Mahdi Waters
May 2nd, 2011He Sleeps With the Fishes
Osama (I keep typing “Obama” by mistake) is dead. Hooray, hooray. It’s good news. No doubt about it. But here’s my question: what has he done to us lately?
As I understand it, under President Bush, America and her allies neutered Obama…I mean “Osama”…years ago. Al Qaeda has been on the run for quite some time, and they don’t get a lot done. So I’m not all that excited about Osama’s death. He wasn’t running the show.
There are some good things about it. It shows that there is a price to pay for killing US civilians. We didn’t quit. It shows that even a dainty, pampered, self-adoring amateur like Obama will support this kind of action. I’m also glad they dumped Osama’s body in the ocean, because now there is no hope of building a mosque over it. It will probably lead to Osama Elvis sightings, but that’s better than having them put him in a nitrogen-filled glass case at the Ground Zero Mosque.
Still, Osama was not our biggest problem. Right now, the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to assemble a coalition of Islamist nations, and they’re probably going to succeed. And we’re helping them. Our tireless terrorist-busting President is pulling yet another Carter tribute. Carter gave Iran to the thugs, and Obama is handing them a big chunk of the rest of the Muslim world. It’s funny how our two least Jew-friendly Presidents of the last twenty-five years have both ended up handing giant tracts of real estate to Israel’s sworn enemies.
Bush made the mistake of supporting land for peace, and so did Clinton, but they were nothing like Carter or Obama. There is no longer much room to doubt that Carter is an anti-Semite, and Obama has been extremely bold in changing our policy toward Israel. He has made it clear that he thinks we have been too good to Israel, and he has established a pattern of humiliating the Israeli Prime Minister. Say what you want about Bush and Clinton. Neither of them would have criticized the US for favoring Israel to the point where more “even-handedness” was needed. Obama did that.
The Muslim Brotherhood concerns me. It seems that their aims are the same as Al Qaeda’s, but they are much more effective, and they are using common sense. It’s much smarter to take over a Muslim nation and use it than to slaughter American civilians and invite a crushing response.
In the past, the US and Israel have generally benefited when Muslims didn’t get along. When they fought among themselves, they didn’t have much energy to fight us. Now we may be looking at a multi-nation alliance that is cohesive enough to deal us severe blows, possibly of a biological or nuclear nature.
Perry Stone thinks the Antichrist will be a Muslim. He believes the Antichrist will be the Twelfth Imam, AKA the Mahdi. Many Muslims hoped Osama would turn out to be the Mahdi. The Bible also tells us the Antichrist will rule ten nations, or at least that’s how people interpret it. Right now, the Muslim brotherhood is putting nations together. Are they building the Antichrist’s confederacy?
God and Satan have a way of rotating their employees. Elijah arose, and then his anointing–his supernatural “commission”–fell on Elisha. I suspect that Satan got everything he wanted out of Osama, so he gave him up to die and go on to get what he deserves. Now someone else is on the rise, and we don’t know who it is. Osama was Madonna; the new person will be Lady Gaga. Maybe.
God is going to severely squash the nations that divide Israel, and the United States is currently one of those nations. We need to get Obama out of the White House and replace him with someone who will support God’s nation. We need to quit voting for legislators who don’t believe in prophecy. America needs to repent. People need to turn back to God, start walking by faith, quit killing their unborn children, stop glorifying themselves, and get into the flow of God’s blessings.
I think people who walk by faith will come through the upcoming economic and political upheavals unscathed. In the Revelation, Jesus told the destroyers not to touch the oil or the wine. Oil represents the anointing and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Believers who are full of the Spirit are like vessels filled with new wine (this is what the miracle at the wedding of Cana means). Maybe Jesus was telling the destroyers to shake the world but pass by his faithful, as the destroyer passed over the homes of the Hebrews in Egypt. I think we’ll be fine, and people will hate us for it. But the rest of the US, well, that depends on how we treat the Jews, the poor, the unborn, and so on. And socialism is not charity, so voting for liberals is not the way to be good to the poor.
