If You Tell a Lie Long Enough…
A number of items in the news have prompted my thinking on telling the truth. It seems like that reality is in short supply these days–especially when it comes to government affairs. It’s also a problem in many people’s individual lives.
You see, when you tell a lie long enough you might just start believing it yourself.
A number of issues are forefront on the world stage this week. They include the Greek debt crisis, the nuclear deal with Iran, and an illegal alien killing 32-year old Kate Steinle in San Francisco.
Let’s talk about the power of words, especially when used to tell ongoing lies.
Words are powerful and truth is important. It was by the spoken word that God created the entire universe (Genesis 1:1-29 and John 1:1-4). On a human level, we’ve all experienced that words can give life (“You can do it!”) or they can bring death (“You’ll never amount to anything.”)
And I think we all know that if you tell a lie long enough, it takes on a meaning of its own. After awhile, you’re no longer sure what the original truth was.
Adolph Hitler nearly took over the world on the power of his words and the promulgation of lies. The killing of millions of innocent people was wrapped in the language of “The Final Solution” which sounds like solving a business problem–not annihilating a race.
The power to distort truth with words is a problem we face everyday. Who do we believe about the big issues of life? Who do we trust in making daily decisions?
Words are powerful and lies are destructive. A good portion of our day should be spent in serious thought, sorting out truth from lies.
Let me help you with a few contemporary issues.
The Greek Debt Crisis
I’m sure many have been praying for the Greek people as they voted in a referendum last week and their leaders shuffled between Vienna and Athens. I have a number of friends in Greece and have visited that nation on a number of occasions. It is a beautiful country with a wonderful people that have made a great impact on the world.
But Greece is in trouble with debt–like many other nations (including the United States). We are being told that their answer is austerity. Sounds awful and undeserved.
One dictionary defines austerity as:
“The fact or condition of being rigorous and unsparing: hardness, harshness, rigidity, rigor, rigorousness, severity, sternness, strictness, stringency, and toughness.”
Doesn’t sound like fun–more like someone’s out to get you. We are told in headline after headline that the Greek people are facing “austerity” and their mean neighbors to the north are inflicting it upon them.
No wonder the Greek people said NO in the referendum. Would you want to be faced with austerity?
But it’s the wrong word. It’s not a matter of what you want or like, but what you deserve and need to get back on the right path.
Many Greek people and certainly Greece’s leaders have lived an economic lie for many decades. That lie is called socialism. Socialism’s basic tenet is that government can take care of us from cradle to grave so we don’t really need to work hard, save money, and be frugal in life. We can pile up debt and hope that someone in the future will pay for it.
But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out a generation ago, eventually socialists “run out of other people’s money.” That’s where Greece is today, a nation of 11 million people, many living on the dole, with billions of dollars in unsustainable and unpayable debt to other people and nations.
The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore puts it this way:
“Greece is now sitting on $350 billion of debt. It’s unpayable and the international monetary experts are deluding themselves if they believe that by some magic stroke this nation of 11 million citizens will sometime in the future come up with the funds to repay it.”
“Greece is already overtaxed, and adding more taxes on the few businesses that are still functioning is only going to ensure their eventual demise too. Meanwhile the Greek citizens have come to the conclusion that fat pensions and cradle to grave welfare benefits are a human right that can never be taken away. That is what they declared in the referendum. But those benefits are going to be lost. Socialism has radically reduced the standard of living of the citizens.”
“The big lie is that Greece has already lived through austerity. This is a nation that in 2013 was spending up to 59 percent of its GDP on government benefits and programs. Even today the government accounts for half of all spending. How is that austerity? The problem is as the private economy shrinks, the government’s role keeps expanding. Greece’s debt was 120 percent of GDP a decade ago, and now its 175 percent. This is the opposite of austerity. It is a spendfest.”
“In sum, Greece needs much less socialism, and much more privatization. Sell off government assets. Cut tax rates. Sell one of the islands to Disney. Oust the communists who ruined this nation. Get government spending down to 25 percent of GDP.”
Get the picture? Austerity, as a term for this situation, is victim drivel. Greece needs national repentance from living it up with other peoples’ money.
It’s not Europe’s or anybody else’s fault. I can just hear Dave Ramsay giving the same advice to a wildly spending married couple: “Sell your big house, get rid of that car you can’t afford, work two jobs if you have to, and get out of debt so that you can rescue your dignity and future!”
That’s what Greece needs to do.
