In a recent letter to his supporters, James Dobson warned of the grave damage that the new administration is inflicting upon the nation through executive orders that defy the teaching of Scripture. We are reprinting it here in its entirety. —THE EDITORS
In my recent letters, I shared my profound concern for the soul of America. I stated that our future was hanging in the balance and our republic was teetering near the point of no return. Well, the free fall has begun. The few remaining voices of reason and truth in the public square are being censored by Big Tech, expelled by corporate thought police, and twisted by the fake media. It is dizzying to watch.
Tragically, from his first day in office, President Joe Biden began to reveal his radical agenda for our nation. When joined with the influence of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, a sweeping takeover by the radical left is occurring at lightning speed. They have seized power in all three branches of government, and they are operating pell-mell without checks and balances. The movement we are witnessing actually began more than a half-century ago with the objective of creating a socialist-totalitarian state. Suddenly, it appears to be within reach.
This is a deeply troubling time for those of us who love our constitutional republic. Who would have believed that a coup of this scope could occur overnight within this greatest nation on earth? Cherished freedoms that have been enjoyed and protected for 232 years are now in serious jeopardy. Among them are religious liberty, free speech and the right to own and bear arms. Everything that has defined America is being threatened or destroyed.
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President Biden, though old and frail, is the spearhead for what amounts to a cultural revolution. He and those around him are jerking the nation 180 degrees to the left. The mechanism they are using to get this done is a flurry of executive orders that bypass the legislative process. While their overreach is apparently legal, it is an audacious expression of raw power. The president signed more than 21 executive orders during his first week in office. Compare that to the record of his predecessors:
The beat goes on. By the end of January, 11 days into his presidency, Biden had signed 42 executive orders. You’ve seen him on television, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, signing a stack of documents in rapid succession. We wonder if he even had the time or energy to read them. But the greater issue is not how many orders he signed; it is how radical most of them are.
- Donald Trump: signed 4 executive orders in the first week.
- Barack Obama: signed 5 executive orders in the first week.
- George W. Bush: signed 0 executive orders in the first week.
- Bill Clinton: signed 2 executive orders in the first week.
- George H.W. Bush: signed 1 executive order in the first week.
- Ronald Reagan: signed 0 executive orders in the first week.
- Jimmy Carter: signed 1 executive order in the first week.
Lest we forget, just a few months ago candidate Joe Biden criticized executive orders as actions taken by a “dictator,” and asserted that a democracy requires “consensus.” So much for his empty rhetoric. He also called for unity in his inaugural speech, but with a few swipes of his pen he ended that illusion. Whereas he promised to be president of “all the people,” Biden endorsed a baseless and outrageous impeachment against Donald Trump, a man who received the votes of over 74 million people and came within a hair’s breadth of being reelected. Unity. Indeed.
From rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement, to halting the border wall, limiting immigration enforcement, requiring non-citizens to be counted within our national census for legislative redistricting purposes, and welcoming transgender individuals into our armed forces, Joseph R. Biden and his liberal colleagues have just begun their efforts to fundamentally transform our sweet land of liberty.
While many of Biden’s actions are deeply disturbing and place the welfare of our country in peril, a few deserve greater condemnation. Let’s look at some of his other executive orders.
First, his administration announced in January that it was rescinding the Mexico City Policy, a commonsense ban on U.S. aid money provided for groups that promote or provide abortion services around the globe. Not only has this policy saved the lives of countless innocents—but the vast majority of Americans oppose funding for abortion overseas. Here at home, President Biden wants to use your taxpayer dollars to fund the taking of innocent lives by rescinding the Hyde Amendment. It appears the president and his associates aren’t interested in unity if it prevents the full and immediate embrace of a culture of death.
Second, President Biden has used an executive order to further the outrageous demands of the LGBTQ movement. His order calls for males to be allowed to enter private spaces for women, such as locker rooms and showers, and to fully participate on female sports teams. The shocking text of the order also suggests that health care plans should be required to cover surgical gender “transition” procedures, and medical professionals should be forced to perform them. This atrocity is not only an affront against God’s biological design of men and women, who are created in His image, it also decimates equal opportunity for women in sports and violates the conscience of health care providers. Notably, there is no mention of freedom of conscience or religious accommodations required by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This should outrage all citizens, people of faith and proponents of freedom.
Third, President Biden has wiped out the Trump administration’s 1776 Commission, an advisory commission established to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and to strive to form a more perfect Union.” The 1776 Commission was born out of a need to combat the revisionism that is happening across our nation, most notably through the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which presented an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out,” according to Pulitzer Prize-winning Civil War historian James McPherson. How could any citizen, let alone the chief elected official of this nation, object to this noble goal? Understanding our country’s history is essential to understanding its present day, and necessary in charting the course for its future. The fact of the matter is that America’s history is under relentless attack.
