Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush

Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush
How Evangelicals in Brazil Are Indoctrinated into Rejecting Conservative Evangelicals and Embracing Socialism

In a cover story in the Brazilian magazine Ultimato, leftist evangelical sociologist who has approved of Lula expresses disapproval of evangelicals who helped to re-elect Bush

By Julio Severo

For a socialist, Brazilian or foreigner, atheist or evangelical, opposition to Bush and support to Lula is as natural, foreseeable and automatic as a fish to know how to swim.



Introduction

This article is a translation and adaptation of my text in Portuguese written to expose misconceptions and efforts by evangélicos progressistas (progressive evangelicals) to lead evangelicals in Brazil to support a socialist agenda. The Brazilian term progressista (progressive), according to the noted Aurélio Dictionary of Portuguese Language, means someone who, though not being a member of a socialist or communist party, accepts and/or supports socialist or Marxist principles.

My article is purposed to show what is happening in Brazil, what has caused evangelicals to get involved in politics in a spiritually detrimental way and how they have been used for suspicious political advantage for the sake of the advance of socialism. They do not have been able to escape from being affected by the omnipresent pro-socialist propaganda in the Brazilian culture. This is why the most important evangelical leaders in Brazil supported Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva for president, a man whose administration has defended abortion, homosexuality, and condom distribution at schools. So it should cause no surprise that the Lula administration has condemned Israel and US and praised their enemies, including Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Muslim dictators.

Lula is a founding member and the first president of PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores, meaning Workers’ Party), one of the Brazilian parties most active in the advance of the socialist agenda. Its politics and candidates, especially Lula himself, have been enthusiastically endorsed by progressive evangelicals.

If you want to understand the political challenges facing evangelicals in Brazil, read my article patiently. I only ask you to excuse my many textual errors, for English is not my mother tongue.

Julio Severo


Secular Media Bias

Recently, when Americans re-elected George Bush as their president, Brazilian media showed all its bitterness and artistic ability to practice selective discrimination. Commentator Arnaldo Jabor, of Globo TV, said that in the election of Bush “stupidity overcame intelligence”, just because he did not like that millions of evangelicals made the crucial difference for the Bush victory. He told about evangelicals who voted for Bush: “Bush’s men are like Osama bin Laden’s fanatics. The only difference is their god. Al Qaeda’s fanatics are the violent sons of a false Allah. And today the suicide bombers of Jesus were elected. Of a Jesus who has never existed. A violent and intolerant Jesus. A false Jesus. Different from the good and true Jesus, an evil Jesus was elected”.[1]

He was disappointed because American evangelicals didn’t copy Brazilian evangelicals, who in the last presidential elections voted obediently, as little lambs, in candidates approved by the liberal press. Intelligence for that commentator is to vote only for politicians accepted by him. In spite of all the massive opposition by Brazilian media against Bush, American evangelicals eventually became winners. They had the courage to demonstrate that they are not dominated.

Globo TV, that shamelessly values and promotes homosexuality and other perversions, shows President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who also supports homosexuality, as president’s exemplary model. And it displays Bush — who doesn’t support homosexuality, abortion and other perversions — as president’s model that, evidently, doesn’t have Lula’s “good” example.

The same Brazilian press that flatters Lula, applauding his government’s initiatives in favor of homosexuality and in favor of the enemies of Israel, ferociously criticizes Bush, the only world leader friend of Israel. It can be noticed real media submission to Lula. Even when criticizing him, in order to feign neutrality, the press does it with the highest respect and consideration. In fact, such “criticism” is so soft, delicate and sparing that could easily be confounded with praise and religious devotion, if compared with the heavy, implacable and cruel criticism the press levels, without the smallest respect, against President Bush and his Christian testimony.

During the American elections, the prejudice and disrespect against American evangelicals were so great that it seemed, by the uncivilized way that the press acted, that it was a “sin” to vote for somebody not following the immoral values usually promoted by liberals. Commenting such attitude of the Brazilian press, journalist Tales Alvarenga, in a rare impartial text of the Veja magazine (which is the Brazilian counterpart of Time magazine), expressed his concern. Alvarenga, who is not an evangelical, said:

Certainly, President George W. Bush is a rightist and a believer in God. But he is smarter and less radical than his opponents say… And I am sure that a mere pietistic hick, as he is presented, doesn’t become re-elected president in the greatest, more powerful and more diversified democracy of the planet… Because of the hate against Bush, a minority of his electorate was treated with cultural, political and ethnic bias by the intellectual elites of the most important cities. That has happened in a country where prejudices against blacks, Jews or Hispanics are considered unpronounceable offenses by educated people. Fundamentalist Christians think Jesus participates in every moment of their lives… American fundamentalist Christians don’t admit abortion in any hypothesis. Sex, only for procreative purposes. Gays are accepted provided they abstain from having a sexual life… I don’t have a religion since adolescence, I have already got divorced more than once, and sex, for me, is a personal choice that it is the exclusive responsibility of the people involved in the act. But I defend the right of evangelicals to live according their beliefs without being insulted for their faith.[2]

Therefore, even non-evangelicals are shocked by the demonstrations of discrimination against Bush and evangelicals supporting him. The same press ridiculing President Bush and evangelicals also renders tribute to TV shows disrespecting the family. What really surprises us it is that even the evangelical press has been contaminated by the prejudice wave against Bush.

Progressive Media Bias

The 2005 January/February issue of Ultimato magazine published the cover story Evangelicals Help to Re-Elect Bush, written by the English-born Brazilian sociologist Paul Freston, disapproving the American evangelicals who voted for Bush. Ultimato is a leading evangelical magazine in Brazil, leading countless leaders and ordinary evangelicals to a leftist worldview. In his cover story, Freston is not able to hide his real intents in his declaration: “There is a need to organize and take on the ideological struggle against the evangelical right which has illegitimately claimed for itself a monopoly on ‘truly Christian politics’, causing immense damage to the image of evangelicals around the world”.[3]

Freston says that evangelicals voted for Bush especially because of the abortion and homosexuality issue. Joining a very large chorus of socialists around the whole world embittered by Bush’s victory, Freston indicated what is necessary so that American evangelicals may be led not to vote for evangelicals like Bush. He stated that the United States needs a MEP (Movimento Evangélico Progressista, which means Progressive Evangelical Movement), a group that has always worked to draw evangelicals in Brazil to the socialist sheepfold. He thinks that with a MEP to reach Americans, the abortion and homosexuality issues might be used to advance the interests of the leftist evangelicals.

What has MEP done for evangelicals in Brazil? It has helped to put Lula in power. Now that he is president, Lula leads the promotion of homosexuality in the UN, has greatly facilitated the Brazilian abortion laws, has launched the disgraceful government program Brazil Without Homophobia (instead of a Brazil Without Sodomy), has allocated grants to gay pride parades and has delivered millions, taken from the hard work of the suffering Brazilian people, to communist criminals who tried to seize, by violence and armed force, the Brazilian government in the past. [4] This is the kind of government MEP has helped to raise up in Brazil.

Where is the Progressive Ethics?

And now do Ultimato and Paul Freston want also Americans to have a MEP? How would an American MEP address the ethical issue of abortion and homosexuality? In August 12, 2004, MEP, with the evangelical politicians of PT (Workers’ Party), organized the workshop A Igreja e os Desafios Atuais (The Church and the Current Challenges), in the Chamber of Deputies. The main speaker was Caio Fábio, who talked about ethics and environmental issues. Fábio was, before his scandal involving adultery and divorce in the late 1990s, the greatest evangelical leader in Brazil and for a long time his authority and influence were so unquestionable that he was like an evangelical pope. But even after his moral fall, he continues trying to speak with his past “papal” authority. Following are some statements of Caio in that workshop:

For me, this universe is sacred. I could just say that it is discreated, that it exists by itself, that it is what it is, that the only thing that exists is itself, that it is God because it exists by itself, because it is the reason of itself. It is a God oblivious of itself.

What is sacred inhabits the whole world.

If I do not have a vision making the cosmos and all the creation sacred, I need at the least to reflect more.

It can be said that India is a technologically outdated country, where there is a very high rate of poverty, misery, overpopulation and other things else. But it keeps being an example of society that looks to the cosmos as something sacred, in a completely different vision from ours.

Therefore, strangely, I have to tell you that animism is helpful to bioethics, in a much more practical way, when ignorantly or not, it sees spiritual meaning in the existence of all that was created. We do not see it.

We have come to a point where there are extraordinary ironies. The first one: the Western Christian world, especially its Protestant version, has become the part of humankind most offensive to the creation. Man exists in a universe without anything sacred. The second one: the animist cultures are extremely less offensive to the creation than we are.

Let’s see: the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis: People begin to read in a completely literal and fundamentalist way. They want to turn the Bible into a science handbook on how the world was formed, something absolutely foolish.

[The Bible] calls the whole conscience of the Gospel for an integration of itself with the sacred attribute of the creation and with the reverence for the creation.

Interestingly, in his text Freston also stresses the environmental issue as something as important as the issue of abortion and homosexuality. He says, “Do we have the right to say that one single issue outweighs all the other possible political issues put together? And if we do, then for how long do we have the right to ignore all the other issues because of that one single issue which has not been resolved? And why should abortion be that single issue and not, for example, the environment?”[5] So, for progressive evangelicals, the defense of environment is as important as the defense of the lives of unborn babies.

It seems that Freston does not perceive that leftists are the creators of the vast majority of abortion bills in Brazil and that they fight even for the right to life of animals and plants, establishing measures to punish even those guilty of destroy the egg of a rare bird.

By pure coincidence, one of the greatest environmentalist leaders in Brazil is the gay journalist Fernando Gabeira, a Workers’ Party ex-militant and today a Green Party member. In 1969, Gabeira was, together with other communists, involved in the kidnapping of the American ambassador to Brazil[6]. Environmentalists boast that because of the rising of the Green Party in Brazil, issues of gay, racial and feminist rights and drug liberation got broad media attention for the first time in the Brazilian politics.[7]

Therefore, environmental issues are an obsessive concern of all socialists and liberals. So it is no wonder MEP, Freston and Caio Fábio embrace this same concern. Somewhere else, Fábio commented this way on homosexuality, which is an important ethical issue in our times:

The only “healed” homosexuals I have seen are the ones that have never been [homosexual].

I have no doubt that soon it will definitively established that the predominant factor for homosexuality is genetical.

There are homosexual individuals who have never committed one homosexual act, but even so they are [homosexual]. They are the eunuchs for the sake of God’s Kingdom.

It is a pity that there is no freedom [in the church] for people to tell who they are.[8]

Even though Caio Fábio has a personal “ethics” very known in Brazil, MEP did not see any problem to back his lecture on ethics. Probably, there must be significant affinities among them. Of course, Paul Freston, Ultimato magazine, Caio Fábio and MEP do not want Bush in the presidency. They want Americans to choose a Lula to lead their country. Yet, Americans have already done it.

Years ago, they elected Bill Clinton, who advanced homosexuality in many ways and fought fanatically to expand and extend abortion laws throughout the whole world. Clinton and his perversions were an important and bitter experience for the American evangelicals, while Lula and his perversions do not bother in any way MEP, Freston, Caio Fábio and Ultimato, that has never cared to put as cover story all that Lula and his party are doing against God’s principles.[9]

Where to Level Criticism to?

Rather than condemn the perversions of the Brazilian president, Ultimato found easier — as always — to disapprove Bush, who is not helping advance the gay agenda in the UN and has never launched a state program called USA Without Homophobia. Besides, the human imperfections of Bush should never be used as a pretext to support pervert politicians who take advantage of the vote of evangelicals to advance evil actively.

If Ultimato wants to criticize an American president, at least for the sake of fairness it should censure those deserving. During the presidency of the progressive evangelical Bill Clinton, who was involved in serious scandals of adultery, there was much opening and sympathy to the pretensions of the radical groups of gay militants.

The Ultimato cover story prefers not seeing or revealing those facts. All that Ultimato does is to continue steadily in its track, with many other secular news agencies in Brazil defending the socialist agenda, of criticizing Bush, without reflecting in its past of support to PT.

Ultimato is free to censure anyone, including someone living far away. We understand, though, that the just standard of God it for us to consider the beam that is in our own eye, before helping others remove the speck of their eyes. Speaking politically, before leveling constant criticism against presidents of other countries, we should firstly evaluate the behavior and acts of the man occupying today the presidency of our country.

Of course, the conservative evangelical stances are not unconditional. If Bush gives up his fight against abortion and gay agenda and turns aside from the divine plan for Israel, by necessity there will be change in the evangelical stance regarding his administration. In the same way, if Lula gives up his support to abortion, homosexuality, Israel’s enemies, the disgraceful communist dictatorships in the world and his policies favoring communist criminals who tried to seize the Brazilian government in the past, and if he turns to promote God’s righteousness, I and many other evangelicals will be very delightful to support his administration.

Because of Brazil, Will Homosexuality Be a Worldwide Problem?

In Evangelicals Help to Re-Elect Bush, Paul Freston praised and stressed the importance of MEP and of the pro-Lula evangelical committees in the presidential elections of 2002, but he did not comment the consequences of the Lula administration fight to classify in the UN homosexuality as an inalienable human right. In 2003, 2004 and 2005, the Lula administration fought to introduce in the UN Commission on Human Rights a pioneering resolution affirming homosexuality as such special right.

If the homosexual sin gets such special protection, every country will be under gigantic and increasing pressure to honor homosexuality and combat all opposition to this sin. Because of a hate law in Sweden, a Pentecostal minister was sentenced to jail for preaching, within his own church, that homosexuality is a sin. Canada and other nations that embraced antidiscrimination laws are also persecuting evangelical churches. The classification of homosexuality as a human right in the UN, as Lula wishes, would give gay militants throughout the whole world authority to demand similar antidiscrimination laws, with all the bitter results we can already see.

While preparing itself to advance the homosexual issue in the UN, the Lula administration has been very active in favor of the gay movement in Brazil. The PT official website itself confirms the clear direction of the Lula administration: “A great advance, for example, comes from the Lula Administration. For the first time in the Federative Republic of Brazil, a president issues a letter backing the homosexual movement, during the gay parade in Brasília. Another great example was the launching of the Brazil Without Homophobia program, coordinated by the Human Rights Special Bureau, but with the collaboration of several government cabinets, including the Department of Justice, Health, Education and the bureaus for the Women Rights and for Racial Equality”.[10]

So it is no wonder that the pioneering policies of the Lula administration in favor of homosexuality have been praised by homosexuals around the world. The lesbian American writer Susan Sontag, for example, said, “I greatly admire Lula. His election in Brazil was the best event the world lived after a long time”.[11]

While American homosexuals praise Lula, Brazilian homosexuals praise a known American ex-president. The Brazilian website GLS Planet notes: “Nostalgia is the proper word. No one gave more visibility to the gay community than ex-president Bill Clinton. He openly defended gay rights and he was the first president in the American History to participate in a dinner organized by a gay group, whose proceeds to the Democratic Party amounted to US$ 300,000 in one night… Clinton is our man”.[12] If gay militants in Brazil and US feel nostalgia about Clinton, there is no need to tell what they feel about Bush.

Nevertheless all Clinton efforts to advance the gay agenda, no one was bolder in its international promotion than Lula has been.

If leading a nation less powerful than the US, Lula is able to launch Brazil to the international leadership of the gay agenda in the UN, what would happen if he occupied the presidency of the most powerful country on the Earth? Nevertheless, Freston suggested that evangelicals in Brazil should not worry about the abortion and gay marriage issues, as if only Americans are being more intensely affected! Freston needs actually to free Brazilian evangelicals from political worries with those issues, for on the contrary what he most fears may happen: the Brazilian left will run the risk of losing the vote of evangelicals in Brazil!

It is immensely necessary to make these questions, for before the presidential elections in Brazil in 2002 progressive evangelicals worked very hard to dispel, among the evangelical churches, the idea that a Lula victory would represent advance for the homosexual movement and the abortion militants.

