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The BibleSearchers
Reflections
Reflections on the Time of the End
By Robert Mock MD
Gleanings on Global News at the
Time of the End
October-November, 2004 Special Edition Issue
The Pathway to a One World Order
The Pathway to a One World Order is the only apparent path of the two candidates for the president of the United States. One appeals to the Evangelical Christian world and the other appeals to the orthodox Roman Catholic world. They both appeal to a walk down the path of Christian unity and a destiny of faith. Yet the question must be asked, does the pathway of Christian unity acknowledge that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Is this a destiny of ‘faith’ on the Supreme Eternal One of Israel or a ‘faith’ in the human destiny of a One World Order?
For four years, George Bush has carried this nation on a crusade of righteous indignation as he evokes the images of good and evil. An avowed born-again Christian, he presents his life as one that evokes piety, a faith in a Supreme Being and a vision that God is guiding him as he is guiding this nation. He is willing to talk about his change of heart and his fervent trust in God to guide him. As we go to war “conquering and to conquer”, President Bush assures us that the hand of God is guiding the affairs of the nation. Yet in recent weeks, John Kerry has challenged that he “prays humbly that we are on God’s side” rather than praying that “God is on our side.”
The two presidential candidates are strongly appealing to the minds and souls of the religious citizens of America, but are they appealing for spiritual guidance of the God of Jacob that will keep us on the path of Torah. Bush is fervently talking the talk but is he walking the walk? Kerry on the other hand is speaking on core religious values but are they a part of his life?
What is equally disturbing is the posturing of both political parties gearing up to win this election amidst challenges of massive voting fraud, and political chaos. Both parties have determined that the courts of this nations will decide the eventual winner. According to Keonig’s International News,
Koenig’s Eye View from the White House - There is a sinister plan in place to spin the presidential election into chaos and try to get the courts to decide the winner. It all centers on disenfranchised voters. You have heard politicians, especially Democratic nominee John F. Kerry and his campaign, say that Mr. Kerry promises that everyone who wants to vote will vote and their vote will count. That most certainly is the plan. Everyone will vote whether they are eligible to vote or not. With the provisional voting law in place, anyone who wants to vote will not be refused and the election boards will determine after the election whether these votes are legitimate.
The Democrats announced they have over 10,000 volunteers and paid lawyers standing by within an hour from any polling place they consider a hotspot for voter disenfranchisement. Democrats have also raised some $3.0 million to supplement their volunteer legal beagles in contesting the election; Republicans have squirreled away some $8.0 million to defend the vote. In election recounts, votes are tossed out based on whether they were legitimate as determined by a committee made up of both Democrats and Republicans. Then the new vote total is established. Democrats say they want every vote to count, you can see that the argument will be whether the vote is legitimate and any vote that is tossed who voted for a Democrat will be touted in the news media as a vote disenfranchised.
With the stakes so high and the political anger rising to unprecedented proportions, there is doubt that the American way will prevail after this election. The disenfranchised voter will no longer be the individual voter but the entire party and the soul of America will, no matter who is elected, will be split with enmity and strife. No longer will the loosing party come ‘back into the fold’ and be supportive of the elected president of America. American’s across the nation are feeling the crushing weight and reality of their vote as whoever is voted into office will carry with them the reputation and soul of America. The nation that carried so proudly the world’s affirmation to make this world safer from terror is now tearing apart its seams. Hardly a family in America is not affected by the political, religious, social and moral repercussions of the final outcome of this election.
In May, 2004 BibleSearchers Reflections, we analyzed the life of John Kerry in the Kerry Equation and his unknown Jewish past that he has carefully kept out of the political limelight. Yet the family history of George Bush is equally mysterious as financiers of the Nazism and the Jewish Holocaust. Have we entered the world of the emerging Anti-Christ where right appears wrong and evil appears good? Have we entered the era of earth’s history in which even “the very elect will be deceived”? As we enter the era of the “false prophet”, are we listening to prophetic voices of our nation’s destiny that do not come from the Lord of hosts?