Don’t feel sorry for them about “austerity.” Pray for their honesty and repentance. (And look in the mirror because we’ve not far behind.)
The Iran Nuclear Deal
The truth is pretty simple on this one. The government of Iran is the world’s leading cause of terrorism. Making a deal with them that allows them a pathway to a nuclear bomb is insanely suicidal. Even a few years ago, that idea was unthinkable.
But then President Obama almost unilaterally decided and promoted the falsehood that a deal with Iran was in the best interest of the Middle East and world. His powerful advisor, Valerie Jarratt, was born in Persia. Apparently, she convinced him that a “deal with Iran” would be great for his legacy.
But disaster for the globe.
He told the lie long enough to himself and those around them that even with Congress and the nation kicking and screaming about stopping Iran from getting nukes, John Kerry forged ahead with a monstrous and dastardly deal.
Columnist Clifford May brings us back to reality:
“Imagine if, on Sept. 12, 2001, I had written a column predicting that within less than 15 years, the president of the United States would be offering the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism a path to nuclear weapons and tens of billions of dollars. You’d have thought me a lunatic. But that’s what President Obama means to do.”
“Just to be clear: There can be no doubt that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. No less an authority than the U.S. government has affirmed that many times over. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans have been killed and maimed by Iranian-backed militias and proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”
“The founding principle of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution was “Death to America!” Even as Iranians negotiators have smiled across the table at their American counterparts, that chant has been repeated—not least by Ayatollah Khamenei himself.”
Yet the US administration drinks in the lie like koolaid which could lead to a nuclear holocaust.
Immigration Madness
Thirty-two year old Kate Steinle was taking an evening walk with her dad on a San Francisoc pier on July 1, 2015, when she was allegedly shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez, an illegal immigrant who had seven felonies on his record and had been deported (and returned) to the US five times.
Bill O’Reilly is trying to use Kate’s senseless death to spur Congress to pass “Kate’s Law” which would mandate a five year mandatory sentence for any deported felon who returned to the USA. If caught twice, it would be ten years. If three, twenty years.
Why are illegal alien felons walking the streets of America?
Because we’ve been telling ourselves a series of lies about immigration for many decades. They include:
- They aren’t really alien and they aren’t really illegal. They’re just desperate people who should be called “undocumented workers.” (Notice the deception of the words here. “Undocumented” implies no illegal entry and “workers” focuses on what they give to America, not what they take away by disobeying the law.)
- The border can’t really be sealed. Try saying that about your own house: “We can’t really put a fence up on have locks on the doors. Everybody should be welcome to come in.”
- Businesses need cheap labor (promoted by Republicans) and Democrats want new voters (who are bribed by giving licenses, voting rights, and welfare entitlements.)
- We need “Sanctuary Cities” where illegal aliens are shielded from the crime of illegal entry by sympathetic city councils. Illegals break the law then city governments do too. Is it any wonder that many other Americans think they can now loot and destroy and break the laws of our country because others are doing it?
Kate Steinle, and many others like her, would be alive today if we had not changed the words to propagate a lie that illegal immigration is benign. That lie has now been told so long and in so many different ways that the United States is under attack on its southern border by illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists.
Words are powerful. Use them carefully. Don’t tell yourself lies–especially over time.
And don’t vote for leaders who do the same.
The Real Meaning of Changing the Definition of Marriage
It was both interesting and agonizing to watch the legal collapse of American morals and marriage from thousands of miles away–in Asia.
I was in Mongolia and then China when the US Supreme Court changed the five thousand year definition of marriage through Obergefell vs. Hodges. Both of these Asian nations are “rising” countries where the Good News of Christ is bringing increased morality and positive changes to many peoples’ lives.
But America–my home nation–is a “falling” nation where the current rejection of our Christian heritage is breath-taking and is bringing about the demise of a once great nation.
While in Asia, I pondered the consequences of what is taking place in the United States. Here is the real meaning of changing the definition of marriage.
1. The world has changed–not to be legally renewed in my lifetime.
Changing the definition of marriage in the world’s only superpower will cause a flood of nations to follow suit in the coming years–causing the Western world to release its moorings from the Judeo-Christian traditions that made it great and prosperous. The world will dramatically change as a result by decreasing and hurting children and tearing apart the family fabric.
It’s already been fraying due to easy divorce, co-habitation, and dead-beat dads–but this could be the deathknell. And because SCOTUS wrongly legislated a “right” to same-sex marriage in the Constitution, this means that only a Constitutional Amendment (CA) can change that.
