September 11 is a date that borders on sacred to most Americans. The day in 2001 when Islamic terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on American soil permanently changed the nation. It is seared in our minds.

Eleven years later on that day in 2012, as Americans were honoring those victims, Egyptians attacked the American Embassy in Cairo. They ripped the American flag to shreds and hoisted a black Islamist flag.

The same day, terrorists attacked the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. They murdered four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The Benghazi attack in particular was horrific and deeply shameful for a number of reasons. Less than a year before, the U.S. had provided the military power to overthrow Libya’s dictator, Muammar Qadhafi. Ambassador Stevens was personally involved. He risked his life to help ensure the Libyans would have a more democratic government. Because of his efforts to promote democracy, Stevens became the target of a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda. He knew about it and told Washington that his life was under threat. The last day of his life, he was pleading with the American government to send more help to protect him. There is evidence that the consulate staff was appealing for help while shots were being fired—and help was denied.

Why didn’t the U.S. fulfill that request? Why not send help to a man so dedicated, so willing to risk his life for his country? That is a maddening question.

Sadly, however, it was only the first of several aspects of the Benghazi attack and its aftermath that should be a source of dismay and sadness for every American, and for anyone concerned for America.

First, the administration of President Barack Obama immediately implemented an aggressive strategy to cover up and deflect blame for what had happened. Though they knew straightaway that it was an al Qaeda-linked attack, administration officials, including then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, downplayed it as a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim YouTube video. Rather than countering the murderous terrorist attack, they directed their loudest condemnation at the video for its religious intolerance! They went to tremendous lengths pretending this “inflammatory” video was to blame—even farcically arresting the filmmaker—while doing nothing to bring those terrorists to justice!

Investigations have since made abundantly plain just how numerous and blatant the administration’s lies about what happened that night really were. Never has a president and his staff been so brazen and deliberate in using deceit!

To this day,nothing has been done about those Libyan terrorists who killed America’s ambassador and three others on the most painful date possible! This is a massive insult to our country and our dead. But it doesn’t infuriate our people the way it should.

America’s pathetic response to the Benghazi attack was far more dangerous than it was insulting—because it showed the entire world how weak this nation has become. It was a spectacle of American weakness. It did a lot to inflame the disrespect, disgust and contempt that our enemies are showing with growing brashness.

Should it surprise us to see America under such attack today—when the nation’s own president won’t even defend it? The Obama administration’s response to Benghazi was consistent with how the president has repeatedly apologized on behalf of America and acted like our enemies’ hatred is justified. In his view, America is the cause of the world’s grievances and ills. The United States is the real problem.

How could a U.S. president undermine America’s interests so completely? How could he be so sympathetic to his country’s enemies—and so casual about defending his country’s honor and welfare?

Could there be a more deadly plan against America? And it is coming from within! Something has gone profoundly and horrendously wrong.

It’s all about the death of our nation! (Ezekiel 33:11).

A pall of the blackest kind of evil is hanging over this land. It is about to bring a measure of suffering worse than anything this world has ever experienced!

Amassing Power

This president has not been weak on everything. Far from it. At the same time the Obama administration has undermined America’s power abroad, it has amassed power within the nation in the federal government, especially in the presidency itself. This may seem contradictory, but in fact it is another side of the same story.

In case after case, this administration has taken more power for itself and increased its control over the American people. President Obama modified and ignored a number of provisions of the Affordable Care Act with barely a pretense of legality. He launched a military campaign in Libya without congressional approval. He evaded the constitutional requirement that the Senate confirm high-level government officials by appointing “czars.” He asserted the right to kill American citizens without due process if a “high-level official” says they pose an imminent threat to the nation.

Examples of this trend abound. Here is a short list: President Obama deciding to ignore laws he does not like, choosing not to deport illegal immigrants who would have been allowed to stay in the country if Congress had passed the “Dream Act”; the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitting it uses surveillance drones over U.S. soil; the powerful Internal Revenue Service targeting the president’s enemies, mostly conservative and pro-Israel groups, to suppress their political involvement before the presidential election; the Justice Department secretly seizing the records of more than 20 Associated Press phone lines in what was called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion”—while the attorney general claimed to know nothing about it; the National Security Agency (nsa) conducting illegal, covert surveillance programs in violation of the Fourth Amendment, keeping phone and Internet records of millions of Americans with the full cooperation of nine major Internet companies. Such revelations have surfaced repeatedly throughout this presidency.