The pen of the Apostle Paul was prophetic when he wrote,
2 Timothy 3:13 - “Evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
Pray carefully through the coming election. The sovereign hand of the Lord of hosts is in charge of the destiny of the nations. He puts men in power and topples rulers from their throne. Most citizens will vote this November with their pocketbook. Others will vote out of fear. Some still believe that America has the ‘divine right of destiny’. Just remember, the God of Israel is Lord over all and He is guiding the nations of the world till the day when the destiny of the institutions of power, greed and control will be over when Yahshua (Jesus) returns to this planet earth with the “Rod of Iron” in His mouth. For many of us who have lived in a land of peace and plenty the fear of the future is the most depressing element of looking into the future apocalypse. Yet all the prophets saw the time of the future of God’s chosen ones and saints as a time when there will be tears no more, a man shall build a house and live his full years in it, and a era when edenic conditions will once again return to this earth. It is important for us to encourage one another and develop supportive networks to sustain the saints and the remnant of Israel until an era of peace will be ushered in upon this earth by the Moschiach (Messiah) of Israel.
We open this section with the emerging declassified documents about one of the powerbrokers in the largest private bank in the world who became the chief conduit of money that built the military might of Adolf Hitler in the decade before World War II. This powerbroker was Prescott Bush, the grandfather of our president of the United States, George W. Bush. Weaving throughout this whole power corridor in the banking-military industry are a group of selectively chosen ones who are members of the most powerful secret organization in the world, the Skull and Bones.
How Bush's grandfather helped
Hitler's rise to power – September 25, 2004
The Guardian - Rumours of a
link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for
decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that
culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt
by today's president George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator
Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from
their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian
has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National
Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with
the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued
until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy
Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being
brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at
Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. The evidence has also prompted
one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's
action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to
the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election. While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world. Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands.
More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland….
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war. Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty". Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family." Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp. The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month. The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented." The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director. Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."…
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business. (Read Entire Lengthy and Thoughtful Article)
· George Bush, Skull and Bones and the New World Order
· Skull & Bones: The Secret Society That Unites John Kerry and President Bush
Yahshua (Jesus) attacks the Institutions of Power, Greed and Control
One of the primary missions of the life and ministry of Yahshua ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) was to assault the bastions of corporate power, greed and control by the House of Ananus Inc. This evil family dynasty of ruling Sadducean high priests controlled the office of the Jewish high priest for forty seven years of the sixty four years from the year of Jesus’ bar Mitzvoth till the destruction of the temple of the Lord in 70 CE. The House of Ananus, under the patriarchal leadership of Ananus the Elder, was the largest, most influential and corrupt money laundering institution in the eastern Roman provinces.
Must it be noted that the ministry of the Jewish rabbi, Yahshua ben Yosef, was centered in the provinces around the Sea of Galilee. Only during the festivals of the Lord did He enter the political arena of Judea. At the beginning and the very end of his ministry, two times, Jesus went into the temple of the Lord (Herod’s Temple) and drove out the money changers and usurers and the high powered sales representatives who rotated the animals sold to the pilgrims for the sacrifices in a vast money laundering scheme. His initial charge at the beginning of His ministry was:
John 2:19 – “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”
Yet at the end of His ministry, Jesus’ once again cleared out the temple courtyard with charges of corruption upon Herod’s Temple Inc:
Matthew 21:13 – “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”
There Yahshua came face to face with the Jewish ‘banking houses’ that made outrageous profits upon the sale of oxen, sheep and doves (John 2:14) as they schemed to launder money from the animals used for the temple sacrifices. Yahshua also came face to face with the ‘foreign exchange bureaus’ where foreign currency taken from the diasporic Jews were exchanged for the “shekel of the sanctuary” required by law to pay the temple tax (Exodus 30:13-16) These money launderers would make the modern day Afghanistan and Columbian drug lords proud. The temple foreign currency con artists and banking lenders would make the modern international banking cartel proud.