According to the propaganda of the pro-Lula evangelical committees, Lula was presented as a family-oriented and God-fearing man, who prays and reads the Bible. Moreover, he committed himself before several important evangelical leaders not to let his future administration get involved in the gay and abortion issues. Yet, the reality of his present government is completely contrary to his promises.

Does not such lack of ethics and commitment by Lula and PT deserve a forceful censure? Does not it deserve cover stories in the large and small evangelical magazines? If for much less Bush is censured, why are progressives exempting Lula? Why does the Brazilian press, evangelical and otherwise, insist in pretending that it does not see the evident evils of the Lula administration?

The American Lula and the Brazilian Clinton

Coincidence or not, Bill Clinton, admirer of the Brazilian esoteristic writer Paulo Coelho, always sought also to transmit a Christian image of himself while giving priority to human rights policies favoring homosexuality. Therefore, Clinton can rightly be compared to a kind of American Lula, for basically the administrations of these two nominal Christians are, in a lesser or greater measure, characterized by a major opening to abortion and homosexuality. As far as the socialistic utopias are concerned, with special emphasis on affirmative policies favoring the feminist, racial and gay agenda, they are not much different.

In fact, they are so like one another that, in 2002, PT brought to Brazil Jesse Jackson, a liberal American minister, to help progressive evangelicals convince the evangelical leaders of Brazil to support Lula and PT. Jackson is a member of the Democratic Party and he was a spiritual adviser to Clinton in the White House. The striking coincidence is that during the adultery scandal of Clinton in his presidency Rev. Jackson was also betraying his wife — proving that they were really in total “spiritual” fellowship! So Jackson was never worried about the adulterous and financial scandals of Clinton, for Jackson himself was also involved in similar cases[13]. According to the newspaper Folha Online, Rev. Jackson has a friendship of many years with PT[14]. In the PT official website there is even an exclusive page flattering comrade Jackson.[15]

The interchange between Brazilian and American leftists does not involve just the visit of Rev. Jackson to Brazil. According to information from the national Workers’ Party office[16], the PT militant Roberto de Jesus (better known as Beto de Jesus) traveled to the United States in 2003 for meetings with gay activists, to learn how to advance the gay agenda. Beto is “married”[17] to another man and was president of the Gay Pride Parade Association of São Paulo. He also gave speeches in American universities, whose subject was Gay Politics, Left Politics: the Social Agenda in Contemporary Brazil. In Washington, this Workers’ Party member met leaders of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the greatest gay groups in the US advancing the gay agenda under the human rights rhetoric.[18]

Such contacts with Americans strengthened significantly the gay militancy of Beto, who months later took an active part in the elaboration of Brazil Without Homophobia[19] (the pioneering program of the Lula administration to expunge opposition to homosexuality) and, according to ILGA (International Lesbian and Gay Association) he also took part in the UN, with complete support from the Brazilian government[20], in the promotion of the known pro-homosexualism resolution of the Lula administration. Even though Beto has a large militant experience from his past involvement with the radical Landless Movement[21], he came back from the US strengthened by many new ideas. Now he is prepared to occupy an important role in the realization of the highest ambitions of the Brazilian homosexual movement. His position is so important that he is one of the chief gay activists charged with the task to give information to the Brazilian delegation to the UN.[22]

All that “interchange” reveals the hypocrisy of the left: Even though PT holds to a fanatical anti-American image, such stance works based completely on the pure political convenience. So, as far as moral and Christian values are concerned, PT is radically anti-American, but when the subject is American perversion the most important thing is just to copy! When the interests are favorable, Brazilian socialists accept and hide the assistance and inspiration they receive from their radical comrades in the US. When the interests are not favorable, they appeal to the old anti-American litany, a hypocritical anti-Americanism that opposes the moral values of the American Christians, but imports, copies, absorbs and practices all that is morally rotten in the US. Therefore, it should really cause no surprise that the “anti-American” PT invited the American progressive evangelical Jesse Jackson — friend of PT, Fidel Castro and the pro-abortion and pro-homosexualism adulterer Bill Clinton — to help lead the Brazilian evangelical flock to the socialist electoral pastures.

Because of the liberal ideology connecting them in many issues, there are really significant affinities between PT and the Democratic Party. In the US, most of the pro-homosexualism bills are from Democratic representatives. In Brazil, they are from representatives from PT. Even so, Freston presumed to declare that Kerry, the Democratic candidate opposing Bush in the 2004 elections, is for the natural marriage, suggesting that he would not help legalize gay marriage. Freston or Kerry is more politically smart than they appear to be, for Charisma magazine, in its October 2004 issue, shows that Kerry supports the gay civil unions. In Brazil, the chief supporter for this kind of union is Marta Suplicy, who is an author of a gay civil partnership bill in the Congress. Even though Marta has declared that her bill will not harm traditional marriage, that partnership bestows to gay couples many of the same benefits enjoyed by normal married couples, cleverly masking the goal to achieve the marriage itself. Kerry’s support to gay unions has the same pretexts and aspirations from Suplicy’s bill. Freston has obvious political sympathy to Kerry, properly protecting the consequences of an elected Kerry. Yet, it should be noted that in all his leftist articles in Portuguese during many years, Freston was unable to see or accept that PT in the government would speed the advance of the political pretensions of the gay militants, and he never visualized or admitted that PT could turn Brazil into a world leader in those issues. That inability reappeared in his positive comment on Kerry and the Democratic Party.

I do not have the sociology PhD Paul Freston has. I could never attend a college. But I know that God gives wisdom and understanding to those who ask wholeheartedly.[23] I sought, asked and, by God’s exclusive grace, I have received. Before the presidential elections in Brazil, there were rumors that if PT did win, it would close churches. The spiritual understanding showed me that this fear was complete exaggeration — probably caused by a rightful worry that PT has friendship with communist groups and governments. Progressive evangelicals always took advantage of those rumors to argue that PT is targeted by bias and unfair criticism. Yet, my discernment indicated that a PT’s victory would mean victory for the homosexual movement in Brazil. My feeling was that Lula would be the Brazilian Clinton. As it is known, in the Clinton administration, gay activists felt comfortable in the White House and their movement soared.

You did not need a sociology PhD to foresee what PT would be in the government, for the gay militants themselves were frantically supporting Lula. Was it necessary more than this for a Christian to wake up?

Differentiated Treatment and Special Protection

Therefore, the political activity of the progressive evangelicals favoring socialism in its varied forms doesn’t only happen in our country, and Brazil is not the only nation where leftist politicians receive support from evangelical leaders. In the United States, during the Clinton administration, many progressive evangelical leaders, including famous Rev. Jesse Jackson, supported him openly, and issues as homosexuality and abortion received, for the first time, defense and strong approval from a president.

This is why until today the homosexual movement sees Clinton with love. Such affection is characteristically bestowed to everyone favoring the gay activists’ interests. However, for Bush and other evangelical politicians that do not attend the whims of the gay militancy, instead of affection there are hate and prejudice. Have you ever seen gay activists in favor of Bush? Have you ever seen them against Clinton or Lula?

The liberal media’s common behavior, that does not hide its sympathy for the homosexual movement, is to present positive images of those having similar sympathy and to present negative images of those not having. So those who do not kiss the homosexual idol in the activists’ altar will not receive the “blessing” from the media. Perhaps this is the reason that a crowd of opportunist politicians and artists do not hesitate in taking part in the gay parades in order to demonstrate their faith in the social religion of tolerance to the sin homosexual.

I suspect that that factor is largely responsible for the attitude of the press in its differentiated treatment toward presidents Clinton, Lula and Bush. Although Lula is not fulfilling his electoral promises and is even imitating what he criticized in the previous administration, the press has not been unkind to him. When Bush decided to depose Saddam Hussein, the press took advantage of it to spill all its fury, being relentlessly unkind and sarcastic. But when Clinton had attacked former Yugoslavia annihilating Serbians “to help” a Muslim minority, the liberal press treated him as a Lula, without any unkindness, even tolerating and justifying his war[24]. And today it is known that the Muslim minority he helped was strongly linked to international terrorism. The fact is that Clinton made a serious mistake, with the cost of many innocent lives. Why did the press that condemns Bush unceasingly for the war in Iraq never gave similar condemnatory treatment for Clinton in his unjust war against Serbians? In the war of Iraq, the press did not accept any justification from Bush, but the press itself took on justifying Clinton’s unjust war. The same American liberal press that routinely attacks Christians faithful to the Bible also protected Clinton in his worst sexual scandals.

Clinton’s several political, financial and sexual scandals made him worthy of an impeachment, which is the legal impediment for a politician with inappropriate conduct to exercise his political job. There were legitimate measures to impeach Clinton, but the sympathetic press was able to behave discreetly. Although announcing Clinton’s serious problems, the liberal press softened so much the gravity of his misbehavior and obscured so much the discussion that the prevailing confusion made his removal from the presidency impossible, in spite of the many serious accusations. The man that deserved to fall never fell—he was properly helped. In his troubled time, he was rewarded by his pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality ideals!

Impressively, when a politician defends socialist ideas, the liberal press takes on protecting him, even when there is evident corruption. Lula has notably experienced such protection. Serious political problems in the Lula administration, including his alcoholism, have been properly protected or treated with fake consideration, and eventually forgotten. For much less, other administrations suffered CPIs (Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito, meaning Parliamentary Inquiry Committee). The worst scandals of PT and Lula administration are softened and neutralized by a nice press sympathetic to socialism. Such media “kindness” is extended to all demonstrating such sympathy. Notable evangelical examples are what has happened to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and the Reborn in Christ Church, which were for a long time accused and relentlessly persecuted by the press for serious financial scandals[25]. The press did not rest in its accusations against those churches, which had a common characteristic: they did not accept the radical ideology of PT.

However, later those churches “were sorry for their sins”—against PT! Bishop Carlos Rodrigues, one of the founders of the Universal Church, eventually asked Lula’s forgiveness for the years of opposition of his church against him. (Not mentioning that openly he also asked for forgiveness from the followers of candomblé,[26] a religion characterized by a blend of Roman Catholic and native occultist African beliefs. He asked forgiveness because his church actively delivered demons from people formerly in this Afro-Brazilian cult!) Then, came the time of the Reborn Church and its leaders, who also chose to support Lula and a radical socialist politician, Marta Suplicy, a chief activist of the gay agenda in Brazil[27]. What did happen then? As soon as they began to back PT candidates, those churches started to enjoy the same kind of protection Bill Clinton and Lula always enjoyed in all their scandals. It is as if a conversion to the socialist Gospel was a guarantee of protection, sympathy and special favor, especially from the media. It is not known what happens in the back stages for so much protection and covering, but what is evident is that the people who began to support PT were no more harassed and denounced by the press, much less investigated or stopped in their improper, corrupt and immoral conduct.

“We have the obligation of entering completely in Lula’s campaign”, Bishop Rodrigues said years ago. “So we will adopt a new form of doing politics. It is the socialism of results.”[28] In spite of that alliance with a conveniently anti-American socialist, Rodrigues was under Bishop Macedo’s authority, who has lived comfortably in his mansion in the US for many years, the same country his leftist allies so much attack. As to Bishop Rodrigues, there were serious accusations against him in 2004 in scandals connected to the Lula administration[29], provoking the loss of his office of bishop and a public humiliating reprehension from Macedo. Yet, Rodrigues has been strangely untouchable—and even forgotten—by the press, as if there was the conscience that a deeper expose of his hidden activities could endanger the position of socialism among evangelicals and the position of that man who helped so much socialism in Brazil to attract evangelical voters.

And why not repay him for all his loyalty and sacrifice? Back in 2000, Bishop Rodrigues appealed openly: “Vote for whom has ethics. Vote for PT.”[30] Today, that PT ethics, so flattered by progressive evangelicals, is governing Brazil. Today with that “ethics” the Lula administration is bold in the international defense of homosexuality, presenting in the UN a pioneering resolution classifying homosexuality as inalienable human right. But before his election, Lula had promised, in exchange of the formal support from important evangelical bishops and ministers, that he would not let his administration get involved in abortion and homosexuality issues[31]. As it is more than evident now, his commitment with those leaders was not fulfilled. That is the PT ethics.

Today with that ethics the Lula administration was able to establish alliances with countries as Cuba and China, known human rights violators. Although often in the past Lula has stated that he is against torture, he feels completely comfortable with dictators that apply it freely against Christians. Lula, whose government is marked by an obsessive concern with “human rights”—especially of gay activists, communists and even murderers—does not have any consideration for the human rights of the countless number of Christians and other unarmed people suffering under the oppressive dictatorial governments from China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. That is the PT ethics.

Today with that ethics the Lula administration was able to establish alliances with influential countries linked to international terrorism. In his first trip to Middle East, President Lula visited several Muslim countries that are deadly enemies of Israel, including Syria and Libya, but he did not visit Israel. He gave preference to the nations that criticize and support terrorist acts against Israeli people. Ten terrorist groups that kill men, women and children in Israel are based in Syria. Syria also supports Hezbollah, one of the largest and more violent groups against Israeli people. All the Muslim countries Lula visited prefer to see Israel extinct from the face of the earth. Lula gave preference to those nations. That is the PT ethics.

Before Lula’s election for president, the Lula 2002 National Evangelical Committee issued an exclusive electoral pamphlet to catch the evangelical public. It stated, “We evangelicals have already decided. We back Lula for president because we recognize that several proposals of his Government Program are identified with the prophetic vocation of Jesus Christ’s Church.”[32] However, Brazilian government has never been so far away from God’s will as today. Gilberto Gil, one of the Lula administration’s most important ministers, declared: “God is a creation of man. He is the creator created by man.”[33] In 2004, Minister Gil presented a show where a screen behind him showed terrorist communist Che Guevara smoking a cigar and George Bush in the gallows and the following sentence: “Die, Bush, die!”[34] Interestingly, the Lula administration radicals would never accept a scene showing Che Guevara or Fidel Castro in the gallows. For those communist murderers, the PT radicals have only sycophancy. Even though it is no secret for Brazilians Lula and PT’s feelings regarding Bush, Gil insisted he does not have anything to do with the scene of his show asking for Bush’s death.[35] When the Almanaque Brasil magazine asked him what is to be a minister, Gil answered: “I already knew what to be a minister was… I was already a minister of Xangô in the temple of Afonjá, in Bahia.”[36] Xangô is the spirit of storms in the native occultist African beliefs. It is people with that kind of spiritual values that today lead Brazil. That is the PT ethics.

Of course, Freston, Ultimato and other progressive evangelicals, united in the same anti-Bush feelings, are kind enough to excuse the “imperfections” of Lula and his Workers’ Party, which they worked so hard to elect. While PT continues in its socialist path that “is identified with the prophetic vocation of Jesus Christ’s Church”,[37] most of the progressives will not feel discomfort by the ethics or its lack in the Lula administration.

Working to Give a Good Image for PT

The image of honesty and “ethics” that PT and its allies—including some churches—get from media is acquired and maintained at the expense of a privileged treatment, exclusively bestowed to those demonstrating sympathy to the socialist ideology. A large part of the media, submissive to that ideology, knows how “to reward” and protect those demonstrating similar submission. It also knows how to punish those that do not are submissive, exposing regularly their “scandals”—often created from small and usually insignificant issues, which are inflated beyond the proportions that deserved. An example is American evangelicals who voted for Bush. They thwarted utterly the leftist interests of the vast majority of the media, which retaliated furiously and disrespectfully, stirring its public against evangelical conservatives. To poison the minds of the people against Christians faithful to the Word of God is not a new strategy (see Acts 14:2). So from a viewpoint of pure political convenience, it is much more worthwhile to row with the tide than against it.