CA’s are rare. It is not likely that this decision will be reversed in my lifetime, if ever. Marriage may never be the same again on planet earth until Jesus returns to make all things new.
2. Secularism has triumphed (for the present time) in American culture.
As I pointed out in my 1989 book Leadership for the 21st Century: Changing Nations Through the Power of Serving, there are three worldviews that are battling for supremacy in the 21st century. The first is the biblical faith which is multiplying via loving persuasion in South America, Africa and Asia, but receding in the West.
The second is radical Islam which is terrorizing the world of the Middle East, North Africa and across Central Asia–trying to establish a regional or global caliphate.
The third is secularism or atheism which controls China, North Korea and Cuba via communism and many Western nations by way of secular philosophy. Atheism uses education, the media, and the power of government (especially the courts) to champion its man-centered ideas of hedonism.
The rejection of biblical, covenant marriage in the USA is a huge victory for the secular cause. The war of values will continue, but it’s uphill now for people of faith.
3. Cultural Christianity is dead in the urban cities and rural America will be forced to follow.
Though the nation is divided over the marriage issue, and the Supreme Court decided the issue prematurely via judicial fiat, the fact that marriage was altered in thirteen states and then rammed through the courts indicates that the Christian consensus on basic moral issues is a thing of the past. Our heritage of Christian truth is no longer strong enough to stop the tide of sin.
This is especially true in our cities–urban areas–which have gone secular in the past few decades. Cultural Christianity is no longer dominant by legacy or default. In many of the southern states, cultural faith is still the norm in many aspects of society, but the SCOTUS decision will force them to change. The North has defeated the South again–and this time in the battle of family morality.
The one area of the country that has been a restraint on ungodly behavior (the Southern States) will now be forced to accept the way of the world.
4. This was never about marriage, but the degrading and destroying of the image of Christ.
If we think the Obergefell v. Hodges decision was simply about marriage, our view is too narrow. No, it was the next battle in a long string of conflicts designed to degrade and destroy Christianity in American life. This is a culture war with many fronts: right to life, human sexuality, prayer in schools, Ten Commandments, the war on Christmas, morality on television and in the movies, and now marriage.
As Franklin Graham said recently, “All the things of God are under attack.” That’s true because the architect behind the degrading and destroying of biblical faith is not a human being or movement–but the Devil himself.
In America, that means we’re battling for the future of 320 million souls.
5. President Obama’s “transformation of America” is now complete.
President Obama did a major victory lap after the Supreme Court decision, and even illuminated the White House with the colors of the rainbow. This is because, whatever the motivation, his stated goal of “transforming America” is nearing completion. It contains three main elements:
- Economy – putting the USA on pathway to socialism (especially through the Affordable Care Act).
- Military – downgrading America influence in the world and weakening the military.
- Social – destruction of Christian morals (immigration, drug laws, right to life, sanctity of marriage, etc.)
6. Persecution of Christians has arrived on our shores. First silencing then sentencing.
It’s notable that even a secular progressive, Kirsten Powers, a columnist for both USA Today and the Daily Beast, has recently written a book on how the secular left wants to silence all faith-based speech in our nation. In The Silencing: How The Left is Killing Free Speech, Powers details not only how secular-progressives aim to win the war of ideas, but are committed to completely silencing anyone that disagrees.
Guess where that strategy comes from? It’s not Hollywood, but from the darker forces behind the human voices.
Because of the Satanic relationship to atheism, there is no interest in a marketplace of ideas. Just like the political arm of communism, secularists want a monopoly on speech and ideas. Increasingly, the voices of the Church and Scripture will be shouted down and removed.
After the SCOTUS decision, a number of newspapers announced they will no longer publish articles in favor of traditional marriage. The silencing has begun. So has the persecution. Bakers, florists, and anyone else who will not participate in a same sex marriage will be made to pay for their faith.
The next battles will involve outright persecution of the Church over tax exempt laws, and many other issues. Are you ready to suffer and stand up for your beliefs?
7. American exceptionalism is dead – now only a historical reality.
What made the United States of America a unique and exceptional nation for two hundred years was the blessing and fruits of its unique Christian heritage and ideals. Faith powered morality. Morality gave birth to freedom and liberty. And liberty produced success, innovation, entrepreneurship, wealth and many other blessings that came to us as a nation when we honored and followed God’s ways.
