Law Under Attack

In September 2012, constitutional experts presented a list to the House Judiciary Committee showing how President Obama was exceeding the legal constraints of the presidency during his first term. HumanEvents.com summarized the panel’s findings this way: “As president, Barack Obama has made a habit of bypassing or ignoring constitutional limitations on his power ….” Examples included his abuse of executive power in connection with the Fast and Furious scandal, his decision to stop enforcing parts of America’s immigration law, and his authorization of military action in Libya in 2011 without first consulting Congress.

One of the panel’s main examples was Obama’s 2012 unilateral appointments of officials, bypassing Senate confirmation. A federal court ruled that this was unconstitutional. “Sen. Mike Lee, … a noted constitutional scholar, told the committee that Obama’s abuse of power … was a historic first” (ibid). This had never happened in U.S. history.

Barack Obama’s administration routinely pushed past the limits of executive power. The New York Times wrote in April 2012, “[I]ncreasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress.” Even the president’s allies in the media knew this was happening. But nobody did anything to stop it. Few people were even paying attention!

It has since become clear how much Obama and his people took advantage of this lack of vigilance.

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

America’s Constitution makes this nation different from any other in the world. It is based on biblical principles. The protections afforded by the Constitution have allowed God to bless this nation tremendously. They prevent a dictator from seizing control of the nation’s unmatched resources—resources God gave us.

The Constitution was one of many blessings that made America the greatest nation in history. God has blessed America like no other nation. And the devil wants to destroy America like no other nation! Satan is marshaling every weapon he can to wreck America, and he is having alarming success.

Again, biblical prophecy supplies crucial insight into why.

Casting Truth to the Ground

Look again at the prophecy of Daniel 8. It describes Satan’s activities in a very telling way. It applies in principle to what has happened to America.

Beginning in verse 10 is a description of an attack Satan made in this end time. The prophetic language here references God’s “sanctuary” and the “daily sacrifice,” using the temple of God in ancient Israel as a prophetic symbol. This describes a satanic assault on the modern “sanctuary,” God’s Church. Still, it exposes the devil’s tactics in his assault on the United States as well.^[1]

Verse 12 says the devil had a “host,” speaking of an army of his demons: “And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.”

Satan is always working to cast the truth to the ground.

God is a God of truth. His word is truth. His law is true and right, and keeping it makes our lives happy, orderly and blessed. His way is the way of goodness, righteousness, law and order (e.g. John 17:17; Psalm 19:7-9; 119:151; 1 Corinthians 14:40).

A truthful, law-abiding society, even keeping man-made laws, is far more stable than a lawless one.

Satan, the god of this world, is a deceiver. He is a liar and the father of liars (John 8:44). He hates truth. He relishes lawlessness and disorder (although he also inspires tyranny and authoritarianism, which use law not as a blessing to people but as a weapon against them). He always sways people to disparage and break the law; he undermines the rule of law. Once people do that, then he can send in his demons and wreak havoc—on an individual, a church or a nation.

When you see a spirit of deceit and lawlessness at work, you know the devil is behind that.

When Satan attacked God’s Church in this end time, he got people in at the top who cast the truth to the ground. (This story is told in our free book Raising the Ruins. It is stunning history that parallels the destruction in America in remarkable ways.)

Satan has used the same tactics when attacking America and the modern-day nations of Israel. This explains the onslaught against America’s founding, history, principles and purpose coming from such high-placed leaders. This is the most efficient and potent way to destroy: from the top down. The devil can use those leaders to wage an assault from within on the truth and the law.

This is a core characteristic of the work of a Satan-inspired “Antiochus.” The Antiochus figure prophesied in Daniel 8 is a lawless man. He is unconstrained by the law of God, and even by the laws of man. Instead, he follows the dictates of his own will, which is, tragically, inspired by the devil.

Executive Orders

In his State of the Union address in February 2013, President Obama said: “I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change …. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future ….”

