eChurch Blog

Article from Global Politician

Not long after the establishment of the State of Israel, Abba Eban, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, remarked, “The peace on Israel’s borders may be no more than the peace of a quiescent volcano; and the crisis of state in its immediate external relationships remain unsolved.” 1

Given the intractable nature of this conflict, many ask why the Jews have been so tenacious in their desire to reconstitute the Jewish state in the land of Israel. What is it about this land that has inspired their love of Zion through centuries of exile?

Culturally, during the 18 centuries of Jewish life in the Diaspora, the connection to the land of Israel played a vital role in the value system of Jewish communities and was a basic determinant in their self-recognition as a group. Without the connection to the land of Israel, the people who practice Judaism would simply be a religious community, without national and ethnic components. Jews were distinct from the Muslim and Christian communities in which they lived because of their religious beliefs and practices and the eternal link to the land of their forefathers. That is why Jews considered themselves — and are seen by others — as a minority living in exile. 2

As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel explained: “For the Jews and for them alone [the land of Israel] was the one and only Homeland, the only conceivable place where they could find liberation and independence, the land toward which their minds and hearts had been uplifted for a score of centuries and where their roots had clung in spite of all adversity. . . . It was the homeland with which an indestructible bond of national, physical, religious and spiritual character had been preserved, and where the Jews had in essence remained — and were now once more in fact — a major element of the population.” 3

The Jews did not publicly challenge the occupation of their land by the empires of the East and West. They did so in their homes, sanctuaries, books, and prayers. Religious rituals were instituted to remember the destruction of the temple and the subsequent exile. During times of joy and sorrow, Zion is always part of a Jew’s thoughts and liturgy. At least three times a day, observant Jews pray for the redemption of Zion and Jerusalem and for her well-being. 4

When the Muslims invaded Palestine in 634, ending four centuries of conflict between Persia and Rome, they found direct descendants of Jews who had lived in the country since biblical times. Rabbinical leaders there continued to argue about “whether most of Palestine is in the hands of the Gentiles,” or “whether the greater part of Palestine is in the hands of Israel.”

Such a determination was essential, since according to halacha [Jewish law] if Jews ruled the country, then they were obligated to observe religious agricultural practices in one way, and in another if they were not in control. 5

As Muslim hegemony prevailed, major Arab contributions to history originated in Damascus, Mecca, Cairo, and Baghdad. Little came from Jerusalem, indicating the low regard the area held for its captors and its minimal occupation by 16 nations. Similarly, while the land of Palestine was two percent of the Arab-controlled land-mass, to the Jewish people it was forever the fount of their religion, their homeland. 6

In testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine in 1947, David Ben-Gurion, later Israel’s first prime minister, pointed out that more than 3,000 years before the Mayflower left England for the New World, Jews fled from Egypt. Jews even slightly cognizant of their faith know that every spring Jews commemorate and remember the liberation from slavery and the Exodus from Egypt to the land of Israel. Those who observe the seder (the Passover meal and retelling of the exodus from Egypt), end it: “Next year we shall be in [Jerusalem] the land of Israel. This year we are slaves; next year we shall be free.”7

Though bound to its religious foundation, a Jewish State also means “Jewish security. Even in countries where he seems secure, the Jew lacks a feeling of security. Why? Because even if he is safe, he has not provided his safety for himself. Somebody else provides for his security. The State of Israel provides such security.”8

There Jews will be “free from fear, dependence, not the objects of pity and sympathy, of philanthropy and justice, at the mercy of others. We believe we are entitled to that as human beings and as a people.”9

To the Arabs who opposed the Jewish return, Ben Gurion, said that the “the closer and more quickly we draw together, the better it will be both for us and for you. The Jewish people and the Arab people need each other in the fashioning of their future as free people in this part of the world.”10

1. Aubrey S. Eban, “The Future Of Arab-Jewish Relations,” Commentary (September 1948), 199.
2. Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State, New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 1981), 3.
3. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Israel: An Echo Eternity (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1967), 57.
4. Ibid.55, 61-67.
5. Yaacov Herzog, A People That Dwells Alone (New York: Sanhedrin Press, 1975). 33; Ibid. 57. While Jewish settlement in recent times began in 1881, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, Palestine was probably the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Benjamin of Tudela, Saadia Gaon, Maimonides and Judah Halevi were there from the 12th century and Nachmanides from the early 13th century. Rabbi Estori Ha-Parhi, author of Kaftor va-Ferah, demonstrates how, since biblical times, Jews have lived on the land continuously.
6. Heschel, Israel: An Echo Eternity, 59.
7. The Jewish Case Before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency For Palestine, 1947), 63.
8. Ibid. 68.
9. Ibid. 65.
10. 10. Ibid. 75.

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. His is the author of a number of books, including Nations United: How The U.N. Undermines Israel and The West and a forthcoming book on Israel’s moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State.

By Aaron J. Leichman – Christian Post Reporter

Around 3,000 people gathered on the west lawn of the Capitol on Friday for a Muslim prayer service that organizers had hoped would draw around 50,000.

Among those present were around 50 protesters, who – though few in number – were audible enough to prompt organizers at one point in time to ask for respect.

“We would never come to a prayer meeting that you have to make a disturbance,” Hamad Chebli, imam of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey, said from the speaking stand. “Please show us some respect. This is a sacred moment. Just as your Sunday is sacred, our Friday is sacred.”

Friday’s event, “Islam on Capitol Hill,” had drawn notable attention and concern as it was expected to be a historic and unprecedented event. One Christian leader, the Rev. Canon Julian Dobbs of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, called Friday’s initiative “part of a well-defined strategy to Islamize American society and replace the Bible with the Koran, the cross with the Islamic crescent and the church bells with the Athan (the Muslim call to prayer).”

“It would be easy for many Americans to believe that Islam is a religion of peace and beauty. By far the majority of Muslims in North America are law-abiding citizens who seek to live out their lives without recourse to violence,” the conservative minister noted. “However, there is a strong and influential movement in the Muslim community that is positioning Islam to gain world dominance in the social, political, financial and religious sectors of nations.”

In response to the event, Lou Engle of TheCall, the National Day of Prayer Task Force, and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council teamed up to call Christians across America to five days of concerted prayers, in the days leading up to Friday.

“Our fight is not against Muslims, it is against principalities, powers, and forces of darkness,” they clarified.

Despite what others were saying, organizers of Friday’s event maintained that it was intended to inspire American Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

“This is not a protest, it is a day of prayer, of devotion, hoping that we can work … for the betterment of the world community,” organizer Abdul Malik told the crowd Friday.

“We can come together and work together for the common good,” he added.

According to the CIA World Factbook, approximately 0.6 percent of America’s population is Muslim, slightly less than America’s Buddhist population. As the U.S. population currently stands at over 307 million, that figure translates to over 1.8 million Muslims.

This is soooo true and you will know it if you have come across determined “evangelistic” atheists, gosh what a boring, repetitive, predictable lot they are

Hat-tip Stand Firm

St Eutychus (great name!) has written “Five things that would make atheists seem nicer“. Here they are:

1. Stop being so smug.
2. Don’t assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you – we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.
3. Admit that the debate about God’s existence is complex – and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.
4. Admit that the scientific method – which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) – is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.
5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing strawmen (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God – and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by “Christians” – but understand how they’re meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

Previous related posts:-

Tony Blair’s PC Political Christianity

Last night Tony Blair warned against the “dark side” of religion and said the world’s faith community had issues it must “confront and overcome”.

Many people are discomfited by the thought of Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation working in schools. It smacks of religious propaganda, and is tied to the name of a prime minister remembered for leading the country into a bloody and controversial war.

