“DeLay is motivated more than anything by power,” says Jan Reid, coauthor with Lou Dubose of The Hammer, a just-published biography of DeLay. “But he also believes in the power of the coming Millennium [of Jesus Christ], and it helps shape his vision on government and the world.” This may explain why DeLay’s Capitol office furnishings include a marble replica of the Ten Commandments and a wall poster that reads: “This Could Be The Day” — meaning Judgment Day.
DeLay is also a self-declared member of the Christian Zionists, an End-Time faction numbering 20 million Americans. Christian Zionists believe that the 1948 creation of the state of Israel marked the first event in what author Hal Lindsey calls the “countdown to Armageddon” and they are committed to making that doomsday clock tick faster, speeding Christ’s return.
In 2002, DeLay visited pastor John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church. Hagee preached a fiery message as simple as it was horrifying: “The war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse!” he said, urging his followers to support the war, perhaps in order to bring about the Second Coming. After Hagee finished, DeLay rose to second the motion. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “what has been spoken here tonight is the truth from God.”
With those words — broadcast to 225 Christian TV and radio stations — DeLay placed himself squarely inside the End-Time camp, a faction willing to force the Apocalypse upon the rest of the world. In part, DeLay may embrace Hagee and others like him in a calculated attempt to win fundamentalist votes — but he was also raised a Southern Baptist, steeped in a literal interpretation of the Bible and End-Time dogma. Biographer Dubose says that the majority leader probably doesn’t grasp the complexities of dispensationalist and reconstructionist theology, but “I am convinced that he believes [in] it.” For DeLay, Dubose told me, “If John Hagee says it, then it is true.”
In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with God, and the Bible was God. It was in the beginning with God; all things were made through it, and without it was not anything made that was made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was King James. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the Bible, that all might believe through it. 
This Saturday, October 29th, His Grace BISHOP TIKHON [Mollard], will be officially installed as the ruling Bishop Philadelphia and the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania of the Orthodox Church in America at Saint Stephen Cathedral in Philadelphia, PA. Bishop Tikhon was elected to the position by clergy and lay delegates at a special assembly of the diocese held in May 2005. He will oversee nearly 50 parishes located in the eastern half of the state. His Beatitude, METROPOLITAN HERMAN, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America, will preside at the installation Divine Liturgy at the cathedral at 10:00 a.m. A native of Boston, Bishop Tikhon converted to Orthodox Christianity from Episcopalianism in 1989. After completing studies at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, he entered Saint Tikhon Orthodox Theological Seminary, South Canaan, PA, from which he received a Master of Divinity degree in 1993. Prior to his consecration to the episcopacy in 2004, Bishop Tikhon was senior lecturer in Old Testament at Saint Tikhon Seminary, and is credited with a number of publications. He also served as deputy abbot of Saint Tikhon Monastery prior to his election for the see of Philadelphia.
She can cite scholarly authority for giving her Christ a birth date of 11 B.C., and for making James, his disciple, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. But she’s also taken liberties where they don’t explicitly conflict with Scripture. No one reports that the young Jesus studied with the historian Philo of Alexandria, as the novel has it—or that Jesus’ family was in Alexandria at all. And she’s used legends of the boy Messiah’s miracles from the noncanonical Apocrypha: bringing clay birds to life, striking a bully dead and resurrecting him.