Obama took these types of actions with unequaled frequency. Here is what the Washington Post wrote just a couple of days before the president’s address: “President Obama is considering a series of new executive actions aimed at working around a recalcitrant Congress, including policies that could allow struggling homeowners to refinance their mortgages, provide new protections for gays and lesbians, make buildings more energy-efficient, and toughen regulations for coal-fired power plants …. The moves underscore Obama’s increasingly aggressive use of executive authority, including 23 administrative actions on gun violence last month and previous orders that delayed deportations of young illegal immigrants and will lower student loan payments” (Feb. 10, 2013).

Such actions conditioned people’s minds to accept executive orders that were primarily intended to circumvent Congress and the Constitution. This moved the nation dramatically toward rule by dictatorship or tyranny.

President Obama’s use of drones also illegally expanded his power. He launched five times more drone strikes than President George W. Bush did, and in half the time. One of these targeted and killed an American citizen in Yemen. Far more chilling was this: The Department of Justice leaked a 16-page document to nbc showing that Obama’s administration assumed power to kill any American citizen it considered a threat, even on American soil. It plainly, boldly considered itself above the law.

Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote in the Washington Times: “Obama has argued that he can kill Americans whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any due process whatsoever. No law authorizes that. His attorney general has argued that the president’s careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. No court has ever approved that” (Feb. 7, 2013). Napolitano pointed out that this practice broke state and federal laws, executive orders prohibiting assassinations, language in the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

Perhaps many or even most of the people targeted in these attacks were threats to the United States. But we should be deeply troubled by an administration so disdainful of the law that it is supposed to uphold!

This trend toward lawlessness is deadly. And because it was not forcibly stopped, this problem intensified throughout Obama’s presidency. It is now even worse with Joe Biden in power.

We must open our eyes to recognize the evil spiritual force that is behind this push to undermine the law.

We in America have been protected for a couple hundred years because we are recipients of the blessings God promised to faithful Abraham. We have not experienced the turmoil that many other nations have. We were involved in a civil war and two world wars, but compared to most other countries and other eras, God has given us victories and a lot of peace. As a result, our people have settled into an unreality about what is happening around us. They don’t understand how deadly dangerous it is!

This is not God’s world. It is a world plagued by great evil. It is full of tigers waiting to tear people apart. As Winston Churchill said, the history of man is the history of war. Yet somehow we can’t come to grips with that today. It is so much easier to ignore it.

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

I wonder how many Americans even know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It is similar to how the Ten Commandments is the supreme law of God and the foundation of the entire Bible. It works beautifully if you just apply it. But radical leftists hate the supreme law of the land.

Barack Obama has criticized the U.S. Constitution as “a charter of negative liberties” and called it outdated. Liberals in academia, the media and in government believe governing officials should cast off the limitations imposed by the Constitution. America’s founders imposed those restrictions to prevent tyranny!

The government is trashing the foundational law of the land and telling us, We don’t need that old law. We know what justice is. You can trust us! Such reasoning paves the way for tyrants! And every tyrant is a tool of the devil.

The Second Amendment

The lawless mindset of radical Democrats is exposed by their stance on gun control. They hate the Second Amendment and want to destroy the Constitution. Every time there is a mass shooting, even before any facts about the situation come out, they immediately begin pushing for gun bans. Many of them don’t just want to raise the buying age or to restrict the sale of a few types of guns; they want to enact these measures on their way to confiscating all privately owned guns. That will leave them with all the firepower.

This attack on citizens’ rights and the rule of law is chopping at the pillars of our nation.

On December 14, 2012, a young man named Adam Lanza killed twenty 6-to-7-year-old children in Newtown, Connecticut. He had some serious mental problems; he almost looked like a young girl; his parents were divorced; he was living with his mom, and his father wasn’t around. Nearly every time a tragedy like this happens, there is a dysfunctional family in the background. Sin in our families can have catastrophic results.

Yet what is the solution, according to the radical-left politicians and the media? Ban the guns.

