by mike Evans
“BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR…”
Most can remember the classic painting of Jesus standing outside a door waiting to be allowed entry. That poignant portrayal of Christ on the outside, wanting to fellowship with His creation, has never been more powerful than it is today. Prayer has been excised from schools, suits have been filed to force Congress to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, displays of the Ten Commandments have been removed from public buildings, and the motto “In God We Trust” is in danger of extinction. Teachers have been forbidden even to carry a personal Bible in view of students, Christian literature has been removed from library shelves, religious Christmas carols have been banned from school programs, and “spring break” has replaced the Easter vacation.
We can but ask ourselves: Are we better off today than we were in 1963 when, following a suit filed by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the U.S. Supreme Court in an eight-to-one decision voted to ban “coercive” prayer and Bible-reading from public schools in America? Are our schools safer? Are fewer kids on drugs? Are fewer kids engaged in promiscuous sex? Are fewer crimes committed by school-age children?
Battle after battle has slowly stripped Christians in America of their rights. On July 19, 2004, after a lengthy fight, a 5,300-pound monument of the Ten Commandments was removed from the Alabama courthouse rotunda. Judge Roy O. Moore, who had championed the cry to leave the monument in place, was removed from office—all in the guise of the separation of church and state. The American courts that espouse such movements as “gay rights,” “abortion rights,” and even “animal rights” are now pursuing the right to be godless. I wrote in The American Prophecies:
We have rejected the foundation of our culture that has traditionally held us together—God and the Holy Scriptures—and as our culture drifts away from that center, we…no longer hear His voice. As a nation, our innocence is being drowned. Things are falling apart. In our halls of justice, in our pulpits, and in the political arenas, those who would speak for God not only lack the conviction to be effective, they are being systematically silenced because of a perverted interpretation of “separation of church and state.” First Amendment rights are denied to those who would speak for God, while those who fight for self, special interest, and immorality are passionately intense…as the “spirit of the world” takes over…. We have witnessed this spirit being more active in our world than ever before through the “isms” of Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and terrorism—the greatest threats to human liberty we have ever faced.3
When the first Continental Congress set out to write the document that would govern the fledgling United States, not one time did they adopt the words “separation of church and state.” It’s not there! Read it for yourself:
Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.4
In the twenty-first century, the courts of our land protect perversion while chastising the church. The writers of the Constitution would likely be amazed at the interpretation of the document over which they shed blood, sweat, and tears, and appalled at the lack of moral clarity in America today. The men who approved the purchase of Bibles with congressional funds, the men who regularly called for national days of prayer and fasting, the men who appointed Senate chaplains, would mourn the path down which succeeding Congresses and Supreme Courts have taken this once-proud nation.
The social revolution of the ’60s echoed Nietzsche’s declaration, “God is dead.” John Lennon proclaimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. TIME magazine reporter John T. Elson wrote, “There is an acute feeling that the churches on Sunday are preaching about the existence of a God who is nowhere visible in their daily lives,”5 and questioned the dedication of professing Christians. According to Elson’s article, God had been replaced by science, and the church had become “secularized.”
With the lack of moral clarity in the secularized church, is there any wonder that the malaise has spread to the governing bodies of this nation? The bedrock foundation of the faith of our fathers has been replaced with shifting sands. The sacrifices of those who have gone before, from the War of Independence that birthed this nation to the war on terror birthed on 9/11, have been diminished. The blood of dead soldiers, patriots from the past, cries to us from battlefields around the world. These men and women sacrificed all to insure freedom for all. Perhaps Dr. James Dobson summed it up most succinctly when he admonished: “We’re at a pivotal point in the history of this country. Be a participant. Don’t sit on the sidelines while our basic freedoms are lost.”6
DARKNESS DESCENDS
We all vividly remember the horrifying pictures of New York City following the World Trade Center attack on 9/11. Clouds of black smoke rushed through the cement canyons of that vibrant city, leaving death and destruction in their wake. The vision of people jumping from the windows of the burning and collapsing buildings will be forever etched in our minds.
Natural disasters in recent years have produced equally nightmarish memories—the wall of water in the tsunami that devastated parts of South Asia in December 2004; Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast in August 2005. But none can compare with the amoral blanket of darkness that has settled over America. We see it in movies, television, magazines, and on billboards; we hear it in music that seems to possess the listener; we shoot it into our veins, smoke it in a pipe, or down it from a bottle. It’s the epitome of evil.