Turning away from this exceptional faith and its fruits will bring exceptional calamity to a nation that was once “the light of the world.”
As we become like other nations in turning away from God, we sabotage our unique leadership and role in the world. All that’s left is the history of exceptionalism–not the practice.
8. We are living in days parallel to Jeremiah – shallow revival then judgment.
The prophet Jeremiah lived during a time of the decline of a nation. In his early years, he participated in a glorious religious revival under the leadership of the godly King Josiah (2 Chronicles 34). But that revival was shallow–and near the end of Jeremiah’s life, the southern kingdom of Judah turned away from its God-given roots and was destroyed.
I participated in the last “American revival”–the Jesus Movement and charismatic renewal of the 1960s and 70s. It was wonderful and many lives were changed. But it also did not go deep enough to renew the biblical foundations of the American nation.
Will America experience the same fate of decline and judgment as experienced by the prophet Jeremiah?
9. God’s blessing is being removed from our nation – He is not answering our prayers.
The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn is a prophetic book warning US citizens that God’s blessing is being removed from this nation if we do not pray, repent, and return to the Lord.
Many people are praying. I have participated in many movements of prayer in the past few years. But God is not answering those prayers because we are not turning to Him in sufficient numbers to confess our sins, change our lives, and plead for the healing of our land (2 Chronicles 7:14).
10. It is time to flee the public schools.
This may seem extreme, but changing the definition of marriage means that the secular indoctrination of the public schools will be acute during the coming years. Christian children will be persecuted, ridiculed, and labeled as bigots if they do not toe the new morality line.
It’s time for the Church to evacuate the schools for private and home education where they can train their children in God’s ways and not let them fall prey to a the worldly system. Some will stay to shine the light. But most need to flee–for their own safety and salvation.
11. This could be the Church’s finest hour. We will find out who the real believers are.
The great upside of our cultural demise is that God could use it to awaken the American Church to her finest hours of prayer, worship, evangelism, mercy and social impact. In the coming years, we will truly find out who the followers of Jesus really are. There will be no fence-sitting, no cultural Christianity.
Some may even die for their faith as they take a stand for Christ. This could be the time of America’s greatest revival–as the people of God return to Him and become channels for his power in our backslidden land.
12. The future is all about birthrates — physical and spiritual.
It is sunset in America at the present time–a time when life is ebbing. Same sex marriage will deflate both physical birthrates and spiritual ones amd increase the looming darkness.
If America is to be revived again, then we must restore the American family through a love of children and a renewal of marriage and family–and we must evangelize the nation with many through spiritual births.
Is it really sunset in America? Only God knows. The future is all about birthrates.
Which side will multiply the most?
When the Supreme Court Gets It Wrong
We make a tragic mistake when we view the decisions of the Supreme Court as either final or wise. After all, they are decisions made by nine fallible people who sometimes get it wrong as all human beings do.
American history contains a number of SCOTUS blunders.
The recent same sex marriage decision announced on June 30, is a case in point. I believe the justices got it wrong–very wrong. And when the Supreme Court errors, millions of people suffer.
Here are four examples.
I’m not a lawyer, constitutional scholar or an ardent follower of the Supreme Court. But I am a student of history and understand a few things about the rise and fall of nations and how civilizations destroy themselves.
We are currently witnessing that prospect in the Western World and in particular, in its pillar nation, the United States of America.
The recent Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalizes gay marriage, is a decision that greatly hastens the decline of the American nation.
That subject we will take up in a future article.
Regarding the Obergefel v. Hodges case, the right outcome wouold have been based on a simple trinity: 1) Marrriage is God-created between a man and a woman for the procreation and nurture of children, 2) God-ordained marriage and family is the social bedrock of all wise and prosperous nations, and 3) All sex outside God-designed marriage is immoral and ultimately hurts people.
This decision, like other historical mistakes, will cause many people to suffer.
It’s happened before. The Supreme Court has made a number of erroneous decisions over the past 200 years that have greatly hurt the American people. Two of them were overturned through decades of struggle. The other two are ongoing battles.
The Court is never the final word. We the People are–in concert with the favor and power of God.
Here are four of the worst decisions ever made by our highest Court. I will place them in historical order.
Dred Scott v. Sandford – 1857
In perhaps the Court’s most infamous case prior to 2015, Dred Scott, who was born a slave but brought to live in a number of states where slavery was illegal, was not only returned to slavery by the Court, but held to have no rights. All Americans of African descent were not citizens, contrary to the laws of several states and the federal Missouri Compromise.
