The attacks on 9/11 were not the result of Islamic extremism, retribution for continued American military presence in the Middle East, the inevitable consequence of clashing civilizations or even a false-flag operation engineered by the feds, says First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress.

No, he told a crowd gathered for Liberty University's convocation this week, he believes the same thing university founder Jerry Falwell did, that the September 11, 2001, terrorist strikes were caused by the United States' continued insistence on killing its children.

"Surely, God doesn't use pagans to bring judgment upon his own people, does he?" Jeffress asked rhetorically. "Just read the Bible, God will not allow sin to go unpunished and he certainly won't allow the sacrifice of children to go unpunished."

Presumably, Jeffress is talking about abortion and Islam, not a new animist sect that's made ritual child sacrifice commonplace under all of our noses.

Since becoming pastor of First Baptist Dallas in 2007, Jeffress has said Roman Catholicism is based on the "genius of Satan," claimed variously that both gays and President Obama were paving the way for the Antichrist, called Mormonism a cult when Mitt Romney was running for president (and later endorsed Romney) and named Fifty Shades of Grey a signifier of the coming apocalypse.

First Baptist Dallas has more than 12,000 members and recently completed a $135 million "re-imagining" of its downtown campus.

(h/t Salon)