Chances are that at the end of this week the magazine Eye opener on the doormat. The magazine calls on people not to get vaccinated. It will be distributed five million times this week and funded by sponsors.
Eye opener is an initiative of anti-taxer Jaap Dieleman from Zeewolde, who hopes that people will “get to know Jesus as their savior” and see that the corona pandemic is “an action of the anti-christ”. Dieleman (66) describes himself as “itinerant preacher”. He is also the author of various books and director of Stichting De Heilbode and of an aid organization in India.
He decided to make the magazine “because every Dutch person has the right to hear the good news of God’s love. Especially now that the world is in such great need and Jesus is the only answer”, he tells the NOS.
‘This is a one-man’
“This is really a completely isolated person within the evangelical world. A real one-man, with his own foundation and organization. He is also not affiliated with a church,” says Miranda Klaver, professor of anthropology of religion at the Free University. According to her, Dieleman’s theories are a combination of religious ideas and conspiracy theories. “His sources can mainly be traced back to American YouTube prophets, in the pro-Trump corner.”
The pamphlet Eyeopener urges readers not to get vaccinated and to convert to Jesus. If the reader does that, “after the coming dark period of the devil” will be a more beautiful period. The ‘heaven on earth’ is the idea.
About the vaccination against corona, Dieleman says that in the end “everyone will be forced, and if you refuse, you will be killed”.
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Taking a vaccine will worship the antichrist, drink from the cup of God’s wrath, get a malignant growth, lose your salvation for eternity, you will be thrown into hell, where you will be tormented with fire and brimstone and then you will never have rest.
“Dieleman does not show what the religious community stands for,” says theologian Klaver. “His number of followers is also not that large, and is mainly on social media.”
The magazine is widely criticized on social media. “This has nothing to do with Christianity at all,” said someone on Twitter. Another says, “I’ve never been so happy with my paper bin”.
The costs for the millions of copies of Eye opener are 600,000 euros. The folder is distributed by the company Spotta, which distributes advertising, among other things. “We distribute various expressions, at the moment also for political parties, for example, where we also do not determine the content of their party program and associated expressions. We do draw a line on eroticism and violence.”