General

The recent 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade–the Supreme Court decision that ignited the abortion holocaust in America–gives occasion to consider the power of deception in our world.

We live in a time when deceit openly parades itself as truth.

Our leaders tell us that federal deficits don’t matter, that marriage can be re-defined, that women should serve in combat, and that taking away guns will make us safer (to name just a few of the deceptions of the month).

What’s interesting about this list (which could include many other progressive examples), is that if you believe one of the deceptions, you probably believe most of them.

And you likely also believe the grandest deception of all: that it’s okay to kill an innocent baby in the womb.

First of all, let’s be clear on the source of deception on earth. Contrary to atheist’s claims, most people understand that there is a spiritual being called the Devil, Lucifer or Satan and legions of fallen angels (demons) that influence human behavior. These beings are as real as we are, though they are unseen (Ephesians 6:12).

We don’t know a lot about Satan, but here are a few salient facts that relate to our topic.

1. We first meet Lucifer in the form of a serpent in Genesis 3:1-5 where his first recorded act was to deceive Adam and Eve into disobeying God–leading to the spiritual fall of the human race.

2. He is called a deceiver: “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:19).

3. To deceive is to tell a lie–to not present the truth about a person or subject. Jesus said about the Devil:  “[He] does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

4. Jesus also linked another horrific sin with Satan and his ways. Speaking to those who had given in to satanic deception, he declared, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

We learn from these references that there is an incredibly powerful and sinister fallen angel (and his minions) that are at work in the unseen world on earth, lying to people about the truth and deceiving them regarding morality.

(If you need a refresher course on the battle we are facing in the invisible world against Satan and his forces, then I recommend pulling off your bookshelf Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness or Piercing the Darkness and reading them through again (I do this once every few years). Better yet, purchase Dean Sherman’s Spiritual Warfare for Every Christian to learn what to do about it.)

And oh–another thing about Satan that was mentioned above:

He is a murderer.

Which brings us to the deception of abortion.

For a moment, let’s clear our eyes and think about the deceit of abortion that is pervading the earth today. Millions of Americans and maybe billions of people worldwide are deceived about this subject. They have bought into a wretched lie that contains:

Deceitful Language

I don’t know who invented the word “abortion” (though I know who inspired it). We use the word abortion as a clinical term for killing precious, beautiful, innocent babies. But the word “abort” is not a personal word. In normal usage, we abort things not people–such as rocket launches. It’s a way of stopping or ending some “thing”, not someone.

When we “end someone” that’s normally called killing or murder.

To rationalize this in our own minds, somebody also invented the word “fetus” which sounds more like a “thing” than a person. That makes it easy to get rid of.

Deceitful History

Killing innocent babies in the womb is not new. It goes back thousands of years, and was viewed by most cultures as morally wrong. You probably didn’t learn that in school.

Even in ancient polytheistic Greece, the Hippocratic Oath (400 BC) was used to encourage doctors of the healing arts to take a stand against abortion. Here is the original form:

“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath. . . I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary (medical device or medication) to produce abortion.”

For thousands of years, this was the norm. Abortion was not good medicine nor moral. It was murder–plain and simple.

Deceitful Autonomy

One of the most prevalent modern lies regarding abortion is that women have a “right” to control their own bodies. Every fair-minded person agrees with this general statement. Each of us has been given a body that we should steward and nurture through good lifestyle choices.

So far, so good.

But wait a minute. A baby in the womb is not my own body. It’s somebody else’s body that has a God-given right to life, health, and protection. Yes, that body is dependent on his or her mother for nine months, but after birth, it’s also dependent on people for many years. There’s really no difference.

Plus, complete human autonomy is an illusion. We are called to love one another and submit our lives to the One who created and loved us first. Actually, “in Him we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Deceitful Logic

Nothing makes logical sense about killing an innocent baby in the womb. The truth is actually pretty simple. Ask a ten year old. They may not understand sex or how procreation works, but they know that mommies and daddies produce babies.

In other words, life begins at “conception”–the moment a man’s DNA joins a woman’s DNA to create a new human life. This concept is not “above our pay grade” as once stated by our current president. It’s a simple, basic, logical fact.

