Edge of Apocalypse Today

Washington, DC   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony last week to the Senate urged lawmakers to quickly pass the new START nuclear weapons treaty with Russia that the Obama Adminstration negotiated.  That debate, coupled with today’s media reports about Iran made us do a double take:  the two of us are currently working on the sequel to our futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalpyse. These events of recent days are hitting close to home. We won’t spoil anything for our readers, but the Russia-Iran connection cannot be ignored, and will be explored in our next book scheduled for release in 2011.  

If we don’t sign the “START” nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, according to Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, then “our national security is at risk.”  But we think that the terms of this treaty WILL put our nation at risk.  In the preamble, the treaty says that America will be prevented from developing defensive anti-nuclear missile systems if they have the potential of weakening the “viability and effectiveness” of Russia’s nuclear force.  Some may argue that such a preamble has no legal effect: not true. Particularly where the terms of a treaty (like any other contract) are less than clear, the language in the preamble can held guide interpretation of the treaty terms.  Thus, this START treaty will have the effect of slowing or preventing entirely America’s use of a defensive anti-nuke shield. Debate over such a shield (in our book a unique laser system), and how it impacts the everyday lives of Americans  is at the core of what happens in our novel Edge of Apocalypse.  Speaking of preambles, it is important to remember that our Founding Fathers stated in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution that one of the reasons for establishing our form of government was to “provide for the common defense.”

How does Iran play into this? It was just announced that Iran will be loading enriched uranium into it’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. And it plans on building a dozen more nuclear facilities. Who is supplying the enriched uranium? None other than Russia, a fact that Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted last Friday.  Such enriched nuclear fuel can be used for nuclear weapons, not just to provide electrity to its citizens as Iran claims.  So why would the Obama Administration give away U.S. security in the START treaty with Russia just as Russia is helping to develope Iran – an official state of terrorism – into a nuclear power? This entire scenario has a foreboding kinship to our new fiction series. With these most recent events, our End Series books are starting more and more to look like perilous fact.  

(c) 2010 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

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Washington, DC   Ten days ago Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg delivered a speech at American University where she spoke openly about one of her favorite and most controversial positions – that our Supreme Court ought to make decisions about our own Constitution not just based on our own American legal values, but also based on ideas gleaned from other nations around the world.  This is a radial proposition,  one that (as we will see below) was vehementally rejected by our Founding Fathers. So when Justice Ginsburg tried to support her idea that our High Court should be influenced by and therefore subservient to, for example, the European courts or the human rights commissions of the United Nations, and did so by citing the Founders, she mistated the historical record dramatically.

In her speech, Justice Ginsburg defended her new Supreme Court colleague Elena Kagan, who was recently confirmed by the Senate. Kagan like Ginsburg, is an unabashed fan of global law.  Justice Ginsburg then quoted what the Founders said in The Federalist (the collection of essays written by the Founders in their successful effort to make the case for the adoption of our new federal Constitution) about the “high importance” of the “laws of nations …” in matter of commerce between nations. However, Justice Ginsburg failed to include the reference to Federalist paper Number 42, authored by James Madison, one of the chief architects of our Constitution. There, Madison made it crystal clear that foreign law should never be the source of American law unless the legislative branch (not the Supreme Court) expressly adopts it. Madison said: “But neither the common nor statute law of England or any other nation should be the standard [for America] unless already adopted by legislation in the United States.” Madison warned, using the example of defining “felonies on the high seas,” that adopting the laws of “other nations would be dishonorable and illegitimate.”

In our new futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalypse, we illustrate the tragic damage to our fundamental rights if our nation adopts the legal standards of the international community.  Our criticism of Elena Kagan’s fondness for the global law approach has earned us the contempt of groups like People for the American Way and Americans United for Seperation of Church and State.  See article “Misfire over Kagan” below. But what neither the radical secularists, nor Justice Ginsburg can dispute is that this new importation of foreign influence into our Constitution by fiat (the Supreme Court has done it in several cases now), as Justice Scalia has noted, would have “appalled” the Founders;  those men who risked their lives to birth our nation, and who then drafted the Constitution, our guiding legal document that continues to be mangled by our federal courts in their misinterpretation.

(c) 2010 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

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WASHINGTON, DC   In the wake of the passage on July 21 of a massive, 2300 page law regulating American finance, the Obama Administration went one step further: calling on the nations of the world to pass comparable regulations in conjunction with America.  Lael Brainard, U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs told a Senate subcommittee that financial standards around the world need to be “converged … by coordinating different approaches across nations.” He also called on Europe to “develop the most globally convergent financial protections the world has ever attempted.”

The new financial regulation law passed by Congress and signed by President Obama has a clear global agenda. In the words of the Denver Post, it creates a new federal “bureau to regulate instruments that link consumers to the world of global finance … and creates a council of regulators to scour the globe for dangers to the system and intervene before the risks get out of control.”  This will be the first time that the United States has formally created a protocol for coordinating our banking and financial systems with the nations of the world. 

