. It was not considered unusual for a man, like my father, to encounter a stranger and without preliminary words of salutation ask, "Are you a Christian? Are you saved?"

Born again Christians in my town believed that human history as we know it will end in a battie called Armageddon and culminate with the return of Christ, who on His return will pass final judgment on all the living as well as the dead.

Generally, the Christians of my town also believed:

The world was about 6,000 years old.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a virgin.

The Jews are God's Chosen People.

God gave the Holy Land to His Chosen People, the Jews.

Because the Jews are his Chosen People, God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses those who curse the Jews.

In Sunday School, I studied a book with colored pictures of faraway places and bearded men wearing flowing robes. I listened to Old Testament stories of the Hebrews' sojourn in Palestine.

Early on, I had a desire to become a sojourner, too. When I was 19, I left Lubbock, my family and security. Earning my living as a writer, I lived for years at a stretch in Europe, Korea, Japan and South America. And eventually, I went to Vietnam as a reporter. I saw hospitals filled with women and children without arms or legs—victims of U.S.-made bombs that were dropped from American planes. Many victims, pointing to the sky, spoke these words in English: "Fire! American fire!"

Why, I wondered, were we killing Vietnamese?

Leaving Vietnam, I returned to the United States and settled in Washington, D.C., where I was a reporter, covering the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. One day President Johnson personally hired me to work for him as a White House staff writer.

He continued to escalate the war, sending more American soldiers to kill and be killed. Often I saw him agonize over the killings. "I was up all night," he would say. He felt himself trapped. His ego trapped him—his indoctrination that strong men win battles.

Why, I kept asking, do we not see Vietnamese as people? How can I say to President Johnson and others, They are real—as real as you and me? Then I asked myself, Were there other groups of people we did not see? As a white, growing up in Texas, I had never really seen black people. Was their being invisible the racism within me? To explore that question, I left my White House job. After darkening my skin, I lived as a black woman and recorded my experiences in a book. Later I learned about the life of an Indian woman while living on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico and Arizona. Still later, I experienced life as a Mexican wetback who

crosses the U.S.-Mexico borders without documents.

Eventually, I went to the Middle East. Before going there, I had not studied the culture and history of the area to any great extent. Rather, my knowledge of the Middle East came almost exclusively from the Bible. In this respect, I was typical of many Americans.

In 1979, in occupied Palestine, I met for the first time a Palestinian. He told how he had been forced, at gunpoint, to leave the land farmed by his father's father's father—back as far as memory served.

I stayed in one of the illegal West Bank Jewish settlements called Tekoa. I lived awhile in the home of Linda and Bobby Brown, third-generation Americans who told me they had used rifles and Uzi submachine guns to take land from Palestinian farmers.

"God gave this land to us—the Jews," Bobby Brown of Brooklyn said.

Suddenly all that I had been taught as a child flashed back to me. God had a Chosen People. And God gave the Holy Land to his Chosen People.

Now I was in the Holy Land. It was not Brother Turner speaking the words—back in the days when there was no political entity called Israel on our maps. It was a man from Brooklyn. And the land on which we sat was not a mystical, other-worldly biblical Zion, but the land—and the livelihood—of Palestinians who had lived there for the past 2,000 years.

In that moment I came face to face with a very important question that had been with me since childhood. Did God indeed have favorite people? A second question came to mind: How could a modern state called Israel be identified with ancient, biblical and mystical Zion?

After initial visits to the Holy Land, I wanted to investigate further my own belief system regarding Christianity and to learn what others thought regarding the End of Time. I read The Late Great Planet Earth, which reportedly has sold an estimated 18 million copies. It was a best-seller all during the 1970s, outselling any other book except the Bible. In this and four other books, including There's a New World Coming, author Hal Lindsey declares God has foreordained that we fight a nuclear Armageddon.

The Late Great Planet Earth was lying on my living room table, and a maintenance man in my building, helping me move furniture,

picked it up. He said he had been most eager to read the book when it first came out and that he had bought a copy.

Why, I asked, had he been so eager to read it?

''I wanted to know," he replied, "what is going to happen to this earth."

And did he agree with Lindsey that we must destroy Planet Earth, annihilating ourselves, our beautiful trees, flowers, poetry, art, literature, music, so that there will remain nothing of the past? And no earthly tomorrows?

"Well," he answered, "it's all in the Bible, just like Lindsey says."

Ronald Reagan was another person who reportedly read The Late Great Planet Earth. Did he, like Lindsey, believe God had foreordained that we—precisely those of us living in this present generation—must destroy Planet Earth? Were we already on the fatal countdown to total annihilation?

In early 1986, Libya became international enemy number one for Ronald Reagan. Did this relate to his interpretation of biblical prophecy? According to James Mills, formerly president pro tern of the California State senate, Reagan hated Libya because he saw Libya as one of the prophesied enemies of Israel and therefore an enemy of God's.

At a 1971 dinner in Sacramento, California, where Reagan, then governor, and Mills were being honored, Reagan suddenly began talking to Mills, seated at his side, about biblical prophecy and about the certainty of our fighting against the Soviet Union (Gog and Magog in the Bible) in a last great apocalyptic war. Mills, recalling this incident in the August 1985 San Diego Magazine, said Reagan "with firelit intensity" told him:

"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off."

The record shows that Reagan over many years has made many similar statements regarding our fighting against satanic forces in a nuclear Armageddon. Research scholar Larry Jones of New York and Andrew Lang of the ecumenical Christie Institute of Washington, D.C., say their studies convince them that Reagan

had in the past accepted a biblical interpretation of prophecy holding that a nuclear Armageddon is inevitable and that as late as 1986 he may have continued to hold such a conviction. The subject is so intriguing that I devote an entire chapter to Reagan and his religion.

Most all major TV evangelists preach what Hal Lindsey says in his popular books: that this Planet Earth will very likely in our lifetime become the late great Planet Earth. God knows it will happen. He knew it from the very beginning. But God kept His plan secret from all the billions of people who lived before us. But now, according to Lindsey, He has revealed the plan to Lindsey and those others, such as Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson, who preach an Armageddon theology.

The belief system of Lindsey, Falwell, Swaggart and Robertson—and an estimated 40 million evangelical fundamentalists—centers around the biblical land of Zion and the modern Zionist state of Israel, which they equate as one and the same.

Lindsey tells us that we must pass through seven time periods, or dispensations—one of which includes the terrible battle of Armageddon, where new and totally destructive nuclear weapons will be unleashed and blood will flow like mighty rivers. Because the prescribed time periods that Lindsey, Falwell, Robertson and most TV evangelists talk about are called dispensations, the belief system itself is known as dispensationalism, while the believers in this system are called dispensationalists. Dispensationalists such as Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart portray their belief system as orthodox fundamentalism based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. But that "orthodoxy" is only 150 years old and it is not possible to accurately apply the words "literal" or "fundamentalist" to a Christian theology that demands war and negates Christ's Sermon on the Mount (Blessed are the peacemakers).

Dispensationalism spread in this country largely through the efforts of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, born on August 19, 1843 in Clinton (Lenawee County), Michigan. Scofield's belief system was not original with him, but rather goes back to John Nelson Darby, a 19th-century Irishman, educated at Dublin's Trinity College and at one time a priest in the Church of England. He taught that God

had two plans and two groups of people with whom to work. Israel was God's kingdom here on earth and the church (Christianity) was God's heavenly kingdom.

Darby made several extended visits to Canada and the United States and influenced James H. Brookes, pastor of two large Presbyterian churches in St. Louis, Missouri, who in time became the mentor for Scofield.

Scofield and Darby placed prophecy at the center of their version of Christianity and made it the heart of their religious system. Beginning in 1875, Scofield talked on the stellar role of prophecy at a series of Bible and prophetic conferences.

As he concentrated on what he believed to be God's earthly plan for Israel and God's heavenly plan for born again Christians, Scofield thought of inserting notes explaining his belief system in a reference Bible. In 1909 he published the first Scofield Reference Bible (SRB). It became the most widely circulated commentary Bible in Christendom, selling in the high multi-millions of copies. (SRB publishers, the Oxford University Press of New York, has not complied with requests for the exact number of books sold.)

'The various millennial currents were most effectively solidified in the Scofield Bible," writes Dwight Wilson in Armageddon Now! 'The significance of the Scofield Bible cannot be overestimated."

Joseph M. Canfield of Asheville, North Carolina, in his self-published The Incredible Scofield and His Book, points out the danger of Scofield implanting his own ideas in the Bible. This meant, Canfield writes, that "many in the pew failed to distinguish between the words of Scofield and those of the Holy Spirit."

Scofield taught that human history is divided into well-defined periods (or dispensations) in which God relates to man in different ways. A dispensation, Scofield said, "is a period of time during which man is tested in respect to obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God. Seven such are distinguished in Scripture."

In the introduction of his 1917 Reference Bible edition, Scofield said "the dispensations are distinguished, exhibiting the majestic, progressive order of the divine dealings of God with humanity, the increasing purpose which runs through and links together the ages, from the beginning of the life of man to the end of eternity." In another comment on his system, Scofield wrote:

'There is a beautiful system in this gradualness of unfolding. The past is seen to fall into periods, marked off by distinct limits, and distinguishable period from period by something peculiar to each. Thus it comes to be understood that there is a doctrine of ages or dispensations in the Bible."

Scofield saw no hope for this world. We can never live in peace, he said. On one occasion he reminded his audience that year after year he had sounded the same warning: our world will end "in disaster, in ruin, in the great, final world-catastrophe."

But, he said, born again Christians should welcome such a catastrophe because once the final battle began, Christ will lift them up into the clouds. They will be saved. They will be Raptured. They will endure none of the torment below.

Although not all fundamentalists accepted this idea—indeed, it caused a split widely known as the Rupture over the Rapture— there is evidence that indicates a growing number of Christians endorse Armageddon theology and the Rapture. Like Scofield, they believe that Christ has promised born again Christians a new heaven and a new earth.

That being the case, they need not worry about this expendable earth. Since it is shop-worn, better throw it away—the entire world. And let Christ provide the privileged few a new heaven and earth. James Watt, the former Interior Secretary, provided a clear example of a dispensationalist view of Planet Earth. He indicated to a U.S. House of Representatives committee concerned about our forests and rivers that he did not worry much about destruction of earth's resources because, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." Similarly, Armageddon theology may be behind the lack of concern within the Religious Right and some government circles for federal budget deficits of more than $200 billion a year and the doubling of the national debt in just four years.

On two Jerry Falwell-sponsored journeys to the Holy Land, I mingled with many dispensationalists, among them Owen, of whom I write in some detail. He explained his belief system, which entails the need to destroy Jerusalem's most holy Islamic shrine, revered by about a billion Muslims around the world, and the necessity of our waging a nuclear Armageddon to destroy Planet

Earth. I asked myself, Does he represent only a fringe element in our society? Should other Americans bother to learn—or care— what he believes? How representative is his thinking?

Owen told me, as we stood in Jerusalem's Old City looking at the Dome of the Rock, that biblical prophecy "demanded" that Jews destroy the shrine and build on the site a Jewish temple. Jewish terrorists who had stormed the mosque—with intent to dynamite and obliterate it—were heroes to Owen. I learned that Jewish terrorists were heroes to many others, including such wealthy and influential Jews as Haagen-Dazs ice cream baron Reuben Mattus, Jewish Press editor Yehuda Schwartz and Mexican arms dealer Marcus Katz, who had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Jewish underground.

Christian fundamentalists who donate generously to the Jewish terrorists include oil and gas tycoon Terry Reisenhoover, a frequent White House visitor; Mission to America chairman Dr. Hilton Sutton and Dr. James DeLoach, pastor of Houston's Second Baptist church who visited me in my Washington, D.C., apartment and boasted that he and others had formed a Jerusalem Temple Foundation specifically to aid those intent on destroying the mosque and building a temple. He said they sent $50,000 for the legal defense of Jewish terrorists who were convicted of plotting to destroy the Dome of the Rock.

In researching this book, I was not intent on making an expose of any individual or group. Rather I wanted to write about a widely accepted belief system. Those who accept an Armageddon theology include the rich and the poor, the famous and the unknown. Not many will have heard of Mona or Clyde or Brad, pilgrims with Jerry Falwell. But millions know Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry— at least they have seen his famous profile, with pulled down hat, on their TV screen. He was a pilgrim on one of the Falwell tours and he, too, admires Falwell's Armageddon theology.

When I began writing, I continually raised more questions than I could answer. When General John Vessey, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, held prayer sessions at the Pentagon, did he believe that a nuclear war with Russia would hasten Christ's return? Do born again Christians and high-ranking government officials such as Edwin Meese and Herbert Ellingwood believe the

modern state of Israel and biblical Zion are one and the same and the land of Israel is "sacred"? How prevalent among those who would make a decision of a nuclear first strike against the Russians is Hal Lindsey's notion that God wants us to destroy Planet Earth?

And how many Christian dispensationalists are there like Mrs. Bobi Hromas, wife of Dr. Leslie Hromas of California's TRW Corporation, a major defense and computer manufacturer, who believe that God gave all the land described in Genesis 15 to the 20th-century Jews? And even in the nation's capital, how many know that Mrs. Hromas, who lives in Rolling Hills, California, maintains a residence across the street from the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., for one sole purpose: to provide a prayer chapel where Christians, many of them high-ranking U.S. government officials, may go to pray—at three hours a clip and around the clock— for the "redemption" (that is, Jewish ownership) of all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates?

In my mention of certain individuals, it is not my purpose or desire to criticize Bible-believing Christians or fundamentalists. My father, Harry H. Halsell, showed me the strength and beauty of character that comes with faith. He was a founder of both Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Indeed Protestant Bible-believing Christians founded most of our big universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Emory, Drew and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, to name only a few. Bible-believing Christians also founded many of our outstanding hospitals. Their zeal was not only to build churches but to create great centers of education and health. They were optimistic and energetic about building a better world—not intent on destroying this one.

