A Week To Change Our World
I don’t usually combine topics, but this week is a doozy. I am constrained to tie together a number of events that will hit our nation and world in some pretty momentous ways.
First of all, a friend of mine reminded me that fifty years ago this week Madalyn Murray O’Hair was successful in getting voluntary prayer banned in the public schools. Many people believe that decision launched us into a cultural death spiral in which we’re getting very close to crashing into the ground.
Didn’t help Ms. O’Hair much either. She ended up being kidnapped and murdered by one of her atheist buddies. Her body was found on a Texas farm in 2001, cut up in pieces with a saw, and dumped in a barrel.
Sometimes you reap what you sow on earth–let alone before God.
This week some human justice is also going to be meted out that may affect the future trajectory of the United States. Because of a deadline, I have to jump the gun and announce that Obamacare is going down, Eric Holder will be found in contempt of Congress, the lawlessness of the Obama administration has reached new heights, and, in world news, Egypt has voted for terrorism.
Is this a week that will change our world?
OBAMACARE
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act–more simply known as Obamacare–was a 2700 page boondoggle that a Democratically controlled House and Senate forced on the American nation in March of 2010. It was the biggest federal power grab in the history of the United States, bringing the federal government into regulating nearly one-sixth of the American economy.
Of course, it was intended to be a necessary first step toward a one-payer (government) monopoly on health care that would eventually put private insurance out of business and allow the federal government to control American lives from cradle to the grave. Liberals believe it is necessary and compassionate. Wiser minds understand that it spanks of tyranny and will lead to higher costs, gross corruption, rationed care and ultimately, national bankruptcy (look across the Atlantic).
Though many people in America have been tempted by the lure of “free health care,” the polls have consistently shown that a majority of US citizens opposed Obamacare two years ago and still oppose it today.
That will be a mute point on Thursday. I predict that the US Supreme Court will strike down the entire bill–dealing a stinging rebuke to Barack Obama’s signature issue. The constitutional-attorney-president is going to find out that he didn’t learn the ABC’s of freedom at Harvard. The American Constitution (Commerce Clause) does not allow the government to force us to buy anything, not cars, not insurance, and according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, not even broccoli.
Obamacare is toast, and probably so is Barack Obama. This week will be his worst week in a string of bad weeks that are making clear to the American nation that he is not up to the job. This is the beginning of the end of the Obama reign.
It also needs to be the beginning of the real health care reform in which we go back to a one-payer system that places the patient in control of his health insurance in direct relationship to his or her doctor, eliminates all the unnecessary mandates, allows portability and competition across state lines, and drives costs down through rubust market competition.
Even if the Court only strikes down the individual mandate, Obamacare is history. May our next batch of leaders take us into wise and constitutional health care renewal.
CONTEMPT CHARGES
Also on Thursday, The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. be held in contempt of Congress for stone-walling the “Fast and Furious” botched gun-running operation. In this ill-advised program, border agent Brian Terry was killed by a gun sold to Mexican cartel operators. Since that time, Holder has testified nine times before Congress, but has refused to come clean on the details nor hold anyone responsible for the tragedy.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Sunday that the vote could still be postponed or scrapped if Holder and Justice Department officials present congressional investigators with documents related to a probe into Operation “Fast and Furious.
If the House votes to hold him in contempt, Holder would be the first U.S. attorney general in history held in contempt of Congress–another major embarrassment for the president and his close friend. The matter would then be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — a Justice Department employee and Obama administration appointee — who would have to decide whether to bring criminal charges against the attorney general, and/or his boss.
This cover-up is actually more important than Watergate. It isn’t just a bungled burglary. It was a botched gun smuggling program that killed at least one American agent and probably hundreds of Mexican citizens.
ARIZONA IMMIGRATION & FURTHER LAWLESSNESS
This week the Supreme Court also gave out a mixed ruling on illegal immigration in Arizona. It struck down three provisions that they said intruded on federal responsibilities. But it affirmed the most controversial part of the law which allows local police to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of a violation or crime.