On January 16, 2013, President Obama signed 23 executive actions on gun control. When he signed those orders, he surrounded himself with little children who had written letters to him asking, Mr. President, would you please do something about the violence in schools? Who wants to debate with him when he has children all around him?

In November 2015, after football player Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and then himself, Bob Costas said on an nfl broadcast on nbc that this wouldn’t have happened if Belcher hadn’t had a gun. A linebacker is big enough that he could have killed her without a weapon. But they’re going after guns.

I’m told that nbc has some of the bloodiest movies on television. Yet it is telling Americans to get rid of the guns. Why don’t we start with getting rid of the bloody television programs? Is it possible that is a bigger problem?

Mr. Obama and the left are so eager to ban guns. But what are they doing to stop drug cartels making inroads into America? In the Fast and Furious scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder gave heavy weapons to cartels and lost track of them. What about stopping the drug wars between gangs in America’s big cities? What success did Mr. Obama ever have in preventing Chicago, his hometown, from becoming the murder capital of the nation?

The radical left wants to take the guns of law-abiding people. They know the criminals are not about to give up their guns.

The Second Amendment in the U.S. protects the people’s right to bear arms, but for what? Leftists act as if its purpose is so Americans can go out and shoot deer.

That isn’t the reason for the Second Amendment at all. The main point was to protect the citizens from government tyranny. The government might decide to take over, and if you don’t have guns or something to defend yourself, what are you going to do (unless you have God’s protection)?

Why won’t the radical liberals admit this? That is the real world our Founding Fathers came out of! That is the real world today. But the liberals dismiss and ridicule even the thought of government overreach. Oh, please! they say. That could never happen!

Can’t we see the danger in a government, unconstrained by the law, disarming its citizens while heavily arming itself with military weapons, spy equipment and even drones that it feels justified in using at will?

Government tyranny is routine in human history, and they know it. Why are they so deceitful? Is it because they have an ulterior motive? Let’s not be naive and think something like that could never happen here. Our forefathers weren’t stupid. They wanted to guarantee Americans’ freedom. They knew that God is a God of freedom; He wants us to be free. That is a gift from God, and they understood that!

Do you remember how we gained our freedoms? A lot of people bled and a lot of people died to give us the freedoms we have today. If they hadn’t armed themselves, faced death and even died for Americans, this country would be like most others in history: oppressed by tyrants.

“Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority. Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions will be punished with imprisonment and a fine.”

This is an executive order from 1938, just before World War ii, signed by Adolf Hitler. He disarmed the Jews as a precursor to controlling them, herding them up, and eliminating them.

Mass shootings are sickening. But what makes me sicker is somebody using such massacres to promote a tyrannical political ideology! I am sickened by executive orders that circumvent the Constitution and by a president casting aside the law and doing whatever he wills! I am aghast at an American president acting like Antiochus did.

Ignoring the Constitution

Throughout Obama’s presidency, his government grew increasingly brazen about casting aside restraint and forcing its will on the public.

In 2010, the president signed his health-care plan into law even though most of the people said they didn’t want it, not one Republican voted for it, and the Supreme Court was one vote away from striking it down. Though the administration had promised to always be transparent, it made all its decisions behind closed doors and assured us, Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. We know what’s good for you. But they do not know what’s good for us. That bill created many more problems than it supposedly solved. But these leaders never admit mistakes. They never apologize. And they never give back power once they have taken it.

In 2011, President Obama illegally launched a military offensive in Libya without consulting Congress. One representative said by unilaterally wielding the nation’s military sword, the president had effectively “neutered” the legislature; another called it “an affront to our Constitution.” Afterward, Libya aligned more closely with Iran, the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism. Did that executive decision have a good outcome?

President Obama directed federal agencies to stop enforcing certain immigration laws. In 2014, he signed a raft of executive actions on immigration without going through Congress, actions that granted some form of amnesty to nearly 5 million illegal immigrants. Courts later ruled that this was unconstitutional. Yet these decisions undermined the meaning of American citizenship and permanently changed the nation’s demographics. Of course, leftists stigmatize anyone as racist who doesn’t celebrate this.