Blair is EU president candidate

Tony Blair and Barack Obama, angels or demons

Tony Blair is not someone worthy to trust on religious matters

Cardinal will not join Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Tony Blair talks about his Philanthropic efforts

TOUGHER INTERVIEW FOR TONY BLAIR THAN COSY HTB CHAT-SHOW – Mr Blair’s interview with Alpha founder the Revd Nicky Gumbel at London’s Holy Trinity Brompton

Vatican: Tony Blair is ‘probable future president of the European Union’

By Robert Mendick – Telegraph

Just two years after leaving Downing Street, Tony Blair is far too busy jetting across the globe to make time this week for the Labour Party conference in Brighton. Instead, the former prime minister will pursue his own hectic schedule which, in no particular order, includes attempting to negotiate peace in the Middle East; reduce the world’s carbon emissions; bring democracy to Africa; and earn money – make that lots of money – both for himself and the faith foundation that bears his name.

A Sunday Telegraph investigation can reveal today the extent of Mr Blair’s efforts to rehabilitate himself on the international stage. We tell how Mr Blair uses an academic teaching programme at a prestigious American university to attract millionaire benefactors to his faith foundation; how he has set up offices in Canada and the US to raise millions of dollars for it; and how a sports foundation launched by Mr Blair in the North East is still to register with the Charity Commission amid accusations that it has done little for the children it aims to help – a claim strongly denied by Mr Blair’s private office.

Mr Blair’s determination to establish a long-term legacy – his reputation having been seriously dented by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – began before he left office in the summer of 2007 and could well culminate with his being appointed President of the European Council by January 2010.

A senior City financier, who wishes not to be named, told The Sunday Telegraph he held a series of secret meetings with the then prime minister in 2007 to discuss setting up the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF). Separately, Mr Blair began talks with the dean of divinity at Yale University about establishing a “faith and globalisation” seminar that is now being rolled out at other academic institutions including the National University of Singapore.

Intriguingly, the chief executive of TBFF is Ruth Turner, Mr Blair’s former director of government relations at Downing Street, whose father, Denys, is a Yale professor of divinity. Ms Turner stood loyally by her boss during the cash-for-honours investigation and is now described as “increasingly indispensable” to Mr Blair. The 39-year-old accompanied her boss on his recent foray to the US to coincide with the meeting of the UN General Assembly, and is at his side during visits to Yale.

Yale has admitted paying Mr Blair’s faith foundation a not “insubstantial” sum for 10 two-and-half hour seminars a year. During his stays, Mr Blair is introduced to the Ivy League university’s major benefactors, where he is able to solicit them for funding for his faith foundation. This employs 17 full-time staff, mainly at its Mayfair headquarters, and generated an income of £3.6 million before it was even properly up and running. It is key to Mr Blair re-inventing himself as a brilliant, modern-day philanthropist. Detractors, who will always be suspicious of the man who presided over a government of spin, will doubtless claim it is a vanity project.

Yale’s dean of divinity, Harold Attridge, told The Sunday Telegraph: “Whatever exchanges hands on the money side is done above my pay grades. I believe there is some contribution to the foundation in lieu of salary to him. This is all done at the [Yale] president’s level so it doesn’t affect my budget.”

Asked if the figure was insubstantial, Mr Attridge replied: “No. [Fundraising] development is always implicated in everything we do. But we don’t raise money for them [the Blair faith foundation] and they don’t raise money for us. But there is a symbiotic relationship between the two and people are interested in both, and, if those things happen, that is all well and good. We might have a dinner for our benefactors and alumni. Our intent is to get them excited about Yale, but, if they want to get excited about the faith foundation, that is their call. That’s the way it works.”

When it was suggested Mr Blair had an ability to attract “big money”, Mr Attridge replied: “That’s true.”

The dean revealed that the foundation had set up an office on the Yale campus run by Scott Macdonald, described as a seasoned fundraiser who previously worked for Bill Clinton’s foundation.

In contrast to the faith foundation – a high-profile charity with strong ties to wealthy evangelists in America, European philanthropists and Middle Eastern royalty – the Tony Blair Sports Foundation (TBSF), set up to help children participate in sport in the North East, does appear a poor relation.

Based in Mr Blair’s old constituency home in Trimdon Colliery and run by his former Sedgefield office manager Jeanette Pickard, it was launched by Mr Blair in 2007. But two years on, TBSF is still to be registered with the Charity Commission, although an application for charitable status was made last month. No proper accounts have been filed, although records buried in the accounts of another local sports chairty, which provides back office support, show an income of just over £212,000 to March 2008, and expenditure on administration of more than £61,000.

An insider who helped to set up the foundation said that since the launch it has done little to fulfil Mr Blair’s pledge to “put something back” in the North East and “do something for young people”.

The source, well-placed within the organisation, said: “At the time, I thought it was a good idea. But the foundation hasn’t really done anything. I am still waiting for it to fulfil its potential. It’s practically moribund.

“It was very high-profile when it launched, but in the first year they have completed two tennis tournaments and that is pretty much all it has achieved. These things take time, but probably in less time the faith foundation has had much more emphasis and this feels like a bit of a sop to the North East.”

Mr Blair’s spokesman insisted, however, that the sports foundation was already exceeding targets, paying for half the training of more than 200 coaches now working on community projects; spent money on encouraging more than 10,000 school children to play tennis; organised a tennis tournament and an athletics sprinting competition; and helped to install 100 rowing machines in local schools. It is thought Mr Blair last attended a sports foundation event in July.

Ms Pickard, who is on holiday and unavailable for comment, has no obvious experience of running a sports charity. According to the foundation website, she was a Labour press officer before becoming Mr Blair’s constituency office manager. The website adds: “Jeanette has always been a keen runner and swimmer – representing Northumberland in the 100m and 200m sprint in her schooldays. She is a member of a local gym and has always tried to keep fit, but admits to being a ‘sunshine runner’.”

Ms Turner, described in a newspaper headline as Blair’s “sexy Catholic aide”, is also listed as a director of the sports foundation and last Sunday took part in the Great North Run. She raised £1,615 for the foundation, receiving small donations from the likes of Hazel Blears (£20), and Lord Puttnam, who gave her £50.

But the money raised for the sports foundation appears small beer compared to the sums pouring into Mr Blair’s faith foundation, which aims to “promote respect and understanding about the world’s major religions, and show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world”.

Mr Blair’s brand of Christianity has earned him support from Rick Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, one of the wealthiest churches in the US. The Dr Rev Warren, who gave the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration, is one of the foundation’s advisers. Others backers include an adviser to the prime minister of Kuwait.

It adds up to millions for the foundation’s good causes such as anti-malaria programmes in Africa. But Mr Blair also needs to earn a private income to pay for mortgages on the Connaught Square home, the Blairs’ country retreat in Buckinghamshire, and an increasingly luxurious lifestyle.

In a private capacity, he is paid £2.5 million for advisory roles with JP Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services; speaking fees of about £150,000 per 90-minute lecture, and a £4.6 million advance for his memoirs, which are likely to be published after the next election should Gordon Brown be voted out of office. He is also the unpaid Middle East peace envoy representing the US, the EU, Russia and the UN. Add to that his expected candidacy for President of the European Council and it is perhaps unsurprising that Mr Blair hasn’t enough hours in the day to find time to attend the Labour Party conference.

Mr Blair’s spokesman told The Sunday Telegraph: “Tony Blair will not be at Labour Party conference next week. He has Middle East and Faith Foundation commitments and will be out of the country.”

Where he will be is not clear. But wherever it is, it is likely to prove a nice little boost for Blair Inc.

I hope that this isn’t true and I will await news form Lutheran Core. I’m going to be blunt here, what fellowship does light have with darkness? If some of the church wants to run after sinful ways and then promote these “lifestyles” in a positive way and throw away the Bible, then split from them as soon as possible, lest you partake of their plagues!

I’m often challenged inwardly when I think like this, because I know I’m not perfect and that I myself am flawed, but I’ll tell you something, I don’t run around “proud” of my sin and exalt others to sin by pretending that it is acceptable to God…simples!

It’s not gonna get better orthodox Lutherans, get the hell out!

Lutheran Core, you will find a friend in the The Anglican Church of North America, who have already experienced this heart-ache with the Episcopal “church”.

