Exodus tells us:

For they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents: but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said. (Exodus 7:12-13)

This verse contrasts phenomena that are very instructive: real miracles vs. fake miracles. The difference lies in the source of the miracle and the power of the miracle. The first serpent which is a transformed Aaron’s rod comes from a holy and just God, and the latter multiple serpents are a species of “magic” or “black arts” worked by devilish magicians. The former are based on righteousness and goals of love, hope, mercy, and deliverance. The latter are performed to protect a wicked status quo.  

Yet, despite the amazing similarity between the two miracles, the serpent of Moses and Aaron swallowed up the other serpents, thereby representing the victory of good over evil, the victory of the true and living God over the false gods of Egyptian polytheism and animism. God’s miracle had power over the pseudo-miraculous work of the magicians, and ate their snakes.

Yet, in an interesting dynamic, after the competing miracles, Pharaoh did not accept Mosaic authority, nor did he even question the authority of his magicians. Instead, his heart was “hardened.” This means that the unbelief he had in the true God not only did not change or even begin to change, but that unbelief deepened. Pharaoh became even more unresponsive to the message from Almighty God.

Thus, a counterfeit narrative about reality can seem to be as rich and appealing as a true and authentic narrative based on godly values, legality, and knowledge.

Today’s sociopolitical landscape presents us with parallel experiences. We see “real news” opposed by “fake news.” When Barack Obama took office, the headline of an article by Josh Gerstein read “Obama Replaces U.S. Attorneys,” whereas when Trump fired Obama’s U.S. Attorneys, a headline by the same author read “Trump Team Ousts Obama-appointed U.S. Attorneys.” The word “ousts” implies a retributive and nasty motive, and suggests that the rightful replacement is arbitrary.

Further, if we reflect on many articles covering the Trump accession to the presidency, the real news would be Donald J. Trump legitimately won the election to the presidency against overwhelming odds, and has sacrificed a fabulously wealthy and comfortable old age for public service to relieve the hurting people of some of their accumulated socioeconomic and political burdens. But the tenor of the fake news is that he is not fit to govern, stole the election, betrayed the country in the process, and is a no good fascist, racist, woman-hating, corrupt buffoon.

The fake news or obstructionist left-wing statements and press coverage represent a hardening, a dark place of no return. The leadership of the Democratic Party and segments of the public have hardened themselves against the massive challenge to the liberal-progressive domination of the American political landscape. The politically correct status quo in our speech, press, legal interpretations, and mores as a society has been repudiated by the most recent presidential election.  

The hardening into a “dark place of no return” has begun. It will insist on a shoring up of the radical Islamist agenda in the phony name of “tolerance” and “magnanimity.” Sadiq Khan, the recently elected Muslim Mayor of London, England, said that Londoners can expect to live with acts of terror from time to time. For Khan, and others who are not Muslims, the presence of terrorist attacks is the “new normal” to be accepted if we are to continue to maintain our important value of toleration for all. Implied in this promotion of “toleration” is a not-so-subtle mockery of Judeo-Christian values, especially the emphasis on love and mercy by Christians. Helping the poor, forgiving others for their wrongdoings, and mercy imitating God’s mercy by sending His Son to be crucified are all being exploited as spiritual and legal constructs by those bent on overthrowing the Christian West. The not-so-veiled mockers pretend to have a greater mercy when they ask: How merciful are you non-Muslims if you push back against the Islamic world because of these threats?

This writer had numerous conversations with an atheist left-wing attorney (a graduate of University of California/Berkeley), and his frequent refrain was that Christians are not living up to the teachings of Christ about the poor in the Bible. In other words, that individual who totally and unequivocally rejects the Deity was telling me that Christians are not Christian enough as evidenced by the opposition to the welfare state, and the extending of federal government growth in order to manage that state. He wasn't interested in Christ saying "The poor you always have with you." Nor was he interested in Christ's teachings about proper investment of one's resources. No. For him, Christian individual responsibility and prudence is a cover for Christian hypocrisy. He believes the anti-God left is more Christian than the Christians!

Similarly, undertones and outright accusations of hypocrisy come against Jews and Christians from those who are straining every day to deny the threat to Western culture, law, public order, and freedom itself by radical Islam whose adherents are all… Islamic. How can you be serving a merciful tolerant God when you encourage a drumbeat of restless and relentless concern about the dangers posed to the West and to the U.S. in particular by Islam? The list of atrocities by radical Islamists in no way deters this hardened defense, supposedly of toleration.

The destruction of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, regular hijacking of ships and airplanes by Islamic terrorists (until Ronald Reagan bombed their training camps in Libya), the two World Trade Center attacks with thousands dead, San Bernardino massacre, Boston Marathon bombing, Fort Hood massacre, Garland, TX attack on an anti-radical-Islamic event, the Chattanooga recruiting station attack against the U.S. Marines, the Washington DC sniper executions, beheading of Policeman Lee Rigby in broad daylight in London, and the unremitting murders and attacks on innocent civilians for decades in Israel, France, Spain, London, and Sweden together should suggest to any reasonable person that there is a continuing and rising problem presented to Western Civilization by terrorists growing up in the soil of Islamic spirituality. Instead, the West, and Jews and Christians in particular, are chided and mocked, and portrayed as hypocrites. Like Pharaoh, hearts are hardened against truth. How loving is your God when you castigate and feel you must protect yourself from persons coming from the Islamic world? Loving truth is met with hardened resistance.

A local Muslim merchant who made a sign for my church asked me, “What do you think about that minister in Florida who burned Qurans?” He was mocking all Christianity because that event was for him a hypocritical and painful farce and rejection of his faith. In turn, this writer asked him what he thought about the burning down of 40 churches in Egypt by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood? What would have been the response of the Muslim world if something like that happened in any country in the world? Why aren’t you criticizing that? And I added, “Did you know that when the Palestinian Authority took over the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem at one point, they tore pages out of the Bible and used them as toilet paper?” In his ignorance, he could see no other point of view but his own.

The defeat of the fake miracle brought a hardening of the heart of Pharaoh. In parallel fashion, the defeat of Hillary Clinton intensified the spate of fake news, and the fake news is breeding a further hardening of the Democratic cultural and political neo-Marxists. The hardening goes on whether or not the fakery of fake news is proved or not. Further, fake news is merely symptomatic of an underlying fake morality, a fake righteousness, that looks down upon authentic biblical righteousness. In its secular form, this righteousness is expressed as the oath of federal office holders to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic.  The Democratic Party and its leaders will be willing to suffer humiliating defeat rather than admit to its fundamental wrongheadedness.