Topic category:  Other/General

You would think we would get used to it after 200 years. But it still bothers me greatly to hear politicians who never give God a thought in their personal lives toss His Name around like they were best buddies when they're running for office. And I'm not just talking about Democrats.

You may well ask how I presume to know what might or might not be going on in a politician's heart or mind. Good question. The Bible says that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). In other words, you can tell what is going on in someone's heart and mind by seeing how they act.

So when you compare how some of these politicians act and the positions they support with the Word of God, it makes you wonder how they would dare use His Name in their campaigning.

For instance, the Word tells us that God knows us while we are still in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). The Hebrew that is translated this way makes it clear that He knows us as persons (not as lumps of tissue as the liberals would have us believe). Combine that with God's attitude towards murder (He's against it), and there can be no doubt that He abhors the murder of innocent babies in their mother's wombs.

God says that homosexuality is a sin. He goes further than that and says that it is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22). And of course you can try as hard as you like, but you will never find one instance of marriage in the Bible except between a man and a woman.

There are many other issues that show what is in a person's heart, but in the coming presidential election these will be the most decisive. Some would call these divisive issues, but I prefer the word decisive. The candidates have already decided whether they will serve God and honor His Word. Now it's up to the voters to decide whether they will elect a leader who truly follows God or one who just uses God's Name to get votes.

Now you might think from what some of the candidates say that they have decided to follow God. In many cases what they have actually done is to consciously and cynically lie to the voters in an attempt to get votes from believers.

Since it is hard to keep track of how many people in both parties are running, I will mention just three hypocrites (two Democrats and one Republican) here. I encourage you to watch all the candidates and compare their actions with their words, as I will. These are certainly not the only three to cynically attempt to use God in their campaigns, but they are the worst that I have observed. All are actively courting the evangelical Christian vote. And all are pro-death and pro-homosexual marriage.

The worst of the worst is the Wicked Witch of the North herself, Hillary. I was appalled to find that she has hired an evangelical Baptist to head her "Faith Steering Group." This takes cynical to an entirely new level. The only time you see this woman near a church is when she is holding hands with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton while campaigning in black churches. (Have you ever noticed that no one says a word when black churches are used by Democrats not just for political meetings but for fundraisers as well, no one says a word? But let a conservative preacher say one word from the pulpit about supporting Godly candidates, the "Separation of Church and State" sword appears to lop off his head.)

When she was running for the Senate in 2000, she viciously attacked Rudy Giuliani for what she called "injecting religion" into his campaign. (See LINK below.) "Mrs. Clinton, her face taut, said: 'I am outraged that he would inject religion into this campaign in any form whatsoever. And to do it in a way to raise money for his campaign is something that he should take responsibility for.'" And yet that is exactly what she is doing today.

In addition to hiring Christians to position her as a religious person, she constantly talks about her "faith" and her Methodist upbringing. Pardon me, Mrs. C., but the last time I checked, the Methodists still believed in the Bible. And your campaigns for more abortions and allowing homosexuals and lesbians to desecrate the institution of marriage sure don't square with the Bible.

Then we have Barack Hussein Obama. His biography describes his background as a weird mixture of Muslim, agnosticism and some ill-defined "Christian" influences. Despite repeated questions, he refuses to specify what his "faith" is, but he sure talks a lot about "faith" in generalized terms. The one thing he never talks about these days is his Muslim roots. In the wake of 911, he knows for sure that America is not ready for a Muslim president, or even one who was raised by Muslims.

Barack describes his mother as "a lonely witness for secular humanism." Both his real father and his step-father were Muslims, but despite the emails floating around claiming that he is a radical Muslim, there is no evidence that Obama himself is a Muslim, much less a radical one. He does admit to attending a Muslim school in his book, The Audacity of Hope: "During the five years that we would live with my step-father in Indonesia I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school, and then to a predominantly Muslim school." Today his campaign claims that the Muslim school Obama describes was not Muslim at all, but rather a public school. I'll leave it to you to decide whether the guy who was there or his spin-doctors are telling the truth.

