- CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In
this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support
system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts:
a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water. It belongs to Army chaplain
Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands
of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.
''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get
baptized,'' he said. And agree they do. Every day, soldiers take the plunge
for the Lord and come up clean for the first time in weeks. ''They do appear
physically and spiritually cleansed,'' Llano said. First, though, the soldiers
have to go to one of Llano's hour-and-a-half sermons in his dirt-floor
tent. Then the baptism takes an hour of quoting from the Bible.
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- ''Regardless of their motives,'' Llano said, ``I get
the chance to take them closer to the Lord.'' A blue-eyed 32-year-old with
an abundance of energy, Llano goes out every day to drum up grimy soldiers
for his pool. He talks to truck drivers, tank drivers, computer specialists
-- anyone and everyone. He goes out to the combat zone to the fighting
soldiers and the combat support soldiers who keep them in supplies. ''You
have to be aggressive to help people find themselves in God,'' he said.
He calls himself a ''Southern Baptist evangelist,'' and justifies the war
and killing with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, which he often recites:
``Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things
that are God's.
''This means we are called upon by our government to fight and that is
giving unto Caesar, as the Bible tells us,'' he said. Earlier this week,
word went out that portable showers might be installed here soon, but Llano
was undaunted. ''There is no fruit out here, and I have a stash of raisins,
juice boxes and fruit rolls to pull out,'' the chaplain said optimistically.
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- http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/5554317.htm
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- Comment
Alton Raines
3-8-03
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- This is the most grotesque, opportunistic and sacreligious
display and abuse of a sacred Christian rite! Not only is Baptism a sacred
rite joining one in faith with Christ and his sacrifice on the cross (scripture
says we are buried with Christ in Baptism, and raised again from the waters
to newness of life) and his resurrection, "for the remission of sins,"
it is by no means a mere matter of getting wet and having some scripture
read over someone. If such could save, Christians would have been instructed
by the Lord to hose down every non-believer and be done with it. For this
chaplain to abuse the pool of water for his own purposes while men are
in desparate need for a bath or to cool off is beyond repugnant. He also
boasts of hording fruit to draw men to his pseudo-spiritual hi-jacking!
There is one thing worse than a convert gone bad, and that's a false convert.
This Chaplain has 'put on the mind of Judas' rather than the 'mind of Christ',
thinking according to the 'weak and beggarly rudaments of this world',
and not the faith-based way of the Kingdom -- which would never make use
of men's cravings and basic needs to illicit a response to Christ's call,
which can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit... not water or fruit
rolls!
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