Here is a story that shows how hopelessly lost our country has become. First, the man selected by voters as the Republican presidential nominee makes a stump speech in which he tells the richest county in America how "lousy" it is doing. He cites the closing of factories in the area as the cause, though none of the closed factories cited were in the area or had impacted its residents at all. Trump, contrary to the belief of his diehard supporters, is proven by his stump speech this week in Loudoun County, Virginia to be just as out of touch with the American people as any other present-day politician. Not only is Trump ignorant about the plight of the average American, being unable to see it from the penthouse of Trump Tower, but his political handlers are so indifferent about the plight of the American people that they don't even bother to double-check the facts of Trump's talking points before Trump starts talking. Now, as much as this proves the putridity of modern-day politics, it is not as great a proof of our nation's present-day peril as what Trump is condemned for by Sara Gonzales in her RedState article. Ms. Gonzales doesn't condemn Trump for being disingenuousness, but for being a Harry Potter-like "Dementor."

Dementors, according to the book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, are evil beings that "drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them." As a result, they also suck from you "every good feeling" and "every happy memory." According to Ms. Gonzales, this is a "perfect description of Donald Trump," a man who "has managed to get this far in [this] election by feeding off of other people’s desperation, their despair, their sadness, and most of all, their fears." Trump, according to Ms. Gonzales, "thrives off of killing happiness so much that he went to the richest county in America and told them they were not well off."

We all know that if there is one taboo in modern-day politics it is speaking the disconcerting truth about our country's current dire and desperate straits. To be a successful politician today, candidates must serve up pie in the sky to a sweet toothed American electorate that finds nothing palatable unless it is sugarcoated. This explains why a liberal lollypop like Hillary Clinton has a double digit lead over the tart Mr. Trump in the latest polls. Terrorism may be sweeping our planet, but liberals keep tickling our fancies with the promise of an upcoming global group hug. Our nation may be on the verge of a racial civil war, but liberals keep tickling our fancies with the promise that things like the Black Lives Matter Movement will lead us into a color-blind society. Our country may be running on hot checks, but liberals keep tickling our fancies with the promise of filling the pockets of government dependents with more and more moola from bankrupt government coffers.

All of this in the political realm is no surprise to a preacher like me. Having been given the spiritual gift of prophecy and called by God to be a prophet, I know first hand the disdain one suffers in today's truth-hating world for daring to declare the truth. In an end-time world, where people, as the Bible predicts, cannot "endure" the truth, but instead "heap to themselves teachers" to tickle their "ears" (2 Timothy 4:3), preachers like me are anything but popular. I guess in the eyes of Ms. Gonzales I'm another "Dementor"; in fact, if she ever heard me preach she may conclude that I'm a "Dementor" on steroids.

Recently, a couple left our church explaining to friends that they were tired of being depressed and scared by my preaching. They went down the road in search of one of those "home on the range churches," you know, "where never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day." I understand it takes the cartwheel inducing pie in the sky sermons of a grinning and gitty Joel Osteen to be popular in a modern-day pulpit. I also understand that a preacher like me, dishing out the bitter truth in a time when truth has become intolerable, has no prospect for the future but persecution in a country that insists upon its terminal condition being treated with nothing but sugar pills. Still, I believe the truth of Christ is the only remedy for a sin-sick world and that I'm divinely duty-bound to preach it, regardless of how distasteful it may be in today's truth-regurgitating America.