McCain's Ties to Hagee Are a THOUSAND TIMES More Dangerous Than Obama and His Pastor

The Washington Spectator has the scoop here:

TWENTY MILLION ARMAGEDDONITES—Hagee's theology is at best bizarre and at worst toxic. It is rooted in the teachings of apostate Anglican preacher John Nelson Darby, who left the Church of England in the 1820s to found his own sect. Pre-millennial Dispensationalism divides the world into seven epochs, or "dispensations." According to Darby's eschatological calendar, mankind is nearing the end of the penultimate dispensation. The final dispensation will be 1,000 years of peace, which arrive after Christ's defeat of the Anti-Christ (and Satan) at Armageddon. For Hagee, this is not a metaphor but a place in the Middle East. Hagee's eschatology also involves "the Rapture"—the physical ascent into Heaven of sanctified and reborn Christians.

Before all that can come to pass, however, certain biblical prophecies have to be fulfilled: the reunification of biblical Israel under Jewish control; the in-gathering of the world's Jewry to the parts of their ancestral home made up of Israel, Judea and Samaria; the rebuilding of the Temple (on the spot now occupied by one of three of Islam's most sacred mosques); etc.

Hagee's focus on End-Times prophecy has turned him toward American foreign policy in Israel and Palestine.

He's not alone.

American Conservative co-publisher John Basil Utley cites Christian writer Gary North's estimate that 20 million Americans are Armageddonites. "Many of them," Utley writes, "have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence."

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John Hagee is committed to the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. He preaches it. He writes about it. And he puts his money—or his congregants' money—where his theology is. Hagee has raised more than $8.5 million for Israel, much of it used to relocate Jews from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to settlements in the West Bank—to Hagee the eastern extension of biblical Israel. Only after a critical mass of Jews have been concentrated in Greater Israel can the End-Times prophecies begin to unfold.

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All this would be harmless enough (perhaps) if confined to Rev. Hagee's temple. But John Hagee has a constituency that extends beyond his congregation. He used that constituency to build a foreign-policy advocacy organization—Christians United for Israel (CUFI)—that is now pressing for a pre-emptive war with Iran. CUFI brought 4,500 End Times activists to Washington for its July 2006 inaugural event, followed by a day of lobbying on the Hill.

Hagee was straightforward in announcing his agenda: "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," he said. He saw this step as "a biblically prophesied End Time confrontation . . . which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation . . . and the Second Coming of Christ." [My emphasis]

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A REPUBLICAN RELIGION?—John McCain has been pressed to renounce Hagee. He cannot. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, whose unsolicited "endorsement" created a problem for Sen. Barack Obama, can preach religious hate. But he works on the fringe of American religion and politics and is an unlikely guest at anyone's White House. The influence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright—Obama's longtime pastor who is cut from a different cloth than Farrakhan—doesn't extend beyond the African-American community in Chicago. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is deeply invested in John Hagee and his followers.

On the Sunday before the 2006 election, for example, Texas governor Rick Perry and sixty other candidates (almost all Republicans) stood before the altar at Cornerstone Church with Hagee, each candidate angling for an election-day bounce with evangelical voters.

But John Hagee is bigger than Texas. In 2000 he was on presidential candidate George W. Bush's "values team." Since then the right wing of the Republican Party has responded to Pastor Hagee's altar call. In 2002, Republican majority leader Tom DeLay was the keynote speaker at Hagee's "Night to Honor Israel." In 2006 Hagee met with Elliot Abrams, Bush's fervently pro-Israel deputy national security adviser. Hagee later said he and Abrams are largely in agreement regarding Middle East policy.

Joe Lieberman (I-CT) got most of the media attention at CUFI's second annual gathering, in 2007, because the Jewish senator compared Hagee to Moses. But Republican house whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) attended and John McCain also joined the pro-Israel Christians when they met in Washington in July. McCain praised Hagee for "doing the Lord's work in Satan's city." That's not San Antonio but Washington.

That's right, folks. McCain can crawl on his hands and knees and BEG for the support of this psychotic End Times fool and virtually nothing is said of it, certainly not compared to the Wright flap with Obama. Read the whole article, if you can bear it. Hagee is violently ANTI-CATHOLIC. Despite his so-called "Christian Zionism", HE BLAMES THE HOLOCAUST ON THE JEWS. He is a wretched fundamentalist lunatic of the worst kind, and a con artist to boot. And yet McCain is given a free pass on him. Outrageous.

Hagee is powerful and influential in the Republican Party. If "Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain is elected, John "Pre-emptive War on Iran" Hagee will be an honored guest in the White House.

If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, I don't know what will