Culture
The Mystery of Iniquity: Is It Time for the West to Admit There’s a Satan?
An article appeared in the Daily Caller on July 20, 2010 that revealed a conspiracy in the mainstream press to protect Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. The evidence indicated that there were hundreds of journalists in the United States who were not interested in the truth about the man–they simply held a bias and wanted him elected.
I’ve been thinking about that bias for a year. Where did it come from? Why was it so strong and uniform so as to overlook the lack of experience, socialist policies, and radical associations of the man who now serves as our U.S. President?
We are now nearly three years into his term. By all accounts, he has been a failure on reviving the US economy, on addressing the great moral issues of our day, and in strengthening America’s position in the world.
Yet those same media outlets are lining up for the 2012 presidential run to both denigrate the eventual Republican nominee and help raise one billion dollars for Barack Obama’s re-election effort. Something seems wrong–even conspiratorial. But it’s not what you think.
There’s a “mystery of iniquity” at work in the world. It’s time for the West to admit there is a Satan. Acknowledging that fact causes many things to make sense.
I admit that the term “mystery of iniquity” is a vague concept in the Bible. The phrase appears in 2 Thessalonians 2:7 where Paul says “For the mystery of iniquity is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is taken out of the way.” These verses are in the context of a time of rebellion on earth, where a strong anti-Christian leader emerges.
My point is not to equate Barack Obama or any other specific leader with the biblical Anti-Christ. I believe there have been many anti-Christ figures in history with more to come. But I’m fascinated with the general idea that when human beings rebel against God and lawlessness is increased, then evil advances in a “mysterious” way.
Why?
Because there is one true conspiracy that the Western World hates to admit: There is a Satan. There are legions of demons in the unseen world. And this Satanic terrorism network can mysteriously blind the minds of human beings to act like mobs that believe crazy things, vote for crazy things, and do very evil things that hurt human begins.
The skeptical Western mind needs to wake up to this reality.
Yes, there is a God. Fear Him and love Him.
And yes, there is a Satan. Hate him and do not give in to his deceptions.
Interestingly, the number one book this week on the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list is about God. It’s called Heaven is For Real by Todd Burpo. At number seven is Ann Coulter’s new bestseller called Demonic which I picked up for some interesting summer reading. Ann’s book begins with the story of the man who was possessed by a legion of demons (from Mark 5:2-9) and how human, mob behavior has demonic origins.
The popularity of these two books shows that some of the American people get it. They know there’s a God and also that there is a demonic conspiracy at work in this world.
But many do not–especially the media and intellectual elites. They make fun of the devil. He’s red with a pitch-fork. He’s a figment of our imagination. He’s a fairy tale figure that Western man can laugh at and ignore.
But he’s not–and this is where much of the world is smarter than we are. Most Africans, Pacific Islanders, Asians, and Middle Easterners believe in the reality of Satan and evil. They have different twists on this truth and perform different rituals to deal with it. But their daily lives attest there is a demonic conspiracy that is alive and active in this world–headed up by a cruel and malevolent being known as Lucifer or Satan.
The Bible says this true source of terror is able to “blind the eyes of the unbelieving” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And the greatest mass of unbelievers (in the supernatural world) live in the West. Our modern, unperceptive civilization is led by intellectual and media elites who laugh at the idea of Satan and his demons.
I think he laughs too–at our unbelieving ignorance.
And thus “the mystery of iniquity”–the mysterious advance of evil–moves forward swiftly and destructively in our societies. What an amazing tragedy.
Admitting there is a Satan, who is able to blind peoples’ eyes and destroy millions of lives, is a vital key to understanding so much of what is happening in the 21st century.
- The war against terror. How can human beings fly airplanes into buildings, strap bombs to their bodies, or the most recent terrorist attack in Afghanistan–blowing up a medical clinic with women and children that collapsed the roof and took scores of lives? Doesn’t that type of evil seem pre-posterous, inhuman, and totally illogical? Only the mystery of iniquity of the demonic world makes any sense of the carnage.
- The holocaust of abortion. In America have systematically killed 50 million babies the past forty years and not called it murder. A person who supports abortion says they are pro-choice. You ask them what is the choice, and they dance and swim around the subject. Of course, the choice is to kill a baby–plain and simple. But our minds are blinded to that fact. If we want to keep the child, it’s a “baby” in the womb. If we want to kill it, it’s a “fetus.” Our words determine what it is! Is that insane or what? No, it’s a cruel trick of the mystery of iniquity.
