Pastor John Hagee: “Atheistic Hands” Nailed Jesus to the Cross

Pastor John Hagee of San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church has a history of saying irrational things in the name of Jesus.

He believes Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to warn us about the dangers of The Gay, the Holocaust had some theological merit for nudging stubborn Jews toward accepting Jesus, and rock music is “Satanic cyanide.”

He also believes atheists should leave the country if we don’t like Christmas, that we should leave because we won’t be missed, that America’s embrace of Secular Humanism has turned the country into a “pagan society,” and that atheism has “never healed a disease.”

Seems like a pleasant fellow.

What’s he got in store for us over Easter weekend? In a sermon clip posted to Twitter, Hagee argued that atheists were responsible for nailing Jesus to the cross.

Up the bloody slopes of Calvary, Jesus Christ went where atheistic hands nailed the precious Son of God to the cross. Friday afternoon, April 3rd, 33 A.D., at exactly 3:00 in the afternoon, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, bowed His blood-soaked head adorned with crowns and shouted in agony, “It is finished!”

What was finished? Death, Hell, and the grave were finished. The power of sin was finished. Satan was forever a defeated foe. There was now redemption and forgiveness and mercy with the Lord. Hallelujah to the lamb of God!

This… is news to my people.

Besides the fact that the exact time and date of the crucifixion isn’t even clear in the Gospels, atheists weren’t the ones who went after him. It was presumably the Romans, and they believed in a multitude of gods. They were polytheists, not atheists. (Jews sometimes get blamed for Jesus’ death, but it’s not like they’re atheists either.)

Just because Hagee doesn’t accept the ancient Romans’ beliefs doesn’t mean it makes any sense to pin their actions on us.

Either this is a bizarre April Fools joke or Hagee’s so deluded that he doesn’t even understand his own mythology.