In our new futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalypse, we take a look at this move toward a global economic system. In our story we fictionalize the move in Congress toward a one-word currency which we dubbed the CReDO. Yet this is far from fiction. A global form of currency called the Terra has been out for several years.  Its supporters boast that it “could play a significant role in getting the world out of recession.”  Apparently some folks in the world of politics are getting concerned about the movement toward world governance, whether in politics or economics.  In July the Nevada State Republican convention committee voted to pass a platform that states:  “we reject the concept of  global governance.”  For students of the Bible none of this will come as a surprise. In the book of Revelation, when mention is made of the future “Babylon” that will govern the world with a iron hand, repeated references are made to its centralized, global economic power:  “all the nations” will participate in the wickedness of this Bablyon and  “the merchants of the earth” will become “rich by the wealth of her sensuality” (18:3).  When God destroys this global Babylon the “merchants of the earth” and the “kings of the earth” who have become willing partners with this future global Babylon will weep and mourn bitterly over her downfall because they have banked everything on her promise of  financial stability and political power. (Rev. 18: 9 – 19).  Yet for the Christian, this future scenario does not strike them with fear.  Instead, those who have trusted in and personally received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord look hopefully to His coming return and the establishment of His future kingdom.  Have you trusted Jesus yet ? If not, your soul is a dry and thirsty place.  But it doesn’t have to be. “And let the one who is thristy come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” (Rev. 22:17). Jesus said: “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” John 4: 14.

(c) 2010  Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved

There is a shadow growing over religious freedom in America. We aren’t talking about the recent Supreme Court decision in the Christian Legal Society (CLS) case, where the Court upheld the banning of a Christian law group from official recognition on a college campus because it wouldn’t deny its Biblical approach to homosexuality, as bad as that was. We are talking about the Obama Administration’s subtle, but apparently deliberate use of a language-sleight-of-hand, substituting the phrase “freedom of worship” for “freedom of religion.” That new phrase has been used consistently in several speeches by President Obama, and by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in speeches in December and January.  The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom noted this shift and complained about it in it’s 2010 report, causing Christianity Today to pick up on this trend in its July 9th issue.

So, what is the big problem? Simply this: the phrase “freedom of worship” follows an international concept that departs from our First Amendment understanding of religious freedom. Under international law, “worship” is a limited right, and connotes activities within a church body, but can exclude public evangelism. The UN Declaration of Human Rights protects “teaching, practice, worship and observance” but fails to protect public preaching.  The United Nation’s 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance uses the same approach on matters of religion. Article 9 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms allows evangelism to be banned on the basis of  protecting “public order.” In 1997 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that under Article 9 Christians could be prosecuted for efforts to evangelize.

In our new futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalypse, we give a picture of America that, sadly, is beginning to look more and more like the headlines of today rather than forecasts about the future. In this fiction story, the United States has signed onto an international treaty that radically restricts the right of Christians to preach the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ. This fictional treaty closely resembles the real-life “defamation of religion” resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in March of 2009. As our current Administration edges us closer to a global approach in matters of religion, it is important to remember that the future “Babylon” in the Bible’s book of Revelation has in fact three aspects, much like a three-legged stool: two of them are a global economic system and a global political system. The third? A global unification of religion. It would seem to us improbable for the stage to be set for this kind of religious unification  until Christian evangelism is finally outlawed – or something worse.

(c) 2010 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved

First it was the ultra-liberal group People for the American way that attacked our blog (see below) on Elena Kagan, currently up for Senate confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Then, yesterday, Americans United for Separation of Church and State joined the fray. That organization, known for assailing Christian messages whenever they appear in public spaces,  calling “pathetic” our conclusions about Ms. Kagan’s loyalty to foreign law as a tool to reinvent the U.S. Constitution, and treats our views as mere conspiracy theories.  True enough, in our new novel Edge of Apocalypse, we do portray a futuristic America where our courts have become servants to international law, among other problems (like an impending economic collapse and compromised national security).  We believe that global law as a master over American courts would not only be tragic for America, but would be a tragedy of Biblical proportions. Yet consider the fact that our detractors dodge the real question: would Elena Kagan move our High Court toward an internationalist approach to law?  So, if you are trying to decide this issue for yourself then first consider our arguments in the blog below.

Next, ponder Elena Kagan’s own testimony this week before the Senate.  She stated that she believes that the foreign law of other nations is a source of “good ideas” on how the Justices should rule on our own Constitution. In that way she went ever farther than another recent Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonya Sotomayor on that same subject. During her confirmation hearing Sotomayor downplayed any allegiance to international law. Then, a few months after being placed on the Court, she joined the liberal block on the  Supreme Court in a decision on a death penalty issue that relied on, and specifically cited foreign law.  Judging by Ms. Kagan’s own testimony, we can expect her to be not just a foreign law follower, but a true global law leader on the Court.

Supreme Court Justice Scalia once noted in a case in 2004, that the Founding Fathers would have been “appalled” at the idea of global law being imported in our view of the American Constitution; that our fundamental constitutional rights could be nullified by American judges who defer to the newest legal trends from France, Spain, or Russia. As we demonstrate in our post below, there are currently four justices on the Supreme Court who have cited foreign law in court opinions as a way of deciding issues involving our most basic constitutional rights. A future Justice Kagan would create a majority.

