Posted on 09/21/2004 8:24:29 PM PDT by GIJoel
Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper
Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations.
Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border for The Independent of London on February 6, 2000, as "triumphant" Russian troops occupied Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Woods article, entitled "Chechnyas civilians put to the sword," continued with Mrs. Goncharuks story:
"They [the Russian soldiers] were asking for cigarettes, then they asked, Do you have a radio, and they said, Give it to us," she said, explaining that the four women and two men were sent back down into the cellar after handing over their valuables.
"We hadnt even sat down," she went on, "then they began throwing grenades into the cellar and shooting. We all were crying and suffocating, the smell was unbearable. We were crying out, we could not see anything but they continued to shoot.
"We said, Guys what are you doing? We are civilians. They stopped shooting and they said to come out of the cellar. Our legs and heads were wounded and we could hardly move but we got up, supporting each other.
"The first out were two Russian women, Luda and Natasha. We were standing inside the garage over the cellar and they started shooting at point blank range. The others were twisting in pain.... Natasha was lying dead already....
"There was one old man with us. His head was covered in blood.... Then they started firing again.
"If I had looked up I would have been shot. I opened my eye just a little bit, all I saw was the muzzles of their guns and their boots."
Putins "Liberation"
Two hospital beds down from Lena Goncharuk was another victim of the Russian "liberation." Unlike Goncharuk, Hedi Makhauri, a 40-year-old Chechen mother, had not been trapped inside besieged Grozny; along with tens of thousands of other refugees, she had fled to neighboring Ingushetia.
With Russian troops establishing themselves in the capital, and the Russian bombing and shelling apparently over, she had thought it safe to go back and check on her house. Paul Woods report briefly recounts her ordeal:
"They said it was a liberated area," she said, frail and thin, clutching her hospital sheet to her chin, telling us that when she got to her street, she and two other Chechen women saw Russian soldiers loading stolen goods from the houses into one of their armoured vehicles.
"They took us to the armoured vehicle and they said to go inside. We were afraid as they put blindfolds on us. We said, Why, we are not criminals, we have just come to see our houses. They said it was orders.
"They said they would take us to the police headquarters, but they just took us around the corner. It was just ruins all around. Me and my neighbour were clutching each others hand. We said: Why are you taking us here, there are no police here. They said: Just wait, they will come.
"The other woman said, Take whatever you want, we have children, just dont kill us. They made us go into one little room. They just shot her in the head. She didnt even have time to say, Let me go. They just shot her. Hedi said that the Russian soldiers were tugging at the gold ring on her finger.
"It slipped off just as they decided to get a knife to sever her finger and the ring along with it. They also took her ear-rings and her money, 400 roubles, about £8.
"Then they put an old mattress over her body, poured petrol on, and lit it. The mattress was wet and did not catch light, only smouldered as they walked away. If I cried they would have killed me," she said.
"They said it was a liberated area"? Where did Hedi Makhauri and many others less fortunate than her get such calamitous disinformation? Why, from no less an authority than Vladimir Putin, then the acting president of Russia. Mr. Putin appeared on Russian national television on Sunday, February 6, 2000, to announce that the last stronghold of the Chechen "terrorists" in Grozny had been taken and the Russian flag had been hoisted over the smoldering ruins of the capital. "Thus, we can say that the operation to liberate Grozny is over," declared Putin.
The seven-year campaign of genocide against Chechnya has been largely invisible to the outside world. The Russian armed forces and security services have successfully kept most of the Western media and humanitarian-aid organizations out, while, at the same time, preventing refugees from escaping with eye-witness details of the brutal subjugation. "Let us call it by its real name," wrote Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby on October 28, 1999. "What Russia is committing in Chechnya is the mass murder of civilians.... And not only is the West failing to rise up against his [Putins] bloodbath, it is actively helping to finance it," directly through U.S. foreign aid to the Russian government, as well as indirectly via the U.S. taxpayer-funded International Monetary Fund.
Convergence Choir
Tragically, far too few of Mr. Jacobys colleagues in the Western media have shared his outrage over the ongoing slaughter in Chechnya; the coverage of Putins campaign of terror against Chechen civilians has been sporadic and the condemnations tepid. Since the September 11th terrorist attacks, criticism of the Chechen pogrom has all but evaporated, as the Bush administration has rushed to embrace Russia as our valued "ally" in the war on terrorism.