- The 2008 Election. He was the most unqualified man ever to run as president of the United States. He had no executive experience. He was a radical community organizer who sat under the teaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and held very strong socialist views on income re-distribution and social justice. Sure, he was a good speaker–but that can only take you so far. Yet, the mainstream media mysteriously backed him without question or normal scrutiny. It was as if their eyes were blinded to to his weaknesses and faults.
- 53% of America voting for a novice over an experienced war hero. I spoke to a number of people about their voting for Barack Obama in 2008. Many had no substantial reasons for pulling the lever for him. Somehow, they were mysteriously blinded to who he was and what he was going to do as president. Now they know. But are they able to see it?
- The “lamestream media” bias. It was amazingly lop-sided in 2008 and appears to be growing in strength in 2012. Is there any good reason to vote for Barack Obama in 2012? The Misery Index is at an all-time level. Unemployment is over 9%. We appear on the verge of a double dip recession or even a catastrophic depression. Nothing is being done to create jobs. Government debt is exploding and the party in power is doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Yet, the main stream media is fully in the tank for the re-election of the president. There’s something very mysterious about the level of myopia they possess.
- The advance of homosexual marriage. I’m grieved at the New York legislature’s approval last week of homosexual marriage. I wonder if it is a cultural tipping point that will speed up the necessary judgment of God on our nation. Imagine the deception of homosexuals “marrying.” To marry is to join together–both spiritually and physically to produce children. Same sex relationships can do neither. But they say “It’s not about gender. It’s about the person you love.” Really? If I love my sister can I marry her? Or if I love my child, or how about my dog? What if I love five women? Do you see the stupidity of this argument. There are many necessary God-given barriers for sexual relationships. Marriage between a man and a woman is the five thousand year standard. Yet, the mystery of iniquity is leading us to commit cultural suicide on this–the great moral issue of the 21st century.
This list goes on and on–from the acceptance of Keynesian economics, to the laughingstock of man-made global warming, to the West’s fascination with entertainment (giving their lives and time to something that is not real), the diabolical mystery of iniquity is the ONLY explanation that makes sense of our idiotic world.
Why we’ve believed Satan’s lies is the greatest mystery.
Theologians call it a fallen nature. It includes the brain.
I believe that the existence of Satan and his demonic conspiracy needs to be shouted from the house-tops of the Western nations. He exists, he’s destroying the planet, and we need to repent and come to Jesus Christ so that he can “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).
As we raise awareness of Satan, there are just three qualifications to keep in mind:
1. Let’s be careful in exposing his deeds. He is an angel, an invisible being, whom we cannot see directly. Like wind or electricity, we simply see the effects of his actions. So we musn’t unthinkingly attribute his presence to just anything. We don’t’ want to see a “devil under every bush.”
2. On the other hand, we must learn to discern his actions, strategies and tactics. The Apostle Paul was seasoned enough spiritually and grounded in a proper worldview to recognize the direct hand of Satan in a number of circumstances in his life–and he mentioned them by name (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 2:18).
3. We also don’t want to blame Satan for everything. He is the influencer (deceiver) of men who then make bad or evil choices by following his lead. The “devil made me do it” is bad theology.
However, it’s time for the West to admit that Satan is at the heart of all of our problems.
Iniquity is a mysterious thing–until you understand its source.
An Actress, A Governor, and the Culture War
I remember when I first saw Natalie Portman’s picture. Our oldest son, Nathan, had just graduated from high school in 1999 and received his high school yearbook. As a joke, he pasted a photo of her next to his in the South Kitsap annual– as if she was in his graduating class!
He liked her then. She was a rising star.
In 2011, her stardom hit paydirt when she won her first Oscar as Best Actress for her performance in Black Swan. Her acceptance speech was short and seemed sincere–but one little sentence in it caused an old debate to re-surface:
How important is marriage to having children?
The answer to that question determines the overall happiness and stability of societies.
I hope we choose well in the 21st century.
Here are the actual words of Natalie Portman on February 27 at the Academy Awards:
“So many people helped me prepare for this role. Mary Helen Bowers spent a year with me, training me, Michelle Rodriguez and Kurt Froman and Olga Kostritzky, Marina Stavitskaya, and my beautiful love Benjamin Millepied, who choreographed the film and has now given me my most important role of my life.”
