03/06/08 – Bill Barnwell – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, the first guest today is Bill Barnwell.
He's a pastor from Michigan and a regular writer for LewRockwell.com, and it made all the news this last week, John McCain's new Best Friendship, an endorsement by Pastor John Hagee from the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio.
This has made a lot of waves, actually, on TV and in the blogs due to Pastor John Hagee's professed anti-Catholic bigotry, and so I thought we would bring Bill Barnwell on to talk a little bit about the theology of John Hagee and his brand of what they call Protestant Christianity, what that has to do with Catholicism, and what it means that John McCain would bring in someone like this to endorse his campaign.
Welcome back to the show, Bill.
Hi, Scott.
It's good to have you on, sir.
Who is this guy, John Hagee, and what does he mean when he calls the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon?
Well, Pastor Hagee is a very successful pastor out in Texas, has had a ministry thriving for a number of years, and over the years has become more and more influential in political circles, and it's really only in recent times where more people outside of his home state or community are starting to take notice of this.
The fact that John McCain would have a local church pastor in front of his campaign billboards and giving his endorsement just shows what a power player that Hagee has become, for better or worse.
A lot of what he believes is standard, fair, evangelical Christianity.
Some of his views that are more controversial are things that I've written about and talked about in the past on this very show, are his beliefs about the doctrine of the end of times or the last things, mainly based on the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, and some other parts of the Bible, that I've written in depth about if people are interested can find on LewRockwell.com or elsewhere, where I address some of these things.
His view of the Catholic Church, as far as I've seen, I've looked at the YouTubes, and I used to watch Hagee on TV, I've heard many of his sermons, and he is a good speaker, but I haven't heard him blatantly come out and say, the Roman Catholic Church is the great whore of Babylon.
I have heard him kind of give winks and nods, maybe, to this idea that are understandably troubling to Roman and Eastern Catholics.
Why would he make these assumptions?
Well, if you go to the book of Revelation, and we could spend weeks and weeks talking about the book of Revelation and what it says or does not say, there's this picture, and the book of Revelation is a very symbolic book, in many respects, and it's giving a picture of Babylon, in the book of Revelation, that is this system, this worldly system that's being occupied also by the great whore, this false religious system or whatever it is, that eventually is going to be destroyed by Jesus Christ in the end of days.
And you've had, throughout Christian history, disagreements and different ideas of, well, who is Babylon?
Who is the great whore?
And is this literal?
Is it symbolic?
Is Babylon going to be a literal rebuilt city?
Is it just symbolic for wicked human government or wicked false religion?
And Hagee's view is that, prior to the visible Second Coming of Christ, that Christians are going to be raptured or taken off of the earth, snapped up to heaven, prior to these last days' events occurring.
And it sounds to me like he's giving this idea that this false religious system, that the Catholic Church is going to have something to do with that.
And back in the early times of the Protestant Reformation, that was a pretty popular viewpoint, because you really had these different factions of the Church battling against each other for many different reasons.
You've seen that idea really go out of style, and probably the vast majority, and in fact I know the vast majority of evangelicals and even fundamentals, are not going to say that the Catholic Church is this great whore of Babylon, or this inherently evil, wicked religious system.
Now, as a conservative Protestant, I have some very strong theological disagreements with Roman and Eastern Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
But I think if you were to survey 100 Protestants of my own theological persuasion, you're not going to find very many that are going to say, all Catholics everywhere at all times are damned to hell, and they're totally wicked, and they're not going to be in heaven.
You're not going to find a whole lot of that.
You're going to find very small minority pockets of that.
And I don't know John Hagee's heart, but I would even guess that if you were to really pin him down and ask him, are all Catholics going to hell, I would assume he'd probably say no, but I can't speak for him.
But a lot of what he's saying that are now being raised as controversial issues about the Catholic Church are based on his interpretation of the book Revelation, that I think that's just one of many problems with it.
Well, he sure got some of the Catholic activists angry.
I saw Bill Donahue even went on the Stephen Colbert show last night to complain about this.
Yeah, Bill Donahue's an interesting character, and Bill Donahue gets mad about a lot of things, but here I think he has a legitimate griping issue, and I think maybe this is something that Pastor Hagee needs to come out and address.
Well, actually Colbert called him out and said, yeah, but you said that John Stewart was an anti-Catholic bigot for pointing out that the Pope has a funny hat, and Bill Donahue said, well, yeah, that's true, too.