My concern with Obama is not that he may be a closet Muslim, but rather his somewhat shaky Christian testimony. In an interview, he said that he has a deep faith "...rooted in the Christian tradition." I have never heard a born-again Christian describe his faith in this way. In the same interview, he went on to say, "Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state." Our civic religion?!?

"The difficult thing about any religion, including Christianity, is that at some level there is a call to evangelize and proselytize. There's the belief, certainly in some quarters, that if people haven't embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they're going to hell," he told the interviewer. Obama told her he did not believe that he or anyone else was going to hell and that he wasn't sure he was going to heaven either.

For a guy with such a "deep faith", he doesn't have a clue about the Bible. I John 5:13 says, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." If Obama was a Christian, he would know it, and he would know he was going to Heaven. And if he had ever really had an experience with Jesus, he certainly wouldn't call sharing the Good News of eternal life "proselytizing," as it was some shameful thing.

The fact that he knows nothing of the Bible may have a lot to do with the church he attends in Chicago. The Trinity United Church of Christ (see LINK below) seems a lot more interested in promoting Africa and the "black experience" than in sharing Christianity. In their website's "About Us" link, we read, "We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian." Notice that Black comes before Christian. In their bookstore, they sell books that are "Africentric and Christian. Again, Christianity comes in second place to their devotion to Africa.

My main problem with Obama is the same as with Hillary, only he is even more bloodthirsty that she is. He is a rabid supporter of the horrible form of murder know as "partial-birth abortion." This is where the abortionist (I can't bring myself to call such animals "doctors") allow the head of a live baby to emerge from its mother, and drive scissors into the baby's brain. Since only the head of the baby is out, technically the baby has not yet been born, so the abortionist literally gets away with murder on a technicality.

Finally, we come to our Republican supporter of both abortion and homosexual marriage, the Dishonorable Rudolph Giuliani. Rudy claims he only supports "civil unions", not actual homosexual marriages, but there is really no difference between the two. Many marriages between normal people take place at the courthouse instead of in a church. So would "civil unions" between homosexuals. They would have the same rights as heterosexual couples, so, please, Rudy, tell me what the difference is.

Rudy believes in a "woman's right to choose" to kill her unborn child. I wonder what the baby would "choose" if he or she were given the opportunity. For that matter, what about the husband's right to choose? Although he has just as much to do with the genesis of the miracle known as their baby, in Rudy's mind only the woman has the right to choose whether the baby lives or dies.

And this guy calls himself a Catholic? (He claims he once considered becoming a priest!) Many Catholic Archbishops around the country have had the courage to say that they would excommunicate any politician who supports abortion. I wish Giuliani's Archbishop would get on the ball so that Rudy couldn't play the God card any more.

Lauren Green, the religion correspondent on Fox News stated recently. "Democrats are liberals and seculars. They tend to focus on social issues such as poverty and healthcare. Conservatives focus more on personal social issues, such as abortion and homosexual marriage." I guess Rudy hasn't been brought up to speed on this yet.

The Pew Forum on Religion in Public life quotes from a New York Observer article by Niall Stanage: "Mr. Giuliani, long viewed with suspicion by the religious right because of his pro-choice, pro-civil-union positions, went so far as to campaign for former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed back in May. The move was widely seen as an attempt to curry favor with a voting bloc that will play a crucial role in electing the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008." (See LINK below.)

Clearly, religion will play a huge role in this election. A poll by the Pew Research Center said 30 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate that was Mormon. The negative sentiment rose to 46 percent for Muslim candidates and to 63 percent for a candidate who "doesn't believe in God."

I think voters ought to take that a step further. Every person who believes in the Bible should vow not to vote for any candidate of either party, who is not clearly and vocally pro-life and anti-homosexual marriage of any kind.

Dr. Tom Barrett
Conservative Truth (Publisher, Editor)