The whole discussion of “viability” is also nonsense. My own children are now eighteen-to-thirty-one years of age and during their childhood years, they certainly couldn’t live on their own. I sometimes wonder if they’re viable now.

I also wonder if I’m “viable” at this point in my life. I need my wife, children, parents, doctors, friends, professionals and many other people in my life. Viability is a silly, non-logical argument for taking human life.

Then there is the greater illogic of the word “choice.” This seems to be the favorite deception of our time because the word “choice” sounds so lofty, noble, and freedom-laden.

However, truth to brain: The rightness of a choice is  determined by what choice you make. Some choices are good: to love, care, be patient, forgive etc. And some choices are bad or out-right evil.

The most evil choice on a human plane? To kill another innocent person.

So next time someone says to you that they’re “pro-choice,” simply ask them a question: What is the choice you’re making? Then after they give you their verbal smoke-screen about terminating a pregnancy or whatever, solemnly remind them that aborting the fetus is really murdering their own offspring for selfish reasons.

Hopefully the truth will lead them to change their mind.

Deceitful “Rights”

Many abortion advocates couch their position in the language of the civil rights movement. They say they are freeing up women the same way Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

But the only true rights that human beings possess are God-given and God-defined. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable (can’t be taken away) rights that begin with “life.”

The “right to life” is both basic Bible and basic American. To be pro-choice (killing babies) is actually to be on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle. It was the morally-wrong slave owners that were pro-choice. They didn’t want to force other people or states to own slaves, they just wanted to be free to do so themselves.

And upon what did they wrongly base their choice? They believed that Negro slaves were not fully human–hence the rationale that the choice was okay.

Pro-choice abortionists are the slave owners of the 21st century. They don’t necessarily want to force others to believe like them (except for tax-payers to pay for all abortions through Obamacare). But they believe their choice is justified because the fetus in the womb is not fully human.

Sound familiar? Satan’s lies don’t change much in history. He just sprinkles the same old deceit on new areas of interest.

Why? Because he was a liar from the beginning and wants to destroy (murder) human beings.

Abortion fits his agenda perfectly. Through human accomplices, he has successfully murdered over 55 million Americans since 1973 and possibly one billion human beings worldwide over the past fifty years.

That’s why abortion is the greatest deception of all.

And that deception is passed on by the secular press. Last week in Washington, D.C. over 600,000 people marched against abortion in the annual March for Life.  That same week, the “Million Mom March” was supposed to draw a million folks to agitate for gun control.

But only 6,000 showed up.

The Associated Press (a secular-biased news organization) reported that “thousands” came to each event. In other words, they lied to the nation to create the impression that two equally significant protests took place in the nation’s capital.

The truth was the March for Life out-numbered the Gun Control March one hundred to one!

Be encouraged those of you who believe the truth and weep over the great abortion deception. Truth will win out in the end.

My friend, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, described his closing prayer at the 2013 March for Life this way:

“For four decades, families have traveled over miles of wintry highways in the hope that their trips to Washington, D.C. will someday end–and with it, one of the darkest periods of American history. Until then, they continue their pilgrimage to protest a ruling now responsible for the slaughter of millions of unborn lives. Undeterred by ice or snow, this generation of abortion survivors has resolved to never let the nation forget the blood spilled in the name of “choice.” Today, despite freezing temperatures and whipping winds, people came by the hundreds of thousands to fill the National Mall with a word the media won’t even say–life.”

“As I closed the rally in prayer, I thanked God for the hope these young people represent–not just to our movement, but to America. In the Old Testament, through God’s servant Moses, He put before a new generation, the covenant that was over 1,000 years old. It was this new generation’s time for choosing. God said, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days.” May we not just be a nation that chooses life, but chooses abundant life in Jesus Christ.”

We live in a world in desperate need of leadership. Good, wise leadership.

I’m sure that people in other time periods thought the same. Sin and tyrants have stalked the earth for centuries. When evil rushes in like a flood,  a new generation of leaders is needed to rise up, speak and live the truth, and point people to freedom.

The biblical book of Judges is entirely devoted to this subject. Things got bad in Israel;God raised up a good leader; the people were delivered.

