My friend Viola Larson has written to Carol Hylkema, the moderator of the PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network, to raise questions regarding the links IPMN has given to Veterans Today and James Wall. Her answer amounts to “ain’t nobody here but us pure-as-the-driven-snow activists”:
Thank you for your letter expressing your concern regarding our network’s endorsement of James Wall and his writings. From where we stand, James Wall is a beacon of light in a place where debate has produced more heat than light.
Mr. Wall’s reference to other writers are his choice, not ours to make. As far as your concern on articles not referenced by James Wall that appear on a website that he has referenced, we feel uncomfortable practicing guilt by association. The Israel Palestine Mission Network never condones anti-Semitism and does not believe that James Wall is anti-Semitic. His record of speaking out against racism and human rights violations in the world speaks for itself and we support his work in this regard.
Hylkema, like Wall himself, tries to play the “guilt by association” card, thinking that that ends the discussion. The problem is that she doesn’t understand what the term means. The issue with Wall isn’t that two odious web sites happen to take blog posts of his and use them for their own purposes. The problem is that he is tightly connected to the sites in question. He’s a contributing writer for My Catbird Seat, and has publicly embraced Veterans Today in his last post, despite the fact that VT’s articles on the Middle East are full of Jewish conspiracy theories, anti-Israel propaganda, and outright anti-Semitism.
If the IPMN actually refused to condone anti-Semitism, it wouldn’t be linking to Veterans Today articles or to the articles by those who embrace it. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anyone from IPMN to recognize that.
Posted by David Fischler under
Bible [5] Comments
I can’t resist a challenge. So when I read this in the Tennessean newspaper, I knew I had to leap into the fray:
There are 24 shopping days left till Christmas.
And 171 days left until Jesus’ second coming.
That’s the message on 40 billboards around Nashville, proclaiming May 21, 2011, as the date of the Rapture. Billboards are up in eight other U.S. cities, too.
Fans of Family Radio Inc., a nationwide Christian network, paid for the billboards. Family Radio’s founder, Harold Camping, predicted the May date for the Rapture.
Tom Evans, a spokesman for Family Radio, insisted the predictions are true, and he and other Family Radio supporters want to save their friends and neighbors from God’s judgments. The billboards are also up in Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, Little Rock, Omaha, Kansas City, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Bridgeport, Conn. In cities with Family Radio-affiliated stations, the message is on the air.
The latest prediction comes from a verse in Luke 17: “As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”
It’s a matter of simple math, said Evans.
According to Camping’s prediction, the Rapture will happen exactly 7,000 years from the date that God first warned people about the flood. He said the flood happened in 4990 B.C., on what would have been May 21 in the modern calendar. God gave Noah one week of warning.
Since one day equals 1,000 years for God, that means there was a 7,000-year interval between the flood and rapture.
“We hope that anyone would get a Bible out and try and prove that this is wrong,” he said.
So I sat here pondering this question. Is there anything in the Bible that would prove this wrong? Where could it be? I thought and thought, bringing all of my limited knowledge of Scripture to bear. And then, approximately one-tenth of one second later, it hit me:
“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Jesus, in Matthew 24:36)
Any questions?
(Via Mark Shea.)