Ultimately, the Supremes kicked the can back into Congress’ court where comprehensive immigration reform is still desperately needed. Again, maybe a new set of leaders next year will finally settle the simmering issue of a porous border, twelve million illegals among us, and America’s commitment to accepting immigrants from the world (more than any other nation) and caring for the strangers among us.
Yet, following the decision to allow police to check papers of suspected illegals, the Obama administration extended its spree of lawlessness by promptly saying it would not respond the the calls of local police to Homeland Security–unless the illegal was a convict! In other words, they still want the Hispanic votes of most illegals and will only enforce the law when they want to.
The spirit of lawlessness.
It’s an epidemic–for political reasons–in this Administration. The rule of law is being sytematically replaced by the rule of men–the very reason we fought for American Independence.
In fact, it goes a step further. In their response to not getting their complete way on the immigration ruling, the Obama Administration said it would use the local police phone calls to the Feds to determine if the local police are being discriminatory!
When crybabies don’t get their way, they not only take their ball and go home–they bring back a lawyer to accuse you of bullying.
The current Administration is increasingly dissing the other branches of government in most of their policy making, including immigration. President Obama’s previous decision to exempt young illegals (16-30 years of age) from the threat of deportation—without a law made by Congress—drew this response from Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent in the Arizona decision:
“To say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia said.
EGYPTIAN SHARIAH?
And finally, this week also saw Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood declared the new president of Egypt by a 51-49 vote.
What’s so had about that? It’s democracy in action, isn’t it?
There are two problems. First, democracy is usually better than tyranny, but without the restraints of law (a biblically-based Constitutional Republic), democratically chosen leaders (such as Adolph Hitler) can dupe the masses and rise to power and create misery for the people.
Mohammed Morsi is an Islamicist–a terrorist. He comes from an organization committed to annihilating the Jews and even setting up their capital in Jerusalem. There is no question that the ultimate agenda of a Muslim Brotherhood run-Egypt will be a drip-feed instigation of sharia law over Egyptian society.
So the noose is tightening around the land of Israel.
We have entered a new phase in human history. A lawless spirit rules in America, though the possibility for renewal has been re-kindled. And near the birth of civilization, the so-called Arab Spring appears to be giving birth to a wintry relgious tyranny–by the vote of the unsuspecting masses.
We need to increase our prayers.
It is a week to change our world.
President Obama and the Spirit of Lawlessness
President Barack’s Obama stunning political pandering for the Hispanic vote this week–granting amnesty to the children of illegal aliens by executive fiat–gives us another window into the soul of the world’s most powerful leader.
The picture is not pretty–and is actually quite scary.
The primary role of any chief executive, the ultimate position being the president of the United States, is to enforce the rule of law. That’s what he or she swears an oath of office to do.
But this president now seems to be making it a habit to choose which laws he desires to enforce. He is acting like a king or dictator, not the servant of law, freedom, and order.
The Bible calls this a “spirit of lawlessness,” and there are grave consequences associated with it.
I’d like to share a lengthy Scripture passage that talks about this spirit in detail. A “spirit” is either a heavenly being such as a demon that possesses a rebellious mind-set toward God, or a human attitude that mirrors the same. Let’s discuss the human side today.
Before we look at the Scripture, I want to make one thing clear: I am not in any way equating our president with the biblical Anti-Christ who is mentioned in this passage. Yes, there will be an anti-Christ global leader one day, but it’s also true that there are many anti-Christ attitudes and people in the world (1 John 2:18). It’s a mind-set–an attitude toward authority.
And all people, including myself, can participate in a lawless mind-set that is at war with the purposes of God. None of us are above it. We can all take on an anti-Christ attitude–if we choose to do so.
