The leather groaned, a tortured whisper against my calloused fingers. The Book. They called it Holy, a beacon in the dark. But the darkness had a grip here, thick and old, clinging to the very stones of the village. Knowledge was a sin, the priests rasped, their eyes hollow pits beneath their cowls. The Book held the key, they said, but the key was rusted, the lock a gaping maw that threatened to swallow you whole.

I stole it under the cloak of a storm that howled like a tormented beast. Lightning carved the sky white, each flash illuminating the terror etched on the faces peering from windows. Back in my hovel, I cracked the cover, the stench of dust and something older, sourer, assaulting my nostrils. The language writhed on the page, black serpents slithering against the yellowed parchment. I fumbled through it, a child lost in a haunted forest.

There were whispers of a time before, a truth the priests choked on. The foundation of their power, it seemed, was built on sand. Lies, piled high like bleached bones in a forgotten graveyard. The Book hinted at a connection, a shared bloodline they desperately tried to sever. But the truth, like a stubborn weed, poked through the cracks.

Fear gnawed at me, a cold serpent coiling in my gut. The priests patrolled the night, their boots echoing on the cobblestones like a death knell. Sleep was a stranger, replaced by a feverish hunger to unravel the Book's secrets. Each turn of the page was a gamble, a dance with a monstrous entity that whispered promises of damnation.

The fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows on the wall. It felt like a thousand eyes watched me, judging. But the thirst for knowledge, that primal urge, was stronger than fear. I pressed on, the Book a forbidden fruit, its taste both sweet and terrifying.

One night, a pounding on the door. The world tilted, the Book slipping from my grasp. They were here, their faces twisted with righteous fury. The flames in the hearth danced higher, a reflection of the inferno they threatened to unleash. The Book lay open, a silent accusation.

In the end, it didn't matter. The truth, once set free, has a life of its own. It crawls on whispers, carried by the wind, a seed waiting to take root. The fire might consume me, this hovel, the Book itself. But the embers of truth will remain, waiting for the next storm, the next soul brave enough to reach for the light.

 Starting in the 1970s, dispensationalists broke into the popular culture with runaway best-sellers, and a well-networked political campaign to promote and protect the interests of Israel. Since the mid-1990s, tens of millions of people who have never seen a prophetic chart or listened to a sermon on the second coming have read one or more novels in the Left Behind series, which has become the most effective disseminator of dispensationalist ideas ever. *** During the early 1980s the Israeli Ministry of Tourism recruited evangelical religious leaders for free “familiarization” tours. In time, hundreds of evangelical pastors got free trips to the Holy Land. The purpose of such promotional tours was to enable people of even limited influence to experience Israel for themselves and be shown how they might bring their own tour group to Israel. The Ministry of Tourism was interested in more than tourist dollars: here was a way of building a solid corps of non-Jewish supporters for Israel in the United States by bringing large numbers of evangelicals to hear and see Israel’s story for themselves. The strategy caught on. 

 *** Shortly after the Six-Day War, elements within the Israeli government saw the potential power of the evangelical subculture and began to mobilize it as a base of support that could influence American foreign policy. The Israeli government sent Yona Malachy of its Department of Religious Affairs to the United States to study American fundamentalismand its potential as an ally of Israel. Malachy was warmly received by fundamentalistsand was able to influence some of them to issue strong pro- Israeli manifestos. By the mid-1980s, there was a discernible shift in the Israeli political strategy. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish state’s major lobbying group in Washington, D.C., started re-aligning itself with the American political right-wing, including Christian conservatives. Israel’s timing was perfect. It began working seriously with American dispensationalists at the precise moment that American fundamentalists and evangelicals were discovering their political voice. 

 *** Probably the largest pro-Israel organization of its kind is the National Unity Coalition for Israel, which was founded by a Jewish woman who learned how to get dispensationalist support. NUCI opposes “the establishment of a Palestinian state within the borders of Israel.”

 *** In their commitment to keep Israel strong and moving in directions prophesied by the Bible, dispensationalists are supporting some of the most dangerous elements in Israeli society. They do so because such political and religious elements seem to conform to dispensationalist beliefs about what is coming next for Israel. By lending their support-both financial and spiritual-to such groups, dispensationalists are helping the future they envision come to pass.     

* Dispensationalists believe that the Temple is coming too; and their convictions have led them to support the aims and actions of what most Israelis believe are the most dangerous right-wing elements in their society, people whose views make any compromise necessary for lasting peace impossible. Such sentiments do not matter to the believers in Bible prophecy, for whom the outcome of the quarrelsome issue of the Temple Mount has already been determined by God. Since the end of the Six-Day War, then, dispensationalists have increasingly moved from observers to participant-observers. They have acted consistently with their convictions about the coming Last Days in ways that make their prophecies appear to be self-fulfilling.    

*** As Paul Boyer has pointed out, dispensationalism has effectively conditioned millions of Americans to be somewhat passive about the future and provided them with lenses through which to understand world events. Thanks to the sometimes changing perspectives of their Bible teachers, dispensationalists are certain that trouble in the Middle East is inevitable, that nations will war against nations, and that the time is coming when millions of people will die as a result of nuclear war, the persecution of Antichrist, or as a result of divine judgment. Striving for peace in the Middle East is a hopeless pursuit with no chance of success. 

 For the dispensational community, the future is determined. The Bible’s prophecies are being fulfilled with amazing accuracy and rapidity. They do not believe that the Road Map will-or should-succeed. According to the prophetic texts, partitioning is not in Israel’s future, even if the creation of a Palestinian state is the best chance for peace in the region. Peace is nowhere prophesied for the Middle East, until Jesus comes and brings it himself. The worse thing that the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations can do is force Israel to give up land for a peace that will never materialize this side of the second coming. Anyone who pushes for peace in such a manner is ignoring or defying God’s plan for the end of the age. *

** It seems clear that dispensationalism is on a roll, that its followers feel they are riding the wave of history into the shore of God’s final plan. Why should they climb back into the stands when being on the field of play is so much more fun and apparently so beneficial to the game’s outcome? As [one dispensationalist group's] advertisement read, “Don’t just read ab prophecy when you can be part of it.” Atheist War Hawks Manipulate Believers to Beat the Drums of War Leo Strauss is the father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of the current administration. Indeed, many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many years. The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for war against Iraq. See thisand this. (They planned both wars at least 20 years ago.) For example, Shulsky was the director of the Office of Special Plans – the Pentagon unit responsible for selling false intelligence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass. He is now a member of the equivalent organization targeting Iran: the Iranian Directorate. Strauss, born in Germany, was an admirer of Nazi philosophers and of Machiavelli. Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Strauss thought that: A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be manufactured (the quote is by one of Strauss’ main biographers). Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver’s Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like: “When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a show of disrespect.” (this quote also from the same biographer) Moreover, Strauss said: Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . . Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns. So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one’s own soil to one’s own people — of “pissing” on one’s own people, to use his Gulliver’s travel analogy. And he advocates that government’s should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally “not know” that Rome is burning. He advocates messing with one’s own people in order to save them from some “catastophe” (perhaps to justify military efforts to monopolize middle eastern oil to keep it away from our real threat — an increasingly-powerful China?). What does this have to do with religion? Strauss taught that religion should be used as a way to manipulate people to achieve the aims of the leaders. But that the leaders themselves need not believe in religion. As Wikipedia notes: In the late 1990s Irving Kristol and other writers in neoconservative magazines began touting anti-Darwinist views, in support of intelligent design. Since these neoconservatives were largely of secular backgrounds, a few commentators have speculated that this – along with support for religion generally – may have been a case of a “noble lie”, intended to protect public morality, or even tactical politics, to attract religious supporters. So is it any surprise that the folks who planned war against Iraq and Iran at least 20 years ago are pushing religious disinformation to stir up the evangelical community? Conservative Christians were the biggest backers of the Iraq war. And the Neocons are catering to them to try to talk them into supporting war with Iran, as well. I’ve recently seen a swarm of spam claiming that all Muslims are evil, that they want to take over the world and establish a Muslim caliphate, and that they want to nuke Iran. They misquote Muslims and use false statements to try to stir up religious hatred. They are simply using the Straussian playbook: stir up religious sentiment – even if you are personally an atheist – to create and demonize an “enemy”, to promote the war that you want to launch. Not a Problem with a Particular Religion … But of Immaturity Most Americans confuse Zionism and Judaism.  But many devout Jews are against Zionism, and Zionists can be Christian. And as I’ve repeatedly noted, fundamentalist Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all very much alike, and often willing to use violence to spread their ideology … while more spiritually mature Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus are all much more tolerant and peaceful than their evangelical brothers: As Christian writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck explained, there are different stages of spiritual maturity. Fundamentalism – whether it be Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Hindu fundamentalism – is an immature stage of development. There are peaceful, contemplative Muslim sects – think the poet Rumi the poet and Sufis – and violent sects, just as there are contemplative Christian orders and violent Christian groups (and peaceful and violent atheists). While there are certainly some Arab terrorists, Islam cannot be blamed for their barbaric murderous actions, just as Christianity cannot be blamed for the Norwegian Christian terrorist – Anders Behring Breivik’s actions. University of Chicago professor Robert A. Pape – who specializes in international security affairs – points out: Extensive research into the causes of suicide terrorism proves Islam isn’t to blame — the root of the problem is foreign military occupations. The 9/11 hijackers used cocaine and drank alcohol, slept with prostitutes and attended strip clubs … but they did not worship at any mosque. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. So they were not really Muslims. And even atheists like Stalin can be terrorists, or at least genocidal maniacs. Indeed, all religions teach compassion, love and the Golden Rule. Likewise, atheism teaches respect for the individual, the most good for the most people, and helping everyone reach their human potential. Some within each philosophy follow these teachings, and others want to kill everyone who doesn’t agree with them.  The issue is not really the label of this religion or that, but of maturity and true spirituality and compassion. Postscript 1: Neoliberals and Neoconservatives are very similar in many ways. And because Neocons are not conservative, nothing in this post is meant to criticize conservatism. 

 Postscript 2: Most evangelicals are not dispensationalists, and so do not want to bring on armageddon. The original source of this article is Washington's Blog Copyright © Washington's Blog, Washington's Blog, 2012  WHY Christians Were Denied Access to Their Bible for 1,000 Years Posted: 05/20/2013

 The Council of Nicaea called by the Emperor Constantine met in 325 C.E. to establish a unified Catholic Church. At that point no universally sanctioned Scriptures or Christian Bible existed. Various churches and officials adopted different texts and gospels. 

That's why the Council of Hippo sanctioned 27 books for the New Testament in 393 C.E. Four years later the Council of Cartage confirmed the same 27 books as the authoritative Scriptures of the Church. Wouldn't you assume that the newly established Church would want its devotees to immerse themselves in the sanctioned New Testament, especially since the Church went to great lengths to eliminate competing Gospels? And wouldn't the best way of spreading the "good news" be to ensure that every Christian had direct access to the Bible? That's not what happened. The Church actually discouraged the populace from reading the Bible on their own -- a policy that intensified through the Middle Ages and later, with the addition of a prohibition forbidding translation of the Bible into native languages. Yet, a different model already existed in Judaism. Dating back to the Exodus, Moses ordained public readings of the Torah, according to Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus: "...every week men should desert their other occupations and assemble to listen to the Torah and to obtain a thorough and accurate knowledge." 

That practice later became standard in synagogue services, in which the Old Testament (Torah) is read over a year in sequence, covering the entire Bible. In fact, as a practicing Jew, Jesus read the weekly parsha (section of the Torah) at the Sabbath services that he regularly attended: "And he went to Nazareth where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for to read" (Luke 4:16). Since the Church sequestering their sanctioned Bible from the populace makes no sense, I was not surprised that some readers bristled when I recently wrote about the historic prohibitions against Christians reading the New Testament on their own, or worse, translating the Bible into a native language. One called me a liar. That too was not surprising. A few years earlier I gave a talk at an American Psychological Association meeting and afterwards lunched with a group of young Christians, some of whom also challenged my statements about the Bible prohibitions. I later sent them references documenting my claims, but never heard back from them. I've always wondered how they reacted to the citations I sent, which included:    Decree of the Council of Toulouse (1229 C.E.): "We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books."    Ruling of the Council of Tarragona of 1234 C.E.: "No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned..."    Proclamations at the Ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415 C.E.: Oxford professor, and theologian John Wycliffe, was the first (1380 C.E.) to translate the New Testament into English to "...helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ's sentence." For this "heresy" Wycliffe was posthumously condemned by Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury. By the Council's decree "Wycliffe's bones were exhumed and publicly burned and the ashes were thrown into the Swift River."    Fate of William Tyndale in 1536 C.E.: William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. According to Tyndale, the Church forbid owning or reading the Bible to control and restrict the teachings and to enhance their own power and importance. While I was writing my book "Jesus Uncensored: Restoring the Authentic Jew," it became increasingly clear to me that there was another more potent motive for keeping the New Testament out of reach for Christians: to conceal the Jewish foundation of Christianity and Jesus' lifelong dedication to Judaism and Jewish practices. Would the newly established Church want converts to know that Christianity began as a Jewish sect and that Jesus was a thoroughly dedicated practicing Jew who never suggested the launch of a new religion? Would the Church want it revealed that Jesus lived and died a dedicated Jew, as observed by Christian writer Jean Guitton in his book "Great Heresies and Church Councils"?    Jesus did not mean to found a new religion. In his historical humanity, Jesus was a devout Israelite, practicing the law to the full, from circumcision to Pesach, paying the half-shekel for the Temple. Jerusalem, the capital of his nation, was the city he loved: Jesus wept over it. Jesus had spiritually realized the germinal aspiration of his people, which was to raise the God of Israel... Wouldn't Church officials also want to conceal that the disciples, led by James, the brother of Jesus, and Peter, continued to maintain their Jewish identities but made Rabbi Jesus the centerpiece of their Jewish practices (Acts of the Apostles). Later, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, initiated a rift between his brand of Jewish Christianity and the teachings of the Jerusalem-based disciples of Jesus. That divide eventually drifted toward increasing separation of Christianity and Judaism. But Jewish converts to the new Jewish Christianity continued to worship in synagogues, a practice that was still proliferating as late as the fourth century. The vicious "Homilies Against the Jews" by Saint John of Chrysostom (386-387 C.E.) make that clear. Why would the Bishop of Antioch, and later Archbishop of Constantinople, spend so much time and energy excoriating Christians for continuing to attend synagogues and participating in Jewish practices? 

The Church was clearly stepping up its attack on Judaism to enhance and expedite a total break with Judaism. To accelerate that process the charge of "Christ Killers" against Jews was stepped up as well. The "blood libels" -- the accusation that Jews ritually murdered Christian children to extract blood for religious practices -- is evidence of the intensification of attacks against the Jews. But there was that pesky New Testament, a thoroughly Jewish document, as Anglican priest Bruce Chilton has noted: "It became clear to me that everything Jesus did was as a Jew, for Jews, and about Jews." If Christians had access to the Bible in its entirety, not only the limited editions that the clergy presented, they might have noticed what leaped out at me: The word "Jew" appears 202 times in the New Testament, with 82 of these citations in the Gospels. The term "Christian" never appears in the Gospels at all, for the obvious reason that there was no Christianity during the life of Jesus -- only Judaism, in which he and his family, disciples and followers were immersed. Readers of the Gospels might also have noted that when Jesus wasn't addressing the "multitudes" (of Jews) he was teaching in synagogues and was attending Jewish holy day celebrations. And his disciples called him rabbi. Since the Gospel writers couldn't keep Judaism out of Jesus' life story and ministry -- without the Judaism there would be no story -- they invoked the ban on the Bible while Christianizing Jesus with selective and edited stories that they conveyed to the public. The Christianizing process, along with erasing Jesus' Jewish identity, continued throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods. It is dramatically illustrated in classical artworks, in which Jesus and his family show no trace of a connection to Judaism. In this ethnic cleansing of Judaism they are pictured as fair-skinned Northern Europeans living in palatial Romanesque settings surrounded by later-day Christian saints and Christian artifacts and practices -- images completely alien to their actual Jewish lives in a rural village in Galilee. But today, in a new era of reconciliation, Christians and Jews are recognizing the strong connection between the two religions. Some Christians are adopting Jewish practices like the Passover Sederand the Jewish marriage ceremony under the chuppah (canopy), and couples are signing the ancient Jewish ketuba (marriage contract). Others are visiting synagogues to relive the experience of Jesus. Several years ago 170 Jewish scholars and leaders from all four branches of Judaism issued a statement calling on Jews "to relinquish their fear and mistrust of Christianity and to acknowledge Church efforts in the decades since the Holocaust to amend Christian teaching about Judaism." When Timothy Dolan returned from the Vatican after his elevation to cardinal in 2012, he appeared on the popular TV show "The View." Barbara Walters, one of the hosts, playfully said to the affable Cardinal, "I'm crazy about you. I'm thinking of converting. Do you take Jewish girls?" Dolan responded, "My favorite girl of all time was Jewish." "Who is that?" Walters asked with a surprised look. "Mary" Cardinal Dolan answered softly. His casual remark suggests that the celebration of common ground can trump doctrinal differences.