These are just a few of the many times Barack Obama broke the rules, overstepped his office, evaded constitutional checks on his power, and eroded the rule of law. They remind me of the old fable about the frog in the pot: Turn on the stove and heat the water slow enough, and before it realizes what is happening, the frog has boiled to death.

Barack Obama encouraged a culture of lawlessness within the government. Many officials grew more and more bold in doing what they felt was right regardless of, even in defiance of, the law.

It is not difficult to look back on these incidents as progressive steps that led to the eruption of lawlessness that undermined and overturned the 2020 presidential election.

Cass Sunstein was the head of the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs during Obama’s first term, a position with a lot of power. In one of his books, Sunstein actually wrote that America would be far better off if it replaced democracy with technocracy—rule by an elite group of well-educated technocrats. The issues are too complicated for most people to understand, he said. One congressman said of Sunstein’s view, “That belief is spread across the administration.”

What kind of a government is that? America’s founders dispersed power among the branches and made leaders accountable to the people. Would you like our country to be run by a few powerful, unaccountable technocrats who think like Sunstein and the radicals around Obama? That is precisely the form of government Joseph Stalin used! He purged and murdered some 30 million of his own people! He made Hitler look tame by comparison. That is what can happen with such a government.

Of course, these officials insist they can be trusted with such power. The truth is, we should have zero trust in the devil—and that is what this is truly about.

Military Under Attack

The way President Obama undermined the rule of law, and even policing and law enforcement, exposed his lawless aims. This ambition had a dangerous corollary in another diabolical act—one that received almost no attention: As president, Obama gutted America’s military leadership.

During his first five years in office, President Obama forced close to 200 generals and many other high-ranking officers out of their commands. He simply dismantled and replaced the leadership of our armed forces. Why?

Several retired generals certainly knew what was going on. Presidents often change some top military staff, but these men called what Obama did a “purge.” Retired Army Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady said, “There is no doubt he is intent on emasculating the military.” Retired Navy Capt. Joseph John said, “[T]he U.S. Armed Forces have been under relentless attack by the occupant of the Oval Office for five years” (World Net Daily, Nov. 4, 2013). Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told Investor’s Business Daily that Obama was “intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged” (Oct. 29, 2013). Yes, that was exactly his goal!

President Obama enfeebled America’s armed forces in many ways: slashing the defense budget, reducing global deployments, prioritizing identity politics and diversity quotas over war-making capability. But the liquidation of leaders was perhaps the deadliest.

No matter how powerful, numerous or sophisticated the military, if it lacks strong leadership it can accomplish nothing.

The people Obama elevated to these commands prioritized political correctness, racial and gender crusading, and other outrageous causes that eviscerated America’s defenses. They supported Obama allowing transgenders into the military. They directed resources toward promoting radical-leftist ideas in foreign countries rather than protecting America’s interests and securing the globe.

Their goal was never to train soldiers to love their country and fight and even die to save their country. Often, these leaders trained soldiers to hate their own country!

These moves did not aim simply to “fundamentally transform America,” but to fundamentally destroy America.

When Donald Trump became president, he worked to restore America’s military might. But even he was disappointed with the poor quality of many of the leaders under his command.

Once Joe Biden assumed the presidency, he immediately resumed the Obama-era madness. He commanded officers to focus on expunging “racism” and “right-wing extremism” from the ranks. His administration offered “free gender-reassignment surgery,” as if that would make them better soldiers. Reading lists for sailors and soldiers feature books that indoctrinate them in anti-American thinking. In 2021, when one lieutenant colonel wrote a book revealing how Marxism had infected the military elite, he was immediately fired. Prior generations of soldiers sacrificed their lives to defeat the ideology that this generation of soldiers is being taught in our military academies!

