Posted on 11/11/2006 12:38:04 AM PST by JohnHuang2
The Republican Party lost the mid-term elections primarily due to the war in Iraq; however, there were other contributing factors. According to the Pew Research Centre, 78 percent of evangelicals in the United States voted Republican in 2004. This week polls indicate that just 50 percent of evangelicals voted for the Republicans, and evangelical turnout was dramatically lower. The Democrats, with pro same-sex marriage, pro-abortion leader Nancy Pelosi, now control the legislative agenda of the U.S. government. How did this happen?
The Rev. Ted Haggard, the defrocked president of the National Association of Evangelicals led a two-year campaign to subject the evangelical church to the laws of global warming. The introduction of the earth movement has confused the church with neo-pagan teachings. In Romans Chapter 1, God warns us not to place creation over the Creator.
The global warming movement began at the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit where its director, Maurice Strong, started with the statement "We must therefore transform our attitudes and values, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of divine nature." Strong subsequently passed several worldwide laws in 1997 known as the Kyoto Accord. In 1994, the U.N. commissioned Strong to write the Earth Covenant that was introduced in 2000 as the Earth Charter. The new edict was written on papyrus paper, placed in a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, ceremoniously ushered into the U.N. and called "the new 10 commandments," a "Global Ethic" that will transcend all religions and countries.
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Nearly two years ago, Rev. Haggard began his earth campaign as he threatened the Republican U.S. Senate, stating that he would turn the evangelicals against them if they refused to ratify global warming laws. On March 10, 2005, the New York Times described his efforts with the headline "Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming." Haggard said in the article: "The question is, will evangelicals make a difference? And the answer is, the Senate thinks so. We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to." Haggard's vice president, Richard Cizik, followed by saying, "When evangelicals speak, Republicans tend to listen, and frankly it's Republicans who need to get the message."
The Republican Senate did not take heed to the threat – therefore, Haggard carried out his plan. By February 2006, Evangelicals Against Climate Change was launched with a joint declaration signed by 86 prominent leaders. They went ahead with the program despite protests from a Who's Who of politically powerful evangelicals, including Chuck Colson, James Dobson and the Rev. D. James Kennedy. The CNN headline read "Strange Bedfellows," as evangelicals had joined forces with environmentalists who are well-known for being ungodly and sexually immoral. James 4:4 says, "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." They spent an initial $200,000 on the crusade. "We will see tens of millions of evangelicals engaged in the work we are talking about today," said the Rev. Dr. Leith Anderson, now the interim president of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Haggard's "environmental evangelism" as he calls it, continued. In October, the NAE promoted their program "Is God Green?" The organization then stepped up its efforts and launched a new vision for the church on Oct. 18 called Re:Vision, a new action plan to promote environmental activism.
On the surface, this all seems like harmless activity to ensure clean air and clean water. God does command us to be good stewards of the earth but not subservient to it. Everyone wants to reduce pollution and save cute cuddly animals. Unfortunately, this is not the focus. Instead, the global warming movement seeks to trump all other issues, including spiritual concerns, with threats of catastrophic destruction if we don't follow its precepts plus reduce CO2 production, the very gas every plant on earth needs to survive.
God warns us numerous times in Scripture to never subvert His precepts with that of man or earth. Romans Chapter 1, versus 22-26 says, "Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions."
We all sympathize with Rev. Haggard's pain. He obviously is experienced great torment as he entered into his "vile passions" hiring a homosexual prostitute and buying crystal methamphetamine. His wife and children are devastated by such debauchery, as are the 14,000 members of his church. Haggard confessed that saying, "I am a deceiver and a liar." Millions of airplanes take off and land safely every year, but when one crashes it is headline news around the world. We don't blame all aircraft for the faults of one.
