Reverend Peter Marshall's Commentary Archive

 "Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:5) 

     On November 4, Americans will vote in one of the most important elections in our entire history. I say that because there is so much at stake.

In my view, the foremost consideration about the election is this: The next President will have the crucially important opportunity to nominate at least one Supreme Court justice, and perhaps two. Veteran readers of my commentaries know that I have long preached that the future of the nation is tied up in the issue of abortion. Having announced to the world in 1776 in the Declaration of Independence that we were going to build American civilization on the God-given inalienable right to life, which we violate with every abortion, a just God is going to hold us to account on that pledge. If indeed He brought on the nation the terrible scourge of the Civil War due to our violation of the God-given inalienable right to liberty by our enslavement of Negroes, there is no reason to believe that He will refrain from levying a similar judgment because of abortion. To avoid His judgments (which some, including myself, believe that He has already begun visiting upon us with increasing severity), America is going to have to outlaw the slaughter of our unborn. That will require the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, even if it is done incrementally. In turn, the only remote chance of achieving that necessitates the appointment of one more pro-life or conservative justice to the Court. We are one vote shy of a conservative majority - most votes on abortion-related issues going against us by a 5-4 majority.

Barack Obama has made it crystal clear that he will nominate only pro-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, so if he is elected the chances are quite good that he will be able to fasten abortion on demand around the necks of the American people by an even greater majority. John McCain, on the other hand, is and always has been pro-life (no waffling for him on this issue), so there is no question about the kind of justices he will nominate. If McCain is elected, by the grace of God we really may have a chance to end the abortion holocaust.

And here let me say something as emphatically as I know how to say it: I find it utterly beyond belief that any person who calls himself or herself a Christian could under any circumstances vote for a candidate (Obama) that supports abortion on demand and special rights for homosexuals (beyond those already in the Constitution)! How, in the name of all that is holy, can a Christian vote for someone that takes a position directly contrary to the explicit Word of God? How can a Christian believer ever cast his or her vote for someone that God Almighty would never vote for? Especially in light of the fact that the nation is already under God's judgment precisely because of these sins, as well as others. The Biblical equivalent of this would be the people of Israel choosing judges to rule over them who were in favor of Baal-worship.

It is absolutely imperative that Christians vote in this election. Do not sit out this election! Listen again to Charles Finney, America's greatest evangelist in the 19^th century: "The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics or the Lord will curse them. God cannot sustain this free country which we all love and pray for unless the Church will take right ground. Politics is a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as part of their duty to God."

Why did Finney say this? Because America is government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Abe Lincoln did not make that up, by the way - he was quoting Englishman John Wycliff, the Father of the Protestant Reformation. In 1382, Wycliff finished the first translation of the Bible into English, which he said he had done so that the people could read God's Word in their own tongue and then created a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." So America government "by the consent of the governed" is a product of the English Protestant Reformation, and directly traceable back to Holy Scripture. In His infinite mercy God has given the American people the responsibility to govern themselves and freely choose their own rulers. In America, therefore, since we select our elected officials, we get the ones that we deserve.

Because God has called us to be responsible for our own government, if any Christian who is eligible to vote does not do so, he or she is in sin against God!

Do not apathetically boycott this election because there are a few things you may not like about John McCain, or because he isn't Ronald Reagan. Consider the alternatives! There are times when a Christian has to engage in what I call "voting defensively" against the alternatives. But, in this case, to refuse to vote is to hand votes to the candidate who is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, wants to raise taxes, and is itching to socialize health care. Only an extraordinarily large turnout of the Christians and other conservatives across the nation is going to give McCain any chance at all to win this election.

And please, please, do not vote for a third party candidate! Again, this is handing Obama a vote, for none of those people stand any remote chance of being elected. All you would end up doing is casting a protest vote, which is useless in this election. There are some misguided Christians out there who think that we must firmly stand on our principles every time, and refuse to vote for a candidate who does not meet every single one of them. May I point out that had Abraham Lincoln followed that advice he never would have issued the Emancipation Proclamation! That was a war measure which only outlawed slavery in the areas of the South reached by the Union armies, leaving slavery untouched in other areas. It took a Constitutional Amendment in 1865 to outlaw it completely. Under what I believe was God's guidance, Lincoln chose an incremental approach, getting rid of it where and when he was able, until Congress could remove it. We need to learn from him.

For myself, I am dismayed and worried by the onslaught of socialism that I see, not only in Senator Obama's health care plan, but in the massive Federal bail-out program just passed by the Congress and signed into law by the President. Senator McCain is supporting this as strongly as Senator Obama, and is not making clear public statements that he will do all he can as President to get the Federal government out of the mortgage business as soon as the crisis has eased. I'm sure that he feels that more than anything else the public needs immediate reassurance that the government is going to come to the rescue of low-income mortgage holders, not lectures on the dangers of socialism. But, simply because McCain is not crossing all the "t's" and dotting all the "i's" on this issue is no reason to refuse to vote for him.

Friends, the choice in this election could not possibly be clearer. Senator Obama has based his campaign on the promise of "change" should he be elected. But that is demonstrably false; it will simply be more of the same failed Democratic Party flirtations with socialism. Consider this: he has promised huge new Federal spending to expand health care for 50 million uncovered people (including illegal immigrants!). This plan is going to be "the same kind that members of Congress get," mind you - and he says that he'll pay for it by curbing waste and plugging loopholes. Don't hold your breath until that happens - no President in my lifetime has ever been able to do that! Inevitably, he will have to raise taxes to pay for it.

