Biblical prophecy and foreign policy: a caution
[ by Charles Cameron — on prophetic stances towards Israel: both blessings and rebukes ]
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It seems to be fairly common in some Christian circles to view the Israeli Prime Minister’s position on war with Iran as somehow sacrosanct.
Thus the end times fiction and non-fiction author Joel Rosenberg, for instance, recently blogged a “sermon” in two posts [Rediscovering the power and purpose of Bible Prophecy: 1 and 2] about the importance of prophecy to an understanding of Middle Eastern affairs, noting:
Israel is the epicenter of God’s plan and purpose in the last days. Other countries mentioned in Bible prophecy are Russia, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, Sudan, the revived Roman empire, and several others. The United States, however, is never mentioned directly or specifically in the Bible. In my recent book, Implosion, I go into this in greater detail. But the bottom line is that even though America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth in the history of mankind, the Bible does not describe a specific role for us in the last days. Something, therefore, apparently happens to neutralize us or paralyze from played a key role in the events that lead to the return of Christ.
Despite this lack of emphasis on the Unites States, he followed these two posts up with a post titled Troubling development: rift between White House & Israel growing as threat of war rises:
In recent days, anyone watching U.S.-Israel relations has seen a very troubling development: the already serious rift between the current White House and Israel is growing. The relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu has been strained for nearly four years. But as the threat of war between Israel and Iran this fall continues to rise, the Obama administration seems to be intentionally signaling a growing distance from the Netanyahu government.
He doesn’t draw a direct link to prophecy in this particular post, but he does close with this prayer:
Please pray for the Lord to change the heart of President Obama and his advisors, and that they would change course and truly and publicly stand firmly with Israel, our most faithful ally in all of the epicenter. As we read in Genesis 12:1-3, God promises to bless those who bless Israel, and curse those who curse Israel. With America facing a growing risk of economic and moral implosion, now is certainly not the time to turn our backs on Israel.
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As usual, my interest is in nuance — so I’d just like to say that from a purely Biblical point of view, it is by no means out of the question for believers to disagree with the kings and rulers of Israel. Indeed, Rav Moshe Taragin, writing in the Virtual Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Har Etzion, hardly a bastion of anti-Israeli sentiment, goes so far as to say:
In general, the function of the prophet is to rebuke the nation, to expose its negative traits and to help the people improve their behavior. As the Rambam teaches (Hilkhot Teshuva 4:2): “Thus, all the prophets rebuked Israel so that they would repent.”
Just because someone rebukes Israel doesn’t mean they don’t bless her…
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I addressed a question to my Christian friends on Twitter the other day, using the Iraq war as my example — but it applies to the current face-off between Israel and Iran, too:
If you and I disagree on, say, the Iraq war now, will one of us have to change his or her mind in heaven?
I added that my question was not about the Iraq war as such, but about our certainties when so many of our certainties differ.
My friend Mike Sellers responded with this admirable quote — which as he pointed out is often attributed to St Augustine (for more on its origins, try Wikipedia):
In things necessary, unity, in things doubtful, liberty, in all things, charity.
September 6th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Revelation One Verse One confirms the Preterist view. All Bible prophecy was fulfilled in that generation.
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But setting preterism aside, the Traditional Christian view -Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, is that “Israel” became spiritual after Christ’s resurrection. There is no “physical, national” Israel left. The Abrahamic Covenant was conditional on obedience to God and God’s will became conversion to Christianity.
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Apocalyptic Christianity is not Traditional Christianity. Dispensationalism aka “Christian Zionism” is hardly more historic in length than Mormonism.
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Then there is the “Traditional” position of Judaism which negated return to Palestine until the Messiah
came: http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com
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Of course The Lobby proved again it owns both parties yesterday. Yet demographics and political trends hint that Israel as a Zionist state ruled by rabbinical law is a transitory phenomena.
September 6th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
Differentiating politics from religion is a hard mental trick for many people to make. The development of even the ideal that politics and religion should be separate is a product of the late seventeenth century. Even the first example of cuius regio, eius religio in Latin Christendom, the Compacta of Prague between the Council of Basel and the more moderate Hussite faction in 1433, was considered highly unnatural and both sided tried to renege on it as soon as possible. Nuance is a gift for keeping one or more incompatible ideas in your head at the same time and many people lack it. For Latter-Day Saints, doctrinally (or theologically as you Gentiles put it) there is no contradiction between the Republican nominee for President and the Senate Minority Leader being both Latter-day Saints. The 11th article of faith states: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” Doctrine and Covenants section 134 expands on this:
7. We believe that rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief; but we do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive citizens of this privilege, or proscribe them in their opinions, so long as a regard and reverence are shown to the laws and such religious opinions do not justify sedition nor conspiracy…
9. We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied.We believe that all religious societies have a right to deal with their members for disorderly conduct, according to the rules and regulations of such societies; provided that such dealings be for fellowship and good standing; but we do not believe that any religious society has authority to try men on the right of property or life, to take from them this world’s goods, or to put them in jeopardy of either life or limb, or to inflict any physical punishment upon them. They can only excommunicate them from their society, and withdraw from them their fellowship.
LDS doctrine even teaches that religious toleration and the existence of multiple religions will continue well into the Millenium. Jesus Christ will personally reign over the earth but he will head separate secular and religious governments. In the end, like most Christian denominations, we believe as is stated by Paul in Romans 14: 11 that: “For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. But that will happen in Jesus’ own time and in his own way.
Nevertheless, some members of my church find it hard to keep straight rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and rendering unto God the things that are God’s in their head. Talking with my uncle once, he denounced all members of the Democratic Party as tools of Satan. I noted for the record that Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and other members of the church from FDR’s chairman of the Federal Reserve Marriner S. Eccles to JFK and LBJ’s Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall among others were members in good standing and Democrats. My uncle denounced them as being fake Mormons despite how they had to go through the same process to remain members in good standing as he did.
The hardlinking of LDS religion with certain strains of Evangelical Protestant political ideology such as those espoused by Glenn Beck is even worse and even more undoctrinal.
September 7th, 2012 at 9:32 pm
Hi L.C.,
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A gift, indeed. However, in that “rendering to Caesar,” the same Spirit that guides the conscious of a believer is present as that believer makes decisions with respect to the state.
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Perhaps your uncle was referencing Matthew 7:20: “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
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Just a thought. I heard an old Baptist preacher once say, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck; it’s a duck!”
September 7th, 2012 at 7:49 pm
http://mit.irr.org/failed-prophecies-of-joseph-smith
You make it all sound so neat, just like Hal Lindsay did time and again.
September 7th, 2012 at 10:59 pm
My own personal belief is that the ‘Gog Prince of Rosh’ interpretation of that particular passage in Ezekiel and identifying that entity as Russia only began in the 1850s after Great Britain found itself in colonial rivalry with the Russian Empire in Central Asia/Afghanistan. Not coincidentally, that was also the era in which Dispensationalism and the doctrine of the Rapture really took off in England and spread through the U.S. and the Anglosphere.
I know of NO interpretation of Ezekiel by the church fathers, or even one that predates the 1800s (surely there Biblical commentaries written in the late Renaissance early modern era, both by Roman Catholics and by Greek Orthodox thinkers?). It is not surprising to me that during the Cold War it wouldn’t have taken much effort for the CIA or other intelligence agencies fighting the USSR to make the connection with the legacy left behind by 19th century British propaganda. Even President Ronald Reagan was no doubt influenced by pamphlets such as ‘Will the Antichrist Come out of Russia?’ that took off after the Bolsheviks seized power and that he may have read as an earnest young Evangelical from Dixon, IL before he left for Hollywood, which led to his reflections on whether the Armageddon of Revealation (or more to the point, the passages in Zachariah describing eye sockets being burned by fire) was referring to neutron bombs and nuclear war.
But perhaps most damaging (and I am certainly not the only one online to point this out, many survivalists, preppers and ‘conspiracy theorists’ also share this conviction) the Rapture serves to give American Christians, mostly Evangelicals, the notion that they will never suffer persecution for the sake of Christ. This is ‘only those Left Behind will suffer for Christ’ belief is obviously not embraced by Roman Catholics as Cardinal Francis George made evident in his famous quote about his successor dying under persecution and that person’s successor dying as a martyr in a paganized America (Charles Cameron recently quoted this one, I think):
http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2011/05/cardinal-georges-prediction-faith-in.html
And in the case of Gog and Magog, the interepretation could be spiritual allegory — the (Greek) Orthodox Church for example as far as I know rejects a literal Millenial reign of Christ on Earth after He returns, preferring to view a 1,000 years as simply a marker denoting the Church age. The literalists remember were disappointed in the early medieval period when Christ did not return around the 1050s though there were plenty of wars and earthquakes. I would submit that an army numbering ‘as the sand on the seashore’ or some of the other descriptives beyond numbers would be more likely to be millions to tens of millions of fallen angels attacking God’s people throughout all of the Church age rather than a vast Chinese or Russian/Arab army attacking Israel as in the “Left Behind” series and Rosenberg’s “The Ezekiel Option”. Alternatively the prophet could’ve been trying to describe a swarm of millions of drones to destroy the Holy Land but that option seems more far fetched given the logical defense of setting off an EMP/nuclear blast in the upper atmosphere to kill all the attacking ‘locusts’.
That all said, the Orthodox judging by the eschatological reflections of Fr. Seraphim Rose who is a very popular Russian Orthodox Church saint outside of Russia do believe in a literal human Antichrist. Rose in particular believed UFOs and an ‘alien landing’ were likely to be part of the Great Deception that Christ spoke of ‘if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived’ and ‘if the Son of Man did not come there would be no flesh left alive on the Earth’. Christ’s reference to the ‘as in the days of Noah’ has also prompted speculation about whether fallen angels ever intermarried with women and gave rise to the ‘gods’ of the ancient world and legends about giants, Atlantis/pre-delluvian civilizations that are universal from Greece to Maya to ancient Hinduism, etc. For more on that subject I highly recommend Charles check out the page of Steve Quayle, who seems to be one of the leading (Non-Rapture) Evangelical evangelists of these ideas.
September 7th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
“Apocalyptic Christianity is not Traditional Christianity. Dispensationalism aka “Christian Zionism” is hardly more historic in length than Mormonism.” Agreed Ken, see the above. However while the Orthodox do interpret about 95-99% of the prophecies in the Bible including nearly all of the Psalms as referring to the First or Second Coming of Christ and the circumstances surrounding his first appearance and the persection of the Early Church by Titus Andronicus, Diocletian and the like, there are still a few passages left that may point to the future beyond the 1st century AD, to the ‘time of the end’ i.e. in the Book of Daniel. But the Orthodox clearly believe the clock was set for Christ’s return when He ascended into heaven not in 1948 when the secular state of Israel came into existence.
September 7th, 2012 at 11:09 pm
http://www.orthodoxphotos.com/readings/seraphim/russia/future.shtml
September 7th, 2012 at 11:31 pm
http://planetpreterist.com/content/video-fr-thomas-hopko-armageddon
There are those who say this Orthodox clergy is a “full (not Partial) Preterist.”
September 8th, 2012 at 1:03 am
I wasn’t endorsing everything on Steve Quayle’s website above, let me make it clear. The man has his flaws, while some of the sci-fi stuff he was talking about just a few years ago has turned out to be absolutely true (i.e. widespread use of drones, sound listening devices in open air places, ‘clipper’ chips in U.S. military hardware with backdoors for Chinese hackers, etc) there are other things he’s declared to be imminent that have definitely not come to pass.
I would also add that in at least one case Quayle and his talk radio partner Doug Hagmann appear to have fallen for some deliberately planted psyop, whereby a few dozen Russian paratroopers were training in COLORADO recently and Quayle declared that this was the start of a Russian/foreign invasion of the U.S. with the connivance of the New World Order elites within. Obviously Quayle looked like a fool in saying either the Colorado exercise or the NATO drills in Chicago could lead to nationwide martial law.
In reality, while obviously Quayle was wrong about that, I do think it’s classic Cass Sunstein ‘cognitive dissonance’ to have the Russians come to COLORADO where the film “Red Dawn” was set instead of having them train at Ft. Bragg, Ft. Leonard Wood, Ft. Bliss, or any other number of large U.S. bases nationwide. I don’t think DoD sending the Russians to Colorado instead of any of those other areas was an accident, nor was the selection of the paratroopers rather than naval commandos or true spetsnaz. The paras in Russia for those not familiar with them are the guys who wear the blue and white striped undershirts and have a reputation for getting roaring drunk on paras day, when they used to terrorize Muscovites at Gorkiy Park.
September 8th, 2012 at 1:05 am
Anyway, it’s becoming a very obvious and repeat tactic whereby the Establishment, the Man, the National Security State whatever you want to call it cherry picks one ‘conspiracy theory’ making the rounds on the interwebs and knocks it down. Quayle and the ‘Russians are coming’ above is one example. CNN reporting only on the NOAA and Social Security Administration ammo purchases while ignoring those by DHS that dwarf 116,000 rounds by orders of magnitude is another. In either case it’s using one hand to say ‘hey look at this silly conspiracy theory and how easy it is to debunk it!’ while with the other hand one carries out much bigger stuff that if not a conspiracy is certainly something the gov doesn’t want widely publicized.
September 8th, 2012 at 1:07 am
“There is no “physical, national” Israel left.” Romans 11 does appear to contradict this, but the promise that ‘all Israel (of the flesh) will be saved’ appears to refer to a future event shortly before the Return of Christ — that has been the interpretation down through the ages even lingering into Protestantism as well.
It by no means suggests parallel tracks of salvation or anyone being guaranteed Salvation merely by being born Jewish, that would make God a respecter of persons.
September 8th, 2012 at 1:09 am
My point also for those Zen readers who may be lurking here is not to suggest that every conspiracy theory is true nor do I buy into them but to point out that increasingly what was yesterday’s ‘conspiracy theory’ i.e. LIBOR, Federal Reserve market/metals manipulations, etc is now widely accepted as fact. See ‘we are all slaves to Central Bankers now’ on CNBC/Bloomberg. In short, the Establishment appears hellbent on doing its damndest to make people I once dismissed as ‘Truthers’ and ‘tin foil hat wearers’ look highly credible while destroying its own credibility and moral authority to lecture other countries (Russia in particular) on human rights.
September 8th, 2012 at 1:26 am
Hi Scott:
As a social conservative, I can look at the Democrats’ endorsement of clearcutting social capital this has nation built up and wonder how anyone, let alone a professed Latter-day Saint, affiliate with it. But my church has specific processes to govern who is a member and what privileges of membership they enjoy. Every Latter-day Saint is a member of a congregation based on their locality. That congregation has a leader blessed with authority to be “a judge in Israel” for the duration of his assignment. That leader, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the one called to look into the hearts of those under his stewardship and discerns who may be a ravening wolf. Other members may choose which fellow members to associate with based on their own interaction with the Spirit. But they have no authority to say who is and who isn’t a Latter-day Saint. If they appoint themselves a judge in Israel, they have placed themselves under condemnation irrespective of the sinfulness of the one they judge.
September 8th, 2012 at 4:05 am
“I know of NO interpretation of Ezekiel by the church fathers, or even one that predates the 1800s (surely there Biblical commentaries written in the late Renaissance early modern era, both by Roman Catholics and by Greek Orthodox thinkers?). It is not surprising to me that during the Cold War it wouldn’t have taken much effort for the CIA or other intelligence agencies fighting the USSR to make the connection with the legacy left behind by 19th century British propaganda.”
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The early CIA was a province of two groups: hard-bitten OSS veterans and Ivy League WASPs who came almost exclusively from the upper class, refined, Episcopalianism of the Eastern Establishment that was less a marker of piety than of social acceptability among the Elite, plus a smattering of Methodists, mostly Southerners. They came with a worldview described by Buckley in God and Man at Yale, so the likelihood of taking religion with much seriousness or relating to Orthodoxy was about zero. Mostly, their program was to subsidize Eastern European emigre activists of any political stripe so long as they were anti-Soviet and quixotic attempts to try to infiltrate the Iron Curtain, which came to nothing because all such missions were betrayed by Kim Philby once intel was shared with the Brits
September 8th, 2012 at 4:38 am
Zen you misunderstood me. I was not suggesting the CIA had lotsa devout Christians Orthodox or otherwise in the 1950s (though it may have had some, I wasn’t born yet, I wasn’t there). My point was 19th century Dispensationalists in Great Britain established the ‘Gog Prince of Rosh = Russia’ narrative, and others just ran with it later, ESPECIALLY after the Bolshevik Revolution installed an officially atheist regime.
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I hardly think there were very many at the Agency who knew much about the Orthodox church much less were baptized into it (Soviet propaganda against the ROCOR aside). There were a few devout Catholics in the ranks, Buckley included at one point. Blackford Oakes after all is basically Buckley’s fantasy of who he would’ve been if he’d been more like James Bond/James Jesus Angleton. So was Jack Ryan as Clancy’s fantasy of whom he would’ve been, with a smattering of Mr. Clark thrown in.
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On a more constructive note, if you or Charles can link to any commentaries on Ezekiel from prior to the 19th century, I’d be truly grateful.
September 8th, 2012 at 5:57 am
You’re taking us farther than my own knowledge goes, but a little quick googling reveals these two for starters…
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Michael Glerup and Kenneth Stevenson, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel :
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Gregory the Great, tr. Theodosia Gray, The Homilies of Saint Gregory the Great on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel — see also this .pdf excerpt
September 8th, 2012 at 6:08 am
Still searching.
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Carl L. Beckwith, ed., Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel looks to be a Reformation equivalent.
September 8th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
Hi L.C.,
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Understand; we’re in a similar boat, as it were, as I am a social conservative as well. Fellowship is vital, so are her terms.
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Mr. X,
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Has it not been the case that eschatologists tend to “fit” the scripture to their world-view? Charles demonstrates with frequency the phenomena of religious groups seeing in current events something prophesied centuries before. On the flip side, arguments about history, context, and intent of early church/religious fathers (Shia/Sunni come to mind) are with us in most major religions.
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I was not familiar with Steve Quayle, who you referenced previous, so I googled him. His website doesn’t lend much credibility, but did spark a thought. People everywhere search for meaning and many find that meaning in religion. But even religions fall prey to those who turn the faith into a commodity and monetize. “Outrageous” sells, and not just Paris Hilton or the base—these fellas do ok peddling their crystal ball. Mr. Quayle seems to fit this genre. He has a business, as does Mr. Rosenberg and the market demands they stay relevant—what is more relevant than channelling/making sense of God’s Word. I’ve read Rosenburg’s book (the first three), and they make for great fiction—page-turners, even. Base policy on them? Nah, I think not. I truly hate to frame it so coldly, but we’ve about 2,000 years of history of dooms-dayers and prognosticators who have been proven wrong by history—I suspect this will be the fate of these two gentlemen.
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That said, I do believe George W. Bush came dangerously close to drinking the kool-aid when he decided to export “democracy” at the tip of a bayonet. His choice of words at times, bordering on itinerant, made me wonder if he didn’t believe he was “doing the Lord’s Will…”
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I remember the Hal Lindsay books, I remember in 1988 many Christians I admired thought Christ would return (based on the prophesy that a generation would not pass after Israel’s homecoming) that year. A few fell away when 1989 came along and no Second Coming.
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Both Peter and Paul advise us He will “come like a thief in the night…”
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Sorry if I rambled…
September 8th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Isn’t Steve Quayle a post-tribulational, pro-Israel guy? Not much distinction there between him and a Dispensationalist in practical political terms, though you have to be pre-trib to be a Dispensationalist.
Post-tribulationalist premillenialists are still usually lackeys of The Lobby.
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Those who advocate neutraility or simply getting out of the Mideast are, if religious, almost always
amillenialists, postmillenialists or Preterists.
September 9th, 2012 at 12:19 am
Well put me in the ‘get out of the Mideast including Afghanistan’ yesterday camp. But the problem I see on the interventionist Right is that they have their own version of the Brezhnev doctrine, whereby any U.S. withdrawal from a position we never could have ‘won’ in the first place (i.e. what’s to win in Afghanistan, exactly?) is viewed as a ‘win’ for Eurasia or Eastasia…er, Russia and China. It’s a mentality I’ve encountered in more than a few threads at some prominent Right websites and it is also on display in certain Establishmentarian Twitter feeds.