Wow, read Psalm 105 and see how it lines up with our current situation. It’s all about God’s people, being enriched and delivered during hard times, and it’s about the plagues that hit Egypt but missed the Jews. I found it accidentally by Googling the bit about the oil and the wine, and it says something very similar: “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”
It turns out Revelation 6:6 is the relevant verse. I’m not enough of a prophecy scholar to tell you whether it has to do with the Tribulation or the current shaking, but I think the principle is eternal. God’s people are often delivered from the mess around them. “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand and thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” Noah, Joseph, Jesus at the cliff in Nazareth, Lot and his family…even Peter, standing on the Sea of Galilee.
I know I sound like a kook, but there is so much I’m not telling people, they really can’t judge. Last night one of the young people from my church called me about bin Laden, and we started talking about evidence that God is real and that Jesus is the Messiah, and even I was amazed at the words that came out of me. God has show me a ton of stuff. He’s up there, believe me. More importantly, he’s down here.
There are worse things than sounding like a kook. I probably have forty years left, if I get to live my entire span. That time is going to pass in a flash. I still remember watching new episodes of Batman and Mission Impossible. I don’t perceive the passed time as very great, but I know these things happened over 40 years ago. In what will seem like a minute, in the same way, I’ll be looking back at today. I’m going to die. It’s as good as done. Why should I sweat about what people think of me here? They’re as good as dead, too. None of this is permanent. And when it’s over, we’ll all know who was right.
May 3rd, 2011 at 5:36 AM
So, how do you feel about the framing and railroading of Edgar Steele?
May 3rd, 2011 at 11:14 AM
I think your writing is reaching the people it needs to reach, Steve. At the very least, those drawn to it are likely to benefit from it. I have. Please keep it up!
May 4th, 2011 at 2:24 PM
“God is going to severely squash the nations that divide Israel, and the United States is currently one of those nations. We need to get Obama out of the White House and replace him with someone who will support God’s nation.”
Yet another reason to like Palin, who is pro-life/religious/pro-Israel if I ain’t mistaken.
And yes, I’m a semi-deranged Palin fan, so this is hardly an objective opinion. But still.
May 5th, 2011 at 3:20 AM
I have just been reading David Irving’s biography of Josef Goebbels. I have to take it a little bit at a time, as it really creeps me out to read about his (Goebbels’s) moral degeneration proceeding apace, by the numbers. Goebbels , and Himmler, and Goering, were much more anti-Jew than Hitler. Of course, Hitler was in charge, and let them do it, and so bore ultimate responsibility.
I can see why Mr. Irving is Persona Non Grata in Germany these days, as well as among the Jews. He seems to be an honest man, who calls them as he sees them, In the book I mentioned he described bad behavior of organized ethnic Jewry and organized ethnic Germans. No wonder both groups are pissed off at him!
May 5th, 2011 at 8:27 PM
A perspective on cheering Osama’s demise: http://www.ou.org/public_affairs/weblog_single/85738
May 5th, 2011 at 9:25 PM
I Googled “Edgar Steele,” and I came up with a Wikipedia article stating that he was a spokesman for Prussian Blue, the famous Jew-hating twin singers. I have no idea what his legal problems are, but he has apparently done some vile things in his life.
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It amazes me that there are people dumb enough to think blue-eyed Europeans are the master race. If we’re so great, you have to wonder why Asians and Jews kill us on the standardized tests we designed.
May 5th, 2011 at 9:28 PM
Regarding celebrating the death of an enemy (or any defeat suffered by an enemy), my conclusion is that you should keep it muted and tasteful. Minimize it. The Bible says that if you rejoice over your enemy’s misfortune, it may be undone.
May 6th, 2011 at 3:25 PM
Long but relevant (and sanitized for privacy) transcript of a Facebook dialogue I’ve had over the last day concerning rejoicing over an enemy. Doubtful that 20 readers reading this lengthy bit will hammer your bandwidth much. It’s meant as food for thought to reconsider the notion of “not speaking ill of the dead” as it leads to the discovery of the conclusive scriptural support in Proverbs 11:10.
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My Facebook status was the punchline. Dialogue follows.
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A new drink called the Bin Laden: Two shots and a splash of water.
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*ND* oh stop it, he is dead now. we humans have no place to speak or joke on dead peaple, once they cross over, we should be banned from speaking on them. We shall let God do the judging and let things go.