Yet recent polls indicate an increasingly large number of Americans feel that we are doomed, that we ourselves will destroy Planet Earth. A 1984 Yankelovich poll showed that 39 percent of the American people said that when the Bible speaks of the earth being destroyed by fire, this means that we ourselves will destroy our earth in a nuclear Armageddon. If this poll is correct, then some 85 million Americans think nuclear war is inevitable.

A New York Times-CBS television news poll made shortly before the Reagan-Gorbachev fall 1985 meeting showed only half the

American public felt the summit would improve Soviet-American relations.

A Nielsen survey released in October 1985 shows that 61 million Americans (40 percent of all viewers) regularly listen to preachers who tell them we can do nothing to prevent a nuclear war in our lifetime.

Some of the most popular TV evangelists who preach Armageddon theology include:

• Pat Robertson, who hosts a fast-paced, 90-minute daily talk show called the ~00 Club (named for his original "00 contributors), reaches more than 16 million families (or, as the poll puts it, television households). That's slightly more than 19 percent of all Americans who own TV sets.

Robertson, the son of the late U.S. Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia and a graduate of Yale University Law School and New York Theological Seminary, employs about 1,300 people to run his Christian Broadcasting Network Corporation (CBN), with headquarters in a S22 million International Communications Center on 6~9 acres in suburban Virginia Beach. CBN includes the "00 Club, three television stations, a radio station, the CBN cable channel, a television station in southern Lebanon, international broadcasts in more than 60 countries, a university, a worldwide charity system and a lobbying group.

In early 1956 CBN began a half-hour daily television news program. "CBN News Tonight," offering news from a Christian perspective to the 27.3 million television viewers who subscribe to cable systems. The CBN staff of 100 operates out of studios in Washington and the network's headquarters in Virginia Beach. It maintains bureaus in Jerusalem and Beirut and in 19S6 planned to open bureaus in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Robertson's operations bring in more than SZ00 million a year.

By early 1986, Robertson's power and appeal were so great he began to wonder how he would look sitting in the oval office of the White House. Pat Robertson? President of the United States?

"Don't scoff," New York Times columnist Tom Wicker wrote on October 15, 19S5. "The likely candidacy, in 19SS, of M. G. (Pat) Robertson of Virginia, the Yale Law School graduate and televi-

sion evangelist who heads the Christian Broadcasting Network" was, in Wicker's opinion, a "most intriguing" possibility.

The Christian Broadcasting Network has 24 million viewers, Wicker wrote. He added: "Mr. Robertson's potential candidacy would be based on huge contribution lists, ample funds and proven television appeal to an audience larger than that of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post combined."

• Jimmy Swaggart, who operates out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is the second most popular TV evangelist, according to the Nielsen survey. He reaches a total of four and one-half million households daily (or 5.4 percent of all viewers) and a total of nine and one-quarter million households (or 10.9 percent of all viewers) on Sunday.

• Jim Bakker, named as the third most popular TV evangelist, began his religious career under the tutelage of Pat Robertson. He reaches nearly six million households daily, 6.8 percent of all viewers.

With a home base in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bakker and his wife Tammy own a $449,000 mountainside home in Palm Desert, California, along with a Rolls-Royce and a Mercedes-Benz. Like all dispensationalists, he believes that we must fight a terrible war in order to usher in the Second Coming of Christ. His PTL (Praise the Lord) "inspirational network" is carried on 825 cable systems, and is the nation's 19th largest cable network.

Bakker's enterprises earn an estimated $50 million to $100 million a year.

• Oral Roberts, whose TV programs today reach 5.77 million households (6.8 percent of all viewers), was born in a log house in Oklahoma in 1918, the son of a farmer turned Pentecostal preacher. Oral Roberts says God told him to found his university. God told him, in 1968, to leave the Pentecostal Holiness Church and become a Methodist minister. In 1977, after he lost his daughter and son-in-law in a plane crash, Roberts said God inspired him to build the City of Faith hospital. He is one of two Americans who have

smglehandedly built a university, medical school and hospital. (The other was Johns Hopkins.)

• Jerry Falwell with his Old Time Gospel Hour each week goes into ; .6 million households \b.6 percent oi all view*

In 1985, Falwell. like Robertson, was deeply involved in politics. In August, after he spent five days in South Africa. Falwell voiced support for the apartheid government and called Nobel p laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu a "phony." The Tutu remark, according to a September 25 Associated Press story, caused contributions to Falwell to fall $1 million below anticipated levels.

Undaunted, Falwell traveled in November. 1°S ; to Manila, where he voiced support for the Marcos dictatorship and called the strife-torn Philippines "a paradise."

On January 3, 1 Q $6, Falwell announced that he had formed a new organization—the Liberty Federation, to serve as the parent organization for his Moral Majority. The change in name. Falwell said, would enable his followers to "'broaden our agenda and allow more rapid growth."

On January 25, L986, Falwell hosted a luncheon in Washington. D.C., honoring Vice President George Bush. Falwell told 500 persons—who were treated to a well-planned, lavish—and all for-free luncheon—that Bush would make the best president in 1988

A week prior to this luncheon. Falwell announced the purchase oi a cable-television network, the financially troubled National Christian Network, which Falwell renamed the Liberty Broadcasting Network. The new cable network, operating out oi Lynchburg, Virginia, will feature 24-hour religious programming including a new program centered around Falwell.

• Kenneth Copeland reaches 4.°- million households (5.8 percent oi all viewers) each week. A graduate of Oral Roberts university, he is also a dispensationalist who sees modern Israel as the same as biblical Zion:

'"God has raised up Israel . . . We're watching Him move in

behalf oi Israel. . . What an excellent time to begin to support our

government as it supports Israel . . . What an excellent time

... to let God know how much you appreciate the very roots

of Abraham." Despite such testimonies of devotion, dispensa-tionalists such as Copeland do not necessarily love or even like Israel per se. Rather they express a love for Israel because they perceive it as providing the site for the battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ. And they express a love for the Jews not because they are Jews, but rather because they perceive them as stellar actors on the stage unfolding the time periods or dispensations that they, the dispensationalists, need for their own Christian maturity.

• Richard De Haan with his Day of Discovery reaches 4.075 million households (4.8 percent of all viewers). He is the son of M. R. De Haan of Grand Rapids, Michigan, who in his lifetime promoted dispensationalism perhaps more than any other American minister.

• Rex Humbard reaches 3.7 million households (4.4 percent of all viewers). Based in Akron, Ohio, he is Pentecostal and an entrepreneur on the order of Oral Roberts. He preaches Scofield dispensationalism: God from the very beginning knew that we, those living today, would destroy Planet Earth.

I list only seven religious broadcasters of the many thousands who preach Armageddon theology on radio, TV and from the pulpit. Of the 4,000 evangelical-fundamentalists who annually attend the National Religious Broadcasters Conventions, an estimated 3,000 are dispensationalists who believe that only a nuclear holocaust can bring Christ back to earth. This message goes out over 1,400 religious stations in America. Of the 80,000 evangelical pastors who broadcast daily over 400 radio stations, a vast majority are dispensationalists.

Some dispensationalist ministers are as powerful as kings in their local regions. The Reverend W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, is an example. Criswell's membership is not only one of the largest in the world (25,000) but also one of the most generous. One Sunday in October, 1985, after Criswell explained that "We have to pay the light bill and the janitorial bill and the upkeep of our property," the members responded by putting $1.85 million in the collection plates—reportedly the largest

cash offering ever given in any one day to any one church.

Like Robertson, Swaggart, Bakker and the other TV evangelists I have named, Criswell also makes a cult of Israel. He believes we must fight the battle of Armageddon, that Christ can return only to Jerusalem and that Israel today is to be blessed by God because it is the same as the biblical Zion.

Currently, Criswell's voice is one of the strongest in the powerful Southern Baptist Convention, with a membership of 14 million. He supports and helps put into office SBC leaders who are dispen-sationalists, and he is a strong advocate of having Scofield's dispensationalism—along with its Armageddon theology—taught in SBC seminaries.

Most Bible schools across the land—denominational and non-denominational—teach dispensationalism and Armageddon theology, according to Dale Crowley, Jr., a Washington, D.C., minister whose father, Dale Crowley, Sr., now of Florida, was a founding member of the National Religious Broadcasters.

"Schools such as the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia College of the Bible, and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and about 200 others are all turning out students steeped in Scofieldism," says Crowley. "Eighty to 90 percent of the teachers and students study Scofield and believe in a Rapture and nuclear Armageddon. There are now about 100,000 students in these Bible schools. And they will go out into the world and become ministers and preach this doctrine, or they will start their own Bible schools and teach it."

Scofield once headed the Southwestern School of the Bible in Dallas, forerunner of the present Dallas Theological Seminary, the major center for the dissemination of Scofield's views. On June 7, 1984,1 visited the tree-shaded seminary, with its attractive, Spanish-style architecture, for a personal interview with Dr. John Walvoord, who taught Hal Lindsey the belief system the writer later incorporated in The Late Great Planet Earth.

Dr. Walvoord, 70, balding and with a kind, avuncular manner, told me what all dispensationalists believe: God does not look on all of His children in the same way. He sees us divided into two categories, the Jews and the Gentiles. God has one plan, an earthly plan, for the Jews. And He has a second plan, a heavenly plan, for

the born again Christians. The other peoples of the world, Muslims, Buddhists and those of other faiths as well as those Christians not born again, do not concern Him.

And as far as destroying Planet Earth, we can do nothing. Peace, for us, is not in God's book.

This was Scofield's message. It is Walvoord's and Lindsey's message and it is the message that comes to us across our dial.

'There'll be no peace until Jesus comes. Any preaching of peace prior to this return is heresy; it's against the word of God; it's Antichrist," says TV evangelist Jim Robison, who was invited by President Reagan to deliver the opening prayer at the 1984 Republican National Convention.

On June 9, 1982, three days after Israel began its invasion of Lebanon, TV evangelist Pat Robertson, with the calm assurance of one who will be spared, explained the horrors of a forthcoming battle of Armageddon. He began his program by repeating a prediction he had made in January 1982.

"I guarantee you by the fall of 1982, that there is going to be a judgment on the world, and the ultimate judgment is going to come on the Soviet Union. They are going to be the ones to make military adventures, and they are going to be hit."

As a TV camera followed him, Robertson walked to his blackboard and using a pointer on the Middle East he paraphrased the prophecy of Ezekiel:

Tn the latter days when Israel is regathered from the nations, I'm going to cause something to happen. Here is what is going to happen. I'm going to put hooks in the jaws of the confederation that is going to be led by someone named Gog in the land of Magog (the Soviet Union). And the people that will be with it are Beth Togarma (Armenia), Put (Libya), Rush (Ethiopia), Gomer (South Yemen) and Persia (Iran).

'This whole thing is now in place," Robertson continued. Tt can happen any time . . . But by fall (1982) undoubtedly something like this will happen which will fulfill Ezekiel. It is ready to happen . . . The United States is in that Ezekiel passage, and ... we are standing by" (waiting for the inevitable final battle).

"We should not make any agreements with the Soviet Union," says dispensationalist Jimmy Swaggart (in a sermon broadcast on

TV from Baton Rouge on September 22, 1985). "If we build weapons, they build weapons. If we don't build weapons, they build more weapons." He urges a greater stockpile of U.S. weapons and withdrawal from the United Nations, saying the U.N. "is an instrument of communism."

"I wish I could say we will have peace," he continues. "I believe Armageddon is coming, Armageddon is coming. It is going to be fought in the valley of Megiddo. It's coming. They can sign all the peace treaties they want. They won't do any good. There are dark days coming. The problems of Africa will not be solved. The problems of Central America will not be solved. The problems of Europe will not be solved. It's going to get worse . . ."

"I'm not planning on going through the hell that is coming. The Lord will descend from heaven with a shout. My Lord! I'm happy about it! He's coming again! I don't care who it (Armageddon) bothers. I don't care who it troubles. It thrills my soul!"

Such a belief system was worth exploring, I felt, since the dispensations or time periods that Walvoord, Lindsey, Swaggart, Falwell, Robertson and others envision for their own Christian maturation include a nuclear holocaust that could destroy all of us. Would Pat Robertson as president believe arms talks with the Russians were useless since this planet was destined to be the late great Planet Earth? Are our policy decisions even today being influenced by a perception that there will be no peace until the Messiah comes? Is disarmament contrary to God's plan as set forth in His word?

This book is my quest for a few of the answers.

WITH

JERRY FALWELL

IN THE LAND OF CHRIST

Maps such as this are distributed by some fundamentalist groups

The Battle of Armageddon

Starting in 1980, I made a habit of tuning into Jerry Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour each Sunday on TV.

To learn more about Falwell's Armageddon theology, and to know to what extent his followers think as he does, I signed to go on a 1983 Jerry Falwell-sponsored tour of the Holy Land.

I was one of 630 Christians who flew out of New York to Tel Aviv, where we were divided into groups of about 50. Each of us was assigned to a certain bus, with a designated Israeli guide. After an overnight rest in Tel Aviv, we were on our buses.

Now, go with me on a short journey:

To get to Megiddo, we travel north from Tel Aviv for 55 miles. We arrive at a site that lies 20 miles south-southeast of Haifa and about 15 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea. On leaving the bus, my steps fall in with Clyde, a retired Minneapolis business executive who is in his late 60s. Clyde, a college graduate, had served as an Army captain in North Africa and Europe during World War II and had been honored for his intelligent command of soldiers and his personal courage under fire. He stands six feet tall, with good posture, which he credits to his service in the army.

Clyde's wife died two years ago, and he later decided to take this trip on his own. He is dressed neatly, with worsted wool trousers, white shirt, subdued tie and a cashmere jacket. He has a full head of hair, only partially gray.

We walk a short distance to a tell, or mound—an artificial hill covering the successive layers of remains of ancient communities.

"An old Canaanite city once was here," Clyde remarks, adding that we are on the southern rim of the large flat expanse of the plain of Esdraelon, also called in Scripture the valley of Jezreel.

