“What I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”
The flood is merely Act One. Read on : This God first “hardens the heart of Pharaoh” to make sure the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the plea of Moses to let his people go. Then because Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so people cannot drink its water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied with the results, God sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture them; rains hail and fire and thunder on them destroys the trees and plants of the field until nothing green remains; orders every first-born child to be slaughtered, from the first-born of Pharaoh right on down to “the first-born of the maidservant behind the mill.” An equal-murderous God, you might say. The massacre continues until “there is not a house where one was not dead.” While the Egyptian families mourn their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God’s thirst for blood is satisfied, God pauses to rest—and boasts: “I have made sport of the Egyptians.”
Violence: the sport of God. God, the progenitor of shock and awe.
Lt. General Jerry Boykin’s Secret “Warrior” Recruitment Program
As one reads or recites the facts surrounding Abu Ghraib, one is tempted to ask how the American military, with its code of ethics as reflected in the high traditions of West Point and our Naval Academy—where men and women are imbued in the tradition of honor— could have turned into such a ruthless band of sadists? The answer is: They didn’t. Someone else did it.
There is evidence the U.S. military, like the Southern Baptist Convention before it, has been targeted as an institution to be taken over and replaced with dominionists who are decidedly less educated and less honorable. These are men and women who may be willing to do anything to further the cause of world domination.
There is also evidence dominionists have infiltrated the military with willing personnel and that the military has similarly infiltrated the churches.
The next chapter of this story begins with Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, the Pentagon’s senior military intelligence official. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1971. That same year, he was commissioned in the U.S. Army where he rose through the ranks to Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) Fort Bragg, N.C. and then in June 2003 to the present to Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence at the Pentagon.[19]
There is no question that Lt. Gen. Boykin is a brave soldier and he is undoubtedly a personable man. But in searching through data available on the web, it appears that while the general has spent thirty three years in the military, he has had very little formal military education with the exception of a year at the Army War College in 1990-1991.[20]
Boykin became the focus of media reports when he spoke about his involvement in the war on terrorism at twenty-three Baptist and Pentecostal churches across the country, accompanied by two military aides. According to a 10-month internal investigation conducted by the defense department’s deputy inspector general for investigations and reported by the Washington Post, Boykin received reimbursement for his travel costs from one of the sponsoring church groups and failed to report that fact. He wore his uniform and gave the impression that he was representing the military. [21]
The investigation confirmed that Boykin said that the U.S. military is recruiting a spiritual army that will draw strength from a greater power to defeat its enemy.[22] In fact, he told the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla. on June 30, 2002, “What I’m here to do today is to recruit you to be warriors of God’s kingdom.”[23]
Wait a minute! He was speaking to Christians—so he was not seeking to evangelize them to become Christians. What then was he recruiting for? If Boykin is a dominionist, then those words have a concrete meaning: He was recruiting soldiers to fight a war to set up God’s Kingdom on earth![24]
After all, Ken Hemphill, the Southern Baptist’s national strategist for Empowering Kingdom Growth, (EKG) spoke to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee recently defining the role of religion for them. According to him, church is about advancing the Kingdom of God. He said, “Southern Baptists must lead in awakening the church to be on mission with God for the redemption of the nations.” Hemphill, quoting a passage from the Bible said there is one biblical sign yet to be fulfilled: “This good news of the Kingdom will be proclaimed in the entire world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”[25]
When we consider Boykin’s speaking and recruitment tour along with the fact he was addressing Baptists and Pentecostals who are the backbone of the religious right dominionist movement, alarm bells should go off. It may be that the Army’s Inspector General’s office is simply ignorant of the goals of the religious right, but there is far more evidence that link the hard right religious world with the U.S. Military.
Boykin not only went on a speaking tour to recruit “warriors,” but prior to the tour, he’d invited a select group of Southern Baptist pastors to meet him at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, NC on April 22-23 of 2003. According to the promotional materials sent out to the group of Southern Baptist pastors, they would be given unprecedented access to the military base while being recruited for the denomination’s “Super FAITH Force Multiplier” program. Boykin’s invitation was extended in a letter authored by the Rev. Bobby H. Welch, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Daytona Beach, Fla.[26]
The planned meeting was scaled back after attorneys for Americans United for Separation of Church and State complained that Boykin was “using his official position to advance the religious mission of the Southern Baptist Convention’s FAITH Force Multipliers program.”[27] But keep the Rev. Bobby H. Welch’s name in mind as he is a prominent player in this saga.