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Aaron The restriction on speaking ill of the dead may be based on the assumption that death was a kapparah, i.e., it was an atonement for sins. This atonement, however, is predicated on his having repented before his death, and that repentance requires both restitution for the harm caused and reconciliation with the victim. If the perpetrator had not reconciled with his victim, no atonement was achieved. And of such an unrepentant sinner the verse teaches, “The memory of the just is blessed; but the name of the wicked shall rot” (Proverbs 10:7).
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The tradition of not speaking ill of the dead comes from “De mortuis nil nisi bonum”, by 3rd century Greek philosopher Diogenes Laërtius, most noted for being an Epicurian (opposed to divine intervention, ergo anathema to Jewish ideals) biographer of the Greek philosophers. In other words, he had a vested reason, as a philosopher to protect himself and those he put on pedestals from having their lives examined. Some say DL was quoting Chilon of Sparta. Chilon was a Spartan politician from the 6th century BC, to whom the militarization of Spartan society and the enslavement of Helots was attributed. Spartan society could not function without slavery.
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It is incomprehensible to me to imagine that OBL’s death provided atonement by any standard. As “shall” is future-tense, I think there’s a stronger argument from Proverbs that our tradition permits reviling those committed to our annihilation. I wouldn’t consider grafting the foreign notion of “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” to one whose name should rot.
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While you may not like the practice, you may wish to reconsider whether it is scripturally prohibited.
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See also: http://www.ou.org/public_affairs/weblog_single/85738
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When I have the opportunity, I’ll gratefully purchase a drink for the next American soldier I see.
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*ND* Aaron you just wrote an essay, will respond when I get to my laptop, on my blackberry 🙂
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*RS* Aaron — kudos!! Your breadth of knowledge (Torah and secular) is amazing!!
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Aaron *RS* — that’s why I get paid the big bucks. 😉
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*SS* It is incomprehensible that if they had OBL’s body, they would have dragged it from land to ocean and then dumped the evidence into the open sea. Absurd! Are we all morons???????
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Aaron Anywhere on land would have become a shrine where OBL’s followers could worship. As I wrote earlier this week, they should have symbolically dumped the body in the Bay of Pigs.
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*ND* ?@ Aaron, I usually enjoy the long text you provide for your argument, but this time I have to disagree. For the fact it is not our place under any circumstance to speak evil of another person, let alone a dead man. I don’t care how evil he was, he is dead, God has done with him as he wanted and allowed him to do what he was to do in this world. Now it is over, now we learn from this and move on, not drag it on with childish jokes.
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Aaron I’ll also throw in some Sun Tzu: “If your opponent is quick to anger, seek to irritate him”.
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Aaron I also think the fear of ridicule after death is a great deterrent to considering evil.
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*ND* it’s respect of life and death, it is the realization that God is King and we have no say so after a person exits this world.
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*DM* *ND*, there are numerous instances in the Torah of the dead being defiled because of the evil they perpetrated in life. I imagine Aaron would be able to find the sources easier than me (’cause he often has them ready and waiting.) There is no basis in Torah to “not speak ill of the dead” when the person who died was evil in life. I wish Bin-Laden had had his body publicly defiled before his burial, but, of course, Obama wouldn’t want to upset the Muslims! Bin-Laden should burn forever in hell and his name should be likened to manure. End of story.
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*MF* ill take you up on that drink aaron i re enlisted this week
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Aaron Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is long ago perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.
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So OBL has no entitlement to honor or dignity, attributes meaningful only to the living.
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Proverbs 8 is clear that those who love death hate G-d. Shall we give honor in silence (and as I often say – qui tacet consentit – silence implies consent) to one who, by that definition, hated G-d and moved millions to follow? And maybe hundreds of millions of others to “tolerate” that ideology in mistaken “understanding” of a loathsome “ism”? Not reviling OBL puts a stumbling block before the blind by withholding the deterrent of shame. Instead, mark my words, there will be MANY children named Osama in the near future.
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Mercy to Agag was the seed of our near annihilation by his descendant Haman. The prophet Samuel didn’t merely slay Agag. He hacked him into pieces. One hacking was clearly enough to kill him, isn’t little bits overkill? Saul lost his monarchy for misplaced mercy. Saul regretted the mercy he showed Agag, begging Samuel, but it was too late.