"In ancient times, Megiddo was a city of great importance. It lay at the strategic crossing of important military and caravan routes," Clyde, a history buff, says. 'The Via Maris, the old coastal route linking Egypt with Damascus and the East, traversed this valley by Megiddo."

So, I suggest, this site has always been a battlefield?

"Yes," Clyde agrees. "Some historians believe that more battles have been fought here than at any other place in the world. Ancient conquerors used to say that any leader who held Megiddo could withstand all invaders.

"You read in Joshua 12:21 how Joshua and the Israelites defeated the Canaanites here in one battle. And two centuries later the Israelite forces under Deborah and Barak—read in Judges 4 and 5—won a battle against the Canaanite captain Sisera.

"And then, as we know, King Solomon fortified the city, making it into a military center for his horses and chariots.

"Even in my lifetime, we've had important battles here. Near the end of World War I, in 1918, the British General Allenby won a crucial victory over the Turks right here at Megiddo."

All the members of our party continue walking to a vantage point, and then we stop to absorb a commanding view of the valley of Jezreel stretching out to the northwest far into the distance.

"At last!" Clyde remarks in a voice filled with emotion, "I am viewing the site of the last great battle!"

But how, I ask, did he know a final battle would be waged here?

"You take the name—Megiddo—and add the additional Hebrew word har, meaning mountain, and that gives you a phrase meaning the mountain of Megiddo or 'Har-Megiddo.' That translates into the word Armageddon."

As he speaks, I try to follow his reasoning by looking for the har, or mountain, but I do not find it. Since I see the valley before us, however, I reason that the vantage point on which we stand can easily be considered the har. Even so, would not Har-Megiddo—literally the mountain of Megiddo—mean a place, not an event?

"No, no," Clyde replies, somewhat impatient. "This is the site of the battle involving all nations. It will be the final battle between the forces of good, led by Christ, and the forces of evil, led by the Antichrist."

Like millions of others, I admit to Clyde, I have always heard of Armageddon. But while often hearing the word, I did not know its derivation. Had Clyde, I ask, read much about Armageddon?

"You know we find the word Armageddon only once in the Bible. That, of course, is in the Book of Revelation. That's chapter 16, verse 16." And Clyde quotes the short verse:

"And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."

Since this word Armageddon looms so important in our lives, I hope to pin down its derivation. I repeat what Clyde has said: the Old Testament makes no mention of the word. And the New Testament mentions the word only in one instance, in Revelation, sometimes called the Apocalypse or the Revelation of St. John. Still, I am confused. Whereas Revelation speaks of "a place" called Armageddon, Clyde insists that Armageddon means a battle.

"John the Divine wrote the book of Revelation," Clyde says. "And as you know it's from John that we get most of our information on these final days we are passing through. He gives us a perfect picture of this last battle to be fought right here. You recall that in his vision of that great battle he wrote: The cities of the nation fell . . . and every island fled away and the mountains were not found.' " Clyde then adds:

"God knows everything about the future—nothing escapes Him. God knew from the beginning who would go to hell and precisely who would not. When God gave the law, He knew that man was incapable of keeping it."

I venture to ask:

He foreknows—and He has foreordained?

"You've got to remember foreknowing does not predetermine everything. But what God knows He knows beyond all guessing. What God knows He knows 100 percent. And He knows everything.

"In the Book of Revelation, God uses John to give us a good description of what this last battle will be like," Clyde continues. "A 200-million- man Oriental army will be moving westward for one year. This army will move through and destroy the most populated area of the world before arriving at the River Euphrates.

"Revelation 16 tells us that the River Euphrates will be dry and this will permit the kings of the East, the Orientals, to cross into Israel."

The kings of the East?—I repeat. My mind flits to the area of the world east of the Euphrates. I can call to mind no kings in that area of the world today. In our time, the shah of Iran was the last king east of the Euphrates. There being no kings today—there were kings in John's time—would it not indicate, I suggest, that John was writing for his own age, not ours?

"No, no—" says Clyde. "You can take 'kings' to mean leaders, heads of state." A literalist, Clyde, in this instance does not take the Bible literally. I do not interrupt, and Clyde continues his narrative: "The kings—or leaders—will move the greatest army in the history of the world right here to Megiddo." His eyes enlarge and his face takes on a glow of anticipation as he talks of an angel pouring out a vial upon the great river Euphrates and the water drying up, permitting the vast army to march across the riverbed.

But how, when it is so difficult to organize one good army, much less all the armies of the Orient, could one man do this? Or one group of leaders?

"Oh, that's clear," says Clyde. "The leaders have geopolitical goals, but they are motivated by 'demonic spirits.'

Demonic spirits? I ask.

"In this case, they are the demonic spirits of the fallen angels who followed Lucifer in his rebellion against God. After these demonic spirits gain control of the minds of the world leaders, these leaders and the armies of the world unknowingly become their pawns."

I seem to be fitting it all together. To make sure I am on the right track, I suggest that it will be the Antichrist who puts the demonic spirits into the leaders of the world, and Clyde says that is right.

Besides the demonic spirits, Clyde talks of the "beast" of John's Revelation, explaining that "the beast means there will be a powerful union of ten European nations or groups of nations that will arise in the last days. Now we know we are living in the last days because we have seen the rise of that union of powerful European nations—that's what we call the European Economic Community or the Common Market. By studying prophecy, one can see that God has foretold all of these developments.

"Everything we read that's happening in the world today in-

dicates clearly that this battle will take place very soon.

"And in this final battle—you learn this from studying Zechariah as well as Revelation—the forces of the nations of the entire earth under the Antichrist will be fighting against King Jesus and his glorified saints. And as we know, Christ, in history's bloodiest battle, will devastate millions and destroy the Antichrist."

To prove his point, Clyde quotes from memory Second Thessalonians 2:8:

"And then shall that Wicked"—which means, Clyde adds, the lawless one, or the Antichrist—"be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming."

It is unlikely, I comment to Clyde, that Christians have devoted more thoughts and words to any other place—outside heaven and hell—than to the idea of an Armageddon.

As Clyde and I stand talking, others in our group take seats on rocks or on the grass, contemplating the valley with its patchwork fields of wheat, barley and fruit orchards. While it looks so quiet, so peaceful, Clyde's demeanor and words make the world going up in a big bang appear inevitable. He seems certain of his details and figures regarding the final conflagration.

Yet this battle is to be waged in a field before us—a valley so small it would fit into a Nebraska farm and be lost if placed in a big Texas ranch. Gesturing toward the minuscule quiet valley of terraced fields, I remark to Clyde that it looks very small for the last, great decisive battle.

"No," he says, quite serious. "You can get a lot of tanks in here."

Tanks, I repeat, and all the armies of the earth?

"All of this. But you've got to remember this will be the greatest battle ever fought. Several million will die right here."

And a nuclear war will start here at Megiddo, and destroy the world? I ask.

"Yes," he replies. "You read this in Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39. It describes a nuclear war, saying there will be 'torrential rains and hailstone, fire and brimstone' and 'a great shaking in the land' with mountains falling and cliffs collapsing and walls tumbling to the ground in the face of 'every kind of terror.' Ezekiel could scarcely have been referring to anything other than an exchange

of tactical nuclear weapons."

Clyde's certitude staggers my sense of reality. Yet I know that he speaks what literally millions of Americans believe.

And did Clyde, I ask, visualize Christ, rather like a five-star general leading an army? And does he interpret Scripture to say that Jesus as Supreme Commander will destroy forces allied against Him by the use of nuclear weapons?

"Yes,* 4 he responds. "In fact, we can expect that Christ will make the first strike. He will release a new weapon. And this weapon will have the same effects as those caused by a neutron bomb. You read in Zechariah 14:12, that 'their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.' '

But is Clyde saying Christ Himself will make the first strike? Before replying, Clyde draws himself up to his full six feet:

"Yes, Jesus Christ returns to this earth to restore the government of God and to bring world peace. And He will take command of the world. And do so from His headquarters in Jerusalem," Clyde tells me in a strong, deadly earnest voice.

And what about the Jewish people living in Israel?

"Two-thirds of all the Jews living here will be killed," Clyde says. "You read that in Zechariah 13:8-9. There are about 13 and a half million Jews in the world today. So God is telling us that nine million Jews will be killed in this battle—more than all the Jews killed by the Nazis. So much blood will flow that God likens it to a wine press that presses out blood. For 200 miles the blood will reach up to the horses' bridles!"

Why, I ask, did Clyde suppose God wanted to pour out a series of judgments that would kill most of the world's people and destroy most of our civilization?

"He's doing it mainly for his ancient people, the Jews," Clyde replies. "He devised a seven-year Tribulation period mainly to purge the Jews, to get them to see the light and recognize Christ as their savior."

I confess his interpretation is confusing to me. Why would God have chosen the Jews, his favorite among all the world's people, only to exterminate most of them—in Clyde's euphemistic word, to "purge" them?

"Don't you see? God wants them to bow down before His only son, who is our Lord Jesus Christ."

Then Clyde explains that after having exterminated two-thirds of the people, God would save the Land of Israel—that He Himself would enter into the battle of Armageddon. "And He has all He needs to destroy those who are determined to harm Israel." It begins to sound to me as if Clyde loves Israel but does not especially like the Jews. He seems to have little or no remorse for the Jews and others he says would be killed.

"It will take the Jews living in Israel seven months to bury all the dead soldiers." As proof, Clyde quotes Ezekiel 39:12: "And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land."

At the risk of repeating myself, I again ask why a God of mercy would want us to use nuclear weapons?

"Remember," he replies, "man obtained from God his knowledge of how to create destructive power. Nuclear energy is not new to God. And the threat of a nuclear holocaust does not take Him by surprise. At all times God knows how many fish are in the sea, how many stars are in the sky and how many grains of sand are on the seashore. He is sovereign, supreme in power. What He decides must take place. No man or nation can prevent what He wills from occurring.

"When Christ comes to earth again, he will descend out of the skies over Jerusalem. You see, all history has in a sense been predetermined by God. And all history relates and is centered on this nation of Israel, which is the apple of God's eye. So, in the great final battle God will again take charge of human history," Clyde concludes, giving me an enigmatic smile.

"The End is Near"

On the Holy Land tour, I had tape-recorded Clyde's words and later when I listened to them, they sounded very much the same as what Jerry Falwell and most major TV evangelists say: we are moving inexorably toward a nuclear holocaust. The script has already been written. As Clyde put it, God is taking charge of human history.

On my return from the 1983 trip, I investigated what other evangelical-fundamentalists had said on the subject of Armageddon. In 19"0, Billy Graham warned that the world is "moving now very rapidly toward its Armageddon" and "the present generation of young people may be the last generation in history/'

"Now many people ask where is Armageddon, how close are we to it?" Graham said on another occasion. "Well, it's west of the Jordan, between Galilee and Samaria in the plain of Jezreel. And Napoleon saw that great place one time and he said, This would make the greatest battlefield in the world.' For the Bible teaches that the last great war of history will be fought in that part of the world: the Middle East!"

"In this final battle," C. C. Cribb, former president of Evangelical Ministries, Inc., wrote in 19 , "King Jesus will utterly devastate the assembled military millions of the diabolical dictator Antichrist."

Best-selling author Hal Lindsey interprets all of history—the Middle East and all the world—by his reading of Scripture. In The Late Great Planet Earth, he says the state of Israel is the dateline for all present and future major events.

"Before the Jews were a nation, nothing was relevant," Lindsey says. "Now when that occurred, there began to be a countdown of all kinds of prophetic signs falling into place. Because there had to be certain spheres of political power that would emerge, and

now, according to the prophetic pattern, the whole world would be focused on the Middle East and particularly Israel in the last days. All of the nations would be troubled and become involved with what goes on there. We can see how that's developing at this time, fitting right into the prophetic pattern by things as contemporary as things you see in the newspaper every day."

A former riverboat captain, who was born again and became a seminary student, Lindsey wrote four sequels to The Late Great Planet Earth, all involving biblical prophecy in which Israel plays a pivotal role.

As a purveyor of prophecy, Lindsey, whom I met at a 1985 Prayer Breakfast for Israel, has a considerable advantage over most of his predecessors and even his rivals. He is not a traditional hellfire and damnation preacher. Low-key and scholarly looking, Lindsey is about 50, with a full head of dark hair and a mustache. He has mastered the technique of sounding expert in world events and universal history. He gives the appearance of being compassionate, caring and concerned. As a speaker on the lecture circuit and on college campuses, where he appeared for eight years as a staff member of the Campus Crusade for Christ, Lindsey was popular as a propagator of standard apocalyptic prediction.

In his approach to Revelation, Lindsey uses what he calls a "deductive manner," attempting to deduce what God was trying to say through John's limited technical knowledge and vocabulary. For example, in his vision or dream, John sees locusts with scorpion tails. Lindsey conjectures that these are Cobra helicopters with some kind of nerve gas spraying from their tails.

Lindsey states categorically that the generation born since 1948 will witness the Second Coming of Christ. But before that event, we must fight both a "Gog-Magog" war and the battle of Armageddon. The holocaust will start like this: all the Arabs plus a Russian confederacy will invade Israel.

"Think of it," he writes in There's a New World Coming, "at least 200 million soldiers from the Orient, with millions more from the forces of the West headed by the Antichrist of the Revived Roman Empire (Western Europe)!

"Messiah Jesus will first strike those who have ravaged His city Jerusalem. Then he will strike the armies amassed in the valley of

Megiddo, or Armageddon. No wonder blood will stand to the horses' bridles for a distance of 200 miles from Jerusalem! . . . This whole valley will be filled with war materials, animals, bodies of men, and blood!

"It seems incredible! The human mind cannot conceive of such inhumanity of man to man, yet God will allow man's nature to fully display itself in that day," writes Lindsey.

Reading Lindsey, I find none of Saint Augustine's mournful mood in the face of war, as expressed in The City of God. Lindsey seems less than sad when he proclaims that every city in the world will be destroyed in a final nuclear war: "Imagine, cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago—obliterated!"