None of this has taken most Bible-believing Christians by surprise. We saw this coming like a freight train, and we prayed that God would somehow deliver America one more time. Clearly, He has another plan for us, and there is no turning back. But as we strive to honor God, we cannot remain silent as our government seeks to call good evil and evil good. I urge you to let your voices be heard in your communities, and to contact your state and federal legislators. If we don’t stand up and protect our children and grandchildren, who will? Indeed, this is a “for such a time as this” moment for all believers. We cannot allow our voices to be silenced during a time of crisis, when our country needs to hear from us most. Our task is harder now than ever, but it is also more urgent than ever. Our resolve must remain strong. As long as I have breath, I will stand against what is wrong and be a voice for what is right. I pray that people of faith will stand with me in the days ahead.
I want to end with the words of my dear friend, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who has a unique gift of seeing things from a Biblical and historical perspective. He sent this powerful message to our new president. I urge you to read his entire statement with discernment. I passionately agree with what he said. Here is a transcript of the rabbi’s message:
Mr. President,
232 years ago, in the first-ever presidential inauguration, the nation’s first president addressed a jubilant multitude, and a nation that was united in shared values and a common hope in America’s future. In that first-ever presidential address, George Washington gave the newborn nation a prophetic warning. He said this: “The propitious smiles of Heaven cannot be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself has ordained.” In other words, if America followed the ways of God, His eternal rules of order and right, the blessings of God would remain upon it, but if America should ever depart from the ways of God, then His blessings would be removed from the land.
And now, Jan. 20, 2021, another presidential inauguration takes place in the nation’s capital city, [which is] named after that first president [and] has become a military zone. For the first time in American history, a presidential inauguration is devoid of people. Instead of a jubilant crowd, 25,000 American troops stand guard over the National Mall, in which flags stand in for the missing people, and razor wire surrounds the halls of American government. There is no war, there is no overt threat from beyond its borders. Rather, the threat comes from within. Division infects the land as does a plague that has kept its citizens masked and locked in their houses, as the nation’s functioning has been in large part, paralyzed.
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For months, America’s cities have seen protests and riots, and doors and windows shuttered, and buildings set on fire, and the nation’s most revered edifice of government, the Capitol building, taken over by an angry mob, with the nation’s leaders fleeing for safety.
And so, the prophetic warning that was given on that day of that first inauguration, the smiles of Heaven, are being removed from the land. And so, the question must be asked, have we then disregarded the eternal rules of order and right that Heaven has ordained? America, as did ancient Israel at the height of its prosperity, has turned away from God. We’ve driven Him out of our public squares, out of the schools of our children, out of our culture, out of our lives, and as did ancient Israel, in place of His absence, we’ve let in other gods and served them. We’ve rejected His ways, and embraced the ways of immorality. We’ve called evil good and good evil. And as did ancient Israel, we’ve lifted up the most innocent among us, our babies, and shed their blood. Israel sacrificed thousands of its children. We’ve sacrificed millions, tens of millions, unborn children, who are not here this day, this inaugural day, because we took their lives, and their silent screams ascend to Heaven and their blood is on our hands.
We’ve passed down rulings from Washington, D.C., that war against the internal laws of Heaven on human life, human nature, gender, marriage, [and] we’ve indoctrinated our children against the ways of God. We have done as we were warned not to do, and then we wonder why the blessings of Heaven are being removed from our land. When judgment came to ancient Israel, it manifested in the form of an enemy attack, a strike on the land, a wake-up call. It came to America on Sept. 11, 2001. Then it came to the very place where George Washington stood and prayed on the day of America’s first presidential inauguration.
The Biblical template of national judgment then ordains a period of years in which the nation is given the chance to return to God, or else head to judgment. In the case of ancient Jerusalem, that period, from that first enemy strike to the year when the greater shakings began, was 19 years. From the strike on American soil in 2001 to the 19th year, brings us to the year 2020, the year when the great shakings began.
The danger that this window of time is drawing to an end is now upon us. We stand in a most critical moment. Mr. President, you have called for unity and peace, but how can a nation have unity and peace when it wars against the very foundation on which it stands? How can a nation have unity and peace when it has turned against the God Who brought it into existence? And it has turned. The nation that once led its schoolchildren in prayer and taught them of His Word now declares such prayers and teachings to be forbidden, and now instructs its children against the ways of God. How can that nation have unity and peace? How can we have unity and peace in America if we have no unity and peace with God? We are a house divided against itself, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Mr. President, how can you place your left hand on the Bible, the Word of God, and then with your right hand sign laws into existence that war against His Word? How can you place one hand on the Word that ordains human life as sacred and in the image of God from conception, and then with the other hand sign laws into existence that will promulgate the killing of that human life, of those children? How can you invoke the Name of God in your oath and lay your hand upon His Word, and then implement laws that will suppress the going forth of His Word, that will censor His Word and those who advance it? You plan to enact laws that will disregard the distinction between male and female, man and woman. Did not the warning of our first president involve that very thing, if we disregard the eternal rules of order that Heaven itself has ordained?