Before President Obama was reelected, Franklin Graham, the son of the famous preacher Billy Graham, said two of his ministries were targeted by the irs. He believed a newspaper ad they ran supporting an amendment against same-sex “marriage” triggered an audit jeopardizing their tax-exempt status. The process took more than twice as long as usual, and it wasn’t finished until just after President Obama was reelected. Many other conservative groups told similar stories. This indicates an unprecedented amount of political meddling! This administration blatantly manipulated the political process, and the nation is too weak to do anything about it!

If you aren’t paying attention to this trend, you should be. Many people are trying to pretend there is no real problem, and that those who are concerned are overreacting. But this should deeply trouble every American! There is an unparalleled spirit of lawlessness here—and it is leading to an outcome far worse than most people realize.

Data Collection

In June 2013, we learned that the nsa has a secret data warehouse in Utah, a “billion-dollar epicenter” where it can store massive amounts of information. Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, YouTube, aol, Skype, PalTalk and Apple were caught handing over to the government all kinds of information about Americans—including phone records, e-mails and other digital communications—and claimed they were forced to do so. However, the nsa says there is no cause for concern: An agency spokeswoman said that “[i]ts operations will be lawfully conducted in accordance with U.S. laws and policies.” Does that reassure you? Has this administration done anything to suggest that it is careful to follow the law?

When a ceremony was held in May 2013 to celebrate completion of the Utah data center’s exterior, it was “closed to the public—an exclusive, invitation-only gathering that barred even the mayor of Bluffdale,” the Associated Press reported. “The nsa also rejected a request by city officials to take a group of visiting Utah mayors on a bus tour of the outside of the facility. The agency said all tours—even of the exterior—are prohibited” (June 13, 2013).

Whyall the secrecy? Washington claimed it needs all this information for America’s war against terrorism. It was expanding the nsa’s powers exponentially, using the war on terrorism as the rationale. Yet at the same time, the president gave a speech telling Americans that thereisno war on terrorism. “This war, like all wars, must end,” he said. America shouldn’t be on “a perpetual wartime footing.” He claimed that the war is winding down, thanks to several victories by his administration. If this is all true, what does the government need that Utah facility for?

Despite all the data the government is collecting, it did not stop the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013. It didn’t stop an Islamist from killing four Marines at two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2015. It didn’t stop two Muslims from killing 14 people in San Bernardino that year. It didn’t stop a man who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State from killing 49 people in Orlando, Florida, in June. The “underwear bomber” wasn’t stopped in 2009 by the surveillance program, but by a tip from the would-be bomber’s parents. How many terrorists is this program catching? Some analysts say jihadists tend to use online resources that popular search engines don’t even see. That means these surveillance tools are basically only good for gathering data on law-keeping citizens.

William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the nsa turned whistle-blower, was asked where the surveillance data was heading. He said: “It’s really a turnkey situation, where it can be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state pretty quickly. The capacities to do that is being set up” (emphasis mine throughout). That is a chilling statement—it gets to the heart of the issue! Look at the potential power the government already has.

What kind of a mind-set is behind the nsa secret data warehouse in Utah? This nsa veteran says “it can be turned quickly and become a totalitarian state pretty quickly”!

Are we afraid to even ponder what the radical left’s agenda really is?

Fox News’s Bob Beckel, a Democrat, said the nsa data mining “is strikingly close to authoritarian rule that has no place in this country and no place certainly under our Constitution.” Herbert Meyer served as an intelligence specialist in the Reagan administration, as special assistant to the cia director and vice chairman on the National Intelligence Council. This man compared the actions of this administration to what the Nazis did under Adolf Hitler. (He didn’t say these officials are like the Nazis, but that they are going about their plan the same way the Nazis did.) Even the Germans have severely criticized President Obama for his nsa program! Some critics say he’s acting like the Gestapo.