In this case, we’re analyzing the mind-set of the president of the United States. Remember that as you reflect on Paul’s words:
“For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed–the one who brings destruction. He will exalt himself and defy every god there is and tear down every object of adoration and worship. He will position himself in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God. Don’t you remember that I told you this when I was with you? And you know what is holding him back, for he can be revealed only when his time comes.”
“For this lawlessness is already at work secretly, and it will remain secret until the one who is holding it back steps out of the way. Then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus Christ will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. This evil man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. He will use every kind of wicked deception to fool those who are on the way to destruction because they refuse to believe the truth that would save them. So God will send great deception upon them, and they will believe all these lies. Then they will be condemned for not believing the truth and for enjoying the evil they do.”
“As for us, we always thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. We are thankful that God chose you be among the first to experience salvation, a salvation that came through the Spirit and by your belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-13 – New Living Translation).
This is a long passage with many insights. Notice a number of pertinent facts:
- Lawlessness grows like a weed when people have rebellious hearts (verse 3).
- There is a pride thing involved in lawlessness where we make ourselves “God” by the arrogant things we do (verse 4).
- Satan himself is behind the spirit of lawlessness (verse 9).
- People who share in the lawless mind-set are deceived because they are rejecting the truth (verses 10, 11).
- Lawlessness and its poison will be directly destroyed by Jesus one day (verse 9).
Now let’s return to our American president for whom all of us are praying.
Over the past three and a half years., President Obama, as an executive leader, has increasingly participated in a spirit of lawlessness related to his responsibilities.
An early instance related to immigration when his Administration sued the state of Arizona over its newly passed immigration law. Arizona wanted its borders protected and defended. The federal government wasn’t doing it, so Governor Jan Brewer and the legislature took matters in their own hands and passed a necessary law. The Obama Administration cried “foul,” and tied up the state in court. At the same time, the president made it known through Attorney General Eric Holder that the feds would not perform their duties. They didn’t like the law–they needed Latino votes–and wouldn’t enforce it.
A spirit of lawlessness.
Next up was the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which protects the five thousand year institution of marriage in all fifty states. In brazen defiance of this law passed by President Clinton, the Obama White House told Congress that it would no longer prosecute violations of DOMA. In the beginning, this refusal was bad enough. But when the president recently came out of the closet endorsing homosexual marriage, it was finally understood that he wanted to change the definition of marriage–and to heck with the laws of the land!
A spirit of lawlessness.
The president also made a priority in his first term to try and pass Cap & Trade–a draconian strangulation of the environment and energy use under the guise of curbing global warming. Congress refused the legislation, so the Obama Administration ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do the same thing via a drip-feed method of agency policy. This move was a blatant end-around to circumvent the laws of Congress.
A spirit of lawlessness.
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but I am expecting that either the entire law will be struck down or, at least, the individual mandate which forces them to buy health care against their will. The entire bill was pushed through Congress in a lawless fashion with bribes, back room deals, and deliberate confusion (Nancy Pelosi famously said they’d have to approve the bill so we could then find out what was in it).
The Obama Administration knew from the beginning that it was lawless–against the Constitution of the United States. But they wasted a year of our time–not helping the flagging economy–because the goal of lawlessness is dominating other people’s lives (tyranny). The end was worth the means to an Administration that wanted to grab control of one-sixth of the world’s largest economy.
A spirit of lawlessness.
This week the President of the United States stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced to the nation that children of illegal aliens, sixteen and under, would be granted special rights to work and live in America. Actually, it’s a good policy. I’m a supporter of the DREAM Act which would not have penalized children for the sins of their parents. That’s fair, a no-brainer and very biblical (Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20).
But again–the end doesn’t not justify the means. Congress makes the laws in this nation. Not the president. Yes, he can release executive orders in various categories, but not change the standing of American law. His job is to convince Congress of the right direction to go, and their enforce the laws they enact.
Anything less is haughty, rebellious, and dereliction of duty. It is an anti-God spirit that promotes its own will over that or others. It is the opposite of the spirit of the Kingdom of God which includes humility, selflessness, submission, and obedience to loving authority (Romans 14:17).