In this second decade of the 21st century, I am viewing an ominous leadership vacuum on the horizon. How should we focus our prayers? And who is most responsible for the dearth of righteous leadership?

Let’s look at few realms where good leadership seems to be waning.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

The world scene today is not very encouraging from a political leadership standpoint.

In Latin America, pseudo-communist Hugo Chavez is dying in a Cuban hospital. Aging dictator Fidel Castro is probably comatose in the room next door, and both nations are mired in poverty. Ecuador and Nicaragua join with these two nations to form a Marxist-leaning beachhead in the area of the world once protected by the Monroe Doctrine.

Other Latin nation like Brazil and Argentina are rising, but godly leadership is desperately needed to save Latin America from a lurch to the left.

Europe is wealthy and stable compared to other parts of the world, but the weight of many out-of-control entitlement states–especially in the southern tier–could bring Europeans to their knees.

Where are the Winston Churchills and Charlemagnes that are needed to save Europe from both a cultural and economic demise? Angela Merkel and David Cameron are decent–but not exciting. President Hollande is leading France off a tax-the-wealthy cliff. And to the east, Vladimir Putin is no Mikhail Gorbachev.

Then there is Asia where India and China are rising–but can you name any of their leaders?  The Communist Chinese shuffle leadership every five years and India is still a nation with great poverty. There are pockets of hope in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, but in North Korea, the latest “Kim” still rules this starving nation–and is testing nuclear missiles.

The Middle East and other Muslim nations are in full-blown leadership crisis. Egypt is now led by Islamic radicals that seem intent on drip feeding sharia law to the unsuspecting masses. Somalia is the new Afghanistan, North Africa is being radicalized, and Syria is engulfed in civil war.

Then there is the United States. I have believed for a number of years that our present political leaders are the worst of our entire history. That goes for both sides of the aisle. No wonder their poll numbers are smaller than my shoe size.

Can you compare Nancy Pelosi to Sam Rayburn? She gave us bills so scary that they needed to shove them through before anybody read them (Obamacare). Harry Reid to Henry Clay? Reid hasn’t passed a budget, which is required by law, for over three years.

And President Obama has clearly shown his quasi-socialist tendencies, and is okay with trampling religious faith (ask Hobby Lobby and numerous other businesses) in his quest to fundamentally transform America from a freedom-based Christian nation into a secular welfare state.

There are many great governors and other leaders waiting in the wings (Governors O’Donnell, Kasich, Daniels, Haley, Jindal, Perry, and Senators Ryan and Rubio are a few that come to mind) but none have commanding national stature. Barack Obama’s cleverness as a politician appears to be producing what Patrick J. Buchanan calls a “New Majority” in America.

That is a scary thought indeed.

Buchanan warns: “With demography moving against the GOP, with more and more Americans becoming dependent upon government, it will take leadership not yet visible to rescue the Republican Party from the fate Barack Hussein Obama has in store for it.”

ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP

I’m re-reading David and Robert Wiedemer and Cindy Spitzer’s best-selling book Aftershock. The sub-title is “Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown.”

The authors were nearly the only people on earth that predicted the economic calamities of 2007-08 and so their words have credibility. They said then and are re-stating now that we are in a very dangerous “Bubble Economy” because of disastrous leadership in high places that led to the popping of the stock bubble, the housing bubble, the private credit bubble, and the consumer spending bubble from which they say we will not recover.

What’s now looming on the horizon are the final two bubbles–the government debt and dollar bubbles. The Wiedemers and Spitzer believe these bubbles will also “pop” sometime between 2013-15–depending on how many drastic measures the Fed Reserve throws at the problem. And because America’s economy is one-third of global GDP, what happens here will affect everybody.

The Aftershock authors believe we passed the point of no return in 1981 when our deficit reached what is now a paltry sum of $200 billion. From that point on it was politically unfeasible to reverse the devastating consequences that are coming.

Worldwide, we have very poor leaders running the Treasuries of the nations. There is a huge vacuum of wise, godly, principled people. Only Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond–the lone dissenter on all the Fed’s quantitative easing moves–seems to understand that we must change course or face grave consequences. See his warning in The New York Times. 