The nsa is amassing enormous power. If it ignores the laws of the land, it can get practically anything it wants.

Imagine what a tyrannical government could do with all that information.

Americans have grown accustomed to and complacent about this steady erosion of their privacy and liberty. They do not prize freedom as they once did. This carelessness is going to come at a high cost.

Destroying Separation of Powers

In cases when Congress refused to implement his radical agenda, President Obama has simply sidestepped the legislative branch of government and ruled by executive decree.

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need,” he told reporters before one of his cabinet meetings in 2014. “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

To make it harder for the courts to rein in his executive decisions, President Obama has substituted “executive actions” for executive orders. Unlike executive orders, which are issued as an official cataloged transcript, executive actions are informal orders from the president to his underlings in the executive branch, making them more difficult to challenge legally, and making it easier for him to trash the Constitution—the supreme law of the land. It’s all about lawlessness!

Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley, a political liberal, is one of the few legal minds warning of the danger behind such executive power grabs. “The system of separation of powers was not created to protect the authority of each branch for its own sake,” he wrote in a Los Angles Times editorial. “Rather, it is the primary protection of individual rights because it prevents the concentration of power in any one branch. In this sense, Obama is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he has become the very danger that separation of powers was designed to avoid” (March 9, 2014).

Please read that paragraph again. If it doesn’t strike fear in you, it should!

In midterm elections later that year, Mr. Obama and his Democratic Party took a shellacking. Voters made clear that they were unhappy with the president’s record over the previous six years. Yet when the president spoke about the result, he acknowledged no fault or error on his part. Immediately after the election, Mr. Obama renewed battles over immigration and net neutrality. That November, he issued executive action on immigration policy. He instructed the executive branch of government to offer temporary legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. This order unilaterally enacted immigration reform that congressional lawmakers wouldn’t enact themselves.

When confronted about his record of executive overreach, the president taunted his critics: “Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So sue me.”

Trashing the Constitution

When he became president, Barack Obama promised his supporters a radical transformation of the U.S. By the end of his first term, some supporters felt the change he promised wasn’t coming fast enough. To them the president explained: “What’s frustrated people is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. … Well, you know, it turns out that our founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.”

This is one of several statements the president has made showing his distaste for America’s Constitution. Mr. Obama is an outspoken critic of the Constitution and has long desired to cast off its restraints. In a 2001 public radio interview, then Senator Obama said the Constitution reflected the “fundamental flaw” of the United States. He characterized the supreme law of the land as “a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

There is a reason the Constitution focuses on what the government can’t do to you: it aims to restrain despotism and to preserve freedom! That is its great strength, not its fundamental flaw!

America’s Constitution has given more freedom to more people than any other government charter in history. It is a noble document that has inspired and enabled so many to attain accomplishments that any other system anywhere else in the world would have denied them.

You would think Americans would love the Constitution, but that is not the case in this country anymore. The radical left wants to destroy the Constitution! The Obama administration and the radically left Democrats are very hostile to the Constitution, and so are the media. Some in the media say Mr. Obama’s only real problem has been that he hasn’t used executive actions to enact radical policy enough. Many liberals now preach that for America to solve its many problems, it needs to abandon the Constitution. Most of the educational institutions would like to get rid of it. Many even argue that it is not even the supreme law of the land! Even one of the Supreme Court justices said the Constitution is outdated and should not be used.

This too is a liberal strategy to usurp power that America’s founders never intended politicians to have. An administration that pays no attention to the Constitution when it doesn’t match its own agenda has a lot of power!

More recently, the attack on the Constitution has become even more vile. People have criticized it not simply for making change more difficult, but because it represents what they perceive to be institutionalized racism inherent within the American system!

“The goal of the Constitution was to make an agreement between factions known as states, which were built on the backs of black slaves.” That’s a paraphrase of what Alicia Garza said during a University of Missouri Black Lives Matter event in February of this year. Garza is one of the three founding members of Black Lives Matter, an organization for which President Obama and the radical left have been major supporters. “The people vowing to protect the Constitution,” Garza said, “are vowing to protect white supremacy and genocide.”