Seemingly, this is why Bishop Rodrigues had asked for forgiveness from Lula: with the many political and social advantages socialists enjoy—especially from the press—, he saw that was pointless “to row” against PT. In an article in Ultimato in 1999, Freston recognizes, “In the political area, the leader of the Universal Church is the federal deputy Bishop Rodrigues. He is perhaps the most powerful political evangelical in Brazil today.”[38] In that time, Rodrigues was still in transition to support explicitly PT. A short time later, in 2000, his “conversion” to socialism was finished and he used all his political power in a way that finally pleased Freston and Caio Fábio. In 2002 Rodrigues actively supported the candidacy of Lula to presidency and in his position as a bishop he openly assured that the rumors among evangelicals that a Lula victory would let government get involved in gay issues were baseless.[39] Eventually, Lula became president, through the support from evangelicals as Rodrigues, and today Brazil occupies the shameful position of world leader in the defense of homosexuality in the UN.[40]

The first strong attempt to launch a good image for Lula among evangelicals happened in 1994, when an evangelical TV show, for the first time in the history of Brazil, introduced a candidate for president (Lula) and his proposals. The show, presented by Caio Fábio, alleged political neutrality, but some time later his name appears in a list displaying famous people taking part in the candidate Lula’s campaign, according to information in the official PT website.[41] Caio Fábio supported Lula so actively that he fell in serious scandals. According to the Estado Agência, a news service, he even tried to contact Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, in order to advance a document that would help Lula to win the elections, in a transaction involving 30 million dollars.[42] Therefore, it is no mystery for the Brazilian press that Fábio sought such contact, and also it is no secret that Iraq of Saddam financed terrorist attacks against the people of Israel.[43] What is mysterious is the kind of contact Fábio had with the dictatorship of Iraq. Yet, what is very known is that after Americans deposed the Iraqi dictator, Fábio became furious and bawled, in several articles, scatological sermons against the American president, even writing a text entitled Bush: Stuntman of the Beast of Revelation.[44] As to the American ministers who supported Bush in that issue, Fábio also saved a little of his wrath for them, calling them “second-rate leaders.”[45]

For a socialist, Brazilian or foreigner, atheist or evangelical, opposition to Bush and support to Lula is as natural, foreseeable and automatic as a fish to know how to swim. In fact, Fábio himself admitted that he has been a friend of Lula for a number of years, even before Lula’s appearing in his TV show in 1994,[46] where Fábio alleged political neutrality. Fábio is not different from American progressives. Such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, he was also involved in an extramarital affair, with a difference. He went far away in the “solution” of his problem: he eventually married to the woman who was the cause of his matrimonial separation,[47] provoking one of the greatest scandals among evangelicals of Brazil. Although Bishop Rodrigues’ collaboration was certainly decisive, no evangelical leader was so responsible for Lula’s pioneering promotion among evangelicals than Fábio. Perhaps this is why Paul Freston commented: “the evangelical community is very much indebted to Caio Fábio.”[48] Freston is very right. Without Caio’s direct and indirect influence, it is difficult to imagine how evangelical churches in Brazil, including the formerly anti-PT Universal Church, could massively embark in a blind support to Lula, Marta Suplicy and other comrades of the Workers’ Party.

It is undeniable that in the past Fábio was a target of admiration and idolatry for many evangelicals. Without his overwhelming influence on evangelicals, probably the Brazilian church today would not be—as he likes so much to affirm—sick. Perhaps that disease has a lot to do with the leftist cancer corroding her and sorely weakening her prophetic ability to confront evil in the society.

Fábio judged the church as sick, without judging himself and his scandals involving finances and matrimonial separation because of adultery. Serious financial scandals usually end in serious consequences, including loss of a career and even jail. However, the socialists are usually spared from those consequences smiting other humans. Such as in the case of Bishop Rodrigues, Caio Fábio was also “persecuted” by the press in serious financial scandals years ago. Differently from Rodrigues, who lost his rank of bishop, Fábio did not need to suffer such inconvenience. But, as well as it happened with Rodrigues, there was neither prison nor other similar penalty: Fábio today has been strangely untouchable—and even forgotten—by the press.

Differently from the secular press that forgot him, some in the evangelical press never forget to ask Fábio’s advice when the subject is attack Bush. In its cover story on Bush, Brazilian evangelical magazine Enfoque Gospel gave privileged room for Fábio to express his customary feelings against the American president.[49] The sad reality is that a great number of Fábios’s admirers demonstrate to have inherited from him, in lesser or larger degree, many of his feelings, prejudices and opinions. Is then Freston one of those admirers?

Creating and Strengthening Prejudices

Taking advantage of the fact that the Brazilian public knows very little of American politics, Freston forgot to say that in the US there are many evangelical groups with the leftist mindset of MEP, not mentioning that Democratic Party, of Clinton, shelters a countless crowd of progressive evangelicals. Freston also omits the fact that although Bush is president, the Democratic Party’s politicians have a lot of influence and they use, with lamentable success, all their power to hinder Bush from appointing judges against abortion and homosexuality, obstructing all efforts to restrict those perversions. Because of the Democrats' subversive maneuvers and political pressures, Bush was unable, in four years of administration, to place those conservative judges in important positions. Why did Freston omit those and other important points? Probably, because such omission helps to reinforce, before the Brazilian public, the image that he has himself that Bush is not the ideal president that he, Caio Fábio and thousands of other progressive evangelicals did always see in Lula.

In his political passion, Freston alleged, in Evangelicals Help Re-Elect Bush, that the number of abortions in the Bush and Reagan administrations increased and in the Clinton administration decreased, suggesting that it is better to vote for a progressive evangelical than voting for a conservative evangelical. I sent that allegation to several American evangelical groups, including Focus on the Family and Concerned Women for America. They did not also agree with Freston’s allegation. Dr. Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, told me that the decline in the abortion rate “began with the election of Ronald Reagan, and continued through the Presidencies of both Bush #1 and Clinton”,[50] doubtless in response to the tireless efforts of courageous Christian pro-life groups, that never interrupted their activities for all those years. Indeed, during the eight years of Clinton administration, there were oscillations of minimum decline and sometimes increase, but differently from what Freston supposed, in the Bush #2 administration there was no increase of abortions[51].

Does not Freston know or want to admit that, while Clinton always gave formal support to pro-abortion groups, Reagan and Bush always supported pro-life groups?

The assumption that the number of abortions in the Bush administration increased was quite diffused soon before the American elections, especially by the leftist evangelical magazine Sojourners, with the very suspicious objective to confuse the voters and disturb Bush’s victory. LifeNews.com informs that in a last-minute, desperate effort “to call into question President Bush's pro-life credentials, a researcher says that Bush's economic policies have led to an increase in the number of abortions during his administration. However, a leading pro-life expert on abortion statistics says the study is flawed and sometimes uses old data or wrong numbers to draw conclusions.”[52] The National Right to Life Committee also prepared an important refutation to the allegations that Bush’s politics had increased the number of abortions.[53] In addition, in May 2005 “the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) published a new report which demonstrates that, contrary to several claims made in the last year, abortion rates in the US have continued their decline under the Bush administration. The AGI was founded in honor of a former Planned Parenthood president and therefore has no personal interest in proving Bush’s pro-life policies to be successful”.[54] So Freston trusted in mistaken or ill-intentioned sources—sources according to his political disposition and interests—and his text is an implicit invitation for the Brazilian readers to follow blindly the same way.

What is striking is that, as a sociology teacher, Freston used information and statistics having no consensus, just political intents. In a previous article in Ultimato, he complains that during an electoral campaign in Brazil some evangelicals had used tactics, false rumors and exaggerated statistics to face a candidate from PT. He confessed: “There were times I was embarrassed of being an evangelical. I was not able to understand why all decent evangelical leaders and ministers of that city did not manifest openly in repudiation.”[55]

Freston is ashamed of being an evangelical when evangelicals treat PT the way he treats Bush, and he admits himself that he is dazed and depressed when the subject is Bush and evangelicals supporting him.[56] These are typically leftist feelings. Now that it is known that the statistics and information on abortion that he used are suspicious, are not we also entitled to be embarrassed of being evangelicals when an evangelical writer, with a little deep research, expresses doubtful interpretations in order to achieve objectives favorable to the purely political interests of the progressives? Where are the Christian honesty and common sense? Does not such incorrectness also deserve public manifestations of repudiation from the evangelical leaders from Brazil, who are being guided by mistaken information?

Freston wants the Democratic Party to adopt a position against abortion, in order to attract the evangelical voters, but one of the principal leaders of that party affirmed: “We can change our vocabulary, but I don’t think we ought to change our principles.”[57] In essence, that statement betrays the secret of the idea itself to reach voters that don’t support legalized abortion. The idea would be for the Democratic Party to adopt a less aggressive and explicit official facade in favor of abortion, but its pro-abortion political actions and objectives would remain unaffected. It is not a strategy different from what has already been done in Brazil. In 1994, Rev. Haidi Jarschel, a Brazilian progressive Lutheran, told on the subject of abortion:

In Brazil the discussion and proposals of public politics on reproductive rights have been intensified. They were prompted by the great mobilization of the feminist movement, by the introduction of the legalization of abortion proposal in the government program of the Workers’ Party and by the great number of bills being presented in the Congress. Measures contrary to those bills have strongly come from the… evangelical churches.[58]

According to Rev. Jarschel, PT had embraced, in the 1994 electoral campaign, the legalization of abortion as one of its official flags, but that explicit support to abortion made difficult the task of attracting evangelical voters. Through the progressive evangelicals’ pressure, that support was removed from the PT government program, but in practice important cities as São Paulo and Porto Alegre launched pioneering abortion services in PT administrations.

Does then Freston want the Democratic Party to behave as PT, which proclaims a thing and practices another? Of course, the pressures from the progressive evangelicals were an important factor in the decision of PT to stop its explicit support to abortion—but the political actions of that party never betrayed its true objective. Although today PT does not declare formal support to abortion and homosexuality, its actions speak higher than its words. Now in power, Lula administration is considering measures to change laws restricting abortion in Brazil.[59]

Is that way Freston wants the Democratic Party to change? It seems that he ignores a fact that is acknowledged by the Democratic Party itself: “Abortion rights activists are critical pillars of the Democratic Party, providing money and grass-roots energy.”[60] In addition, even American progressive evangelicals approve politics Brazilian progressive evangelicals apparently don’t approve. Rev. Jesse Jackson, for instance, is not only one of Democratic Party’s main pillars, but also a known pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality adulterer.

Rather than collaborate with Bush’s efforts to restrict abortion and gay activism, Freston has so much sympathy for the Democratic Party (at least this is what one feels by reading his text) that he thinks it is easier to work and try to convert Democrats for a possible future stand against abortion and homosexuality than helping right now in the efforts to prevent his Democratic comrades from continuing blocking the antiabortion conservatives judges Bush has chosen. Before trying such feat, he should—since he mentioned MEP as successful reference from progressives in Brazil—firstly show how MEP was able to hinder the Lula administration from putting Brazil into the leadership of the promotion homosexual in the UN and in the road for the amplification of abortion laws. Before Lula, Brazil didn’t occupy that disgraceful position in the UN. Brazil only occupied it after MEP helped to elect Lula for president! Why did Freston hide that truth from Americans he talked to?

So, before the American public, Freston omitted important facts about the role of MEP in the support of one of the most pro-homosexuality governments in the world. He didn’t make any reference to Brazil Without Homophobia, a pioneering program of the Lula administration to combat all opposition to homosexuality. In that program, the Lula administration offers their following official interpretation of the human sexuality: “In the same way that heterosexuality (attraction for a person of the opposite sex) has no explanation, so homosexuality also does not”.[61]

Before the Brazilian public, he makes other omissions and mistaken interpretations of the American political reality. He really took advantage of the lack of knowledge Americans have of the Brazilian reality and also of the lack of knowledge Brazilians have of the American reality. So Freston’s opinions really hinder both Brazilians and Americans from reaching the entire truth.

Freston complained that Bush’s reelection is bad for the American missionary efforts. Yet, Christians persecuted in Muslim or communist countries think differently. A minister from Uzbekistan declared to a crowd of evangelical leaders in early 2004, “I would like all of you to know that my church and the Christians in my country are praying that President Bush will be reelected… The officials in my country are afraid of President Bush, so they don’t persecute Christians as much. Under Clinton it was very bad for us. Many of us were arrested, put in jail, and some were killed. With Clinton, it was very bad. But under President Bush, it has been much better, so we are praying for him.”[62]

Even after the tragic example of Clinton and Lula, Freston does not demonstrate disposition to learn. He is determined to see in the presidency, of Brazil and US, only leftists. The old Brazilian saying is right: passion is blind—especially in the case of Freston, who is barely able to hide his feelings for PT and Democratic Party.

Then, the only way Bush and other conservative evangelicals could escape from the disapproval, condemnations and criticism from the leftist evangelicals is through their conversion to the progressive “Gospel”.

Bush has his human weaknesses, as any other person has, but he accepted Jesus and let the Holy Spirit deliver him from alcohol addiction. It was a great blessing—a blessing Lula needs sorely. Bush was humble enough to recognize that he had a serious problem with alcohol and to look for God’s help.

Progressive evangelicals don’t call Clinton or Lula Stuntman of the Beast of Revelation. Then why use that heavy title exclusively against Bush? Why such discrimination and prejudice? Why don’t they judge the many immoral and pervert politics of Clinton and Lula? Why do they condemn conservative evangelicals who supported Bush and don’t say anything about the progressive evangelicals who supported Clinton and Lula? Here is what Clinton and Lula never did:

Demonstrations of an Ethical Testimony

· President Bush Stresses Sanctity of Marriage in State of the Union Address.[63]

· President has supported, in his administration, sex education programs focused on sexual abstinence.[64]

· President Bush Addresses March for Life.[65]

· President Bush issues 2004 Proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day.[66]

· Bush administration opposes the pro-homosexuality resolution of the Lula administration in the UN.[67]

· President Bush delivers powerful pro-life speech at Concordia University.[68]

· President Bush appointed Rev. John Danforth, a conservative evangelical, as the American ambassador to the UN. Rev. Danforth is known for his solid stand against abortion and homosexuality.[69]

· Bush Administration continues to deny funding to United Nations arm over forced abortion.[70]

· Bush refuses to grant the requests from gay militants to proclaim June as Gay Pride month.[71]

· Bush was considered the best friend of Israel in 2004.[72] Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington in 2002: “There has never been a greater friend of Israel in the White House than President George W. Bush.”[73]

· President Bush tells United Nations to protect life — Ban Cloning.[74]

· Bush talks candidly about his faith to Christian journalists.[75]

Rarity: A Progressive Evangelical Empathizes with Conservative Evangelicals who Suffered Prejudice

In the same issue in which Ultimato let Paul Freston have the opportunity and privilege to reveal his anti-Bush dissatisfaction in his article in the most important room of the magazine, Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti was given freedom to express his feelings in the excellent text entitled Secularist Fundamentalism’s Violence. Although also disapproving Bush and conservative evangelicals who supported him, Bishop Cavalcanti at least noticed the radical intolerance demonstrated against evangelicals who elected Bush. He said:

As a Christian, Protestant, evangelical and progressive, I admit I was shocked by the treatment that has been given by the secular press, in several countries, to the conservative evangelicals’ actions… an entire fury, all the violence of the secularist fundamentalism against a religion that refused to die and against a faith that refuses to be irrelevant.

As all progressives, Bishop Cavalcanti always fought for PT. It is not known if today he is sorry for that fight. What we know is that he has been perhaps the only leftist evangelical who, in the September/October of 2004 issue of Ultimato, took a clear stand against Lula’s pro-homosexuality politics. Those politics are very evident in Brazil, but Freston has declared that abortion and homosexuality issues “don’t affect Brazilian Christians in the same intensity” as they affect American Christians! Perhaps this is why he doesn’t demonstrate any concern and repudiation to the Lula administration’s politics. But Cavalcanti worried, and he admitted:

Mr. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva let the national press know the content of his letter sent to the organizers of the Gay Parade of Brasília, mentioning an excerpt from a song by Milton Nascimento, which says, “Any way of loving it is worthwhile”. It is obvious that the expression “any” is a rhetoric illustration—or an exaggeration—because the word is absolutely inclusive. Some “ways of loving” are even defined in our penal code and in the penal legislation of the civilized countries. The absence of illicit acts or of limits in the poetic sentence denotes the hedonism or the pan-sexualism of the contemporary Western culture, which has already tragically penetrated the church.