I’m spending much of this year getting both my personal and corporate financial houses in order to prepare for what’s ahead. There’s time to build an ark when God speaks, but not after he closes the door and the rains descend.

Make Aftershock one of your books of the year in 2013.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

But I believe the gravest leadership crisis or vacuum we face comes from the realm that is meant to be the “light of the world”–the Church. Where are the pastors and spiritual leaders who are championing the spiritual harvest, making disciples of all nations, and reforming nations through the power of the Gospel?

In the 20th century we had Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Loren Cunningham and others who pointed the way. In past centuries, the pastors in America led the fight for salvation in individuals and freedom in nations.

Can you name their counterparts today? Probably not.

One survey tells you all you need to know about why we’re in a spiritual leadership vacuum.

The National Association of Evangelicals--the largest evangelical umbrella in America (and upon whose board I serve) asked their members how many of their pastors endorsed political candidates in the 2012 election–a critical election with a clear choice between a man with a Judeo-Christian worldview (Mitt Romney) and one with a secular outlook (Barack Obama).

According to the IRS, non-profit churches can’t endorse partisan candidates, but pastors can do so as individuals and certainly disciple their people to make informed choices.

But in the 2012 election, 94% of pastors didn’t endorse candidates or disciple their people in voting.

Only 6% of Christian leaders got involved. Less than a tithe. During the Revolutionary War days, the numbers would have been reversed.

Now you know why 25 million evangelicals voted for secularism and the growth of the entitlement state in the 2012 election. The pastors didn’t lead, and the people didn’t follow.

The leadership vacuum begins with the Church.

One hundred and sixty years ago, during the drama of the Civil War, America’s greatest revivalist, Charles Finney, blamed the ministers of the day for the growing darkness in the nation. The following quotes are from his book Power From On High:
 
“I believe it is a fact generally admitted that there is much less conscience manifested by men and women in nearly all walks of life than there was forty years ago. There is justly much complaint of this, and there seems to be but little prospect of reformation. The rings and frauds and villainies in high and low places, among all ranks of men, are most alarming, and one is almost compelled to ask: Can anybody be safely trusted?”

“Now what is the cause of this degeneracy? Doubtless there are many causes that contribute more or less directly to it, but I am persuaded that the fault is more with the pastors and public press than in any and all things else.”

“Pastors have ceased in a great measure to probe the consciences of men with the spiritual laws of God. So far as my knowledge extends, there has been a great letting down and ignoring the searching claims of God’s law as revealed in His Word. This law is the only standard of true morality.”By the law is the knowledge of sin.”

“The law is the quickener of the human conscience. Just in proportion as the spirituality of God’s law is kept out of view will there be a manifest decay of conscience. This must be the inevitable result.”

Notice Mr. Finney says the failure of pastors to share the truth–coupled with the influence of the media–inevitably leads to societal decay. Here is his ringing verdict:

“If there is a decay of conscience, the pastors are responsible for it. If the press lacks moral discrimination, the pastors are responsible for it. If the Church is degenerate and worldly, the pastors are responsible for it.

“If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pastors are responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pastors are responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pastors are responsible for it.”

“Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.”

Charles Finney was right. If the spiritual leaders don’t point the way, then all other spheres of leadership will, of necessity, become corrupt.

My pastoral friends: It is time to repent and step into the void with the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. To all others, we must  “pray for those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1).

Let’s begin with those who shepherd our souls.

Happy New Year. I hope you had a meaningful holiday season with family and friends. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen in Washington, D.C. as our leaders were engaged with the so-called fiscal cliff–an array of tax increases and budget cuts that needed to be dealt with by December 31.

I am making a resolution for my columns in 2013–to mince no words as to the dangers we face in the coming months and years. This era is akin to the 1930s which foreshadowed world upheaval and war.

I commit to be a Dietrich Bonhoeffer who dares to speak up.

Here is my take on the “fiscal cliff” and the forces we are facing in 2013.

First of all, let’s summarize what came out of the legislation that was passed by a sizeable Senate margin of 89-8 and a 257 to 167 count in the House which included support from 172 of the chamber’s Democrats and just 85 of the 242 Republicans.

