Who’s Minding the Store?

By: Adrian D. Ruiz

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that there seems to be more lies than ever on the political scene? I
know that political promises have existed as long as politics itself and that no one ever really expects
politicians to keep their promises, but this is different. The lies have become so prevalent that it is
disturbing. Political promises are made during election campaigns and no one really takes them too
seriously. But lies after the election are intended for a different reason. Their intention is to deceive the
public. But one unexpected consequence of this is that it also insults the intelligence of many Americans
and angers them at the same time. This style of governing is undermining the values we have relied on for
centuries in the maintenance of our liberty. The more prolific that lying becomes in our politics and
government, the more our freedoms are threatened. Any agenda that can only be advanced by lies is
dubious at best and evil at worst. As this administration ignores the collective wisdom of America, it
seems that no one in this current administration possesses an ounce of respect for the voice of the majority
or for the values of truth and honesty. They have an arrogant attitude and hold a lowly opinion of anyone
who doesn’t share their views. All of this causes me to believe that they have been deceived by the shrewd,
invisible enemy of all mankind.

Let’s begin with the very first lie ever told. That first lie was told with the intention of seducing us away
from the greatest truth. Keep in mind that mankind was created by God in a sinless state which allowed
man and God to have an unencumbered relationship.We were also created completely free. But complete
liberty did not mean that we could disobey God’s commandments without consequence. Eve broke the
only commandment that God had given her and Adam. She ate the fruit of the only tree in the garden from
which God forbade them to eat. She was seduced by a lie that the shrewd serpent (Satan) told her, telling
her that she could become like God, attaining to His position of authority and level of knowledge if she
would just eat the forbidden fruit. After eating the fruit, she persuaded Adam to join her and when he did,
the Bible says they realized that they were naked. The threat of certain death that God had earlier warned
them about had taken place. God removed His Holy Spirit from them and they experienced immediate
spiritual nakedness, which is spiritual death. The whole nature of life itself was transformed. The eternal
beings God created had now become mortal. They would now experience illness and disease, hatred,
slavery, murder, wars, the need to work to sustain their lives, aging and ultimately physical death. In
addition, they would learn of sorrow, sadness, suffering and hopelessness. All this Satan accomplished
with just a single lie. He only needed someone willing to listen.

When Adam and Eve experienced the separation from God, a vacuum was created in them that was
replaced by a natural inclination to rebel (sin) against God. This sinful nature has made it easy for Satan to
deceive mankind into becoming a self-destructive race. This shows the destructive power of the lie and
exposes its real source. In the Gospel of John (8:44), Jesus confronts the religious / political leaders of the
Jewish people that had become so corrupted through deception that there was no longer any truth or value
left in their doctrine. They were misleading the people that depended on them to lead their nation and to
provide a moral and spiritual example. Jesus said to them, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you
want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for
there is no truth in him. When he speaks, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of
lies.

This offers us insight as to why contemporary politics is so drenched in lies and why lies are being used
today without restraint. Our leaders have become deceived into thinking they are intellectually superior to
their opponents, when in fact they have become so deceived they are ineffectual. Unless an individual has
gone through the process of being restored (born again) to the former status man enjoyed before the fall of
Adam and Eve, Satan will exercise free reign in the thought process of their minds. In the Book of
Ephesians (2:2), the Apostle Paul offered insight into this phenomenon when he referred to Satan as “…the
ruler of the kingdom of the air.” Pastor Jack Hayford once explained it by saying that God has given Satan
authority over the atmosphere of thought. Considering the elitists’ attitudes produced by deception, it
explains why Satan has enjoyed such great success in the venues of entertainment, academia, media,
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philosophy and politics. All these are spawning grounds for deception at the deepest level. The scriptures
say that “pride comes before a fall” and this sure seems to hold true in this case.

Actually, the entire agenda behind the “lie” is to keep man separated from God indefinitely and eternally by
keeping us distracted with false priorities. Our deceived leaders have bought into the falsehood of the
original lie, thinking that they have attained a sort of divinity of their own similar to the attitude of the
Roman emperors. They have lost all fear of God and encourage the elimination of any mention of God or
anything Godly in the public square; competition just won’t do. They have been fooled into thinking they
are superior. How can elitists be intellectually superior (as they consider themselves to be) if their agenda
is in harmony with that of Satan’s? That’s not intelligent, that’s stupid. Take for example the philosophy
of socialism. It claims that its goal is to fairly redistribute wealth that has been unfairly hoarded by the
‘evil’ capitalists. Even from the beginning its early proponents “realized” that this philosophy would be a
hard sell to everyday people. In order for their plan to succeed, the masses would have to agree to major
changes in two areas of traditional thinking. They would have to give up their belief in a sovereign god
(atheism) so that the sovereignty of the “Society” could not be in question. The rights of inheritance would
need to be abolished (inheritance tax) because all property would necessarily revert to the state. This is in
direct opposition to what God intends for us to enjoy. That is the freedom to worship Him and an
inheritance from Him, both tangible and spiritual. Another necessity would be to organize the working
class which would become the instrument of the state to be used to intimidate wealthy business owners and
monarchs and to “enforce” labor policies. These are hardly values endorsed by the Bible, but they are in
perfect harmony with the Satan’s agenda of lying and stealing anything and everything, including a hope
for a prosperous future. Contrarily, in the Book of Jeremiah, (29:11) God declares, “For I know the plans I
have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Capitalism, in contrast to other systems, is based on the concept that both consumers and providers must be
free to interact and that each person knows what is best for him/herself. Additionally, people must remain
free so they can seek the Lord in determining their own futures. God did not design life to work any other
way. The destruction of Pharaoh’s military in the Book of Exodus was a direct response from God to
Pharaoh’s refusal to allow the Hebrews to worship God in the desert.