Article from IndyStar.com

FISHERS, Ind. — Some came looking for a clean and fast break from a denomination they feel abandoned them. Some, with roots in their local churches going back generations, were more hesitant, even if they shared the sense of loss.In the end, more than 1,200 self-styled Lutheran “reformers” who came to Fishers this weekend decided to give their movement a year to chart a course that many expect will lead to a split in the 4.6 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

“Let’s make it clear we are moving on,” the Rev. Michael G. Tavella, a pastor from Pennsylvania, said during an open microphone comment session Saturday. “The possibility of a (new) denomination here is extremely high. Let’s go with it.”

Officially, the Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) adopted a constitution and elected officers charged with having a recommendation ready by next fall. “In a year, we ought to know,” said the Rev. Paull Spring, a reform movement leader, “if we are going to continue to be as we are or whether we are going to form a new Lutheran church body in this country.”

Not everyone in Fishers this weekend will wait that long. Several congregations represented here have already voted to leave the ELCA, and others are preparing to do so. And some of the roughly 900 lay people among them will seek new churches to call home.

Sparking the schism was the widely held view here that the ELCA abandoned the authority of Scripture when its Churchwide Assembly voted last month to allow Lutherans in same-sex relationships to serve as pastors and for the blessing of same-sex unions. They were moves described several times this weekend as “heresy.”

Denominational leaders from the ELCA, on hand to witness the discontent, heard the claims of heresy and said it was clear there was a great deal of unhappiness in the crowd when it comes to the church hierarchy. That didn’t make the discussion any easier to accept.

“It’s a strong reaction,” said Stephen Bouman, executive director of evangelical outreach for the ELCA. “I think we have a different interpretation on the very few passages that bring up homosexuality in the Bible.”

Although the reformers drew people to Fishers from 44 states and overseas, it wasn’t clear exactly how wide and how deep their support runs. Bouman said some bishops in the ELCA had seen fewer objections than they expected regarding the new policy on same-sex relationships, while others have seen more.

Most in the crowd this weekend were individuals or couples. Roughly one-fourth were pastors; many represented congregations deeply split by the controversy. Of the denomination’s 65 sitting bishops, organizers said they believe only about 10 are sympathetic.

But what was a gathering that a few months ago expected only about 400 people at Christ the Savior Lutheran Church in Fishers exploded into a standing-room-only, 1,200-plus affair that had to be moved to Holy Spirit Catholic Church at Geist.

“The ground has shifted, and it is still shaking,” said the Rev. Paul Ulring, a pastor from Columbus, Ohio, and a reform leader. “The real question before us is, what do we do next? The church has changed a lot. There’s no going back.”

Before the gathering ended, the crowd stood and sang “God’s Word Is Our Great Heritage.” For many, that defines a key element behind the outrage — that the ELCA’s acceptance of same-sex relationships was a turn from biblical principles.

“We saw this decision as a slap in the face of the authority of the Scripture,” said the Rev. Larry Gember, pastor of St. James Lutheran Church in Greenfield. “I think there is outrage. We’re trying not to be bitter. At this point, we are trying to move forward in a positive way.”

Part of that for Gember, pastors from Jasper and South Bend and others from the Indiana-Kentucky Synod was to exchange phone numbers and e-mails and make plans to work with grass-roots renewal groups.

“I think things will be a bit more clear in a year,” said the Rev. Tim Kraemer, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Jasper.

UPDATE

This is the news release form the Lutheran Core

Lutheran CORE organizes, begins working toward reconfiguration of Lutheranism in North America

INDIANAPOLIS — More than 1,200 Lutherans from throughout the United States and Canada took actions Saturday, Sept. 26, that they hope will lead to a reconfiguration of Lutheranism in North America. The Lutherans were in Indianapolis for a Convocation formally organizing the Lutheran Coalition for Renewal (Lutheran CORE).

The event became even more significant when the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted in August to change its teaching to affirm same-sex relationships and to allow pastors to be in those relationships in spite of the Bible’s teaching on marriage and homosexual behavior.

“I believe it is abundantly clear that God is reforming the churches of the Reformation,” said Ryan Schwarz of Washington, D.C., a member of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee. “The question for us is how we will respond to the clear invitation to re-vision Lutheranism.

“I believe it is abundantly clear that God is reforming the churches of the Reformation,” said Ryan Schwarz of Washington, D.C., a member of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee. “The question for us is how we will respond to the clear invitation to re-vision Lutheranism.

The Convocation took action to adopt a constitution and to change Lutheran CORE from a Coalition for Reform to a Coalition for Renewal. This action is more than a name change. It is a change in focus from renewing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to a renewing organization and an alternate church fellowship for Lutherans.

“Lutheran CORE will be a free-standing synod for all faithful Lutherans,” explained the Rev. Paull Spring of State College, Pa., chair of Lutheran CORE. “We are going to do things that synods typically do: strengthening personal faith and congregational life, providing resources for congregational ministry, developing new congregations, supporting global missionaries, providing some forms for theological eduction for pastors, developing mechanisms for theological reflection and conversation related to Scripture and the Confessions.”

“God is calling us to do something. The ELCA has fallen into heresy. It is a time for confession and a time to resist. It is, please God, also a time for new life and transformation and for mission,” said Spring, the retired bishop of the Northwestern Pennsylvania Synod.

The Convocation also authorized the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee “to initiate conversations among the congregations and reform movements in Lutheran CORE and with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ and other compatible churchly organizations, leading toward a possible reconfiguration of North American Lutheranism.” A report and recommendations will be brought to Lutheran CORE’s Convocation in September 2010.

“This could be one of the biggest events in Lutheran history in contemporary time,” said the Rev. Jaynan Clark of Spokane, Wash., president of the WordAlone Network, one of the renewal networks that comprise Lutheran CORE.

The Rev. Kenneth Sauer of Columbus, Ohio, opened the Convocation Friday by discussing the current situation facing members of the ELCA. “We now have two churches within one organizational structure. One church emphasized Bible and Theology, the other culture and experience. There are deep divisions over the fundamental meaning of the Gospel, the authority of Scripture ,and the purpose and work of the Holy Spirit. The division reaches into congregations, synods, and seminaries and agencies. Only the churchwide organization seems to be of one mind.”

“Elijah needed to know that there were 7,000 in Israel that did not bow the knee to Baal, and we need to know that there are millions of faithful Lutheran Christians in this land who with us want desperately to know how to be faithful in the midst of a church we love which is falling apart,” said Sauer, the retired bishop of the Southern Ohio Synod and former chair of the ELCA Conference of Bishops.

The convocation heard from leaders of the African immigrant and Hispanic churches in the ELCA. Both communities have been deeply hurt by the ELCA’s actions.

“As far as we are concerned our choice is very clear: We have to either give up our evangelical and prophetic ministry in our society and silently die as a denomination or rise to the task of realigning ourselves with churches, leaders and communities of similar conviction and work shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” Baro said.

“My friends, in the middle of these uncertainties, we are glad to see that God is using these times of darkness to manifest the light. God is using this time as a time when we, as men and women of God, are called to define ourselves by taking a stand on the basis of our beliefs, on the basis of our convictions , on the basis of our conscience bound to the Word of God,” said the Rev. Eddie Perez of Miami, Fla.

“My advice to the ELCA members is this: the time for hesitation is now over. God is demanding a response from us. Through the prophet Elijah, God keeps saying to the members of the ELCA congregations: “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him,’” Perez said.

“We are not dividing the church. The church is already divided. We’re just mopping up what the church did,” said the Rev. Paul Ulring of Columbus, Ohio, a member of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee. “There is a future for us, a future that we only glimpse right now. Things will happen that will make it possible for us to do this, things that aren’t clear right now, but Jesus is in clear view,” said Ulring.

Ulring outlined steps that individuals and congregations can take as they move into the future. “We’ve spent all our ELCA years and before, struggling and working against what has now happened. It’s over; it’s done. We don’t have to spend ourselves there anymore,” Ulring said. “Let’s take that energy, that passion and transfer it to a future that we don’t have clearly, but a future that surely is better than what we’ve been messing with. And let’s be gracious and kind, known for our positive spirit and hope. Let’s be known for what we believe, not what we’re against anymore. Let’s be faithful to the Gospel, the Word of God, and the Lord Jesus.”