Theologically, ethically and legally, all the ways of loving are not worthwhile—in some cases, they are worth a penalty and, in others, they denote deviations in behavior, pathologies, sins. The expression “loving” from the sentence can be understood just as a physical-affective attraction… Before the “celebration” of the Gay Pride Parade of São Paulo city—the “biggest in the world”, with 1.5 million participants—, where “lower authorities” [participated] bringing a message from the “highest authority”, we can notice that there is something rotten in the Federative Republic of Brazil.

In recent years, by orientation from the Foreign Affairs Department (Itamaraty), the Brazilian delegation to the United Nations Organization (UN) is insisting on the proposal of introduction of the expression “sexual orientation” among the inalienable rights. Vatican, Islamic countries and most of the Southern Hemisphere countries were opposed to that proposal, which received the support from the Northern Hemisphere post-Christian countries. If that proposal were to be approved, the effects in the civil and penal legislation in several countries could include the marriage of homosexuals, the right to adoption by homosexuals and the criminalization of any contrary opinion, including in the religious sphere. On the other hand, the Human Rights National Bureau has just announced a “For a Non-Homophobic Brazil” state effort. As we can verify, in Brazil the phenomenon called world gay lobby has also been showing its increasing power and influence.

Because I was openly exhorted by a respectable evangelical NGO, for my name was included in a list of ministers who voted for the current President in recent elections (in my case, I voted for him in all the presidential elections in which he was a candidate), I come also publicly disconnect myself from those federal government stances, expressing my disagreement and vehement condemnation against such course of action.

The scandalous, immoral and shameful support of the Lula administration to homosexuality deserves a reprimand and strong opposition from all evangelicals and all Brazilian population, and Bishop Cavalcanti should be congratulated for being one of the only progressive voices to express his public condemnation.

Converting Evangelicals to the Progressive “Gospel”?

Freston could have used his cover story in Ultimato to, instead of showing opposition to Bush and conservative evangelicals, condemn the Lula administration’s undeniable perversions. But he wanted Bush as an exclusive target of his disapproval. In that sense, he is not alone in his bitterness. Gay activists in US, Brazil and around the world agree with Freston and his dissatisfaction. The worldwide liberal press is also with him.

That affinity of feelings comes from the fact that Freston is not different from other socialists. In Lula’s electoral campaign in 2002, Freston worked so well to give evangelicals a positive image of the left that his efforts were distinguished in Lula’s personal website.[76] Thanks to the efforts of Freston, MEP, Caio Fábio, Bishop Rodrigues and other progressives in favor of that image, it eventually happened what Freston calls “leftization” of the evangelical politics.[77] That leftization happened as a direct influence from the progressive evangelicals, who follow the Theology of Liberation, a religious movement originally born among leftist Catholics. To disguise that Catholic origin, among the evangelicals that theology received the “innocent” label of Integral Mission of Church.

However, an evangelical teacher as important as Freston should occupy himself less with political passions and ideological interests. After all, the life of a Christian on the earth is short and should be used for the objective of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the glory that endures forever. That is the glory that is worthwhile to promote, not the glory of men as Lula or Clinton, who explore the vote of evangelicals to give glory to homosexuality and other perversions. Freston admitting or not, Lula is not the ideal politician that he and many other progressive evangelicals envisioned that he was. He accepting or not, that utopian image collapsed before the hard political reality PT installed in Brazil. The political dream of MEP and other progressive evangelicals became a nightmare throughout Brazil, and if homosexuality eventually becomes an inalienable human right, as the Lula administration wishes in the UN, the nightmare will be worldwide, but the utopian dreamers refuse to wake up.

One is mistaken if he thinks that all evangelicals wanting a biblical involvement in politics are forced to become progressive, socialist, Marxist, leftist or communist (that are different labels to disguise the same basic ideology founded by satanist Karl Marx), especially because a Christian has no calling from God to transform government into an inhuman machine to extract through the force of law a worker’s earnings for “giving” to the poor. What the poor need the most is the Great Provider—although often socialist governments think they know how to play that role better than God does.

Even being born in a poor family, I have never struggled to give the government that role that belongs exclusively to God. Only he can supply all our needs. I know what is to be hungry, but I never wanted other people to be robbed by unjust politics of taxes (that are true assaults on name of law) in order to supply my needs.

I don’t have everything I want or I need, but I work with a lot of love and dedication by using the little I have, knowing that to love and honor God is the chief objective of our lives. When I was inspired to write the book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), I worked arduously, in a typewriter I needed to borrow, just using the index finger, because I didn’t know how to typewrite, having never been able to take such a course! After some time “typewriting” the book, my finger was badly affected.

Even not being rich (still today I work only with an old computer, Pentium I, donated by a friend), I think a government should be supported only in its responsibility to fulfill the role God gave it: to give security, to punish the wicked and to praise the good citizens[78]. The State has a calling to serve God only in that purpose, not to do charity in stead of us, especially at the expense of the good citizens. The State doesn’t have a calling “to rehabilitate” the wicked at our expense, but just to punish them. Rehabilitation is an exclusive area of the Gospel. When a government is not busy in the call God gave it, the result is lack of security for the population; benefits and privileges for the wicked; and criticism, disapproval and injustices toward the good citizens. In extreme cases, the good citizens are criticized because they do not accept depravities as homosexuality, and they are also oppressed by the obligation of financing the perversions of the wicked through taxes, as the Lula administration has demonstrated by meeting the political whims of the gay activists.

If the Most Important Role of Government is Security, Why is There so much Insecurity in Brazil?

In the security issue, while the Brazilian press, secular or evangelical, and Caio Fábio are busy criticizing Bush for the war in Iraq, many cities in Brazil live the cruel reality of daily crimes, assaults, rapes, violence and a high number of murders, that make Brazil more similar to a nation in war than a nation in peace. The Lula administration’s solution to solve the critical problem of insecurity is to disarm the defenseless population. Even after the beginning of the celebrated disarmament effort, the rates of crimes and murders continue high. Why? Because the outlaws did not suffer any discomfort. Only non-criminals were forced to surrender their weapons.

Only outlaws should be disarmed, not the law-abiding citizens. Now that the population has been disarmed, the “work” of burglars and killers was made easier, because the Lula administration is taking from the citizens their right of defending themselves.

If the disarmament effort didn’t have a negative affect on the “work” of criminals, why then such effort? The totalitarian governments have an obsessive concern and fear that their aberrant politics may provoke a legitimate revolt from the population. Nazism and communism, for instance, disarmed their captive populations, so that nobody was able to overthrow their tyrannies. It worked exceptionally.

In that perspective, why disarm criminals if they represent threat only to the defenseless population, not to the “security” of an ill-intentioned State? The priority is to disarm the ones representing the most pressing threat to the totalitarian systems: the citizens.

While disarming citizens of their legitimate right of defense, the Brazilian government “intends to regulate, through ordinance, the consumption of drugs by drug addicts, with delimitation of areas for liberation of their use”, offering varied drugs, with the warranty of total impunity.[79] So, the Lula administration wants to make a crime the use of weapons for defense, but it wants to legalize drug consumption!

Truly democratic countries, as the United States, don’t fear the citizen’s right to have a weapon. American citizens have the legal freedom to defend and protect themselves.

Although the Bible makes very clear that the legitimately constituted government’s priority is to give security to the population and punish the wicked, the Brazilian government seems more interested in its own political security and in punishing and oppressing the citizens who need to protect themselves. I have never had a weapon in my hand, but I cannot back the government in its effort to take from its citizen their right to defend themselves. There are legitimate reasons that demand that recourse.

Since biblically the government’s priority is to give security, the Lula administration should be busy investing more in that area. But such investment is often difficult because Lula has many other priorities for the use of our taxes: to finance the Brazil Without Homophobia program, to give large financial “reparations” to communist criminals, to finance gay parades, to finance the use of drugs and many other expensive, unprofitable activities that consume the Brazilian taxpayers’ money. Sadly, government thinks it is absolutely important to use our taxes to those inglorious causes—although its most common propaganda is that our taxes head directly to education, health, etc.

Compulsory “Charity” through Our Taxes

People should not be forced to pay taxes in order to support supposed good politics, but everyone should, according to the Bible, be free to donate their resources spontaneously to help people in need, through pure compassion and love, not through force. Who should do charity are us, the individual citizens, not the State, which just explores the tragic condition of the poor to increase their tentacles and take more taxes from the workers. The Lula administration, for instance, was born from a strong appeal to the masses, for a significant part of the Brazilian population is poor and PT always affirmed to defend them. So, the role of provider by the State is played at the expense of the suffering Brazilian workers.

Enormous “Charity” to the Communists

Today in power PT enriches, through vast financial reparations, individuals whose basic feature in their lives was not poverty, but a past marked by the armed combat in the communist movement to spill blood and seize the government from Brazil by force. Although having been elected through promises “to help the poor”, the Lula administration has used the money from the taxpayers, who have a daily sacrificial fight for survival and often work badly having what to eat, shamefully to fill the pocket of the communists.

Charity: by Force or by Love

The Old Testament laws are considered very strict, but even with all their strictness those laws didn’t force—they just recommended strongly—God-fearing people to have compassion for the poor. Yet, progressive evangelicals want to do much more than the strictest laws in the Bible. In their political activism, they want the compassion for the poor in a free and spontaneous will to be replaced by the tax-based social programs.

The Ten Commandments show the specific and central will of God. Although he is greatly worried about the poor, God didn’t put that concern among the Ten Commandments. If he had done so, probably the progressive (or socialist, communist, leftist, etc.) evangelicals would be using the government force to seize our resources state social programs. In their theology, the assistance to the poor—through our involuntary taxes—it is as important and fundamental as any one of the Ten Commandments.

For instance, they don’t have a decisive posture of struggling actively against abortion and its legal expansion. Why? Because, for them, there are problems as important as abortion. So, if a politician or party is relatively in favor of abortion, but it has proposals of assistance to the poor, the progressive evangelicals prefer to support that politician or party. Of course, that support just gives visibility for the issues they are more identified with: the poor. In their mind, the assistance to the poor should not be treated as matter of personal compassion, but of legal compulsion, while the commandment you shall not kill (that is also applicable to the act of killing babies through abortion) is grouped in the socialist ethics as a personal issue that should be, in the best, solved by each citizen, although generally socialists fight to impose legally abortion as a matter of the women’s right. The problem of babies’ murder through abortion is eventually put for consideration in a long list of interests, most having no direct connection to the Ten Commandments. However, the progressive evangelicals don’t consider the biblical reality that, different from their environmental issues and their defense of murderers, innocent babies’ murder is obviously condemned and forbidden in the Ten Commandments.

God wants us to have compassion for the poor, by love—not by compulsion and violence. State can enact laws to regulate behaviors God doesn’t approve—including rape, murder and homosexuality—, compelling citizens to live right behaviors. Yet, State cannot force people to practice charity, because generosity to the poor is directly linked to one’s heart and only God and his Word should deal with heart. As far as the poor are concerned, the government should only enact laws in cases in which employers stop paying to the poor the wages for the work they have already accomplished, according to James 5:1-6. When God addresses the exploration against the poor in his Word, he means those cases and also the cases where widows and orphans are robbed from their properties.

For socialists, the simple fact that a human being has more properties than others is already injustice, irrespective of what God’s Word says. For God, there is injustice when a human being takes advantage of other—the way the State and the exploiters do.

In God’s perspective, justice is to give to the worker what he deserves for the work he has already done, and God allows legal compulsion when a worker doesn’t receive the set wages, but the progressive evangelicals follow the socialist ideology, which sees as injustice all situations in which a human being has more than another does. Their solution is to encourage income redistribution, so that anyone may not have more than another may. So, if progressive evangelicals were in God’s place when he was distributing talents, certainly they would not do what God did, when God gave five talents to a person, two to another and just one to another (see Matthew 25:14-30). Such “unequal” distribution is seen as injustice in the socialist ethics. In that distribution, progressive evangelicals would be more “fair” than God would: They would give or five talents to each person, or just one.

Therefore, in God’s perspective, a man is entitled to possess more through his hard work and if he didn’t employ a poor he doesn’t have the legal obligation to support him, by taxes or not. That man cannot be considered unjust for not accepting laws forcing him to support state social programs through oppressive tax politics, because the Word of God is very clear that compassion for the poor should come exclusively from heart. So socialism, evangelical or not, violates four important commandments of God:

The first commandment orders us to worship God alone. The socialist ideals take from God his exclusive place of worship and attention as the Provider in the people's lives by putting the State and its institutions as provision source for all human needs.

Socialism doesn’t respect the seventh commandment, which orders not to commit adultery. Such commandment means that the sexual order of God for humankind should not be altered. Yet, socialism overturns that order, supporting laws in favor of divorce and homosexuality and the most radical pretensions from the gay activists, including gay marriage, adoption by gays, etc. Although most of the socialist evangelicals do not favor that aspect of socialism, their attitude prioritizing the poor’s issues—a repetitive slogan of the socialist political propaganda—mobilizes them to vote for candidates promoting some politics in that sense, but that have also proposals of abortion and homosexuality. This is what happened, for example, in the case of Lula. Evangelical leaders got deluded by Lula’s proposals to the poor and they helped to transform their congregations into PT electoral powerhouses. But the victory of that party also meant the advance of several radical threats, including homosexuality and abortion.

The eighth commandment orders not to steal, which undoubtedly is not only applicable to people, but also to governments and their institutions. The socialist ideals make the State rob collectively, through taxes, the resources from honest citizens that gathered their wealth by much hard work. The government excuses that robbery through its “income redistribution” propaganda, suggesting that all taxes are used in social assistance programs.

The tenth commandment orders not to desire to take the household, the employees and anything else that belong to a man. Through greedy socialist politics, the State always desires to take, through taxes, everything a man has. Its pretext is to invest in health, education, etc.

Focus on the Family Talks about the Criticism of Freston:

Freston writes criticizing Bush supporters for being “single issue” voters. That is not true. Yes, abortion and gay marriage are mobilizing issues but Freston is wrong to say that Bush voters support him only for these. Supporting a pro-life candidate does not mean all other issues are “ignored by these voters.” Freston should give these voters a bit more credit. They also supported Bush's policies on economics, health and education, the environment and foreign policy. Just because he disagrees with Bush on these topics doesn't mean all voters who supported Bush disagree with Bush. Evangelicals who voted for Bush do feel responsible before God for these issues, and that's why they voted for Bush. They generally like his policies.

Freston asks, “Do we have the right to say that one single issue outweighs all the other possible political issues put together? And if we do, then for how long do we have the right to ignore all the other issues because of that one single issue which has not been resolved? And why should abortion be that single issue and not, for example, the environment? After all, if the warnings of the environmentalists are right, the whole human race is in danger, and our grandchildren (if they ever exist) will criticize us severely for not acting in time.”

Abortion and gay marriage are on the top of U-S Evangelical voters’ priority lists because both violate the basis of Christianity: abortion by destroying the sanctity of human life and gay marriage by perverting the one-man/one-woman model of creation. See Genesis 1:27. The problem with Freston’s thinking is that he fails to see that if we elect candidates who will allow the foundations of the our faith to be ruined by violating these two core Christian principles, God will not bless other efforts. Any candidate who understands the necessity of protecting human life and defending traditional marriage can also be trusted to make wise decisions about economics and the environment. A candidate who will allow the abortion of preborn children and permit two men to “marry” if the states want to cannot be trusted with any issue.

