http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Drives-the-Delusional-by-Robert-S-Becker-110104-99.html?show=votesJanuary 4, 2011 at 21:56:18
By Robert S. Becker
<snip>Revelation Rules, Everything
The bottom line: for believers, all of world history is God-driven, like life, without randomness or ambiguity. Who cares if the planet is 6000 or 6 billion years old, this divine chain rules: 1) Creation established Man (literally men) to lord over the Earth; 2) Original Sin ended Paradise but produced more divine grace with the redemption paid by Jesus, leading to 3) a crusading Universal Church, in its own terms eventually beset with Sins of Vanity so God inspired the Protestant Reformation. Thus, good Christians had to defy not just the corrupt, typically tyrant-friendly established churches (Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, whatever) but cross over, like Jordan, from the Old World to the New American Eden. Getting the drift?
Though this paradise was infected by savage heathens, a few centuries of brutal invasions led of course by pious priests and conquistadors, plus disease, cleared the American real estate. In rushed Pro-test-ants to repopulate, leading to W.A.S.P. dominance, with wandering ne'er-do-wells finishing the job by obeying manifest destiny. By 1945, a double dose of nasty world wars decimated world competition, and America the super-power emerged intact and ready to roll. Meanwhile, the new Jewish state could keep Muslim infidels at bay, which pleased all Biblical literalists as this step presaged the Rapture.
Can any true believer miss the overall logic and progress here, even if it's concocted all after the fact and oblivious to complexity, let alone our natural endowments and geographic immunity from overseas conflagrations? Or was that in the scheme, too? Except for one sneaky Kenyan black guy (a one-termer, for sure), American history celebrates triumphant white, mainly male, Protestant mastery (okay, with one Catholic).