“Given me the most important role of my life.”
She was referring to the role of motherhood.
Natalie was clearly pregnant on stage–and also unmarried. She’s had sex (or was in some type of “relationship”) with Black Swan’s choreographer, Benjamin Millipied, and together they’d produced a baby.
In all thirteen generations of American history–except the last two–that reality would have been looked down upon as not ideal or desirable. Children were supposed to be born into marriages where both the presence of a mother and father was necessary and vital to to their nurture and future success.
But Natalie Portman is a part of a generation that no longer believes in the ideal–God’s order of things. She believes that sex or “love” is all that’s required to bring a child into the world.
Enter the Governor–former Governor Mike Huckabee–who is considered one of the leading presidential contenders for 2012. On a March 3rd talk show hosted by Jewish commentator and film critic, Michael Medved, Governor Huckabee shared his perspective on Ms. Portman’s example:
”You know, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’ But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie.”
It’s true that Natalie Portman has more resources than most to raise her child out of wedlock. The Governor was right on that point. But he went on to say:
”Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing.”
That is also a sobering truth. The largest single cause of poverty in America is single parent homes–children being born out of wedlock.
Then the Governor-and-possibly-presidential-candidate-Huckabee–shared some down right scary statistics:
“You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids — across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.”
Let those stats sink in for a moment.
- Three out of four African-Americans that you know were born missing a dad or mom.
- Six out of ten Latinos are victims of single-parent homes.
- And nearly four-in-ten of all live births in the United States are children that will not grow up “normally” in the loving nurture and more-successful structure of a two parent home.
That’s a huge problem–for any society.
The Heritage Foundation rightly points out that:
“Couples who are married have a higher average household income, more assets, and better health than many of their single or cohabitating counterparts. Conversely, families that are headed by unmarried females make up more than half of all families living in poverty. And paychecks are not the only reason two parents are better. Research shows that ‘improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income.’ With four of every 10 U.S. children now born outside of marriage and welfare spending skyrocketing—especially on single-parent households—policymakers and taxpayers can no longer afford to overlook the effects of family and marriage on civil society.”
This is an important discussion. And it’s not just about abstract statistics.
I am personally close to a situation right now where a young teenager is devastated and hurting. She lives with her mother but they don’t get along because of the brokenness of the home. She spends weekends at her father’s place–and cries. She goes back home to her mother–and doesn’t feel loved and protected.
She’s missing security and blessing because the nuclear family is not valued and encouraged.
But back to Mike Huckabee’s analysis. Governor Huckabee was not singling out Natalie Portman for ridicule or disrespect–just commenting on a national problem that she had brought to the forefront by her words at the Oscars. A few days after, he clarified his remarks:
“In a recent media interview about my new book, A Simple Government, I discussed the first chapter, ‘The Most Important Form of Government Is a Father, Mother, and Children.’ I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby’s father. However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not ‘slam’ or ‘attack’ Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock.”
For the past week Natalie Portman’s words and Mike Huckabee’s response have dominated the social media. One side has said that what Natalie Portman has done is okay–it’s modern, individualistic, and is nobody else’s business. The other side has retorted that it is not helpful to our society to popularize or condone having children outside of marriage. It only hurts the kids–and the entire society in which they live.
During my lifetime, this is the second major national discussion we’ve had on out-of-wedlock births. The first occured in 1992 when Vice President Dan Quayle made his famous remarks about ficticious TV single mom Murphy Brown–and the media escoriated him for it. At the time, Quayle was tarred and feathered as prudish, out-of touch, and bigoted for his criticism of single motherhood.
Years later, the press quietly admitted that Quayle had been right–and that the growing epidemic of single parent homes was a major problem in our nation.
Apparently we have short memories.
So I welcome the debate again in 2011. Because here’s the simple truth: Sex outside of marriage is not good for people; Having children out-of-wedlock hurts kids and increases poverty; We should not glamorize or condone single parenting; We should work hard to keep our marriages intact–a gift of love, security, and prosperity to our children and their children.
That’s the bottom line.
Elevate marriage and family–discourage its counterfeits.
We are in a culture war over the future of marriage and family. Natalie Portman currently represents the secular side that wants to minimize the importance of the nuclear family. I hear a “demonic echo” coming from that direction. Satan wants to destroy kids and inflict poverty and despair upon people. One of his greatest strategies is to bend and break the traditional family.