Keep watching our Supreme Court. Just last week the liberal block + Justice Kennedy formed a majority  that voted to uphold the Hastings Law School ban on campus recognition for the Christian Legal Society (CLS). CLS’s offense? They refused to deny their belief that homosexuals are disqualified for leadership in their Christian organization. Dissenting from that opinion, Justice Alito, appointed by President Bush, gives us a glimpse of this approaching storm over the issue of global law. He states that even if the America is the last nation left that stands for free speech and religious freedom, “ I would not change our law to conform to international standards …”

THE SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING STARTED YESTERDAY FOR ELENA KAGAN. She was nominated by President Obama to serve as America’s newest U.S. Supreme Court justice.  The odds favor the Senate confirming Kagan and adding her to the High Court. What does that mean for America? Elena Kagan brings with her a globalistic world-view that presents a danger as old as the book of Genesis.

When she was Dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan struck the requirement that her law students study the U.S. Constitution. Instead, she replaced that course requirement with a new one: the mandatory study of foreign law and international legal standards. In a 2006 press release Kagan explained that the intent was to confront law students with the “larger universe” of legal norms and to study “global networks” of law so they could appreciate law from a “global sphere” rather than strictly from an American constitutional standpoint. During her confirmation as Solicitor General under the Obama Administration, Kagan said that as our nation’s top lawyer arguing for the government before the Supreme Court she would not hesitate to make arguments based not just on our Constitution but also on international law as well.

Elena Kagan’s loyalty to global law is problematic for two reasons. First, if she becomes a Supreme Court justice, she could well be the all-important fifth vote in favor of interpreting our Constitution, not according to the vision of our Founding Fathers, but rather from an international law basis; a concept that would probably have been viewed as treasonous by our Founders. Three justices on the Court have already relied on foreign law in their opinions: Justices Kennedy, Breyer and Ginsberg. Recently installed Justice Sotomayor has praised Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s penchant for international law, so we can assume she will be a legal globalist as well. Five justices create a majority, and with Kagan on board they could begin readically steering us away from a view of the Constitution that honors our Judeo-Christian heritage and founding.

Second, if this happens it will usher America into a new age of global law. With Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, international legal standards could well be imposed on American citizens by the High Court’s legal globalists even without the need for Senate approval of specific international treaties.

In our new novel, Edge of Apocalypse, we show how this trend could create a legal nightmare for conscientious Christians. We need only turn to chapter 11 of Genesis to see how God opposed the ancient attempt at global unification. The Lord declared the tragic result that would follow if a centralized group of fallen men were to consolidate an unlimited , unrestrained power over the planet.

Keep your eyes on the Supreme Court’s view of global law. It could be one of the most telling “signs of the times.”

(c) 2010  Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved

NORTH KOREA THREATENED THE UNITED STATES LAST WEEK when its ambassador, Sin Son Ho said that North Korea would consider using nuclear retaliation against the United States if it blamed that communist regime for the sinking of a South Korean ship recently. You can understand our intense interest in this development, considering the fact that our brand new futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalypse, begins with a North Korean nuclear attack against New York City. But was this threat last week just more “bluster” from North Korea? The Obama Administration apparently thinks so. So far the President has merely continued sanctions against that tyrannical nation. Nothing more. But even the Council on Foreign Relations, usually considered ultra-liberal on national security issues released a report last Tuesday strongly criticizing the Obama Administration’s efforts against North Korea’s ambitions to develop, and use, nuclear weapons. The report called the President’s efforts “half-hearted” and called upon him to be much more aggressive. We think that the rants and ravings of North Korea’s despot, Kim Jong-il, and his deputies need to be taken seriously.  North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean vessel is serious business and may be just the beginning. Wars have started over just those kinds of events.

But there is another side to this too. The  ”half-hearted” approach of America’s ”Commander In-Chief” to threats against us from abroad, may be a signal of things to come.  There is no clear mention of the United States in the prophecies of the Bible concerning the End Times. Considering our status as a world leader, that fact would indicate several possibilites. But certainly one of them is that America may capitulate to a radical form of internationalism and be absorbed into a global community of nations, or that we will fail to defend ourselves against real and present dangers from our enemies. Or possibly both. But Christians should reject as far as they are able, government policies that fail to protect our national security. Bible believing Christians need only read Romans 13 for the explanation of a nation’s right to use force against evil. Likewise, if we read Acts 17 we see Paul, in his speech to the intellectuals of Athens, defending the concept of national sovereignty as part of God’s plan in establishing the “bounderies” of man’s habitation. And in Genesis 11 God defeated a plan for global government, creating seperate people groups, clearly an indication that there is a kind of “checks and balances” by having separate nations looking to their own legitimate interests.   

These are the kinds of issues we confront in our novel Edge of Apocalypse. It is our hope that you will not only find some entertaining, suspenseful fiction, but also some hard-hitting facts about America and the world as we see it unfolding. And of course, most important of all, we trust that our readers will see that the God of prophecy is a merciful God, always seeking to save the lost, and give hope to the hopeless.

(c) 2010 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All rights Reserved