Rev Graham: Obama Holder Pushing a 'New Morality That Does Not Include God'-An Anti-Christ Movement'

President Barack Obama and his outgoing attorney general, Eric Holder, are, along with "progressives" in government, forcing "a new morality" on the American people, a "morality that does not include God" and which is "an Anti-Christ movement," said Reverend Franklin Graham.

"There is an anti-Christian bias that is now in our government, has permeated our government, that’s also permeated Washington but [also] at the state and local level," said Rev. Graham during a Mar. 11 interview on Washington Watch With Tony Perkins.

"It’s the progressives, whatever you want to call them, that are trying -- and the president is into this and the attorney general is into this 100% -- and that is, forcing on the American people a new morality," said Rev. Graham. "And it’s a morality that does not include God or His standards. That’s what we’re facing today."

However, the reverend, who runs the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and the international relief group Samaritan's Purse, said Americans still "have a voice" and "can speak up, like we're doing right now."

"They cannot silence our voice yet," he said. "I think as long as we speak we've got an opportunity to turn the tide."

Leading into the program, host Tony Perkins asked Rev. Graham about religious persecution in the Middle East by the Islamic State and whether the United States was doing enough to help the people fleeing the persecution.

Rev. Graham said that what was happening constituted, in his view, genocide. "I'm just frightened that the Christian community in Iraq is going to be completely wiped out," he said.

As for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Shia Muslim government there has placed tough restrictions on the Farsi-speaking Christian churches to the point, said Rev. Graham, where they "will soon be gone" and just "die off."

The Sunni Muslims in Iraq and Syria, in contrast, are just "killing the Christians, beheading them, cutting their throats, telling them to convert to Islam or we're going to shoot you," he said.

Concerning the Obama administration, they were warned by our military leaders not to pull completely out of Iraq but they did not do that "and now we have an imploding in that part of the world," said the reverend.

We pulled out of Iraq and "that vacuum was filled by ISIS," the Islamic State, said Tony Perkins, adding that the administration doesn't want to acknowledge that the Islamists are motivated "by their radical beliefs."

Commenting on that point, Rev. Graham said, "One of the problems we have, the president, his father was a Muslim and his stepfather was a Muslim -- [he] lived in Indonesia and went to Muslim schools. His mother must have been a Muslim. We don’t know that but she married two Muslim men, so there must have been something there."

"The framework that our president has growing up, his influences in his life were that of Islam," said the reverend. "My influences, growing up in this country as many in this country, were under the Christian influence and the biblical influence. But our president did not have that; it was Islam. Many feel that he’s protecting Islam. I don’t know that but it certainly seems that way."

Perkins said, "Well, it doesn’t look like he’s going out of his way to help Christianity." He also raised the point that an apparent "growing religious intolerance here at home" is perhaps "fueling this persecution abroad."

Rev. Graham responded, "I would agree with you but I would humbly focus a little bit more on that it’s not so much religious freedom, because other religions have lots of freedom. It is really focusing against Christians." The reverend then went on to explain his observation of the anti-Christian movement in the government.

Franklin Graham, 62, is the son of world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham who is 96 and doing fairly well, according to reports, residing at his home in Montreat, N.C.

Well that is one interpretation. Since the church in the Bible is refered to as “she” as in the Bride of Christ..there may be room for discussion as to the “he” in 2 Thessalonians. It might be the church in dwelt by the Holy Spirit...the real “he” in this case. It might be the Holy Spirit who steps aside but not necessarily abandoning the world at large by taking away the church with him immediately(or abandoning Christians). “He” might be an angelic entity such as an ark angel keeping the whole Beast system squashed until such time as God indicates other wise.

I certainly don’t deny a Rapture, the Bible says one is coming. Revelation speaks however of the Beast and his”system” being allowed to “wear down the saints. Some argue that this means “end times” post rapture saints who will have to endure persecutions, and the mass delusion effects that the whole world is under without benefit of any Holy Spirit protection because they didn’t go with the “first wave”...so they are stuck trying to sweat it out by saving themselves by works as they are all by their lonesome. Or... the whole body of believers has to at least endure persecutions thru at least part of the Beast’s reign...or they have to endure “to the end” as one verse puts it!

Jesus first came to Earth in a way that the religious experts weren’t expecting despite obvious prophecies indicating how and when he should appear. Only an old prophetess and another old servant of god recognized who Jesus really was even as a baby, and what his mission on Earth was to be. Jesus has his own read on scripture. Maybe there will be a pre-trib rapture...but expect the unexpected. Scripture will unfold as it says it will but it may not unfold how we’ve all interpreted it as unfolding!

Time is an element in some of those scriptures predicted to unfold. Elements of the Beast system may be in operation decades before God allows it to reach it’s evil nadir. Infra structures, means of control, armies....even peoples demonically purposed toward the evil goals of Israel’s destruction need time to make their ill fated preparations.

There is an assumption that the Holy Spirit in dwelt church keeps the Antichrist system at bay. With such a powerful influence on Satan and the Beast, even lesser devils and just the evil doings that common men do should also have been kept at bay.

Yet evils have continued in our fallen world....the tares still contend with the good wheat and have been allowed to do so until the end of the age occurs. I think the suppression of the Beast may be a specific singular function of “he that restrains” that is separate from Holy Spirit’s empowerment of the church to reach the lost for Christ. This restrainer must have been active even
before the temporal existence of the church(though its eternal influence stretches across all time backward and forward) for if it had not, Satan would have set up his antichrist already and little Israel would have been strangled before it was created, and the world of men already destroyed by fire.

