by Lou Engle
To The Black Church in America:
Since 1776 this great country has been a beacon of light to the rest of humanity in demonstrating the divinely allocated value of each and every human individual. Though America has struggled to ensure freedom for every people, her enduring attitude “liberty for all” has prevailed at least in measure to every race, gender, and creed. Our country was securely built on foundational truths that, though at times have been wanting in application, have remained our countries basic societal and moral cornerstones. Thomas Jefferson articulated these basic values in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is this credo that has driven this nation to the heights of glory and power it currently resides in. The Constitution that governs this nation was founded on the belief that no man’s freedom can come at the cost of another and all men deserve to live free of repressive edicts, fear of death, and tyrannical oppression.
With this freedom in mind, forty-five years ago on August 28 a great prophet Martin Luther King trumpeted the sound of “I HAVE A DREAM” in front of thousands gathered at the mall in Washington D.C. It was from King’s resounding voice that hope was re-kindled in the hearts of a people who for years had been bound by oppressive chains of racial segregation and bigotry. They stood on that day in the shadow of the great memorial of President Lincoln in which is engraved the words of the Gettysburg Address: “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” This dream spoke of by King was a dream carved out of the bloody backs and sweaty brow of slave ancestors; it was a dream re-birthed out of the thousands of dead soldiers bodies that littered the killing fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, Manassas; and it was a dream forged from the sweltering heat of poverty, segregation, and racism.
Abraham Lincoln, a man well versed in the scriptures, most certainly drew his inspiration from Numbers 35:33, “So you shall not pollute the land where you are, for blood defiles the land and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it except by the blood of him who shed it” as well as Genesis 9:5-6 “ Surely for your life blood I will demand a reckoning… Whoever sheds mans blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.” Lincoln came to understand that the Civil War was God’s divine discipline upon a people and a nation who refused to live according to God’s laws. Lincoln was aware that the Civil War was a day of reckoning for the horrific injustice of slavery and the shedding of innocent blood done in the name of economic gain and racial oppression. If what Lincoln came to conclude was true and if 600,000 men died on the battlefields of the Civil War for the blood of slavery, what will it mean if God brings a day of reckoning for the shed blood of conservatively 48 million aborted babies since Roe v. Wade 1973?
The dark shadow of abortion stretches itself across the moral fabric of our nation. Since the landmark case Roe v. Wade in 1973, yearly the blood of up to 1.3 million babies has been spilled upon American soil. Undermining the basic foundational moral and societal cornerstones laid in both scripture and by our founding fathers, abortion strikes against the very life of our nation. A living, moving, feeling, and breathing child being abducted from the womb is not a “side-line” socio-political issue. We are talking about the murder of a child- a child who is just as “human” as the African American slave one hundred and fifty years ago working the cotton fields.
John Noonan, Professor of Law at the University of California says it this way, “Once or twice in a century an issue arises…So far reaching in its consequences and so deep in its foundations that it calls every person to take a stand.” In past times the forced removal of Native American Tribes from their homes was such an issue but very few took their stand. Slavery was such an issue, and the civil rights movement carried this kind of moral gravity. Undoubtedly there were many issues during the days prior to the Civil War that pressed upon the nation but God was bringing one issue to a divine apex. Based on whatever side you took in that day history now stands in judgment of you. And so it will be another forty years from now. History will stand in judgment of a nation that appallingly aborted its own children and assigned millions of her women to live lives plagued with shame, regret and devastated relationships.
This is not the end: the ready access to abortion now is fueling the worldwide proliferation of human sex trafficking in which women are kidnapped and forced to have sex with men 10-20 times a night. When these women become pregnant, they are then compelled to abort their children in order to remain economically useful. How is this for fruit of the feminist cause célèbre? We have ended up enslaving our own daughters! We are unleashing a sexual insanity into the earth in epic proportions and abortion is the atomic bomb that has cleared the way for the gradual destruction of our nation’s moral values. This is not just a social issue; this is the shedding of innocent blood. Blood affects the spiritual realm and fuels the demonization of a whole culture.
In the scriptures the shedding on innocent blood is the ultimate crime, a crime that God would not pardon. 2 Kings 24:4 records that God removed Judah out of his sight because of the sin of Manasseh, “because of the innocent blood that he had shed, for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon.” Brothers and sisters, a great turn has been taking place in America on the ideology of Abortion. Movies are shouting adoption is a better answer than abortion. The movie Horton Hears A Who prophesies to millions that, “a person’s a person no matter how small.” Judges have been appointed in the US Supreme Court and the lower courts that are now ruling against partial birth abortion and agreeing that a child in the womb is a unique human life. Today we live in the shadow of possibly the most defining election in American history, and lamentably as I write this, millions of believers of Jesus are being courted by a mans charisma rather than his voting record. Senator Obama stated publicly, “35 years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade its never been more important to protect a women’s right to choose…Through my career, I have been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice and have consistently had 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL pro-choice America.” We have come to an Elijah v. Jezebel showdown in which America will choose LIFE or DEATH. And the church, called to be the prophetic conscience of a nation, melts away like snow in the summer heat awash in moral relativism.