The positives:

• The Bush tax cuts on lower and middle class taxpayers were permanently left in place, thus not raising income taxes on 86% of the American people. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax reform said that “When Democrats wake up they will realize they just made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent and lost their leverage for the next four years.”
• The deal also nixed a scheduled pay raise for members of Congress signed by Executive Order by President Obama. (I don’t think they deserve it.)

The negatives:

• The measure increases “taxes on the rich” by letting the top income tax rate rise immediately from 35 percent to 39.6 percent on income over $450,000 for married couples and $400,000 for single people. This first-in-twenty-year tax increase will hurt small businesses and the job producers of the nation.
• This is not a “balanced” approach to the nation’s fiscal problems. In the bill, there is only $1 in cuts for $41 in various tax increases.
• The deal also means higher taxes on 77% of households via increased payroll deductions. This will add up to about $1635 per family.
• According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the measure adds 3.9 trillion dollars in debt to the exploding US deficit (over ten years).
• The bill increases government spending by 330 billion dollars.
• Many “earmarks” were thrown in for favored groups including tax breaks for Hollywood films, millions for rum producers, subsidies for green energy including $59 million for algae producers, milk subsidies, ad nauseam.
• Our fearless leaders “kicked the can down the road” on dealing with the 16.3 trillion dollar debt ceiling as well as the sequestration budget cuts. Sixty days from now we’ll be back in full-blown crisis mode.
• The $650 billion fiscal cliff distracted us from the true $48 trillion looming fiscal time bomb—the long-term funding obligations of Social Security and Medicare (not counting Obamacare).

That last bullet is the most significant. If yesterday’s crisis was a “fiscal cliff”, then the real cataclysmic disaster we are facing is a fiscal black hole in outer space: scores of trillions in fiat-money debt with no courage to tackle or repay it.

The Fiscal Cliff Crisis truly reveals the forces at work in America.

DESTROYERS

This is not too strong a word to describe our current Administration and its secular-progressive allies in the House and Senate. Many of our current leaders are doing nothing less than destroying the American Dream and our freedom-influence around the world.

I am not judging their motives–only God knows the heart. In fact, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that most of them actually believe they are doing “good” for the American people. A spirit of deception brings moral dyslexia. (Representative Nancy Pelosi called the fiscal cliff bill “a happy start to a new year.”) But regardless of motivation, what our president and his Congressional allies are doing is destroying the godly foundations of the American nation.

Consciously or unconsciously, they are systematically removing America’s long-held biblical values in three areas:

1. They are destroying faith in the land. Hence the “war on Christmas,” the suppression of religious values in the public square, and forcing people of faith to go against their convictions via Obamacare contraception and abortion mandates. The secular-progressives want a secular America (Europe-style). That necessities a crusade against biblical faith.

2. They are destroying the family via changing the definition of marriage, rewarding babies born out of wedlock (currently 40% of births and 76% in the black community) and creating a government-dependency mentality. The family used to be the biblical bedrock of American society. Secularism’s encouragement of free sex and no moral judgments is destroying the family structure in this nation.

3. They are destroying economic freedom and prosperity in this nation. This is the indirect consequence of damaging faith and family, but it is also directly promoted through the growth of government power and control. Yesterday’s legislation really did nothing except raise taxes. And “the power to tax is the power to destroy” (John Marshall). Think on that again. When you raise taxes you lose liberty. If God only requires 10% (the tithe), and Joseph considered 20% taxation in Egypt to be high (Genesis 47:24), then what is 39% (or 70% in France)?

It is the power to destroy.

When I watched Vice President Joe Biden, and Senators Patty Murray and Dick Durbin strut through the Capitol Building on New Year’s Eve on their way to a meeting with President Obama, I knew that, whether it was conscious or not, we were looking at destroyers.

Secularism will change America. It will destroy the country and eventually persecute people of faith.

WIMPS

I believe this label applies to many in the Republican ranks. I personally like John Boehner (he  pronounces his name like mine), and others, but Winston Churchills they are not. In fact, for the past seventy years since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, the Republicans have primarily gone along with the growth of government. Even Ronald Reagan didn’t reverse it, just retarded its growth for a generation.