He openly says that he wants to "transfer the wealth" from "rich" Americans to the middle class. That, my friends, is basic Marxism 101! When "Joe the Plumber" (Joe Wurzelbacher) accosted him near Toledo, Ohio a few weeks ago Obama had said that he wanted to raise taxes on everybody making over $250,000 a year. Joe is getting his Master Plumber's license, and told Obama that he was planning on making about $270,000 or $280,000 a year and didn't appreciate the prospect of having his taxes raised. The truth seems to be that most of the small businesses in America do $250,000 or more in a year, so Obama is going to raise taxes on the middle class, not cut them!

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover raised the tax rate from 20% to 50% on income over $100,000, which in 1932 was more money than $250,000 is today. The result? He plunged the nation into a severe depression. That's the specter that Obama is hanging over us.

The leftist bias of the mainstream press, radio, and TV coverage has prevented the American people from getting an accurate picture of this Presidential election. In the Biden/Palin Vice-Presidential debate, Senator Joe Biden made at least 14 (Newt Gingrich counted them) factually false statements. But not one mainstream media organization reported these as such, or went to the trouble to check out the statements and report the truth.

Since then, Sarah Palin has been modeling grace under fire for the American people. She has been running a campaign full of grit and common sense, giving solid speeches one after another, and attacking Obama on precisely the points that need to be held up before the people. Yet, she has been vilified by the leftist mainstream media in the most vicious and unprincipled attacks since those on Barry Goldwater in 1964. The New York Times, which has hit new lows in journalism in this campaign, ran three separate front-page stories on the same day about the pregnancy of Sarah's unwed daughter. Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post, referred to the Palins' "wreck of a home life" (which is completely untrue), and held a reader contest to name the baby! When the various Palin family members took turns watching their little boy Trig during Sarah's convention speech, a number of reporters said that he was being "passed around" like a stage prop. In addition, there have been innumerable false accusations of her, such as the claim that she opposes contraception; that she belonged to the Alaska Independence Party; that she cut funding for pregnant teen programs - the list goes on and on.

The most scurrilous attacks are typified by Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, who announced that "a woman with five children, including one with special needs, and a daughter who is a 17-year-old child who is pregnant and about to have a baby, probably has got to rethink her priorities." At MSNBC the on-screen headline read: "SOME VOTERS CONCERNED IF PALIN, A MOTHER OF FIVE, HAS TIME TO BE VP." I don't think the voters were concerned about any such thing; I think that MSNBC was trying to make them concerned.

What is all this about? It's probably abject horror on the part of the secularists at the thought that a committed pro-life Christian could get this close to the White House. I think they're terrified. After all, we've never even had a pro-life First Lady in the White House since Roe v. Wade was handed down.

In the last few days, it seems as if McCain has been gaining some ground on Obama's lead. Even among some Democrats there seems to be a smidgeon of hesitation lately about Obama, as if they are beginning to wonder if his resume - community organizer; brief stint in the Illinois Senate; and three years in the U.S. Senate - really doesn't add up to enough experience to be President of the United States (which it definitely doesn't). Palin's jabs at "community organizing" have been hitting home. Left-wing blogs have been hysterically shrieking that "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor." That's hilarious.

Don't be fooled by Obama's pitch (in Biblical sounding language) to the American people that we need to be "our brother's keeper." If you listen closely you will hear that what he means by that is the government is supposed to exercise that responsibility - and of course he is going to do that by raising our taxes. In his interview with Bill O'Reilly he said that raising taxes on the wealthy was "neighborliness." "If I am sitting pretty, and you've got a waitress who is making minimum wage plus tips, what's the big deal for me to say ‘I'm going to pay a little bit more.' That's neighborliness." No, it's not - it's socialism. For Obama, it's always government, government, and more government. He talks of using government to create heaven on earth - he sees politics in messianic terms. This is where he combines the black-power liberation theology of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (yes, Obama did soak up that man's teaching over a twenty-year period!) with his Marxist community-organizing skills and Biblical language to try and sell the idea of the loving and caring Nanny State that will take care of everybody's needs. John McCain wants to reform government; Barack Obama wants to expand government and re-make America. In Obama's view, you're either "on your own" out there in the cruel and cold world, or (in National Review's phrase) "you're in the good hands of the all-state," and they didn't mean the insurance company.

That is not what the Bible means by our needing to be our brother's keeper. To use Obama's example of the waitress, being her "keeper" means that we should give her a large tip (for openers), and then strike up a relationship with her such that we can steer her toward churches, schools, and all the myriad voluntary organizations that can help her and her children (if she has any) achieve a better standard of living. We're supposed to personally help her, not push her to an impersonal government agency.

At this juncture, it looks as if the election will go to Obama. But, if that happens, I believe that America will be in for a very rough four years - much worse than it was under Carter. We will immediately see Obama reverse the ban on Federal funding of abortions for military, and we will see a Democrat-controlled Congress raise taxes and take large steps toward increased socialism - government-controlled health care and more.

If this scenario occurs, the American people will be very sorry that they elected Obama. But God may allow it, to bring us to our knees before Him.

We need to pray for a miracle next Tuesday.

Copyright, 2008, Peter J. Marshall.  All rights reserved.

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