“Let us stand together, as we see the future of Lutheranism change for the good. It’s worth it. Jesus calls us to do it. he is not defeated or set aside by any decision or action. We have the opportunity to make an eternal difference,” Ulring said. “God has given us this new freedom and opportunity. Let us rise in hope and forgiveness, to put aside the past and find the future we have been called to for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of those he loves and wants.”

“Those who stand against us are not our enemies. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. We owe it to them and to those faithful ones who remain within the ELCA to be true to our convictions but gracious in our dealings with them,” Spring said.

The convocation was moved frrom Christ the Savior Lutheran Church to Holy Spirit Parish at Geist in the Indianapolis suburb of Fishers because of the large attendance.. . Even with the larger space, organizers were forced to close registration Sept. 14 due to space limitations.

Bill Muehlenberg

Social Engineers Continue Their Crusade

For the secular left, social activism is all about “two steps forward, one step back”. That is, they know they can never foist their radical agendas on the rest of society all at once, and must therefore use an incremental approach. Thus a few setbacks along the way are all a part of their relentless march forward.

Indeed, Lenin used the phrase to describe the slow but steady progress of the Russian Revolution. And the same strategy is being used today. Our coercive utopians will never rest until their visions for humanity are realised. They are quite happy to make apparent compromises, and take some detours along the way, knowing that each little step forward will eventually mean reaching their goal.

We have a great example of this coming from Victoria’s activist Attorney-General, Rob Hulls. Yesterday he appeared to be taking one of those backward steps in announcing a “compromise” plan on ridding our equal opportunity laws of religious exemptions. But it is simply another step along the way on his radical social crusade.

Mr Hulls said a new Equal Opportunity Bill would be presented next year in parliament. As one press account puts it, “Under the changes, religious groups will no longer be able to discriminate on the grounds of race, disability, age, physical features, political belief or breastfeeding. But they can continue to discriminate on grounds including sexuality or marital status if it is in accordance with their beliefs.”

Homosexual groups have attacked the announcement, while some Christian groups have praised it. But the truth is, this is simply more bad news for religious groups everywhere, especially Christian groups who hold to a high view of Scripture, and seek to live out their faith in the public arena.

This becomes clear in the words of another press account of the story: “Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission chief executive officer Helen Szoke said the move was a good step, but ‘a whole section of the community is still left out’. She hoped that eventually the community would understand there was no reason to treat people differently because of their sexual preferences or marital status.”

She said the burden of proof would be on religious groups: “Religious schools or religious charities, for example, will have to show how belonging to a particular religion is relevant to the job they are trying to fill. In the case of religious education teachers or chaplains, this will be clear. However, in the case of office staff or the maths teacher it will need to be made explicit how religion is relevant to the job.”

This is clearly no victory for religious freedom. While we still must await what the government will in fact produce next year, if these press reports are anything to go on, we have plenty to still worry about. This is simply a ruse to lull the Christian community back to its usual condition – that of a deep sleep.

Core and non-core Christianity?

It is clear that the government, Hulls, Szoke and others still don’t get it – or don’t want to get it. It is impossible to separate Christian work into ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ activities, as the government’s initial proposals sought to do. To use Szoke’s example, consider a math teacher at a Christian school. In one sense, it would be assumed that math can be taught by anyone, and that religious viewpoints or moral dispositions should have nothing to do with it.

But things of course are not that simple. A Christian school will be interested in all areas of life, including the moral and spiritual aspects. A Christian school may well have every class begin in prayer. Obviously an atheist, Muslim or Hindu would not at all be in the same place in regards to such prayers.

A student in the class may need some counselling or pastoral care. Again, a Christian school (along with the child’s Christian parents) would obviously want a teacher who reflects biblical Christianity to do such counselling. They would not want a secular humanist, a witch, a homosexual activist, or a Satanist involved in this.

And talk of discrimination is just plain ludicrous anyway. Everyone discriminates all the time, and for good reasons. To have a decidedly Christian janitor, math’s teacher, receptionist and administrator would all be part of the rationale and basis for a Christian school.

The government might a well argue that rabid Carlton, Richmond and St. Kilda supporters be allowed to hold positions in the Geelong Football Club. Sorry, the Club wants people who support everything about Geelong to be on board, from lowly positions to higher up ones.

A Christian school (or charity, or business, or whatever) wants among other things, a complete unity of purpose, vision, aim and ethos. Having a homosexual physical education teacher, or a Muslim history teacher, or a Wiccan chemistry teacher would instantly render impossible that sort of unity.

A Christian school would of course also expect the highest moral standards of those who work for it. To say it must be forced to hire an adulterous gardener, or an alcoholic secretary, or a dope-smoking janitor (because what they are doing is only ‘peripheral’ to the purpose of the school) would in effect be suicide for that institution. The school could not function at all under such circumstances.

The Christian faith, in other words, permeates every aspect of life, and a Christian business or charity or educational institution expects to see Christian beliefs and values held to by everyone employed there, whether a principle or a floor sweeper.

Thus this ‘compromise’ by Hulls is nothing of the sort, and is just another nail in the coffin of Christian freedom. While we must await the actual legislation as it is introduced next year, if the remarks of Hulls, Szoke and others are anything to go by, Christians have not won anything of substance here.

Instead, we have here simply another “two steps forward, one step back” approach in which the final outcome will be just the same: the complete loss of vital Christian freedoms. It is just being realised piecemeal, instead of in one fell swoop. Lenin knew the value of this approach, and so do Victoria’s social engineers.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/gay-rights-groups-angry-at-victorian-equal-opportunity-laws-allowing-discrimination/story-e6frf7kx-1225780078806
http://www.theage.com.au/national/government-bows-to-religious-right-20090926-g76u.html

(CNA).- During a meeting with academics held at the famous Castle of Prague Sunday evening, Pope Benedict called professors and students to exercise academic freedom as a gift that must bring them to know and proclaim the truth.

Before the audience of rectors, professors and students from around the Czech Republic, the Pope again brought forward the issue of the dramatic transformations in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism.

“The great changes which swept Czech society twenty years ago were precipitated not least by movements of reform which originated in university and student circles. That quest for freedom has continued to guide the work of scholars whose diakonia of truth is indispensable to any nation’s well-being,” he said, using the Greek word for “service.”

“I address you as one who has been a professor, solicitous of the right to academic freedom and the responsibility for the authentic use of reason, and is now the Pope who, in his role as Shepherd, is recognized as a voice for the ethical reasoning of humanity.”

The Holy Father recalled that “the freedom that underlies the exercise of reason, be it in a university or in the Church, has a purpose: it is directed to the pursuit of truth, and as such gives expression to a tenet of Christianity which in fact gave rise to the university.”

“Indeed,” he continued, “man’s thirst for knowledge prompts every generation to broaden the concept of reason and to drink at the wellsprings of faith. It was precisely the rich heritage of classical wisdom, assimilated and placed at the service of the Gospel, which the first Christian missionaries brought to these lands and established as the basis of a spiritual and cultural unity which endures to this day.”

Digging into the thorny issue of academic freedom in universities, and the autonomy usually claimed by the academic world, Pope Benedict said that the proper autonomy of a university finds meaning in “its accountability to the authority of truth.”

“Nevertheless, that autonomy can be thwarted in a variety of ways,” he added.

“The yearning for freedom and truth is inalienably part of our common humanity. It can never be eliminated; and, as history has shown, it is denied at humanity’s own peril. It is to this yearning that religious faith, the various arts, philosophy, theology and other scientific disciplines, each with its own method, seek to respond, both on the level of disciplined reflection and on the level of a sound praxis,” he added.

The Holy Father also recalled that he great universities springing up throughout Europe during the Middle Ages “aimed with confidence at the ideal of a synthesis of all knowledge, it was always in the service of an authentic humanitas, the perfection of the individual within the unity of a well-ordered society.”

