I now know I live in a fool's paradise of a nation. We've learned so little over the decades, nay millennia, about human nature, sin, and man's inherent ability to deceive himself or be deceived regarding his own strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures.

Humankind and its machinations go back to the creation of Adam and Eve and the moment they chose to disobey God. The old and often ignored adage, "Oh what an evil web we weave . . ." is more real to me as humanity ebbs and flows into a Garden of Eden style of avoiding responsibility for the condition of our nation. "We the people" works in both directions--rights have parallel obligations or duties.

"How dare she say that?" I can hear the shrill voices protest my words because they call into question the very reasons this nation is in such deep trouble. So here are a few questions to answer . . . and while you're pondering your answers (it's not multiple guess this time), consider looking in the mirror first. Look at yourself; examine your heart as you try to sort out fact from fiction.

Where were you when the liberals of this nation assaulted us with their vicious rhetoric about unborn babies being nothing more than a blob of tissue, some random cells, or proof of evolution during the "it was a big lie" frog stage of gestation instead of a developing human life? (Ultrasounds prove otherwise, don't they?) What did you believe at the time? Did you agree and scream for the courts to create a constitutional right to murder the unborn? Did you demand that your elected officials vote your way? Or did you fight to save the most innocent among us . . . our posterity? ("Well, it's not really a baby yet, is it, dear?" "Oh, it's just not convenient for me to have a baby now!")

Where were you when the media, the politicians, and the campus liberals filled your children's heads with one lie after another about free love, living for now, and how great it is to get high on drugs? Did you continue to pay their tuition, or did you take a stand and tell your children it was time to come home to sanity? ("Don't worry, darling, he'll outgrow all this soon.")

Where were you when America haters protested the very godly foundations upon which this nation was created? Did you agree with them that the rules were too stringent? Did you believe that there was a better way to be free? Or did you know in your heart that real freedom comes from the Creator of the Universe? ("Well, maybe God is dead after all, dear.")

Where were you when the alternative lifestyles movement swung into full gear, invaded the schools and began to indoctrinate your children with their worldview in direct opposition to the Bible? Did you say anything, do anything, or try to protect the children? Or did you hide in shame because you might be labeled a hate-filled conservative who understands what God meant when He said some folks have been turned over to reprobate minds? ("What's a reprobate mind?")

This nation is dying or metamorphosing into something akin to Sodom and Gomorrah because most American citizens put their heads in the sand more than four decades ago and said nothing. Perhaps it was too shocking; or maybe we believed that nothing bad would happen to us . . . even when we allowed prayer to be taken out of the schools . . . the Ten Commandments to be chiseled off our courthouses and other public places . . . when we turned our backs on the God who blessed us for so long with a nation of laws that made us freer than any other nation in the history of humankind.

This nation was created by God to preach the gospels to the entire world, not cave in to the anti-God squads. We were "the other vineyard" that God raised up while Israel was in the Diaspora to bear witness to the truth. And all we can do is blame the Democrats and Republicans for our ills. Meanwhile, we've turned our backs on the real source of our freedoms while we look for someone to blame . . . some others who can take the heat.

And who are the others? While pre-editing some pieces that were being considered for this issue of the newsletter, I saw the worst of humankind again. Either in ignorance or with malice, some reached back to the days of the Holocaust and used the same propaganda to blame the Jewish people for all the ills of the world . . . blame Israel for everything that's wrong in the Middle East . . . blame her for her mere existence . . . and went so far as to side with the terrorists. Brilliant! Talk about in interesting turn of events.

Well, read a little Bible prophecy . . . then study it for awhile and it just might bother you that again humanity needs a Super Scapegoat and has picked a people who are fewest in number. I'm still trying to figure out how 16 million Jewish people can have so much power over the world. Let's face it, if a cabal of 16 million people could control the lives and destinies of seven billion people, they should be congratulated rather than reviled, especially when it's reasonable to assume that only half of the 16 million are adults who can handle the reigns, and that's being overly generous. Personally, I can't control my own destiny, so if they can pick up the slack for nearly a thousand people each--"Hey! I need some stuff done over here, Mr. Rosenstein!--we can sit back and let them take care of things for us.

If all this were true, then why are we focusing our war on terrorism on others? Maybe it's because it wasn't a passel of rabbis or a group of Baptist ministers who flew those planes into our buildings and murdered 4000 civilians on September 11th; it was 19 men from Saudi Arabia. It wasn't a group of Jewish students from Brooklyn, NY who gassed all those Kurds; it was Sadaam Hussein, a Baathist supremacist with a Nazi agenda. It's the "Palestinians" (trained by the Nazis and aided by the UN after World War II and today) who've blown up innocent men, women, and children on buses in Israel to annihilate a race of people and a nation, not for real freedom. And they don't plan to stop . . . at least that's what they've said.

Let's not forget that all of Western Civilization is built on the foundation "those evil Jews" have provided for us. Moses, Christ Jesus, Peter, Paul, Mark, Timothy, and John, to name a few, are our paragons, and they were all Jews. The Decalogue, in fact the entire Scripture, was notation from God to His people, the Hebrew people (hence, the Jews).

What's that you say? Christians replaced the Jews and are the real Israel? Well, someone should've told Paul that. In Romans 9, he clearly stated that Christ's sacrifice did not revoke God's sovereign choice of the Jewish people.

Look, I'm not blind and I'm not stupid. Like any other people group, there are Jewish elected officials, judges, businesspeople, and criminals who've done much damage to this nation because of their political ideologies or behaviors just the way their Gentile counterparts have done the same; but we don't hear much about the latter because it's more fun and fashionable (according to the media and the UN) to blame the Jews and Israel who will let us collectively or individually off the hook. Or, we can just blame the Democrats and Republicans because it's so easy to do.

To those who spend their days playing the blame game, I wish to remind you that Adam and Eve did the same in the Garden of Eden. Eve blamed the serpent with the old "the devil made me do it" excuse, but Adam really blew it. He not only blamed Eve for deceiving him, he blamed God for giving him Eve in the first place; and 2000 years ago Christ paid for the sins of the world, though few have the courage today to bow a knee before Him and repent. It costs to acknowledge your sins and it hurts when they're removed, but the price of our sins was not cheap; and each day they cost each of us and this nation more and more. Pray, my fellow citizens . . . without ceasing . . . before it's too late.

(Heartfelt thanks to Jack L. Kemp, the co-author of our book, The Call to Prayer, for his contributions to this piece.)