Last week, someone with the Transportation Safety Administration posted online a top secret manual of scurity screening procedures.  If you were looking for ways to circumvent airport security, this is your how-to guide.

Among the goodies posed were templates of easily copied CIA, congressional and law enforcement ID's. The 93-page pdf file includes all kinds of tricks of the trade, including a list of things that the airport screening X-ray machines can't pick up.

The manual contains all kinds of insights, such as the fact tht TSA agents may only use blacklight authentication of passports 25% of the time, meaning the odds of getting through with a fake passport better than even.

The TSA eventually took it down, but once something is on the web, it is never 'taken down'.  I found a complete copy in one Google search.

Another odd incident involving the TSA took place in Atlanta on November 17 aboard Flight 297.  There is an email going viral written by one Tedd Petruna, telling of a harrowing ordeal and his heroic response aboard an Airtrans flight as it moved across the runway into takeoff position.

Petruna told of a dozen or so Muslim men who began disrupting the flight as it prepared for takeoff. 

As the plane left the gate to taxi to the runway, were using cell phones to call each other on the plane, distracting two stewardesses, and exhibiting other bizarre, threatening, and defiant behavior that terrified the passengers and flight crew.

Petruna said the pilot returned to the jetway where the twelve men were removed by the TSA.  Ten minutes later, they were all cleared to fly and returned to the plane.

Petruna said the pilot and crew walked off, refusing to fly with them onboard, as did the entire planeload of passengers.  The flight was delayed while AirTrans located a new crew.

AirTrans immediately began to discredit the email, saying Petruna was never on the flight to begin with, before denying his account, point by point.  That seemed both unusual and unnecessary, especially if Petruna wasn't on the flight in the first place.

AirTrans told a highly sanitized version in which a passenger who didn't speak English failed to understand an order not to use his cellphone, causing the plane to return to the gate.

The facts not in dispute are the following.   There were more than a dozen men involved.  There was a disturbance. The plane returned to the gate. The flight crew was replaced. More than a dozen passengers refused to reboard the aircraft.

The problem for AirTrans' 'explanation' is that Petruna wasn't alone on the flight.  One passenger named Brent Brown was interviewed by WSB TV,  another, Chaplain Keith Robinson, by KHOU TV in Houston.

Both their accounts sounded a lot more like Tedd Petruna's account (only without Petruna's heroic self-embellishments) than they do AirTrans. 

I wasn't on the plane, but I was a police officer for many years and I've conducted uncounted witness interviews.  No two interviewees remembers a situation exactly the same way -- if it actually happened.

If they did, it was a dead giveaway they were lying.  Those passengers that were on the plane didn't all remember the same details, but the details they do remember tell the larger story -- and it doesn't resemble the official Air Trans version at all.

AirTrans undoubtedly also interviewed the witnesses, particularly the members of the first crew and the twelve passengers who refused to reboard the aircraft. 

So why the coverup?

Assessment:

These are just a couple of recent security-related oddities that have been suppressed by the administration and/or the mainstream news media.  There are more, but these are still in the news. 

Taken together with other recent developments, one can discern an emerging pattern. . .

Ever since making the announcement, I've been racking my brain trying to understand what is behind Eric Holder's decision to bring Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators to New York for a civilian trial. 

I don't believe Holder's explanation that it 'sends a message' about the purity of American justice for a second.  Holder was the guy who vetted and approved the presidential pardon for Marc Rich.  

Justice is blind -- Eric Holder isn't.  He knows what he is doing - he's a team player. That's how he got to be Attorney-General.

Holder's decision automatically affords them all Consitutional protections. Under the Constitution, they weren't arrested, they were kidnapped.  They weren't advised of their right to silence, they were 'tortured' into confessing.

None of the evidence obtained against them was obtained legally.  No warrants were issued or served.  No chain of custody was maintained.  They were not legally extradited. 

If it were really about the Constitutional rule of law, which is the heart of his argument,  then Holder would have no choice but to release them as soon as they touched US soil. Even if there were a case against them, under the Constitution, it is subject to dismissal on any one of a dozen Constitutional grounds.

Which is why, until now, they were to be tried as enemy combatants before a military tribunal.

But since we're really not giving them full Constitutional rights and since this is just a show trial, why have it?   At first blush, I suspected it was really intended as a venue to put the Bush administration on trial, but I'm not so sure. 

No doubt the Left would be delighted with the prospect,  but that's a lot of bucks for not much bang, since  Bush can't ever run again. It isn't that I doubt they are that petty, but there has to be more than that.

This is where it starts to get really dark. What if it isn't about the trial or the Constitution or KSM at all?   The security implications of bringing those dirtbags to New York is unthinkably dangerous. 

There is a fatwa in existence calling on all faithful jihadis to help free those imprisoned by the infidels. Terrorism is the use of violence to coerce a government -- in this case, to release KSM and his co-conspirators -- and New York is FILLED with potential targets.  