God warns us not to place anything above Him. His first commandment in Exodus 20:3 is "You shall have no other gods before me." We cannot subjugate Father God to mother earth. The original sin of Adam was to trust the creation over the Creator. God gave man dominion over the earth, not subjugation under it. Jesus Himself says to us in Luke 21:34, "And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting (drugs), and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares." The hedonistic cares of this life, including drugs, drink and the earth, must not be our concern. We are to focus on eternal affairs, not temporal things.
Today we live in the last days before the return of Christ. Second Thessalonians 2:3 warns us to "Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition." I believe this "falling away" has begun.
The seductive earth movement has crept into our churches and is leading us to trust the creation over the Creator. The "False Prophet" or Apostate Faith described in Revelation 13 as the lamb with two horns and verse 17 as Mystery Babylon and the Scarlet Harlot clearly lines up with the earth movement of today. My book "The Great Falling Away," to be released Dec. 15, compares 100 aspects of the "Apostate Faith" with the earth worship of today.
Scripture warns us "be not deceived," "beware of the false prophets," "take heed lest you be led astray." Haggard assisted in exalting the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi to power. He was led astray and is now suffering tremendously. We need to pray for him and pray for protection for us. If it can happen to a great leader such as Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals representing 51 denominations with 30 million members, then it can happen to you or me. With God's help, we can avoid being seduced into "falling away" as we place Jesus Christ Lord of all, including the earth.
I agree with you. I'm not buying this as a reason or at least as a major reason for the defeat on Tuesday. Although, on our local radio I have heard Evangelical environmental commercials. I wonder if they were produced by Haggard?
Every little bit hurts, but I think that the point of the article is that Haggard's attacks om parts of the GOP agenda is the reason while evangelical support of the GOP went down.
I believe that Ted Haggard's push to change the direction of the Evangelical Movement did have some effect. He turned some to a new set of beliefs that are more compatible with the Democrats. His failures as a leader might have effected some votes, but I sort of doubt it. Christians of many ilks recognize that the sin of one man is the sin of one man. If steps are taken, then the one bad apple will not spoil the basket.
I don't know how much of the Evangelical Movement he effected. But with margins as narrow as they were, even a small effect across the country could have been the difference.
In 1992, George Bush 41 turned off the Republicans by trying to get along with the Democrats. He lost to Clinton. In 1996, there were stories that got circulated about Dole that he was pro-abortion. I heard these stories here in Tennessee and know people that did not vote because they figured both men were bad. This included Catholics and Evangelicals.
What is the moral of my bit of thinking? The Republicans need to choose candidates that have a strong moral backbone and act like Republicans. Conservatives and Evangelicals are both looking for someone they feel they can trust.
Ditto.
Have you looked at the exit poll responses?
Reagan went out of his way to support the unborn. I need not mention his success. At the time I gasped that anyone would be so bold because I found everyone ducking the issue, including and especially Lutherans.
"hiring a homosexual prostitute and buying crystal methamphetamine"
That's what did him (and anyone he was associated with) in, not his talking about the weather.
Many of those evangelicals are part of the Pysbertarian church, which has a track record of being ultra liberal.
Hate to sound like a "me too", but I am right in the middle of the Bible Belt and a life long Evangelical.
Never heard of this pervert, and if I had it would not have changed my vote one iota!
Alright by me.
I doubt that these churches were really Evangelicals in the true sense of the word!!!
I never heard of Haggerd before, but I had heard the commercials for Evangelicals Against Climate Change.
Actually I thought it must be Soros and Moveon sowing confusion by picking a religious sounding name for another front group.
Now that I know the founder is a meth head, I can see where he got his strange theology. Hoo boy.
Exactly! My neighbor is a staff member at the local Presbyterian church and is very conservative.
Baptists - even the subset of Southern Baptists - cover a lot of theological ground.
Southern Baptists are not members of the NAE, although some smaller Baptist groups are. NAE members run from Pentacostal to Reformed to Wesleyan; the Salvation Army is even a member. It tends to include groups which want to be part of an ecumenical group but which don't want to associate with the liberal mainline denominations.
And in will come the anti-Christ, but only for a short period of time.
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