How the Constitution Crisis Will End

What happens when leaders put themselves above the law.
 

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must have missed the memo about Egypt’s radical Islamist transformation over the past year. Since Hosni Mubarak’s government crumbled under heavy pressure from the United States, Islamic extremists have been assaulting Coptic Christians, raping their wives and daughters, and burning their homes and churches to the ground. In September, terrorists ambushed Israel’s embassy, prompting a late-night emergency evacuation in September. In January, Islamist hard-liners, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, won 72 percent of the seats in Egypt’s parliament. They refuse to recognize the State of Israel and have threatened to dissolve the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

Yet, despite the transparent nature of Egypt’s Islamic revolution, liberal elites in the West continue marching along in total darkness, fantasizing about what rights the new Egyptian constitution might guarantee for homosexuals and women. These blind guides act as if a piece of paper will prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from implementing tyranny and enforcing sharia law, and will usher in a new era of Western-style freedom and peace in Egypt.

“It is a very inspiring time—that you have overthrown a dictator, and that you are striving to achieve a genuine democracy,” Ginsburg said while visiting Cairo in February. She lavished praise on Egypt’s recent parliamentary elections, saying they were free and fair.

After that, she proceeded to trash the United States Constitution—the very document she is sworn to support as one of just nine sitting justices on the United States Supreme Court.

“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” Ginsburg told her foreign audience. Egypt needs a more recent document to work from, she believes, like South Africa’s constitution. South African law guarantees citizens the rights to housing, education and health care—all high-ranking items on the liberal agenda. South Africa’s free speech clause, on the other hand, is much more restrictive than the U.S. Constitution and could be used by oppressors as an easy excuse to squelch any expression deemed to be “controversial.”

“It really is a great piece of work,” Ginsburg said, referring to the South African document. As for America’s Constitution, it’s just too old, she told her Egyptian interviewers.

Of course, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is hardly the first progressive to call for a more flexible constitution that can be periodically adjusted to accommodate a radical leftist agenda. But it’s still shocking to hear a Supreme Court justice, of all people, insult the supreme law of the United States in front of a foreign audience.

On the other hand, in today’s upside-down world, if you’re a Supreme Court justice with a hankering to bash the U.S. Constitution, what better place to receive a warm reception than in Cairo? Cairo, remember, is where President Obama spoke in 2009 about Islam’s “proud tradition of tolerance.” British-American “colonialism,” on the other hand, “denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims.”

If only those old documents, like the Constitution and the Magna Carta, would have guaranteed more rights for Muslims. Think of the peaceful and cooperative spirit there would be between Anglo-Saxon nations and the world of Islam!

During a February interview, President Obama was asked to respond to critics on the left who say he hasn’t been the transformational political figure he promised to be. “What’s frustrated people,” the president said, “is that I have not been able to force Congress to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, you know, it turns out that our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes” (emphasis added throughout).

If it weren’t for that old document, in other words, we’d be much further along in our radical transformation of America!

The president has long desired to cast off the restraints of the U.S. Constitution. During a 2001 interview, many years before he became president, Mr. Obama criticized the document as being a charter of negative liberties. He said, “It says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”

This administration isn’t even trying to conceal its contempt for the Founding Fathers and the rule of law. But then again, why should it? Most Americans are far too busy watching reality shows and sports events to take note of what’s happening. And then there’s the liberal media—an establishment chock full of “progressive” thinkers.

The New York Times, for example, rushed to defend Justice Ginsburg’s subversive remarks in Egypt. It referred to how popular America’s constitution used to be around the world. In 1987, for example, Time magazine estimated that out of 170 countries in the world at the time, more than 160 nations had “written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

But oh how times have changed in just one generation. Today, the supreme law of the land is losing its international appeal—and even here in America, in the case of liberal progressives.

“There are lots of possible reasons,” the Times explained. “The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige” (February 6).

The ignorance here is stunning. America is besieged by all kinds of problems and evils. Its stature and influence among nations has been massively diminished. And yet, rather than view the Constitution as a way to solve our problems, many of our leaders now see it as part of the problem!

The Supreme Rule of Law

When the American Framers wrote the U.S. Constitution, they intended to prevent abuse of power by carefully defining the specific responsibilities and narrowly restricting the administrative powers of all three government branches. The highest authority of the land wasn’t any particular branch of government or elected official.

It was the United States Constitution.

This supreme law concept, of course, is firmly rooted in the pages of your Bible. There is just one lawgiver, Scripture says, who can save and destroy (James 4:12). It is the Eternal God, the Prophet Isaiah wrote. God is our righteous judge and king (Isaiah 33:22).

When ancient Israel rejected God as king and insisted on having a human king like the nations around it, God outlined specific instructions for the Israelite monarchy in Deuteronomy 17. These earthly kings, for example, were expressly prohibited from multiplying livestock, silver and gold for themselves (verses 16-17).

