On July 20, 2008, the pastor of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's home church, Larry Kroon, delivered a sermon called "Sin Is Personal To God." Kroon, the senior pastor of the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church in Wasilla, Alaska, used the book of Zephanaiah as his reference point for discussing "that great day of the Lord when God will finally bring closure to human history... a day of wrath." According to Kroon, "all things and all people" are going to bear the brunt of God's "intense anger." "There's anger with God," he proclaimed. "He takes sin personal."
Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, warns God "is gonna strike out his hand against" America
Kroon placed Zephaniah in a modern context, warning that the sinful habits of Americans would invite the wrath of God. "And if Zephaniah were here today," Kroon bellowed, "he'd be saying, 'Listen, [God] is gonna deal with all the inhabitants of the earth. He is gonna strike out His hand against, yes, Wasilla; and Alaska; and the United States of America. There's no exceptions here -- there's none. It's all.'"
Kroon's sermon, which I first reported on my blog and at The Nation's Campaign Matters blog, can be heard by clicking the play button on the player below:
A full transcript is here.
While Kroon has cautioned his parishioners against the mass marketed End Times prophecies of Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, he has nonetheless invoked doomsday scenarios that mirror those on the pages of Lindsey and LaHaye's bestselling tracts.
"It's so very possible that God, instead of responding by granting spiritual renewal and sustained prosperity," Kroon said in a sermon on July 13, 2008, "could just as easily...it's conceivable that He could just as easily, for example, raise up a revived, prosperous and powerful Communist Russia with a web of alliances across the Middle East. And our gas pumps would go dry. The dollar would collapse. And the markets would crash. The kayak could go upside down. And it could happen in a matter of weeks. That could happen. It could happen by this fall."
Palin joined Wasilla Bible Church after leaving Wasilla Assembly of God, a Pentecostal church where she delivered a controversial sermon asking her audience to pray that the war in Iraq is "God's plan." When she is working in Alaska's capitol, she worships at the Juneau Christian Center, another Pentecostal church where charismatic displays like speaking in tongues and dancing in the spirit are encouraged. Palin describes herself as a "Bible-believing Christian."
Palin's presence at Wasilla Bible Church has not been confirmed for the days Kroon warned of God "striking out his hand against... the United States of America" and "rais[ing] up" an alliance of nations to ruin America.
I was struck by the Rev. Kroon's reference to the book of Zephania as justification for his prediction. In my KJV Bible, Zephania was prophesizing God"s severe judgement against Judah. I found no mention of the U.S.A.
Part 3
They're out of touch because they
have confined themselves to a dogma whose logic lacks
more than good sense, it lacks the teachings of God's
great goodness, and love, and giving -- and they're finally
sick to death of it.
Each day that the clergy reminds youth of God's revenge
and anger and damnation upon them -- while rarely if
ever finding room to speak of His grace and love
and kindness and fairness and goodness and forgiveness
-- it drives that many more young people away from what
the American church has become: a place to go to be
severely reprimanded and reminded to FEAR God --
and plenty.
But now comes youth with its own sermon. The lies, the
deceit, the fear-mongering, all of these are dead. Their impact
is on over and done. A nation of youth is up here with the reflux
of fear in its throat and its not having anymore of it.
It is time for American government and the American clergy
to shut up and listen -- to youth, if they are able. Youth is the new
government and the INTERNET is where it goes to "church".
Anyone who watched 84,000 people crowd a football stadium
to hear Barack Obama speak and who still doesn't get it
probably never will.
Any chance the clergy once had of reaching out with
love and understanding and acceptance of all
people and religions and colors and sexual
persuasions, etc., it blew. It isn't trusted or believed
in anymore because instead of a gospel that primarily
celebrates God, it dotes almost exclusively on fearing
God, on His hate and revenge, His punshiments, Hell
and eternal damnation. Who wants to hear that after
being up all night with the baby, getting no sleep,
going to work anyway -- both jobs -- coming home at
9pm to make dinner, and finding out there's not any
milk for the kids' breakfast? Or learning that the baby's
sick again just after opening the letter explaining how
sorry the insurance company is to have canceled
their insurance policy and denying the thousands of
dollars in claims even 3 jobs won't pay?
Only one man had the keen insight and great
judgment to embrace youth and its new church,
Barack Obama.
Oh, the clergy's despicable use of fear will continue to
be hard at work the poor souls who have been irretrievably
brainwashed by such garbage as the suggestion that
AIDS is God's revenge on homosexuals, but the new
youth is in touch with a new world, the whole world, all
of its citizens and cultures and religions and countries
and beliefs and morals and in a way the American
clergy just doesn't get.
I have a question for Sarah Palin and Pastor
Larry Kroon in reference to AIDS being one of God's
punishments....
A married man with 4 kids has a fling with another
man 10 years into his marriage. It turns him off and
he immediately knows he will never try this again.
However, he contracts AIDS in the process, and
before he is aware of it, he also infects his wife.
Now what I'm trying to understand here is why God
punishes the wife also? What did she do? Couldn't
He have just told the disease, "Ooops, not her, she's
straight and didn't do anything to anger me and for
which she should be punished"?
Then there are the 4 kids -- who have now lost 2
parents in death to AIDS. Does God feel all better
now that He's cut off his nose to spite his face?
It is the invention of these silly stories and the
outrageous disrespect and contempt for youth's
mind that has sent them in search of a new church
outside of America. And they have found it, in the
INTERNET, where they can discover many truths,
explore infinite cultures and ideas and religions and
governments and choose from among these any
combination that suits their fancy.
People like Palin and her pastor who believe in the End Times, are people who believe it justice, righteousness, and have moral convictions unlike the majority of our country these days, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't agree that those characteristics belong in the white house. Is justice not the sole foundation of our country??
Can there really so many brain-seized American citizens? Can they actually be so frightened of a man with a tan? Is that Christian? Is it American? How are these people different from the Taliban? The Taliban is sure the world is full of demons too. This is such a profoundly anti-Christian pov, you would think the phrase "Anti-Christ" might occur.
These people are full of suffering. How do we rescue them from their desperate longing for drama? Historically people long for crusades when their life otherwise has no meaning. How has this happened? How can they sit in beautiful Alaska and say their God's creation has nothing for them and is evil? St. Fransis, who truely modeled his life on the life of Christ, felt the whole world and every being in it his brothers and sisters.
I for one am a major supporter of allowing creationism
to be taught in our Biology classes, with this one condition:
that a reciprocal agreement can be reached in which the
clergy allows evolution to be taught at Sunday School.
Maybe she had her fingers crossed when reading that commandment in The Ten Commandments which says we ought not to :bear false witness."
jb
Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave: New Video Documentary: Bruce Wilson; currently on HuffPo page One.
ALL churches and places of worship need to educate themselves & their congregants so that congregants can make their own INFORMED choices.