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[Larson is speaking to an alleged demon.] "Breathe in the Holy Spirit right now - I command you to breathe deeply, BREATHE DEEPLY, breathe the Holy Spirit! The angels of God make you breathe in the Holy Spirit!!"
-- Bob Larson
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'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader
Posted on Tuesday, February 07 @ 04:13:36 PST by Virgil |
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Erick submitted: "By Anton La Guardia
As Iran rushes towards confrontation with the world over its nuclear programme, the question uppermost in the mind of western leaders is "What is moving its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to such recklessness?"
Political analysts point to the fact that Iran feels strong because of high oil prices, while America has been weakened by the insurgency in Iraq.
But listen carefully to the utterances of Mr Ahmadinejad - recently described by President George W Bush as an "odd man" - and there is another dimension, a religious messianism that, some suspect, is giving the Iranian leader a dangerous sense of divine mission.
In November, the country was startled by a video showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a cleric that he had felt the hand of God entrancing world leaders as he delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly last September.
When an aircraft crashed in Teheran last month, killing 108 people, Mr Ahmadinejad promised an investigation. But he also thanked the dead, saying: "What is important is that they have shown the way to martyrdom which we must follow."
The most remarkable aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's piety is his devotion to the Hidden Imam, the Messiah-like figure of Shia Islam, and the president's belief that his government must prepare the country for his return.
One of the first acts of Mr Ahmadinejad's government was to donate about Ł10 million to the Jamkaran mosque, a popular pilgrimage site where the pious come to drop messages to the Hidden Imam into a holy well.
All streams of Islam believe in a divine saviour, known as the Mahdi, who will appear at the End of Days. A common rumour - denied by the government but widely believed - is that Mr Ahmadinejad and his cabinet have signed a "contract" pledging themselves to work for the return of the Mahdi and sent it to Jamkaran.
Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.
He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.
This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.
Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.
The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying. The unspoken question is this: is Mr Ahmadinejad now tempting a clash with the West because he feels safe in the belief of the imminent return of the Hidden Imam? Worse, might he be trying to provoke chaos in the hope of hastening his reappearance?
The 49-year-old Mr Ahmadinejad, a former top engineering student, member of the Revolutionary Guards and mayor of Teheran, overturned Iranian politics after unexpectedly winning last June's presidential elections.
The main rift is no longer between "reformists" and "hardliners", but between the clerical establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary populism and superstition.
Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations.
World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August.
Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote "state terrorism", impose "the logic of the dark ages" and divide the world into "light and dark countries".
The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to "hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace".
In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN.
"I felt it myself too," Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. "I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink…It's not an exaggeration, because I was looking.
"They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic."
Western officials said the real reason for any open-eyed stares from delegates was that "they couldn't believe what they were hearing from Ahmadinejad".
Their sneaking suspicion is that Iran's president actually relishes a clash with the West in the conviction that it would rekindle the spirit of the Islamic revolution and - who knows - speed up the arrival of the Hidden Imam.
news.telegraph
1/15/06"
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Re: 'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader (Score: 1)
 by Waidmann on Tuesday, February 07 @ 06:01:25 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | Let's see.
One the one hand, we have Dispensationalists (perhaps quack dipsies, but dipsies nonetheless) rooting for a global showdown in the Middle East with the AntiChrist to usher the return of Jesus, and Ahmadinejad also heading towards a global showdown in the Middle East to usher the return of the 12th Iman.
What are the chances, do you think, that it's going to happen? May you live in interesting times.
