Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon

By Casey Sanchez, Southern Poverty Law Center. Posted August 30, 2008.

Members of Joel's Army are fighting to bring about the millennial reign of Christ.




LAKELAND, Fla. -- Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don't bat an eye when he tells them he's seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. "He was looking very Jewish," Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

"An end-time army has one common purpose -- to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. ... Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."

Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.

Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96945/theocratic_sect_prays_for_real_armageddon

[kwolf68]

1. Goody

And to think I was upset about missing the crusades.

These people are different than the Taliban how?

[AlinPA]

2. Part of the republican base.

[Realityhack]

3. too bad we can't lock them up preemptively for conspiracy to commit.

These people need serious medical help in a secure lockdown facility.

[GliderGuider]

4. The real danger lies in Sarah Palin's links to these people.

The problem isn't so much the direct threat these nutballs pose to America, but the danger that Palin's involvement with them represents. Those sympathies make Palin a perfect power conduit for the corporatist crypto-fascists that are looking to consolidate their stranglehold on America. Palin's selection as VP is a deliberate, calculated move by the right wing, made in full knowledge of (and indeed because of) Palin's lack of political gravitas and theocratic aspirations. It signals a terrible danger to America.