The city is estimating security costs in the neighborhood of $75 million.  Even NYPD can't be everywhere.   

Holder can brag about how America would 'stand firm' under the threat of terrorist blackmail until he is blue in the face.  Why put America in a position where that firmness need be tested?  

Bringing them to New York practically guarantees new attacks.  Bringing al-Qaeda's top operatives to New York is like waving a red flag in front of a raging bull.  It is inviting new attacks. It makes no sense. 

Or does it?  We've discussed the 'false-flag' scenario before.  President Obama claims to be a great admirer of FDR and a student of his governing style.  

In that regard, it is worth keeping in mind that many historians believe FDR had advance knowledge of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor and allowed it to go forward unimpeded. 

FDR needed something to overcome the American pacifist movement and his own campaign promises to keep America out of the war.  While Pearl Harbor wasn't purely a 'false flag' operation, neither would a terrorist campaign aimed at getting KSM and the others released from custody in New York.

But it would be a convenient crisis, given the overall agenda. And it was Rahm Emmanuel's stated policy to 'never let a good crisis go to waste'. 

Why post the TSA security handbook online?  Why cover up a terrorist dry run effort? Why hamstring our military operations overseas by introducing law enforcement rules of engagement?  Why fight efforts to curtail illegal immigration? 

Why, oh why, bring KSM and Company to New York and afford them Constitutional rights that nullify the criminal case against them?  And the biggest 'why?' of all -- why are they acting as if there won't be a voter backlash in 2010?

A lot can happen between now and November.  Maybe by next November, what with the renewed threat against domestic targets,  it won't be 'safe' to hold elections. 

In a normal world, that would sound paranoid.   Maybe it is paranoid. But 'normal' is a word that has taken on the exact opposite meaning in recent years. 

And it is only paranoia if it isn't true.

On Tuesday,  foreign ministers of the European Union issued a statement effectively demanding the division of Jerusalem whether the Israelis agree or not.

In the statement, they called for finding a solution through peace talks to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and Palestine. The EU statement came following a vote on a draft resolution presented by Sweden calling for the dividing of the city.

The ministerial draft of the EU declares the European Union "will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders."  Let's stop there momentarily and revisit what that means. 

The pre-1967 borders are the 1949 armistice borders.

In 1947, the UN partitioned the Holy Land into Jewish and Arab partitions, which would have created a Palestinian state on the spot.  Jerusalem was to be declared an international city, neither Jew nor Arab.

The Jews accepted the plan, the Arabs rejected it and occupied Jerusalem.  During the War of Independence, Israel recovered the Western half from Jordanian occupation. 

The 1949 Armistice line cut the city in half, west to east, leaving the Old City, including Temple Mount, in Jordanian hands.

The two sides stared each other down for the next two decades until June 5, 1967 when Israel beat back another pan-Arab effort at its annihilation.   Israel was attacked on three fronts.  

Syria attacked via the Syrian Golan Heights in the north.   Egypt attacked from the south via the Egyptian Gaza Strip.  Jordan,  already in East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank, attacked from the east.

Miraculously, Israel emerged six days later in possession of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights.  Israel captured far more territory than that, eventually giving all of it back except the three corridors through which she had nearly been annihilated. 

Israel annexed them under the international rules of war by which every country in the New World, including our own, was established.   Israel also annexed East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.  

Under international pressure to give back the captured territory,  General Moshe Dayan agreed to led Jordan continue to administer the Temple Mount under Israeli control, hoping that would quiet the demands for total withdrawal.

Had Israel not retained the Golan, West Bank and Gaza, she would have been certainly been annihilated by the Arab sneak attack that began the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  Even WITH the buffer zone,  Israel was barely able to regroup in time to avoid defeat.

The EU's demand that Israel withdraw to the 1949 Armistice line included a demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In a normal world, the EU demand would sound insane.  Israel is a prosperous, modern, Western-style democracy surrounded by a sea of Arab thugocracies.   The Arab claim to the 1947 Partition Plan borders is tenuous at best, since they rejected it in 1947. 

The only legal land grant remaining would be the Balfour Declaration granting the whole of 'Palestine' to the Jews as a homeland in 1917, twenty years earlier.  

The Balfour Declaration was made by Great Britain on behalf of the European allies following the capture of Palestine by the Allies from the Ottoman Turks in WWI. 

(The same allies that LATER created the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc -- Israel's grant was FIRST)

So for the Europeans to side with an already-failed terrorist state, born out of terrorism and governed by terrorists holding a tenuous claim to territory ALREADY previously granted to Israel over a Western-style democracy with shared values and a European pedigree does not make logical political sense.

The EU ministers also demanded that the Jewish settlements in the West Bank be 'evacuated' (meaning 'purged') of Jews in order to meet the Palestinian demand for an ethnically-cleansed territory, in open violation of scores of UN charters, treaties and international laws.