Freston writes, “But casting a vote always involves a process of negotiation. We are very unlikely to find a presidential candidate whose platform and probable course of action coincide entirely with what we would wish...” The majority of US Evangelicals do not see it that way. We are responsible before God for our votes and that is precisely why most could not vote for John Kerry. Contrary to Freston’s view, we do not see ourselves as “kidnapping” the Christian faith, but rather as preserving true biblical values in the public square. [80]

The Great Provider: God or the State?

The day in Brazil when we let the government think and behave as the Great Provider, citizens will have their needs met, as the modern Europeans, who don’t know what is like to be hungry. When that day comes, who will need God to supply human needs? Since their basic needs are met by their socialist governments, Europeans forgot God. Everything that is necessary for a population to abandon God, the way Europeans did, is to let the State be the Great Provider. Recognizing or not, the pretensions of the progressive evangelicals will fatefully lead Brazilian society to a state in which all are supplied by the government and don’t need God, just as in Europe.

While the left prevails in Europe and the European churches are getting increasingly empty, opening way for the overwhelming wave from the growing Muslim religion, many American evangelicals refuse to let their spirituality be contaminated by the socialist wave that has been sweeping through churches of Europe and other countries. That is the great difference between the vibrant Christianity of many American conservative churches and the Christian churches under extinction in Europe.

Charity is Our Responsibility, Not Government’s

The truth is that we do not need socialism to guide us in our attitude to the poor. When God talks about helping the poor in the New Testament, he gives that responsibility directly to you, not the government. The Word of God says:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”. (James 1:27 NIV)

“What God the Father considers to be pure and genuine religion is this: to take care of orphans and widows in their suffering and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world”. (James 1:27 GNB)

Corrupted charity, at the Expense of Our Taxes

One of the more pervert influences in Brazil, that has been seducing and contaminating many Christians, is the modernized left, which takes from the Brazilian worker their money in order to finance gay parades, to finance health care services including abortion, to invest millions in the Brazil Without Homophobia state program, to teach school-children that homosexuality is normal and that sin is not sin, to distribute condoms to school-children and to promote homosexuality throughout the whole world through the UN.

However, perhaps one of the worst threats in this world is not just that socialism puts government in the role of the Great Provider of all the citizens, but also that it robs, through taxes, the resources of each Christian, making him less capable to help the poor, the orphans and the widows and usurping from him an important social responsibility God didn’t design nor delivered in the government’s hands, but in the compassionate hands of people that answer the loving call of God: to help the poor. That is not the government’s responsibility, which uses law, compulsion and corruption. That responsibility is yours and mine, for us to use it with a lot of love and direction of God.

Undoubtedly, the State became an important part of the current problems in the society by usurping the role of God and yours and mine. But with our vote, prayers and actions we can let God be the solution to many social problems that the government itself is creating, in favor of a supposed will of giving assistance to people in need.

Does Freston want to help the poor? He has our backing. May he do what we God-fearing Christian do: to follow what the Bible commands and use money from our own pocket, instead of struggling for the government to take money from our pocket! Therefore, he should stop supporting government systems that make doubtful charity at the expense of our involuntary sacrifice. He should stop doing propaganda in favor of leftist governments that explore us on behalf of the poor, taking a lot from our money for objectives having nothing to do with the poor or with the Gospel.

In fact, the leftist politics of heavy taxes on the suffering Brazilian population increasingly impoverish the honest worker. The newspaper Diário do Nordeste exposes the current reality of Brazil: “In spite of the lying propagandas and the prepared statistics, the truth is that, in the Lula administration, the middle class fell in the bottom of the pit.”[81] Research by the University of Campinas also shows that the middle class is experiencing a violent shrink in the Lula administration.[82] So, the worker who made sacrifices throughout his life and was able to reach the middle class is forced to return to the old times of poverty so that all may be equal and equally poor, in this way fulfilling the socialist goal of equality for all. The poor will never be able to escape from poverty and they who were able will be forced to return to it.

I know an eighty year-old man, for instance, who began to work when he was just boy, as a simple farm employee, living the hard reality of the manual work under sun and rain. After many years of sacrifice and hard work, without spending his money in alcoholism and other addictions, he was able to buy a house and a car, arriving to the middle class. Today, though, with the volume of taxes he pays, he is forced to spend minimally, having at his house (in order to not to use much electricity and have more expenses than he already has) such weak lamps that one is badly able to see the letters of a book. That economy is necessary, because he lives as a true slave, oppressed by taxes, being his life useful only to spend his financial resources (hardly acquired during his life as an honest worker) in taxes. He struggled to leave poverty, but the government robs from him the right to enjoy the earnings of his sacrifice.

Opportune Questioning

Does Freston approve that government robbery through tax overload? Does that injustice against a worker bother him? Or does his theology see as normal government robbing a human being under the pretext of “helping” the poor? Then he should consider that in the Ten Commandments there is a strong prohibition against robbery. That prohibition, if he doesn’t know, it is not only relevant to citizens, but to all people, including the government. Or does Freston support so much the tax overload from leftist governments that he doesn’t care about the commandments of God or the value of the sacrifice of a worker?

Is Freston satisfied that the Lula administration, of the supposed “party of the poor”, is giving huge reparations to communist criminals?[83] Is he happy with all the investment Lula is doing in Brazil Without Homophobia,[84] in order to silence our mouths and take our right to express freely our biblical conviction on homosexuality? Is he happy that Lula uses our money to travel throughout the world and make important alliances with Syria and other Muslim countries enemies of Israel?

Why doesn’t Freston condemn what deserves to be condemned? Why does he level his criticism exclusively against Bush and the conservative evangelicals who elected him? With all that the PT government is doing, why does he continue exempting from his criticism Lula and the progressive evangelicals who elected him?

Perhaps Freston is not even seeing what is happening—as Christians, we sometimes need to believe in the people’s innocence! Or perhaps, in the best, he is consoling himself and leaning on the fact that, at least, the Lula administration launched a beautiful self-esteem campaign for the suffering Brazilian people, so that all may be very busy loving themselves. Following, a family-centered campaign will come and, who knows, even a campaign (with a due consultation with MEP, of course) directed to the churches’ self-esteem, so that evangelicals may be so happy and busy with themselves and their events that they will not have time to notice some tragic realities such as Brazil Without Homophobia. We would then be the happiest and most smiling people in the world, giving Lula a perspective of good popularity, without seeing, though, what our government has been doing to the nation while benevolently offering varied self-esteem sedatives and other anesthetic political measures—gifts kindly financed by the money of our taxes. With the usual assistance of the liberal press comrade, those strategies would, undoubtedly, be very helpful to distract much less attentive eyes from the purposes and actions of the smart PT leaders governing Brazil today.

Thanks to the support from the progressive evangelicals to PT, it is not difficult to see that the Lula administration’s anesthetic politics are affecting even churches, prompting a Brazilian evangelical to affirm: “We do not need an evangelical president, but a competent and honest president. Lula has already showed he is such a president.”[85]

We need to believe in an uncommon innocence in Freston. Otherwise, how does one explain his blind faith in the left and his criticism against Bush? Even Robinson Cavalcanti, his progressive comrade, has already waked up for the obvious reality that “there is something rotten in the Federative Republic of Brazil.” Then why does Freston insist on seeing rotten things only in the conservative Bush administration?

Such a radical attitude is prompting evangelicals in Brazil to mistrust so much hate. Two Brazilians, tired by the evident, implacable and incessant opposition and intolerance against Bush, expressed the following opinions:

· “George W. Bush can be accused of several things, less of inconsistency. If most of our politicians and some opportunist evangelical leaders were like him, our Brazil would certainly be better.”[86]

· “What is the justification for that hate against the evangelical Bush? Where does the authority come for it from? Does our authority come from the fact that we helped to choose a spiritually ignorant, morally alcoholic, and religiously superstitious president? Brazilian church, take the plank from your eyes so that you can see the dust in the eye of your brother Bush.”[87]

It is very easy to disapprove a president and government of another country. But the right attitude would be firstly to give more room—and a lot of room—to consider the president, government and problems of our own country. The priority is Brazil, not Nigeria, or Indonesia, or Bolivia, or US, etc. That priority deserves, without hypocrisy, superficiality and fake concern, many cover stories in evangelical magazines to confront the undeniable evils of the Lula administration. Brazil does not need a cover story Evangelicals Help to Re-Elect Bush, supposedly to show the American political “reality”. We are living in the Brazilian political reality. The most necessary for us is an article entitled Lula and the Evangelicals who Helped to Elect Him, to reveal everything that is behind our own reality, that up to now was not shown with the due depth, seriousness and honesty.

Therefore, if we really have a serious, fair and impartial motivation to want to deal with the sins, injustices, corruptions and cruelties of a government, then we do not need to travel to Washington or London. Why go so far? Brasília is much more close to us. Yet, progressive evangelicals in Brazil are determined to stay with their socialist companions throughout the whole world, united in the same feelings of opposition to George Bush and all other evangelicals that don’t meet the political qualifications demanded by the left. As far as I know, their criticism does not spare anybody having not those qualifications. It will be a special miracle from God if they spare me from their hit list!

Nevertheless all the implacable condemnations from the socialists in Brazil and other countries, and the mistaken rebukes from progressive evangelicals who prefer a Lula or Clinton, American evangelicals faithful to the Bible should be congratulated for their courage. They refused to be again deceived, by the biased liberal press and by the deceiving propagandas from the evangelical followers of the Democratic Party, and they acted with a great determination and political discernment so that their country might not choose an American Lula for president again. It is an important lesson that we in Brazil need to learn.

Copyright 2005 Julio Severo. Translated and adapted from Na Mira do Preconceito: Os Evangélicos que Votaram em Bush, an article in Portuguese by Julio Severo. Email: juliosevero@hotmail.com

Source: www.juliosevero.com

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[23] James 1:5-6.
[24] http://www.donfeder.com/filecabinet/10272004.doc
[25] http://oglobo.globo.com/jornal/pais/143002967.asp
[26] Discurso do Dep. Bispo Rodrigues na Câmara dos Deputados em 20 de março de 2003. Sessão 020.1.52.O.
[27] www.resenha.inf.br/politica/?page=resenhas&actions=viewresen&resen_cod=32723
[28] Ari Pedro Oro, A Política da Igreja Universal e Seus Reflexos nos Campos Religioso e Político Brasileiros (Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, vol. 18, nº. 53), págs. 62,63.
[29] http://www.radiobras.gov.br/anteriores/2004/sinopses_2002.htm
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[31] Conforme informação dada pelo Bispo Robson Rodovalho, que participou da reunião.
[32] http://www.lula.org.br/noticias/not_int.asp?not_cod=1152&cf_cod=21&sis_cod=37
[33] http://www.almanaquebrasil.com.br/almanaque63/papo3.asp
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[35] http://www.nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus200408250939.asp
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[42] http://www.estadao.com.br/agestado/noticias/2001/mar/13/117.htm
[43] http://www.chamada.com.br/mensagens/reidosjudeus.shtml
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[45] Enfoque Gospel, abril de 2003, pág. 51.
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[47] http://www.caiofabio.com//hpaginternapesquisar.aspx?VGJULhAonLFn/pIy2gue7g==
[48] http://www.caiofabio.com//hpaginternapesquisar.aspx?j53Mj5UMg6G4AEesY0f+L0==
[49] Enfoque Gospel, abril de 2003, pág. 51.
[50] Email pessoal do Dr. Allan Carlson para Julio Severo, de 20 de dezembro de 2004.
[51] http://www.the-hamster.com/mtype/archives/2004/10/friday_13.html
[52] http://www.lifenews.com/nat886.html
[53] http://www.nrlc.org/rko/stassenpart2.html
[54] LifeSiteNews.com - Tuesday May 31, 2005
[55] http://www.ultimato.com.br/revistas_artigo.asp?edicao=268&sec_id=330
[56] http://www.ultimato.com.br/Artigo_1.asp
[57] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1325026/posts
[58] Haidi Jarschel e Carolina Teles Lemos, “Atores/Atrizes Sociais se Posicionam”, artigo publicado na revista hispânica Consciência Latino Americana (Católicas pelo Direito de Decidir, setembro a dezembro de 1994), p. 13.
[59] http://www.clicrbs.com.br/clicnoticias/jsp/default.jsp?tab=00002&newsID=a735005.htm&subTab=00026&uf1&local=1&l=&template
[60] http://www.democracyforminnesota.org/node/view/536
[61] Brasil Sem Homofobia, Programa de Combate à Violência e à Discriminação contra GLTB e de Promoção da Cidadania Homossexual, © 2004 Secretária Especial de Direitos Humanos [da Presidência da República do Brasil], página 29.
[62] Email from Esly de Carvalho to Julio Severo, September 8, 2004.
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[64] LifeSite Daily News - Monday July 19, 2004.
[65] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jan/040122a.html
[66] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jan/04011602.html
[67] http://www.jesussite.com.br/acervo.asp?Id=916
[68] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/may/04051701.html
[69] LifeSite Daily News, terça, 8 de junho de 2004
[70] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jul/04071601.html
[71] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jun/04061106.html
[72] http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA04B20
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[74] http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/sep/04092102.html
[75] http://www.charismanow.com/a.php?ArticleID=9609
[76] http://www.lula.org.br/noticias/noticias_int_radio13.asp?rad_cod=148
[77] http://www.ieclb.org.br/noticia.php?id=136
[78] Romans 13:14 e 1 Peter 2:14.
[79] Do Narcotráfico ao Narcoturismo, discurso do Dep. Milton Cárdias, em e-mail datado de 14 de dezembro de 2004..
[80] Email from Carrie Gordon Earll, Government and Public Policy, Focus on the Family, December 29, 2004.
[81] http://diariodonordeste.globo.com/materia.asp?codigo=159112
[82] http://www.jhoje.com.br/131104/economia.asp
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[85] Boletim eletrônico Vidanet ano 5 n.° 254..
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[87] Boletim eletrônico Vidanet ano 5 n.° 253.


Other articles by Julio Severo

Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

Message to President Lula on Israel

Message to President Lula on homosexuality

Growth of divorce among Christians: a biblical perspective

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

Julio Severo

On May 2005, the whole world celebrated the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. Who could forget that awful event where millions perished? And it cannot be forgotten that the Jewish population in Europe, always discriminated against and persecuted, was almost exterminated by the killing obsession of Hitler. About 6 million Jews were killed.

The Jewish people, more than anyone, know that discrimination has a deadly cost. Brazil, under the Socialist administration of President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, whose main preoccupation is the issue of discrimination, could well have taken advantage of the occasion to remember the cost Jews paid for that irrational prejudice. Yet, the Lula administration chose to occupy itself and spend the contributions of the Brazilian taxpayers to implement the Summit of South American-Arab Countries, hosting Muslim government officials from countries rich in oil and rich in prejudices and hate against Israel. Nations at the summit included Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Algeria, Egypt, Qatar, Libya, Oman, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, and, of course, Brazil.

Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim had declared that the conference would be an exclusively economic and cultural event and would not attack the traditional allies of Brazil. Nevertheless, the opposite happened: by the end of the conference, the South American leaders, including dictator Hugo Chavez, endorsed a declaration condemning the Israeli occupation of “Palestinian” territory. The declaration denounced terrorism, but it also asserted the right of people "to resist foreign occupation”, suggesting that “Palestinian” terrorist groups have the right to attack Israel.

Inconsistencies, insults and gaffes

The Lula administration’s boldness in the defense of human rights and in the fight against discrimination is so unwavering that Brazil has unashamedly and publicly defended homosexual behavior, becoming the first nation to introduce in the United Nations a resolution fighting “prejudice” against homosexuality. Yet, because of the Arab leaders invited to its meeting, Brazilian government was obliged to sacrifice briefly its international pro-homosexualism policy, giving up its pioneering resolution in the UN. Moreover, Lula could not make a public defense of democracy before the Arab attendees. The word democracy is offensive to Arabs, reminding them that they should be fair with women, Jews, Christians and with all groups suffering daily discrimination and even death in the Muslim countries.