Josephus is very descriptive of the abuse of he Jewish peasant population by the high priest and his hired servants as they bought the office of the high priest from the Romans, bribed the Roman governors for their own personal gain and soaked the profits from Herod’s Temple Inc. as the temple money flowed through their hands. So today, the international corporate brokers and banking interests are what drive the vast international military and munition industry. Here is the ‘den of thieves’ that feeds the world on a war of terror.
In the near future, in the description of the Gog-Magog War against the land of Israel (Ezekiel 39), is the Lord of hosts not specific enough when He portrays to the prophet the vast military coalition that will be poised against Israel? After it is over, the nation of Israel will not need any fuel sources as they will be using the vast military fuel depots and machinery to power the Israeli industry for seven years.
Ezekiel 39:9-10 – “Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers (armament hardened tanks), the bows and arrows (jets and missiles), the javelins and spears (rocket launchers and machine guns); and they will make fires with them for seven years.
They will not take wood from the field nor cut down any from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons; and they will plunder those who plundered them, and pillage those who pillaged them.”
When the Sovereign Lord of the Universe intervenes in the affairs of man at the time of the end, listen to the difference between what will happen in the coming “kingdom of God” and the institutions of power, greed and control that fuel hate and destruction upon this planet through “wars” and the fear generated by “rumors of war”.
Did not Yahshua, after He drove out the animal salesmen and money exchangers take control of Herod’s Temple for two days? What happened? “The blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.” (Matthew 21:14) “The chief priests and the elders of the people confronted Him as He was teaching” (Matthew 21:23) and He spoke of His authority from His Father.
While the Passover lamb was undergoing inspection for imperfections and blemishes by the high priest, Jesus was healing and teaching and He was undergoing inspection by the “Pharisees and Herodians” (Mark 12:13), the Sadducees (Mark 12:18) and the lawyers and scribes (Mark 12:28). Yahshua presented the “kingdom of God” in living drama and the Roman soldiers, the Temple guards and the chief priests of the temple did not lift a finger to touch or to harm Him. Why?
Mark 11:18 – “And the scribes (lawyers) and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy Him; for they feared Him, because all the people were astonished at His teachings.”
So today, the world is controlled by the same financial and corporate interests. When the government is talking about national interests, it is not yours and my personal and safety interests they have in mind. The ‘national interests’ of the United States is not the interest of our land and environment that is being destroyed before our eyes. The ‘national interest’ is not our personal freedom or the “freedom” we seek to export in the name of democracy. The ‘national interest’ is the ‘interests’ of the national political power brokers (Sadducees), the international banking industry (the money exchangers), the international corporate lawyers (the scribes), and the sales marketing interests that is driving this war on terror. As we terrorize them, they will terrorize us until we have Divine intervention in the coming of the Moschiach of Israel. Read the Prophet Isaiah as he describes the coming Kingdom of G od and what will be the prime reason for His coming.
Isaiah 2:2-5 – “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it.
Many shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the Torah, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Oh, house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Let us look below at a modern day version of the Sadducees, money exchangers, and scribes, Yale Universities’ Skull and Bones Secret Society.
Skull
And Bones – June 13, 2004
(CBS) As opposite as George Bush and John
Kerry may seem to be, they do share a common secret - one they've shared for
decades, and one they will not share with the electorate. The secret: details of their
membership in Skull and Bones, the elite Yale University 
society whose
members include some of the most powerful men of the 20th century. Bonesmen, as
they're called, are forbidden to reveal what goes on in their inner sanctum,
the windowless building on the Yale campus that is called the Tomb. When 60
Minutes first reported on Skull & Bones last October, conspiracy
theorists, who see Skull and Bones behind just about everything that goes
wrong, and even right, in the world, were relishing the unthinkable - the
possibility of two Bonesman fighting it out for the presidency.
