Transparency

As I considered the many promises that President Barack Obama reiterated during his state of the union speech this week, I was struck by his disingenuousness. Obama consistently says one thing and does another but he is only challenged on this by the vocal conservatives. One promise stood out to me as being a deception that the coming Antichrist will make: his promise of transparency.

Dictators have to operate is secret without any public accountability because their wickedness can not stand the light of scrutiny. Many will dismiss Obama as being responsible for all the secret deals that Congress is making to get their unpopular health care reform ideas forced on us but he is in lock-step with the majority party leadership in the House and Senate. And Obama promised that such activities would not happen under his watch. Just like he’d do away with run away pork spending also known as earmarks.

Reports are that Team Obama is planning to use Congress’s reconciliation process to resurrect the remains of Obamacare, despite the clear referendum on it voiced in Massachusetts. I’m convinced that something will get passed with more back-room deals appealing to special interest groups and favored constituencies. Making such secret deals is how the Antichrist will secure his power… “he shall come in peaceably, and seize the kingdom by intrigue” (Daniel 11:21, NKJ) and “many shall join with them by intrigue” (Daniel 11:34).

The root Hebrew word translated "by intrigue" in the New King James Bible is described in the Lexicon of the Blue Letter Bible as meaning by flattery, slipperiness, fine promises, and smoothness. All these descriptions apply to how Barack Obama was able to rise to power so quickly. There are many things our Leftist government does that foreshadows what we can expect to see in the Antichrist.

The more I see the spirit of the Antichrist exhibited by our governmental leaders, the more I look forward to the Rapture which precedes the Beast’s rise to power. We certainly could turn the tide of our government with the mid-term elections later this year and the next presidential election in 2012. But developments are happening very fast that will overwhelm us like a flood (Daniel 9:26).

This prompts one other observation about Obama’s state of the union speech… he is pretty focused on domestic issues and paid very little attention to the international situation. I think this is very dangerous with the trends that we see in the world today. We are being distracted by our self-contrived national interests while international dangers are growing. This makes us less safe and I would not be surprised to see a major terrorist attack on the U.S. before Obama’s term is up.

There is a lot to be fearful of in this world. I’m sure most people don’t give much thought to what is going on in the world today because doing so only makes their fears grow. That why it is such a pleasure to know Jesus as Lord, “for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The best way to deal with what we see going on in the world today is to have a sound, rational mind which is a gift from God as a by-product of having a personal relationship with Jesus.