As in the days of slavery and in the days of segregation, it was the moral blindness and silence of the church, even her involvement in the national sin, that caused generations after to wonder, how could a nation built on such godly foundations drift so far? The moral confusion within the church today over the issue of abortion is strangely reminiscent of a mindset that existed within the church in the midst of segregation and slavery. I believe as the church we have come to a defining moment in American history. In our repentance we may prayerfully see an end to the decrees of death legalized in Roe v. Wade and a new movement of adoption and compassion spring forth from the church of America. Likewise, if we fail to respond to the crisis of bloodshed within our nation and continue to waiver between two opinions, we may very well go through the fires of an ordeal that will shake this nation to its knees.
I believe that this election will literally be the churches’ choice between life and death and that it all comes down to this one singular issue. We can no longer “reason the issue away” as if it was just progressive maternal healthcare. 2008 is not entirely unlike 1858, the year that the Supreme Court of America ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that the slave was not a person but was property. Three years later, in 1861, the Civil War was unleashed and men went into battle singing, “Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Coming Of The Lord, He is Trampling Out The Vintage Where The Grapes of Wrath are Stored, He Has Loosed The Fateful Lightning Of His Terrible Swift Sword, His Truth Is Marching On.” Though they may not have known it, they were prophesying the judgments of the Lord against the bloodshed of slavery. God is not mocked, what you sow you will reap America. For 150 years after Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade now flies its bloody banner over America and it has yet to see what the reckoning looks like.
A group of young people who have been standing for four years in front of the Supreme Court pleading the cause of the unborn with LIFE tape over there mouths were given a dream. In the dream, they were going from court room to court room to court room which then lead to a long hallway and entered into a large court room and there God was preparing to bring His own court case against Roe v. Wade and in the dream the name of that court was Appomattox Court House. Appomattox is where God finished His court case against Dred Scott. Because Americas courts did not deal with slavery in its own halls of justice God took it to the Appomattox Court House where General Lee of the South surrendered to General Grant of the North. This was after 600,000 men’s blood was poured out on the battlefield of the Civil War as the full payment for the blood shed of slavery. Brothers and sisters, what will Appomattox Court House look like if America doesn’t deal with Roe v. Wade in her own courts.
Part 2 below.
October 24th, 2008
This is part 2 of an article by Lou Engle that I’m sure you’ll see in many other places. I’m posting part 2 first so that they appear in order on my website.
by Lou Engle
On September 15th 1963, 2 weeks after the “I Have A Dream” speech, a bomb exploded in Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church and 4 young black girls were killed. Martin Luther King was shattered with grief. What was equally heart rending as the atrocity was the appalling silence of the white majority. The white church either did not care or no one in it was willing to challenge the heavy politically correct atmosphere of racism that hung over those dark days. In his eulogy King called the girls, “Heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity whose deaths tell us to work passionately and unceasingly to make the American dream a reality. “Then he declared, “they did not die in vain, God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History is proved again and again that unearned suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this city.”
Today we affirm mightily that those girls deaths were not in vain. Today, a black man, Barak Obama has moved the nation running as a candidate for President. On November 4th, millions of black men and women can vote in America and for this we rejoice. But to my black brothers and sisters I am constrained to ask, was the innocent blood of those precious girls in Birmingham of any other biological makeup than the innocent blood of 4,000 babies (Psalms 106:37-38) who today was spilled in abortion clinics across America, 35% of which are Black American? Are not these little ones as much, “heroines of a holy crusade for freedom in human dignity as those 4 little girls?” And will not their innocent blood serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark nation? Or will the blood of these babies be the target of another “generation of oppression” who demand sexual freedoms at the expense and suffering of the most marginalized voiceless people group in America, the unborn? If the blood of these unborn human babies is a redemptive force (and they are human beings if we indeed believe the scriptures we preach), then does not the deafening silence of the mass of black and white pulpits over this great human tragedy weigh heavy against our people on the eternal scales of justice?
