TV Evangelist John Hagee Wants War With Iran, and He Wants It Now!
If anyone still thinks that the radical end-times "prophecy" movement is not a threat to peace and stability, think again. At the popular level, in terms of the TV preachers and the hot-selling prophecy books, the dispensational pre-trib stuff still reigns supreme. Most conservative-leaning Evangelical churches in America today are heavily influenced by popular dispensational theology to some extent. Even churches and pastors that don’t teach pretribulationalism still are influenced by dispensationalism to varying degrees.
The most dangerous element of this prophetic paradigm, however, is its doom-and-gloom view of the world. And in most cases, those who have a fascination with the end of the world have a particular fascination with war and militarism as well. More problematic, it assumes that their wars of choice are not just their own foreign policy preferences or personal opinions. Rather they are ordained by God. In 2003, more than a few pastors and influential Christian figures basically said that opposing the Iraq war was opposing God’s end-time plan. According to Evangelical end-times enthusiasts, if you opposed the Iraq war, you didn’t just hate your country and the troops, now you were opposing God and the Bible as well.
An even bigger obsession for dispensationalists has always been Israel. For the average dispensationalist, modern-day secular Israel is going to be the focal point in the end-times. Therefore, if the Bible really does teach in Daniel 9:27 that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is going to be torn down for a rebuilt Jewish Temple, why should any of us seek to prevent it? Sure, it very well might ignite a regional war and even ignite tensions around the world, but it's all part of God’s prophetic plan. Not to worry though, things might not get really ugly until after the "rapture," so the Christians today who are cheering for events that would bring about World War III won’t have to worry about it anyway. Unless of course, they are wrong about the whole thing.
Enter the Rev. John Hagee. Hagee is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio Texas, where he has 18,000 followers right in his own congregation. He also has a global television ministry and has sold scores of prophecy books over the years. John Hagee is perhaps the most powerful and influential Christian Zionist figure in America. Hagee has a long history making strange predictions about world events that are almost always wrong. His books in the late 90’s trumped up Y2K hysteria to ridiculous levels. He inaccurately predicted that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was the "Beginning of the End" in the book of the same name. In every book he writes, he is constantly warning of catastrophe in various forms right around the corner. According to one of his fans, he supposedly just preached a sermon predicting that 2007 would be a "significant" year in Bible prophecy and that his prophecy claims can be "mathematically" backed up by the Biblical text.
If anyone still thinks that the radical end-times "prophecy" movement is not a threat to peace and stability, think again. At the popular level, in terms of the TV preachers and the hot-selling prophecy books, the dispensational pre-trib stuff still reigns supreme. Most conservative-leaning Evangelical churches in America today are heavily influenced by popular dispensational theology to some extent. Even churches and pastors that don’t teach pretribulationalism still are influenced by dispensationalism to varying degrees.
The most dangerous element of this prophetic paradigm, however, is its doom-and-gloom view of the world. And in most cases, those who have a fascination with the end of the world have a particular fascination with war and militarism as well. More problematic, it assumes that their wars of choice are not just their own foreign policy preferences or personal opinions. Rather they are ordained by God. In 2003, more than a few pastors and influential Christian figures basically said that opposing the Iraq war was opposing God’s end-time plan. According to Evangelical end-times enthusiasts, if you opposed the Iraq war, you didn’t just hate your country and the troops, now you were opposing God and the Bible as well.
An even bigger obsession for dispensationalists has always been Israel. For the average dispensationalist, modern-day secular Israel is going to be the focal point in the end-times. Therefore, if the Bible really does teach in Daniel 9:27 that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is going to be torn down for a rebuilt Jewish Temple, why should any of us seek to prevent it? Sure, it very well might ignite a regional war and even ignite tensions around the world, but it's all part of God’s prophetic plan. Not to worry though, things might not get really ugly until after the "rapture," so the Christians today who are cheering for events that would bring about World War III won’t have to worry about it anyway. Unless of course, they are wrong about the whole thing.
Enter the Rev. John Hagee. Hagee is the pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio Texas, where he has 18,000 followers right in his own congregation. He also has a global television ministry and has sold scores of prophecy books over the years. John Hagee is perhaps the most powerful and influential Christian Zionist figure in America. Hagee has a long history making strange predictions about world events that are almost always wrong. His books in the late 90’s trumped up Y2K hysteria to ridiculous levels. He inaccurately predicted that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was the "Beginning of the End" in the book of the same name. In every book he writes, he is constantly warning of catastrophe in various forms right around the corner. According to one of his fans, he supposedly just preached a sermon predicting that 2007 would be a "significant" year in Bible prophecy and that his prophecy claims can be "mathematically" backed up by the Biblical text.
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