Dred Scott was a dreadful decision that kept millions of black people in chains and lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Civil War.
The Court got it wrong and millions suffered and thousands died.
Plessy v. Ferguson – 1896
I learned more about this decision while watching Bill O’Reilly’s Legends and Lies television series recently on the Fox Network. The story was told on a segment which featured the probable inspiration of the Lone Ranger character–a black U.S. Marshall named Bass Reeves.
Yes, the Lone Ranger was not a white man with a black mask. He was a black man! And a very courageous one at that who rode a white horse and had an Indian sidekick. And at the end of his life, the Plessy decision hurt him very badly.
In Plessy v. Ferguson the Court foolishly upheld a Louisiana law requiring forced segregation by train car on the East Louisiana Railroad. This enshrined racial discrimination in state laws under the “separate but equal” doctrine and would remain in place until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Plessy was an incredible setback for social justice. During reconstruction, though difficult in the southern states, much progress had been made toward liberating and bringing blacks as equal partners into American society. This is sometimes forgotten by our history books.
Plessy destroyed that progress by not just allowing for self-segregation or discrimination by private individuals. It expressly upheld the right of states to force segregation upon others.
This incredible error by the Court caused nearly seventy years of racial struggle in the United States, not fully being corrected until the Civil Rights laws of 1965.
If the Supreme Court had ruled rightly in 1896, there would have been no need for Dr. Martin Luther King. This very bad Supreme Court decision caused millions of African Americans to suffer for seven decades.
Roe v. Wade – 1972
The battle for life itself began in Texas, which outlawed any type of abortion unless a doctor determined that the mother’s life was in danger. The anonymous Jane Roe (later known to be Norma McCorvey who became a strong pro-life advocate) challenged the Texas law, and the case made its way to the highest court in 1972.
The Supreme Court struck down the Texas law, and essentially the right to life enunciated in the Declaration of Independence by an incredible 7-2 vote. Seven justices got it horribly wrong.
Using the same reasoning as the Griswold v. Connecticut decision, the majority of the justices maintained that a right to privacy was “implied” by the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments–a crazy stretch of imagination now criticized for decades.
Fifty-five million human beings have been slaughtered through abortion since 1972 in the United States as the result of Roe. It is one of the greatest genocides of all time.
NFIB v. Sebelius 2012 and King v. Burwell – 2012
Two of the worst SC decisions of all time relate to Obamacare, in 2012, and again last week.
In 2012 the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare (the Affordable Care Act). Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to hijack this decision by ruling that ObamaCare was a tax and not a mandate, and was therefore declared constitutional. The convoluted decision stunned the nation.
No one died as a result of this decision, but it affected millions of people who were left on a pathway to socialized medicine with the Federal Government strengthening its nanny state role while effectively taking over one-sixth of the US economy. The decision created great confusion among American businesses that are now sitting on 1.7 trillion dollars of cash that they’re fearful of investing in job creation.
And last week in a stunning decision in King v. Burwell, the Court revealed that it was illerate when it said that the word “States” in Obamacare could also refer to the “Federal Government” which was clearly not the case. The 6-3 decision was a triumph of political judiciary tyranny over the plain meaning of words.
Millions of consumers will suffer for at least two more years as a result of these bad rulings.
Obergefell v. Hodges – 2015
Which brings us to the same-sex marriage decision. The two big constitutional questions in the case were: ” 1) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? 2) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?”
The Supreme Court erroneously answered these constitutional questions this week by a 5-4 decision. The results of this case will essentially be the final death knell to marriage, family, and cultural stability in the United States.
The decision will allow same-sex marriage in public documents including marriage licenses and death certificates which translate into money, benefits for families, as well as a recognition of people’s marriages. The real outcome of the case will open a Pandora’s Box of other groups and entities seeking marital status and will greatly increase discrimination and persecution of Christians.
So should we trust the Supreme Court?
Ben Howe of Redstate.com recently reported that “many lack trust in the Supreme Court’s handling of those two issues according to a new CNN/ORC poll…Only about half say they have at least a moderate amount of trust in the court on health care (50%) or same-sex marriage (49%).
That’s wisdom on the people’s part.
The Supreme Court sometimes gets it wrong. When they do, millions of people suffer. But the people have the “next” word and the final one will come from God.
Are we on his side, and will we persevere for justice and holiness on these great issues of our day?