God’s law, in other words, put certain limitations on the exercise of human power. Leaders were to be subject to a higher power—God’s royal law, as summed up by the Ten Commandments!

Notice verses 18-19 in particular: “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copyof this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read thereinall the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.” God actually commanded the leaders to write out the law and to study it every day! They were the ones, after all, primarily responsible for administering God’s government—for making judgments based on God’s holy law.

When Israel’s leaders feared God and obeyed His commandments, the entire nation prospered! On the other hand, Israel’s history teems with tragic examples of what happened when leaders acted like they were above the law. When lawless leaders took the helm, the people of Israel turned to every imaginable evil and idolatrous act. This always led to anarchy and division—eventually captivity and slavery.

The Curse of Lawlessness

In his 1999 essay “No Law Without Order,” historian Paul Johnson wrote, “The essence of the rule of law is its impersonality, omnipotence and ubiquity. It is the same law for everyone, everywhere—kings, emperors, high priests, the state itself, are subject to it. If exceptions are made, the rule of law begins to collapse—that was the grand lesson of antiquity.”

America today has utterly failed to learn this grand lesson. This is why those who should be enforcing the Constitution are instead working, actively and openly, to undermine the very law on which America was established!

And yet, even though this spirit of lawlessness now permeates the highest levels of government, most people today, even those who know America is headed in the wrong direction, simply cannot conceive of this republic ever ending in anarchy, captivity or slavery.

God says this is exactly what’s coming!

Isaiah 3, for example, perfectly describes our lawless society. It’s a prophecy for our day—it applies to the people of America and Britain primarily. Isaiah prophesied that in the latter days, childish leaders and unjust judges would help to accelerate the stunning downfall of our once mighty nations.

Strong’s Concordance defines the word judge in Isaiah 3:2 as one who pronounces sentence, governs, defends, executes and reasons. The prophecy says God has taken away these kinds of leaders—the God-fearing, law-abiding, wise and prudent ones. He’s taken away judges who render true justice—because of our many sins.

Sin, or lawlessness, is the cause!

“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear,” it says in Isaiah 59:1. God isn’t that far away from any one of us—if we would just turn back to Him and submit to His laws. “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (verse 2). Because of the sins of our people, God has hidden His face. What a terrifying reality!

Our hands are defiled with blood and our feet pursue after evil, the prophet continues. Our thoughts are on evil continually. We speak lies and perverseness. No one calls for justice or defends the truth. Our trust is in vanity—not God (verses 3-4, 7).

We have become so steeped in sin that we despise the rule of law—whether it is God’s law or the law of the land.

And so we continue on, groping in the dark like a blind man (verse 10). “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness” (verses 8-9).

Truer words could not have been written about 21st-century America.

Colonial America, on the other hand, was very different. As Johnson wrote in his essay, “[T]he colonists were determined, God-fearing men, often in search of a religious toleration denied them at home, who brought their families and were anxious to farm and establish permanent settlements. … Thus took shape the economic dynamo that eventually became the United States—an experiment designed to establish the rule of God on Earth.”

What a lofty proposition! What a noble goal! The rule of God on Earth. No wonder George Washington said the foundations of our national policy had to be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” Washington said during his famous farewell address.

Since those words were spoken, however, our sins have multiplied greatly. We are evolving all right, as my father wrote in No Freedom Without Law—evolving into anarchy!

Righteous Judgment Is Prophesied!

Study the rest of Isaiah 59. Compare it with Hosea 4:6, where God says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.”

All of these “progressive” ideas and this modern knowledge, to paraphrase what Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in the August-September 1970 Plain Truth, “yet virtually no happiness—just accelerating troubles, problems, evils. It’s like being stranded on a raft in mid-ocean. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

Yet, despite this widespread political, social and economic turmoil man has brought upon himself—because of blatant hostility toward God and the rule of law—there is good news ahead for America and the rest of the world. Isaiah alludes to it at the end of chapter 59, where it says the “Redeemer shall come to Zion”!

Jesus Christ will soon return to rule this Earth! And it is “for judgment” that Jesus came into this world, it says in John 9:39. Jesus Christ is coming back to this Earth to administer righteous judgment based on the rule of God’s law.

He is coming to establish the rule of God on Earth!

Dozens upon dozens of Bible prophecies describe this soon-coming millennial reign. Revelation 11:15 says when the seventh trumpet sounds, the kingdoms of this world will become the “kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.” In the book of Daniel, Jesus Christ’s coronation—which takes place in heaven just before He returns—is described in chapter 7, verses 13-14. In that same chapter, the prophet adds that God will give His Kingdom to the saints of the Most High and they will possess that Kingdom forever and ever (verses 18, 22, 27).

Yes, the resurrected Jesus Christ is the only leader truly qualified to bring obedience, peace and prosperity to this rebellious, sin-drenched planet. He’s the only ruler capable of firmly establishing and permanently upholding the rule of God’s law over all the Earth.

That just and righteous reign is much nearer than you might think!