In fairness, during most of those decades R’s were in the minority and did their best to encourage fiscal restraint. But over time, the Republican establishment also gave in to the pressures of lobbyists, constituents who wanted goodies, and the power trap of Washington, D.C. and did not fight effectively for limited government and human freedom.

Courageous they were not. Wimpy in the face of pressure is a better metaphor. I believe there are a few bright spots among them. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Eric Cantor–along with 157 other Republican representatives–voted against increasing taxes during this weak receovery. Others made the case that making the Bush tax cuts permanent was a victory of sorts.

But steely-spined, courageous leaders are desperately needed on both sides of the aisle. Will they emerge in the coming years of financial reckoning?

CHEERLEADERS

The other ominous problem in American politics today is the clear secular bias of most of the old guard American media. They are clearly “cheerleading” the ascendancy of secularism in the world as a whole. They are pom-pom holders for the Destroyers and antagonists of the Wimps.

Some call this group the “Mainstream” or “Lamestream” Media. Let’s be clear who they are:

• the influential New York Times who many media outlets look to for the daily news feed.
• Other newspapers including the Washington Post and LA Times and others. The Associated Press is strongly committed to the secular-progressive vision.
• Then there are the major networks–CBS, NBC, and ABC–and cable-based CNN and MSNBC.
• Finally, add to them the new media of Moveon.org, the Huffington Post, Media Matters, etc.

All of these groups actively campaigned for Barack Obama and his cohorts in the past two elections. The news media used to be the “Fourth Estate” that kept all politicians honest.

No more. They are clearly the “cheerleaders” of the secular progressive revolution and take utter delight when it triumphs (think Chris Matthews). They bury stories that hurt the cause (Benghazi), promote stories that help it (“The War on Women”), and try to take down faith-oriented candidates (Allen West comes to mind).

They also try to keep the Wimps in line through flattery or intimidation.

The Destroyers/Cheerleaders are a powerful coalition in 21st century America. We will either pooh-pooh their reality or downplay their power at our own peril.

THE ILL INFORMED

This group now makes up a significant portion of the America electorate–probably over fifty percent. They were educated in secular schools, got their degrees at secular universities, or have simply joined the secular pastimes of entertainment and consumerism.

I am always amazed when hearing interviews of average Americans “on the street”–especially those who are under thirty. They often can’t name the vice president, any Supreme Court justices, or have the foggiest idea of the great issues of the day. They’re too busy playing video-games, partying, or watching television. They know who Lady Gaga is but not Mitch McConnell. They can name the past three winners of “American Idol” but not one of their two US Senators.

They couldn’t define “freedom” if you gave them Blackstone’s Communtaries. In fact, they couldn’t read it because the language is too high.

Here’s how sad it is. I spoke with a Christian senior citizen this week who watches ABC News and was delighted that taxes are going up on millionaire athletes and entertainers. She thought they were the “rich”–not job producers and small business owners. If this wonderful person is ill-informed because of her choice of news source, then what about the rest who are only watching Saturday Night Live?

The Bible warns that “my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Thomas Jefferson said that “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

An ill-informed electorate will be slaves. They already are to entertainment

THE REMNANT

I believe there is still a remnant in this nation who love God and liberty and “understand the times with a knowledge of what we should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). But this group is shrinking and is in desperate need of revival and enlargement.

Are you a part, and what would God have you do?

After watching the 2012 election results and, more recently, the fiscal cliff debate, I believe the most relevant verse for America in 2013 may be found in the words of Jesus in Luke 22:53:

“This is your moment, when the power of darkness reigns.“

(My second choice is Psalm 11:3 – “When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?)

Let’s be painfully honest. Right now, evil sits in the American driver’s seat in a variety of forms. We are being destroyed spiritually, socially and economically by an invisible Destroyer who has deceived many people in this nation.

But we must take courage.

After Jesus said the ominous words above came the power of the Resurrection and the defeat of the Enemy!

Let us put our hope in His ultimate triumph and be faithful to advance His Kingdom regardless of the powers we face.