“And likewise today: once young people’s understanding of the fullness and unity of truth has been awakened, they relish the discovery that the question of what they can know opens up the vast adventure of how they ought to be and what they ought to do.”

“The idea of an integrated education, based on the unity of knowledge grounded in truth, must be regained. It serves to counteract the tendency, so evident in contemporary society, towards a fragmentation of knowledge.”

Speaking about the consequences of new technologies such as the Internet, Pope Benedict explained that with their massive growth comes “the temptation to detach reason from the pursuit of truth.

“Sundered from the fundamental human orientation towards truth, however, reason begins to lose direction: it withers, either under the guise of modesty, resting content with the merely partial or provisional, or under the guise of certainty, insisting on capitulation to the demands of those who indiscriminately give equal value to practically everything.”

He then warned against relativism, which provides “a dense camouflage behind which new threats to the autonomy of academic institutions can lurk.”

“Our societies will not become more reasonable or tolerant or adaptable but rather more brittle and less inclusive, and they will increasingly struggle to recognize what is true, noble and good,” he also warned.

Finally, the Holy Father briefly mentioned “the mending of the breach between science and religion,” calling it a “central concern” of his predecessor Pope John Paul II.

“Each supports the other and each has its own scope of action, yet still there are those who would detach one from the other. Not only do the proponents of this positivistic exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason negate what is one of the most profound convictions of religious believers, they also thwart the very dialogue of cultures which they themselves propose,” the Pope explained.

“An understanding of reason that is deaf to the divine and which relegates religions into the realm of subcultures, is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures that our world so urgently needs. In the end, ‘fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom’,” he concluded.

No doubt the same editorial news judgment that neglects the obsessive attacks on Israel, prompted the Times to essentially ignore Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s September 24, 2009 address to the UN General Assembly in New York. The Israeli leader’s speech (see in full below) was a call to action against of one of the most grotesque propagandists of our time — a Holocaust denier sworn to Israel’s destruction whose regime is working to develop nuclear weapons to implement its aims. The Israeli leader also used the forum to expose Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s lies about the Holocaust as well as to challenge the distortions of the UN’s new Goldstone Report related to the recent Gaza conflict. In addition, he warned of the peril the world generally faces should weapons of mass destruction fall into the hands of radical Islamicists.

The paper chose to bury reference to the Israeli leader’s appearance in the second half of a story by Neil MacFarquhar at the bottom of page 6 entitled “With Bush Gone, Chavez Smells No Sulfur, While Netanyahu Assails Iran’s Leader” (Sept 25). A small photo of Netanyahu was paired with one of equal size of Hugo Chavez.

Other papers, especially those in New York where the story is a local as well as international one, thought differently of the event. The Wall Street Journal ran a large front page photo with the story inside; the New York Post ran a full front page photo, two-page spread inside, an editorial and extended excerpts of the speech. Newsday too gave focused attention to the story. CNN and Fox carried the speech live.

The Times, however, decided a story on the “milder side” of Muammar Qaddafi’s personality during an appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations was, for example, more significant, placing it at the top of the same page 6 where the story of the leader of the Jewish state decrying the assault on his nation was an afterthought tacked on in the bottom corner.

Nor was MacFarquhar’s cursory little account free of factual problems. The reporter refers erroneously to what the Israeli prime minister said regarding evidence of the systematic Nazi genocide against the Jews. The reporter states:

Mr. Netanyahu began by waving a German document from World War II, the minutes of a meeting in which the Nazis planned the system of concentration camps used to kill people, primarily Jews.

Mr. Netanyahu specifically referred to the January 20, 1942 Wannsee Conference which was convened to formalize the so-called “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem, which entailed the rounding up of all Jews, their deportation to the east and their liquidation. The minutes record that detailed attention was given to various aspects of the plan, including defining the degree of Jewish “blood” that would designate Jewishness. That is, this was not a meeting to discuss ways to “kill people, primarily Jews” but one devoted entirely and solely to exterminating the Jewish people.

Of course, Hitler ultimately murdered millions of others but his overriding obsession, spelled out at Wannsee, was removing the Jews.

Prime Minister Netanyahu concluded his speech seeking to arouse world attention to the Iranian menace with a quote from Winston Churchill about the “confirmed unteachability of mankind” — the penchant of peoples and leaders to avoid facing danger when taking action could be simplest and least bloody.

The same “unteachability” apparently afflicts the New York Times where Israel, the Jewish state, is concerned. As former editor Max Frankel observed about the paper’s abysmal coverage of the Holocaust, that record was a “staggering, staining failure” by the Times. Yet today the same extreme refusal to tell the story of what Israel faces in all its dimensions, fully and completely, is once more staining the reputation of the publication.

Fortunately for news consumers, the advent of the Internet and alternative media and the relative decline of the Times in importance diminish the impact of the biased coverage on the public and on policy makers.

September 24, 2009, United Nations General Assembly

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.

Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie? This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife’s grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You’re wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century.

The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially. It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet. I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom? Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world’s most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn’t get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country’s civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot. By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations, will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat. If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here’s why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country – of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty! Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace. Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.

We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more.” These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.

But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don’t want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv. We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the “confirmed unteachability of mankind,” the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them. Churchill bemoaned what he called the “want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill’s assessment of the “unteachibility of mankind” is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history — that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

(CNA).- During a meeting held this Sunday afternoon at the Archdiocese of Prague, Pope Benedict XVI warned members of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic that in a country where about half the population claim to be “non-believers,” there is a risk that Christianity will be marginalized from public life.

“Europe continues to undergo many changes. It is hard to believe that only two decades have passed since the collapse of former regimes gave way to a difficult but productive transition towards more participatory political structures,” said the Pope at the beginning of his address.

“During this period,” he continued, “Christians joined together with others of good will in helping to rebuild a just political order, and they continue to engage in dialogue today in order to pave new ways towards mutual understanding, cooperation for peace and the advancement of the common good.”

“Attempts to marginalize the influence of Christianity upon public life, sometimes under the pretext that its teachings are detrimental to the well-being of society, are emerging in new forms,” the Holy Father warned, saying that this phenomenon “gives us pause to reflect.”

“We may ask ourselves: what does the Gospel have to say to the Czech Republic and indeed all of Europe today in a period marked by proliferating world views?”

“Christianity,” Pope Benedict explained, “has much to offer on the practical and ethical level, for the Gospel never ceases to inspire men and women to place themselves at the service of their brothers and sisters. Few would dispute this. Yet those who fix their gaze upon Jesus of Nazareth with eyes of faith know that God offers a deeper reality which is nonetheless inseparable from the ‘economy’ of charity at work in this world: He offers salvation.”

The Holy Father said that Christians must take confidence “in knowing that the Church’s proclamation of salvation in Christ Jesus is ever ancient and ever new, steeped in the wisdom of the past and brimming with hope for the future.”

“As Europe listens to the story of Christianity, she hears her own. Her notions of justice, freedom and social responsibility, together with the cultural and legal institutions established to preserve these ideas and hand them on to future generations, are shaped by her Christian inheritance. Indeed, her memory of the past animates her aspirations for the future,” he added.

Pope Benedict then said that Christians today must open themselves to present realities and affirm “all that is good in society.” They “must have the courage to invite men and women to the radical conversion that ensues upon an encounter with Christ and ushers in a new life of grace.”

“Dear friends, let us ask the Lord to implant within us a spirit of courage to share the timeless saving truths which have shaped, and will continue to shape, the social and cultural progress of this continent,” he concluded.

Wow, this is an unusual one….

Hat-tip Joels Trumpet

Pink Floyd meets Star Wars meets Moses

Illustration by Kenn Brown
Let there be light: The site is the sky above the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The project includes a laser-projected temple. The goal: to summon the Messiah.

To read more about this very odd story, click here.