The “anything goes” sexual revolution of the ’60s was fueled by such “scientific studies” as the Kinsey Report—a man who sexually abused children in the name of science—and fed by the likes of Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy philosophy.” The advent of the Internet only served to make the sexual revolution more readily available.
Internet pornography alone is a $57 billion industry worldwide, $12 billion in the United States alone. According to Internet Filter Review, “U.S. porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, NBC, and CBS (6.2 billion).”7 The average age of a child exposed to pornography on the Internet is eleven years old, and a staggering 90 percent of eight-to sixteen-year-olds have viewed pornography online (most while doing homework).
Another favorite pastime of the morally decadent is to try to bring God down to their level. Taking the constitutional edict that “all men are created equal,” they have applied it to religion and have declared that all religions are the same. “We are all going to the same place,” they say. “We’re just taking different roads to get there.” Sin has been banished from our vocabulary, the cross of Christ has been reduced to costume jewelry (the gaudier the better), and the blood of Christ has been counted as worthless. Religions that once elicited horror, Satanism and witchcraft, are accorded equality with Judaism and Christianity, and are, in fact, featured in the religion sections of the newspaper. And who would have thought that Anton LeVey’s Satanic Bible would have become a collector’s item, sometimes selling for as much as $1,000 per copy?
It has often been said that human beings have a God-shaped hole in their hearts, a place that can only be filled by a relationship with their Creator. It is a spiritual law written on a tablet of flesh. Those who try to fill that void with everything imaginable—drugs, sex, pornography, alcohol, perversion, pagan religions—are only lying to themselves.
There is neither time nor space to fully discuss stem cell research, the divorce plague, fatherless families, the “feminism mystique” of Gloria Steinem, child abuse, and other such issues. All, however, have played a part in secular America’s slide into depravity and debauchery. And the starkest reality of all is that the secularized church has often concurred. Isaiah 5:20 says:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
We have clearly reached the point that the apostle Paul expressed in his first letter to Timot
hy:
The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.
—1 TIMOTHY 4:1–2
No? When did you last weep for an abuse victim, mourn the senseless death of an innocent and defenseless child, reach out to a battered wife, or donate to a clinic that offers an alternative to abortion?
The genie of evil has been let out of the bottle. America has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind. Babies die daily, aborted, sacrificed on the altar of self-interest. Abortion has become a valid means of birth control for many women. Have a one-night stand, get pregnant—no problem! Take a morning-after pill or run down to the abortion clinic on the corner. After all, it’s only “tissue,” not a real baby. It’s a fetus, not a child fearfully and wonderfully made. Is there any wonder that Dr. Billy Graham said that if America failed to repent of her evil, God would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah?
A TOLERANCE FOR EVIL
On September 11, 2001, America met evil head-on when nineteen Islamic fanatics commandeered four American airliners and piloted two into the World Trade Towers and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth airliner, likely headed for a target in Washington DC, was retaken by passengers and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. It was our first taste of the hatred of jihad as preached by radical Islamic clerics.
Immediately following the attack, the politically correct were hard at work to avoid calling a terrorist a terrorist. Some objected to the use of the words Islamic or Muslim in describing these mass murders. Others objected to the use of the word terrorist. While the American public was traumatized and paralyzed by the horrific events, members of the American press were locked in a debate over how not to offend a particular segment of society. A memo from Reuter’s news department written by Stephen Jukes admonished his department not to use the word terrorist. He wrote, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”8 Never mind that Osama bin Laden had issued an edict calling on every Muslim to kill Americans.
Before the dust had settled over New York City and the fires were extinguished at the Pentagon, these spin doctors were outlining their campaign to thwart any attempt to hunt down those responsible for the carnage. What followed in the weeks after 9/11 was a succession of antiwar demonstrations reminiscent of the Vietnam era, a series of peace vigils, and other protests. America was declared guilty of aggression, having deserved the attacks due to some perceived ill against Islam and/or its adherents. Those not blaming the United States found another scapegoat in Israel. Why was it so hard to place the blame precisely where it belonged, on a group of radical Islamofascists spouting a hate-filled ideology and killing innocent people?