Lula is internationally known for his ability to offend, using any word coming to his mind. With that “special” ability, he is an author of many gaffes, usually addressed to Bush and Americans. If he is not afraid to offend or make gaffes, then why not to talk about democracy and human rights before Arabs, who have so many problems with those issues?

In the Summit of South American-Arab Countries, Lula took utmost care not to use his “special” ability against Arab leaders, even dictators. Nevertheless, he eventually offended — but, of course, not the Arabs! He offended the most discriminated ethnic group in the History: the Jews.

In a historical time when everyone should remember the tragedies of World War II, where Jews suffered brutally, almost to extermination, the Brazilian government remembered only to cut Israel from the map used by the Foreign Affairs Ministry at the Summit. On the map, the whole region where Israel should be is marked Palestine, as if the Israeli territory were exclusively an Arab State[1]. Therefore, the map of the Lula administration cut Israel out geographically, as if the Jewish land did not exist! Whom did Lula want to please? Muslim terrorists? Did Lula want to draw their vast financial resources to Brazil?

Independence of ignorance or death

Today Brazil lives in a time of extreme ignorance. A people can be destroyed for not knowing and understanding reality. There is no better or greater independence than to be free from ignorance.

However, for this independence and liberty to exist, a Tiradentes[2] should raise up, fearless of consequences. The original Tiradentes came from the Minas Gerais State, fighting and dying for the independence of Brazil. From Minas also arose the cry against the evident and incomprehensible flattery from the Lula administration for the Muslim dictatorships in the Summit of South American-Arab Countries. From Minas came the cry against the prejudiced policy from the Socialist government of Brazil against Israel. From Minas came the cry against the Brazilian stand that defended astutely the “Palestinian” terrorism against Israel.

While the Brazilian government was busy flattering Hugo Chavez and the Muslim Arabs in Brasília, in Minas an event was taking place that addressed with legitimate fairness the Middle East issues. By initiative of the state representative João Leite, the Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais honored Israel for the anniversary of the foundation of its State in 1948 and denounced the prejudice of the Summit of South American-Arab Countries against Israel.

Israel, worthy of remembering, is the only real democracy in the Middle East. Therefore, João Leite did what the Brazilian government itself should do: praise the only democratic country in the Middle East and condemn the violations of human rights and women rights in all Muslim Arab nations around Israel.

After all, Lula and his Workers’ Party always claim to carry the flag of defense of democracy and human rights. If they are not able to demonstrate seriousness for this flag, they should not use the federal government to make alliances with Arab countries without democratic tradition and turn Brazil into a circus of international tragedies. If they want such a circus, only Lula and his Party should enter it, and they should leave the government of Brazil to honest people having genuine commitment to the flag of democracy and human rights.

Perpetuating the Philistine hate

At the Summit, Hugo Chavez, Muslim leaders and Lula condemned Israel. By doing so, Lula got involved in a war that has nothing to do with Brazil. Even worse, he chose the wrong side to support, because — as always — he ignores the facts. The so-called “Palestinians” are in reality the offspring of Arabs of the region around Israel. Yasser Arafat himself, the greatest “Palestinian” leader and considered one of the greatest terrorists of the 20th century, was born in Egypt. Arabs were able to invade and occupy the Jewish land only because Israel was unprotected and unoccupied for a long time — since the beginning of the Christian era, when the Roman Empire expelled the Jews from their own land, forbidding them from returning. This expulsion was so wrathfully carried out that Roma turned the land of Israel into the simple province of Syria, destroying its national identity and changing even its name, designating all the territory of Israel as Palestine, which is a variant of Philistine land. Therefore, the title Palestine is a total forgery, made up by Romans to cover, insult, assault and destroy the only legitimate denomination of all that land. Why did the Roman Empire decide to designate it by the name of those who were the worst enemies of Israel? For vengeance — for Jews had vigorously resisted the Roman military occupation.

By clear and tragic coincidence, today all who nurture the Philistine and Roman hate against the Jews keep alive the title Palestine. Even though the current “Palestinians” have no relation — religious or cultural — to the original Philistines, they sustain their same anti-Jewish hostility.

Unfortunately, Lula chose the side that is perpetuating the hate.

“Palestinians” are welcome in Israel

Who could blame Lula for such ignorance against the Jews? Even among Christians, there are those ignorant that support the “Palestinian” fight to create a country in the territory of Israel. A point misinterpreted and even abused by liberal Christians to harm the legitimate right of the Jews to their land promised by God is taken from the Bible passages that command the Jews to accept foreigners in their land.

However, the purpose of those passages is only to include in the nation of Israel the foreigners. This is not the case with the “Palestinians”. They do not want to be included in Israel. What they want is to tear off from Israel all or much of their territory and create another nation in a place where there already is a country.

In spite of all this, Israelis are ready to admit “Palestinians” in their land as Israeli citizens. Yet, during World War II, when millions of Jews wanted to flee for the land of Israel, the English prevented it, for the “Palestinians” — who were the Arab occupants of that land — did not want the Jews. The man most unwilling to see Jews escaping the Holocaust and fleeing to their God-given land was the Jerusalem-based Muslim leader of the “Palestinians” — who in that time was a strong ally of Adolf Hitler. In fact, no one wanted to accept the Jews as refugees in their countries, nor let them flee for their own land — leaving them completely without alternative and place to go. This tragedy is as scandalous as the Holocaust itself.

In spite of this, Israelis do not nurture vengeance against those who occupied their land and refused their entry to the territory of Israel while Hitler massacred millions of Jews.

If “Palestinians” wish to be included in Israel and become Israeli citizens, the nation of Israel is ready to admit them, and the Bible itself supports that option. However, in no place does God’s Word show that there will be more than one nation in the land God gave the Jews. Besides, the Arab countries around Israel, where the Arab ancestors of the “Palestinians” came from, have territories much larger for sheltering the “Palestinians” than the tiny land of Israel. Yet, will their Arab and Muslim brothers want them? This is what Lula and liberal Christians should consider and ask themselves.

Choice of blessing or curse

Lula is too smart to make gaffes and offend the Muslim Arabs. He knows very well whom he can disturb. Yet, if his goal is to get international visibility at the expense of Israel, he will need to know who the nation of Israel is and has been since ancient times, so that he may know what happens to a man or nation allying themselves with those spreading hatred against the Jews. If he has no nerve to antagonize the ruthless and dangerous Muslims, why provoke He who said that those who touch Israel touch the pupil of His eyes? For those who believe in the Bible account, there is the undeniable fact that God always takes care of the Jewish people. The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel after a dispersion of almost two thousand years confirms God’s care of the Jews, for in Ezekiel 37 God promises to resurrect the nation of Israel after an apparently total national death. That divine promise was completely fulfilled in 1948, with the foundation of the modern State of Israel. For those who do not believe in God and the Bible, there is the account of history, which makes very clear that the enemies of the Jews do not have an end better than Hitler, who led a whole nation to its destruction and who committed suicide.

The hate of the Philistines and Romans against the Jews is growing into a worldwide hatred against Israel. While there is time, Lula should begin to read the Bible and abstain entirely from immersing Brazil in that sea of hatred — craftily masked as support to the “Palestinian” cause. If he wants to make a real difference in the Middle East issues, he should stop condemning the Jewish people, who for centuries and centuries suffered discrimination, persecution and death. If he is determined to condemn, there are many legitimate targets that deserve censure. He should focus his attention on the Arab peoples, who, to this day, commit violations of the rights of women, Jews, Christians and other minorities in their countries.

If he reads and believes in what the Bible says about Israel, he will have an excellent perspective set before him: God promises to bless those who bless Israel (Genesis 12:3).

Source: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

[1] According to the map of Itamaraty shown in the Brazilian paper Folha de S. Paulo in May 10, 2005, page A6.
[2] Tiradentes is a national hero in Brazil, who fought and died for the independence of Brazil in the century 16.

Other articles by Julio Severo

Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

Message to President Lula on Israel

Message to President Lula on homosexuality

Growth of divorce among Christians: a biblical perspective

The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education

The Mark of the Beast:
The Tomorrow’s Education

By Julio Severo

If asked how the tomorrow’s education will be, perhaps we would say that it will be an education which, at last, will completely destroy illiteracy and give learning opportunities to everyone. At least, our simple desire is the well-being of our children, including in the educational area. Education is an essential part of life. So the large majority of parents expect to send their children to good schools.

However, what if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were asked how the tomorrow’s education would be? It seems that they did not worry about this issue, for they were busy in the responsibility to train their children to live for God in this world. God was not also worried, for he knew that Abraham and his posterity would fulfill that responsibility. He said: “For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice, in order that Jehovah may bring upon Abraham what he hath spoken of him”. (Genesis 18:19 Darby)

So Genesis, the first book of the Bible, shows that God was perfectly aware that Abraham would be able to impart an education rooted in the right place: the commands of God. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not worry about the tomorrow’s education, for their attention was focused on the important mission of training their children in the ways of the Lord. For them there was not greater educational interest than creating in the children a mindset having a profound knowledge and fear of God.

What if other men and women in the Bible were asked about how the tomorrow’s education would be? It seems few would be in condition to answer, but there are two men who would know how to give a relevant answer: Moses and John. Having studied in the best Egyptian universities, Moses was qualified to offer an outlook based on his experience in the Egyptian educational system, which was not much different from the system we know today. Yet, it appears that in nowhere in God’s Word we see so a clear and positive answer as the significant revelation found in the last book in the Bible. In Revelation, Apostle John was given the opportunity to see by special revelation how will be the educational system of a future that, very probably, also includes our generation.

WHAT REVELATION TELLS ABOUT FUTURE

Among the many visions that he was given in the book of Revelation, John saw a worldwide government system, under the leadership of the beast, controlling the lives of all individuals:

“The beast forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to have a mark placed on their right hands or on their foreheads. No one could buy or sell without this mark, that is, the beast's name or the number that stands for the name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 GNB)

Is it hard to understand that verse? God loves the simple people who love him and give attention to him. He wrote his Word so that even an ordinary, unschooled man may comprehend. “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple”. (Psalms 119:130 ESV) How can we then interpret what God means in certain Bible texts? What we need to do is to compare a spiritual passage with another spiritual passage. In fact, the Word of God itself teaches us that we can learn to distinguish the thoughts, intents and revelations of the Holy Spirit in His Word by “comparing spiritual things with spiritual”. (1 Corinthians 2:13 KJV)

So, comparing the Revelation text with two Old Testament passages containing similar suggestion of mark on the hand and forehead, we can know what this symbolism means.

“This observance will be a reminder, like something tied on your hand or on your forehead; it will remind you to continue to recite and study the Law of the LORD, because the LORD brought you out of Egypt by his great power”. (Exodus 13:9 GNB)

“This observance will be a reminder, like something tied on our hands or on our foreheads; it will remind us that the LORD brought us out of Egypt by his great power”. (Exodus 13:16 GNB)

The repetition of the feast, year after year, would help educate God’s people never to forget God’s Word. Explaining in a simple way, that repetition was an educational method used to mark profoundly the minds of the people, so that they would always remember to recite and study God’s Word.

PROFOUND MARKS

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 NIV)

Buying and selling is a part of the life system of society. To survive in that system, each citizen needs a job at the very minimum. Especially in large cities, virtually all jobs require certain educational level. In fact, one of the first questions an employer asks to one wanting a job is about his educational level. More than ever, today a man needs a diploma to be able to have an occupation in the marketplace, and the minimal educational demands are increasingly high, compelling children and teens to spend most of their years in the educational institutions. A human being today is only respected according to an official diploma proving he spent years studying in schools and universities. It is getting almost impossible to live without a diploma.

This trend suggests that soon it will be not possible to get a job without a minimal government-approved education. Worried about their children and in order to help them not suffer disadvantages and closed doors in the marketplace, parents make a point of forcing them to spend most of their years in the educational institutions. The today’s social, political and legal pressures do not let a young man get a worthy occupation without a government-accepted diploma, annulling his survival prospects. Without a job, how can one buy and sell to live? This is what the Revelation passage suggests: those not having their hands and foreheads marked cannot do anything to survive in the marketplace. What is then the meaning of the marked hand and forehead?

Mark on the hand: Hand is the body part that acts, works and performs tasks. The sign on the hand is a symbol that one received so a profound and intense education that everything he does brings the mark of what he learnt. He was taught to do things according to the patterns of the government educational system. He was “marked” to act and behave according to the education that was implanted in him.

Mark on the forehead: Forehead is the body part where the mind lies. The sign on the forehead is a symbol that one received so a profound and intense education that everything he thinks and speaks brings the mark of what he learnt. He was taught to think and express himself according to the values of the government educational system. He was “marked” to think according to the education that was implanted in him.

If this symbolism actually represents the influence of an educational system on the way people think and act, then we can consider that influence as a very effective mark, for today a child is obliged to spend years in a formal school being marked by many government-education imposed teachings.

THE BEAST’S MYSTERY AND HER MEANING

What is the meaning of the name and number of the beast? There is a possibility that name and number may be a very simple reference to the basic concepts of language and mathematics, which are the fundamental pillars of education. So in the beast’s system every citizen, Christian or not, is forced by law to attend school to learn the essentials (read and write) and, in the process, absorb “other teachings” the beast consider of value for the children and teens’ education.

Therefore, the beast mentioned in Revelation is not a man, but some kind of spiritual entity behind of a social system controlling and guiding the course and lives of all citizens. So the beast is a system working here on the earth under demonic direction and control. How exactly will the beast control the people’s lives? Who is the beast?

The term beast means in the original Greek savage animal or wicked person. Following this definition, we can understand that all people (whatever his religion, ethnic background or social status) will receive an education conditioning them to think and live without the support of moral values, just as the savage animals or wicked people do. How precisely could the human learning institutions implant in the minds of children openness to behaviors like the conduct of the savage animals or wicked people?

A MAJOR ISSUE: SEXUALITY

God says about the human sexuality: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one”. (Genesis 2:24 GNB) In fact, the first and most significant positive command of God for the first human married couple was exactly about sex, marriage and family (see Genesis 1:28). Even though man has a special call from God to leave father and mother to get united with his wife, become one flesh, establish a family and subdue the earth, the modern educational system forms children to think and act without moral boundaries, as if human beings were savage animals.

To combat the threat of sexually transmitted diseases, the Brazilian government offers the condom solution. In the public schools, the programs to prevent these diseases have “as a primary purpose make possible for children and teens to be able to choose responsibly and without a sense of guilt in the sexuality area, without incurring the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases”. Children and teens are taught to “choose” in the sexual area [they learn to decide whatever they want: oral, vaginal, anal sex.] responsibly [always using a condom and birth control] and without a sense of guilt [without being troubled by sex without a marital commitment]. This is how government wants public-school children to learn to “protect” their sexual pleasure of possible “nuisances”. Among theses nuisances is pregnancy, which is put in the same category of the threat of sexual diseases.

For government, the problem is not sex before marriage, but pregnancy and an innocent child conceived. The problem is everything (pregnancy or disease) that disturbs a teen from getting his sexual pleasure, with or without marriage, with or without moral values. So the government’s aim is to use schools to educate young people to avoid pregnancy, not sex outside marriage. It intends to teach “respect” and “tolerance” toward sexual freedom, not respect toward all moral commitments involved with sex, including marriage, family and bringing up of children.

By barring the essential role of the marital commitment between a man and a woman as the only healthy and natural way to have sexual relations, the public-school education eventually opens room to abnormal sexual choices, including homosexuality. Homosexuality has been presented and taught in classrooms not as a sexual behavior against nature, but as a different lifestyle deserving respect and tolerance. Basically, schools today form a child to think and act as a savage animal or wicked person in the sexual area. Would the beast’s educational system do differently?

