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In a blog post subtitled “Cold-Hearted Lawlessness”, radical-right cleric Joe Fuiten has put on his Jesus Decoder Ring and divined a connection between domestic partnerships, marriage equality and the recent murder of several Washington police officers. His ultimate goal seems to be to exploit these murders in an effort to entice secular people to support his theocratic goals.
Here is Fuiten’s basic outline. The details are after the fold.
Jesus said “increased wickedness” is a sign of impending End Times.
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Domestic Partnerships and marriage equality are examples of such wickedness.
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This wickedness causes cold-heartedness.
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Cold-hearted people kill police and kill children.
(emphasis original except pink color highlighting homo-words)
It is ultimate cold-heartedness to kill children and police. …You don’t have to be religious to feel the threat to the American way of life by such cold-heartedness.Indeed, I am proposing that secular people should join forces with what they call the religious right to stand against this threat. On a wide spectrum of issues of morality, the secular left has an interest in hoping for the religious success of people who preach the Bible. Even more than just religious success, secular people should want to encourage support for biblical morality in public life.
To stoke fear, Fuiten assures the reader that the police murderers weren’t just a few bad apples, but a sign of the (end) times:
Were the shootings just the cold-hearted acts of mentally unstable persons or the predictable outcome of the alienation of a cold-hearted society? My reading of the Bible suggests that the police shootings were different from, but still on the same continuum as, the passage of legislation that denies America’s majority biblical morality or the administration officials like Daschle, Geithner, and Sebelius who hadn’t paid their taxes.> EACH represents a blow to the governance of God.
> EACH is a mileage marker toward the end of the road.
> EACH marks a sign of the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdom of our Lord.
Jesus prophesied that acting against the law would be a sign of his coming and of the end of the age.
Ah yes, End Times. They’re always a-comin. I especially like his last sentence; apparently nobody has broken the law before now. Because the Second Coming would have happened already if Joseph Smith, war and earthquakes had happened before today, right? Curious though that an apparent believer in End Times like Fuiten would want to stave them off. Isn’t the Second Coming what he’s been waiting and preparing for? In Fuiten’s universe, only someone prioritizing the profane over the sacred would want to postpone End Times. So why is he trying to?
Next Fuiten quotes Bible verses Matthew 24:3-14 in which Jesus describes to his followers the signs of the End Times. And here is where the Jesus Decoder Ring comes online I guess, because Fuiten ominously states that “In the answer that Jesus gave, I detect elements of our era.” I guess Fuiten thinks we won’t notice that rapture raptors like him have been fitting their own present-day events into Jesus’s scaffolding of predictions for over 2,000 years much like people read their own lives into the daily horoscope.
Fuiten gives particular attention to describing what he thinks Jesus meant by “the increase of wickedness” in his prophecy. Here is where he begins making the connection between gay marriage and the murder of Washington police officers.
There is a prophecy about our times contained in the phrase, “the increase of wickedness. “In the Greek language “wickedness” is anomia, a violation of law. More than violating a specific law, it is the condition where a person is unwilling to be subject to biblical law.I am making the case that Jesus was referring to our day when he gave that prophecy.
If we are looking for evidence of “the increase of wickedness” we won’t necessarily hear that terminology. Here are a few samples of how I think we would hear it today:
> “Nobody is going to tell me what to do.”
> “You don’t have the right to impose your religion on my body.”
> “Keep your religion out of my bedroom (pharmacy, operating room, etc., etc.).”
> “Equality demands that we grant marriage benefits, if not the name itself, to same-sex partners.”
> “Religion and politics must be separate.”
In recent times, many, if not most appeals to freedom, equality as applied to homosexuals, libertarianism, liberalism, or individualism are sophisticated political language for this same spirit. Beyond words, the failure to pay taxes unless you are up for nomination to a high government post reflects lawlessness. Such attitudes are the anomia of which Jesus spoke. It is unwillingness to be subject to biblical law. I expect any objective observer can see the increase in this attitude and secularists might even celebrate such increase.
Interesting admission by Fuiten that he sees his brand on the wane. Next he makes the final link in the gay marriage – cop murder chain.
From Jesus we learn that the spirit that opposes biblical law is a cold spirit that chills the soul.It might seem to some that promotion of gay marriage or abortion rights should be considered political opinion rather than opposition to God’s law, wickedness, or love grown cold. But if we take the words of Jesus seriously, then we must agree that the consequence of increasingly rejecting biblical law is coldness of heart. It is a spiritual thing to reject biblical law in any part. …
From the contrast that Jesus offered we can say that rejection of biblical law produces cold-hearted people, while standing firm in faith and adherence to biblical law leads to salvation. Cold-hearted people not only kill police and children but they do a lot of other harm as well.
Fuiten goes on tell secularists that they’re freer under the restraint of Fuitne-style “Biblical law”. LOL, can’t make this stuff up.
To my secular friends I would say, you have more freedom when we all live by biblical law than you would have if all biblical restraints are removed from society. Therefore, even an atheist has an interest in the success of the church I pastor.