So this restrainer, even from the flood onward must have already been in operation against Satan and his “son of Perdition”! There was no world wide church of Holy Spirit filled saints in Noah’s time...so something has been holding antichrist in check from even before the church age!

A pure study of Chemistry would involve not just the theory and practice but the understanding of the foundational “inspiration” of the science. What was driving the “alchemist’s of old” and what were they looking for. The bible has some perjorative things to say of the witches and sorcerers who mixed their brews while attempting to harness demonic forces, their “pharmacopeia” as it were. Modern chemistry of course uses math and the scientific method in it’s study and manipulations of the elements for the benefit of men(hopefully in most cases, though we know what the inventions of explosives have been used for) and thus demonic superstition has been stripped away from modern chemical engineering practice. Now Satan tempts and tries to manipulate all men including chemists...but that is another issue.

I have no argument for or against dispensationalism other than I have some issues that those who are into it tend to cast God as a “static” “sets it all in motion then hangs back sort of being”. God is both tactical and strategic. He has a mind and being and a will to save those whom he will...snatching some right at the very brink of hell. Other than keeping his promises to restore Israel in the millennium, God has no real interest in nations or kings other than their temporal usefulness in maintaining order.

God loves people, individuals,looking for those who would worship him in spirit and in truth. If there was only one lost soul in the universe, Christ would have died for that soul just to save him...thus is my read from his parable of the lost sheep. That is the Christ I believe in, that “in flesh” God who existed from the foundation of the world with the Father!

I’m given to understand that as valuable as Matthew Henry commentaries are, his friends finished his commentaries after the book of Acts, so that any comments concerning 2Thessalonians were probably not his own or at best were drawn and interpreted from notes he had left. They are commentaries, in the end, not biblical canon and written some 300 years ago...so not so modern a scholar as you claimed in your posting.

The Talmud for example is a body of commentary which seeks to preserve and guide the reader of the Pentateuch and prophets into the “proper Hebrew understanding” of said OT. Matthew Henry’s commentary tended to be verse by verse and some argue that entire contexts of chapters could be lost, the forest being lost by getting lost in each little tree. Henry’s own religious subjectivities also colored his objectivity...not that his subjectivities were egregious and blasphemous, but he did have his own opinions.

CS Lewis is a great influence on my own thinking but I am aware that while he was a Christian he was also Anglican and intellectual, not “red neck” fundamentalist in his approach...but rather deeply orthodox which is to say fundamentalist in the truest sense. Yet many have found points of which they would argue with him. He wrote commentaries and Christian apology; even he admitted (see the Great Divorce)that his own opinion and experience have colored his work and may not be helpful for some who are seeking to understand God. Lewis, being so intellectual as he was seemed perplexed all his life between the logic of faith with the occasional experiences of God’s presence that sometimes breached his cold intellectual approach to life. He writes of those perplexities in the book “Surprised by Joy” and in his book “A Grief Observed” written sometime after the death of his wife “Joy Davidman”!

The point of citing Lewis of course was to amplify the idea that even our best Christian expositors(which is what Henry was) and apologists (like Lewis) have their own take or opinions which may color a person’s thinking outside of what God may intend for that particular individual as that individual seeks to know him as he prays and reads scripture.

Christ is the remedy for each damaged soul but only the Holy Spirit knows best how to apply the bandages!

The Holy Spirit may draw one person to Henry...some to Lewis, some to the best writers of the founding dispensationalists!(oh the horror!) In the end...Christ has his own read on scripture and his own interpretations of the fulfilled law as he experiences them in his own person, though Paul states it is after the order of Melchizidek. Christ said “I come as a thief”(present tense trans chronological declarative)...and never at a time one would expect”. Of course he’ll come at a time men might not expect him to rule the Earth...but I believe it is his approach to individual souls as well. Christ is often never what we foolishly and selfishly expect of his person, but he’ll always be the one that we have needed(and in the nick of time), just the same!

To best understand scripture is to study the life of Christ and his approach to people and the institutions of the day. One should “kiss the Son” as it says in Psalm 2 and beg to know the person of Christ and to see the image of Christ grow and mature in one’s own heart, soul,spirit and mind. Commentaries may help guide a person and be useful as far as they will, but as Christ begins to shape an individual into what Christ wants that individual to be, then commentaries, or the exhortations of favorite Christian writers may begin to fall short as a person grows into the maturity that God wants him to exhibit!

William Henry, the Christian, was being shaped into the ideal William Henry that Christ wanted him to be; that would best show the glory of God thru Henry..in this life and then in the resurrection! The same goes for all Christians who wish to grow and please God!

Paul himself said...”Be ye imitators of Christ and of me also” Paul was strong enough in his faith and in his relationship with Christ that he could make such a boastful exhortation...yet Paul was trying to say that his whole life was given over to loving God and to the preaching of the gospel to the lost. He was into the growth of his own inner man thru its renewal daily by the Holy Spirit. He wasn’t “saying imitate my personality”, he was saying learn to love knowing God the way he loved to learn to know and love God. The person you become may be different from Paul but as long as God sees Christ in all of us, it is all good!

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