That is a satanic lie! How can the president and the radical left support such a racist organization? The truth is that it was the system built by the Constitution that allowed the United States to become one of the first societies in history to completely abolish slavery!

Comments like these are a contemptible attack on the U.S. Constitution—the supreme law of the land! Such vile statements are stirring up a lot of anger and bitterness against the system of government established by America’s framers.

Do you realize how deadly dangerous this trend of lawlessness is? Very few people do. But it gives insight into the real nature of the threat facing America.

This is quickly moving America toward a race war and rule by dictatorship or tyranny.

Lies

Mr. Obama repeatedly said how transparent his administration would be—yet virtually everything he has done has been in the dark. Many journalists have complained that his has been the most opaque administration in history.

That is the path to a violent dictator ruling America! And it wouldn’t take but a few large and destructive riots to reach that nightmare.

In March of 2013, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was called before Congress and asked, “Does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper replied, “No sir … not wittingly.” That was a lie, and he knew it.

Attorney General Eric Holder has also lied to Congress—about the Fast and Furious scandal, and about what his department did to reporter James Rosen.

As these scandals pile higher and higher, nobody can get administration officials to tell them anything! They have lied and lied and lied—and have been caught in their lies! This administration covers itself in a cloak of deceit. In some cases, they have even joked or bragged about their lies!

It is impossible to measure the damage that such deception has wreaked on the fabric of our politics and our society. But nobody seems to care. When Secretary Clinton was later investigated over the lies in the White House’s response to the Benghazi attack, she responded, “What difference at this point does it make?” Apparently a lot of Americans agree with her. Mrs. Clinton is now the presumptive Democratic nominee and could become America’s next president!

That speaks volumes about our people. We get the leaders we deserve. Especially in a democratic republic, we the people must accept the blame for the problems!

Many Christians pray for more righteous leaders, but their prayers are not being answered. Why? Because of their sins.

What happens to a nation when people come to expect their leaders to lie? When people embrace deceit? That is a far deadlier crisis than most people realize. Lies enslave and destroy us. Lies are the tools of tyrants. It is truth that sets us free. We should be passionate lovers of truth.

We must see reality: Something deadly dangerous has seized the country—far more than what people realize. There is a spiritual dimension to what is happening, and you cannot understand these events unless you recognize that.

Know Your Enemy

What is happening to America’s leadership, its domestic policy and foreign policy is not just a quirk of history. The fact that Americans are casting the Constitution to the ground and encouraging lawlessness in their marriages, in their government and in their foreign policy has a very definite cause.

We must know our enemy in order to understand what is going on in America.

Revelation 12:12 reveals that Satan is our deadly adversary. He is the one behind these dangerous developments. The devil is full of wrath, and he has gotten control of the government of this land! He controls the radical left. The fruits prove it. These people want to bring this system down. They are deceived (verse 9).

Our people don’t understand their Bibles as they once did. They don’t understand the many scriptures about Satan the devil. He has his agenda against America, and it will prevail.

Only God can protect us from this powerful evil spirit.

In his second epistle to the people of Corinth, the Apostle Paul drew attention to this evil spirit being. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 he called him “the god of this world” who has “blinded the minds of them which believe not.” In 2 Corinthians 6:15 and 11:3 he warned about how easy it is to be beguiled through his subtlety. In verse 14, he wrote that Satan actually transforms himself into an angel of light, and his ministers look like ministers of righteousness! (verse 15). This is an extremely deceptive being with a lot of power!

Paul cautioned the people to be careful and vigilant, “[l]est Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11). In any war, ignorance of the enemy is dangerous. We are far more vulnerable to the devil if we are ignorant of his devices, designs or schemes. The more you know, the better equipped you are to resist and fight! Satan is laying a trap, and you need to recognize it!

The devil’s fingerprints are all over what is happening to America today. The rampant deceit bears the stamp of the father of liars (John 8:44). The contempt for law springs from Satan’s own lawlessness. The support for America’s enemies, the appeasement of dictators, the undermining of alliances, the hatred of the Jewish state—all these are telling signs of Satan’s influence. Even the way that all of these problems are originating from the very top is consistent with the devil’s methods of operation.

