There’s a certain rhythm for things. And, when that rhythm accelerates, you know that the crux of an issue is approaching resolution.

Well, the frequency – and strength – of leaks and statements from Washington and Jerusalem are increasing almost daily, and that sounds almost as if they are preparing us for something.

Of course, they might be preparing Iran for something. It might be that this increased talk of war is a deep psychological game played out for the purpose of convincing Iran to cave in to the West’s demands that Iran give up her pursuit of nuclear weapons. If Iran starts to believe that the West really WILL attack them unless they shut down their nuclear weapons program – and if they don’t want this – they might actually do it. But, what if Iran actually WANTS the West to attack them?

Or, maybe they’re telling us the truth for a change, and the US and Israel really are getting ready to strike Iran.

The good thing about all of this?

The US actually seems to be on Israel’s side and doesn’t seem to be standing in the way of Israel’s best interests.

Would you believe that I’ve never actually seen this happen before?

Unfortunately, this may be the last time we see something like this, so celebrate it while you can.

(That is, if what we’re seeing is the truth.)

U.S. military told to prepare for Iran ops
WND EXCLUSIVE – Special Forces ordered to be ready ’1 March through October’

by F. Michael Maloof, Feb-16-2012

WASHINGTON – Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta believes that Israel could attack Iran in an April-to-June timeframe, and there apparently has been a decision made for the U.S. to help in an assault on the radical Islamic nation’s nuclear facilities.

U.S. military sources tell WND that the Pentagon has begun preparations for “a number of operational plans and counter-operations,” with a Feb. 22 due date for submitting the plans.

There also is a request for identifying U.S. forces “by 1 March with a ‘through’ date of October.”

The military sources indicated that U.S. forces will be augmented by an Aegis warship, presumably one of the two in the U.S. carrier task forces scheduled to be in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carrier task force already has re-entered the Gulf.

The Aegis combat system on U.S. Navy ships is used to track and guide weapons to destroy intended targets and to act as a protective shield to counter ballistic missile threats.

The U.S. carrier task forces returned and have recently been augmented to patrol around the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians have threatened to block if the Islamic republic is attacked or if increased sanctions are put into effect to halt the export of oil.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Bill Speaks told WND there was “nothing to what your sources are saying,” but he also quickly added that the Pentagon “doesn’t discuss what future contingency plans we have, and I am not going to discuss this with you.”

Panetta first revealed the prospect of Israeli action in a Feb. 2 published interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, although the defense secretary was quick to point out that his comments were not intended to send any type of signal.

In that interview, Panetta told Ignatius that he had cautioned the Israelis that “the United States opposes any attack,” although the columnist pointed out that this was not a direct quote.

Until now, the Obama administration has stated that it doesn’t want to be involved in any conflict with Iran unless U.S. assets are attacked – in which case there would be a strong U.S. response.

The apparent U.S. war plans, based on what U.S. military sources tell WND, suggest that the U.S. may not wait for an attack on U.S. assets before responding and instead may be preparing to assist the Israelis in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Read the rest of the article, here.

Well, they all fit together. (Of course, I could have called this, two quotes and a moral, but I’m saving that title for a rainy day.)

Anyway, there are two sayings that struck me this morning, and they both apply to the situation in Israel – and in the rest of the world. The first one comes from the Navaho Indians:

You cannot awaken someone who pretends to be sleeping.

And, I’ll let Barry Rubin describe how it applies to the Middle East:

In other words, you cannot convince someone who is not merely mistaken but is deliberately lying. They have abandoned professional ethics, democratic and intellectual norms. They have embraced being propagandists and supporters of authoritarian and bloody regimes. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to everyone, and in those others are the hope for something better. It is those people, who honestly don’t realize that their leaders follow foolish policy, their newspapers all too often lie, and their universities (or at least significant sections of them) have abandoned the pursuit of truth in favor of the manufacture of lies.

Barry goes on to describe the categories of individuals that apply, illustrating the sheer insanity of what the people are doing vis a vis Israel and the Middle East. And, that brings me to my second quote, which is attributed to a really old Greek dude, Euripides:

Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of their senses.

Ain’t THAT tha truth?

And, we are seeing it worldwide, everywhere. The world has been deprived of its senses, and it has sent us on the path to destruction. It is both shocking and amazing that the world is destroying itself so thoroughly – especially when it didn’t have to happen.

This may sound strange, but it’s the truth. If Europe and America had sided with Israel the way that it should have, we would not be facing the threats that we face today. If we had just ASKED her opinion, and followed it!