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Charles — much thanks! Will check out the links to Gregory the Great’s commentaries on Ezekiel. Given that the first part of the Biblical book is about reconstructing the Temple and or heavenly Temple worship, it would seem the Orthodox interpretation would lean heavily toward the liturgical rather than looking to temporal moments in history.
September 9th, 2012 at 12:22 am
And as for Quayle, again mentioned how he was duped by a little bitty “the Russians are coming to Colorado! ‘Red Dawn’ psyop above”. Even folks like Alex Jones caution listeners every time Quayle is on that many of the things he’s said have in fact come true but the timing has often been wrong. He’s kind of what happens when Evangelical pro-Israel Christianity meets The X-Files. That’s not to say that I don’t agree with him on a few things — the UFO/abductee phenomenon for example being both real and aphysical (in other words, having a spiritual or even demonic origin).
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And I am not so quick anymore to assume that somebody makes loads of bucks from their websites, even if they can make a modest living pushing tin food for the imminent collapse. Quayle isn’t in the same league as Alex Jones or some of the other alt-Rightists when it comes to site traffic.
September 9th, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Mr. X,
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Good analogy to The X-Files. Concur on Afghanistan. The interventionist Right mentality has, sadly, become pervasive on the right. If one disagrees with their philosophy they are labeled as unpatriotic or isolationist. No one with a national political following is making a cogent argument against this dangerous policy, and the Progressives aren’t any better.
September 9th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/why-republican-hawks-dont-care-that-romney-has-no-foreign-policy-experience/
None better than Larison and some of his commentors to document this as it proceeds to election.
September 9th, 2012 at 8:15 pm
Hi Ken Hoop,
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Excellent example. The foreign policy choices in November aren’t.
September 10th, 2012 at 2:53 am
Larison is one of the best sensible Right foreign policy analysts out there. There are only a handful of Progressives like Chris Hedges whom I once regarded with suspicion during the Bush years, but have stayed consistent through the Obama years instead of disappearing like much of the fake ‘antiwar’ movement that mostly consisted of Democrat hacks. Hedges has sued the government to block the NDAA with modest success so far.
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Now that antiwar libertarianism has gotten a little bit of a shot in the arm it will be interesting to see how things get spun going forward — it seems both conservatarians (which I am), libertarians, genuine progressives and the like are all being pushed to the barricades together by Demopublican Corporatism which is veering toward Fascism fast.
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On the Tweeter-webs I was amused to see the liberal Glenn Greenwald denounced as a Paul supporter to try to get some Deminternists to further anathematize him. I have also predicted that since AKs and Russian made .223 are getting more popular as domestic firearms get more expensive, BigSis trolls will start claiming that Putin and ‘the KGB’ are now arming the ‘bitter clingers’ to fight Washington. You heard it here first, it’s a Sunstein mind twist but there it is. I’ve already observed the beta testiing of such memes on Twitter.
September 10th, 2012 at 3:15 am
Mr. X,
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Interesting new political lexicon; and mostly accurate. Of your comments w/respect to Twitter memes, I’m not surprised. I was in southern Virginia a few years ago and a gun shop was selling Soviet era 7.62 by the crate at fire sale prices. One older couple bought several thousand rounds—no doubt, they are agents for Putin—complete with overalls and the gun rack in their truck.
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People buy 47’s because they are cheap and practically indestructible; proof the Soviets did make good stuff, but not much…
January 18th, 2013 at 5:26 am
I just read a really plausible novel called The Prophesy Gene. In the story the author makes a really compelling argument that the biblical prophets weren’t people anointed by God, but they were simply people with a rare gene that allowed them to share the memories of everyone whoever lived and also shared the gene. He didn’t come right out and say there’s no such thing as God, but he suggested that the collection of all these memories might be what God really is. The book is by Stuart Schooler. His website is http://www.stuartschooler.com and there is a link to a blog and YouTube video 9http://vimeo.com/53365895)