All right, well, so one thing about Hagee is that he represents the faction of Protestantism that they call the Christian Zionists, that these are the guys who are very pro-Israel.
In fact, I remember listening to Ricky Ware on the radio down in San Antonio, who would be very reasonable about foreign policy and lots of things, but if I remember right, Ricky Ware, he was a member of the Cornerstone Church, and when it came to Israel, he would just immediately switch from the world that we live in to, yeah, but it says in the Bible that America is supposed to protect Israel.
That kind of thing.
So I don't know, it seems kind of funny, though, because if I understand right, the Christian Zionist motivation for wanting to be such good friends of Israel is to make Israel big enough that that'll finally force Jesus to come back and kill all the Jews.
Is that right?
Well, in a sense, yeah, there are some troubling implications, yeah, of this Christian Zionist viewpoint.
Now, let me say, I am not anti-Jew or anti-Israel.
I support Israel's right to exist and defend itself, but not everything that Israel does is ordained and blessed by God, and this goes back to the end-times theology of dispensationalist Christians, and, you know, this idea, and it is, in the Old Testament, God blesses Abraham and says, I'm going to make a great nation through you, and I'll bless those who bless you, and I'll curse those who curse you, and throughout the Old Testament, you know, God judges the enemies of theocratic, Old Testament, biblical Israel.
Even if you were to talk to Orthodox Jews in modern, secular Israel today, they would also tell you, Israel as it exists today is not a biblical Israel.
So Jews themselves disagree with this kind of fundamentalist, dispensationalist interpretation.
The other thing is, you know, there's a disagreement in Christian circles of what is the role and purpose of Israel today and in the future.
Is Israel still entitled to specific land boundaries that were given in the Old Testament?
Did God meet those obligations already?
Is that, have these things already been fulfilled?
And you know, there's some discussion, a very minority in the Christian community, that are Jews under a separate covenant than Christians, this kind of dual covenant theology?
And do they even have to accept Christ as their Savior, or are they just okay because they're Jews?
And quite frankly, a lot of people just do not know how to interpret the Bible, so they go to the Old Testament, they find these passages about Israel, you know, the land, and they automatically apply that to the situation today.
And while the Bible, Old and New Testament, speaks for people today, I think some of their conclusions and applications are just off on that.
So the reason you see them totally shift on this issue is because there's this idea that if we don't give a wink and a nudge to everything Israel does, God is going to curse us, per this verse in Genesis chapter 12.
And that we need to support Israel, and these are God's chosen people, and you know, really, the teaching in the New Testament is not that, as some critics allege me and others believe in this quote, replacement theology, that the Church or Christians have replaced Israel and God is now done with ethnic Jewish people.
That's not the teaching of the Bible, but that the Church or Christianity, those who have faith in Christ, completes the Old Covenant and fulfills it to a new level.
And that the true people of God are not Jew or Gentile, but Jew and Gentile united by faith in Christ.
And today, you know, Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is everywhere, God doesn't just dwell in some physical temple, and that Jesus was the new temple, and that it's not just about some piece of real estate in the Middle East anymore, that God's people are everywhere of every race and both genders and economic status.
I mean, the message of the New Testament is not exclusive at all.
So in my opinion, they're simply just misreading and misapplying these Old Testament texts.
And it makes it really difficult, too, which is what I find troubling.
It makes it very difficult when we have a complicated foreign policy over there in the Middle East that is made more complicated by the invoking of passages in the Holy Book from 2,000 years ago, when we're trying to deal with space and time and land borders and, you know, retaining walls in the, or not retaining walls, separation walls all over the West Bank.
These are things that aren't referenced in the Bible.
These are things that have to be worked out by human beings here and now.
You know, and as a Christian, I believe that, again, that all the Bible is relevant and does speak to circumstances, but it doesn't speak on every little foreign policy decision, and it doesn't speak in detail about how, again, modern, secular Israel's place in the world, the global economy and foreign relations, and what this means for the Arab peoples.
And I, again, I'm not reflexively anti-Israel.
I think I have a lot of criticisms of the Arab governments and even how the Palestinians have conducted themselves throughout these two different intifadas and so on and so forth.
But it's not just a one-way thing.
A lot of times you talk to people and it's, the Arabs are doing everything right, and you know, Israel's doing everything bad, and then you talk to Christian Zionists and it's exactly the opposite.
There's really no nuance or discernment in this whole thing, and it is a complicated issue.