Apart
from presidents, Bones has included cabinet officers, spies, Supreme Court
justices, statesmen and captains of industry.
Over the years, Bones has included presidents, cabinet officers, spies, Supreme
Court justices, captains of industry, and often their sons and lately their
daughters, a social and political network like no other. And to a man and
women, they'd responded to questions with utter silence until an enterprising
Yale graduate, Alexandra Robbins, managed to penetrate the wall of silence in
her book, “Secrets of the Tomb,” reports CBS News Correspondent Morley Safer.
"I spoke with about 100 members of Skull and Bones and they were members
who were tired of the secrecy, and that's why they were willing to talk to me,”
says Robbins. “But probably twice that number hung up on me, harassed me, or
threatened me.”
Secret or not, Skull and Bones is as essential to Yale as the Whiffenpoofs, the
tables down at a pub called Mory's, and the Yale mascot - that ever-slobbering
bulldog. Skull and Bones, with all its ritual and macabre relics, was
founded in 1832 as a new world version of secret student societies that were
common in Germany at the time. Since then, it has chosen or
"tapped" only 15 senior students a year who become patriarchs
when they graduate -- lifetime members of the ultimate old boys' club. “Skull
and Bones is so tiny. That's what makes this staggering,” says Robbins. “There
are only 15 people a year, which means there are about 800 living members at
any one time.”
But a lot of Bonesmen have gone on to positions of great power, which Robbins
says is the main purpose of this secret society: to get as many members as
possible into positions of power. “They do have many individuals in
influential positions,” says Robbins. “And that's why this is something that we
need to know about.”
President Bush has tapped five fellow Bonesmen to join his administration. Most
recently, he selected William Donaldson, Skull and Bones 1953, the head
of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Like the President, he's taken the
Bones oath of silence… (Read
about the Power behind the Throne of the Presidency)
Links to Sites related to the Present One World Order
· The Order of Skull and Bones
· The Health Establishment and the Order of Skull & Bones
· A Chronological History of the New World Order
· Trilateral Commission: World Shadow Government
· The Women's International Media Group, Inc.
· Anthony Sutton On 'Skull & Bones,' - US Banks Financing Hitler
Let us consider for the first time in the history of the United States we have only the choice of two candidates who evoke the political spectrum of the left and the right and the religious spectrum of Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestant Christianity. One candidate is Jewish and poses as a Catholic ‘spiritual Jew’, the other is a globalist warrior and poses with piety and humility as a born again Christian. Both are ritually united by a secret satanic organization whose goal is to exert power, greed and control over every facet of the geo-religio-political landscape on this planet. Must we must remind ourselves of the text by the Apostle John.
1 John 4:1-3 – “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.”
President talks a lot about religion, but rarely his own – September 28, 2004 – For Bush, a hunt for the right voters.
MSNBC - President Bush is deeply religious. More specifically, he is a born-again conservative evangelical Protestant. We all know that. Or do we? Americans have heard the president speak of God and the nation’s destiny many times. But they have rarely heard him speak of his own faith in specific terms. In fact, Bush appears never to have said publicly that he is an evangelical. While he has dropped many clues, they do not constitute a definitive statement of his faith.
The ambiguity offers advantages and disadvantages, never more so than in the current campaign, when the president's strategists have made conservative white evangelical voters — 4 million of whom they believe failed to go to the polls in 2000 — their No. 1 target. “I don’t think Bush says, ‘I’m God’s man,’” Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said this month at a conference of religion writers. “But he doesn’t correct it when others say that.”
Whether or not Bush himself is among the 25 percent to 30 percent of Americans who describe themselves as evangelicals, he has made them the foundation upon which he has built his career. As early as 1987, Bush was overseeing outreach to evangelicals for his father’s presidential campaign. In contrast with other recent Republican national candidates, the president’s re-election campaign has not openly courted the so-called religious right. That is not because conservative and evangelical Republicans have lost influence within the party; it is because they have been so thoroughly integrated into the Republican coalition that Bush’s operatives can safely appeal to them outside the media spotlight, where they run less risk of alienating moderate and undecided voters. This year, the campaign aims to mobilize religious conservatives to get out and vote, confident it does not need to spend significant resources to persuade them.