The eastern force alone will wipe out one-third of the world's population. Jesus, Lindsey writes, will "lay waste" to the earth and scorch its inhabitants. When the "great war" reaches such a pitch that almost everyone has been killed, there comes the "greatest moment"—Jesus saves humankind from total extinction by preserving a faithful remnant. In this hour those Jews who have not been slaughtered will convert to Christianity.

Only 144,000 Jews will remain alive after the battle of Armageddon, Lindsey says. And they all—every man, woman and child— will bow down to Jesus. As converted Christians, all the adults will at once begin preaching the gospel of Christ. "Imagine!" exults Lindsey. "They will be like 144,000 Jewish Billy Grahams turned loose at once!"

Jerry Falwell prefers the topic of Armageddon to almost any other subject. In a December 2, 1984, sermon, he began by reading Revelation 16:16—which gives us the first and only biblical mention of Armageddon, and then proclaimed:

"The word strikes fear into the hearts of people! There will be one last skirmish and then God will dispose of this Cosmos. The Scripture tells us in Revelation, chapters 21 and 22, God will destroy this earth—the heavens and the earth.

"And Peter says in his writings that the destruction will mount as with a fervent heat or a mighty explosion."

In the "holocaust at Armageddon," Falwell continues, "the Antichrist will move into the Middle East and place a statue of himself in the Jewish temple, the holy of holies, and demand that the whole

world worship him as God . . .

"Millions of devout Jews will again be slaughtered at this time (Zechariah 15:8) but a remnant will escape (Zechariah 13:9) and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra (located in Jordan). I don't know how, but God will keep them because the Jews are the Chosen People of God."

The battlefield for Armageddon, says Falwell, quoting Zechariah 12:11 and Revelation 16:16, as well as Isaiah 34:35-36 and 36:1 "will stretch from Megiddo in the north to Edom on the south, a distance of about 200 miles. It will reach from the Mediterranean Sea on the west to the hills of Moab on the east, a distance of almost 100 miles. It will include the valley of Jehoshaphat—read Joel 3:2 and verse 12 as well. And the plains of Jezreel and the center of the entire area will be the city of Jerusalem—according to Zechariah 14, verses one and two.

"Into this area the multiplied millions of men at Armageddon— they will doubtless be approaching 400 million in number—will crowd in for that final holocaust of humanity and Joel 3:14 says the kings with their armies will come from the north and the south and the east and the west. In the most dramatic sense this will be the valley of decision for humanity, with a great wine press into which will be poured the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God referred to in Revelation 19:15.

"Why will they be fighting there? Why is the Antichrist leading the armies of the world against Lord Jesus?

"Number one, because he hates the sovereignty of God. The battle has always been Satan versus Christ. That's the issue. Secondly, because of the deception of Satan, these nations will come. Third, because of the hatred of the nations for the Lord Jesus Christ. Some things will happen during that battle. The Euphrates river will dry up (Revelation 16:12) and the destruction of Jerusalem will occur."

Meanwhile, continues Falwell, quoting John's Revelation again, "all the fowls that fly in the heaven" will be feasting themselves on "the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.

"John saw a beast in his dreams," Falwell concludes, and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against the Lord Jesus Christ, who, in John's vision, is a man sitting on a white horse.

As Armageddon draws to a close, with millions lying dead, the Lord Jesus will throw the beast and the false prophet (the Antichrist) "into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone." And the Lord Jesus will slay all His other enemies who somehow survived Armageddon.

Falwell had portrayed a horrifying picture of the end of the world. But he did not seem to be sad or even concerned. In fact he concluded this sermon by giving us a big smile and saying:

"Hey, it's great being a Christian! We have a wonderful future ahead!"

After listening to that sermon, I played tapes of "Dr. Jerry Falwell teaches Bible Prophecy" issued by the Old Time Gospel Hour in 1979. On these tapes Falwell says:

"So you see, Armageddon is a reality, a horrible reality. But, thank God, it's the end of the days of the Gentiles, for it then sets the stage for the introduction of the King, the Lord Jesus, in power and in great glory."

"Almost all Bible teachers I know are anticipating the Lord's imminent return. And I do believe myself that we are a part of that terminal generation, that last generation, that shall not pass until our Lord comes."

"There are some very recent developments in Russia, predicted by the prophet Ezekiel, which point up the soon return of our Lord. These communists are God-haters, they're Christ-rejecters, and their ultimate goal is world conquest. Some 26 hundred years ago, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel prophesied that such a nation would rise to the north of Palestine just prior to the Second Coming of Christ.

"In Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, we read that the name of this land would be Rosh—that's Ezekiel 38, verse 2 in the American Standard Version—Rosh, R-O-S-H. He (Ezekiel) continues by mentioning two cities of Rosh. These he called Meshech and Tubal. That's all in verse 2, as well. The names here are remarkably similar to Moscow and Tubolsk, the two ruling capitals of Russia today.

Also, Ezekiel wrote that the land would be anti-God—verse 3—and therefore God would be against it. He also said that Russia or Rosh would invade Israel in the latter days—that's verse 8—then he said this invasion would be aided by various allies of Rosh—verses 5 and 6.

"He named those allies: Iran (which we have in the past called Persia), South Africa or Ethiopia, North Africa or Libya, Eastern Europe (called Gomer here in Ezekiel 38), and the Cossacks of southern Russia, called Togarmah in this chapter. In 38:15 of Ezekiel, the prophet describes the major part of horses in this invasion.

'The Cossacks of course have always owned and bred the largest and finest herd of horses in history. The purpose of this invasion, Ezekiel said, was to take a 'spoil'—verse 12, chapter 38. If one but removes the first two letters from this word 'spoil,' he soon realizes what Russia will really be after—obviously, oil. And that is where we find ourselves today. This, then, is Ezekiel's prophecy concerning Russia."

"In spite of the rosy and utterly unrealistic expectations by our government" (on the Camp David accords involving Israel and Egypt), "this treaty will not be a lasting treaty. We are certainly praying for the peace of Jerusalem. We certainly have the highest respect for the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of Egypt—great men, no doubt about that. And they certainly want peace—I am convinced that is true. But you and I know that there's not going to be any real peace in the Middle East until one day the Lord Jesus sits down upon the throne of David in Jerusalem."

"That day is coming. And for sure, you and I are going to be a part of it. But until then, there is not going to be any peace on this earth until the Prince of Peace, our Savior, returns."

Armageddon was much on Falwell's mind when he gave an interview, published March 4, 1981, in the Los Angeles Times, to reporter Robert Scheer. Their conversation went like this:

Scheer: "Turning to the future—in your pamphlet on Armageddon, you prophesy nuclear war with Russia."

Falwell: "We believe that Russia, because of her need of oil— and she's running out now—is going to move in on the Middle East, and particularly Israel because of their hatred of the Jew, and that

it is at that time when all hell will break out. And it is at that time when I believe there will be some nuclear holocaust on this earth, because it says that blood shall flow in the streets up to the bridle of the horses in the Valley of Esdraelon for some 200 miles. And it speaks of horrible happenings that one can only relate in Second Peter 3, the melting of the elements, to nuclear warfare. But I think, at the end of the church age, when the church is Raptured, as we use the word, or cached out, then uninhibited hostilities will occur on this earth."

Scheer: "And Russia will be—"

Falwell: "And Russia will be the offender and will be ultimately totally destroyed."

Scheer: "Well, the whole world will, won't it?"

Falwell: "No, not the whole world, because then our Lord is coming back to the earth. First, He comes to take the church out. Seven years later, after Armageddon, this horrible holocaust, He's coming back to this very earth so it won't be destroyed, and the church is coming with him, to rule and reign with Christ on the earth for a thousand years. And then comes the new heavens and the new earth and eternity. That's all in that book on Armageddon—that is just an outline."

Scheer: "But will it be possible for Russia to be destroyed with nuclear weapons without it destroying the world?"

Falwell: "Yes, I don't mean that every person—Russia has many wonderful Christians there, too. The underground church is working very effectively in Russia, Red China. They're going to be taken out in the Rapture ... It (the war) will come down out of the north—that has to be the Soviet Union—upon the midst of the earth—Israel and the Middle East—and so we believe the hostilities will be initiated by the Soviet Union. That's why most of us believe in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. We believe we're living in those days just prior to the Lord's coming."

Scheer: "By imminent, you mean a year or how long?"

Falwell: "Nobody is willing, of course—we're warned by the Lord not to set dates. The Lord said, 'No man knows the day or the hour.' Every religious group or leader who has ever set dates, I think, has dishonored the Lord and embarrassed themselves. It could be 50 years. I don't think so. I don't think we have that long.

I think we're coming to an impasse. All of history is reaching a climax and I do not think, I do not think we have 50 years left. I don't think my children will live their full lives out . . ."

In a tract, "Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ," published in 1983 by the Old-Time Gospel Hour, Falwell writes: 'The Tribulation will result in such bloodshed and destruction that any war up to that time will seem insignificant."

In a chapter entitled 'The Coming War with Russia," Falwell predicts a Soviet invasion of Israel followed by the annihilation of Soviet forces "on the mountains of Israel."

"At the conclusion of this battle, Scripture tells us that five-sixths (83 percent) of the Russian soldiers will have been destroyed (Ezekiel 39:2). The first grisly feast of God begins (Ezekiel 39:4,17-20). A similar feast would seem to take place later, after the battle of Armageddon (Revelation 19:17-18; Matthew 24:28). The communist threat will cease forever. Seven months will be spent in burying the dead (Ezekiel 39:11-15)."

The Saved Will be Raptured

On the 1983 Falwell-sponsored tour, I remark to Clyde, who apparently has memorized much of the Old and New Testaments, that I am puzzled about how the Rapture will transpire. What does the Bible tell us about it?

'The term Rapture itself is not found in Scripture," Clyde said. "But it means 'the catching up.' It refers to the scene described in First Thessalonians 4:16-1": Tor the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.'

So, I ask Clyde, will Christ come to get the saved at the time of the Rapture?

"That is right."

And does He return a second time, or—considering His visit 2,000 years ago, it would now be the third time—to fight against the Antichrist in the battle of Armageddon?

"Yes," said Clyde. "That is right."

Since Clyde seems certain of this, I suggest that prophecy might fall into the category of "prewritten history."

"You must understand," Clyde explains, "that prophecy was a closed book until recently because God had instructed Daniel to seal the book 'until the time of the end.' That vou find in Daniel 12:4."

Does Clyde believe that there are prophets today who are getting direct revelations from God?

"Not necessarily," Clyde said. "But we have men like Hal Lind-sey and Jerry Falwell who have been given special insight into the prophetic word."

THE SAVED WILL BE RAPTURED

I recall to Clyde that once, as a child, returning home from school and not finding my mother, I feared she might have been Raptured—and thus lost forever to me on this earth.

"It can happen anytime," Clyde says. "I believe it is the next event. And millions will be caught up. Now in Florida I play golf with a neighbor who has not confessed Jesus Christ as his savior. I witness to him—that Christ can save him from damnation. And I warn him we are approaching the End of Time. We read in First T m, 'Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Anti-en t is coming, so now manv Antichrists have come; therefore we nrv, that this is the last hour.'

And then of course we have the words of Jesus himself, in Revelation 22:20, 'Yes, I am coming soon.' "

And just how did Clyde expect the Rapture to work? How, I ask, will Christ pick and choose?

Clyde stares as if looking at a scene in the future. "I'm driving with my friend who is not saved, and the Rapture occurs, which, again, I expect any day, and I'm lifted up in the air out of the car. The car runs amok. And my friend is killed in the crash." Clyde then adds a sentence he likes to repeat, "I rejoice in the idea of meeting my Savior."

And what about his friend, with whom he played golf? Once Clyde is Raptured, safely awaiting the battle to end, will he be concerned about him?

"No, I need not be," he said. "The agony of friends and loved ones in hell will be entirely deleted from the mind of the survivors in heaven."

Clyde earlier told me his wife had died two years ago. Had she, I ask—and the others in his family—been saved?

"No, and that bothers me. Neither my wife, before she died, nor my son and his children—none of them are saved. They refused to confess Christ. I will be in heaven and I hate to say it, but I will not see them there. And I well know what is in store for those who have not bowed down before our Lord. We know from Zechanah 14:12 that the flesh of the wicked shall, on the last day, 'rot while they are still on their feet.' "

Clyde speaks of God's vengeance in a quiet voice. He seems certain his God will mete out to most of the dead and the currently

alive—all who have not been born again—a punishment that denies any peace of annihilation.

In the everyday world, Clyde is soft-spoken, genial and considerate. He has been highly successful in his business. But his commitment is to another world, the world of his Rapture and his salvation. To him, this is reality, not just a world of apocalyptic visions. Emotionally he exists in his apocalyptic world, for it is more fascinating, providing him energy, sustenance and a tomorrow.

I can't help wondering: had Clyde forgotten that just as one may find a God of vengeance and hate in the Bible, one may also find a God of love and compassion? In his messages, Jesus calls us to be disarmed, to surrender, to be as little children, to forgive not seven times, but seven times seven.

We move on to discuss another perplexing question, never clear to me, even though I have heard several sermons on the subject of the Rapture. Just how long will born again Christians be up in heaven with Jesus?

"We will return to earth when Christ does—at the time of the great World War," Clyde says. "When He returns, He puts to death all the wicked. And the righteous who are left, the surviving Jews and Gentiles, are ushered into his thousand-year millennial reign, when Christ rules on earth as King of Kings for a thousand years. And we will be here with him.

"At the end of that thousand years, our present earth and heaven are destroyed and the new earth and new heaven are created, and in the new earth will be the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, where the saved of all ages will live. And that begins eternity, and after that there are no more sequences of events. So the Rapture of the church is the first event in this whole series, and that can occur anytime."

I have been in remote corners of the world, I tell Clyde, where native peoples have not heard of Jesus Christ. Because of this, do they deserve to be assigned to an endless hell?