Wired Magazine: Yitzhaq Hayutman holds the key to peace on Earth – it’s on a floppy disk in his pants pocket. With his full white beard, bald pate, and well-pressed khakis, the 61-year-old Israeli cybernetics expert and tech investor looks like Moses done over for a Banana Republic ad. Right now, he’s showing me how he wants to position an airborne hologram over the Dome of the Rock, a gold-capped shrine that’s one of the most holy sites in Islam. “The blimp will go there,” Hayutman says pointing into the blue. “And eventually the Messiah will come.”

Hayutman is excited by the prospect – perhaps too excited. Twenty yards away, two flak-jacketed Israeli police officers finger their machine guns while four plainclothes members of the Islamic Trust – the Muslim force that protects Islam’s holy sites – move cautiously toward us. Violence has a habit of erupting here on the Temple Mount, the world’s most explosive plot of land.

For 1,500 years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought for control of this 35-acre plateau in the heart of Jerusalem. The dispute remains one of the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East. Jewish teachings say that a temple must be built here – many say on the exact spot where the Dome now stands – in order to induce the arrival of the Messiah and the coming of peace on Earth. Fundamentalist Christians interpret this to mean the Second Coming of Christ and actively encourage Jewish building efforts. Muslims categorically oppose any encroachment on their holy site, from which they believe Mohammed ascended to heaven to receive the Koran.

All sides acknowledge that tensions on the hill have the potential to start a war, but Hayutman believes he has found a way to resolve the intractable conflict. “What most people see is that if the Muslims are here, surely there is no temple,” Hayutman says. “They do not understand that technology has given us the tools to realize the prophecy right now.”

He has two big ideas, two ways to engineer the apocalypse. The first: a hovering holographic temple. Hayutman wants to set up an array of high-powered, water-cooled lasers and fire them into a transparent cube suspended beneath a blimp. The ephemeral, flickering image, he says, would fulfill an ancient, widely revered Jewish prophecy that the temple will descend from the heavens as a manifestation of light. Hayutman hopes to finance the project with some of the proceeds from a $20 million patent-infringement suit he and his partners have filed against Palm.

The rest of that money would be poured into Hayutman’s second idea for jump-starting the end-times: a virtual temple within a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The goal is for thousands of people to join in its construction on the Web. Hayutman even wants to display progress reports in the floating hologram as a kind of apocalyptic scoreboard.

Whether it’s a hologram or a cyberstructure, Hayutman believes that a techno temple does away with the need for a physical building. Under his scheme, Jews and Christians would get a biblically accurate temple without razing the Dome of the Rock. A description of his plans is on the floppy disk in his pocket, which he says he will give to me when we leave the Mount.

It may sound crazy, but every other effort at peace has failed, and partisans on all sides are surprisingly open to Hayutman’s proposals. People in the Middle East are used to radicals who carry guns and explosives. Hayutman is a radical who envisions a peaceful, technological advent to the end of the world. For him, the Bible is a Read Me file for Earth 2.0. Some think he’s out of his mind, but in a region where extremists often set the agenda, Hayutman is preparing to click the Install button.

The future Temple which we are expecting, is built and perfected and will be revealed and descend from heaven.
- Talmudic scholar Rashi, 11th century

The first storm of the season has washed boulders and banks of sand onto the narrow road skirting the edge of the Dead Sea. A flash flood courses over the pavement, but Hayutman seems unconcerned.

We are going to meet Ohad Ezrahi, a onetime ultraorthodox rabbi who exiled himself to the desert after falling out with the small right-wing settlement where he lived. Until 1998, Hayutman and Ezrahi had been developing a forerunner to Hayutman’s videogame with financing from the Jewish Agency for Israel, a foundation established to encourage, among other things, tech innovation. Hayutman invested $30,000 of his own money, but the duo halted work when they realized they didn’t have the resources to code an animation engine. Now Hayutman has arranged a meeting with one of the largest technology companies in Israel and needs to upload stills from the sole copy of the game, which Ezrahi has.

The problem is, a river has swallowed the road. When it starts raining in Israel, most people avoid the desert for fear of floods like this. But Hayutman revs the engine of his Daihatsu mini-SUV and launches us into the torrent. A wide arc of water splashes out on either side.We lurch over unseen obstacles, verge on a rollover, and emerge on the other side.

Hayutman’s faith in himself is a little disconcerting, at times annoying, and even terrifying. He talks about flash floods and God for hours without pause while we drive and doesn’t notice when I doze off. When I wake up, he’s still talking. “God has given me a mission,” Hayutman says, speaking in a thoughtful, accented English as rain pounds the windshield. “I am here to show that the temple can be rebuilt peacefully and in such a way that it will bring the beginning of a new age.”

What’s fascinating about his vision of the apocalypse is that it’s not the bloodbath that fundamentalist Christians imagine. It is the end of the current world – with all its inequity and injustice – and the beginning of a new, perfect Earth ruled by the Messiah. The trigger will be a peaceful, technology-fueled spiritual revolution. A velvet apocalypse.
Hayutman has pursued this theme his entire life. Born into a wealthy family, he inherited a small fortune in real estate – his grandfather was one of the founders of Tel Aviv. It has been his family’s mission to build cities in new ways. And what could be a better life goal than designing the ultimate building – the structure that will trigger the redemption of the world? “I have always thought of myself as God’s architect,” he says matter-of-factly.

To prepare for the position, Hayutman traveled to the US in 1967 and earned a bachelor’s in architecture from UC Berkeley. Later he moved to London to study design with Gordon Pask, a founder of the field of cybernetics, the creation of lifelike processes in machines. When Hayutman joined Pask’s lab in the mid-1970s, they began exploring the relationship between computers and architecture. Both felt that there was a new type of structure to explore: buildings erected in cyberspace.

Photo by Ziv Koren/Polaris
Ive always thought of myself as God’s architect, Hayutman says.

Back then, technology limited Hayutman to designing simple interfaces. But he still thought of it as work on the temple. His PhD dissertation in cybernetics described how a virtual Temple Mount could create common ground for Jews and Arabs to interact in ways they otherwise never would.

The rain lets up enough to reveal the barren mountains that ring the Dead Sea. This was where Satan tempted Jesus and where Jewish rebels committed mass suicide four years after the destruction of the last temple in AD 70. It’s a land that has always been fertile ground for extreme ideas, so it’s fitting that Hayutman first envisioned assembling his holographic temple here.

He was inspired in part by a passage in the Midrash Rabbah, a collection of Torah analysis written more than 1,000 years ago, which says that the temple will descend fully built from heaven as a manifestation of light. It’s a prophecy that many Jews have embraced because it suggests that only God can build the temple. But Hayutman found a loophole. He realized that another way to get a temple of light to descend from the heavens was to combine a blimp with hologram-producing lasers.

The structure would consist of a transparent polyurethane cube supported by a lightweight metal frame. An onboard fog machine would pump mist into the enclosure to serve as a screen for the lasers. The cube would then be fastened under a large tethered blimp and lifted into the sky. To make it descend, he would simply winch in the blimp’s tether and re-aim the lasers.

In 1999, Hayutman took the concept to Joseph Bodenheimer, a laser expert and the president of the Jerusalem College of Technology. Bodenheimer’s verdict: The plan’s engineering and optics were feasible. But navigating the politics of the Holy Land was another matter. Hayutman would be contending with nearly 40 years of active struggle on the Mount.

That struggle began at the end of the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel wrested control of eastern Jerusalem from Jordan. For the first time in nearly 2,000 years, the Temple Mount was in Jewish hands. For many Jews and Christians, this was an electrifying moment. The Israeli government finally had the chance to raze the Dome of the Rock and build the prophesied temple. But in a decision that pains fundamentalists to this day, then-defense minister Moshe Dayan returned day-to-day control of the Mount to the Islamic Trust.

The Israeli authorities argued that the southwestern end of the Mount’s retaining wall – better known as the Wailing Wall – was a sufficient religious monument. For centuries, it had been the most holy site in Judaism because the 2,000-year-old weather-worn stones near the bottom were the last remnants of the old Mount sanctuary.