According to Aaron Klein's report at Worldnetdaily,  Obama refused to counter the EU draft declaration and is prepared to go along with the ethnic cleansing plan.   

And a report in the Jerusalem Post suggests the Obama administration is planning to scale back US diplomatic involvement and see how things play out.

It is difficult to see a best-case scenario in here anywhere.  A worst case scenario has Israel attacking Iran's nukes and being retaliated against by Iran's proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

Between them they have enough conventional rockets to practically blanket the country.  Most estimates say Hamas has at least ten thousand rockets and missiles within firing distance of Israel.  

The Middle East Quarterly details Syria's formidable chemical and biological weapons capabilities including Scud-C missiles tipped with VX gas.   Hezbollah's rocket arsenal is believed to number more than 100,000. 

The Weekly Standard reported in 2006 that Hezbollah inflicted more damage on Israel during the 2nd Lebanon War than Saddam Hussein inflicted on Kuwait.  And Hezbollah is believed to be far stronger today.

Given the circumstances and considering the EU minsterial resolution and Washington's evident acquiecense to it, the only logical explanation is also unthinkable. 

To let them fight it out and put an end to the squabble over Jerusalem.

Assessment:

The Prophet Zephaniah seems to suggest that is how it will turn out, regardless of the intention of the EU or the Obama administration.   They'll fight it out.  And the squabbling over Jerusalem will end.

Zephaniah 2:1 begins by Israel, saying,  "Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation not desired."

There is no nation on the earth today that is a better fit for Israel than, 'O nation not desired.'  Zephaniah  warns the nations of the earth to seek forgiveness for their harsh judgment of Israel. 

"Seek ye the LORD, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the LORD's anger."  (Zephaniah 2:3)

Zephaniah then turns his attention to Israel's tormentors:

For Gaza shall be forsaken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive out Ashdod at the noon day, and Ekron shall be rooted up. 

Woe unto the inhabitants of the sea coast, the nation of the Cherethites! the word of the LORD is against you; O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy thee, that there shall be no inhabitant.

And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks.

And the coast shall be for the remnant of the house of Judah; they shall feed thereupon: in the houses of Ashkelon shall they lie down in the evening: for the LORD their God shall visit them, and turn away their captivity.

I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon, whereby they have reproached my people, and magnified themselves against their border.

Therefore as I live, saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual desolation: the residue of my people shall spoil them, and the remnant of my people shall possess them.

This shall they have for their pride, because they have reproached and magnified themselves against the people of the LORD of hosts. . . .And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness."

Zephaniah's prophecy includes Gaza, the Phillistine coastal cities north of Gaza,  Moab and Ammon (Jordan) and Assyria, which includes Syria and parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran.  

Coupled with Isaiah's 'Burden of Damascus" prophecy,  the picture that emerges suggests that if it comes to war, Israel won't wait to see how accurate Syria's Scuds are or how far Hezbollah's missiles can travel or how many rockets will roar out of Gaza.

The exact chronology is not clear, but all the players are in place and waiting, precisely as foretold.   We don't know when it starts, but Isaiah is crystal clear about when and how it ends.

"And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not."  (Isaiah 17:14)

Tick . . .tick . . .tick . . .

A collection of the world's greatest confidence artists convened for the first day of collaboration on the world's greatest hoax with the open admission of the conference organizer, Connie Hedegaard;

"This is our chance.  If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one.  If we ever do."

And with that, the largest and most important UN climate change conference in history opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Like any good circus, the conference had it's share of clowns:

Mohamad Shinaz, an activist from the Maldives, plunged feet-first into a tank with nearly 200 gallons (750 liters) of frigid water to illustrate what rising sea levels were doing to his island nation.

 "I want people to know that this is happening," Shinaz said, the water reaching up to his chest. "We have to stop global warming."

Copenhagen's 1,400 hookers are giving free, er, sessions,  to any person who presents a climate conference delegates pass.  They're joined by Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles, who are also are all there doing their bit to help save the planet. 

The conference opened with video clips of children from around the globe urging delegates to help them grow up in a world without catastrophic warming.

On the sidelines, climate activists competed for attention to their campaigns on deforestation, clean energy and low-carbon growth.

At stake is a deal that would "wean the world away" from fossil fuels by making the use of fossil fuels 'unprofitable'.  How does one make the use of a particular fuel unprofitable?  By making it too expensive, forcing the development of alternative fuels.

It sounds good on paper, and there are wingnuts galore who are cheering it on because they never looked beyond the theory stage.  What if there isn't a cheaper alternative fuel? 

Well, duh.  If there was a cheaper alternative fuel that was actually CHEAPER, we'd already be using it. It won't become cheaper until gas costs more.  That doesn't mean it got cheaper. 

It means that the cost to deliver the cheapest alternative fuel is still higher than whatever it costs to deliver a gallon of gas.  It isn't some 'lock' by Big Oil in some nefarious conspiracy.

If there were an alternative fuel that could be delivered more cheaply than a gallon of gas, let's go buy some. 