"We are now with short-wave radios, getting the message of Christ to all the areas of the world," Clyde said. "So many may still have time to repent of their sins and to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior."

Clyde and I then discuss the difference—as regards a Messiah—

THE SAVED WILL BE RAPTURED }Q

between Judaism and Christianity.

"There's the story of a Jew and a Christian discussing this," Clyde relates. "They are both sitting and talking—and waiting. And they agree that the big question in each of their minds is. Has He been here before?

"I say we have a common destiny: the Jews today look for the Messiah to come. We Christians look for the Messiah to return. So when He does come, Christianity and Judaism will be united again because we will all recognize this is the Messiah we have been looking for."

Few if any rabbis or religious Jews, however, would say or feel this. Those who revere Judaism would resent Clyde's including all Jews as an abstract entity in his belief system, rendering them mere pawns and ultimately unimportant in his scheme of heaven and hell and his own salvation.

Clyde has a simple formula to deal with life's complexities such as atomic fallout, the pollution of our environment, the population explosion, widespread hunger, world deficit, higher taxes, less security.

For Clyde, Falwell. Lindsey and millions of others, the answer lies in one solution: "Get Right" with Jesus, and God's spirit will take up residence within you. And then, before the impending destruction of the world occurs, you as one of the saved will be taken from the earth. In Clyde's view one need not work to eliminate pollution in our cities or starvation in India and Africa. One need not concern oneself with nuclear proliferation. One need not attempt to prevent an Arab-Israeli war. Rather—pray for it to explode and engulf the world, since this is part of the divine scheme.

I heard Falwell sum up his reason why a nuclear Armageddon would not bother him. "You know why I'm not worried?" he said. "I ain't gonna be here."

Reagan: Arming for a Real Armageddon

Did Ronald Reagan grow up with the same belief system as Clyde, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and other dispensationalists? Andrew Lang of Washington, D.C., who has made an in-depth study of Reagan and Armageddon theology, believes that he did.

"If Reagan was not a dispensationalist in the years of his presidency, he was earlier on. Remarks made by Reagan in the 1970s, and revealed for the first time in 1985, prove that Reagan was a dispensationalist—a believer in the ideology of Armageddon," said Lang, research director of the Christie Institute, a nonpartisan research center of Christians, Jews and Muslims. In 1984 the institute held a press conference on the subject of Reagan and Armageddon that produced headline stories in leading newspapers across the nation.

At that press conference, Lang said that he and others at the Christie Institute wanted to investigate Reagan and the subject of Armageddon theology "since the possibility that a president might personally believe God had foreordained a nuclear war raises a number of chilling questions: Would a dispensationalist president really believe in the feasibility of arms negotiations? In a nuclear crisis, would he be deliberate and rational? Or would he prove to be eager to push a button, and thereby, in his mind, perhaps, feel he was helping God in biblical, foreordained plans for the End of Time?"

Lang, who was aided in his study of Reagan and Armageddon by New York research-writer Larry Jones, a graduate of Columbia University, explained that "a dispensationalist, or believer in the ideology of Armageddon, is a fundamentalist who reads the Bible as an almanac to predict the future. Dispensationalists such as Jerry

Falwell, Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson and other leaders of the New Christian Right believe that the Bible predicts the imminent Second Coming of Jesus Christ after a period of global nuclear warfare, natural disasters, economic collapse and social chaos.

'They believe these events have to happen before the Second Coming and they believe they are clearly outlined in the Bible. Before the last seven years of history, born again Christians will be physically lifted from the face of the earth and reunited with Christ in the air. From that vantage point they will safely watch the nuclear wars and economic crisis of the tribulation. At the end of the tribulation these born again Christians will return with Jesus Christ as their military commander to fight the battle of Armageddon, destroy God's enemies and then rule the earth for 1,000 years."

Did Reagan believe this?

Three sources shed light on the subject. First, his childhood, and the strong influence of a Bible-believing mother, Nelle Reagan. She "believed in the divine will perhaps to the point of predestination," writes Christian Broadcasting Network executive Bob Slosser in a Reagan biography, Reagan Inside Out. (Word Books, 1984).

"Ronald Reagan's mother, Nelle, was very influential on him in just about every way, particularly influential in young Reagan's spiritual upbringing," Slosser explained on a broadcast, "Ronald Reagan and the Prophecy of Armageddon," produced by New York WBAI radio reporter Joe Cuomo and heard on public radio stations in the fall of 1984.

"She—the Disciples of Christ was her denomination—faithfully attended services. She was a very devout woman, a Bible reader, thoroughly committed to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and so as a result of that, Reagan was exposed to churchgoing and he was exposed to Bible reading and sort of just a natural outworking of what you might call a Christian life."

At times Reagan was embarrassed by his "extreme piety," Slosser said on the Cuomo show. Reagan worked out this piety, Slosser said, in "a manly, sort of Gary Cooper, Western kind of way." Instead of saying "The Lord made it plain to me," Reagan would say, "My first counselor told me." Those who knew Reagan knew he meant "the Lord." said Slosser, who concluded, "So you know, he has been greatly influenced down through the years by the teaching that he received from his mother in his early life."

Reagan admitted the tremendous influence of his early indoctrination. "You know I was raised on the Bible. I also taught it for a long time in Sunday School," Reagan told writer William Rose in a May, 1968 Christian Life article. Reagan taught Sunday School at the First Christian Church in Dixon, Illinois while he was in high school.

Reagan referred to his early indoctrination again in a 1980 interview. "I was fortunate," he told TV evangelist Jim Bakker. "I had a mother who planted a great faith in me, much more than I realized at the time she was doing it."

In addition to his Bible-believing mother, Reagan was influenced by close friends, many of them dispensationalists who believe God will both show special favors to and punish His Chosen People.

In the 1968 Christian Life article Reagan said that during a brief stay in a hospital that year he had been visited by his Bel Air pastor Donn Moomaw, a former ail-American football player, and Evangelist Billy Graham. Reagan then related this story:

"We got into a conversation about how many of the prophecies concerning the Second Coming seemed to be having their fulfillment at this particular time. Graham told me how world leaders who are students of the Bible and others who have studied it have come to this same conclusion—that apparently never in history have so many of the prophecies come true in such a relatively short time. After the conversation I asked Donn to send me some more material on prophecy so I could check them out in the Bible for myself."

As governor of one of America's largest states, in territory and population, Reagan was a busy chief executive. Yet, he took time from his job as governor to study prophecy and the End of Time. Apparently his own research into the Bible led him to accept, to some extent at least, the doctrine that God had foreordained millions of us living today would be killed in a final battle called Armageddon.

On September 20, 1970, during Reagan's second campaign for governor, Hollywood singer Pat Boone and his wife Shirley, and two influential evangelical-charismatic Christians, George Otis and Harald Bredesen, visited Reagan at his home in Sacramento, and had a long talk about prophecy and the signs of the times, including

what Otis and Bredesen described as the "outpouring of the Holv Spint. Otis describes the meeting, which he term - with

I King." in his book. High Adventure, And S reports n the

same meeting in Reagan I ..:

At the end of their talk, both Otis and Slosser report, the men joined hands in prayer with Governor Reagan. Otis was overcome with the spirit and so. apparently, was Reagan. Otis proph-. Reagan's ascent to the presidency and F s aims 'shook and

pulsated" while Otis prophesied.

On June 23. 1 Q ~1 Governor Reagan asked Billv Graham to deliver a '"spiritual State oi the State" address to both houses \ the California legislature. In his talk. Graham declared the only alternative to communism was "the plan in the Bible. The Bible that man is going to go from trouble able and iudgment

to iudgment but there is going to come a day when God will intervene in the history of man and the Messiah is going to come."

Following the talk, Reagan honored Graham at a luncheon. Those attending included Reagan's cabinet and staff is wefl as the chairman of Graham's Sacramento cms : Hanson.

During the meal. Hanson recalled to New York YVBAI radio

reporter Joe Cuomo. Graham and Reagan began talking about the

nd Coming oi the Lord le>;:> Christ And Reagan asked

Graham. "Well, do you believe that Jesus Christ is coming soon.

and what are the signs oi His coming if that is the cas

"The indication is . . . that fesus Christ is at the very do Graham told Reagan. '"Christ could come at any time."

'"Governor Reagan was very much at that point impressed and went along with it." Hanson reported on the Cuomo broadcast.

That same year— 19~1— Reagan read many popular books on the subject of Armageddon, among them Lindsev's The Late Greai Planet Earth, which was "repeatedh discussed" that year, according to the governor's legal secretary. Herb Ellingwood speaking on the Cuomo radio program. '"Ronald Reagan and the P \rma-

geddon." Ellingwood. one of the most fervent believers in the cult of Israel, including the necessity for a final battle, said he and Governor Reagan often sat ::^:ether and discussed biblical prophecy. Reagan "quoted the Bible or referred to the Bible in a variety of ways," >a:c Ellingwood who conducted daily prayer services with

staff members praying exclusively for Reagan, while Reagan was governor.

There was evidence in 1971, as I mentioned in the Prologue, to indicate that Reagan, at least in that year, was a dispensationalist or a believer in the cult of Israel and the ideology of Armageddon. James Mills, formerly president pro tern of the California State Senate, in an August, 1985 San Diego Magazine, reports this incident:

It was the first year of then Governor Reagan's second term and Mills's first year as elected head of the State Senate. The two were sitting side by side at a lobbyists' banquet in Sacramento honoring Mills. Reagan, "with marvelous skill and infectious enjoyment," had related an amusing anecdote about Barney Oldfield, the racecar driver. Reagan's mood changed abruptly, however, when the headwaiter dimmed the lights to prepare guests for the fiery entrance of cherries jubilee. As a waiter set two flaming bowls of cherries in front of Governor Reagan and Mills, Reagan turned to Mills and "totally unexpectedly" asked if he had ever read chapters 38 and 39 of Ezekiel.

Mills assured the governor that, having grown up in a household of Bible-believing Baptists, he had read and discussed the Ezekiel passages that speak of Gog and Magog (which dispensationalists say mean Russia) many times, as well as other references to the End Times in the 16th and 19th chapters of the book of Revelation.

It was the "fierce Old Testament prophet of Ezekiel," Reagan said, who had best "foreseen the carnage that would destroy our age." At that point Reagan spoke with "firelit intensity" about Libya having gone communist. And insisted "that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off."

Mills then reminded Reagan that Ezekiel also says that Ethiopia will be among the evil powers. And Mills added, "I can't see Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah, teaming up with a bunch of commies to make war on God's Chosen People."

"No," Reagan said. "I agree that everything hasn't fallen into place yet. But there is only that one thing left that has to happen. The Reds have to take over Ethiopia."

Mills said he did not think that very probable.

"I do, I think it's inevitable," Reagan insisted. "It's necessary

to fulfill the prophecy that Ethiopia will be one of the ungodly nations that go against Israel." (Three years after their conversation, Mills noted in his article, the communists desposed Haile Selassie, and Reagan "may well have been gratified to see an apparent fulfillment of prophecy relating to the advent of the Messiah.")

At the 1971 dinner, Mills wrote, Reagan talked of a coming nuclear Armageddon "like a preacher to a skeptical college student." Reagan told Mills: "All of the other prophecies that had to be fulfilled before Armageddon have come to pass. In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel it says God will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, where they'd been scattered and will gather them again in the promised land. That has finally come about after 2,000 years. For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ."

When Mills reminded Reagan that "the one thing the Bible says most clearly about the Second Coming is that no one can know when it will happen," Reagan, his voice rising, more in pitch than in volume, replied:

"Everything is falling into place. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they'll be destroyed by nuclear weapons. They exist now, and they never did in the past.

"Ezekiel," Reagan continued, "tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly."

Mills could not get Reagan's words out of his mind, and after the dinner he made copious notes of what Governor Reagan had said. Those notes, made in 1971, formed the basis for his 1985 article.

In 1976, Reagan discussed the Battle of Armageddon in a taped interview with a California associate, George Otis, mentioned previously as having prophesied Reagan's ascent to the presidency.

Otis, who in his book, The Ghost of Hagar, says he looks forward to the prophecied Gog/Magog war (interpreted as an invasion of Israel by the Soviets "in the near future"), asked if Reagan felt he would be Raptured and thereby escape the terrible period of Tribulation during the final battle—an escape made possible, in dispensationalist theology, only by being born again.

Was Reagan, Otis asked, born again?

"Yes," said Reagan. "I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't call upon God and hopefully thank Him as often as I called upon Him, and yet, yes, I have to believe within my own experience there came a time when there developed a new relationship and it grew out of need. And so yes," Reagan concluded, "I would say in the sense that I understand it, that I have had an experience that could be described as being born again."

Governor Reagan also talked about Armageddon to Evangelist Harald Bredesen of California. On one occasion, Bredesen, along with singer Pat Boone and George Otis, visited Reagan in his home. To Bredesen's "great pleasure and some little amazement" Governor Reagan impressed his visitors by ticking off biblical prophecies.

"First, that the Jew, if he was not faithful to God, would be scattered to the ends of the earth," Bredesen quoted Reagan as saying. "But that having happened, God would not wash His hands of them. Before the return of His Son, He would regather them to Israel and even the method of transportation they would be using would be detailed by the prophet. He said some would come by ship and others return as doves to their cotes. In other words, they'd come by ship or by plane. A nation would be born in a day . . .

"And of course he (Reagan) cited the fact that the promise that Jerusalem would be trodden under foot of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles was fulfilled. And this prophecy was fulfilled in 1967 when Jerusalem was reunited under the Israeli flag.

"What impressed me specially about it was the fact that I could see that Reagan had grown spiritually, tremendously," Bredesen continued. "A good example of his full awareness of what was going on, in terms of prophetic eschatology, was his ability to cite the very day in 1948 when Israel was reconstituted as a nation.