Lesbian writer Susan Sontag wrote in defense of those who called the hijackers “cowards”:
And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.9
Not cowards? Nineteen men sauntered aboard four airlines loaded with passengers—men, women, and children—took control of those giants of the air, murdered not only the passengers but thousands of other innocent bystanders without ever looking them or their families in the eyes—and that is not a cowardly act?
Yet another writer took Americans to task for the upsurge in patriotism and the number of American flags that were raised in the days immediately following the terrorist attack. The flag was purported to be a visual symbol of bigotry, criminality, hatred, and even homophobia in America.
The novelist Barbara Kingsolver jumped into the mêlée with this liberal, enlightening pronouncement:
Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?10
President Bush was repeatedly denounced for having stated unequivocally that America would hunt down the perpetrators and punish the planners of the attack on America. The president was careful to explain that any strike would be specifically directed at the organizations that funded and harbored terrorists worldwide. In an address to the joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, President Bush precisely identified the target:
Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.
Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.11
The president warned the American people not to expect the war on terror to be concluded swiftly:
Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.12
And so, the war against bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan was launched. In two short months, the Taliban had been routed, and a new leader, Hamid Karzai, was in place. During his State of the Union address in January 2002, President Bush was able to tell the viewing audience that America had “rid the world of thousands of terrorists, destroyed Afghanistan’s terrorist training camps, saved a people from starvation, and freed a country from brutal oppression.”13
Attention quickly turned from bin Laden and Afghanistan to other countries that harbored and funded terrorists—namely Iraq. Saddam Hussein was clearly pleased with the overt attack on Americans in their own homeland. Hussein had for decades provided a safe house for international terrorists. He gave sanctuary to Abu Abbas, the mastermind of the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985, and Abu Nidal, a terrorist mercenary said to be responsible for the deaths of as many as nine hundred people. He also provided safe harbor for the lone escapee from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdul Rahman Yasin. Hussein doled out large sums of money to the families of suicide bombers that died in attacks against the Jews in Israel. It seemed only natural to turn the attention in the war on terror to Saddam Hussein.
It is interesting to note that the focus on Saddam Hussein began not with President George W. Bush but with former president Bill Clinton in 1998. In 1998, Hussein ousted the UN weapons inspectors in clear violation of the ceasefire agreement following the first Gulf War. The Clinton administration requested that Congress draft what was called the Iraqi Liberation Act. The act proposed that a regime change be sought. The bill, as signed by Clinton, stated that “it should be the policy of the United States to seek to remove the Saddam Hussein regime from power in Iraq, and replace it with a democratic government.”14 Furthermore, the Senate approved the use of force in order to achieve that objective. It was overwhelmingly supported by a majority in both the House and the Senate.
With such a show of support for regime change in Iraq, it was only natural that President Bush might expect the same kind of support from Congress when Saddam Hussein began to openly defy UN calls for weapons inspections. The president appealed to the UN to call a halt to Hussein’s game playing. In his speech, he reiterated that all of the sanctions and incentives to tempt Hussein to
comply had been in vain. A toothless UN was impotent against the “butcher of Baghdad.”
Across the country, murmurs of dissent became a roar of antiwar protests. Even Jimmy Carter entered the fray on the side of the dissenters. He averred that Baghdad posed no threat to America. Carter’s declaration was soon accompanied by a similar statement from the ubiquitous Al Gore. The cacophony grew as senators Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy joined in the debate. It seemed that many could not quite understand how a brutal dictator that had at various times invaded both Iran and Kuwait, committed mass murder with WMDs against his own countrymen, and opened his borders to avowed terrorists could possibly pose a threat to anyone.
As the countdown to an Iraq invasion proceeded, the number of antiwar protestors grew, not just in the United States but worldwide. Were they protesting the attack on America by Al Qaeda? Were they protesting Hussein’s brutal attacks against his own people? No, the targets of the demonstrations were the United States and Israel. America was labeled a “terrorist state” and President Bush equated to Adolf Hitler. The Washington protest crowd included the likes of Representative John Conyers and Charles Rangel, and New York City councilman Charles Barron. In his comments, Barron cast the United States into the same “axis of evil” category with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.