I read in a Popular Mechanics a couple of years ago (when diesel was topping four bucks a gallon) that even bio-diesel distilled in one's own private distillery using old French fry grease collected from neighborhood restaurants ends up costing about $1.89 a gallon.  

But because diesel topped four bucks a gallon, distill-your-own bio-diesel was drawing wider attention than just among die-hard environmentalists who'd been doing it for years.

The Copenhagen Climate Conference is working on the same principle.  The price of all energy will go up until alternative energy IS cheaper, not that alternative energy will BE cheaper. 

Like when $1.89 a gallon was 'cheaper' than four bucks.

Assessment:

According to the Associated Press report of the conference, quoting verbatim,

 "Scientists say without such an agreement, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures, leading to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather events, drought and the spread of diseases.

 "The evidence is now overwhelming" that the world needs early action to combat global warming, said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an U.N. expert panel.

We've already gone for days on end about the emails from East Anglia U that confirmed that the entire global warming/climate change scenario was founded on flawed data.  

One wonders how one could argue that the evidence is overwhelming in the face of the new evidence which is equally overwhelming? 

Easy.  Stand tall, look indignant, and express anger -- at somebody else.

"The recent incident of stealing the e-mails of scientists at the University of East Anglia shows that some would go to the extent of carrying out illegal acts perhaps in an attempt to discredit the IPCC," Pachauri told the conference.

I have to tell you, one seldom finds this much evidence in one place proving that the cons know its a con as well as we know its a con.  They are just hoping that we don't know that they know that we know. 

You know?

Because if they don't know that it's a con, then the only other conclusion is that they don't care about the planet so they are in it for the money.  If they really cared about their planet, they'd stay home.  Or fly coach.

The Copenhagen CONference will attract some 15,000 True Believers and their various entourages.  That's in addition to the 1,200 limos and 140 private planes. 

In all, the CONference's carbon footprint, according to the New York Post, is "more than sixty of the world's smaller countries -- combined."

The delegates will meet for eight days to work out the details of how they will lobby the 110 heads of state --and their various entourages -- when they arrive for the formal gala next week.

Thanks in large part to the East Anglia email scandal, most analysts are forecasting this will be a big party in Copenhagen but that they won't come away with a binding agreement.  

But not just due to the email scandal. Also due to the record-breaking cold temperatures and snowfall records being set worldwide.

For example, last week was the first back-to-back snowfall in Houston's history tying a 64-year record for accumulation on the earliest snowfall in that city since 1896. 

The elite don't see it yet, but the game is up.  But what will that mean for the True Believers?   They aren't going to go away -- and there are a lot of them. 

The earth worshippers have proved themselves an angry, vindictive bunch. Al Gore's contemptuous dismissal of climate change skeptics as 'flat earthers' is one of the milder epithets. 

One of the most stunning aspects of the email scandal was learning how skeptical scientists were fired and their reputations destroyed.

If Copenhagen flops, as it looks like it might, it isn't hard to imagine the rise of new form of angry religious fundamentalism that is duty-bound to save the planet from the ravages of mankind at whatever cost. 

If you HONESTLY believed you were saving the planet for future generations, what cost would be too high?

Earth worship is among the oldest of the pagan worship systems. 

The Bible illustrates earth-worship's antiquity and God's attitude toward it in the story of Cain and Abel in which Cain offered the fruits of the earth as a sacrifice before God.

God was displeased.  Cain reacted in much the same way as did Rajendra Pachauri when confronted with the contradictory emails.  

The conference also stands as a living testimony to the Divine inspiration of Romans 1:22-29.  If one follows Paul along through to the end of the chapter, one sees a familiar progression  (without my having to point it out directly and risk having this OL bounced by the ISP censors).

There's a lesson in here,somewhere. I'm sure of it.  By the time the Copenhagen Conman Confab is over, we should know what it is.

But I'm not sure we're going to like it.

The focus of the OL for pretty much the entire week has been on the subject of deception. It really wasn't deliberate on my part.   You might say circumstances demanded it.  

All week we've been immersed in the deceptions and the deceivers already in high places. There is the growing Climategate Scandal in which it appears that a genuine consensus is finally emerging on the issue of global warming.

The consensus is growing that global warming alarmists were relying on falsified scientific data. It is being called one of the greatest deceptions ever perpetrated on (and by) the scientific comunity.  A Rassumssen poll taken even before Climategate erupted showed 74% of those polled doubted global warming.

We looked at how global warming has taken on all the trappings of a global religion much like that described in Scripture for the Tribulation Period.

We looked at some of the various candidates for antichrist that have risen to center stage, uniquely, in this generation. 

We even looked at some of the incredible ways Obama seems to fulfill prophecy, such as his proclamation from Cairo that America wasn't a Christian nation but was one of the largest Muslim nations in the world.  

But the point wasn't that Obama was the fulfillment of the prophecy -- the point was why it was important that he could be.  Because it confirms how little time remains before the coming of the Lord for His Bride. 