These decisions by America’s leaders have deadly consequences. What happens when military commanders are more dedicated to promoting radical ideas than to defending the country? What happens when they don’t even believe in the ideals of the nation they represent?

This dramatically fulfills the prophecy in Isaiah 3:1-3, where God promises to curse America by removing “[t]he mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man,” and other effective leaders. Where are you headed when you are bereft of strong, honorable, law-abiding leadership?

Scandal After Scandal

In one of his last official acts as president, Obama granted clemency to Oscar López Rivera, who belonged to a Marxist terrorist organization. The editor of the Federalist, Ben Domenech, wrote on Substack that López “recruited and trained a small army of terrorists to murder his fellow Americans. He built bomb factories. He taught the young and impressionable how to make devices that would kill and maim …. When he was put on trial, he admitted to doing all he had been accused of—he showed no remorse.” Yet Obama granted him clemency.

This typifies the work of Antiochus. It is lawless. It unleashes forces of hatred and violence. It casts down truth to the ground. And it masquerades as mercy and kindness.

Having such a man at the helm in America has produced bitter affliction. The scandalous acts he and his administration perpetrated are too voluminous to count. Here, though, is a short list:

• Refusing to disclose foreign donors to his campaign
• Suddenly reversing his stance on homosexual “marriage”
• Refusing to enforce or actively trying to stop duly enacted laws on marriage and immigration
• Doubling the deficit
• Nearly doubling the national debt accumulated by the 43 preceding presidents combined
• Eroding average Americans’ wealth
• Massively expanding food stamps and welfare
• Administration staff and agencies using secret e-mail accounts
• Funneling millions in government contracts to cronies
• The Department of Justice organizing racial protests
• Pushing sexual perversion on other countries through the State Department
• Spying on journalists, members of Congress and everyday Americans en masse
• White House staff involved in a prostitution scandal in Colombia
• Interfering in the fbi probe into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails
• The Veterans Affairs scandal and cover-up
• The Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security Administration and other federal agencies buying large amounts of weapons and ammunition
• Praising the Chinese Communist system
• The corrupt auto industry bailout
• Denying 77 percent of Freedom of Information Act requests
• Spending $36 million in lawsuits to keep information secret
• Pushing public accommodation of transgenders
• Massive land seizures
• Spying on former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Pressuring Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear program
• Signing the New start Treaty that empowered Russia and weakened the U.S. (which Russia then violated, with no apparent consequences)
• Pulling out of Iraq and paving the way for the Islamic State terror regime
• Stopping an investigation into the Clinton Foundation
• Giving financial waivers to White House staff and allies
• Requiring religious groups to pay for abortion drugs
• Solyndra and other stimulus-receiving failures
• Suing states and other jurisdictions for enforcing the law
• Interfering with and possibly hacking certain elections
• Releasing five Guantanamo Bay terrorists in exchange for Islamist Bowe Bergdahl
• The Justice Department refusing court orders
• The State Department supporting a boycott of Israeli goods
• Funding a political campaign against Netanyahu
• Helping to draft a United Nations resolution against Israeli settlements
• Betraying Israel on the UN Security Council

Americans should have been sounding the alarm about these events with all their strength! Why weren’t the media, even “conservative” media, exposing Obama’s lawless, destructive actions? Some simply lacked the courage to stand up for our constitutional republic. Many others are themselves corrupt and have come to accept and support the president’s toxic anti-Americanism.

For whatever reason, nobody stood up against Barack Obama.

Communist Infiltration

In 1956, Herbert W. Armstrong encapsulated the emerging threat of communism in America as “a psychological warfare of propaganda, infiltration, subversion, demoralization. It is a warfare that has attacked our minds and our moral and spiritual values, rather than our bodies and our earthly possessions.”

Mr. Armstrong said that this warfare is actually described in biblical prophecies. “It’s a kind of warfare we don’t understand or know how to cope with,” he wrote. “It uses every diabolical means to weaken us from within, sapping our strength, perverting our morals, sabotaging our educational system, wrecking our social structure, destroying our spiritual and religious life, weakening our industrial and economic power, demoralizing our armed forces, and finally, after such infiltration, overthrowing our government by force and violence!”