You plan to enact laws that will specifically neutralize the protection of religious freedom. You plan to strike down the Hyde Amendment so that more children will be murdered, and those Americans who recognize abortion as murder will be forced to support the act of murder with their taxes. And you plan to empower the act of killing unborn children, not only within the borders of America, but throughout the world to the end, that yet more rivers of blood will flow. How does one do such things and name oneself as a believer in God and a follower of Jesus? How does one sign the sign of the cross and then sign decrees that rage against what God has so clearly set forth in His Word, concerning life and death, holiness and sin, righteousness and immorality, good and evil?
Photo: AP Photo/Pat Eaton-Robb
To you, Mr. President, and all who have joined you in this agenda, from the vice president, to the leaders of the Senate and the House, and all who sit in halls of power and have embraced this agenda, heed this warning. This day will pass. The applause of men will fade. This administration will inevitably be over. This world will pass away, but you will stand before God and give account, for it is written in His Word that we will each stand before God and give account. And on that day, all the power you once wielded will be gone, and all of the world’s approval and praises will have faded away, and all the fame and glory you received will amount to nothing.
In the day when the book of history is closed and the Book of Life is opened, none of that will matter. It will be you and Him, and you will be required to give account of what you have done. Did you follow the will and Word of God, or did you not? If you pursue these things, then you did not, and the blood of children will be on your hands, and then will come eternal life or eternal judgment. The voice of God calls out to you and to all, to turn and follow Him with all your heart, Who gave all His heart and life that you might be saved.
As for America, the problem is not social, or economic, or cultural or political, the problem is ultimately spiritual, and so must be the answer. America has turned away from God, and its only hope is that it returns to God. Choose true greatness and lead in that return, or continue in this departure from God to destruction and judgment. As for those of you who love this nation and are burdened and fearful for its future, America’s only hope is revival. Return. Without it, the nation is lost, and revival only comes through repentance and return.
It’s time to pray as never before that return and revival would come, but it’s time not only to pray for revival, but to choose revival, to choose to live in revival now. And for that, we must each commit to return to God, to put away from our lives that which must be put away, and take up that which must be taken up, and walk in His ways and live in His spirit as we have never done before. “For the eyes of the Lord search to and fro throughout the entire earth, looking for the one whose heart is completely His, to show Himself mighty on their behalf” (Cf. 2 Chronicles 16:9). Let us be that people, and revival will come.
And if the darkness must come, whether by persecution, or disorder, or disintegration, or apostasy, do not fear, for God is still on the throne, and the darkness cannot overcome the light, but only magnify it. And if the darkness should grow darker, then it’s time for the lights of God to shine even brighter; for it is no longer the time of the candle in the day, it is now time for the candle in the night. We are now the candle in the night that shines against the darkness and lights up the night, the world, with its radiance. We pray that the civilization that was established and consecrated to be a city on a hill, America, would once again shine with a light that once illumined it; but whether or not it does, it is time that each of us shine with a light of His glory.
It is time to live unhindered, uncompromised, unbound, bold, and all out on fire and mighty in the power of the living God, for thus says the Lord, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Deep darkness shall cover the earth, but the glory of God shall rise upon you” (Cf. Isaiah 60:1-2). In the Name above every name that is named, the Name of Yeshua Hamashiach; Jesus the Messiah, the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the King above all kings, the Lord of all, the Hope of the ages, and the answer to every life; the Star of Jacob, the Prince of life, the glory of Israel, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; the Name that will remain above all names when all is passed away, Yeshua, Jesus, the same yesterday, today and forever. Amen.
Thank you, Rabbi Cahn. Your powerful words remind me of a historic quote from Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” Given our utter depravity, I wonder how we can escape judgment by the Almighty. But when I am tempted to despair, I recall the comforting words of the Prophet Habakkuk in ancient Israel. He wrote, “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2, NIV).
We must pray fervently and continuingly for our country. ©2021 Family Talk
James Dobson is the founder and president of Family Talk and the author of more than 30 books dedicated to the preservation of the family. His radio program “Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk” airs on more than 1,300 radio outlets and many digital channels, reaching millions of people each month.
Above: President-elect Joe Biden puts his hand on the Bible and is sworn in as the 46th president at the U.S. Capitol.
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