Which brings us to the other great deception of this generation.  When raising the issue of the Rapture, I am regularly accused of being a false teacher and a deceiver for my position on the pre-Trib Rapture and the doctrine of eternal security. 

The label 'deceiver' bemuses me.  

The whole message of Scripture can be boiled down to a single phrase a child can understand:

 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."  

My doctrinal view demands total trust in the Lord for my salvation and total trust in the Lord's promise that I have been saved from the judgment reserved for those who reject Christ's offer of redemption. 

If I am spreading deception, it is the 'deception' that to trust in the Lord with all one's heart and lean not on one's own understanding leads to eternal security.

And that by acknowledging Him in all our ways and allowing Him to direct our paths, we can know He won't withdraw His Holy Spirit from us without keeping His promise to come to us first.  Which demands a pre-Trib Rapture.

By definition, every other view requires shifting that trust to one's own abilities and dependence in one's own faith and provision to see them through the judgment period.

Given the focus of the entire Body of Scripture,  rather than cherry-picking individual Scriptures to pieces, which sounds like man's idea of God and which sounds like God's idea of man?

I put the question forward as part of the whole week's examination of deception in the last days.   If we're going to discuss deception, the most deadly deceivers forecast in Scripture are false teachers.  

I want to be out in the open regarding our doctrinal view as a ministry, and why we hold it.  

The whole Body of Scripture points to salvation by faith.   The Old Testament testifies to man's inability to keep the Law and the New testifies of Christ's fulfillment of the Law on sinful man's behalf.  

One can make strong cases with seemingly solid Scriptural support by cherry-picking certain Scriptures, but not without complicating or nullifying the Prime Directive, which is the fact that "man can't, Jesus did, it is finished."

If one isn't eternally secure,  logic demands the conclusion that it ISN'T finished -- Jesus only STARTED it.  It isn't finished until YOU finish it --  by dying with your salvation intact by not losing it to repeated sin.

No matter how carefully one parses the argument, or how many individual verses one provides as proof textt means Jesus DIDN'T -- and that man must.   

My argument rests on the fact that Scripture's Prime Directive proclaims that man's inability is no barrier to God's grace and that constitutes a summary of the overall message of Scripture.

That is my understanding of the Gospel of the Kingdom the Lord charged us to preach as our Great Commission.  
 
When testing a doctrine for truth,  it my rule of thumb that a doctrine that directly contradicts the Prime Directive of Scripture should be viewed with suspicion.

One that requires an impossibly sinless life as a condition of salvation while still requiring the Church undergo judgment for sin in the Tribulation would seem, not just a variation, but rather a direct repudiation of the basic Prime Directive -- on all points.

Assessment:

I don't teach the doctrine of eternal security to deceive people into believing that once they are saved, they can sin with impunity.   In the first place, it violates the 'Prime Directive' -- the central theme of Scripture which is, "man can't, Jesus did, it is finished".   

In the second place, that is foolishness.Nobody can sin with impunity.  Smokers get lung cancer. Drunks have liver failure.  Gluttons have heart attacks.  The promiscuous get venereal disease.  The list goes on.

If someone doesn't commit any of these particular sins, the cumulative weight of our own sin eventually kills us of old age, if not something else.  So nobody is advocating sin as a lifestyle.   It has consequences -- dire consequences.   

But the consequences don't include separation from Christ.  

Paul writes: "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."   

It is a clear, concise and unambiguous statement completely in harmony with the entire theme of Scripture.   To accuse me of being a false teacher and a deceiver based on the doctrines of eternal security and a pre-Trib Rapture requires making Romans 8:39 mean something else.  

Accusing someone of being a false teacher implies they know better but are teaching falsely.  Accusing someone of being a deceiver draws the same implication.   

Why would anyone want to teach a doctrine they know is false?  I assume that those who hold different doctrinal views hold them sincerely, even when they are totally at odds with my understanding of Scripture.

If one believes in God and knows their Bible, one already knows the penalty for deliberately teaching false doctrine.  So I assume that they believe what they are teaching, even if I believe they were taught incorrectly.    

Because I don't agree doesn't mean I question either their sincerity or their devotion to the Word.  Sincere people can be sincerely wrong, including me.   One merely has to demonstrate that the central theme of Scripture is not man's inability and God's grace, but some lesser variation.    

And that the Scripture is so complicated that only Bible scholars like themselves can understand the difference between salvation by grace through faith alone and salvation by grace through faith and not sinning.   To a lost person seeking salvation, that sounds like a slamming door, since it was their inability to not sin that drove them to seek salvation in the first place.   

Insofar as the Big Picture is concerned, salvation by grace through faith and not sinning is indistinguishable from man's Old Testament condition.   The 'not sinning' part frustrates the grace of God, since not sinning IS keeping the law.   