Family Research Council had it right when they described the president’s spirit of lawlessness:
“When Americans elected Barack Obama, they believed they were voting for a chief executive. What they got is a chief legislator and chief justice. If the administration doesn’t like a law, they call it unconstitutional and ignore it. If they can’t pass a policy democratically, they enact it anyway…The pattern of abuses is so out of hand that even media outlets like Politico are suggesting that the President’s ‘policy strategy’ is ‘ignore laws.”‘
“In the end, today’s debate isn’t about immigration. It’s a debate about the limits of executive authority — a conversation that goes back some 237 years. Our founding fathers shed a lot of blood to avoid what this White House increasingly resembles — a monarchy with absolute power. While the President can try to bypass the law, one thing he cannot bypass is voters. And ultimately, his interpretation of the separation of powers will be subject to the ultimate checks and balances: November 6 ballots.”
There is a lawless spirit operating in the highest echelons of the current White House. The last time this happened in these hallowed quarters was under the tenure of Richard Nixon, a Republican. He also thought he was above the law and could do what he pleased. His presidency crashed and burned. I voted for Nixon in my first swipe as an adult citizen. I regret my naive vote.
Now we have a Democrat who clearly manifests a spirit of lawlessness. Most of his lawless deeds are rooted in narcissism–a quest for personal power and aggrandizement. It is a scary moment for the American Republic. For when a your leader is lawless then the people are unrestrained.
A nation without the rule of law devolves into chaos. Is that the American future? I hope not.
Exercise your own self-control (and wisdom) by voting correctly on November 6.
Gender Killing: The Next Stop on Abortion’s Slippery Slope
Our cowardly legislators in Washington D.C.–actually 168 of them (including seven Republicans)– took an infamous vote last week, failing to stop “gender profiling” in the lucrative abortion business. The House of Representatives fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the human fetus.
The vote was 246-168, a sizable positive majority, but thirty votes shy of the two-thirds majority that was required for passage.
The legislation would have made it a federal crime to perform or force a woman to undergo a sex-based abortion, a practice that is common in some Asian countries where families wanting sons abort female fetuses. It is common under the “one-child” policy in China–which sparked Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and his family fleeing to the United States on May 19.
Now he may regret his decision. Our own leaders have become like the godless communist Chinese rulers–not willing to stop the slaughter of innocent babies for almost any reason.
Most pro-abortionists don’t like the term “slippery slope.” They say it’s a straw man argument that doesn’t apply to real life moral issues.
Well, it’s time for a much-needed reality check on the slippery slope of abortion. We’ve arrived near the bottom of the cliff where nearly all selfish choices are okay to kill babies–including if you don’t want a “girl.”
The pro-choicers said it wouldn’t happen. It did.
Maybe this is the real war on women.
Abortion has become so commonplace in the world over the past forty years that we’ve become numb to its chilling reality and effects. Abortion is by far the greatest form of genocide ever invented. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there have been anywhere from one to two billion abortions worldwide since 1970.
Let that number sink in: One to two billion people.
Please forgive the impreciseness of the figure, but abortions have always been hidden and clouded in mystery by those who perform them–so the true number is nearly impossible to come by. But few dispute that one to two billion is an accurate global estimate.
That means in your town or city, one-sixth to one-third of the population has been quietly murdered during your lifetime.
Ponder that thought for a moment.
I live in South Kitsap county, Washington–an area that is home to 60,000 people. Statistically-speaking, some 10-20,000 human beings have lost their lives in my area through abortion since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Ten to twenty thousand. That’s a staggering number of people.
It’s the same percentage in your town, city, and nation. One sixth to one third of all the people around you have perished in the past four decades.
Do you care? Have you forgotten what evil we tolerate through the holocaust of abortion?
I’m in Los Angeles this week with my family. This morning I purchased a Los Angeles Times newspaper to catch up on world events. On page A-8 there was a lead story entitled, “Seattle in the Grip of Violence.”
