The Anti-Christ

They say the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know.  In thinking about international relations, religious ideas must be given more than token  consideration as they affect the thinking,  as a component of the core belief system, of billions of people of all faiths.

That said,  it is a curious thing that Christian Fundamentalist,  many of whom follow the politically influencial Rev. Jerry Falwell,  seek to embrace Israel so strongly when, according to the Book of Revelations,  the State of Israel is said to embrace the Anti-Christ at the end of time.   Is the revelation holds to be true,  it doesn't take much thought to see that the Muslims are ruled out;  For no one expects to see Israel embracing the Muslim nations any time soon. 

On the other hand,  the Prince of Darkness  is said to offer the promise of a world wide peace.  The only kind of leader who can make such a promise, and make it credible, must be a leader with a great deal of clout, a leader who must be seen as having the power to back up the promise.

In Israel today,  there is, in radical Judaism,  a group which calls itself "The Temple Faithful Movement".  This group believes that the end of times centers around events occuring within Jerusalem.  The project of the Temple Faithful Movement is the restoration of the Second Temple within Jerusalem.  The Second Temple happens to be located somewhere within the immediate vicinity of The Dome of the Tablets,  also known as The Dome of the Rock,  one of Islams three most holy religious sites.  The Temple Faithful Movement proposes to deconstruct the Islamic Shrine and ship it off to an Arab state for reassembly,  as the area beneath and surrounding The Dome of the Rock must be excavated to a depth of some 20 odd feet in order to unearth the remains of the Second Temple.  It should be remembered that the Jews who seek to restore the Second Temple are hoping to usher in the end of times;  they anticipate calling the Messiah home,  and not vice versa. 

Where the Muslims are concerned,  they believe they will find themselves fighting against the Anti-Christ and that they will be defeated.  The Muslims believe that at the end of times,  the Golden Gate will be opened and the Messiah will walk through one of two gateways,  The Gate of Mercy or The Gate of Redemption.   More than one thousand years ago,  the Muslims walled up both gateways.  The stoned in gateways are visible today in Jerusalem.  However,  in spite of the fact that these gateways have been walled in for more than a thousand years,  these gateways are said to not truly be the fabled gateways.   Those are said to remain buried underground,  some 20 feet or so,  and would certainly be unearthed if any excavation of the area, in search of the Second Temple, was to take place.  So, if the Muslims believe that their defeat will occur at the end of time following the Messiah's passage through one of these gateways,  and Jews desecrate one of their most important religious sites in a search for their Second Temple,  and in an effort to reconstruct it,  then it goes to follow that the end of times scenario can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  An important adjunct to all of this is of course the fact that if Israel embraces the Anti-Christ then surely the Anti-Christ enjoins Israel in it's war against the Arabs,  the war in which the Muslims believe they will be defeated. 

So one must ask,  if radical Muslims refer to the United States as "the great Satan", how literal are they in their thinking?  The Russian empire collapsed following Ronald Reagan's threatened,  without consulting NATO,  to wage a limited theater nuclear war against the Soviets in Eastern and Western Europe.  This is the same president who used a psychic to establish the precise times in history in which meetings with the Soviets were to take place.

When the racist apartheid era South African regime began searching the world for viral agents with which to "reduce black fertility",  the CIA kept the lid on that information while the US sought "constructive engagement" with the neo-fascist government. 

If we look about today,  the current Bush administration is said to have hired numerous, perhaps 100s of psychics and "remote viewers" in attempting to locate Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants. Why do these administrations,  who characterize themselves as deeply Christian,  resort to witchery for help?

The last, and unrelated matter, regards the electorate system of the United States and American democracy in general.  In the US,  if 100% of the electorate were to come out and vote,  the need for campaign contributions increases as well.  There is pressure to advertise to a greater audience in proportion to the number of people actually participating in voting for a candidate. So candidates and incumbants must sell themselves twice, once to the corporations who will fund their campaigns and once to the electorate whose votes they need.  The promises kept to the corportate funders are generally kept while those made to the electorate are generally subject to intense review.

One last comment,  Ronald Reagan's far-right revolutionaries,  for these are not conservatives,  established the seeds for the creation of a Republican Guard when they began running an illegal war out of the White House basement,  meant to topple the government of Nicaragua.    One possilbe reason Bush brought back so many of Reagan's people into the current administration may have been to further establish a Republican Guard.   The CIA currently has it's own 5,000 man army.  It also has an airforce replete with Stealth bombers.  As you may be aware,  the operations carried out by the CIA are often conducted in secret and with little congressional oversight. If at one time wealthy individual contributors offered funds to Reagan's private war efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas,  perhaps tomorrow the Bush administration or some other far right government will use the power of this new Republican Guard to fight for the private material interests of campaign contributors and other wealthy friends.

KR