"I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness comes by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Galatians 2:21)

The best definition of salvation that I can think of is contained in the question often put to lost sinners;  "If you died right now, are you sure that you would go to heaven?"   

The answer to that question is either yes or no -- 'maybe' cannot count.   

It is hard for me to get my head around the concept of being "willfully ignorant" rather than confronting an uncomfortable truth.  Self-deception seems, well, somewhat idiotic, like trying to surprise yourself.

One can believe what one wants to, but believing it doesn't make it so.

You are welcome to believe that I am a twenty-five year old body builder who looks like Brad Pitt, but I will still be an gray-haired old man with a paunch and an attitude.  

Americans are undoubtedly the most well-informed population in the history of the world.  Freedom of the press is one of the nation's most jealously guarded civil rights. 

Admittedly, a lot of what passes for news is really partisan propaganda, but very little of it (apart from PBS) is government-funded.  But for the most part, the American press is free to uncover and report on whatever it thinks is relevant.

The Obama administration attempted to silence its most vocal critics at Fox News, but it backfired.  The more Obama tried to isolate the network and denigrate the integrity of its reporters, the higher Fox's ratings went.

The Obama administration sent out its top spokespersons to hit all the other networks and get them to agree that Fox wasn't really a news organization, insisting it was really a wholly-own subsidiary of the Republican Party.

It froze Fox out at every opportunity, pointed excluding Fox from media interviews, even attempting to freeze Fox News out of the presidential press pool.

At first, the other networks gleefully joined in the Fox-bashing.  But when they noticed that their own ratings were falling as quickly as Fox's was going up,  they began to suffer public attacks of journalistic integrity. 

Some of the clearer heads among the liberal media elite, notably Howie Kurtz over at CNN, began to wonder aloud if their news organization might be next.

This all played out in the most public of all public arenas -- cable news networks with global reach.  (Every place we stayed when we were in Israel carried the Fox News Channel.)

Given how blatant the effort was to silence a member of the Constitutionally-protected free press, one would expect to hear somebody in the Congress calling for his impeachment.

An attack on any single news organization is an attack on them all.  It is an assault on American freedom and a threat to every single liberty-loving American.

But there was barely a peep about the Constitution, the 1st Amendment, the threat posed to American liberty -- other than those few like Howie Kurtz, little was said. 

What was striking to me was the lack of indignation.  Here was the president metaphorically patting the tame media on the head by kicking Fox in the butt as if the public were too stupid to see it. 

The lack of public indignation at the assault on their intelligence suggests maybe he was right about most of the public.  But that is unsatisfactory. 

If it were George Bush trying to silence an unfriendly media, the public outcry would have been deafening.  Even when the media was leaking top secret war memos that aided the enemy,  the 'public's right to know the truth' trumped national security concerns.

So the lack of public indignation can't be explained away by public ignorance.   At best, it is a deliberate, willful ignorance.  When the public doesn't want to know what it doesn't want to know, it just pretends it doesn't know.

The Obama birth certificate issue is an example of deliberate, concentrated, willful ignorance. 

Anyone who raises the question is marginalized as a 'birther' which has been assigned the credibility level of a 9/11 'truther'. Not by people who know the answer to the question, but by people who don't WANT to know.

They don't know either, but it isn't because they are too dumb to ask.  When the question was raised concerning John McCain, who was born on a US naval facility in Panama, Congress held a hearing.

NBC News solemnly explained how and why McCain did not qualify as a 'natural-born citizen' and cited a 1964 Supreme Court decision that defined a "natural born citizen" as meaning "born inside the United States."

Barack Obama has a team of paid lawyers whose only job is to prevent the question from being asked or answered. 

Dozens and dozens of lawsuits aimed at forcing the President to prove his birthplace have been angrily dismissed by federal judges who don't know the answer to the question either.

One judge even FINED a lawyer that filed a motion, calling it 'frivolous' and a 'waste of the court's time' -- but THAT judge doesn't know the answer to the question, either.

Even the Republicans marginalize and mock the 'birthers' for asking to see Obama's birth certificate -- but NONE of them have seen it, either.

And NOBODY seems even remotely curious as to why Obama won't settle the question the way that John McCain did.  It is politically incorrect to the point of being criminal to ask why anybody would fight to conceal the facts surrounding his place of birth.

The so-called 'birthers' could be instantly silenced by Obama simply showing his actual birth certificate to a competent, unbiased authority -- like a federal judge.  

It is almost comically simple, but not only has nobody done it, nobody is questioning why he's concealing it.  Tiger Woods had a one-car minor accident on his own property but he wasn't forthcoming with the details.

Instead of labeling those who questioned his account as sub-sentient conspiracy nuts, the media kept digging and digging until they fleshed out a domestic violence story, complete with candidates for 'the other woman.'

I heard one reporter explain it this way: Tiger Woods is no longer a man, deserving of the same privacy the rest of us demand, but instead, he is a public institution belonging to us all. 

People WANT to know if Tiger Woods has feet of clay.  