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Elijah prophesied that the blood of the evil Ahab and wife Jezebel would be licked by dogs. II Kings 9:10 “And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.”
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I could probably find more.
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*ND* that is bit much don’t you think? That passage says nothing of what we are talking about.
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Aaron *MS*, what’s your pleasure?
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Aaron *ND*: I think it’s clear that scripture is filled with examples that clearly don’t support your assertion that the dead not be spoken ill of. While I agree that the average person probably deserves as much, there is little to support refraining from heaping shame on the evil and most of all on the evil who led millions of others to evil.
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*ND* The passage hints to your assertion, but is a hint that his blinded by the fact that it failed to state what you want it to say. It is a general statement, but what we are talking about is speaking evil of dead people.
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Aaron *ND*: Find me a passage that prohibits speaking ill of evil dead people. *MF*: When are you going to be in Pico Robertson? Beer? Single malt? Anejo Patron? A good cigar?
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*MF* beer and a cigar works lol and your families company of course its been a year or so since i have seen you last you tell me when to be there and i will be
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Aaron *MF*, we’ll have to enjoy our cigars away from my family, or at least downwind. 😉
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*MF* no problem i know how it goes. itll eb nice to see you again though
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*ND* there is not verse that I know of, Eclesiastes 12:7 states ” and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” hinting that God is in control of the spirit of the dead, but I don’t see any Biblical verse supporting our arguments.
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*DM* I think the best thing to do at this juncture is ask a [significant rabbi] what our tradition teaches. Until then, I have to agree with Aaron (which is something I don’t always do.)
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*SS* *MF*, you are awesome dude. Can I offer you some shots too? Call me: ###-###-####.
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*SS* *ND*: I got love for you. Just call me – number above!!!!!
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*SS* Aaron, They should a brought the body here, let anyone who wanted look have a look, then burned the sucker together with a wart hog – or without… Who cares, they hate us anyway!!!!!! laila tov.
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Aaron I may have found a clear piece of scripture on the matter: Proverbs 11:10 “When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth; and when the wicked perish, there is joy.” The Alshich (on discussing Psalms 5:11) qualifies verses about not rejoicing over the fall of an enemy to refer only to a personal enemy, but one whose evil is so much against G-d – the opposite feeling is in order – one should, in fact, rejoice. Psalms 5:11-12 “Hold them guilty, O God, let them fall by their own counsels; cast them down in the multitude of their transgressions; for they have rebelled against Thee. So shall all those that take refuge in Thee rejoice, they shall ever shout for joy, and Thou shalt shelter them.” Again, I’ll quote Proverbs 8 which mentions that those who love death hate G-d. National Geographic, certainly no tool of the rightwing, quotes OBL “We love death. The US loves life”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_VOjGXpyIU
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*ND* I will take those passages, good research!
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Aaron *ND*: Researching is what makes me happiest. When I was truant through much of junior high school, I spent the majority of my time in *** University’s library. Sadly, that library is no longer open to the public because of theft and EBAY. Knowing you, I knew wisdom from Mishlei (Proverbs) or Koheles (Ecclesiastes) would clinch the argument. 😉
May 9th, 2011 at 9:43 PM
I’m not going to pretend I read that whole thing, but I think I got the gist. I would certainly not deny that bin Laden deserves all the ridicule he can get. Here is the scripture that concerns me, however: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth , and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth : Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him. ” That is Proverbs 24:17-18
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I take that pretty literally. You and I have talked about Elijah’s rudeness to the Baal worshipers. You felt he was justified; after all, he was Elijah. I used to agree. But I noticed that not long after Elijah ridiculed the idolaters and falsely claimed he was the only servant God had left, some very bad things happened to him. Notably, he ended up running in terror from Jezebel, which had to be extremely humiliating.
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I now think Elijah screwed up. I’ve noticed that when Biblical figures blow it, the Bible doesn’t always say so. It sometimes relates the facts without expressing judgment. Maybe in this case, Elijah dropped the ball.
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Also, God seems to hate smugness, generally.
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As a person who has a real talent for insulting people, I am concerned that by indulging it, I might do myself a lot of harm.