Would we be suffering other problems? Of course, but nothing like we face today.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt from the Barry Ruben article that I quoted above:

The Insanity of the Middle East: A Handy Guide

– Thomas Jefferson

The writer of the Declaration of Independence worried that the sins of the nation would bring God’s judgment upon them. In the case of Jefferson, it was the great evil of slavery that worried him. How long did it take for God to judge America for this great evil?

Just about a hundred years.

During the Civil War, more than 600 thousand men died – more than any other war that the US has fought. In fact, it was almost as much as all the other wars that America has fought, from 1775 to now. Thomas Jefferson was right to worry about God’s judgment.

The question is, what great sins are we involved in, that is about to bring judgment on us?

For one part of the answer, let me provide the rest of the text from the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C.:

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.”

– Thomas Jefferson

It took almost a hundred years for God’s judgment to come down on us in the form of the greatest catastrophe in American history, and we deserved it. But, we at least held onto our faith in God – which is why I believe that God spared us from complete destruction.

But, do we really believe in God?

For those of us that believe in God, how many of us have a conviction that our liberties are a gift of God?

I doubt that very many of us believe this anymore.

Jefferson worried over what God would do to us for the evil of slavery. What do I worry about?

• adultery
• sexual promiscuity
• homosexuality
• murder of unborn children
• pornography
• rape
• child abuse
• murder

Did the above exist at the time that Thomas Jefferson worried over slavery?

Of course, but not nearly to the same degree that they plague us today. Not even close.

These problems have been with us since the beginning of history. The Bible is full accounts of these things. However, the Bible is also full of the consequences. And, when it is God’s own people doing these things, the Bible records this:

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

– 1 Peter 4:17 (KJV)

In my last post, I mentioned that a country cannot stand unless you’ve broken her bones, and I showed that it is men and women of faith that are the bones of a country. Let me remind you a bit with a quote from Patrick Henry:

“. . . Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.”

– Patrick Henry

But of course, we are in danger. We are in danger because we claim the armor of Virtue, Morality and Religion, while engaging in every evil that is destroying the country. We have claimed God for ourselves, while at the same time dishonoring Him.

And, now that the government has cast off the symbols of Virtue, Morality and Religion, I don’t think that there is anything standing between the US and destruction. Indeed, I actually can’t think of why the US should exist anymore. Worse, I can think of many reasons why we shouldn’t.

Let me ask you this question:

For the past one hundred years, what has been the single greatest corrupting influence on morality, worldwide?

I know that there have been others, but what is the single biggest corrupting influence?

That’s right, Hollywood and – by extension – the rest of America – for… just about a hundred years.

Remind you of anything?

America has become the greatest corrupter of morality in the history of the world. It’s bad enough that we have corrupted ourselves. That alone is enough to destroy us, but the fact that we have been directly corrupting the rest of the world?

Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

How can God possibly let us continue?

God judged us for the evil of slavery, but we at least did not spread that sin elsewhere. But, the evils that we are doing now? And, the fact that we are causing the rest of the world to do the same?

I truly do not know why God hasn’t destroyed us before now.

There is one thing that we can do, and that is this:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

– 2 Chronicles 7:14

But, America has had her chance to do this and failed to follow through. I just don’t think that it’s going to happen. I do not believe that believers in America will turn from their evil ways.

America, we truly have broken your bones.

You can’t.

It’s as if your legs have ceased to exist. You cannot stand on broken legs. You cannot use an arm that is broken. You can’t stand with a back that’s broken.

Without a foundation to work with, your muscles are useless, and your body is useless. And, if your bones are broken in a hostile environment, that ‘useless’ body is going to become someone’s lunch – unless you have someone with good bones to protect you.

For a while, it was America that had the good bones, and she has often stood to protect those who didn’t. In World War I and World War II, America stood up for liberty and freedom. America stood when Korea was falling. During the Cold War, America stood while Europe cowered in fear. In the Middle East, America stood for Israel when everyone tried to destroy the only democracy in the region.

America stood because she had something to stand with. She had a foundation for her strength. She had good bones.

So, what are those bones? What are the bones that the United States stands with?

Is it the Constitution?

John Adams didn’t think so:

“It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue.”

We talk a great deal about how great the American Constitution is, and we have a Supreme Court that attempts to protect it. But, the creators of the Constitution knew that their document was meaningless if the people it sought to protect were corrupt. John Adams also went on to say:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Without morality and religion, the US Constitution was worthless. At some level, I think that we understand that, but we certainly weren’t taught this. No, we were taught that the US Constitution freed us from the ‘oppression’ of religion and morality. By chipping away at the connection that morality and religion has with the US Constitution, our teachers have done much to destroy the Constitution itself. They have made the power of the Constitution meaningless.

The truth is that the founding fathers of the United States embraced the idea that there was a higher power and a higher authority than the Constitution.