That confidence is why Bush can speak in broad spiritual themes on the stump without explicitly referring to his own beliefs. He signals his solidarity with evangelicals through coded language and seemingly innocuous biblical allusions that don’t set off alarms among voters suspicious of religious politicking. That is also why Bush rarely speaks about his opposition to abortion. He talks instead about the “culture of life,” which ardent anti-abortion voters recognize as the same thing. When he talks about the “family,” segments of the voting public grasp that he is really talking about same-sex marriage. Likewise, when Bush speaks about God, many voters interpret his words not as a general acknowledgment of the United States as a religious nation, but as his agreement that God is on his side.
Working with Kevin Coe, David S. Domke of the University of Washington analyzed inaugural and State of the Union messages by every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Historically, they found, presidents have spoken of God from the position of a petitioner, asking for His guidance or blessing, with two exceptions: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Their message comes from a prophetic stance, as though describing God’s intentions from a position of knowledge. It is the difference between “May God bless the United States” and “God has blessed the United States,” a common refrain in Bush’s speeches. Domke and Coe found that five of 12 addresses by Reagan and Bush explicitly linked freedom to God’s will. By comparison, only four of 61 addresses by all the rest of the presidents made such claims…
It is carefully calibrated. Domke suggested that even the president’s seemingly offhand reference to “this crusade, this war on terrorism” six days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — a construction that was widely seen as an incitement to passions in the Arab world — was calculated. “They’ve thought carefully about everything,” Domke said. It was intended to “get his point across” before it was disavowed. Indeed, the word continues to pop up in targeted messages: As recently as March, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent a fund-raising letter to Republican donors in Florida asking for more help in the president’s “global crusade against terrorism.”
The direct appeals to religious conservatives are left to surrogates for Bush, who speak out when the media usually aren’t watching…Such rhetoric is important because it energizes conservative evangelicals to spread the message by reinforcing grievances they have against a secular society that allows abortion, homosexual relations and obscenity in entertainment. Mouw, of Fuller Theological Seminary, says that beginning with their rise in the 1980s, religious white conservatives developed a sharp — and politically useful — “evangelical persecution complex.”…
Even some of the president’s supporters in the evangelical movement said the campaign went over the line this summer when it issued a 22-point memo outlining how to generate enthusiasm among members of their churches. Many of the points were uncontroversial, suggesting volunteers write letters to the newspaper or hold pot luck dinners. But one created an uproar: “Send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney ’04 headquarters or give it to a BC04 Field Rep.” Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention — who commonly wears cuff links bearing the presidential seal, a gift from Bush — issued a statement saying he was “appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way.” Besides striking some voters as “smarmy,” in the words of Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, such entanglement of churches in politics could cost churches their tax-exempt status. In June, the IRS issued an unusual letter to both parties noting that tax-exempt charitable organizations “are prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of, or in opposition to, any candidate for public office.”
“Smarmy” or not, the prophetic religious message is at the heart of the president’s conservative philosophy, which he told religion writers in May was “to help cultures change [because] the culture needs to be changed.” “I understand people’s view” about church and state, Bush said. “But I’m the kind of person who doesn’t change. The best thing I can do is to be myself so that when I finish my job here, I will say I was comfortable with who the world saw.” (Open for Complete Article)
The president has never clarified his conversion narrative – September 28, 2004 – Bush, born again or not?
MSNBC - Any discussion of President Bush’s presumed evangelicalism is complicated. Evangelicalism is a style of worship, not a set of beliefs, and to a large extent evangelical Protestants are defined by their personal stories of faith and by whom they choose as their pastor. But core to many evangelicals’ identity is the “born-again” experience described in John 3:3, when a sinner undergoes an intense conversion during a personal interaction with the Holy Spirit, often Jesus Himself.