Political leaders understand very well the crucial role of education to form the tomorrow’s citizens. In his Socialist government, Brazilian President Lula launched a completely avant-garde, comprehensive program entitled Brasil Sem Homofobia (Brazil Without Homophobia), to cultivate in the Brazilian citizens attitudes favorable to homosexuality and, through educational campaigns, implant in their minds a hostile ideological programming to make them spontaneously reject all view contrary to homosexual acts. This programming will condition them to see as prejudice, discrimination and hate every stance, including from the Bible, regarding homosexuality as a sin, abnormality and perversion. How will this subtle brainwashing happen? The government’s plan is to train especially public-school teachers to make exclusively positive presentations on the homosexual behavior to students. Then will it be a wonder to hear and see, some years from now, most of the young people defending homosexuality naturally? Such defense will be evidence that the years they spent in the schools produced the results expected by the “educational” campaigns. So the government sees schools as key factors in its effort to form and change the children’s mindset. Will the beast see schools differently?

SPIRITUAL RISKS OF THE PLUBLIC EDUCATION

In addition to sexuality, it is the government’s will that the public education should also include, covertly, religious elements. Even though the Ministry of Education of Brazil (MEC) has not the least interest in teaching children to know, read and respect the Bible, such ill will does not apply to the practices of witchcraft. MEC believes that candomblé and other occult religions from Africa are legitimate cultural expressions of Brazilian blacks and wants systematically indoctrinate public-school children not to despise or reject the practices of those religions. So schoolchildren are taught to respect African occultism as culture. Any opposition to that “culture” is considered racism. Would the beast’s educational system do less than this?

A major concern of every loving parent is guaranteeing the physical, spiritual and moral safety of their children. Even wild animals protect their young. Yet, in many public schools a child is exposed to drugs and other situations endangering his moral and spiritual health and, sometimes, his own life. Many schoolchildren are also not protected from bad influences and teachings disrespecting the moral and Bible principles learnt at home and church. It is in the school often teens and children are exposed to improper models and examples of dating and sexual conduct. Is it a wonder then that so many Evangelical young people are falling under the pressures of their friends and are turning from the Lord after spending years under such negative socialization and influence? Would the beast’s educational system do differently?

In the beast’s educational system, children will be conditioned, in some respects, to live and see themselves as an animal. While in the Bible the human being is shown as clearly distinct, different and more important than animals, in the schools of the beast’s system children will learn the human being had his origin not in God, but in animals. Is not exactly this that is happening in our days? In today’s schools, teachers receive government command to teach that man came from monkey, making human beings equivalent to animals. Innocent children’s minds are marked by a lie against God, the Creator. If man is equal to animals in essence, then why cannot his behavior be made equal to the conduct of animals too? If animals do not need to get married before their sex acts, why respect marriage among human beings? Why await until marriage to make sex? Is it a wonder then that the AIDS-government propagandas and the school education stress only preparation for sex, not for marriage? Would the beast’s system do differently?

STUDENT’S VULNERABILITY AT SCHOOL

The influence a child receives at school can mark him for the rest of his life. An important example is what happened to a young man in Germany. He wasted the money of his father in drunkenness. For the joy of his father, who was a lawyer descended from rabbis, the young man was converted to Christianity and left his bad habits. He began to write poems on his Christian experiences. Yet, when he went to study in a school institution he fell under the influence of a teacher who introduced him into an advanced level of Satanism and radical political ideas. From this point on, the young man got a new mindset and increasing interest in Satan. His new inspiration led him to write poems and books on subjects very different from the teaching of Jesus. In his poem The Player, he wrote:

The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain,
Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.
See the sword?
The prince of darkness
Sold it to me.
For me he beats the time and gives the signs.
Ever more boldly I play the dance of death. [1]

Somewhere else he said:

Every word of mine is fire and action. [2]

The young man was so marked by the influence he received that he eventually became the author of books that even today influence nations and world leaders: The Capital and The Communist Manifesto. His name? Karl Marx, the Socialism’s founder, a government system established to occupy God’s place in the citizens’ lives and control and determine everything they do, especially in the education and family area. Perhaps no ideology has provoked so much bloodshed to humankind as the Socialistic ideas. In fact, Marx’s words became fire and action, burning and killing. Millions of innocent lives were destroyed in Communist Russia and China. Millions of Christians around the world suffered and suffer cruelly in countries controlled by radical Socialistic ideas, as Cuba, China and North Korea. In nations where a “soft” Socialism thrives — as Sweden, Holland, Canada and Germany — Christian churches are withering and the most fundamental rights of Christians are little by little being suppressed on behalf of privileges and special rights for homosexual behavior, abortion and other practices contrary to the most basic Christian and moral principles. Evangelical parents who, by obedience to God’s Word, physically discipline their children are targeted by the discrimination, prejudice and hostility from the Swedish and Canadian government officials, while homosexual militants adopt children and are allowed to promote homosexuality even to schoolchildren. Would the beast’s system do less than this?

SOCIALISM FOR ALL, BY EDUCATION

In spite of all the cruel reality involving Communism, Socialism, leftism and all their ideological relatives, in the Brazilian schools and colleges Socialism is presented in the most benign and favorable way. An Evangelical young man told me that when he studied informatics in a college in Brasília, the reading of The Capital, by Karl Marx, and other Socialistic books was mandatory, even though those writings have no relation to informatics. Can a young student be contaminated and marked by wrong ideas and influences in school? Karl Marx is a tragic and actual example of what may happen to a young man in a school setting.

Basically, Socialism — in all its forms — preaches entire submission and dependence of each citizen on the government and its institutions. In the most of European nations, their populations have been systematically indoctrinated, by various educational strategies, not to be “intolerant”, “discriminatory” and “prejudiced” against abortion, homosexuality and other perversions. They are being conditioned to see as natural government occupying in their lives a control only God should have. They allow their lives to be dominated from birth to death. In the past, when there were family and national troubles, many Europeans turned to God. Today, they appeal to government. When they needed jobs, they sought God more earnestly. Now they were “taught” to think that it is the government’s responsibility to give job to everyone. European Socialism has indoctrinated citizens to see government as the Great Provider. Is it a wonder then that Europe is forgetting God and experiencing an emptying of its Christian churches?

The “soft” Socialism conditioning in Europe, through schools and media, programs everybody to think that it is the government that has the duty to supply solution to everything and everyone. In short, Europeans learnt to depend more on the government than on God to provide their most basic needs. For perverts, government gives laws favorable to homosexuality, instead of protecting citizens against behaviors harmful to their physical and moral health. For feminists, laws sympathetic to abortion, instead of taking a consistent stance against the killing of innocent and defenseless babies. For wives, ways to work outside home, instead of means for them not to be forced by economical pressures to go out home to work and complement family income. For children, daycares, instead of means for a mother to be able to take care of their own children at home. For elderly, rest homes, instead of working to promote family well-being, for home is the healthiest place to welcome the weakest human beings, including elderly. Not to mention that the mandatory school attendance laws keep vulnerable children many daily hours away from family and its values and close to government and its values. And the whole society sees as normal the government role and its Socialistic policies that replace the most essential family functions. Those policies render family to a certain extent irrelevant and disposable. Consider carefully: Would the beast’s system do less than it?

By imposition of the “tolerance” and “cultural diversity” government concepts, modern schools promote Socialism, evolution, homosexuality and sex without a need of marriage and moral responsibility. After spending day after day and year after year under such “educational” influence, how can children fail to be marked? Would the beast’s system do differently?

So an intriguing question is: is the tomorrow’s education already here? Is the education revealed in Revelation already happening?

SCHOOL FOR ALL, WILLINGLY OR BY FORCE

The modern issue is not only that someone needs to receive a good education, but where everyone is forced to receive it. In Brazil, the only kind of education approved for someone to have a good job is the education from learning institutions following government guidelines. If a Christian child receives a complete education, at home, all that will be needed it is a fair acknowledgment. But government has its reasons and interests for not giving such acknowledgment. Government sees a parent-controlled education as threat to its ideological intents.

That control over school-age children follows the Socialism and Nazism’s track. Public education has never been targeted by compulsory government policies in the past, but the greatest killing dictatorships the world has already known had special interests. Socialist Russia and Nazi Germany are among the first modern nations to completely control schools, not to allow an exclusively Christian education, to force teachers to teach that man came from monkey and to put human being and his will in the heart of everything in education and society. In that issue, there are no significant ideological differences between Nazism and Socialism. In fact, most of the founding members of Nazism were former Communist militants and it is known that the Nazi Party — a short name for National Socialist Workers’ Party — was a political movement organized, with Hitler and his elite, by many secret homosexuals. The greatest human calamity in history — World War II — began when National Socialists in Germany and Socialists in Russia made a treaty to divide, invade and ravage the defenseless Poland. After this, the world saw massive tragedies and destruction. By that cruel example, nations should have learnt that a government system which controls citizens and forces all children to attend only Bibleless, government-approved schools is, literally, on the way to destruction.

Doubtless, the mandatory school attendance laws in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia would have got full and joyful approval from the beast. Yet, has the government desire to control school-age children ended? Sadly, no.

There are already in Brazil and many other countries mandatory laws forcing all children to attend school, and the social, legal and political trends suggest that soon no child will be allowed to stay outside the government-approved education institutions. Then is the mandatory education revealed in Revelation already beginning to become real? Today, all children — regardless their religion, ethnic background and social status — are forced to attend school and receive an education according to the government determinations. A child may study very well and even get an excellent educational formation, but if he does not receive his education through government-determined institutions, authorities will refuse to him a fair diploma, so that families may never have the courage to take the responsibility to control the education of their own children through home schooling. Those government actions leave a child chanceless to enter the marketplace later. The issue is not only that government wants children to receive an education, but also wants them to receive a diploma proving that they were systematically indoctrinated according to government-accepted principles.

A major side effect provoked by the position of education on the social pedestal is that young people are obliged to spend most of their years studying, without being allowed to think in marriage. In Bible times and even recently, the large majority of young people could marry as soon as they felt much need. Today, even in great need, they are forced to await long years to get married, because of the social pressures in their lives: everyone fears that without a government-approved diploma young people will be not able to support a family. Not to mention that the college-environment pressures for dating early and for not marring early are so enormous that we can consider a great miracle if a young man or woman finishes college as a virgin.

Surveys suggest that because of college studies, young men and women now get married increasingly later in their lives. Yet, they keep feeling sexual desires. While young people in Bible canalized those desires to sex within marriage, young people today also canalize them to sex, but not within marriage, partly because of the social imposition that hinders them from getting married before a graduation. It is an important dilemma, where often one or another is sacrificed, even though in the most of times the sacrificed is family and marriage. So even many Christian young people are, when they put their education aims before marriage in their urgent sexual needs, eventually involved in situations very similar to the situations lived by non-Christian young people: sex and pregnancy before marriage and, tragically, even abortion. Government solves those “problems” by training public-school teachers to talk about sexual issues (including birth control, condom and homosexuality) in a level far away from family and Bible values. All that government has done, in its efforts to help take “care” of the children and teens’ sexual needs, is to teach students to make sex without pregnancy and marriage.

It is no novelty the fact that government has an obsessive interest in the education of all children. Its aim, obviously, is to form the future citizens’ mindset since early.

DIVINE ALTERNATIVE

However, God’s Word reveals that God also has a profound and special interest in the issue of education of the Christian families’ children. God’s orientation is for parents to take the responsibility to give their child a complete education at home, where he can learn much more than only reading, writing and add. God says:

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Never forget these commands that I am giving you today. Teach them to your children. Repeat them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working. Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates”. (Deuteronomy 6:5-9 GNB)

In Deuteronomy, to tie the commands and teachings on the arms and on the foreheads is a sign and symbol used to represent the whole education children are given at home, under the parents’ guidance. Who wrote that text was Moses and he knew very well what is to be marked by education, for he himself had received such mark. The education issue is so vitally important that God, through Moses, repeats the same orientation to families:

“Remember these commands and cherish them. Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates. Then you and your children will live a long time in the land that the LORD your God promised to give to your ancestors. You will live there as long as there is a sky above the earth”. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21 GNB)

Another translation is even clearer still:

“Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night”. (Deuteronomy 11:18-19 MSG)

That passage makes clear that children and the home environment where they live should be profoundly marked by education. Evidently, that education’s heart is God’s commands. Without those commands, all education, within or out home, is worthless.

Parents were put on the position of natural teachers of their children, with the opportunity and responsibility to teach spontaneously from dawn to sunset of the day, wherever they are. So while children are in their vulnerable phase, their closest and most important educational companionship should be their own parents and their values. God’s desire is for children to stay entirely exposed all the day long, everyday and in everyplace to the parents’ educational example and influence, in order to mark completely their attitudes and thoughts.

GOD’S EDUCATION VERSUS THE BEAST’S EDUCATION

When God used Moses to orient parents to educate children at home, there already was an “excellent” educational system outside the family environment. Today that system occupies so a great position of control and respect that no one believes that at home a child may receive a minimum of adequate education. Supposedly “no one can live respectably without going through an institutional school”. So the institutional education occupies a pedestal of social divinity that no one dares to question.

Even though not attending public schools, the godly families’ children in the Bible received an excellent education, especially in God’s commands. The teachers were not strange people, but father and mother. School was the home itself.

In that time there were not pencils, pens, erasers, exercise books, books, etc. Today, with all the resources available to us, parents think that, before public-school teachers, they are unfit and inferior to teach their children. Yet, having only God’s Word and following the orientation of Deuteronomy 11:18-21, parents in the Bible were able to educate and train children for the Lord. If it was possible to homeschool in that time, why not now? Today there are fewer hindrances for home schooling. There are computers, videos and many other tools that greatly assist the child’s learning. Therefore, from the technological viewpoint, there are not barriers for the child’s education to be dispensed at home. The only barrier is government, which fears to lose the opportunity to mark the child by its ideologies. From God’s viewpoint and calling, parents have the responsibility, with or without barriers, to take on the whole education of their children.

Home schooling is not impossible. Jesus said himself: “What is impossible with men is possible with God”. (Luke 18:27 NIV) My wife and I educate our children by this method, sacrificing everything so that God and his projects may be absolute priority in their lives. We verify by experience that a boy learns to write and read better and faster under the parents’ direct teaching. But we are not in no way alone. There are many Evangelical families in Brazil homeschooling their children, even without any government support and acceptance. In the USA, the number of Christian children in home schooling is 2 million and keeps increasing. Yet, even if we were alone, would it not be worthwhile? After all, God is faithful and he always honors those who honor him above all.

The public education’s aim is to form the mindset of a boy and girl according to government-approved values and transmit to them all that those values regard as essential. God’s aim, when he orients parents to homeschool, is to transmit to a child all God’ Word regards as essential. Of course, government has no willingness to allow God and his Word to occupy the education’s heart in the children’s lives. In fact, the modern social and political system wants us to believe that it is possible to educate a child without mixing “religion”, even though in the public schools there is increasing room for the expression of the African-Brazilian religions under the mask of an appreciation for black culture. The whole education that government demands for children is mandatory and does not include God’s Word in the heart of everything, not much different from the education revealed in Revelation.

“[The beast] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name”. (Revelation 13:16-17 NIV)

While Revelation mentions the “mark on the right hand or n the forehead”, Deuteronomy mentions tying God’s commands on “the arms and on the forehead”. That Bible symbolism refers to a whole and “marking” education in the children’s minds and attitudes, but with one difference: Deuteronomy presents God’s design to form children at home, but the humankind’s future educational formation Revelation shows will happen outside family’s influence, control and their values. Its most important connection will be the beast’s values, and the most effective way to transmit those values is taking advantage of the opportunities when children are away from the parents’ direct supervision.

What is the place where a boy and a girl stay more hours, daily, away from family’s view and moral protection?
What is the place where they, in their most vulnerable years, stay more time away from the parents’ influence sphere?
What is the place where they stay, during years, most close to government and its values?

