Grace Halsell - Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Z293241

To those who seek peace

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011

http://www.archive.org/details/prophecypoliticsOOhals

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 Turnercame 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 legsvictims 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 himhis 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 realas 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.