George Bush has not said directly that he was ever born again. He has often said he was pointed on the path to God after a discussion with evangelist Billy Graham in 1985. “Over the course of that weekend, Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul, a seed that grew over the next year,” Bush wrote in his 1999 campaign autobiography, “A Charge to Keep.”…
There is a second story about how Bush started on the road to salvation, one that is more in line with the common narrative. While Bush has never confirmed it, he has also never contradicted it, nor has he apparently sought to reconcile the two accounts. Evangelist Arthur Blessitt, best known for carrying a 12-foot cross around the world, writes that in 1984, Bush asked to see him and told him: “Arthur, I did not feel comfortable attending the meeting, but I want talk to you about how to know Jesus Christ and how to follow Him.” The two men and an aide prayed together and discussed salvation, Blessitt says in a long article on his Web site, which comes complete with photographs of Bush and Blessitt together and of personal, handwritten notes Bush wrote to him as late as 1998.“It was an awesome and glorious moment!” Blessitt writes. “We were just three brothers rejoicing in Christ. I said ‘There is rejoicing in Heaven now! You are saved!’”
Bush does not mention the episode in his autobiography. The Republican National Committee, however, approved the screening of a film, “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House,” at off-the-floor events during its national convention this month in New York; the film recounts the story and implies that Bush’s meeting with Blessitt was the true beginning of his spiritual rebirth.
Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., said this month at a conference of religion writers that the ambiguity surrounding Bush’s religious beliefs was, if not intentional, at least a fortuitous development for the president’s campaign. “I don’t think Bush says, ‘I’m God’s man,’” Mouw said. “But he doesn’t correct it when others say that.” (Article)
God on the ballot - For Bush and Kerry, religion a powerful but tricky factor – September 15, 2004
Although
He’s regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.
—
Democratic former Sen. George Mitchell
MSNBC - Tell it to the Republicans, senator. They’re banking on Him. President Bush, a United Methodist, built his meteoric national rise on his appeal to conservative white evangelical Christians. Although Bush previously had made it clear that he was “born again,” he was reluctant to discuss the details of his faith before he ran for president. That changed in 2000, as the Bush campaign highlighted the candidate’s religious principles as the core of his proclaimed “compassionate conservative” agenda. It paid off in 2000. Exit polls showed that Bush won 55 percent of the Protestant vote, which made up more than half of the electorate; among white Protestants, Bush beat Al Gore by almost 2 to 1. The support was crucial — Gore won among every other measurable religious group, from black Protestants to Catholics to Jews to non-believers.
For the president, paying close attention to his religious base doesn’t just make sense — it is imperative. Opinion polling shows that Americans’ votes most closely track their religious attendance. Voters who say they go to church every week vote Republican, by overwhelming margins. Those who go to church less frequently vote Democratic, by nearly similar proportions. Beginning with exit polls conducted during the 2000 election, the synchronicity has held across nearly all denominations and even faiths, appearing among Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians.
For Bush, then, a critical goal in 2004 is to generate turnout among the nation’s most religiously observant voters. The Bush campaign sees that task as being easiest among the president’s own. Bush’s main political adviser, Karl Rove, has said he was frustrated that as many as 4 million conservative white evangelical voters did not go to the polls four years ago. Those voters, the campaign believes, could make the difference in any of a number of closely divided states. In an election as tight as this one is expected to be, when one state could make the difference, the Republican Party has mounted a sophisticated pitch to what it sees as its base.