Answer: The institutional school setting. Revelation shows that, through education, the beast-chosen values will be implanted in every child and teen: religious and atheist, poor and rich, black and white, employees and employers, etc. One of those values, for example, is the tolerance, respect and acceptance as normal of behaviors such as homosexuality. That education will be, in most future educators’ view, complete because the human being and his will be in the heart of everything.

However, what good will it be for humankind to reach high levels in its education “quality”, without God’s Word? “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26 NIV) Noah Webster, author of the known Webster’s Dictionary, stated, “Education is useless without the Bible”.[3] Would a Bibleless education be worth the sacrifice of our children’s souls? Martin Luther declared, “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of the hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt”.[4]

Was Luther mistaken? Today almost all examples of Evangelical families where there are children turned away from the Lord, the children began to distance themselves from parents and their values during the period when they attended an institutional school. They turn away through friends’ influence, especially in the school setting, where often there is not respect for the moral values of God’s Word. Besides, in the modern institutional schools a child and teen absorb new values and basically learn independence from family and its values.

MOSES AND THE BEST SCHOOLS, FROM A HUMAN VIEWPOINT

Does God need the government-controlled education to “build” and use a man or woman? Perhaps no one has experienced so much of such education as Moses did. As the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, the ruler of Egypt, Moses spent significant part of his life receiving education in the best Egyptian universities, which were regarded as the most advanced in his days. In today’s language, it would be as studying in the best American universities. Modern history books confirm that education in Egypt was advanced:

Many of the modern ideals and beliefs, as well as great part of the knowledge on man, had its origin in Egypt. The ancient Egyptians developed the first kind of national government in the world. They produced a significant art and literature. They initiated an architecture based on stone and made the first adequate material for writing, the papyrus. They established the 365-day year, and the basic methods of geometry and surgery.[5]

Moses spent almost 40 years of his life studying! His educational formation in the Egyptian universities was so comprehensive that he became, by all knowledge and training he got, a man having an ability to speak eloquently and achieve great works and undertakings in the political, scientific, social, philosophical an military areas. “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action”. (Acts 7:22 NIV) Much before his being used by God, he acquired an impressive fame and influence as a thinker, philosopher, orator and entrepreneur. By human standards, which respect only diplomas, he was bound to the success of the great careers.

Because of his special education, he was more than prepared to lead a people, in the political and military sphere. One of his first acts, after years of training in the Egyptian learning institutions, was to kill an Egyptian who was mistreating a Hebrew. Even though God often directs his leaders militarily, he did not need the Egyptian educational and military training to use Moses to lead the Hebrew people in their exit from Egypt. So God led Moses to the desert to remove from him the education and preparation of Egypt and give him the education and preparation of the Lord. There, after years working with flocks of sheep and without access to books and other means to feed the vast cultural knowledge he had acquired in the Egyptian universities, he lost his ability to speak eloquently and courage to accomplish great works (see Exodus 4:10,13). Forty years of desert “training”, without access to the high human knowledge of Egypt which he was so used to, left him humble in his words and actions! The long years Moses spent in the Egyptian universities also were, in the same measure, the same long years God chose to mold him and remove from him the marks the Egyptian education had left in his way of thinking and acting.

After spending 40 years in the desert and being “unmarked” and “decontaminated” from the Egyptian education, Moses could have what all the years of study never gave him: openness and sensitivity to hear and attend to God’s voice. In order to remove from him all negative socialization he experienced in the learning institutions, God put him in a situation where there was almost no social contact, except his wife, children and… God’s presence. Seeking God profoundly in the solitude of the wilderness was a momentous experience that helped him become a man sensitive and open to the Holy Spirit. Hearing the Lord’s voice, he kept learning his will and, eventually, he was used by the Holy Spirit powerfully to teach God’s people. In fact, it was through him that the Lord gave the orientation of Deuteronomy 6:5-9, where parents are instructed to take on the whole education of their children, marking their minds to think and their lives to act as the Lord determines.

Moses knew very well what school education is like. Philosopher Philo of Alexandria (circa 20bc-ad50) remarked that Moses studied mathematics, geometry, science, astronomy, poesy, music, medicine, hieroglyphs, etc. He studied all that the Egyptian universities had to offer. Even though the instruction he received in Egypt marked him powerfully to speak and act according to the education of the best learning institutions of his time, Revelation makes aware that the beast’s system will surpass the Egyptian education, marking much more profoundly the way people speak and act. Of course, the beast’s conditioning in the people’s minds and lives will come disguised as excellent human education.

In Deuteronomy, God uses Moses, a man having vast experience in the human learning institutions, to show parents that the best education happens at home. In Revelation, the beast will show and force all the people to accept as fact that the best education happens at institutional schools, outside the sphere of family and its values. The sign or mark on the hand and the forehead the Bible reveals suggests the power of a systematic education marking profoundly students in their way of thinking and acting. The difference is where each system works to mark the people’s lives.

Mandatory institutional school attendance is increasingly the government choice for families. Yet, God’s choice gives us the option to choose a better way to train our children academically, free from government interference.

God-approved education has home as the essential school, but the tomorrow’s education will happen away from family and their moral and spiritual supervision in the children’s lives. That future education will happen under the responsibility of governments and laws inspired by a spiritual entity which wants to condition human beings to think and act, in some respects, as savage animals or wicked people, who do not follow or respect God’s commands, especially in the issues of sex, family, children, abortion, homosexuality, etc.

JOHN BAPTIST AND THE BEST EDUCATION, FROM GOD’S VIEWPOINT

The current generation needs God’s visitations. And the truth is that he is very much pleased to visit people to bring healing, deliverance, change and salvation. If we want to bring up and educate children who will have a spiritually strong life structure to help prepare the visitations the Lord wishes to achieve in this desperate and needy world, we need to have the willingness and spiritual openness that the couple Zechariah and Elizabeth had. They were willing to sacrifice everything for God and his projects. Because of this willingness, God gave them the honor and opportunity to become parents of John the Baptist, the man God used to prepare the people’s hearts for the coming of Jesus Christ.

John was trained in a very special way, since early in his life. He was born exactly in the time of Jesus’ birth, and he was almost killed, for in his furor against the coming of the baby Jesus in the world, King Herod launched a campaign of persecution against families in the town of Bethlehem. He ordered the killing of all babies, hoping to destroy the Messiah who had been born. To save their baby from death, Zechariah and Elizabeth took John and fled to the desert, where they lived hidden from the authorities. They were already very old and probably spent their last years in the wilderness, protecting and training their special boy.

Zechariah and Elizabeth, who were very godly people and came from sacerdotal families, were very qualified to teach everything about God and his powerful Word. They strongly implanted in John God’s truth and commands and gave him basic instructions on how to survive in the wilderness. By his rustic attitudes, we can notice that he grew up without a “normal” sociability. But God chose exactly such circumstances to train him to grow up different from other people. Men and women who have a special mission from God in their lives are trained, since early, in a special way of life different from “normal” people. The special training of John changed his life, strengthened his calling and moved the Holy Spirit to pour out on him the powerful anointing of Elijah, a praying man who lived in deserts with God, a man who was prophetically used by the Lord to touch a whole nation.

From a human viewpoint, John may have lost many opportunities of social contact, but there were not actual losses, as confirms Jesus, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done”. (Matthew 16:24-27 NIV) His lack of “normal” social contact was met by God with a special training that involved him in very special contacts: most of Jesus’ apostles already followed John much time before knowing Jesus. He got the privilege to guide the early spiritual training of Peter and other disciples of Jesus! From a spiritual viewpoint, the education John received was very helpful and gave him a strong structure which made him able to prepare the men’s hearts who would take important part in Jesus’ ministry.

God found it necessary for John to be brought up in the desert, with many sacrifices to him and his parents, so that he might stay away from every kind of negative socialization and influence that could turn him from the divine calling to him. The only education John experienced in his wilderness seclusion was the Bible and personal instruction that his parents transmitted to him. There was nothing more to divert him. There was no other kind of educational influence. His most important contact was the presence of the Holy Spirit, his parents and their values. And he was not the only man of God to “lose” on behalf of more important aims. Apostle Paul said himself, “Not only those things; I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ”. (Philippians 3:8 GNB)

Zechariah and Elizabeth died soon, but their spiritual values and teaching never died. “Son, do what your father tells you and never forget what your mother taught you. Keep their words with you always, locked in your heart. Their teaching will lead you when you travel, protect you at night, and advise you during the day. Their instructions are a shining light; their correction can teach you how to live”. (Proverbs 6:20-23 GNB) They homeschooled his son themselves. Their homeschooling was passed on together with the teachings of God’s Word. The God-intended education has home as school and God’s Word as education’s heart, under the direct supervision and companionship of parents. Even distinguished men acknowledge that the best education comes from the Bible. Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, stated, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education”.[6] To acknowledge a truth is important, but to sacrifice oneself for it is of infinitely more value. The parents of John the Baptist sacrificed everything to put God’s Word above all in the education of their son.

All that Zechariah and Elizabeth taught John remained alive in his soul, guiding him in the purposeful mission to announce and prepare the Messiah’s coming. By his home schooling (or, more appropriately, his desert schooling), John was enabled to do what, in God’s sight, is the most significant aim of every human being: to live God’s will and calling on earth.

Modern education and its formal institutions may appear much more appealing, sophisticated and important than the Christian teaching at home, but institutional education is a deceptive-promises filled, treacherous oasis increasingly controlled by governments to indoctrinate children systematically. That control and indoctrination is the central characteristic of the beast’s system revealed in the book of Revelation. In contrast, home schooling offers freedom for families to strengthen and protect their children morally and spiritually. Is that education achievable? In the examples of Moses and John the Baptist, God shows that even in deserts, where there is shortage of educational resources and where no one sees hope for success, he can educate and raise up great men of character, integrity, wisdom and courage to lead a nation, train leaders and, especially, honor the name of Jesus Christ. So if God can work in deserts, how much more at home!

For Christian families, home education is essential because its control does not belong to government, but to parents. Home schooling gives parents the precious freedom to put God and his will in the heart of everything and train and enable a child to become an adult equipped to do God’s will, glorify the Person of Jesus Christ and help advance, in society and the people’s lives, a higher government: the Kingdom of God and its values. So home-educated Christian children are given the wonderful opportunity to know and obey their Master, Teacher, Lord and King and are trained, as John the Baptist was, to help men and women become enthusiastic and passionate followers of Jesus. Such education is perfectly attainable when parents give free room and full opportunities for God to be its Enabler.


Bible translations used:
GNB: the Good News Bible — Second Edition © 1992 by American Bible Society.
Darby: A literal translation of the Old Testament (1890) and the New Testament (1884). By John Nelson Darby (1800-82)
ESV: English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
KJV: King James Version.
MSG: Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.
NIV: New International Version. Copyright International Bible Society.


Copyright 2004 Julio Severo. Julio Severo is a Brazilian writer. He is the author of the book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), published by the Brazilian branch of the Bethany House Publishers. He writes especially on pro-life and pro-family issues and his work has been mentioned in the Brazilian Congress and in major national Evangelical magazines, including Revista Show da Fé, Eclesia, Enfoque Gospel, etc. Besides, his articles have appeared in many Brazilian websites and published (including three cover stories) in Defesa da Fé (Defense of Faith), the leading apologetic magazine for Evangelical leaders in Brazil. He is also a homeschool leader in Brazil (see the section on Brazil in the Home School Legal Defense Association site). If you want to publish this article in your site or magazine, contact the author.

Email: juliosevero@hotmail.com

Website in Portuguese: www.juliosevero.com

Blog in English: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

[1] William T. Still, New World Order (Huntington House Publishers: Lafayette, Louisiana, 1990), p. 131.
[2] William T. Still, New World Order (Huntington House Publishers: Lafayette, Louisiana, 1990), p. 131.
[3] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country (Fame Publishing, Inc.: Coppell, Texas, 1994), p. 676.
[4] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country (Fame Publishing, Inc.: Coppell, Texas, 1994), p. 405.
[5] 2002 Enciclopédia Koogan-Houaiss Digital.
[6] CITIZENLINK, April 14, 2004.

Other articles by Julio Severo

Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

Message to President Lula on Israel

Message to President Lula on homosexuality

Growth of divorce among Christians: a biblical perspective

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

By Julio Severo

It is no news the fact that family is the most essential group for the survival of the human species. Likely, there has never been a doubt that marriage has a basic role in the healthy channeling of the human sexuality and the formation of the future generations. Thus, every culture, in a way or another, always implemented measures to encourage and prepare young people for the marriage sexuality. After all, adjusted children, born in the natural family, mean gain to all society, developing responsible and productive citizens.

Yet, as the human body is vulnerable to cancer, society also is vulnerable to evils and trends that may seriously jeopardize its own foundations.

Therefore, every citizen has a responsibility to participate in the preservation of the basic values for the existence of society. Being a representative of the ordinary citizen, the politician knows his responsibility to attack the social evils and use the available means to encourage what is good. Remarkable examples of positive political actions in Brazil are the mandatory use of the safety belt and disincentives to the cigarette use. Those important measures may and should be extended to other essential areas, as the implementation of actions for discouraging behaviors that, for their own abnormality, produce negative consequences to the persons practicing them, to families and to all society.

Such is the case with homosexuality and other sexual conducts far away from the natural sexuality standard. They do not contribute for the promotion of the social health and are significant causes of expenses in the public health system.

The Christian who has a calling in the political sphere has a higher and amplified vision. He feels, guided by the values of God’s Word, his commitment to work for encouraging society to take the stand to stimulate the sexual well-being of young people and their healthy preparation for marriage and deter all kind of behavior harmful to the social health.

Great social tragedies have already happened, in a way or another, because of homosexual factors. Sodom and Gomorrah are classical examples. In the modern times, Nazi Germany suffered immense national devastation, because of a crazy man called Adolf Hitler. Today it is known, as a properly verified historical fact, that Hitler and most top Nazi leaders hid expediently their homosexuality.

Even though homosexual groups of political pressure use all kind of maneuver to portray their defense and promotion of their conduct as a human right issue, the Christian politician has a responsibility to discern that the bestowing of special rights for anti-natural behaviors represents threat of deprivation of essential rights to citizens. Recently, because of an anti-prejudice law, a Pentecostal pastor was sentenced to prison in Sweden for preaching, within his own church, that “abnormal sexual [homosexual] practices are like a cancerous growth on the body of society”.

Anti-discrimination laws do not use to indicate intents to combat religions that do not accept homosexuality, but their application eventually hit religious people always. Aware of the religious factor and of the risk of a religious reaction, lawgivers in the service of gay activism work on tiptoe, just embedding subtly in the laws terms as sexual orientation, tolerance, gender equality and other kinds of smooth language — terms vulnerable to varied interpretations favorable to the gay ideology.

Accordingly, the Christian politician needs to be alert and prepared to use his discernment in order to recognize the threats to society and the opportunities to fulfill a significant role on behalf of what is good and just before God. He needs to know that it is good to love men and women who live deceived or oppressed in homosexuality, and he needs to be conscious that it is more than just to help them leave that destructive lifestyle. Obviously, he would never confound acceptance and welcome of a homosexual in need with acceptance and tolerance of the harmful practices of men having anal sex with other men. True love and tolerance has nothing to do with this kind of sexual abnormality. Real love helps one leave this abnormality.

Julio Severo is the author of the book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), published by Editora Betânia, the Brazilian branch of the Bethany House Publishers. Email: juliosevero@hotmail.com

Website in Portuguese: www.juliosevero.com


Blog in English: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

Article originally published in the November 2004 issue of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front Magazine (Brasília, Brazil), page 22.

Other articles by Julio Severo

Targeted By Bias: Evangelicals Who Voted for Bush

The Great Gaffe of Lula Against Israel

The Mark of the Beast: The Tomorrow’s Education

Helping Take Care of the Social Health

Message to President Lula on Israel

Message to President Lula on homosexuality

Growth of divorce among Christians: a biblical perspective