Category Archives: Sermons
In Their Own Words: Conflating Patriotism And The Gospel
To follow up on that last post, here’s a sermon from Truth Baptist Church entitled In one Accord – Patriotic to God and Country.
There’s really too much here to catalog all of it. After some special music, the pastor starts out by claiming to have gotten his message straight from God while driving down the highway reading his Bible (yes, you read that right), then there’s lionization of patriotism as the ultimate in Christian virtue, sales pitch for the pastor’s book, random congregational pledge to the flag, and then…well…it just gets fun from there.
(Yes, this is the entire sermon, I felt like editing it down would ruin the overall feel of it. Feel free to stop at whatever point you actually start to get physically ill.)
Comparing Themselves Amongst Themselves
Gog and Magog
Other than the Antichrist himself (and his mark, of course), perhaps no other apocalyptic reference has been been given so many different possible interpretations by fundamentalists as the threatening specters of Gog and Magog.
Who could these amassed radical anti-Israel forces be? A Revived Communist Russia? A Fascist Nuclear Iran? An Uzbekistan Buzkashi Team? And it’s only fair to assume that the Catholics will be involved somehow or another.
Whatever Gog and Magog are or were they’re absolutely perfect for fundamentalist sermons. Just about any news of military maneuvering somewhere vaguely northish of Israel can be turned into an angel getting ready to blast out the end of the world. And since somebody over there is inevitably flexing their military muscles at any given point in time, it’s pretty easy to keep the eschatological ball rolling.
As for me, my money is on Switzerland. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch the closest.