Difference of opinion is helpful in religion. — Thomas Jefferson
The president appeals
to such voters across a shared belief that the Bible is the literal Word of
God. It is a faith that recognizes a very real Devil. In fundamental terms, in
other words, the president’s faith divides the world into two camps: good
and evil. There is no gray. There is only right and wrong. In “Plan
of Attack,” his examination of the Bush administration’s buildup to the war in Iraq, Bob Woodward portrays Bush as unwavering in his belief that his cause was
righteous, not merely right. “I haven’t suffered any doubt,” Bush said in
an interview with Woodward. The president’s religious conviction is the
defining measure of his life, and of his administration. Lest there be any
doubt, Bush said in that book: “I was praying for strength to do the Lord’s
will. ... I pray that I will be as good a 
messenger of His will as possible.”
In June 2003, Mahmoud Abbas, then the Palestinian prime minister, said that in a conversation with Bush, the president told him: “God told me to strike at al-Qaida, and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.”
Democrats and other Americans surprised by how strongly Bush’s near-fundamentalist beliefs guide his governance can’t say they weren’t warned. Throughout the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush expansively talked about his faith and how it had rescued him from a squandered life of alcohol and failed business ventures. But even before then, he had hinted at a more direct connection between his beliefs and his political aspirations. Southern Baptist television evangelist James Robison related that in a telephone call in 1999, Bush told him, “I feel like God wants me to run for president.” The same year, said Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bush told religious leaders at a meeting that “I’ve heard the call. I believe God wants me to be president.” …
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. — Mohandas K. Gandhi
Catholic voters favored Gore by 50 percent to 46 percent
over Bush in 2000,
exit polls showed. As a Catholic himself, Kerry would hope to do even better. But
the Catholic Church isn’t exactly cooperating. Kerry disagrees with
church doctrine on abortion, and the controversy has occasionally slowed his
campaign. A handful of U.S. bishops said they would deny communion to
pro-abortion-rights politicians, including Kerry, and two — Archbishop
Raymond Burke of St. Louis and Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs —
said Catholics who voted for them would be guilty of a grave sin. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, a member of an ecclesiastical court filed heresy charges against
Kerry...The polling firm Belden Russonello & Stewart reported in June that 61
percent of Catholics believed abortion should be legal. Even more, 72
percent, said Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights should not be
denied communion, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in
May, indicating that even some abortion opponents did not see the issue as make
or break.
Likewise on embryonic stem cell research. Bush issued an executive order three years ago banning federal funding for scientific research using new lines of stem cells harvested from human embryos. Many scientists believe such research could lead to significant advances in treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases, but Bush said that “even the most noble ends do not justify any means.” The president is in line with the Vatican’s stance on embryonic stem cell research, which a spokesman said “the Holy Father has always unequivocally condemned.” Polls show that American Catholics overwhelmingly support such research — only 15% opposed it in a survey conducted in July by Harris Interactive.
The data explain, in part, why Kerry speaks so seldom about his faith. He does not need to. Bush’s decision to target Catholics on religious grounds means he must talk to them in explicitly religious terms. Kerry, with Catholic voters on his side on many issues, is under no such obligation. To try to match Bush’s rhetoric would be largely superfluous, and it would risk disaffecting less churchly voters.
Kerry prefers to speak in terms of “values,” a word that for him encompasses not just religious principles but also “social justice” issues that have little to do with religion. In that way, he can speak to religious voters without invoking individual faiths. “I don’t wear my own faith on my sleeve, but faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday,” Kerry said in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. The appeal is targeted at so-called “freestyle evangelicals,” a term coined by Steven Waldman, founder of Beliefnet.com, and John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron who is considered the foremost scholar on the politics of the American evangelical movement.