New York Times correspondent Bill Keller typified this response in an October 6th article, in which he stated: "We need the Russians now, as we needed Stalin once, and if that means our president pulls a punch on the subject of the indiscriminate civil carnage in Chechnya, I can live with that; the punch had no muscle behind it anyway." Mr. Keller and other pragmatists of his ilk can apparently "live with" patently immoral policies like genocide, turning a blind eye to the unpleasant bloodletting as long as the perpetrator advances the globalist agenda of East-West convergence.
On November 23rd, the Times offered an even more startling re-evaluation of Russia as NATOs new partner in the war on terrorism. Aleksandr Rahr, a scholar at the German Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Berlin, told the Times: "What changed radically on September 11th was the complete disappearance of Russia as a threat to Europe. Its completely gone." The German CFR is a sister to the American CFR, this countrys "ruling establishment," and Mr. Rahr was trilling the same convergence theme as his U.S. counterparts. Mr. Rahr, along with other European and American CFR one-worlders, advocates a full, lusty embrace of Russia against our new common enemy.
One of the most enthusiastic advocates of this policy of NATO-Russia embrace is none other than Lord Robertson, the current NATO chief. "We sense very strong indications from President Putin in recent weeks that he wants to change the way that Russia does business," the November 23rd New York Times quoted Robertson as saying. "We take that at face value and we will work on that basis," he continued. "The Russian response to the terrible attacks on the United States," he said, "has been the reaction of a real and genuine friend." "In the past," said Robertson, "we were divided by walls and fences and by ideology and by armies. Today the threats to the Russian people are very similar, if not exactly the same as, the threats to the people in the NATO countries and the West."
Does Lord Robertson, the head of the Wests military alliance, truly buy the Kremlin line that the pounding of Chechen cities and villages into rubble, the rampant slaughter of civilians, and the driving of hundreds of thousands of refugees into camps, neighboring provinces, and foreign exile are the same as fighting terrorists who carry out acts like the 9-11 Black Tuesday attack? Whether or not he truly believes it, Robertson is definitely retailing that line with a passion. "To utter such nonsense, a top Western official has to be either a closet Communist or one of Lenins useful idiots," says Christopher Story, editor and publisher of the authoritative London-based Soviet Analyst.
One of the most reliable analysts of Russian affairs and a keen observer of British power politics, Mr. Story clearly believes Robertson to be of the former category. "Look, Robertson was well known in Britain as a former Communist trade union agitator when Tony Blair picked him to be secretary of state for defense," Story told The New American. "Blair is to the left of Clinton and has been clear over in the Kremlin camp all along. The September 11th attacks have given him the opportunity to advance his pro-Moscow agenda while appearing to be pro-military, pro-American, and anti-terrorist." Story points out that when a member of parliament queried the British Fabian Socialist Society concerning charges that certain members of the Blair cabinet were members of the socialist group, the secretary of the Fabian Society publicly confirmed that 20 of Blairs 23 cabinet officials were indeed members in good standing with the organization. For over a century, notes Story, the Fabians have played a crucial role in implementing Marxist-Leninist policies in the British Commonwealth.
"Lord Robertson the former Communist is quite obviously a continuing covert Communist who is enthusiastically implementing the continuing Soviet strategy against the West from the highest office in NATO, no less," warns Story. "What makes this even more troubling is that Robertson was appointed NATO secretary-general following Javier Solana, a former Spanish Communist, who shared the same love affair with Moscow. Solana has now been transferred to a key position within the European Commission of the EU [European Union], where he and his fellow radicals are working in concert with Robertson, Blair, Germanys Joschka Fischer, Italys Romano Prodi, and other subversives to convert NATO and the EU completely into an oppressive Soviet collective."
The Russians have always been master chess players, reminds Story, and they have been playing the terrorist gambit very successfully. "If the people of the West do not wake up soon to this fact, we will soon be in checkmate," he warns.