Think seriously about that statement. Look at America today. Have those Communist objectives been achieved? Morally and spiritually, the nation is filthy. We lead the world in pornography. We promote same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism and push other nations to embrace it. God says we have forgotten how to blush! (Jeremiah 6:15; 8:12). Religion, where it is practiced, is about feel-good self-help rather than obeying God and living by the Bible (Matthew 4:4). Our educational system produces millions of students who hate America, love communism and know nothing. Millions of Americans depend on handouts that enslave them to the government and to their human nature. The national debt has sailed past $30 trillion. Our military is powerful, but it is wielded by weak, “woke” leaders. Even among everyday Americans, our pride in our power is broken (Leviticus 26:19).

The Communist infiltration Mr. Armstrong warned about has happened. I don’t claim to know the degree to which the Communists organized it, or that Mr. Obama fulfills a Communist plan (though there is some evidence to suggest that).

But I do know about the devil! And I know he is doing everything he can to sink America.

I have personally seen him use a man at the top, an Antiochus, to bring down God’s Church. And I have watched as America’s government, ruled by a man with a stated goal to fundamentally transform the nation, took one step after another to weaken this country, hastening the fulfillment of some of the most terrifying prophecies in the Bible! And I know that the devil, who is a liar and who hates law, is behind that.

The fact that Americans have been casting the Constitution to the ground and encouraging lawlessness in their marriages, in their government and in their policy toward other nations has a definite cause. The worst of it traces back to the fact that Satan and millions of demons have been cast down and confined to Earth (Revelation 12:9; see Appendix B). That is making an astounding, dumbfounding difference in what is happening around us.

Many people scoff about there even being a devil—while he is tearing them apart! They do not know God nor do they understand anything about Satan. Until they do, the problems will only intensify.

‘By Reason of Transgression’

The obvious question arises, why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen to America? The answer is in Daniel 8:10-12.

As I explained, these verses describe a Satan-led army of demons wreaking destruction within God’s Church. And notice: It says it was “by reason of transgression.” In other words, the sins of the people gave Satan his opening. Then he went right into the sanctuary, working through the leaders at the top, and cast the truth to the ground. That is how Satan destroyed God’s Church. I watched it happen before my eyes.

Such devastation cannot be done from among the people. It can only be done from the top.

Now Satan and his mighty army of demons are destroying the superpower of end-time Israel the same way. The values that helped make America great are being cast to the ground—from the top.

And why? This is the part that many people overlook or reject: It is “by reason of transgression”: because there is so much sin within the people. This is not merely a problem of one man at the top with a lawless spirit. He would never have achieved the heights of power if not for a massive crisis of lawbreaking throughout the nation! Our people are saturated in sin of every imaginable type—and proud of it!

There are consequences for such lawlessness. This is a clear principle spelled out in the Bible from beginning to end. This is why God punishes us with such a devastating curse. Many people pray for God to protect us from this satanic attack. But those prayers are not being answered—because of our sins.

Isaiah prophesied about our people today: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward” (Isaiah 1:4).

This nation has had so many blessings for so many years. But this is rapidly changing, and God is warning us that it is about to get unimaginably worse!

Notice the prophecy in verse 7: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.” This is speaking of massive race wars swallowing up our cities! America’s cities are going to burn.

This will be the end result of this attack on law. Do not be ignorant of Satan’s devices. You can see his fingerprints all over what is happening today.

The solution to these problems is to reject satanic lawlessness. It is to exalt truth and refuse to allow it to be cast down to the ground.

Even respecting and enforcing the Constitution and the laws of the land would halt the decline and eliminate many of America’s woes. But real, lasting recovery and progress will come only by repentance toward God (Ezekiel 33:11). We must return to honoring and obeying the law of God.

Continue Reading: Worshiping the Will