Look at Joe the Plumber from during the campaign.  He dared to question Obama's socialist leaniings.  The next day, the New York Times gleefully reported Joe "may run a plumbing business but he is not a licensed plumber. His full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he owes a bit in back taxes.

The Times reported that Joe had two liens filed against him, each over $1,000.00 and, ominously, "one of which — a personal tax lien — is still outstanding."

The Times even discovered that Joe voted Republican in the March primary election and that his last name was misspelled on his voter registration card!

But when it comes to those who simply want to see Obama's birth certificate, the Times describes them as " a fringe element that insists President Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate is not enough to convince them that he was born in the United States."

Further, the Times noted dismissively, "They have been getting a lot of time recently on the Internet, where conspiracy theories live and flourish."

Joe the Plumber spelled his name wrong on his voter registration card and he voted Republican last election.  He couldn't keep that from the New York Times.

But the Times is well aware of the birth certificate question.  The Times does NOT know the answer to the question, but it knows that only fringe elements prone to conspiracy theories would even ask.

They don't WANT to know the answer.  But they can't pretend they don't know there is a question.

Assessment:

The Climategate scandal is yet another prime example of the public not wanting to know openly what it can't help but know privately. 

The revelations, taken from the emails of the scientists involved, that the evidence showing man-made global warming was 'cooked' should have everybody from the president on down DEMANDING an investigation. 

The White House is committed to taxing a trillion dollars out of the public by artifically increasing energy prices, to combat man-made global warming. 

If you were about to invest your life savings in Bernie Madoff's investment company when the Madoff scandal first broke, would you still plunk your money down based on Madoff's past record of return?

And how much would you trust your investment advisor who told you to ignore it and continue with your investment plans anyway?

But Obama and his administration are actively working against conducting an investigation, while pressing forward with plans to attend the upcoming Copenhagen Conferenc anyway.

It isn't that the White House is ignorant of the controversy.  It is only pretending not to know because knowing the inconvenient truth would be, well, inconvenient.

Willful ignorance doesn't exactly fit the Apostle Paul's description of "strong delusion" because Paul says that they will BELIEVE a lie. 

I can't make myself believe Obama doesn't know the science on global warming is NOT settled. Or even close.  I can't make myself believe that the birth certificate question is irrelevant or conspiratorial.  

I can't make myself believe that the New York Times COULDN'T find out where Barack Obama was born.  Obama is the president of the United States and nobody knows -- for sure -- where he was born. 

On the other hand, Joe the Plumber, well, we already know he isn't even a plumber and that his name is misspelled on his voter registration card.

And I don't believe anybody else honestly believes all that, either.  If global warming is REALLY settled science, there wouldn't BE a question.  If Obama was REALLY born in Hawaii, THAT wouldn't be a question, either. 

But the mechanism behind the strong delusion is well-oiled and ready;  "because they received not THE LOVE of the truth, that they might be saved."

I love the truth.  It is what motivates me.  It is what fascinates me, because it is always more interesting that fiction.  I haven't read a fictional novel in decades, but I devour books on theology, politics, current events and factual history.

It was the LOVE of the truth that led me to Christ. My sister had read Hal Lindsey's "Late, Great Planet Earth" and surrendered to Christ.  Being a Catholic at the time, I figured she had joined a cult and it was up to me to deprogram her.

I set out to disprove Lindsey's book but I could not ignore the truth when it was staring me in the face, even it if meant rethinking everything I thought I knew about God.

One cannot come to Christ and remain willfully ignorant.  It is too confusing.  Yet it is one of the defining characteristics of our politically correct society.  Here are a few more.

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof."

If that isn't descriptive enough, "For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

I'd like to tell you that this is only a passing fad, something that will pass with the Obama administration and the country's dangerous flirtation with the lunatic left.  I'd like to.

"But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived." 

This is only the beginning.

Do you ever look around at the mess we're in and think to yourself, "Is this really real?  Is it really possible that things are this bad?"   

For you young folks and some of us older ones with selective memories,  it was just 18 years ago that America had 'peaked'.  The Cold War that had shaped public policy for forty-plus years was over. 

The Soviet Union had just dissolved, having spent itself out of existence.

On our side of the world, the debate was over how to best spend the "peace dividend" -- referring to the hundreds of billions of dollars formerly earmarked for the Cold War arms race. 

America's status as the world's only remaining superpower had been confirmed beyond all doubt after America's armed forces cut through the world's fifth most powerful army equipped with the finest and most up-to-date weaponry the Soviet block could produce like they were schoolboys equipped with slingshots. 

The fearsome Iraqi military, having just concluded an eight-year war with Iran,  was one of the toughest and most combat-experienced in the world.  America's troops were mostly green, having never heard a shot fired in anger.

So when the much-vaunted Soviet-equipped Iraqi army crumbled in a ground war that lasted just 100 hours, the Soviets knew their time was over. On Christmas Day, 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, leaving Boris Yeltsin to announce "the Soviet Union, as a matter of geopolitical reality, has ceased to exist."