Covert Strategy, Deadly Deception
The Russian war against Chechnya is, of course, central to the current U.S.-Russian embrace as allies in the war against terrorism. For the Russians and their CFR apologists in the U.S., it provides an important test of the American publics gullibility: Can the slaughter in Chechnya credibly be equated to our current war against Osama bin Laden? After all, as the CFRs Mr. Rahr claims, the Russian threat is "completely gone," and were both fighting against Islamic extremists, right? Or as Lord Robertson put it, we both face "very similar, if not exactly the same" threats.
The chess pieces were being positioned to produce American acceptance of this preposterous notion long before the suicide attacks of September 11, 2001. In December 1994, Boris Yeltsin ordered Russian troops, tanks, and air power into Chechnya to fight what he claimed were "terrorists" and "bandits." Soon the term "Islamic extremist" was also being applied to the Chechen opponents. For months the Russian army appeared pathetically inept, demoralized, barbaric, and incapable of subduing the Chechens. However, after grinding much of Chechnya under its tank tracks and killing 100,000 civilians, the Yeltsin regime negotiated an accord to withdraw Russian forces, while negotiations would continue toward a settlement of Chechnyas status by the end of 2001.
The most penetrating (and what has also proven the most prophetic) analysis of the 1994-96 Russian-Chechnyan War was written in February 1995 as a memo from Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn to CIA Acting Director William O. Studeman. Published in the 1995 edition of Golitsyns book The Perestroika Deception, the memo marshaled important evidence and observations supporting the contention that the Chechnyan War was being "deliberately staged largely for Western consumption by the Kremlin strategists in the pursuit of their objectives."
What hidden objectives could the Kremlin strategists advance by a controlled operation that showed the Russian military performing so poorly and the Russian military leaders quarreling amongst themselves? Mr. Golitsyn, himself a former elite KGB operative amongst the Kremlin strategists, listed many important objectives, including:
The Russian military bungling was intended to "demonstrate that it can be discounted as a serious military adversary for the foreseeable future."
This message was "intended to influence US Congressional debate on the subject of Russias military potential and the size of US forces required to maintain a balance with it."
The message could "also be used as a pretext for deepening the partnership between the US and Russian armed forces by seeking American advice and help in reforming, reorganizing and retraining the Russian army in order to enable it to serve a democratic system."
The Chechnyan events also "enabled the Russians to play especially on European fears of destabilization in Russia" and "injected a further boost to the European desire for partnership with the democratic forces in Russia."
This partnership would lead to "entry into European institutions" and then "East European and eventually Russian involvement in NATO."
As usual, Mr. Golitsyns cogent analysis has proven prescient as well; all of the above objectives, and others he mentioned, have been advanced on the Russian chessboard to a frightful degree. And, as usual, Golitsyns warnings and analyses have been ignored and supressed by the CFR insiders dominating U.S. policy-making positions, Establishment think tanks, and the press. (See the sidebar.)
Russias New Front Man
Mr. Golitsyn suggested that the Chechnyan "crisis" might be "a possible planned prelude to a change of government," replacing the spent Yeltsin team with a new set of rotating faces. "Since an outright military or nationalist government [in Russia] might prejudice the flow of Western aid and the continued cooperation with the West which furthers the strategists interests," he said, it is likely that the Kremlin strategists wielding the real power behind the scenes would replace Yeltsin with a team comprised of a tough new president and a "reformist" prime minister. "The President would be presented as a guarantee of Russian stability while the Prime Ministers task would be to ensure the continued flow of Western aid and the continuation of cooperative operations."
Enter Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the Russian "hero" of the Chechnyan pogrom. President Putin, the current player sitting in the Kremlins big chair, may seem in charge of moving the Russian pieces around the board, says Christopher Story, but he is merely the current front man for the covert Communist leadership collective that has continued to rule Russia since the Soviet Unions supposed collapse. Mr. Story is perhaps the worlds leading proponent of Golitsyns thesis that the "Soviet collapse" was a controlled deception, planned many years in advance, for long-range strategic purposes.
Mr. Story, whose publications have closely tracked developments in Chechnya as well as the rise of Putins star, derides the government and media experts for falling all over themselves to come up with explanations for Putins meteoric rise. "Vladimir Putin has been a lifelong Communist and asset of Soviet intelligence," first of the KGB, and then of the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, he told The New American. "And the Chechnyan crisis that raised him to the national and world stages has been completely an operation of the successor Russian intelligence services. If you follow the Russian-Chechnyan events and Putins career its very clear that he was hand-picked by the Kremlin strategists for his current role."
