Yoffie to Hagee - "Get Lost!"

In 1914, the talk was of Armageddon; "...military recruiting posters showed St. George, St. Michael, angels and even Christ in the background."

The British spoke of Kaiser Wilhelm as a threat to world civilization, "against which God had marshaled his chosen island people [the English]. The most extreme blessing of the cannons came from the bishop of London, A. F. Winnington-Ingram, who called the war 'a great crusade--we cannot deny it--to kill Germans.' He advised The Guardian that 'you ask for my advice in a sentence as to what the church is to do. I answer MOBILIZE THE NATION FOR A HOLY WAR.'"

"But when the Armageddon of 1914-1918 brought forty million deaths instead of Christ's return, the embarrassment was not limited to flag-bedecked Anglican churches or nonconformist chapels that had joined in the parade. Religion in general seemed to have failed, and British church attendance shrank - and then shrank again.

"It is not hard to imagine something similar happening in the United States by 2030 or 2040 as two or three decades of cynicism claim religious as well as economic and political victims. Evangelicalism under George W. Bush probably expanded to levels of adherence and belief that it will be unable to sustain much further into the twenty-first century. However that will certainly not happen overnight, because the end-times imagery of the early twenty-first century--from tsunamis and terrible hurricanes and the AIDS crisis to the rise of Iraq, followed by China, the trauma of oil, and even financial panic--lends itself too well to religious end-times explanation to dissipate in the face of anything much less than a World War I equivalent."

-- from American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips


If John Hagee has his way, we will not become enmeshed in anything so mild as a World War I equivalent, but a nuclear horror that is simply unimaginable, that can not be contained or sustained by the human mind. Unless you're crazy, like Hagee.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said something the other day that has long needed saying. Thank god, someone finally had enough temerity and courage to spit it out:

He essentially told John Hagee to "get lost!"

At a convention of Reform rabbis in Cincinnati, Yoffie said that Jewish groups need to disassociate themselves from Hagee's CUFI (Christians United For Israel) because of Hagee's extremist views. Yoffie said Jews should avoid Hagee's "Nights to Honor Israel" because Hagee is opposed to a two-state solution and his expressed disdain for Roman Catholics and Muslims.

"...I cannot accept the argument from Jewish leaders that they can endorse CUFI events, appear as speakers at these events, accept CUFI money and still distance themselves from the positions that CUFI embraces," said Yoffie.

Furthermore, Yoffie noted that CUFI "rejects a two-state solution, rejects the possibility of a democractic Israel, and supports the permanent occupation of all Arab lands now controlled by Israel."


Rabbi Yoffie hit a few raw nerves and there was the expected backlash. I have heard the rationale numerous times that Israel needs all the help it can get and should take all the help it is offered no matter the source. That to me is morally repugnant. You are what you eat, so to speak. If you keep feeding your face with tainted food, you will get sick. Money from Hagee and the CUFI is tainted - tainted by hatred, by bigotry, by terrorizing millions of people all over the world with end-times nonsense, and, yes, even with anti-Semitism.

Yoffie is right, but there is so much more! Hagee is not the "friend" that Israel needs. We've gone over some of this before, but it evidently needs repeating. In his book, Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude to War, Hagee wrote that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by rebelling against God. Furthermore, the Holocaust was the method God used to force Jews to move to Palestine.

According to Hagee's view of the Christian Bible, most of the Jews in Palestine will be killed in the apocalyptic battle which Hagee's group is trying to make happen because it is a precondition for the "Rapture" which will swoop Christians bodily up into Heaven. Jews, unfortunately, will not be "raptured."

Hagee, like so many TV evangelists, talks out of both sides of his mouth (that's a nice way of saying he's a liar). CUFI would like everyone to believe that it seeks peace and a strong Israel and is committed to Israel's defense. But less than two years ago, at a CUFI's inaugural, Hagee said,

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West...a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

Later, in a editorial for Charisma Magazine, Hagee said this preemptive attack should use nuclear weapons.


Ladies and gentlemen: These are not the words of a sane man. They are the words of a lunatic, a madman, an insane person!


How can Jews cozy up to such a person who claims to love them, but says this:

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day...

"Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come ...it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."?


Hagee at times has been said to believe in a "dual covenant" theology which means simply that because of God's covenant with Israel, Jews do not need to accept Christ to be saved.

Hagee has more or less refuted that, but seems to want to take away the sting by proposing that maybe, perhaps, some Jews will be saved - if they follow the Torah.


Finally, Hagee is not a friend to the Jews. He will befriend the Jews because of their role in his fantastical end-times schema. But that's where it ends. The Jews are all going to die a horrible death unless they confess that Jesus is Lord.

And after the great battle of Armageddon, Jesus will rule the world from a throne on the Temple Mount. Hagee has said over and over again that this all is going to happen soon, that many people alive now will experience the Rapture. ... "when you see what's happening in America and the world it doesn't take long to realize that God is proclaiming through the voice of nature that we are approaching the coming of Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven."

Hagee has also said that World War III has begun ... "the final countdown has begun."


Once again, the man is insane. But to Joe Lieberman, he's quite a guy. Lieberman said CUFI is "miraculous" and thinks he can "see God's hand" working through it. Lieberman would put Hagee right up there with Moses, a "man of God" -- who has become a "leader of a mighty multitude."

And John McCain, poor John, who now is so sorry he voted against establishing a national day of honor for Martin Luther King, Jr., thanked John Hagee for his spiritual guidance, because, said McCain, "it's hard to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan."

Hmmm... Hagee said God took out New Orleans with Katrina because New Orleans was full of queers. Why in the world would God mess around with a sinking city full or queers when he just as easily could have done away with McCain's "city of Satan" -- Washington, D.C.?


Thank God for Yoffie. Finally. He got it. Show Hagee the door. He's not a friend. His money is tainted. He is crazy!