"I got the impression that Reagan was definitely aware of God's

purposes for the Mideast," Bredesen concluded. "And for that reason felt the period which we're going through now is particularly significant, since the events projected in the Bible are coming to a head right at this time."

As a 1980 presidential candidate, Reagan continued to talk about Armageddon. "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon," Presidential candidate Reagan told evangelist Jim Bakker of the PTL network.

Evangelist author Doug Wead, present at that interview, reported he had often heard Reagan say the end of the world may be at hand. At a dinner party in the Reagans' California Pacific Palisades home, which the Weads attended, the conversation turned to the Soviet Union and Bible prophecy. In the midst of the discussion, Reagan, according to Wead, announced to his guests, "We could be the generation that sees Armageddon."

That was no chance remark. Reagan discussed Bible prophecy and eschatology as "common subjects," Wead said, adding that in interviews where he had been present, "I've heard him (Reagan) say, This could be the generation that sees Armageddon. This very well could be that generation.' "

In that same year, 1980, presidential candidate Reagan made yet another apocalyptic comment. As reported by New York Times columnist William Safire, Reagan was addressing a group of Jewish leaders when he said, "Israel is the only stable democracy we can rely on as a spot where Armageddon could come."

Reporter Robert Scheer in a March 1981 interview with Jerry Falwell revealed President Reagan had said the destruction of our world could indeed happen "very fast." "History is reaching a climax," Falwell told Scheer, adding he did not think we had 50 years left. Asked if Reagan agreed with him, Falwell said, "Yes, he does." Falwell added that Reagan had told him, "Jerry, I sometimes believe we're heading very fast for Armageddon right now."

Two years later, Reagan arranged for Falwell to attend National Security Council briefings and discuss with America's top officials plans for a nuclear war with Russia. Also, according to Hal Lindsey, Reagan also approved of The Late Great Planet Earth dispensa-tionalist author giving a talk on a nuclear war with Russia to Pentagon strategists.

One October day in 1983, Reagan revealed that Armageddon continued to occupy his mind. He telephoned Tom Dine of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful of the pro-Israel lobbies. According to Dine, President Reagan said:

"You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we're the generation that's going to see that come about. I don't know if you've noted any of those prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through."

On three occasions, in 1982, 1983 and 1984, Reagan addressed the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), composed for the most part of dispensationalists who believe a nuclear war is approaching.

"Maybe it's later than we think," Reagan told cheering NRB members in 1982. An Armageddon, in their minds, will usher in the Second Coming of Christ.

In 1983, Reagan revealed the importance of the Bible in his life, telling the NRB, "Within the covers of that single book are all the answers to all the problems that face us today."

In 1984, addressing 4,000 NRB delegates, Reagan indicated that he agrees with those who say, "Better dead than red." To reveal his own feelings on the matter, Reagan told a story of once having sat on a podium at a Los Angeles religious gathering when singer Pat Boone was a featured speaker. Boone's two daughters were little girls then, and Boone said that while he loved them more than anything on earth, "I would rather that they die now believing in God than grow up under communism." Reagan, in his 1984 NRB talk, praised Boone for having come out so strongly against the evils of communism. Until Boone did so, Reagan said, "I had underestimated him."

Most ardent dispensationalists see Russia as satanic—the evil empire. On March 8, 1983, Reagan spelled this out. "They (the Soviet Union) are the focus of evil in the modern world." Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals, he added, "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written."

James Mills, in the forementioned San Diego Magazine article, says Reagan's use in 1983 of the phrase "evil empire" to describe

the Soviet Union "was not just rhetoric calculated to appeal to religious and political fundamentalists." It was. rather, a declaration that arose "from the beliefs he had expressed to me that night in 1971."

As president, Reagan "consistently manifested a commitment to discharge his duties in accordance with God's will, as any true believer holding high office should try to do," Mills wrote in his article, adding that Reagan felt that obligation especially as he sought to build up the military might of the United States and its allies.

"It is true that Ezekiel prophesied the victory of the armies of Israel and her allies in their terrible battle against the powers of darkness. However, conservative Christians like our president are not allowed the spiritual luxury of taking that victory for granted. Making the forces of righteousness strong to win that all-important conflict is, in such men's eyes, acting in fulfillment of God's prophecies and in accordance with His divine will, to the end that Christ will come again to reign over the earth for a thousand years.

"If Reagan now believes what he said to me in 19" 1—and whether he does or doesn't has been the subject of much speculation by newspaper columnists in the last few years—I have no doubt that is how he sees his responsibilities as the leader of the Western world. And it appears to me that most of his policy decisions are influenced by that perception.

"Certainly his attitudes relative to military spending, and his coolness to all proposals for nuclear disarmament, are consistent with such apocalyptic views," Mills continued. "Armageddon, as foreseen in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation, cannot take place in a world that has been disarmed. Anyone who believes it will come to pass cannot expect that disaramament will ever come about. It is contrary to God's plan as set forth in His word.

"The President's domestic and monetary policies, too, are in harmony with a literal interpretation of biblical prophecies," Mills continued. "There is no reason to get wrought up about the national debt if God is soon going to foreclose on the whole world.

"His support of gung-ho neo-conservatives like James Watt makes sense if seen in that way, too. Why be concerned about conservation? Why waste time and money preserving things for future

generations when everything is going to come to a fiery end with this one?"

As a policy goal, "the implementation of the return of Christ to the earth hardly admits of competition for funds by outfits like Amtrak. It follows that all domestic programs, especially those that entail capital outlay, can and should be curtailed to free up money to finance the development of nuclear weapons in order to rain fiery destruction upon the evil enemies of God and His people."

Reagan was right to believe he had a mandate to spend trillions of dollars preparing for a nuclear Gog and Magog war, Mills concludes, "if he thought most of the people who reelected him believed as he told me he did with respect to Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ."

One of the most striking thoughts expressed by James Mills in his article, it seemed to me, was his statement that Armageddon "cannot take place in a world that has been disarmed."

Yet, every nation is building more arms—and none more rapidly than the United States. Today, according to Nuclear Battlefields by William M. Arkin and Richard W. Fieldhouse, the United States has 670 nuclear-weapons facilities in 40 states for a total of 14,599 warhead deployments. West Germany hosts 3,396 U.S. nuclear weapons; Britain 1,268; Italy 549; Turkey 489; Greece 164; South Korea 151; the Netherlands 81 and Belgium 25.

On February 3, 1986, the Washington Post reported that the U.S. administration had proposed a continuous military buildup over the next five years. Quoting budget documents, the Post said that under spending projections the Defense Department outlays would rise from $258.4 billion in fiscal 1986 to $356.6 billion in 1991.

The total destruction power of nuclear force in the world today, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on August 14, 1985, told the Washington, D.C., National Press Club, "is one million times the force of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima." Yet, Clifford asked, what do we do? "We go right on making more."

A Rest Stop in Nazareth

The Falwell-sponsored tour in 1983 was typical of most organized tours in that the quoted price was based on double occupancy of rooms. A single person could get single accommodations by paying a supplemental fee. I opted for the minimum price, based on a double occupancy. And the Moral Majority in Lynchburg chose my roommate. On the first night, after the group checked into a Tel Aviv hotel, I took my bag to an assigned room and shortly thereafter my roommate, whom I had not previously met, appeared. Her name, she said, was Mona.

She was about 55, somewhat short and sturdily built. Her husband, she explained, had wanted to come on the trip, but could not leave his job with the postal service. Formerly, they had lived in Indiana but were now living in Florida. Mona was dressed in wash-and-wear nylon attire, and she wore a lapel pin pronouncing, "Israel, we love you because God loves you." As I came to know her better, I noticed that she always carried a Bible and often referred to it as a guide for everyday living. She was soft-spoken, considerate—never overstaying in the bathroom—and all in all an accommodating, pleasant roommate.

One day after visiting the Sea of Galilee, we boarded our bus for a drive to Jerusalem. It was five o'clock and after we were seated, our Israeli guide told us, "We've about a two-and-a-half-hour drive. You won't see anything, so why don't you put your heads back, close your eyes and take a siesta." The pilgrims reclined their heads and closed their eyes. We were entering into the West Bank land of the Palestinians, but our guide did not mention West Bank or Palestinians.

Mona, I whispered to my roommate, who sat beside me, we are

passing through the land of the Palestinians. There are Palestinian homes and Palestinians all around us. They have always lived here.

I pointed to a small stream, the Jordan River, so famous in our Christian hymns, that flowed on our left. Mona, I continued, this land is inhabited by Palestinians, but our guide does not mention this. Rather, he calls this land by the old biblical names of Judea and Samaria. But for more than three million Palestinians, this is Palestine.

The West Bank together with a section called the Gaza Strip comprise about a quarter of former Palestine. These areas are inhabited by about 1.2 million Palestinians. More than 400,000 live in the Gaza Strip and 800,000 in the West Bank, including 105,000 residents of Arab East Jerusalem. These Palestinians form a third of the Palestinian people. Another half million Palestinians live inside Israel, and more than 1.5 million live in exile in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the United States and other countries.

The area of the West Bank through which we were passing was inhabited exclusively by Palestinians until the 1967 war. At the end of that war, which resulted in an Israeli victory, the Israelis began to build Jewish settlements on the Palestinian land. Their settlements have been condemned by every world leader and ruled illegal by all international courts. The building of the settlements has steadily increased, however, and many believe the West Bank is already well on its way to becoming part of the Zionist empire.

In 1983 Jews controlled about 40 percent of the land, which they had carved into a network of roads, waterways and electrical grids. In that year more than 25,000 Jewish settlers—about one-third of them from the United States—were living in illegal West Bank colonies.

Dusk was bringing mysterious colors to the land. We saw flickering lights of villages in the distance. As I whispered my comments about Palestinians being all around us, I could see Mona's body undergo a transformation. I saw her shoulders move forward in an encapsulating, protective, defensive stance, as if I were literally assaulting her with a weapon. She was attempting to avoid hearing what she had assumed she should not know. Eventually she asked:

"Palestinians? Who are Palestinians? Isn't everyone living here Jewish?"

That, of course, was the way she had read it in the parts of the Bible familiar to her. Mona read her Bible every day. But she knew little or nothing about current Middle East history or any of the events that had occurred since the Hebrews, for a short time, controlled Jerusalem. That one brief period, out of the dozens of conquests by various tribes, was the only history engraved on Mona's mind. It was as if, in studying English or European history, she had read about events before and during the time of Christ but failed to study, read, or talk about events that had transpired since then. Rather, she had her mind fixed on one time frame—and only one tribal people.

In our religious, fundamentalist backgrounds, Mona and I were very much alike. We both had grown up in Christian homes, listening to and reading the Bible. We had not learned about the Middle East in our schools but knew only what we had read in Scripture penned by the Hebrews. We both had studied the Old Testament stories of the Hebrew people's sojourn in Palestine, the wars of the kings of Israel and the special dealings of God with the Chosen People. Like millions of other Christian children, we read stories about Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David and Solomon, who we assumed were the principal heroes in all Middle East history. And, for that matter, the heroes of all peoples everywhere—including the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, Persians, and Japanese.

Growing up, neither of us learned that the Hebrews were a tribal group like many other tribal groups before as well as later, who held control of Jerusalem only for a brief span of time.

Rather, we came not only to focus on the Hebrews as if they had discovered Palestine, but to believe that it was a land without any people until the Hebrews arrived. In our young minds the Hebrews were the earliest of people, coming along shortly after Adam and Eve. And when we did begin to read or hear about other Middle Eastern peoples, we did not accept them as real people, but only as the enemies of the Hebrew authors and automatically the enemies of God.

As children, Mona and I listened to stories of a covenant, which we and millions of other fundamentalists came to understand to

be a special relationship that God made with his Chosen People. We were taught to believe those Old Testament authors who declared themselves and their tribe to be the favorite people of God. In my own childhood, I could never have imagined that this concept might one day lead to the uprooting of non-Jews and recurring wars.

After a silence, Mona, as if pleading for reassurance that non-Jews did not exist in this land, asked:

"Are the Palestinians also Jews?"

Palestinians, I reminded her, were Christians and Muslims.

"Well," she replied, closing her eyes, "It is all too complicated for me."

Mona wanted to sleep. And I did not disturb her further. I had failed to reach her mind. She had firmly accepted the Holy Land on emotional terms. And, as psychologists remind us, in a conflict between rational thought and deep feelings, we are swayed more easily and deeply by emotions.

Mona had learned from mentors such as Falwell that man-made laws do not apply to Israel. She had been taught that of all the peoples in the world, only the Israelis do not come under the laws of men, but rather the law of God.

If Mona had been led to believe that God favors Jews but not Palestinians, whether Christians or Muslims, then, as a Christian, she must make native Christians and Muslims invisible or treat them as one stereotypical whole, or dismiss them as mere pawns in a divine chess game. As in any form of racism, she blocked from view their political, religious, and cultural diversity. A Christian such as Mona who accepts the cult of a Chosen People will lose some of her capacity to understand, to feel compassion. And she will even lose the concept that Palestinian Christians and Muslims share human traits and a human existence with other Christians such as herself.

Mona was no different from most of the other Christians who were on our tour. They, too, having accepted the concept of a Chosen People, had also accepted a concept of an unChosen People. They placed the Chosen and the unChosen into their system of belief that calls for the Jews to be in Palestine—and the native Christians and Muslims who have for centuries lived in Palestine,

to be outside (whether they were or not). If actually there, then they were the absent present and invisible.

On one occasion, however, we passed a site where Palestinians seemed entirely visible. It was a large refugee camp for Muslims and Christians who once lived on the land where Israelis now reside.

"What is this?" Elizabeth, a retired school teacher from New Jersey, called out.

"Arabs live there," our Israeli guide said. "They prefer to live like that."

"We tried to be friends with the Arabs," our guide continued, "but these Muslims are all terrorists." In his comment, he ignored the presence of the local Christian communities and represented all Palestinians as Muslims—enemies of God and His Chosen People. As the guide spoke, I watched Elizabeth, who sat in a seat directly in front of me, nod her head in agreement. I touched her on the shoulder, asking:

Was she, knowing that our guide and most other Israelis see the Arabs as enemies, viewing them as her enemies, also?