Shooting Putin to prominence was a spectacular string of 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities that left hundreds dead. Yeltsin had appointed Putin prime minister, after serving a stint as head of the FSB, the current acronym for the KGB. Putin then strode on the scene vowing to bring the terrorists to justice. He quickly identified the perpetrators as Islamic extremists from Chechnya and soon launched a new massive invasion reducing Grozny to ashes and corpses. Heralded by the KGB/FSB-directed government organs and media as the strong man who had redeemed Russias honor from the ignominy of the 1994-1996 Chechnyan War and ended the terror bombings, Putin was elected "president" in March 2000.
USA Today reported on March 27, 2000 that Putins win "capped an incredible rise to power by a man who had never before stood for election." The Los Angeles Times reported that prior to his victory over the Chechens, "few thought the mousy, soft-spoken former spy could convince a majority of voters to elect him president."
Christopher Story has pointed out that Putin was able to solve the terrorist bombings "because they were very simply provocations perpetrated by covert Soviet intelligence operatives to provide Moscow with a pretext for an official re-entry into Chechnya. I say official because Russia never really relinquished control when it supposedly left in 1996." Other analysts, investigators, and reporters around the world have reached some of the same conclusions. Many major mainstream media organs have acknowledged that the Putin regime has produced no evidence substantiating that Chechens were behind the Moscow bombings. Moreover, it has been fairly widely reported that strong evidence indicates that the FSB actually perpetrated the bombings. Many news groups have reported that after the fourth major bombing in September 1999, local police foiled a fifth bombing when they arrested terrorists planting explosives in another apartment complex. The terrorists turned out to be FSB agents.
According to Soviet Analyst, the Russians did not merely seize an opportunity (the 9-11 attacks) that happened to coincide with their long-range objectives; Putin and associates actually planned and carried out the terrorist deed using assets connected to bin Laden in Chechnya. The publication, which, like Anatoliy Golitsyn, can boast an uncanny accuracy on major Russian developments unmatched by the media-anointed Russian experts, has pointed out a number of important facts that support this theory. Among them:
Land-locked Chechnya has long been one of the most completely controlled areas of the former Soviet Union, surrounded by Russia and Georgia, run by the faithful Communist Edward Shevardnadze. It is thus one of the safest venues to carry out a false Islamic revolt.
The huge Soviet strategic military base and air base at Mozdok near Ingushetia has been using Chechnya as a "live warfare" laboratory and training ground, preparing for further strategic warfare in the region.
The Chechen opposition has been completely controlled and compromised with false leadership, notably, with the likes of Djokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general, accepted by Moscow as the representative voice of Chechen independence.
The Russian armed forces and security services repeatedly released their controlled Chechen opposition, or allowed them to escape, to carry out repeated provocations.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, an estimated 50,000 young Afghan males were removed from Afghanistan and transferred to terrorist training camps in Chechnya, Tajikistan, and elsewhere to be filtered back in subsequent years as fighters in the ranks of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Northern Alliance.
Utilizing its client regimes in Iran, Sudan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, Russia has supported the "Islamic" terror network while making it appear that it is itself under assault from "Muslim extremists."
As usual, says Christopher Story, the Communist strategists in Moscow have used the "principle of reversal," lying audaciously about the true situation in Chechnya. "Putins claims that Russia is under attack from bin Ladens forces, just like the U.S., is a complete reversal of the truth," he says. In reality, he notes, "the evidence is far more persuasive that his al-Qaeda contacts in Chechnya and neighboring areas have been used to coordinate provocations that will provide the image of a common enemy." If this analysis is correct, and it appears to be, then the United States and the West have embraced as allies in the war on terrorism the engineers and perpetrators of the global terror offensive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Predictions of an Ex-KGB Agent by William F. Jasper
Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the rise of a false Soviet reformer like Gorbachev, the removal of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, and the restructuring of NATO.
