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Applause and Ovation for Hagee at AIPAC
Hagee wasn't at AIPAC in person, but he got a big hand nonetheless; The Forward reports:
Speakers at the session, titled "Friends in Faith: Evangelical Christians and the Pro-Israel Movement," included Gary Bauer, president of American Values; John Buhler, founder of Christian Advocates for Israel, and David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the group led by Hagee.
"I want to take a moment to discuss with you a good man, evangelical pastor John Hagee," Brog said to the audience. Before Brog could finish the sentence, the crowd broke into a lengthy round of applause, ending in a standing ovation. Among the few attendees who did not cheer at the mention of Hagee's name was the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham Foxman, who has occasionally been critical of the ties between the Jewish community and Christian Zionists.
Brog, who runs CUFI on behalf of Hagee, has been busy defending the pastor over the past week or so, putting forward the argument that Hagee's detractors are guilty of religious prejudice.
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Brog is the author of Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State, which has a foreword by Hagee. The book is a call for his fellow American Jews to stop worrying and to learn to love evangelical Christians, much as Merrill Simon's Jerry Falwell and the Jews did back in 1984. I have discussed Brog's views in more detail on my blog here.
Bauer's response to the McCain repudiation of Hagee featured recently on OneNewsNow:
"The only winner in all this has been the radical left and big media, who despise Senator McCain and also despise Pastor Hagee -- and not incidentally, [also] despise Israel," he contends.
When all is said and done, Bauer continues, the other side has scored a victory. He says the left-wing blogs, including the Huffington Post, distorted Hagee's comments in order to "drive a wedge" between evangelical voters and McCain.
John Buhler, meanwhile, is rather less well-known than his two co-speakers. He runs the Alabama Strategic Prayer Network and Mission Huntsville, and the Christian Advocates for Israel (which has a logo quite similar to that of CUFI, but no designated website) appears to be a division of the former. All of Buhler's groups are ultimately linked to Global Harvest Ministries, which is co-headed by C Peter Wagner and Chuck Pierce. Both Wagner and Pierce are known for their strong emphasis on supernatural "signs and wonders", in particular prophecies from God and "spiritual warfare" against demonic forces. The result is, as with Rod Parsley, a form of Charismatic dominionism top-heavy with militarized rhetoric and symbolism. Here's one event advertised on the Alabama website:
God is recruiting all worshiping warriors from near and far to marshal upon Mt. Cheaha as we unite to "Thunder on the Mountain" - a massive prayer maneuver with Prophets, Intercessors and Multitudes of Drummers!...
Isaiah 13:2-5 says, "Lift up a banner on the high mountain, raise your voice to them, wave your hand, that they may enter the gates of the nobles...The LORD and His weapons of indignation, to destroy the whole land (of Babylon)."
Through the "Thunder on the Mountain", we are asking God to unleash the power of His anger against the enemies of His people and purpose through the sound of the rejoicing of those who rejoice to exalt their God.
Zechariah 9:13-14 says, "For I have made Judah (people of praise) a bow bent for my use, I have made Ephraim (doubly fruitful) the arrows of the bow; I will make your sons, O Zion, take up arms against your sons, O Greece, and will make you like the sword of a man of war. And the Lord will be seen over them, and his arrow will go out like the thunder-flame: and the Lord God, sounding the war-horn, will go in the whirlwinds of the South.
The prophets are declaring that in the spirit realm, the whirlwinds will blow out of the South and will change the spiritual climate of the nation. In the natural realm, the wind actually comes up from Mobile Bay, hits Mt. Cheaha and goes straight up and creates an invisible "wind highway" that blows all the way to Maine.
However, Buhler and his organization are also interested in gaining victories by earthly means, and, unsurprisingly, he has engaged in activism on behalf of Judge Roy Moore. |
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