Couldn't Pat Have Sent Sharon A Hallmark Card?

You can always count on the Rev'rund Pat Robertson to practice his acid reflux rhetoric at the worst possible times. Here's what he said about stricken Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon today:

The Reverend Pat Robertson says Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke could be God's punishment for giving up Israeli territory. The founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network told viewers of The 700 Club that Sharon was "dividing God's land," even though the Bible says doing so invites "God's enmity." Robertson added, "I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course." He noted that former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Robertson said God's message is, "This land belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone."

I don't ordinarily ask this question about men of the cloth, but hasn't this man ever read his Bible? Is he unaware that God allowed the Assyrians to sweep away the ten northern tribes of Israel in 722 BC? Or the Babylonian conquest of the southern kingdom of Judah 135 years later? That exile lasted for seventy years. And what of Christ's prophecy that Herod's Temple would be demolished, which was fulfilled thirty-seven years later by Titus' Roman legions, beginning a Jewish exile that lasted 1,878 years, a vast epoch in which the Holy Land lay desolate and largely uninhabited?

For that matter, did the Holy Land stop belonging to God in any of these circumstances? Did Mr. Sharon's cutting and running from Gaza cancel His deed on the property?

It is also written,

33 Oh, the depth of (B) the riches both of the (C) wisdom and knowledge of God! (D) How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For (E) who has known the mind of the LORD, or who became His counselor?

How does Robby know that God is "punishing" Mr. Sharon by bursting a blood vessel in his brain? That happens to be the very injury that killed my maternal grandfather; would Robby suggest that maybe God was "punishing" him for farting in the living room in the middle of the winter, driving my grandma, mother, aunt, and uncle outside in sub-freezing temperatures to escape the stench and his regular grunt of, "MMMboy!" Or was my grandpa simply a frail man weakened by years of poor health that killed him at the premature age of 59, and perhaps Prime Minister Sharon is simply an old man in his late seventies whose time to pass on has come?

One thing we can definitely count on, I think, is the Extreme Media commentary when it's Rev'rund Pat's time to "fall asleep." Judging by what the peerless Mark Steyn had to say about him on Double-H's radio show this afternoon, it will not be pretty at all.