In 1961, in a dramatic escape under cover of a blinding snow storm, a major in the Soviet KGB defected to the United States. He was no ordinary KGB agent; he was an elite officer working within the "inner KGB" a super-secret strategic planning department that plotted long-term Soviet strategy against the West. He is probably the most important Soviet defector ever to have reached the West. His name is Anatoliy Golitsyn.
Golitsyn warned that KGB moles had penetrated the CIA and virtually all other Western intelligence services and that many defectors were actually double agents feeding strategic disinformation to the West. For more than four decades, Golitsyn has been providing methodical analysis of developments in the Soviet Union and of Russian initiatives and operations throughout the world that has proven uniquely accurate. He has been explaining patiently that the Communist strategists who ran the Soviet Union continue to run Russia today. Following Leninist strategic principles, they are engaged in a deadly long-term war against the West. Foremost among their objectives is to convince Western leaders that Soviet Communism has collapsed and represents no further threat to the world.
Golitsyns amazingly prophetic book, New Lies for Old, was published in 1984. His main predictions included details of the forthcoming false liberalization of the whole of Eastern Europe, followed by similar developments in the Soviet Union. He predicted the rise of a false Soviet reformer like Gorbachev, the removal of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, and the restructuring (if not abolition) of NATO. He even went so far as to specify that a "Break with the Past" process would start in East Germany, with the opening of its borders as it turned out, to neighboring Communist countries. That was very remarkable: Golitsyn knew that the process would start in East Germany, and it did.
Author Mark Riebling, in his important 1994 book entitled Wedge: The Secret War between the FBI and CIA, conducted a careful analysis of Golitsyns predictions in New Lies for Old. He found that out of a total of 148 predictions, 139 had been verified by 1993 "an accuracy rating of 94%." No other Soviet expert even comes close. Golitsyns 1995 book, The Perestroika Deception, continuing in the same tradition, offers unparalleled information and insight. Our leaders continue ignoring his proven wisdom to our own great peril.
So who finally is your hero, Sharon or Putin :-)?
I'll let you know when I decide. Probably sinkspur for this week.
Was that something or what?
unbelievable.
truly.
"The pain and misery that he fronts for will finally be dealt with when Russia meets its doom on the mountains of Israel. A consuming fire will provide the world's largest barbeque for the beasts of the fields and fowls of the air; out of respect for buzzards they should leave them alone but Jehovah God has willed it otherwise!"
Your quoting Ezekial 38. Also, if you like prophecy, check out www.prophecy.org . This is a site by a modern day prophet I met in person about four years ago. The spirit of God and Ray's accuracy have confirmed he is genuine. According to prophecies given to Ray, the Russian bear will wake up and attack with nuclear weapons and is considered "The beast". The lifespan of their success as the anti-christ is limited as scripture tells us but it ain't gonna be pretty...
"People fail to understand one very basic notion...totalitarianism arising in Russia as a pretext to fighting Islamic terrorists does not give us an ally in the War on Terror...it adds an enemy."
I think we are in agreement on that point. They may kill some of the same terrorists we will but the way they rule to try to stop this threat will be far more damaging to the rest of the globe. If your interested in prophecy, check out Ezekial 38 about what Russia does in the end times. Also, check out www.prophecy.org . I met the modern day prophet behind the site 4 years ago. He has been dead on.
By supporting terrorists countries such as Syria, Iran, Iraqi that get shifted into terrorist hands. That was my point, they used the terrorist sponsored countries as a proxy war, not it is biting Russia in the butt. If you disagree, I will supply plenty of links.
"Please define communism and socialism and then show how Putin's actions are taking Russia into that direction. Please define republicanism vs autocracy and capitalism."
I know the general meaning of these terms and what communism was and what it meant to the people of Russia in the 20th century. I know what socialism is to the people of China in the 20th century. Call it whatever you want, it all boils down a country being ruled by one guy who can do whatever he wants and that almost always turns out bad.
"The gulags also contributed to a nationwide culture of relinquishing children in state-owned orphanages. There is now an orphanage in almost every city in Russia. The Russians are not always kind toward these children. One tv show I watched in Moscow simply called them "little criminals", an attitude which has persisted since they were set up to house the children of those sent to the gulags."
