Posted on 08/13/2009 12:07:59 PM PDT by P.O.E.
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him:
"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. ... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. ... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."
This bizarre -- seemingly deranged -- episode happened while the White House was assembling its "coalition of the willing" to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush's call, and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."
(Excerpt) Read more at wvgazette.com ...
It’s because his language does not suggest a dispensational perspective. That plus his church choice, plus his background all add up to something other than dispensationalism to me.
There is also the issue that many consider this a purely apocryphal, unsubstantiated story that was put out by enemies.
My sense is that there’s “some” truth to it, but that it has all the earmarks of a story told and retold and grown distorted in that retelling.
Besides, it makes perfect sense if one is in a mainline denomination where there is zero emphasis on eschatology to find a book or preacher and adopt the latest fad. Especially one that sells lots of books.
Yours is a reasonable reply. As an ordained elder in his denomination, however, my sense is that Pres Bush is not dispensationalist. His language is not the language of a dispensationalist.
In fact, his neo-conservative Pax Democratia, of its march via destiny to the renewal of the political earth is a transfer of post-millenialism to the political realm.
Maybe Bush is either indirectly fulfilling a handful of God’s prophecies or wants to delay them because he feels the world is not ready yet for prophetic major events.
Is there any place OTHER than in the Leftists’ blogs and editorials that CONFIRMS that Chirac actually made this claim?
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