I ask you to pray for Natalie Portman and many others like her.
Mike Huckabee represents the other side–the Judeo-Christian consensus that believes that God has something vital to say on this subject. He loves all human beings–especially vulnerable children–and created the family structure to nurture, protect, and defend them. Governor Huckabee wants families and children to be strong, productive, and fruitful.
And now you know the real reason that this story hit the front pages. Mike Huckabee might run for president of the United States in 2012, just as Dan Quayle ran for Vice President in 1992. The secular media, who do not believe in the importance of marriage and family, saw this as a great opportunity to try and cut him down to size.
Let’s not let them succeed.
Mike Huckabee is right on marriage, single parenting, and out-of-wedlock births. I asked my wife to order his book, A Simple Goverment, for my birthday.
Maybe he’s right on a few other important ideas that are vital to America’s future.
The Night is Coming
“We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work” (John 9:4) — Jesus Christ.
The intelligence community talks about an increase in “terrorism chatter” when groups hateful of the West intensify their efforts. Similarly, I have recently been hearing “prophetic chatter” about great changes coming to our world. A central theme is that “everything is about to change”–that the alignments of the past one hundred and even five hundred years may be altered in the comng years.
Some are saying it could happen within twelve months. Others project one to three years. The current upheaval in Muslim countries–especially Egypt–is increasing the chatter. Is the world as we’ve known it about to experience a major downturn or alignment? I wouldn’t bet against it.
The night is coming. We must pray–and do the works God is showing us to do.
One of our greatest human limitations is a short life span. Since we live at most seventy to eight years on earth (Psalm 90:10), we rarely experience major changes in eras or civilizations. For example, since the world wars, there has been relative global stability for the past seventy years. Before that, Western society was fairly predictable for over four hundred years.
But if you gaze on the overall tapestry of human history, it’s clear that there have been many major seasons of societal upheaval and change. The rise and fall of Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations; the Greek and Roman era; the crash of Pax Romana and centuries of European darkness; the one hundred year conquest of the Mongols; Islamic prominence and decline. And many more.
History is filled with both dark and light periods–times of great advance, revival, and stability, and also times of upheaval, bloodshed and chaos. Of course, there is also darkness for some during times of light for others. For example, during the relative stability of the world from 1945-2010, many nations including China, Cambodia, and Russia faced great troubles, tyranny and bloodshed.
I believe a time of judgement, darkness, and/or major realignment is a possibility in the coming years. The prophetic chatter is increasing–and is coming from many diverse sources.
Some of the voices are economic ones. Our modern civilization is on a dangerous and unsustainable financial pathway. The violation of God’s principles and mountains of debt portend a serious time of economic decline or darkness.
Here’s a typical warning from the best-selling 2010 book Aftershock:
“Unlike any other moment in our history, there is fundamentally something different going on this time. Even people who pay no attention to the stock market or the latest economic news say they can just feel it in their gut. Something is different. This is not merely a down market cycle, nor is it a typical recession. The difference is the multi-bubble economy–the usual strategies for returning to our previous prosperity no longer apply.”
“We call it a bubblequake. As in an earthquake, our multi-bubble economy is starting to rumble and crack. Clearly the real estate, credit, and stock market bubbles have already taken a serious fall, and the financial consequences for the broader U.S. and world economy have been terrible.”
“Next comes the aftershock. Just when most people think the worst is behind us, we are about to experience the cascading fall of several, co-linked bursting bubbles that will rock our nation’s economy to the core and send deep and destructive financial shock waves around the globe. The bubblequake fall of the housing, credit, consumer spending, and stock bubbles significantly weakened the world economy. But the coming aftershock will be far more dangerous…In fact, the worst is yet to come.”
We need to listen to the economic chatter. Nations cannot long operate on the cruise control of runaway spending and debt.
We are facing an economic “night” in the not so distant future.
Some religious voices are also raising the battle cry. One comes from the third most popular radio personality in America–Glenn Beck. Beck is a Mormon libertarian who gets close at times to be a conspiracy guy–but mostly is sane, rational, and prophetic about the dangers that America currently faces.
For a number of years he has been warning Americans to renew their faith in God, to restore virtue in their lives, and rise up and lead the nation out of the death spiral that we are facing. I don’t think his warnings are extreme. I hope he is wrong–but something inside of me says that he is “a voice crying in the wilderness.”