"If Arabs are enemies of Israel," said Elizabeth, "it follows they are enemies of God."

Clearly, Elizabeth was assuming that, by the act of having lived on the land for so long, the Palestinians stand in defiance of the Almighty. Elizabeth was not one of the Christians who fuel anti-Semitism against the Jews by calling them killers of Christ. Rather, she was one of the Christians who fuel a new anti-Semitism with a contempt for other Semites, the indigenous people of Palestine.

It seemed natural to me that we would be interested in meeting Palestinian Christians. Travelers often seek out familiar religious affiliates when traveling abroad. Delegations of American Jews, for instance, traveling to Moscow, want to meet Soviet Jews, and when they go to Jerusalem, they meet Israeli Jews. But Jerry Falwell and his group ignored—and deliberately chose not to see—the Christians who were all around us.

Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem own and operate restaurants—but we as Christians on the Falwell junket did not visit or eat in any one of these. Palestinian Christians own hotels in Jerusalem, but we did not stay in any. Christians also own and operate bus lines and travel agencies, but we did not meet any of them.

On the tour, I carried the names of a number of Christian organizations and Christian leaders now living in and near Jerusalem. From my previous stay in the Holy Land in 1979-1980, and from American Christian friends I had names and addresses of a number of Christians including the Reverend Audeh Rantisi, head of the Evangelical Home in Ramallah and acting mayor of that city; two American professors, Shirley and Hugh Harcourt— as well as a Christian journalist, Raymonda Tawil, and Henry Selz, representative for the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) in Jerusalem.

I also carried names of Christians given me by Dr. Landrum Boiling, head of the Ecumenical Center at Tantur, near Bethlehem; the Reverend O. Kelly Ingram of Duke University Divinity School, and Professor David M. Graybeal of Drew University's Theological School.

Additionally, I had the names of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Morgan, as well as Marilyn Hunter, who were serving as lay leaders with the Church of the Nazarene in Nazareth. I asked our guide to please permit us the time to meet the American Nazarenes when our bus reached Nazareth.

Since the time of Christ, Nazareth, along with Bethlehem and Jerusalem, has been an important Christian town and remains so today. Nazareth was the town where Jesus lived and where he grew to manhood. It was in Nazareth that Jesus preached his first known sermon and was nearly killed when he spoke comparatively favorably about a Lebanese (Sidonian) widow and a Syrian soldier. (Luke 4:26-9).

However, our Israeli guide did not tell us much about towns inhabited predominantly by Palestinian Christians. Since the creation of the Jewish state, it has been Israeli policy not to recognize the existence of the Palestinians. Former Prime Minister Golda Meir summed up this policy when she stated: 'There is no Palestinian people."

The evening before our group was scheduled to visit Nazareth, our Israeli guide announced to our group that we would not stop in Nazareth. He perhaps made the announcement to deal in advance with objections any of us might have to not visiting one of the three principal Christian towns. Since he obviously had decided

not to comply with my request, I said nothing further. And no one else in the group questioned his decision or asked why we would not visit the town where Jesus, known as the man from Nazareth, spent all of his years from age 12 to 30.

As our bus approached the famous Christian town, we saw that it is situated in a basin in the south side of a hill. To the north, we saw a beautiful panorama of fertile valleys and hills, with snowcapped Mount Hermon in the distance. Looking to the south, we saw the Plain of Esdraelon that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Ten miles to the west of Nazareth we saw Mount Carmel, where Elijah in his contest with the priests of Baal called down fire from heaven.

On the outskirts of Nazareth, our guide said, in reference to the announcement made by God to Mary that she would conceive and give birth to Jesus: "You could go to that church there,"—and he pointed to the Church of the Annunciation in the distance. "But there are 32 other churches that claim to be the site, so why go to any of them?" The Christians laughed about that and agreed to take no interest in Nazareth. However, our guide did change his mind about making a stop.

"We will stop in Nazareth for 20 minutes," he said, "to use toilet facilities."

And the bus did stop. Everyone went into a shop with toilet facilities. And within 20 minutes we reboarded the bus.

Then we left Nazareth without having seen it. I tried to imagine a Buddhist going to see the Kamakura Buddha in Tokyo or a Muslim going to Mecca, or a Jew making a journey to the Wailing Wall only "to use the toilet facilities."

Our leaders, it appeared to me, made a special effort to keep all of us isolated from Christians—native Palestinian Christians as well as Christians from other countries, including the United States, living in the Holy Land. On a Sunday, someone suggested: "Why don't we go to a church service?" The request was sent to Falwell, who—although there are several dozen Christian churches throughout Jerusalem—announced that we would have a "church" service in an Israeli hotel.

In stating that it seemed natural to me that Christians traveling from America would want to meet Christians living in the Holy

Land, I do not mean to imply that I am more interested in them than Muslims, Jews or atheists. However, since we were Christians on a tour of the Land of Christ, presumably to learn about Christ, one might assume that native Christians, whose forebears date back to Christ himself, could make a contribution on the subject of Christianity.

Yet because of FalwelFs presumption that the Palestinians were not there, our group was encapsulated, as in a space ship, and unaware of the reality outside our air-conditioned bus. By not recognizing one party to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Falwell-sponsored Christians ignored the reality of the war between the Palestinians and the state of Israel that raged around us.

The pilgrims missed learning about the religious implications of this war, and its political significance in all our lives, as well. I felt we could have been helped by meeting Christians who, for over a century, since the first stirrings of Arab nationalism, have been at the center of the internal politics of the Middle East.

Meeting with native Christians might have enabled us to understand more of the ferment of the Middle East, where most of the people are ruled by totalitarian regimes characterized by a one-party system.

We might have come to understand, in addition, why the peoples of the Middle East, including the Christians, are going through a new crisis of identity. And why they are challenging the idea of nationalism, with which they are attempting to identify. And why individuals and communities are now attempting to redefine their identities along ethnic and religious terms.

Had we met indigenous Christians, we might have asked, What does it means to be a Christian in the Middle East today? Is your faith in power, and therefore in powerful institutions? How do you relate to the Muslims and Jews? Do you relate only on the basis of a balance of power? Or do you as Christians see your power as the power of sacrifice?

Falwell, however, did not instruct his followers about real times in a real place where real people of three major religions struggle to coexist on grounds held sacred by all three. Rather, he presented the Holy Land as an Edenic fulfillment of God's promises to only one group of people. The rest, as Golda Meir had said, did not exist.

Applauding a Military Messiah

In his sponsorship of tours to the Holy Land, Jerry Falwell does not himself go over with the group. Nor does he accompany the Christians to any Christian site, such as the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Mount of the Beatitudes, the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth or any of the holy Christian sites in Jerusalem. Rather, Falwell flies over first class, goes to a first class Jerusalem hotel, meets with top Israeli military and governmental figures and talks politics. In short, he stays in the Holy Land—and only in Jerusalem—for the last three days of the tour.

I will pinpoint the time and place when I first learned that Falwell himself would not accompany the group:

It is November 13, 1983, and I am seated alone at JFK airport, having checked in for the El Al flight designated by the sponsoring group, Falwell's Moral Majority.

Four women approach me, asking, was I with the Moral Majority? I nod a greeting, we exchange names and locate a coffee shop, where we become better acquainted. Virginia Bolton is traveling with her pretty, dark-haired daughter, Jerrie. Peggy Jinks, blond and in her mid-forties, is traveling with her stunningly attractive blond teen-age daughter, Jamie. The Boltons are from Bainbridge, Georgia, and Peggy and Jamie Jinks are from Colquitt, Georgia.

As we chat, Peggy volunteers that Jerry Falwell—she says she feels she knows him personally by regularly listening to him on TV—will not be traveling with us. He will not be on any of the three planes used by the 630 pilgrims, Peggy explains, "because he would not want to risk our security."

"Bless his heart!" intones Virginia. "This is the price one pays for being a leader!"

One evening after our leader's arrival in Jerusalem—it is Saturday night, November 19,1983—all 630 of us gather in the Diplomat Hotel auditorium. We anticipate a big event: Falwell has promised he will introduce us to Defense Minister Moshe Arens, former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Seated in the auditorium, I look out to twelve flags of Israel and twelve American flags that are placed symbiotically two by two. I note that Falwell, seated on the podium, appears excited and happy, his alert eyes focused on a door at the rear of the auditorium through which the main celebrity of the evening will pass. We continue to sing hymns as the anticipation for the star attraction builds. Soon we experience a hushed silence and hear the marching of feet. The defense minister, in a suit with open-neck shirt, appears with four armed bodyguards and walks toward the podium.

As they march past me, I have time to reflect that in few other countries of the world does one see more armed men than in Israel. The ratio of soldiers to civilians in a country of fewer than four million is one to 22—by far the highest in the world. How sad a development that Israel, proclaimed as a haven for the world's Jews, has become one of the least safe places for Jews to live. As they build more weapons, they grow more fearful, less secure. Ironically, the danger of total collapse and disintegration comes from within, rather than from the enemies with whom they have fought so many wars.

To enthusiastic applause, Falwell introduces the U.S.-born graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Arens begins by boasting that Israel's military operation in Lebanon "achieved a great victory, not only for Israel, but for the free world. We went into Lebanon to kill all the terrorists. We wanted to wipe them out." As he talks of slaughtering enemies, I sense a transformation in the usually soft-spoken, well-mannered Christians. They are energized, the adrenalin is flowing, as if a lion has been loose in our midst.

Arens talks of an Israeli army going back into Lebanon and Syria, and the Christians jump to their feet in sustained applause. Waving an arm, perhaps in the direction of Syria and the Soviet Union, he speaks of "enemies" and "communists" and says, "If the United States will fight alongside us, we will finish the job!"

As Arens calls for renewed dedication to military strength and a new and bigger war, the Christians interrupt him 18 times with standing ovations. All around me, I see men and women applauding wildly, stamping their feet and shouting "Amen!" and "Hallelujah!"

Afterwards, as we are leaving the auditorium, I ask George, a Texan who sells satellite dishes, Did he realize our group was applauding an invasion and the slaughtering of innocent people?

"Oh," he replies, "the invasion of Lebanon was God's will. It was a sacred war. I thought the invasion of Lebanon was great. It was right out of the Old Testament and confirms biblical prophecy. You know, this could mean we are nearing Armageddon—" As he pauses, anticipating such a nuclear holocaust, I see his eyes widen and his face brighten.

On another day our group visited Caesarea Philippi, north of Jerusalem, an ancient Roman stronghold where Philip, the son of Herod the Great, built a Roman temple in which he placed statues of Augustus and Tiberius and issued coins with the Temple of Zeus on one side. But the site is famous for another reason. It was here that Jesus questioned his disciples, asking if they really knew Him— if they truly understood His mission. And it was here that Peter answered Jesus, saying, "Thou art the Messiah, the Christ."

The tour—and Falwell's obvious interpretation of Jesus Christ as a military conqueror—prompted me to rethink my own interpretation of Christ. And to ask myself how I would answer Christ if He asked, "Who do you say that I am?"

Leaving Caesarea Philippi, I strike up a conversation with a man of our group named Chester, in his 60s, who describes himself as a lay preacher. It is my understanding, I say to Chester, that Peter was referring to a military Messiah. And rather than praise Peter, Jesus rebuked him, saying "Get thee behind me, Satan." And that Christ rebuked Peter because He was not taking the role of military conqueror.

"Yes, that is absolutely right!" Chester replies. "In fact, the disciples never really learned that lesson. You recall that even after the Last Supper with Christ, Peter wanted to go out with his sword and use it against his enemies.

"And it wasn't until later that they realized that He was the suffering servant of Isaiah," Chester continued. "And when the

disciples started going back over the life of Jesus, they could see all the signs He had given them—revealing that He was taking a non-military role. And in fact, he had tried to teach them a principle: those who live by the sword die by the sword."

It all is so confusing, I tell Chester. Because it seems to me that Israel is going down the path of militarism, with huge defense budgets. And Falwell invites a military man to address us. Arens was, in fact, the star attraction offered to us Christians. And we applauded. So it seems to be a military Messiah we are applauding.

"Well," Chester said, "that's true."

I am now more perplexed than ever. If we Christians are supposed to follow Christ as the suffering servant, why should we be applauding a military Messiah?

Chester pauses for a moment and then quotes me the words of Jerry Falwell: "Because in the Bible it says that those who bless Israel, God will bless. And those who curse Israel will be accursed by God."

That's where I get really confused, I admit. If God wants people to follow the role of His son, the non-militaristic Messiah, and if Israel, by being highly militarized is sinning, I do not understand why God would bless the United States and Christians in the United States who are aiding and abetting the sinner.

Chester pauses. "Well, it doesn't make much sense," he admits. "But that's the way it is!"

My persistence in raising the issue of our group not having had the opportunity of meeting a single Christian—Palestinian Christian or any Christian from any land, serving in Nazareth, Jerusalem or Bethlehem—may have influenced Brother Greg Dixon, who served as aide to Falwell on this tour, to persuade Falwell to produce for the group at least one token native Christian. This is the scene:

We are in a large hotel auditorium. Falwell is speaking, and soon he is introducing a Baptist, a native of the Holy Land. Falwell does not, however, present the Baptist, who is sitting on the podium with Cal Thomas of the Moral Majority, as a Christian or a Palestinian. Rather, he presents the token Palestinian Christian simply as a "a man of God."

"This man is doing what I believe in doing, he is preaching the

gospel to his own people," Falwell intones. "I kinda' have an affinity with him. I am pastor of a church in Lynchburg, Virginia, where I was born and raised." Turning to the guest, whose name is Nairn Khoury, Falwell asks:

"Nairn, where were you born?"

"Jerusalem."

"How many miles from Bethlehem?"

"Five miles."