“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

- Patrick Henry

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”

- Samuel Adams

“If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”

- Daniel Webster

The foundation of the United States is faith in God, and the willingness to follow His rules. Faith and the willingness to follow are the bones of our country, the foundation that allows us to stand.

Our founding fathers knew that America would never fall, at least not until we broke her bones.

(I have a big mouth.)

But, there’s something on my mind that I’m having trouble getting out, and it’s all about the decline of America. It’s a giant topic and very complex, and it just doesn’t fit easily through the narrow pipe that is the written language. And, when I chop it down into smaller pieces, it still doesn’t seem to fit. So, instead of throwing concepts and ideas at you, I’m going to talk about me and what ‘me’ has seen.

I was born just three months before the unification of Jerusalem by Israeli forces in 1967, and it was the height of the Cold War. I didn’t see much of that war, but I, like the rest of my generation was affected by it.

It seems like every generation gets engaged in a fight to the death between liberty and oppression. My grandparents fought oppression in Europe, Asia and North Africa. My great grand parents did the same in France, and my great great grandparents… well, I’m not quite sure what they were up to, but fighting probably had something to do with it.

The Cold War was… interesting. It was all about US versus THEM, and we were mobilized by the idea that liberty and freedom and justice must win and would win. We were committed to making it happen.

But, it seems to me that each time we have been challenged to fight in the war of good vs. evil, we’ve been slower and slower to grasp the handle and the steering wheel. We jumped straight into the Civil War and fought hard to remove the awful stain of slavery from our midst. We hesitated a bit before jumping into World War I, but we jumped in all the same. We hesitated even more before World War II, but the Japanese presented a convincing argument and off to war we went. The threat of Communism backed by nuclear weapons scared us to death, and we spent a lot of time nervously sitting on our hands. Now, we are at war again, and we’re doing more than just hesitating. I’m not even sure that we know who the ‘good guys’ are.

Every time she went to war, America changed. She became less religious, less spiritual and less reliant on what the US Declaration of Independence called Divine Providence. We drifted away from God and the character that He has called us to have. We fled the restrictions of sexual morality, and we produced bastard children everywhere we went. And, as our moral compass continued to fail, we brought the scourge of drug abuse.

Our grandparents brought the sexuality that they learned in Europe and Korea and changed our society. Our parents brought home from Vietnam even more, and now? Now, I don’t even know what we’re doing.

But, make no mistake. It wasn’t war that did this. War was just the opportunity for the fertile ground our culture had become. After all, colleges do much the same.

How many bright young kids went off to college and came back damaged? In one sense, all of them – to varying degrees. I remember being in my senior year, wanting to graduate so that I could start cleaning out all the garbage that my university education had dumped into me.

There was one other thing that I remember about college. As I began my junior year in the Fall of 1986, I remember seeing the new batch of students come in and realizing just how much I stood at the crossroads of two generations. The previous generation at least knew what morality was before they chose to reject it. But, this batch that were flooding in? They didn’t know what morality was (and they still don’t).

As I was growing up, my country went from rejecting morals to not knowing what morals were. Within a short space of forty some years, the United States had gone from being immoral to amoral.

And, I see the same being repeated in our churches. We still know what morality is, but we’ve decided that it’s not important. Worse, I see churches losing sight of morality and following in the footsteps of the nation.

Kelly Clinger wrote in her blog last January:

I find it interesting that the abortion, promiscuity and pregnancy rates are no different among Christian girls than any other group.

- kellyclinger.com

While I believe that Mrs. Clinger wasn’t minimizing the problem, I find her observation more than interesting. It’s horrifying.

When I left for Israel in 1992, I was a single guy, passionate about meeting single girls – the godly kind. Maybe I was a bit behind the times, but it seemed like the question on everyone’s mind in Indiana was, “do you kiss on the first date?” (It was certainly on MY mind.) When I limped back to the US, 14 years later, I found that the question on everyone’s mind had changed. It was “do you sleep with someone on the first date?” And, I was shocked to find it on the minds of church-goers, too.

What has happened to our churches? Not long after I came back in 2006, someone once told me that the average person without faith in the 1940s was more honest and more moral than the average church-going Christian today.

How far we have fallen.

How many of us have noticed how difficult it has become to rent or buy a DVD that wasn’t ‘uncut’? Have you noticed how bad the TV shows have become? I did, but I was gone for 14 years and returned to see the change.

Back in the 1950s, what they saw as pornography… well, today we see it as just good advertizing.

I began by talking about the conflict between liberty and oppression. Let me end this rather rambling piece with a few words from two who laid some of the foundation of America.

Only a moral and virtuous people are capable of freedom; the more corrupt and vicious a society becomes, the more it has need of masters.

Benjamin Franklin

“Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.”

George Washington