Waidmann |
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- by Islamaphobe on Tuesday, February 07 @ 07:39:51 PST
- by EWMI on Tuesday, February 07 @ 15:00:25 PST
- by Islamaphobe on Tuesday, February 07 @ 17:06:40 PST
- by Waidmann on Tuesday, February 07 @ 17:06:09 PST
- by MiddleKnowledge on Tuesday, February 07 @ 18:59:09 PST
- by OSTRALOA on Saturday, February 11 @ 09:39:01 PST
- by Waidmann on Monday, February 13 @ 09:54:55 PST
- by OSTRALOA on Tuesday, February 14 @ 03:41:36 PST
Christ - the Peace of the Middle-East. (Score: 1)
by Erick on Tuesday, February 07 @ 13:54:46 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | This article is a bit old, but the situation over there is still pretty freaky and escalating every day. I feel sorry for the people of Iran, Christ wants their relationship with God to be stronger not weaker, but bad eschatology is once again going to lead folks astray. Moreover, the Iranian leadership is isolating Iran from a world of economic/trade opportunity. Nothing good – physically or spiritually – can come from this man getting his way. Christ died for the people of Israel and the people of Iran, may God open both their eyes to see the great love of the Father.
- Erick |
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- by Erick on Tuesday, February 07 @ 14:05:21 PST
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- by Virgil on Tuesday, February 07 @ 18:21:45 PST
- by Flakinde on Tuesday, February 07 @ 19:34:54 PST
- by Virgil on Tuesday, February 07 @ 20:22:10 PST
- by MiddleKnowledge on Tuesday, February 07 @ 20:38:00 PST
- by EWMI on Tuesday, February 07 @ 20:45:40 PST
- by Islamaphobe on Tuesday, February 07 @ 23:31:57 PST
- by Erick on Wednesday, February 08 @ 05:57:34 PST
- by Flakinde on Wednesday, February 08 @ 06:47:24 PST
- by Islamaphobe on Wednesday, February 08 @ 08:40:09 PST
- by Flakinde on Wednesday, February 08 @ 09:27:51 PST
- by Islamaphobe on Wednesday, February 08 @ 10:59:07 PST
- by Flakinde on Wednesday, February 08 @ 12:35:31 PST
- by Waidmann on Wednesday, February 08 @ 09:20:43 PST
Re: 'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader (Score: 1)
by Islamaphobe on Wednesday, February 08 @ 14:21:30 PST
(User Info | Send a Message) | This will be my last comment in the current series. I shall start with the observation that I do not believe that I wrote that cartoons of the turbobomb type are the "best way" to open "these societies about their dominant relgion," etc. I do concede that I consider them ONE way to accomplish that objective, and I consider them an appropriate tool of communication in a free society as long as they have a factual basis. I do not like to have what I write distorted.
You ask why I consider the use of such cartoons to be an effective way to deal with the problem under consideration; i.e. the problem of dealing with the Islamic world. Fair enough. Evidently, my previous suggestion that satirical cartoons that incorporate the truth are an appropriate tool of communication was insufficient, so I shall elaborate a little.
I indulge myself in considerable reading of Internet postings by ex-Muslims who offer their opinions about how we should be dealing with the Islamic world. Almost uniformly, they criticize the West for being too submissive and too tolerant in its treatment of the Islamic faith. They argue that most Muslims (and most Westerners) have not been exposed to critical treatments of Islam and that such exposure is absolutely necessary for the benefit of humankind. Most Muslims, they insist, make unwarranted assumptions about the superiority of their faith and culture that need to be rudely and abruptly challenged.
If Islam is to be reformed, and I would like to hope (though I have doubts) that it can be, it has to be confronted with the truth of its scriptures and its history. Very little critical analysis of Islam is permitted in Islamic countries, and the mainstream media there present a completely distorted picture of the world designed to lay the blame for all problems on the Americans and the Jews while completely whitewashing the shortcomings of Islam.
As things now stand, we are war with Islamo-fascism, though many in this country and in the West in general repudiate such a notion. There can be no compromise between Islamo-fascism and Western democracy. Unless Islam changes, one side or the other must win. I want Islam to either change or disappear, and I fervently believe that accomplishing either its reform or its removal means bringing maximum pressure against the forces trying to promote the promised world conquest that so many Muslims believe in.
Gotta run. Til we meet again, as I am sure we shall.
John S. Evans
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- by Flakinde on Wednesday, February 08 @ 15:22:21 PST
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