Obviously, the story got my attention because we live near the Emerald City. The subtitle to the article read, “A rampage that killed five prompts the city to confront a wave of often deadly gunfire.”
The lengthy story chronicled a spate of murders that have taken place in the city of Seattle this year. The most recent was the senseless killings of a mentally disturbed man named Ian Stawicki who walked into an artsy University District cafe last week and used a gun to murder five people before finally shooting himself in the head.
These murders are tragic and horrific. The story describes the fear and anxiety that now exist in the Seattle area because of the uptick in murders. There have been 21 murders in Seattle during the first six months of the year. That’s the same total for all of 2011.
Twenty-one people murdered. That’s a grievous situation.
But let’s bring ourselves back to reality. Seattle has a population of over 600,000 people. Using the Guttmacher statistic on global abortions as a guide, then the real murder count in Seattle since 1970–through abortion alone–has been one to two hundred thousand people.
That’s 2500-5000 a year.
That’s a heck of a bigger number than twenty-one. And it’s not just a number. It represents the precious lives of real people, just like you and me, who have been cruelly killed through abortion.
To feel the reality of this, let’s go back to my area across the water from Seattle for a moment. According to the global statistics, our region has quietly erased the lives of ten to twenty thousand human beings during the Abortion Holocaust. Imagine a person with a gun, terrorizing the neighborhoods of South Kitsap every day for the past forty years.
It amounts to killing one or two people every single day for forty years! Can you imagine how the residents of the area would feel if that had been the case?
That’s the reality of abortion. Now let’s return to “sex selection” in abortion.
I was in China twice last year–and will be there again in about five weeks. Last July I was in a gathering of about four thousand young people where the evil of aborting females in China was exposed. At the end of the presentation, hundreds of Chinese girls stood, saddened and weeping over the loss of millions of their fellow females because of China’s sex selection abortions.
The boys and fathers also stood to embrace and confort the girls. In China today, because of gender profiling abortion, 58% of the nation are males–an immense problem in coming years. Yet, as I saw at the youth gathering, even the girls who have survived felt marginalized and unwanted.
I spent hours that night putting my arms around these precious Chinese girls letting them know that they were special–and that the death of their “sisters” had been wrong, cruel, barbaric.
Now this same form of gender-based abortion is rearing its ugly head in America. First it was early term abortions under the guise that fetuses were”not fully human,” just clusters of cells. Then it became later term abortions (did age in the womb really matter?). Next up was partial birth abortions where our little ones are partially removed from the womb in order to kill them. And now it’s come to “sexual preferences.
“If I want a boy, you die!”
A slippery slope–really, a deadly lie that we’ve foisted on ourselves for decades.
All of it–not just the sex selection choice–is based on bare, bald selfishness. If I don’t want a baby, you die. If I don’t want to carry you long-term, you die. If I don’t want a girl, you die. Of course, the reverse is also true–if I don’t want a boy, then you die.
What’s next? If I don’t want a boy or girl that has your father’s eye or hair color, then I’ll kill you until I get one that looks like me?
All of this charade is diabolical nonsense.
The one hundred and sixty-eight US representatives who didn’t have the guts to stop sex-selection in abortion need to be removed from office at the polls in November. Don’t believe their nuanced excuses about “excesses” in the bill or other concerns.
We need leaders who stand up for the right to life. It is the first of all human rights.
National Right to Life legislative director, Doug Johnson, had this to say about the shameful House of Representatives vote: “We are heartened that a strong majority of House members voted to ban performing or coercing abortions for the purpose of eliminating unborn babies of an undesired sex—usually, girls. Shamefully, President Obama, and a minority of 168 House members, complied with the political demands of pro-abortion pressure groups, rather than defend the coerced women, and their unborn daughters, who are victimized by sex-selection abortions.”
Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy laments that God’s people have allowed America to careen down the slippery slope of abortion for far too long. He said this about the gender-based abortion vote: