zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — remembering the Ted Cruz Christ / Antichrist (and Obama ditto) rhetoric from an earlier post ]
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Dismal, both of them:

Sources:

NBC News, Trump Calls Clinton ‘The Devil’

NYT Magazine, I’m the Last Thing Standing Between You and the Apocalypse

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I could be wrong, but I somehow doubt that either Trump or Clinton is using the terms “devil” or “apocalypse” (respectively) in their literal religious meanings here.

For that I’m thankful.

But then..

In contrast to the two posts I’ve linked to above, these two below appear to me to be making overtly and deliberately religious appeals with respect to the current election.

Alex Jones, InfoWars, Hillary Clinton: Demonic Warmonger

Andy Crouch, Christianity Today, Speak Truth to Trump

I’ve included the InfoWars video clip because it makes it very clear that Alex Jones, at least, claims he is being “Biblical” — his own word — when he calls Hillary Clinton demonic — and the Christianity Today piece because it represents a distinguished Evangelical response to the general tendency of Evangelical Christians to support Donald Trump‘s candidacy.

In somewhat related news, I am saddened to report that Christianity Today‘s literary magazine Books & Culture will close at the end of the year. John Wilson, the editor, is a long time and valued friend from Pasadena bookstore days — see his kind words about the late Bill Tunilla, the bookman who introduced us, in this Letter from the Editor.

[ Charles Cameron — glance, okay, because it’s strange, and about tomorrow — no need to play the videos ]
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Nostradamus:

Brother Nathanael:

Sheikh Imran Hosein:

Illuminati:

And:

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Just dipping my toe in the strange waters of Matthew 24:36:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

and Qur’an 33:63:

People ask you concerning the Hour. Say, “Knowledge of it is only with Allah. And what may make you perceive? Perhaps the Hour is near.”

So:

Socrates, The unexamined life is not worth the living…

Christ, That they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly..

Anais Nin, The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself..

Bob Dylan: It’s life and life only..

[ by Charles Cameron — one black swan that’s almost predictable — where two timelines meet ]
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God in His wisdom has decreed that all right thinking humans should circumambulate the Kaaba in Mecca if at all possible during their human lifetimes, so proclaims Islamic orthodoxy.

A Guardian piece titled Extreme heatwaves could push Gulf climate beyond human endurance, study shows gives an approximate date by which Mecca may be impossibly hot for humans, even clothed in the brilliant white ihram of the pilgrimage:

The extreme heatwaves will affect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran as well as posing a deadly threat to millions of Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia, when the religious festival falls in the summer. The study shows the extreme heatwaves, more intense than anything ever experienced on Earth, would kick in after 2070 and that the hottest days of today would by then be a near-daily occurrence.

After 2070.

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Tim Furnish, describing the Boston conference at which we both participated last year, expresses his regret that the Center for Millennial Studies is no longer with us in these words:

It’s a pity that Landes’ CMS has run its course, for as the Islamic year 1500 AH (after hijrah)/2076 AD approaches, Muslim eschatological fervor — almost certainly to include jihadist leaders thinking themselves the Mahdi — will only increase

Graeme Wood in his article What ISIS’s Leader Really Wants perhaps simplifies reality a little when he writes:

David Cook, a historian at Rice University who studies Muslim apocalypticism, points out that the battles preceding the Day of Judgment will take place in modern Syria, with a final showdown in the year 1500 of the Islamic Hijra calendar, or A.D. 2076.

2076, or 1500 AH, is indeed a plausible date, but not the only possibility.

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If there’s a second part to this post, it will express the extreme fierceness and driving passion of what Richard Landes calls “Active Cataclysmic Millennialism” — a category that includes both secular variants (Nazi, Marxist) and religious (Taiping Rebellion) — and how it ties in with the converging ecological and Mahdist timelines discussed above.

Okay, at the point of convergence:

Mecca uninhabitable, Hajj obligatory, and the arrival of the Mahdi imminent — it’s a potent brew to consider as we head towards the 2070s.

[ by Charles Cameron — not that that should be news.. also Egypt, Israel, Saudi ]
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The bomber described in the upper panel, above, has a somewhat strained notion of revenge, it seems to me, though no doubt it makes sense to him. And you can tell that the button ad in the lower panel is from a Christian Messianic rather than a Jewish site, because it includes the spelling “God” rather than “HaShem” or “G*d”. And do those who have put the ad together truly suggest that God, G*d, HaShem has literally signed the covenant you’d be signing if you pressed the button?

Muslims, with some history behind them, claim the Noble Sanctuary / Al-Aqsa as their third holiest site. Jews, with some history behind them, claim the Temple Mount – the same plateau — as their holiest site. Gershom Gorenberg in his book, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount terms it “the most contested piece of real-estate on earth”.

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Here’s an intriguing suggestion from Henry Siegman, The Truth About Jewish and Muslim Claims to Jerusalem, writing in the NYT back in 2000 CE —

When the sages of the Talmud had irreconcilable differences over a point of theology or law, they decided to defer a decision to the Messiah, when he comes. It is a legal fiction referred to in the Talmud as teiku. Teiku isthe only solution to the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem’s holiest site.

Of course, that wouldn’t stop the current violence, nor solve the blockages in negotiations, nor hasten the coming of the messiah — but we can dream, can’t we?

And PM Netanyahu of Israel recently greeted the visiting Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry… while a Saudi general, Anwar Eshki, visited Israel with a posse of businessmen to talk up the Saudi peace Initiative.

[ by Charles Cameron — noting a further IS propaganda effort to frame its terror as a war against Christendom ]
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Fake Dabiq 15:

Fake version/s of #SIS English mag, #Dabiq 15, are circulated on twitter. Not 1st time bogus #ISIS/ #AQ mags surface pic.twitter.com/yYUK0Bc71T

— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) June 9, 2016

Clicking through the two images will allow you to see them in full. These are the fake Dabiq 15s.

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Authentic Dabiq 15:

Latest release of #ISIS magazine #dabiq (n.15) strongly focuses on the fight agst Christians: "Break the Cross" pic.twitter.com/CvtGYfsa41

— Laurence Bindner (@LoBindner) July 31, 2016

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Dabiq 15’s Break the Cross page:

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DoubleQuoting Dabiq 15 and the Gospel:

This one’s for Tim Furnish. Upper panel above, the claim of the Islamic State; lower panel, the claim of Christianity.