Hayutman can recite the history for hours, but he prefers to talk about the future. As early as the 1980s, he began meeting with Israeli officials to discuss the rebuilding of the temple. Jerusalem’s city engineer told him that no plans would be considered on the Israeli side – to do so officially would be viewed as a provocation against Muslim autonomy on the Temple Mount and could spark an uprising. Before he could start talking about nonthreatening, technological solutions to the problem, the city engineer abruptly ended the meeting.

Hayutman is still fuming. “Politicians don’t want to address the Temple Mount as a religious problem,” he says, slowing for a security checkpoint manned by three well-armed Israeli soldiers. “They think Jews and Arabs should just get rid of their ‘idiotic’ religions and then everything will be OK. But the whole reason we are here is because of religion. And if you just divide the land, you end up with a situation similar to India and Pakistan – always teetering on the edge of war.”

Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.”
- I Kings 8:12-13

We reach the top of a bluff and see Ohad Ezrahi’s compound – a half-dozen decrepit trailers parked near the edge of a cliff. When he was ostracized from the orthodoxy, the rabbi started his own community here, where he now lives with 20 followers. He stays in touch with the outside world in part through his dust-covered Compaq PC, which is where the game prototype is stored.

Despite his foot-long beard, Ezrahi looks surprisingly young when he opens the door. Pushing back his wiry frizz of brown hair, he invites us into his living room. It’s not much more than four shoddy trailer-home walls and a shelf lined with more than a hundred books. Most are devoted to the kabbalah, the secretive offshoot of Jewish mysticism traditionally taught only to the most advanced students of the Torah.

As Ezrahi and Hayutman developed the game, some of that kabbalism seeped in. It’s still there, in dozens of esoteric riddles and puzzles. But the Jerusalem Games System, as Hayutman now calls his project, has evolved into a cross between Myst and Doom set within the walls of old Jerusalem. Players navigate the narrow streets and bustling marketplaces trying to uncover and decipher Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptural clues relating to the end-times. They can choose to kill each other, but they won’t be able to move to the next level if they do. The goal is to unlock the secret that will induce the coming of a messiah – whether players believe he will turn out to be the Christian Jesus, the Jewish Moshiach, or the Muslim Mahdi.

It’s possible, according to Hayutman, that the game itself may be the realization of prophecy. “The Book of Revelations describes a New Jerusalem which will encompass the entire Earth,” he says, citing Revelation 21. “The online, worldwide virtual reality version of Jerusalem is the only thing that could fulfill that requirement. The digital version of the city would exist in Germany or Indonesia at the same time it exists in Jerusalem itself.”
Ezrahi launches into a tirade about the Windows operating system and the problems he encountered working with Windows 95 while developing the videogame with Hayutman. One of his tasks was to come up with the look and feel. It turns out that in addition to being a neo-Hasidic kabbalistic rabbi, he’s a graphic designer. “I’ve designed children’s books, corporate sales videos, software animations,” he says. “But designing this game was a lot more fun. We were going to hook players up to biofeedback sensors and throw demons at them if they got angry.”

Hayutman digs through his pocket, fishes out a USB key drive and hands it to Ezrahi, who boots up his computer and copies still images of the game demo onto it. Hayutman needs these for his pitch meeting with Yossi Tsuria, the executive vice president of NDS, a News Corp. company that enables the delivery of movies and TV shows to 34 million cable and satellite subscribers around the world. The Jerusalem-based R&D arm of the company is developing a platform for multiplayer gaming, and Tsuria is interested in the Jerusalem Games System.

“Tsuria?” Ezrahi asks. “Isn’t he one of those who tried to blow up the Dome of the Rock back in the ’80s?”

All the surrounding area on top of the mountain will be most holy. Such is the law of the temple.
- Ezekiel 43:12

Standing in his modest, unadorned office on the northern edge of Jerusalem, Yossi Tsuria looks like the prototypical Silicon Valley software executive, complete with khakis, a loose-fitting dress shirt, and a short, unkempt schoolboy haircut. He’s in charge of strategy and technology for a company that grossed nearly $450 million in its last fiscal year. You’d never suspect that in his younger days he was part of one of the most ambitious plots to destroy the Dome of the Rock.

Tsuria’s story sounds like the plot of a straight-to-video movie. In the early 1980s, he joined a group of 26 other well-educated, politically connected young Israeli men who decided to instigate the rebuilding of the temple by blowing up the Dome. They loaded a jeep full of stolen explosives from the Israeli army, manufactured their own bombs, and drew up a scheme to strap 28 charges to the Dome’s pillars. They planned meticulously, estimating the amount of time it would take to scale the walls of the Temple Mount and predicting the direction of the mosque’s collapse.

But they didn’t anticipate that the Shin Bet, Israel’s FBI, would unravel the conspiracy before it was put into action. The plotters were rounded up and became infamous overnight, making the front page of newspapers worldwide. Tsuria quickly pleaded guilty and spent almost two years in jail. “I was young and stupid,” he says now, visibly uncomfortable talking about the subject. The jail time and the introspection that came with it fostered a distaste for all things radical.

Nevertheless, he greets Hayutman warmly. The two men sit at a table wedged into a corner of the office, and Tsuria explains that NDS is moving into new kinds of interactive television. That’s Hayutman’s cue to launch into a pitch for the Jerusalem Games System and the realization of the temple. “The assumption of the game,” he begins, “is that the Temple Mount is central to the destiny of the planet.”

Tsuria looks unfazed by this pronouncement, and Hayutman continues with increased enthusiasm. “Playing a game centered around the Mount has implications for the whole world,” he says. “It’s infinitely more meaningful than playing Space Raiders or Montezuma’s Return.” This is an opportunity to create a game that will fulfill prophecy. How many cable companies get a chance like that?

Tsuria seems interested. He peppers Hayutman with practical questions. What language will it be in? How will Muslims be included in the development process so that it accurately represents their views? How will Hayutman portray God without offending Jewish or Muslim prohibitions against iconography? When confronted with such direct questions, Hayutman tends to retreat into vague, even unintelligible babble. That’s his tactic now, as he launches into a speech about “interactive psychological and social systems.” Tsuria nods, interested but cautious. It’s understood that he’ll need to see a fully functioning prototype before he will consider presenting it officially to anyone at NDS.

“Do you have the money to build a prototype?” Tsuria asks.

Not yet. Hayutman is counting on his patent-infringement lawsuit against Palm. In 1994, a couple of Israeli inventors – Mike Kagan and Ian Solomon – approached him with the idea for building cheap, wirelessly connected game consoles. Hayutman signed on as an angel investor. He saw an opportunity to open a channel of communication between Muslims and Jews. He immediately grasped that a mobile technology allowing people in different locations to play games together would help bring his Jerusalem Games System to fruition. The game, after all, was all about real people interacting in a computer-simulated world.

He invested $16,000, and by 1995 the inventors had filed to protect their ideas with the US Patent and Trademark Office. (A patent was issued in 1997.) As proof of principle, they produced two consoles that allowed players to compete in a wirelessly networked version of Pac-Man.

But nobody bought the concept, in part because handheld and wireless devices were still in their infancy. Hayutman and his partners contend that they came up with the idea and should therefore receive a royalty on what has become a commonplace device. The group filed a $20 million lawsuit last March against Palm. Early settlement talks broke down, and the case is due to be heard in Delaware’s US District Court in June.

Because he recently lost almost $700,000 in a disastrous medical technology investment, Hayutman is hoping the suit will replenish his bank account. His lawyers have told him to expect about 16 percent of the proceeds from the lawsuit, and he plans to funnel most of it into his temple plans. “If I hadn’t gotten seduced by biotech, I could have had a prototype of the game by now,” he says ruefully.

If the lawsuit succeeds and Hayutman receives his sought-after settlement, there are still larger hurdles to overcome. For instance, even if he can afford to build his blimp-borne hologram, would the Islamic Trust allow it anywhere near the Dome of the Rock?

