McCain, Hagee, Parsley and CAIR

John Hagee certainly has some unusual ideas.

I'm glad he no longer writes for WND, as he once did regularly, because upon learning he believes Adolf Hitler was God's instrument to get the Jews back to the Middle East, I would be sorely tempted to discontinue his column.

For once, I can't fault John McCain for rejecting his endorsement.

However, there was another celebrity pastor whose endorsement was rejected by McCain that I must question.

His name is Rod Parsley, and, for the life of me, I can't see what he did wrong. In fact, Parsley has been excommunicated from the McCain campaign for expressing a standard, biblical Christian viewpoint about Islam.

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In fact, the only disagreement I would have with Parsley is in his endorsement of McCain!

Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, stands accused of calling Islam an "anti-Christ religion." He is also quoted as saying he would like to see "this false religion [Islam] destroyed." He also described Islam's prophet Muhammad as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."

To which I say: "Yeah, where's the controversy?"

Look, I know WND has Muslim readers around the world. I hear from many of them who agree with me on many of my positions. But, when you get right down to basics, I am a Christian who believes in the Bible. And the Bible tells me that all religions not biblically based are false religions and anti-Christ religions that need to be destroyed.

That's not to say we believe in destroying the human beings. Christians seek to convert Muslims to Christianity by sharing the Gospel of love and forgiveness.

As to Muhammad being "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil," I would have to agree, again. All false religions, by definition, are evil to biblical Christians. That's what the Bible says.

So, I see a danger here with the admittedly spiritually deficient McCain throwing Parsley overboard along with Hagee. Hagee made a statement that would be, to say the least, controversial within the church. Parsley truly did not. He was expressing a heartfelt belief of mainstream evangelical Christianity.

I know I open myself to character assassination by the foreign-subsidized busybodies at the Council on American-Islamic Relations by making this point. But I think it's important.

If McCain is willing to throw Parsley under the train, is he willing to do the same with everyone who agrees with him? Is he willing to forsake every other conservative Christian pastor who understands the Bible states there is only one path and that it comes through His Son, Christ Jesus?

I know why CAIR is trumpeting the news of McCain's rejection of Parsley and Hagee. That group and those who fund them would like all Christians in the U.S. to become so self-conscious about proclaiming the truth about Islam that we begin to censor ourselves through a form of self-imposed political correctness.

This is dangerous. It's one thing to reject and marginalize Hagee for what he said, which startled me in its crude insensitivity and questionable biblical analysis. It's another thing to take the same approach to Parsley, whom, I believe is expressing the spiritual convictions of the vast majority of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in America – as well as the Bible they revere.

Jesus Himself proclaimed it in John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

Just so there be no confusion, Jesus also proclaimed in Matthew 12:30: "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad."

I'm sure this is all Greek to McCain. But if he is only going to welcome support by people who are ready to proclaim Islam as a viable path to finding God, he is going to find himself very lonely on Election Day.