But some of these Christian Zionists believe that if there's some two-state solution in the Middle East, or anything that gives the Palestinians or Arab peoples any wiggle room here, that this is contrary to God's Word, and that God's going to judge us, and I hear this a lot, that God's going to judge America and bring America to her knees unless we fully support Israel.
And by support Israel, they mean, you know, basically bless everything it does.
And I simply don't agree with that, and I don't think that's the teaching of the Bible.
I understand why and, you know, where they reach those conclusions, but I disagree with them, as do probably the majority of Protestants, and really Christians on a whole, if you include Catholics and Orthodox and other branches of Christianity.
Well, you know, it's funny, because it's just impossible that either book of the Bible or any book of the Bible would reference what the North Americans are supposed to do in any particular situation, and yet, as you say, the Bible does apply in the broader sense.
Of course, a few years back, Jerry Falwell, I wonder if he's in heaven, wrote an article called God is Pro-War, where after September 11th, this was God is on the side of white Christian Americans who need to go around the world and kill all the infidels, or whatever it was.
So I wonder what you think of that, the idea that, well, you know, people say in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, God's a very violent guy and he demands a lot of blood, and in fact, there was a debate going on in the comment section on my blog, where they were talking about whether God favors collective punishment, the bombing of this village because of what a couple people in it did, and that sort of thing.
So where does your religion come in on evaluating those kinds of questions?
Well, I think, you know, I've read that Falwell article in question, and in fact, I referenced it in a piece I wrote for the American Conservative about a year and a half ago, and took issue with some of it.
He didn't quite come out and say things as forcefully as you presented it, but he did present some troubling implications of these passages, of God being pro-war.
And again, this is another complicated discussion that you have to go back and understand the setting, the biblical covenantal time that these passages were written in the Old Testament.
You were dealing with God promising specific land boundaries to biblical Israel, and you'd have to know the story going from Genesis all the way through Joshua, but through Abraham's descendants, and by the time we get to Moses, there is this Israelite people, there's many of them, and they wind up in Egypt, because 400 years prior to that, there was a famine, which caused Joseph and his family to leave the promised land.
And during this time, it began being inhabited by Canaanite and other religious systems that, really, when you look at them, were quite wicked, even in a secular sense, were doing completely awful things, child sacrifice amongst other abominable things, and the issue there was that God did promise this land to the Israelites, and they were to go in and offer the Canaanites and other inhabitants to repent from their wicked ways, and give up the land, and this and that, and if they weren't to do that, they were to go in, and this is a troubling passage for many people, and I understand this, but they were to go in and wipe out these tribes, if they weren't to accept this.
And people could look at that and say, well, man, that's genocide.
But again, you know, I always crack up when liberals, liberal critics of the Bible especially, are so offended by not understanding things on a particular cultural level, but you have to look at the time and place that this was written in, in the Old Testament, that if you study ancient Near East practice, there was this concept of what's called harem warfare, in the time that these books were written, where this is what the nations did, they would go in, and they would wipe out everything that was there, and give it unto and over to their gods, and to their idols.
So in a sense, this is the God of the Bible meeting people where they're at, their cultural conventions, and the other issue is that God never, in the Bible, sanctions humans taking human life into their own hands.
The only time you see human life being taken by humans is when it's ordained and ordered by God, basically, and when it's not, human beings are judged for that in the Bible, and we've seen in history, since the Bible was written, when human beings have taken matters in their own hands, and have gone about things in a completely unbiblical fashion, we've seen all the horrible things that have happened.
So no, I don't think the Bible is pro-war, and I don't buy this idea that, at least in my lifetime, any world leader has been spoken to by God, and told the mere anything that was going on in the Old Testament.
So what you're saying is, despite how violent it is, that basically, vengeance is mine.
It's for God to go around killing people at His will, not for human beings to choose to do so in His place.
In essence, yes.
And some people, and I understand skeptics, have a problem with it, that God, a violent God.
Well, no, I mean, none of this violence was God's intention with creation, and God's not – anybody who was punished in the Old Testament, it's not like these were wonderful people.
Well, we hear about Noah's flood, and so forth, he killed everybody but this one guy and his family.
You know, that kind of thing.
That's collective punishment.
That's the way the Israelis treat the people in Gaza.
That's the way the Americans treat the people in Iraq.
Well, again, we're dealing with separate issues there, and I think each of those deserve their own attention, but the teaching of the Bible is that those that are punished are not innocent.