Was it wrong that Martin Luther King was disappointed with the white church in Birmingham? No, a million times no! Then will it be wrong to say that I am deeply disappointed with the Black American church whose voice is virtually silent amidst this holocaust and in the whirlwind of this presidential election. I will never know the pain of your past, your experience of poverty, or your history of lynching, but I am convinced that the “promised land” will not be found in some political “messiah” that promises change. In a speech before Planned Parenthood immediately after the Supreme Court had righteously upheld a ban on partial birth abortion, Senator Obama declared that the first thing he would do as president would be the drafting of the Freedom Of Choice Act. This act would virtually remove every restriction from every abortion procedure from conception to birth and could possibly even permit live birth abortions. In his speech Obama went on to say “ we know that a woman’s right to make a decision about how many children she wants and when – without government interference is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country.” Where did this fundamental right to abort our children spring from? Not from our forefathers and certainly not the scriptures. But here again the ancient lie asserts itself just as it did in the days of our constitutional forefathers. They refused to include the black slave in the ancient credo “liberty for all.” They built their freedoms on the bloody backs of slaves and now we demand our freedoms on the dismembered limbs of our children. Can we by conscience make alliance with this ideological and political throne? In Matthew 23 Jesus cries out “Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites because you build the tombs of the prophets, (like we have done with the Abraham Lincoln Memorial and numerous memorials to Martin Luther King) and adorn the monuments of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not had been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up then the measure of your fathers guilt.” (Matthew 23:29-32) The modern day equivalent to this scripture would be ——- If one honors Abraham Lincoln and agrees with his quotes engraved on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial, “…Till every drop of blood drawn by lash must be repaid by that drawn by the sword…” and then supports and votes for a man and a system that legalizes the shedding of blood of babies, then truly this one accuses himself before the very words of Jesus and agrees with the masters indictment, “Pharisee and hypocrite.” In your silence and in effect acceptance of abortion, and now in your voting you become like the sons of the white slave bosses and slave traders and the silent white church of America who enslaved and murdered the black race.
I write these things not with a vindictive spirit, I only ask that you prayerfully listen to my argument. I have prayed for 5 years for the Black American Church to lead us into a national healing for that is your redemptive gift. I have wept in intercession in Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham. I have walked the Trail of Tears. The Lord has shown us that abortion is connected to the ongoing injustices to the Black and Native Americans. Now is the time to forgive us and unite against this holocaust of abortion. Today I take courage and am filled with hope as I see a new company of black voices arising in America who are raising their voice against abortion declaring that the dream cannot live as long as we kill our children and wound our women. These are the new black prophets who carry forgiveness in their hearts like Martin Luther King toward those who have oppressed them who hold holiness of heart as a life standard, and in whom prayer is their breath. They are calling their people out of the fog of political alliances into the bright shining light of that ancient prophetic promise, “He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers unless I come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6) The turning of the fathers to the children is the remedy to the curse, not the raising up of a charismatic leader. Church of America, abortion is the complete antithesis to Malachi’s divine remedy.
Again to my black brothers and sisters, in California black leaders have raised their voice to ban same-sex marriage that was legalized this year by four judges who over-ruled the will of the people. I thank God for your faithful stand on the Word. But when you vote for Barak Obama you are aligning yourself with one who has stated firmly that he will appoint judges who will legally affirm the gay agenda. By doing so you actually contradict your own moral stand and you throw open the door to a flood immoral rulings that will affect not just your children but also the generations to come in America.
Some of the black church may say while reading this “What Shall We Do?” Forgive the white people, the US Government, and the white church for its lack of care for the poor and its racism. If you forgive you will receive redemptive authority like no other people group to lead this nation into the sunlit future of revival and reformation. Take up your prophetic calling again and lead the nation into true justice. Demand the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Expose her racist root springing from Margaret Sanger who targeted the black race for extinction. We must disarm her authority of immorality and take the millions of her death dollars and turn it into a stream of life to the inner cities. We must raise up massive mentoring programs across the nation and the church must lead the coming movement of adoption. Lets launch prayer and fasting movements that can alone challenge the spiritual darkness over our inner cities. We must proliferate crisis pregnancy centers and pregnant mothers homes. Then let us with one voice Black, White, Latino, and Asian, as was the dream of MLK, lift up a mighty chorus of fasting and prayer for God’s divine intervention in America. More than change, we need God’s mercy for the shedding of innocent blood. Let the dream go on for the binding of the wounds of our racial division and for the ending of abortion that together we may see another Azusa Street revival that was birthed by that great black prophet William Seymour. Black church of America lead us into another great move of justice and into another Great Awakening in America.
Lou
October 24th, 2008
Here’s an article I wrote a year and a half ago during the primary season on the faith of Barak Obama. It was interesting to go back and read it again in light of the discussions that abound on the potential benefits of an Obama presidency. After reading it again, I find it difficult to be restrained in kindness on this issue: I can’t grasp why someone would rationalize voting for a pro-death candidate in the name of faith. If anything, the twin skeletons in the closet of Obama related to his connection with potential voter fraud and donor fraud shout with far more clarity related to the substance of his faith than anything that Obama has actually done or demonstrated as a public figure, and as such I continue to stand by what I wrote last May.