A brief walk through the day's headlines gives one pause to wonder if it will be Joe Biden making a similar announcement about America sometime between now and 2012.   We certainly seem to be taking the same path as the Soviets.

President Obama announced yesterday that he has decided,  after 92 days of deliberations, to reinforce the troops fighting in Afghanistan incrementally over the next year or two.   We've been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years and are not much further ahead than the Soviets were in 1988 after eight years of fighting.

And like the Soviets, we're broke.  Our infrastructure is in shambles.  Our standing in the world has never been lower.  Capitalism's future looks as bleak as Communism's did twenty years ago.  

Soviet Communism was replaced by a kind of thugocracy that grew out of an unholy alliance between the KGB, the Russian mafia and senior Russian military officers.  

American republican democracy started to unravel in 2000 when the Left attempted to overturn a close election through the use of clever legal maneuvering that very nearly worked.    Gore won more popular votes, but didn't carry enough states to win in the Electoral College. 

When the Gore Team couldn't find enough hanging chads or disqualify enough military ballots to beat Team Bush in a Florida recount, the Supreme Court had to step in and order the parties to honor the Constitution's Electoral College results.

Team Gore claimed that they had been the victims of a stolen election, thereby justifying future efforts to fight close elections in the courts.   That broke an established precedent that dictated that the sanctity of the US election process was more important than which side won.

A similar situation occurred during the equally-close 1960 Nixon-Kennedy election.  The two were separated by just one tenth of one percent of the popular vote.

Kennedy won by just about the same margin as the number of dead Chicago voters that voted in that election. Everybody knew it.  But rather than tear the country apart by subjecting it  to a recount, Nixon conceded.  

Gore conceded.  But then he took it back. That created a new political standard for winning US elections. Since Election 2000, stealing an election has become just as legitimate as winning one.  

The Left believes Bush stole the election in 2000 and 2004 -- the Right believes Obama's ACORN and SEIU ties helped Obama to steal the election in 2008.  Each side points to the other as justification for the theft.

The effect, according to the polls, is that the American electorate is rapidly losing faith in the system. 

Assessment:

It doesn't seem real.  It's like watching a slow-motion train wreck.  Every time a new revelation about ACORN comes to light and nobody does anything,  I shake my head in disbelief.  

But I notice that the constant drumbeat of corruption is wearing me down.  I find myself less and less shocked.  I can only assume that I am a typical guy -- so if I am getting hardened to it,  it seems reasonable to think others are, as well.

Capitalism is rapidly becoming a dirty word in America, in much the same way that "Communism" fell out of favor during the Gorbachev years under the guise of glastnost and perestroika. 

In America, capitalism is rapidly giving way to a kind of perverted socialist/fascist system in which the State controls the economy, rather than market forces.  The various bailouts effectively nationalized American industry. 

The health care system will give the government control over national health care. The individual is becoming a ward of the government, rather than its master.  And when the government gets to decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn't,  the individual won't dare to complain. 

The media has to toe the line or be punished.   There is little reason to think individuals will get more latitude than does the much more-powerful media.  

There is a story in The Atlantic today about the White House punishing Politico for publishing an unfavorable story in the same way it punished Fox News.   In fact, Politico admits that it usually allows the Obama adminstration to use Politico set the agenda.

" . . .truth be told, the White House maintains good relationships with POLITICO reporters and has been known to try and agenda-set by dishing out a few tips to the publication."

In a free society with a free press, that kind of admission ought to be the kiss of death for the news organization that makes it.  But since they aren't admitting anything that everybody doesn't know already, it isn't making any more waves than the Climategate revelations from last week.

We began with our discussion of the first Gulf War.  At just about that same time, the Europeans were hammering out the Maastricht Treaty to serve as an interim constitution for the new European superstate.

Until 1990, there were but two world superpowers,  the United States and the Soviet Union.  Europe was divided between American and Soviet domination.    

There is no room in Bible prophecy for a Soviet Union.  Ezekiel depicts the Russians in the last days as a regional power allied with remnants of the old Persian Empire, like the 'stans,  Iran, and the Mediterranean Islamic states.

The Prophet Daniel says that the world's most powerful superstate in the last days will correspond to the old Roman Empire, which encompasses pretty much all of modern Europe and parts of the Middle East.  There is no room in Bible prophecy for a divided Europe.

The only reference I can find to America in Bible prophecy is a description that corresponds perfectly with the political platform of American progressive liberalism.   There is no room in Bible prophecy for the existence of a predominately Christian country. 

We've looked at this passage before, but it's worth revisiting, since it grows more stunningly relevant to our current social meltdown with each passing month.  It is a perfect word picture of modern American social morals.

"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;  Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2nd Timothy 3:2-5)

It's real.  The times are as perilous as the Bible predicted.  

"And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. . . . Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled" (Luke 21:28,32))