The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

Glorified be He Who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Far distant place of worship the neighbourhood whereof We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens!
- Koran, 017.001

The councillors of the Islamic Trust meet in a domed room built into the wall that surrounds the Temple Mount. The room’s large window frames the Dome of the Rock. As the sun sets, the light reflected off the shrine illuminates the wrinkled face of Mohammed Hussein, an imam of the Noble Sanctuary.

Wearing the robes and white headdress of a Muslim cleric, the imam sits silently behind a large, cheap-looking desk. Seated to his left is Adnan Husseini, the Islamic Trust director. Four plainclothes guards stand outside the 18-foot-tall door to the room.

Husseini has agreed to see me on the spur of the moment – he seems intrigued by the appearance of a technology reporter in the Islamic Trust’s inner sanctum. “With the imam’s permission,” Husseini says, casting a glance at him, “you may address me.”

The imam raises his hand in approval. I start by asking Husseini if he’s familiar with Hayutman’s idea of projecting a holographic temple over the Dome of the Rock. “We have heard of this man’s projections of light,” he responds, speaking slowly and cautiously. “And we will allow it to happen here – when there is a peace settlement.”

For a second, I don’t know what to say. It seems stunning that the Islamic Trust would even consider allowing a Jewish temple to float above their holy shrine. Perhaps Husseini believes peace will never come. But if so, why not just dismiss Hayutman’s idea outright?

When asked if the Islamic Trust would endorse the creation of the Jerusalem Games System, Husseini says he has neither heard of it nor is he familiar with the concept of virtual reality. The aging imam, however, knows all about VR and explains it in Arabic to Husseini, who concludes that Palestinians are focused more on basics like food and shelter than luxuries like videogames.

I leave the Temple Mount wondering if that is true and soon find myself wandering the narrow Arab-quarter streets that run west and north of the Islamic Trust’s headquarters. I find kids flocking to the gaming shops set up between spice merchants and butchers hawking skinned lambs. These narrow rooms are filled with teenage boys playing networked games like Counter-Strike and Midtown Madness.

Mohammed, the proprietor of the Ali Baba Internet Caf?, says Palestinians are more wired than most Arabs, and the statistics back him up. According to Abdul Kader Kamli of Madar Research, a Dubai-based company that compiles data on IT use in the Arab world, Palestinians post higher per capita tech usage than people in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, or Syria, among others. “Palestinian kids are already playing games that help them rebel against the situation here,” Mohammed says, citing Hezbollah’s Special Force and Dar Al-Fikr’s UnderAsh, two first-person shooters in which the targets are Israelis. “Why do we have these destructive games? Why not a constructive game of rebellion? As long as the action is good, the kids will play it.”

You are to take some of its blood and put it on the four horns of the altar and on the four corners of the upper ledge and all around the rim, and so purify the altar and make atonement for it.
- Ezekiel 43:20

While in Jerusalem, I make a pilgrimage to the oracle. I ask, “How will World War III begin?” Google answers with a Web site that details the struggle over the Temple Mount. Before coming here, I’d read that the Mount was a “powder keg” and “ground zero for the apocalypse.” The reality is that the fuse is already burning. Every day, Jewish zealots are praying for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock, and there are legions of Muslims ready to give their lives to avenge its desecration. And though violence is anathema to his vision, Hayutman likes watching the clock tick down, because he believes a climate of urgency is necessary before he can convince radicals on all sides that redemption is only a mouseclick away.

Jewish and Christian fundamentalists are intrigued by this new approach to prophecy. But because they read scripture literally, they have a lot of questions. “How will I perform an animal sacrifice if the temple is in a computer?” demands Amos Taieb, a 32-year-old member of the recently organized Temple Guard, a small group of primarily young Jewish men dedicated to rebuilding a physical temple as soon as possible. Taieb emphasizes that scripture clearly states that lambs must be sacrificed on the temple’s altar.

Taieb staffs the Guard’s center in the Jewish quarter of old Jerusalem. The small converted storefront on a cobblestoned alley features an impressive 1:100-scale wooden model of the temple. Taieb also has aerial photographs of the Temple Mount, on top of which he lays transparencies of his proposed temple footprint. He positions it so that the structure lies directly on top of the Dome of the Rock. What happens to the Dome? “You take the mosque and blow it away,” he says calmly.

As for a holographic temple, Taieb cites the Midrash Rabbah prediction that the temple will come from the sky. This is a possibility, he allows, but there’s still the matter of how to sacrifice animals. “Do you bring a lamb hologram into the sky as well?” he asks. “And how do you throw lamb blood on a holographic altar that is floating in the sky? It gets complicated.”

Jan van der Hoeven also worries that a virtual temple creates some very real religious problems. Van der Hoeven – a founder of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and currently the director of the International Christian Zionist Center – is a Dutch minister who moved to Jerusalem in 1968 and has been pushing the Jewish people to construct the temple ever since. He represents the desire of European and American fundamentalist Christians who believe that building the temple will trigger the return of Jesus Christ.

His talk of an “army of Christians” ready to help Israel has resonated through to the highest levels of Israeli politics. As prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu had dinner at Van der Hoeven’s home. Five of the last six prime ministers have spoken at the annual meeting of the International Christian Embassy and sought the kind of fundamentalist Christian support that Van der Hoeven can deliver. “Both the Old and the New Testaments say there is no possibility for Jesus to come except that there is a temple waiting for him,” he says with uplifted eyebrows.

Van der Hoeven has spoken with Hayutman about the holographic temple and the Jerusalem Games System, and he cautiously supports the efforts. “The Jews have not come back from Auschwitz and 6 million dead to stand at a stupid piece of Wailing Wall,” he adds. “Hayutman seems to realize that the Wall is not the climax of history.”

Still, Van der Hoeven takes exception to Hayutman’s designs for the temple. Like the Temple Guard, he wants the design to follow the dictates of Ezekiel, which are quite specific about the measurements of the structure. He, too, has a wooden scale model and proudly shows off pictures of it. “If it is true that the Third Temple will be the result of these holograms – fantastic,” Van der Hoeven says with a sly grin. “But even if it is not, and the Islamic Trust will agree to it, it will set things in motion. The lie of Islam’s exclusive claim to the Mount would be broken.”

Van der Hoeven leans forward in his chair and sets down his teacup. “You see, you have to be very clever because the whole future of planet Earth and mankind will be fought here, over the Temple Mount.”

Son of man, describe the temple to the people of Israel.
- Ezekiel 43:10

In October, Islamic Trust guards watched as Israeli police arrested Van der Hoeven for silently praying on the Temple Mount. The Dutch minister cursed the guards and denounced the police who booked him. When recounting the incident, his face tinges red and he spits his words. For the Islamic Trust, people like Van der Hoeven are easy to classify as extremists.

Hayutman is not. When we first set foot on the Temple Mount and he points to the sky above the Dome of the Rock to show me where the blimp will go, I can see the Islamic Trust guard trying to decide what type of radical he is. Their efforts are complicated by the glowing smile he displays when he sees them approaching. He wants to shake their hands and talk about how beautiful the Dome is in the afternoon light. He wants to find out what they think about the redemptive value of videogames and ask them about the sorts of symbols they would like to project over the Dome.

Before he has a chance to reach out and introduce himself, a group of 14 black-suited orthodox Jews enters the Mount through a nearby gate in the ancient wall. They shuffle in shoulder to shoulder like a chorus line, never allowing their backs to face the Dome, which marks for them the location of what was once the Holy of Holies – the temple’s innermost sanctum.

It is a form of protest prayer that never fails to incite the Islamic Trust. The young protesters are essentially pretending that the Dome isn’t there – they are imagining a future without this holy shrine. The Islamic Trust guards immediately forget about Hayutman and speed-walk toward the new visitors.

Hayutman and I quietly stroll off the Mount, and he hands me the floppy disk he has been carrying in his pocket. It contains a detailed description of the Jerusalem Games System – a kind of cheat sheet for what Hayutman thinks of as the most important videogame anyone will ever play. His eyes gleam in the half-light of the ancient, arched passageway leading out of the Mount. “The technology is ready,” he says. “The time has come to take action.”