Regarding my reference to Revelation, it makes your point - to a point.
And let me explain why:
I have been a Professing Christian Fundamentalist (PCF) since I was 30 – I am now 54. I do not "speak in tongues", don't handle snakes, etc., but I believe the Bible is the un-erring word of God. I have found often that when I thought it contradicted itself it turned out it was only weak interpretations that were contradicting themselves, not the bible itself.
I have been a student of Bible prophesy for over 20 years and about 15 years ago I was looking at Revelation 17 and 18 and suddenly said, "holy cow, this could be discussing the US". Yet when I brought this idea up to leaders in my church they tried to say it was nonsense. The reason was at least partly because they considered the US such a good influence on the world that she could NEVER be the whore discussed there. They were literally mixing up their Christianity with their patriotism. For them, part of being a Christian was being an American!
They were ignoring evidence against their position and focusing on their own "circle jerk" feedback group to reinforce their opinion and simply ignore the facts that may contradict it. And now it is not such an unusual position within Christian circles:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=re ... +states%22I saw this on Freerepublic and KVI talk radio on a different subject. Whenever someone like me or some other conservative pundit would point out that the economy was tanking, we were accused of being Bush Haters. At the time I really liked Bush but I could not ignore what I was seeing going on with the economy. I am a very black and white thinker and can separate the two.
BTW, regarding my reference to Revelation, I do not think we are there yet – just barely. I think that if Obama were to have won, we would be on the fast track. I have read quite a bit about the man and I think there is a very strong possibility that he has strong Muslim ties to the point that he may be a closet Muslin.
And I consider Islam to be a greater threat to the world today than Nazism was in the mid-1930's. I say this as a student of history, the bible and, to a strong but lesser degree, the Koran.