A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHT
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques
Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and
Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in
a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French
troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission
from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader
appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog
and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies
are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who
wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a
New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling
its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion.
Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how
someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with
Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a
theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird
appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel
contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog
and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah
vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks
into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New
Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog
gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of
heaven, and devoured them.”
In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne
University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss
newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled:
“When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible
Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the
headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But
other news media missed the amazing report.
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a
long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who
tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai
(If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the
publisher Plon.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5
<http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5>
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"Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be
amused."
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