Still, many people scoff about there even being a devil—while he is tearing them apart! They know little or nothing about their Bibles. They don’t understand anything about God, nor do they know the devil. Until they do, the problems will only intensify.

Those who fail to see the devil behind what is happening in America today will end up being his victims.

Let me warn you again not to forget Revelation 12:7-12. Satan and millions of his demons have been cast down from a war in heaven. They are now confined to this Earth. Their time is short because of Christ’s imminent return, and they are full of their worst wrath ever!

You see evidence of that wrath in this violent world full of treacherous deceit.

America is being attacked from within and without. There are failures everywhere: economically, culturally, politically, militarily and morally. Anyone who says there isn’t a real problem here needs to open his eyes! We need to see what is happening to our nation.

The radical left is not our big problem. It is only leading the way. Ultimately, this isn’t about a man or an administration; it’s about an evil spirit being who is working to destroy this nation—and about why God is allowing it to happen!

Time Is Short

God is against three nations in particular—America, Britain and the Jewish nation—because of their history with God, the birthright and scepter blessings today, and their unparalleled rebellion. Not only is God not helping us, He is against us! (Ezekiel 5:8). (This is all explained in our free book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.)

Look at what God says about this through the Prophet Ezekiel: “Make a chain: for the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence. Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be defiled” (Ezekiel 7:23-24). That prophecy is about America in particular (for proof, request our free book Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet).

“The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled: I will do unto them after their way, and according to their deserts will I judge them; and they shall know that I am the Lord” (verse 27). God blames the people for their sins, not the leaders! America is full of sins—and the whole world sees them! The leader may lead us to destruction, but God blames the people.

God says He has broken the pride of our power (Leviticus 26:19). Benghazi is just one example that perfectly shows that although America has tremendous power, we fear to use it. It is a sign that America has receded into the background and is declining rapidly.

Being weak causes violence and wars! The fact that America will not respond will only allow evils like this to increase. As we get weaker, people will attack us more and more violently.

Why is America so weak? Study Leviticus 26. Again—it is because of our sins. This is why God has brought this curse upon us.

The curses on America are plain to see. Prophecy is being fulfilled in events all over the globe! You would think that as times get worse and worse, people would look to the Bible to see what God has to say. Conditions are intensifying and getting so bad that anybody can recognize something is terribly wrong. But virtually nobody is turning to God. That is to our shame.

America’s problems are a direct result of America’s sins. No political candidate is going to “make America great again,” no matter what people think! I would like to see it happen, but it isn’t going to happen in this age. Everyone will come to recognize that truth before much longer! God will make America great again in the World Tomorrow. He is going to solve our problems—in spite of our rebellion. He will save America—and the world—at Jesus Christ’s return, which will occur immediately after all these crises climax.

Notice the end of verse 27 of Ezekiel 7: All the punishment that is coming upon us is intended to bring people back to God. This is good news: In the end, people are going to know God!

You absolutely need to understand the truth about what is happening to America today. We have been protected in this country for a couple hundred years. We have not experienced the turmoil that many other nations have. Yes, we were involved in two world wars, but God has given us a lot of peace. As a result, our people have settled into an unreality about what is really happening around us. They don’t understand how deadly dangerous this world is!

This is not God’s world. There is a lot of evil in this world. It is full of tigers waiting to tear people apart. It has always been that way. As Winston Churchill said, the history of man is the history of war. Yet somehow we can’t come to grips with that today.

Are you willing to face reality? Most people are not. A haze of deception enshrouds our world. It is absolutely stunning how easily the people in this land today are duped.

Many people are alert to the problems in America today, but have only become deeply discouraged and anxious as a result. But if you open your eyes to the spiritual dimension, then you will see the tremendous hopebeyond the tragedy that is unfolding. Putting these events in their full prophetic context shows how God is using these events to serve His purposes—and how they are quickly leading to the greatest event ever: when He will intervene to establish His rule on Earth!