Here is one of his warnings: “Much has been written about how complicated the downfall of Rome was, but the recipe was actually pretty simple, and has since been replicated countless times. A great civilization arises. The state encroaches upon freedom and demands more power. People take less responsibility for themselves and want more handouts from the government. Taxes go up to pay for the handouts. The size of government explodes and economic growth slows. The government seeks to divert the public’s attention from what is really going on. Collapse, economic or otherwise, ensues.”
“If history teaches us one thing, it is this: Empires tend to crumble from the inside. If history teaches us two things, it is that very few people ever see it coming.”
Glenn Beck is right on both counts.
But there are also secular voices speaking to us from a political point of view. One of the best articles I’ve seen on the riots in Egypt is called “The Arab Revolution and Western Decline.” It was recently published at haaretz.com. I will quote it at length because I believe Mr. Shavit gives us a poignant picture of political dangers we are facing. Here are his sobering words:
“Two huge processes are happening right before our eyes. One is the Arab liberation revolution. After half a century during which tyrants have ruled the Arab world, their control is weakening. The Arab masses will no longer accept what they used to accept. The Arab elites will no longer remain silent.”
“Modernization, globalization, telecommunications and Islamization have created a critical mass that cannot be stopped. The example of democratic Iraq is awakening others, and Al Jazeera’s subversive broadcasts are fanning the flames. And so the Tunisian bastille fell, the Cairo bastille is falling and other Arab bastilles will fall.”
“The scenes are similar to the Palestinian intifada of 1987, but the collapse recalls the Soviet collapse in Eastern Europe of 1989. No one knows where the intifada will lead. No one knows whether it will bring democracy, theocracy or a new kind of democracy. But things will never again be the same. The old order in the Middle East is crumbling.”
“The second process is the acceleration of the decline of the West. For some 60 years the West gave the world imperfect but stable order. It built a kind of post-imperial empire that promised relative quiet and maximum peace. The rise of China, India, Brazil and Russia, like the economic crisis in the United States, has made it clear that the empire is beginning to fade.”
“And yet, the West has maintained a sort of international hegemony. Just as no replacement has been found for the dollar, none has been found for North Atlantic leadership. But Western countries’ poor handling of the Middle East proves they are no longer leaders. Right before our eyes the superpowers are turning into palaver powers.”
The West’s position [on the Egyptian uprising] is not a moral one that reflects a real commitment to human rights. The West’s position reflects the adoption of Jimmy Carter’s worldview: kowtowing to benighted, strong tyrants while abandoning moderate, weak ones.”
“Carter’s betrayal of the Shah brought us the ayatollahs, and will soon bring us ayatollahs with nuclear arms. The consequences of the West’s betrayal of Mubarak will be no less severe. It’s not only a betrayal of a leader who was loyal to the West, served stability and encouraged moderation. It’s a betrayal of every ally of the West in the Middle East and the developing world. The message is sharp and clear: The West’s word is no word at all; an alliance with the West is not an alliance. The West has lost it. The West has stopped being a leading and stabilizing force around the world.”
“The Arab liberation revolution will fundamentally change the Middle East. The acceleration of the West’s decline will change the world. One outcome will be a surge toward China, Russia and regional powers like Brazil, Turkey and Iran. Another will be a series of international flare-ups stemming from the West’s lost deterrence. But the overall outcome will be the collapse of North Atlantic political hegemony not in decades, but in years. When the United States and Europe bury Mubarak now, they are also burying the powers they once were. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the age of Western hegemony is fading away.”
Economic night. Spiritual judgment. Political night.
It’s happened before and will happen again.
Just before his death and resurrection, Jesus gazed forty years into the Jewish future and saw a time of “night” that would befall the unrepentant nation. It came in AD 70 when Titus destroyed Palestine, defiled the Temple, and led thousands of Jews away into slavery.
At that time, Jesus tried to prepare his followers for what lay ahead saying, “We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work” (John 9:4).
I’ve been making many decisions lately with this Scripture in mind. What would God have me to do while there is still daylight? Changed priorities? Greater urgency? How can I be obedient to God to lead those I love through a time of great change or cultural nightfall?
I do know this comforting fact: Light comes after darkness. The darkness never prevails–it simply sets the stage for a glorious sunrise. For our generation, that might mean another great revival on earth, or possibly the Renewal of All Things through the Return of Christ.
I am praying for wisdom, strength, and faith to prepare for the night–and afterwards, the dawn.
How about you?