This is all so reminiscent of the 2005 Brian Camenker interview on The Daily Show. Remember that gem?
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Mass. Hysteria
Daily Show
Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Health Care Crisis Brian Camenker: You know the gay marriage issue is destructive on many levels. You have to deal with it in business. You have to deal with it in the public square. You have to deal with it in the public schools.
Ed Helms: So the quality of life has decreased.
Brian Camenker: Yeah.
Ed Helms: Homelessness gone up?
Brian Camenker: (Laughing) I can, you know…
Ed Helms: Crime rates?
Brian Camenker: Crime rates?
Ed Helms: Air quality?
Brian Camenker: I mean let me put it this way. I could sit here and I could probably, you know, find some way of connecting the dots to gay marriage to all of these if I had enough time, and I did some research.
Narrator: Yeah! Why take time to do the research when saying it is so much faster? Besides, the statistics are clear-cut. Now that gay marriage is legal, Massachusetts ranks dead last in illiteracy, 48th in per-capita poverty, and a pathetic 49th in total divorces.
Fuiten is on the Board of Directors of Family Policy Institute of Washington (FPIW), a local affiliate of Focus on the Family and Family Research Council. Although FPIW was a major player in the recent effort to repeal Washington’s domestic partnership law via Referendum 71, Fuiten created a public spectacle early on by not backing the campaign. Only after Fuiten, Gary Randall and Ken Hutcherson staged several embarrassing rounds of cat fight in public did Fuiten jump on the anti-DP bandwagon at the 11th hour, citing crackpot imaginary conversations as “reasoning” for his backpedaling. Those FPIW Board meetings must be a laugh a minute.
11 Comments
Won’t the End Times…Make his job easier?
So what is he complaining about, then? Sheesh, you just can’t please some folks.
You know, this confuses the living hell out of me…….……aren’t they supposed to be looking forward to the “end of times?”
I like telling fundiesthat the Rapture already happened, during the Clinton Administration, and that they missed out on it!
My one must-see TV program each weekis Dr. Jack van Impe and his dingbat wife Rexella, preaching the End Times and explaining that virtually everything that happens, anywhere in the world, is predicted in the Bible. As near as it’s possible to decode the mentality of these asshats, EVERYTHING on earth is a sign of the End Times. So I guess it’s no surprise that this stuff is, too.
(I sent a few videos of Jack and Rexella to an Australian friend a few years ago. They were a smash hit with him and all his friends. And now every year at Melbourne Pride, there’s a whole gaggle of drag queens doing Rexella. I hope she’s pleased. After all, it’s a sign of the End Times.)
Sometimes……I think I look forward to the rapture more than the fundies do.
An evil, evil manWonder if I should mention this guy in my presentation just for the sake of perspective.
Yeah, all that evil..>”Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”
>”Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”
>”When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them.”
>”Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.”
>”Whatever you did not do for the least of your brothers, you did not do for me”
The sad thing about his list of all the evil things that people are saying in these end times is that in every case there is a specific New Testament quote that actually mandates it for Christians.
Separate Church and State? See the Caesar quote.
Keep religion out of people’s lives – see lots of quotes, but specifically the ones where Jesus healed on the Sabbath and told everybody that people were more important than rules.
And so on.
Moron.
If you look carefully, I think he takes a swipe at Gary Randall…It’s a bit subtle. Joe Fuiten equates failure to pay taxes with “lawlessness”. Gary Randall has had tax problems in the recent past. Gary and Joe have been feuding for the better part of the year. Joe publicly announced it was not a good idea to run a referendum to stop the newly expanded domestic partnership law. After the passage of R-71, Joe said “told you so.” Gary singled Joe out for criticism, insinuating that he betrayed the cause and that his lack of support may have impacted their fundraising and resulted in their failure. By equating unpaid taxes with lawlessness, I think Joe is taking a subtle swipe at Gary. It’s good to see the opposition divided. Let them stay that way.
Another thing – Larry Stickney and Maggie Gallagher seem to have a thing against transparency in government. They want the courts to rule campaign finance disclosure laws unconstitutional, so that persons who sign petitions or donate to conservative ballot measures/candidates can do so anonymously. It doesn’t seem well thought-out because an attack on the disclosure laws can benefit the left as well as the right. Organizations like the Teamsters and SEIU could take advantage by – anonymously – sponsoring left-leaning candidates and ballot measures. People like George Soros would also take advantage of the situation.
I think you may be right about the tax dig.Certainly Randall hasn’t pulled any punches when it comes to showing disdain for Fuiten. I documented half a dozen of Randall’s blog posts where he took pointed swipes at Fuiten, and I certainly didn’t have to look hard – there are many more. So you may be right that Fuiten is “returning the favor”.
“increased wickedness”cool! where?! when!? do I need to join something to share in this? can I bring a friend?
I tell them that the Book of Revelations is a first-hand account, not a prophesyThe Apocalypse occured almost two thousands years ago, as predicted (within the lifetime of the generation alive at the time of Christ) and under budget.
That always seems to annoy them greatly.