Of Ebola and Fundamentalist Fantasies about Being Enslaved by Sodomites

Rick_Wiles
Rick Wiles, who has previously claimed that America is turning into a godless, pagan cesspool of Free Mason fascism, fantasized that Miley Cyrus had sex with a demon and sold her soul to Satan, and called President Barack Obama a “devil from hell,” who is “emulating the antichrist,” is now fantasizing about being enslaved by sodomites.

Somebody needs to tell this guy to chill.

Take a listen to Wiles’ fantasies courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

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If Barry Soetoro’s socialist Democrats win, against all odds and common sense and history, we’ll know that America’s elections are rigged,” he said. “On the other hand, if the mac daddy socialist Democratic party gets an old-fashioned thumping at the polls, it still doesn’t matter: Mr. Obama will simply crack down on all opposition, use government surveillance agencies to spy on his opponents, he’ll continue to issue presidential decrees and ignore the Congress, and rule the country like a dictator. Nothing’s going change, except that he’s really going to step it up as a dictator.

Apparently, being “left behind” will lead to the fulfillment of Wiles’ most secret desires:

“A consuming fire is coming,” Wiles warns. Turning Old Testament imagery – where people who turn away from the Lord are “vomited forth” from the land – on its head (perhaps because he hasn’t actually ever read the Old Testament), Wiles warns that “this country tasted of the goodness of the Lord and then spit him out.”

Contrary to Wiles’ inversion, Regina Schwartz notes the manner in which the biblical narrative paints “inclinations toward polytheism” as “sexual infidelity” and how Israel itself “is castigated for ‘whoring after’ other gods, thereby imperiling her ‘purity.'” The land itself must be kept clean “or its inhabitants will be ejected, ‘vomited’ out of the land…when Israel is not monotheistic, it is filthy and it pollutes the land” (Lev 20.22-25). When Israel worships a foreign deity, she is a harlot, the land is made barren, and she is ejected from the land” (Jer 3.2-3).

At any rate, Wiles further jumbles things (after all, the Garden of Eden was still a Garden after Adam and Eve got ejected) by claiming that after the Lord is spit out (I’m thinking he is a wimpy deity), the neighborhood goes to hell:

We’ve been taken over by homosexuals and sodomites, and lesbians and transvestites, and a bunch of communists and socialists and atheists and God-haters. And this country is about to be judged.

From Shining City on the Hill to Gay Massage Parlor on the Hill?

And yes, this means what you think it means. The “judgment has already started”:

If you’re here when this judgment strikes, you’re going to be consumed. The Lord has told me – the Lord has told me – vast numbers are going to be consumed and the survivors will be slaves. That is the future that is facing America if this country does not repent and the time is ticking away and there are just a few grains of sand remaining.

Rutroh! I don’t think there will be a film version of Rick Wiles’ “left behind” visions.

Wiles is so far out there that even Focus on the Family has come down on his extremism, not without a measure of hypocrisy. You see, James Dobson, the guy who founded Focus on the Family, warned in this October’s newsletter no less – just like Rick Wiles – that God will destroy America on account of sexual perversion – but he gets a pass while Wiles gets called out on the carpet.

When Wiles said of Ebola that it “may be the great attitude adjustment that I believe is coming,” that “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion,” Ron Reno, Focus on the Family’s worldwide ministry’s vice president of orthodoxy responded in a statement:

Since suffering and misery have been part of the human experience throughout recorded history, publicly speculating on God’s motives in allowing specific outbreaks of disease is both unwise and unhelpful.

Interesting that Reno does not have some harsh words for Dobson, who left Focus on the Family in 2003 and founded Family Talk in 2010. After all, there is nothing inherently unbiblical about God sending disease as punishment, and AIDS as divine punishment is a common trope of the Right. Even the Liberian Council of Churches even said that, “God is angry with Liberia.”

The Religious Right has even proved the connection with this handy diagram:

David Barton's Sin Theory of Disease

David Barton’s Sin Theory of Disease

Or maybe Reno hasn’t read his Bible either.

This theme that America will be destroyed for its sins has become so commonplace that the surprise is not that Wiles should tie it to Ebola but that Focus on the Family should take exception to it. Isn’t it a bit late to pretend compassion plays any role in Religious Right thinking?

Shouldn’t Focus on the Family be castigating itself – and others – for threatening divine wrath rather than Jesus’ forgiveness and cheek turning? Shouldn’t the message be, “Well, there is a lot of sexual perversion out there, but as Jesus says, we must turn the other cheek and not cast the first stone.”

Nothing at all about either the Republican or Religious Right response to Ebola has been helpful. Saying it has anything at all to do with people having “un-approved” sex is just ridiculous. One has nothing to do with the other.

From Rick Joyner’s claim that some Christians have power over Ebola and can make it go away by the fact of their mere presence, to Kenneth Copeland ordering the “murderous demon virus” Ebola to bow down to Jesus, the Religious Right’s response has been a theater of the absurd.

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) says President Obama should send the Peace Corps, not the U.S. military, to West Africa, to combat Ebola. But whey send anyone other than Joyner and his pals? If Joyner has power over Ebola, and Ebola is demonic in nature and tied to sexual perversion, why does not Joyner have power over both? Why are we having this discussion instead of simply watching Joyner work his miracles? People threatened by Ebola would be happy, Rick Joyner would no doubt be happy to be acting like a boss, as the kids say, and Rick Wiles would be happy (maybe) that he’s been freed from his pending enslavement by sodomites.

Sounds like a win-win to me. Why don’t we do it, then? Because we can’t. Because the Religious Right is not about hope and love. It’s about fear and hate. Love does not motivate the base; hate does. Hope does not send them to the polls to oust Democrats; fear does. The Religious Right claims to denounce worldly things like sex, but there is nothing more worldly than grasping schemers like Rick Wiles and his Religious Right pals.



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