And I think if we were to look at the situation today, like in Israel, I think you do have some innocents that are suffering on both sides here, and we need to look at that, and need to think through these things.
So again, these passages in the Old Testament, I think that they do have relevance to modern Christians today, but the relevance is not to go out and commit genocide and to write columns about God being pro-war, and all the rest of it.
If you look at the New Testament, and you look at the person of Jesus Christ, I don't think the Old and New Testament contradict each other, as critics have alleged, but when you look at the whole Bible, what God's intention is, it's not for strife and warfare, and it's not for people killing each other and mistreating each other.
And the only thing that you see in the New Testament with warfare is in the Book of Revelation, when you have this end-time picture in the Book of Revelation of Christ and these armies, and especially since the Medieval times, there's been all this artwork and literature and the writings in the end-times books, today in the left-behind books, about human armies gathering together in this big, bloody battle, and that's really not even the teaching of the Book of Revelation.
It says that out of Christ's mouth is going to come a sword and slay down the wicked, in so many words, and that's a symbolic thing for basically saying that it's God who's punishing the evildoers, it's not human beings, it's not some human-directed war with missiles and tanks and nuclear bombs and all the rest that the popular culture has been fed.
It's not a human-directed thing.
Let me play a short clip, this is almost a minute, this is a couple of clips of John Hagee taken from Max Blumenthal's work at the Huffington Post.
There's an army of 200 million marching down the river Euphrates coming toward the Persian Gulf.
There's going to be the meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion that is unplanned for, on the charts of all of the dictators of the earth.
It's not an invasion from the north or the south or the east or the west, it's an invasion from heaven.
And he will establish his kingdom, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
I am telling you that makes this message one of the most thrilling prophetic messages you've ever heard in your life.
You could get raptured out of this building before I get through finished preaching, we were that close.
John the Revelator says in Revelation the 19th, and I John saw the heavens open and he that sat upon a white horse was called faithful and true.
And in righteousness doth he judge and make war.
And out of his mouth shall go a two-edged sword with which he shall smite the nations of the earth.
Well, he sounds pretty convincing, Bill.
He sounds definitely certain about what he's talking about.
Is he leading his flock astray?
I think he's sincere in his conclusions, but I think he's off on some things.
And I think some of it does have troubling implications.
Again, to sit and unpack the book of Revelation would take a long time.
And I think, you know, one of the dangers in biblical study is taking the literal and making it figurative, or taking the figurative or symbolic and making it literal.
And I think the latter is a pitfall that Hagee and some others have run into as they deal with the book of Revelation.
Just for some of your listeners, I would encourage them to look at a serious, conservative, scholarly evangelical study of the book.
Two examples I can think of right off the top of my head would be a guy named Craig Keener, his Revelation Commentary, or Ben Witherington, his Revelation Commentary, are just two of many good examples that, again, these are conservative evangelicals who are going to reach some very different conclusions than Hagee on a lot of these issues, and I think do a much better job of handling the text responsibly and drawing the implications from them more responsibly.
Well, let me ask you about the clash of civilizations with Islam here.
In my view, the actual threat to the United States is a band of jihadists numbering no more than a couple of thousand.
And yet, there seems to be an entire segment of the population that believes that what we're really facing here is a war between the East and the West, between Christianity and apparently Judaism on one side and Islam on the other, and that this is inescapable.
There's a billion and a half of them.
We and they cannot coexist in peace.
They mean to destroy us.
Something must be done.
How necessary do you think this clash of civilizations really is, Bill?
Well, I think you do have extremist components in the Islamic faith, and some in the Christian faith that believe that this, by prophetic necessity, must happen.
You do have a small minority of radicals and the movement of Judaism.
But here's different things I'd say for each group.
I'd say in the Muslim community, I do think it's a minority of Islamists that are causing the problems and the ruckus and such, but I do think that the moderate Muslim community needs to do a better job of calling out their own.
And I mean, there is a bit of a permissiveness in Islamic culture that I think sometimes gives a wink and a nod to these extremist components and doesn't fully call them out.
And I think you do see more often in the Christian community, myself and others included, we're not afraid to have these inter-party disputes and discussions and to call out extremist elements and so on and so forth.
So I think that's one issue.
Two, based on the way we conduct our foreign policy, and in my own theology, I don't like this idea of going in and just conquesting the Islamicists with the sword.