Thanks for the post MarMema. Your always provide interesting perspectives about what is going on in Russia. This was something I did not know. Such misery for the Russian people for so long.
It looks to me as if Italy was his model in making the recent choices for change.
Additionally be aware that only 2/3 of the regional governors/leaders are affected by the changes Putin is proposing, so that Moscow for instance, is not affected and will vote for their regional head.
Most Americans are freaking out about this and calling it a power grab, but when you look closely at it, it is simply an approach to ridding Russia of corruption which has worked in another country.
Russia was voted by some council or other as being among the top 3 countries with extensive corruption among leadership, next to Mozambique, and as the top country with leaders most likely to accept a bribe. Last year or the year before....so change is needed.
I did not mean to imply that the orphanage workers themselves were unkind. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Communism is economic, Marxist-Communism (Bolshavism) is a communist centralized economy, while Menshavik-Communist is a decentralized communism of people's councils and small factories. Both types of Russian communism were about the factory and city. Maoist Communism was about the peasants not the city and was also more peasant culture based against the educated (Mao's Great Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward). There are other varients of course. But Communism is not dictatoriship, it is an economic/cultural system that leans closest to autocracy and dictatorship.
Capitalism is not necessary a republican government, though it leans well with one. Dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, facists in Spain, Italy, Greece all were capitalists.
That is my point, people throw around terms like dictator and communist interchangeably but they are not. True Putin might become a dictator or a heriditery dictator (monarch) but the economy is and will remain capitalist, that's no doubt. But even capitalism comes in many flavors: State Capitalism: most of latin america, Socialist Capitalism: EU, Corporate Capitalism: Japan/China, State Capitalism can also be found in places like Arkenssa or Mississipi (where the governors hold a lot of power over local business) while the US is mostly Lazi-Farre, though it is becoming increasingly Socialist Capitalism.
Sorry about the book.
I don't disagree but this is like the story of Christ and the adultress. With our continued association with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan (we have never and continue to not condemn the murder of 2 million Christians in the south, only 10,000 muslims in the west), KLA, Bosnia, PLO, Egypt we have few stones to throw.
Since your mentioning associations and Christ, the Apostle Peter had several prophecies. One seemed to be very much about Islam and not sitting down to dinner with these people. I can probably get you chapter and vs. if your really interested. Email me if so. Never knew Peter to also be a prophet until I read the bible on my own. I was really scared when after 9/11 Bush sat down with the Imams in the White House for dinner. The book of Psalms mentions that it is a waste to have guards over a city without the blessing from God.
Also, our country is headed for judgement because of three key issues: rampant immorality, abortion and gay activism. These things to God are an abomination and caused judgement and destruction of nations in the past. It does not mean that America will not survive as a whole but to me it will mean we will be corrected the harsh way. We had our chance on our own as a country to do it the easy way.
I don't stress about it too much anymore, I simply try to develop a deeper relationship with Christ. Whether I live through such a judgement or not will not matter as long as when I die (sooner or later anyways) I can stand before Christ and look Him in the face without shame because I know I tried my best. I have to say that I have been blessed more then I could ever imigined just for being genuine and trying as best I can to be Christ-like.
THANK YOU!!!!
I also believe that Islam is the Devil's answer to Christianity. If you look at the perversion of the original Jewish/Christian teachings and the often quite opposite teachings, what else can you believe..once you leave PC behind.
"I also believe that Islam is the Devil's answer to Christianity. If you look at the perversion of the original Jewish/Christian teachings and the often quite opposite teachings, what else can you believe..once you leave PC behind."
The "devil" tempted Christ with what??? The devil knows scripture better than most Christians and he works both sides of the fence.
He tempted Christ with the very things that Islam promises for the after life: worldly possessions (ok, for Christ it was more like the whole world but, we're talking desert nomads here).
"He tempted Christ with the very things that Islam promises for the after life: worldly possessions (ok, for Christ it was more like the whole world but, we're talking desert nomads here)."
If he the devil tempted Christ with the "whole world" then that is what he will be offering to the rest of us. The devil is going down and wants to take as many of us as he possibly can and war and killing is not his only method of operation. Christ said "fear" not when you hear of wars and rumors of wars... Now if it is not war we are to fear then what the "peace"????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.