Some months later, following the “scaled back” meeting at Fort Bragg, Lt. General Boykin’s name appeared in the second controversy I mentioned above. In October of 2003, Boykin and/or his Department of Defense bosses decided if he couldn’t bring the churches to the military bases, then he could take his program to the churches. But this stirred the largest media controversy. Some organizations began calling for Boykin’s resignation.[28]
Immediately the hard right dominionist church world vigorously jumped to Boykin’s defense. Most of Boykin’s supporters are believed to be members of the secret Council on National Policy.[29] In an excellent article, Deborah Caldwell, a senior editor of Belief Net, revealed that among Boykin’s “staunchest supporters were Focus on the Family’s James Dobson; religious broadcaster Pat Robertson; the Family Research Council; the Christian Coalition and the Rev. Bobby Welch.”[30]
The Rev. Bobby Welch Rescues the General
Rev. Bobby Welch wrote a heated column in defense of his friend. “Who do these so-called ‘watchdogs’ think they are ‘barking’ at anyway?” He wrote, “Boykin…has again and again tried to give his life for this country…he has never been stabbed in the back by an American. Not until recently.”[31]
But what Bobby Welch didn’t say was that his Southern Baptist church in Daytona, Fla. was the first church in America to introduce the significant military concept of “force multiplier” into the churches. In fact, Welch and his Associate Pastor, Doug Williams coined the words, “FAITH Force Multiplier,” and “Kingdom Warriors,” conjuring up imagery of soldiers fighting for God’s “Kingdom”—the same concept Lt. General Wm. Boykin used as he brought his message to the churches.
Welch and Williams,[32] in partnership with LifeWay Christian Resources, “developed a strategy to help equip churches to fulfill the Great Commission in July, 1997.”[33] The significant thing about Welch’s partner, LifeWay Christian Resources, is that it is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention and it owns and operates 119 LifeWay Christian Stores, LifeWay’s E-commerce operation and other businesses and is one of the world’s largest publishers of Christian magazines and literature. LifeWay’s combined monthly readership ranks in the millions.[34] The publishing headquarters encompass more than one million square feet of floor space. In 1999-2000 LifeWay’s E-commerce operation handled more than 104,000 online orders via the Internet.[35]
When Bobby Welch spearheaded a drive to insert military concepts into the Southern Baptist churches, he had the backing of an enormously wealthy corporation.[36] He flew over a million miles, crisscrossing America to get his message across to the churches. Yet his “message” is essentially a secret known only to the Southern Baptists and Pentecostals recruited into the program, which now numbers more than 6,000 churches.
Like his friend Jerry Boykin, Bobby Welch started life in humble circumstances. He graduated from Jacksonville (Ala.) State University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Like Boykin, nationalism is important to him. He is a decorated Viet Nam veteran and he is known for his “God and Country” speaking engagements. He is author of You, the Warrior Leader.[37]
But perhaps the most important fact about the Rev. Bobby Welch is this: he was elected president of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention in June, 2004, just a few months after he penned his defense of “Jerry” Boykin.[38]
Bobby Welch stepped up to the helm of a vast communication network. The Southern Baptist Convention has at its disposal the means to communicate electronically with huge numbers of its members by utilizing its websites and by utilizing its connections to likeminded broadcasters and that is not to mention its ability to communicate through its publications through the U.S. mail. Recent news articles posted on its website inform its members how to access the politicians who are working on SBC approved bills coming up for vote in congress and in state legislative bodies.[39]
Southern Baptist churches have also apparently participated in live nationwide simulcasts, broadcast to over 2,500 churches.[40]
The latest airing occurred on September 19, 2004 and featured House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in a nationwide broadcast in a futile attempt to muster support for the so called “marriage protection amendment” that would ban same-sex marriage contracts. A BP report published on LifeWay’s web site said:
“The two-hour rally came just days before a scheduled Sept. 30 vote on the marriage amendment in the House of Representatives. The amendment, which would protect traditional marriage and ban same-sex marriage, has 130 sponsors but needs 290 votes — two-thirds of the House — to pass. If passed, it would then require passage by two-thirds of the Senate and ratification by three-quarters of the states.