I don't think that's the Biblical teaching, and I don't think that's the application for today.
I think it would be totally counterproductive.
In the same way, I don't think we ought to have a foreign policy that provokes the Muslim community and makes them feel as if America is a bully and doesn't care about them.
Our leaders would deny that, but I think we need to do a better job of seeming like we do actually care about the Islamic community.
You know, I read something, I don't remember if this is something from one of Osama bin Laden's speeches, or whether it was somebody else, I think this was actually one of Osama bin Laden's speeches, where he pointed out that you Americans may not understand this, but we believe in Jesus, and we believe in the Virgin Mary, and our religion is just like yours, only we also have this other prophet that you guys don't listen to, but we're not so alien trying to make that case.
I wonder if Americans understand that.
I've written a lot about this issue too, that Americans and Christians really don't understand what Islam teaches.
I'm not a scholar on Islam, but I have read the Qur'an, I have read other Islamic writings, and again, I take major disagreement with some of their conclusions.
Yes, they believe in Jesus, they believe in Abraham, but they totally changed the version of biblical events, and when the Qur'an was composed in the early 600s, they're changing events 600 years after the fact, or even 2600 years after the fact, and just saying, with no textual evidence before that, and saying it's based on revelation from God, some people accuse the Christian authors of doing that same thing, but I don't think that's a fair case.
So again, I disagree with these things, but I think if Christians did take the time to understand, not just for Muslims, but people from all different backgrounds are coming from, there would probably be more of a love, it doesn't mean you have to agree with them, and I don't buy into this new age idea that we all basically believe the same thing, we all should just hold hands and sing Kumbaya, but if we really, and I'm speaking of fellow Christians, want to win over the support of Muslims or anyone else, I think that we have to actually know what they believe, and have a ready response available, and to show them Christ's love.
And I can understand why sometimes, not just Muslims, but people from all different backgrounds would not feel that coming from the Christian community, for better or worse.
So I think that's something that me and people in my faith group need to do a better job of.
Well, you know, Bill, when we're little kids, we learn about God and country, and we learn that thou shalt not kill, unless it's a war, and you're fighting in a war for your government, then that's a different situation, right?
Yeah.
I think there's been a problem with American Christianity in particular, of wedding this hyper-nationalism to our faith.
Now, look, I'm glad I'm American, I love my country, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but I think just as we teach on an individual basis that there needs to be humility in personal human affairs, for some reason Christians and others think that that rule doesn't apply to national standards.
I think, you know, we do need national humility, and we do need to be humble, and we do need to take more of, or less of, this triumphalist kind of attitude.
So yeah, you do, and the teaching of the Bible is clear that we are to respect and obey the governing authorities, but if those governing authorities are in conflict with the teaching of God's Word, then we should obey God rather than men.
And there are times when, you know, Christians and believers are just so uptight on these issues of following authority, but disobeying unbiblical authority, but they don't apply that to some of these standards dealing with the nation-state, and I think that's kind of troubling.
I think if you were to ask most Christians, they would say that they're Christians first and Americans second.
But I don't always see that lived out, and I think that the teaching of Jesus Christ and the Bible speaks very clearly on how a person is to live in this world, and how to treat others, and that needs to be, you know, for myself, and I'd say for others, that needs to be our starting point, and not our loyalties to the state when they conflict with God.
Yeah.
You know, it sort of seems too easy, and yet, apparently, this has been a very important part of the Ron Paul campaign, that he has said in the debates repeatedly, we have to ask ourselves, what if this is what they were doing to us?
We have to apply the golden rule to foreign policy.
This is actually earth-shattering insight.
Yeah, you know, and I've said these things in previous columns and speeches, and I've been attacked for it by fellow Christians, and yeah, again, there's this big disconnect between how we are to live as individuals, and you know, if there's just one of me, here's how I'm supposed to live, but now there's 100 of me, suddenly the rules totally change.
And I think that is, you know, a point that Ron Paul has made, and that people attack him and call him a sissy, and you know, all these other allegations, but you know, they're not seeing it from the other perspective, and I think we do need to ask ourselves those kinds of questions.
I think they're very relevant, and he really was the only one in this campaign cycle with the courage to do that.
Thank you very much for your time today.
Everybody, Bill Barnwell, he's a pastor in Michigan, he writes regularly for LewRockwell.com.
Greatly appreciate your insight this morning, sir.
Thank you, Scott.