Last night, we saw the future. The unparalleled over-the-top spectacle of sights, sounds and pyrotechnics (not to mention movie-soundtrack-like choreographing) used to herald Barack Obama in as the Democratic Party’s official presidential candidate is just a foretaste of what people can expect to view from their TVs when the world endorses the Antichrist as its top executive.

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Obama identifies himself as a Christian but never seems to come anywhere near a clear testimony of salvation. At the first-ever “faith caucus” held Wednesday at the Denver convention, a Pepperdine University Law school professor, Douglas Kmiec, revealed a very telling exchange Obama had with the Rev. Franklin Graham at a meeting of religious leaders in Chicago a few months ago.

Kmiec recalled, “Franklin Graham asked him, ‘Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life?’ Sen. Obama paused and he thought. And he thought very carefully. He said, ‘Reverend, he is my way.’ (Graham responded), ‘No, no, is He THE way?’ Of course, the Reverend was making a point.”

Kmiec then arrogantly argued in total biblical-illiterate fashion, “Our senator, the next president of the United States, a man of great intelligence and great integrity and great honesty, even if he’s not speaking in a place where he’s completely welcome. His message is consistent. No, Reverend, the person in my life who was of great service and most wonderful exemplar was my mother, and she never had the blessing of baptism. It is my understanding of faith that I will see her again in eternity. That she was not lost to salvation. One can dispute the theology, one can dispute the traditions, (but) one can’t dispute the senator’s faith, commitment, his love of family and his authenticity. Barack Obama’s the real deal, and even Republicans can see it.”

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Reading Kmiec’s comments online yesterday at Christianity Today’s website, I was reminded of a Jordan sermon I have on tape from just after 9/11 in which my preacher tells of inadvertently riling up a popular local Christian radio talk show hostess after she denounced Bill Clinton’s moral character to him.

Jordan recalled, “She blew her stack when I asked her the question, ‘Have you ever considered the fact that Bill Clinton could be a Believer?’ She said, ‘Oh, no, nobody could do what he does, and promote what he promotes, and be a Christian!’ I said, ‘You want to bet?! You think people have to be politically like you in order to be a child of God?!’

“She said, ‘Well, how could he support abortion?!’ I said, ‘Well, there’s a guy in I Corinthians 5 who was living in incest. He did a whole lot worse than Bill Clinton ever thought about doing in the White House Oval Office or whatever it is you’re all mad about.”

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Jordan told this same Sunday morning congregation about how once, four to five years earlier, he accidentally caught a re-broadcast of a 1992 interview with Clinton on ABC’s Nightline in which the then first-time presidential candidate “talked about all the failures in his life and about his faith.”

Jordan recalled, “I sat there at the end of my hotel bed (watching this) and almost fell on the floor listening to that guy! I can’t quote it perfectly, but I remember the gist of it because it shocked me so, and I remember thinking, ‘You know, I better write this down—nobody’s ever going to believe I heard this!’

“Clinton said, ‘You know, I’m constantly aware of my failures. I’m full of failures. I’m a sinner but I believe in a Redeemer. I have a Savior who I trust with all my heart that went to the Cross and died for me and shed His blood for me.’

“When the word blood came out, I thought, ‘Holy mackerel, ABC let this on!’ I didn’t know who to be more flabbergasted by—Bill or ABC! Clinton gave a clear testimony in faith in Christ alone and I thought, ‘He believes what he said, and it sure sounds like he does!’

“I thought, ‘You know, that’s just how you get saved; that’s how you get into the family of God. That’s the way God thinks and everybody else can think anything they want to but you know what’s going to happen? God’s going to take the ones He thinks are His into His family and He’ll always be right.

“There are going to be a lot of people, I suspect, who get into heaven and folks are going to look at them surprised they ever got resurrected—surprised that God thought they were His children.

“You know, Christian people can believe a lot of things and do a lot of things that aren’t consistent with who they are in Christ, but you don’t get saved by what you do and don’t do. You get saved by what God did and you’re receiving it as a free gift.

“And whether you ever live like it or not, look like it or not, smell like it or not, vote like it or not, or do anything else like it or not . . . Romans 6 says, ‘How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ The message is, ‘You shouldn’t do it, but there’s a difference between may and can; should and shouldn’t; should and couldn’t.

“You can go through the Bible and through Paul’s epistles and find saints doing every wicked, evil thing you can think of anybody doing. Paul will chastise them about it because it’s inconsistent with who they are—it’s a waste of their life in Christ—but he doesn’t tell them they’re not saved because of it. He says, ‘You’re living like you’re not saved.’ ”

(Editor’s Note: Still have one last installment to my Solomon series coming. Sorry for the delay.)