"And I am preaching about five miles from where I was born in Virginia," Falwell says. And then he tells our group: "I want to do something for this man tonight. We are not going to have a cash offering tonight or tomorrow night. This is the only one, right here, now. I know some of you birds are loaded. (Laughter) I am a Baptist, I know how the Lord has blessed you—and so forth. Now I want tonight to invest in what God is doing with this man, right here. I don't give to programs, I give to men of God.

"Now I happen to have a 100-dollar bill in my pocket. I'm going to tell you whose picture is on it, in just a moment. . . [pause] . . . Jack Wyrtzen's." (This draws more laughter—Wyrtzen being a popular evangelical personality, traveling with our group). Falwell turns to an assistant on the podium, asking, "Whose name is that? I can't see it."

"Benjamin Franklin's."

"I want (aside to photographer) to have a picture taken of me giving $100. Now I want you to take a picture of everybody else, while they do the same thing." (Laughter) "I want everybody to write a check. Now you say, 'If I write a check, how do I make it out?' First Bible Baptist Church of Bethlehem. Just start writing! My goodness, get moving! And if you don't want to write a check, give ten dollars, give one hundred, five hundred—everybody give something. And make your check to the First Bible Baptist Church of Bethlehem."

Someone comes forward with a package of money. Falwell asks, "What is it? Israeli money? Now listen carefully, does everybody have your money out?" Cardboard boxes are passed and most everyone puts in money. Then, Dr. Nairn Khoury speaks to us:

"I was born again 15 years ago in Jerusalem. I went to the States to get my education in the Baptist Bible College in Springfield,

Missouri, and four years ago came back to start the First Bible Baptist Church of Bethlehem. We had two people that first day and now we are running around 200. We have seen 500 people come to know the Lord Jesus Christ in this four-year period. It is known Jesus Christ was born 2,000 years ago and I am glad there is room for Jesus in the hearts of people in Bethlehem today."

Then Dr. Khoury sits down. I record his entire message, which is noteworthy for its brevity. After the meeting that night, I find Nairn Khoury standing alone, and I ask if his converts are all Arabs.

"Yes," he says. "They are."

And do the Israelis permit him to speak to Jews about Christ?

"No, that is not permitted."

What about the suffering of Palestinian Christians and Muslims living under Israeli domination? Does he see this suffering?

"Yes."

But why, I persist, does he not speak out against this oppression? He remains silent.

I wonder how much money Falwell collected for him that evening. Guessing, I ask: Was it $5,000?

"Seven thousand," he replies.

This one Palestinian, among 100,000 Christians living in Israel and the occupied territories, was the only one we were officially permitted to see and hear. He told us little.

"I would have been most happy to have welcomed Falwell's group to Bethlehem," the mayor of Bethlehem and a well-known Christian, Elias Freij, told me. Freij, whose forebears have been Christians for nearly 2,000 years, said 14 million Christians live in the Middle East.

One day just prior to leaving Jerusalem, I sought out on my own Brother Joseph Loewenstein, a Christian and President Emeritus of Bethlehem University, with offices within the old walled city. As we sat over small cups of Arabic coffee, I asked him how the Israelis benefited by encouraging Falwell's followers to negate—to make invisible—the native Christians.

"The main goal of militant Zionists is to control the hearts and minds of the American Christians," he began. "If they can convince American Christians that the Palestinian people do not exist, or that they do not matter, then whatever the Israelis do, the Christians will approve.

APPLAUDING A MILITARY MESSIAH ;

'The Israeli stranglehold over Palestine means that the older Christians will stay—and die—and the younger Christians who cannot leave will have to remain, but they will not find a future here. The Zionists continue their illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The Palestinians continually lose land, and nobody seems to do anything about it. I am not at all pleased with the American policy, which goes along with the Israeli takeover. I consider it the genocide of the Palestinian people—without the furnaces.

"The Christians who are leaving or dying under this oppressive yoke are the same Christians who throughout Chnstian history have continually kept alive the flame of the mother church. Now they are enduring their greatest persecution since Christ called them to forsake all that Falwell now espouses—power and a 'king' such as Begin. Arens or Sharon. If Christ had been Falwell, he would have approved everything that was wrong, and would not have died on a cross.

"Falwell comes to Jerusalem. There are Christians all around him, but he refuses to see them. He closes his eyes and his heart to Christians who have lived here since the time of Christ. He forsakes the suffering—to please the Zionists. Falwell would have the Christians revoke their own heritage as followers of Christ. Would Christ be so unseeing, so uncaring, of the individual Christians, as Jerry Falwell? No, I do not think so," Brother Joseph concluded. "I would imagine he would say, 'For the least of these are my brothers and sisters.' He would call on all Christians to bear witness to the suffering of the Palestinians."

On another day, I boarded our tour bus in West Jerusalem and rode to the Old City. Leaving the group at Damascus Gate. I walked a few blocks to St. George's Anglican Cathedral and Hostel, where I had an appointment with another Christian, Jonathan Kuttab. an American who had relinquished a flourishing law practice and an easy, somewhat affluent life in the United States in order to return to his native Palestine. Since his return to Jerusalem, Kuttab had become a member of both the West Bank and Israeli Bar Association and served as attorney and a director for Law in the Service of Man. a West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists.

Arriving early for my appointment, I sat in a church garden of

dahlias, roses and chrysanthemums, near a pond of lilies and goldfish. While seated in this oasis of tranquility, I saw a messenger motioning me to follow him, and I walked to Kuttab's office. I found an average-sized man in his late 30s, with handsome, even features, standing behind a desk. He greeted me in a friendly yet businesslike manner, and I began by saying I had come to talk with him not in his role as an attorney, but rather because he was a Christian— a Protestant evangelical Christian.

Could he as an evangelical Christian who had lived in America help me understand the hearts and minds of American pilgrims who will travel to the Land of Christ to visit stone monuments but will not visit the Christians who live here?

"For the evangelical-fundamentalists such as Falwell, the cult of Israel is higher than the teachings of Christ," he answered plainly. 'The Christian Zionists such as Falwell pervert the teachings of Christ. Falwell's Zionism is about politics. It has nothing to do with morality, ethics or wrestling with real, serious problems. He tells followers to support Israel. And he tells the American taxpayers to give five billion dollars a year to Israel. He assures his followers that as supporters of Zionism they are on the right side, the 'good' side, the successful, winning side. And he says that they do not ever need to see or hear about any other side.

"Because Falwell has influenced his followers to put the cult of Israel above humanity, few Christian groups come here and seek out Christian organizations. The Christians on such tours practice a folk religion, with a mythology of Israel and prophecy. It negates biblical Christianity.

"The average American finds this mythology very appealing," Kuttab continued. "It is not demanding, nor is it a moral or highly ethical religion. It is a macho religion of the small, ultrapowerful Israel, which is not a sissy. Their God is a cross between Superman and Star Wars, a God who zaps here and there with a fiery, swift sword and destroys all enemies. He is proof for those of weak faith that the Bible is still true and alive. For them, it's almost as if Joshua were in the daily newspaper.

"Christians such as Falwell who hold to a simplistic theology that allows them to see stones but not people exacerbate the problem," Kuttab added. "They provide Israel with carte blanche approval of their militaristic aggressions. Such Christians encourage

Israelis not only to refuse to recognize the Palestinians, but to refuse to withdraw from the West Bank. In fact, Christians such as Falwell provide Israelis with an incentive to expand and take more Arab land and oppress more people because they say God is on their side and Uncle Sam is willing to foot the bill.

"The Israelis know that good, solid red-blooded Christians such as Falwell are with them all the way, regardless of what they do morally or ethically. No matter how oppressive they become, Israelis know the American Christian Zionists are with them and willing to give them weapons and billions of dollars and vote for them in the United Nations."

Falwell prefers not to meet or even see Christians in the Land of Christ because "We, by our mere presence, interfere with his mythology. If he were willing to meet Christians," Kuttab concluded, "he would not need to come to see us, we would go to visit him. I, and countless other Palestinian Christians would welcome the opportunity to visit and talk with all Christians who visit here."

A large portion of Palestinian Christians—perhaps as many as 30,000—continue to live in the Galilee, where Christ had his ministry. When we toured the Galilee, our group could have met with a well-known Christian, Father Elias Chacour, who in his com-pellingly beautiful autobiography, Blood Brothers, details how he felt growing up a Christian in the Land of Christ. Chacour's forebears are among the native Christians who have kept the flame of Christian churches burning since the era of Christ Himself.

Returning on the plane after the 1983 tour, I asked a born again minister, Reverend Clifford, if on his own he had met any Christians while we were touring the Land of Christ.

"One or two," the Reverend Clifford replied.

Tell me truthfully, I said. How many?

"Well," averred the Reverend, "I think I saw one or two from the bus."

TV Evangelist Pat Robertson summed up the general feeling of the New Christian Right when on August 27, 1985 he told syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer:

"There is regard and concern among fundamentalists for the Arabs, but it pales into insignificance compared to (our) feelings toward Jews."

A VISIT TO LYNCHBURG

One day I boarded a Piedmont airliner in my home city of Washington, D.C., and hardly had gotten settled before the plane had covered the 150 miles to Lynchburg. Nestled in the Piedmont region of rolling hills, Lynchburg, "a city of seven hills," lies at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the geographical center of Virginia. Named for John Lynch, an early settler who ran a ferry on the James River, Lynchburg today has a population of about 75,000 people.

After the plane landed, I walked into a modern airport building and quickly spotted two men obviously waiting for an arrival passenger. By previous arrangement made with letters and phone calls, I was there to meet Dr. James Price and Dr. William Goodman, ordained Presbyterian ministers and college professors. Both are in their mid-40s, Price has blondish hair and Goodman has dark hair, a ready smile, and is somewhat more sturdily built than Dr. Price.

The professors have researched Jerry Falwell's life over the past 15 years and have studied his sermons and other remarks made over the past 25 years. I wanted to learn, if possible, when Falwell began his alliance with Israel and how Israel used Falwell—and what Falwell got in return.

"As you came in for the landing, did you see Falwell's plane the Israelis gave him?" Dr. Price asked. Then he pointed to a nearby hanger, with a jet out front. "There it is. It's a Windstream. It's valued anywhere from two and a half to three and a half million dollars. The spare parts came to about a half million. Our source is a pilot, who knows Falwell's pilot. Falwell boasts that he travels as much as 10,000 miles in a week in this jet—recruiting voters for his favored political candidates."

For the next hour, Goodman and Price showed me Falwell's empire, including his mansion, with a huge, sturdy stone wall around it. "Armed security guards are posted at the entrance 24 hours a day," Dr. Price said. We next drove to Thomas Road Baptist church, where Falwell preaches Sunday TV sermons beamed nationwide. And then on to Liberty Baptist College (now Liberty University).

"Falwell very much dominates this town," Dr. Goodman said. Eventually we entered the tree-shaded campus of Lynchburg College—not affiliated with Falwell's domain—where Price and Goodman teach. After parking and walking to one of the buildings, we climbed steps to a book-lined office the two professors share. Over cups of coffee, we continued discussing Falwell, whose ministry, philosophy and basic idea of Christianity differ radically from their own.

Co-authors of Jerry Falwell: An Unauthorized Profile, the ministers told me they had learned in their research that prior to 1967 Falwell said preachers should stay out of politics. "He never talked of modern-day Israel at all, prior to 1967," Dr. Price said. To prove his point, Dr. Price shuffled among his papers, and handed me this quote, made by Falwell in 1964:

"Believing the Bible as I do, I would find it impossible to stop preaching the pure saving gospel of Jesus Christ and begin doing anything else, including fighting communism, or participating in civil rights reforms. Preachers are not called on to be politicans but to be soul winners. Nowhere are we commissioned to reform the externals."

After Israel's 1967 military victory, "Falwell changed completely. He entered into politics and became an avid supporter of the Zionist state." My question was obvious: why had Israel's 1967 military victory made a Zionist out of Falwell?

"The stunning Israeli victory made a big impact not only on Falwell, but on a lot of Americans," Dr. Goodman began. "Remember that in 1967, the United States was mired in the Vietnam war. Many felt a sense of defeat, helplessness and discouragement. As Americans we were made acutely aware of our own diminished authority, of no longer being able to police the world or perhaps even our own neighborhoods.

"Many Americans, including Falwell, turned worshipful glances toward Israel, which they viewed as militarily strong and invincible. They gave their unstinting approval to the Israeli takeover of Arab lands because they perceived this conquest as power and righteousness.

"Macho or muscular Christians such as Falwell credited Israeli General Moshe Dayan with this victory over Arab forces and termed him the Miracle Man of the Age, and the Pentagon invited him to visit Vietnam and tell us how to win that war.

"Although that mission failed, Dayan continued to be viewed as a near God," Goodman continued. "No one gave the United States much credit for providing Israel with weapons, technology, billions of dollars and even with American military personnel who aided Israel in that war. Israel won because it had full U.S. backing. But Falwell saw it differently. He said there simply was no way the Israelis could have won, 'had it not been for the intervention of God Almighty.'

After the defeat of the Social Democratic Labor coalition and the rise of the right-wing Likud bloc, the Israelis, led by Menachem Begin, began to make more consistent use of Falwell, Dr. Price said pointing out that "In 1978, Falwell traveled to Israel on a trip sponsored and paid for by the Israelis and to show his gratitude he planted some trees in what became the Jerry Falwell forest and he was photographed over there, on bended knee.

"In 1979, the Israelis extended another free invitational trip, dm -g a period in which Begin was in a rush to build illegal Jewish colonies throughout the West Bank. Begin had gone to one of the settlements, Elon Moreh, and promised, 'There will be many more Elon Morehs.' And then Begin wanted Falwell to go there and proclaim that God gave the West Bank to the Jews.

"So Falwell, accompanied by his bodyguards and reporters, traveled the road toward the Palestinian town of Nablus and turned off the highway and stood at a cluster of prefabricated houses built by the Jewish settlers. And an Israeli photographer snapped Falwell's photograph with one of the new immigrants, an American named Jed Atlas, from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.