Green estimates that as many as 40 percent of American evangelicals fit the definition: theologically conservative but politically independent and more troubled by what they see as the degradation of the world around them — popular culture, the environment, neglect of the disadvantaged — than they are by specific questions of doctrine. The term could apply equally as well to moderate Catholics, giving Kerry a surprisingly large pool of religiously conservative voters who could be open to his message. Again, polling data suggest that Kerry is already making noticeable inroads. In a major new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted last month, “moral values” emerged as a key issue in the presidential election, with 64 percent of likely voters saying it would be “very important to my vote.” Even though conventional wisdom holds that those voters should overwhelmingly back Bush, Kerry was statistically tied — leading by 45 percent to 41 percent, in fact, but within the margin of error — when likely voters were asked which candidate “could do the best job in improving the nation’s moral climate.” …
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Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted. — Thomas Jefferson
The surveys suggest that Bush’s aggressive courting of deeply religious voters has exacted a cost. For even though 70 percent of voters thought in 2003 that there wasn’t too much religious discussion in politics, that has fallen to 63 percent in just the last year — and nearly all of that drop is blamed on Bush. The proportion of likely voters who thought Bush mentioned his religious faith and prayer too much jumped from 14 percent last year to 24 percent this year, a statistically significant difference. By contrast, only 10 percent of likely voters thought Kerry spoke of his faith too much. (Kerry was not included in last year’s survey.) In other words, while most Americans are quite comfortable with mixing politics and religion, they remain deeply suspicious of mixing church and state. For both candidates, the key to victory lies in finding the right mix. (Provoking Article)
In churches, prayers and predictions of presidential politics – September 22, 2004 – For which candidate is the bell tolling?
MSMBC - Polling tells us that these days, voting has less to do with where someone goes to church, than how often. "Polling data is showing us is that Americans who go to Church most often are the people who actually vote more Republican," says Michael Cromartie of Ethics & Public Policy Center. In 2000, people who went to church once a week voted overwhelmingly for George Bush: 57 to 40 percent. Those who went more than once a week voted for Bush by 63 to 36%.
Al Gore’s supporters? Voters who seldom or never attended services preferred the Democrat almost two to one. So it would be nothing short of miraculous for Kerry to have a shot at winning Utah, a.k.a., Bush country. The dominant Mormon Church is the fastest-growing in the country, and 88 percent voted for Bush in 2000. But then, there’s what has been disparagingly referred to as the “godless Northwest.” In Washington, just 31 percent of resident belong to a church. And in Oregon, 33 percent, the city of Medford’s numbers are lower than anywhere else in the country. These states haven’t voted for a Republican for President since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Down South, it’s devotedly Baptist. The faith predominates in eight of the 11 states of the old confederacy. George Bush may be Methodist, but his born-again status plays into the conservative feel here, and Kerry forays into this territory hasn’t made these voters. The Northeast is home to many members of the country’s largest denomination— Catholics, 60 million strong, among them, Boston’s John Kerry, a former altar boy who once thought of becoming a priest. But in 2000, the Catholic vote split at just about 50/50. “The Catholic vote is a critical swing vote,” says John Podesta, Center for American Progress and former Clinton chief of staff. “Middle class values and family values are things that motivate Catholic voters.” This religious divide helps the parties track who they want to get to the polls.
Consider Christian evangelicals, core Republican voters: Here’s a shocker – 4 million of them didn’t vote in 2000. Ralph Reed, the former leader of the Christian Coalition who now runs the Bush campaign in the southeast, says that’s going to change. “Obviously we don’t ask the question but based on how they self-identify as they join our team, it looks like about a third of all the new voters we’re registering are conservative people of faith,” says Ralph Reed, Bush-Cheney ’04 Southeast director. “I am confident that we’re going to do much better among voters of faith in 04 than we did in 2000.”
What’s clear in 2004, is that the search for votes is intersecting with American’s search for meaning in a troubled and complex world. “At a time of enormous uncertainty and fear, people will rely on those primal resources for comfort, for meaning, for order,” says Robert Franklin, president of the Interdenominational Theological Center and Emory University Social Ethics Professor. “I think religion provides precisely those goods.” The victory may go to the candidate who delivers just that… There is one more change worth noting: Research shows that voters all religions are becoming more tolerant. The lesson in that for the candidates is to avoid the appearance of extremism whether talking about secular or religious issues. (Article)
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