Whatever shortcomings there are in capitalism can be attributed to the sinful nature in people, not an evil
system. Greed and corruption are the common factors wherever any human system fails in its intended
mission. In itself, capitalism is a system that serves the needs of a free market and a free society quite well.
In contrast, socialism is an evil system based on confiscation of property and freedoms.

In the Book of Proverbs (6:6, 7, 8) the scriptures speak words of advice against laziness, using the
industrious ant as an example of how we should live. The text assumes that an individual is free to work or
free to be lazy. It implies that work has it rewards and laziness its consequences and it endorses the
concept of small government (political and religious) and of a free market, stating that without overseers or
rulers, ants are quite capable of providing for themselves. If God created the ant with the ability to
succeed without rulers, how much more capable are we that are created with God’s own creative nature? In
contrast, the former Soviet Union was famous for its system that micro managed industrial, commercial and
agricultural production. Every plant and farm had its overseers to enforce quotas. An overseer that could
not meet production quotas would be fired and stripped of all the benefits of the position. They would be
forced to move out of state-owned housing with amenities befitting the position and into lesser dwellings.
The former overseers would fall out of favor with their superiors. The rest is history.

America, socialism as a philosophy is a lie created literally in hell and those that embrace it are liars in their
own right. They would love for us to agree that they are intellectually and culturally superior to the
“common man” and that they are the ones qualified to rule society, since the rest of us are too simple and
ignorant to be trusted to govern our own lives. They believe they are doing us a great favor by showing us
the superiority of their philosophy over the misguided ideas we prefer. They often refer to conservatives as
knuckle draggers as if we failed to keep up with them in the intellectual evolutionary process. They are
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overly impressed with themselves and their degrees, but they are, in fact, educated fools. The lessons of
the Bible are too simple for them to appreciate but Jesus did say that God uses the simple to confuse the
“wise.” Of course He was being facetious in His use of “wise” because the Bible also declares that only a
fool says there is no God.

They dictate to us what to eat and drink, what to wear, what to say or not to say, what to drive and what to
believe. They try to control every little aspect of our lives. They are like an unquenchable fire that has no
fill. They lie about everything. They, like their lying father, the devil, distort the truth at every opportunity
in order to rule over us. They call it spin. They tell us that things we know to be evil are actually good.
They are the most deceived of all and are walking into a trap they know nothing about. Meetings in secret
have become the norm for these liars. They defend godlessness and oppose Godliness in every way they
can. Their thinking has become infected with stupidity. For example, in the recent budget battles in
California in mid 2009, a liberal California legislator was seen and heard on T.V. news screaming in
frustration, “Where does this crazy idea come from that we should live within our means?” I suppose, this
legislator believes that twenty three billion dollars of public debt is preferable to being debt free.

But truthfully, the situation isn’t completely hopeless. The Bible is clear that the devil is not this fearsome
creature Hollywood has created in various forms. In truth, he is no more than an imp. The one thing he is
empowered and even commanded by God to do is to deceive the whole world, and the only weapon he has
been given to accomplish this feat is “The Lie.” Because Satan has figured out that telling man what he
wants to hear works, it has been easy to fool man into thinking that many of its ideas are original, when in
fact they have been implanted into their minds by the lying imp and his network of lying spirits. Satan’s
success can be attributed directly to mankind’s willingness to believe lies such as there is no God, or God is
only a fable, religion is the opiate of the masses, the Bible can’t be believed, evolution is real, abortion is
not murder, there are many roads leading to God and so on and so on. In fact, Satan’s success can be
attributed more to the stupidity of man than to the shrewdness of Satan. How sad that is when you consider
the eternal cost of it all.

So friend, with Satan having been given the authority to influence human thought and whose native
language is “lying,” ask yourself, who is really in control of our government? With the big push to
secularize our society, it’s no wonder that deception, like a dense fog, has permeated our political
environment at all levels. Driving down the road of the future, this fog blinds our leaders to the bridge that
is out just ahead. We can expect to experience more suffering, poverty, desperation and more lies.