“DeLay urged those watching to contact their representatives and tell them to vote for the amendment. He also encouraged amendment supporters not to give up; in July, the amendment was filibustered in the Senate.”[41]
Church members could receive the telecast either via a webcast or satellite and the DVD can now be purchased at We Vote Values. The broadcast was titled, “Battle for Marriage III.” Subsequently, the House of Representatives rejected the amendment.
Nevertheless an ambitious “Million Christians’ March” was planned for October 15, 2004 on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in support of the traditional definition of marriage. Crimson-colored “Mayday for Marriage” T-shirts will be sold. The color crimson was chosen so that it would look like the blood of Christ covering the D.C. mall from a photograph taken above the event.[42]
What Do Southern Baptists Mean When They Say “Kingdom Warriors”?
Bobby Welch now has a 16 million member draft pool from which “warriors” can be drawn, enlisted, trained and sent out to fight the fight of faith. But who do they fight against? In an Agape Press article by Ed Vitagliano, titled, “In the Culture War, the Church Must Never Flee the Scene,” the enemy is described variously as the “assaults of wickedness” and “evil in this nation.”[43] But at last the truth comes out as Vitagliano writes:
“The battlefields on which Christians fight are not European hedgerows or Pacific islands, nor are they the winding, icy roads of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, or the desert sands of Iraq. Believers battle in corporate boardrooms, in university lecture halls, before community school boards, around water coolers, in political campaigns, and over coffee at family gatherings. Those battles must never cease, nor must the church ever flee from the scenes of fiercest conflict.” [44] (Emphasis mine.)
A LifeWay’s ad on the same page as Vitagliano’s article pushes itself into the piece and offers itself as a “recommended book.” It is Sean Hannity’s: Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War Over Liberalism. At last the Southern Baptist Convention has tipped its hand. They are recruiting warriors to remove all liberals from political participation!
John Kramp, the Interim Vice President of LifeWay Church Resources division, said the division attempts to “transform churches into powerful Kingdom entities” that change people and cultures.[45] (Emphasis mine.)
Ken Hemphill (the national strategist for the Southern Baptist Convention’s “Empowering Kingdom Growth” program) defined the term “Kingdom of God” to mean, “God’s rule and reign on earth—in, around and through His people.” He went further: “The Kingdom of God is about God’s right to invade our human existence with His Kingdom authority.”[46]
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines the word “kingdom” in its usual meaning as “a politically organized community, having a monarchical form of government usually headed by a king.”[47]
If the Southern Baptists intend to change American “culture” as Kramp states, by taking over and changing what is or is not taught in schools, or taking over the political institutions of this nation and the laws of this nation as a means of setting up a new “kingdom”—these are subversive goals and are not legitimate religious purposes and their tax exemption status should be voided.
It is one thing for men to humbly seek to worship God; it’s quite another thing for men to declare they are God’s representatives (or regents) on earth and therefore the rest of America must follow their edicts! This latter attitude is not freedom to worship—it is coercion! It is also the means to a national coup and it is evil and subversive to the core. Subversion under the fraudulent guise of “religious beliefs,” using the U.S. mails and communication systems, must be stopped for what it is: an unconstitutional means to destroy the United States of America by turning our nation into a theocratic dictatorship and steering the wealth of this nation into their own pockets.
Source: Yurica Report
These days, where is General Jerry?
His wife of 28 years left him, saying he was a religious fanatic.
He eventually got promoted to be the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone.
Cambone is one of the gold-plated neocon nut jobs, so they must have made a good fit.
And Boykin loved to help his Zionist buddies. A December 9, 2003 item in The Guardian (UK) connected Boykin with secret Israeli counterinsurgency assistance in Iraq, allegedly including assassination squads.
If you were a betting person, you could bet money that those Israeli assassination squads were in Iraq killing Americans, to help inflame American blood lust and guarantee that we'd stay there to get revenge.
The general retired in 2007 to teach, and give lectures like these, where he brags about killing people for his gawd.
"Kill one person, and they'll call you a murderer."
"Kill a million, and they'll call you a conqueror."
"Kill eveybody, and they'll call you God."
Sounds like the god these fools are worshipping is the one called Jehovah.