If you can’t find the time to read “Dreams From My Father” or, “The Audacity of Hope”, then perhaps you can read the “Cliff’s Notes”summary given recently by the New York Times, as reporter Jodi Kantor examines Barack Obama’s faith. I’m not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to issues of media bias - I tend to view conspiracy theories as those musings that attribute far too much thoughtful, strategic thinking and planning on the part of those who constitute any kind of “right-wing conspiracy” or “liberal bias”. Of course a bias exists. Reporters are not automatons or robots able to divorce how they perceive the world, what is noteworthy, or what stories need to be told from their worldview and life philosophy. No one reads the New York Times for the facts. In the information age, the facts come quickly and fade from their importance just as quickly. People want to know more than “what” in our postmodern time - they want to know “why”.
This article, in fact, is exactly in line with modern reporting - particularly in regards to the media pace-setters. It presents, in fact, the reverse of the above premise: it feeds hungry information junkies the “why” as a means of providing a very interesting and noteworthy “what”. In other words, the reporter already assumes you knew the initial ”what”, or facts of the matter: Barack Obama is a man of faith. Her job, then, is to report to you why that is. In doing so, she is presenting to Democratic voters in the south and the principled swing voters throughout the nation a very appealing “what” - a presidential candidate that actually possesses a substantive faith. A similar article ran in the Times regarding Hillary Clinton’s Methodist faith a few months ago in Newsweek.
It’s a reasonable faith that is the subject of these presentations, a depiction of the kind of faith that stirs the complacent and provokes the selfish to do similar good works and have a like-minded concern for the down-trodden, or the “underdog”, the concept that Obama credits with his conversion to Christianity. It is a variation of a theme - faith as the vehicle for hope related to great societal change: all that is wrong being set right in a manner that expresses true justice for the weak and the hopeless. Isn’t this what we all are striving for - and isn’t this something that all should celebrate? Obama’s social and societal concerns appear to be noble and his intentions sound? If you are nodding your head “yes”, at this point, you really won’t care for what I say next.
What does your faith draw men towards?
Hear me when I say this - the fact that the New York Times has an affinity for Obama’s version of Christianity does not make it illegitimate in my eyes. I would, however, suggest that you read the previous paragraph again and tell me what is missing. In my opinion, the initial by-product of my faith in Christ should not be to stir men and women to good works and worthy causes. If you come away from talking with me and are not stirred to:
1. Know Jesus (and study the Bible) and / or 2. Pray more
…than I am going to have to confess, repent, and try again. I was commissioned to draw all men to the Beautiful One, the Desire of All Nations - the Risen King who is the only One worthy of such pursuit. I yearn and long within myself to be a true friend of the Bridegroom, and as such my prayer life is in part a pursuit of authentic loyalty through a transformed heart that draws no attention to myself or my own cause. I want to be a living advertisement for those things that burn on the heart of Jesus. Once we connect to Him in prayer, subject then to the tenderizing work of the Holy Spirit and ignited with a heavenly fire within, we will then receive our mandate and can go forth from that place in confidence that we have been sent by the King and are safely subject to His will.
Obama’s faith is the kind of faith that stirs the soul within itself to act as the first response to need and lack. As a gifted, competent, and capable man, one like Obama would feel a deep responsibility to do his part when made aware of the societal deficiencies and racial inequities that those around him experience on a daily basis. While sounding benevolent and reasonable, Obama falls victim to the most seductive deceit in all of history: the need to play the messiah for those who are in need. Obama’s faith is the kind of message that draws men to themselves as the solution to the problem. Thus it becomes (with seemingly good intentions), even initially (and fully expressed eventually), outrageously anti-messiah in spirit and in truth.
Men are sinners that need to be saved
The first sign of one who is “anti-messiah” is that they misdiagnose the problem. Thus, rather than preaching Jesus, they spend much of their time identifying problems and challenging people to change / learn compassion / get perspective in order to solve the problem. Pick any issue - race, poverty,the environment, peace, etc. The solution, ultimately, is that men would be transformed and renewed in their innermost being that they might walk in true meekness and love. This can only happen through encounter with Jesus Himself, of course. It takes repentance, it takes a conviction to leave our sinful ways, and it takes a continual heart cry in prayer to ask for help, or grace, in our times of need. It takes work to come into true godliness and holiness - work that most do not want to give themselves to. It is far easier to either preach easy forgiveness or social action as a way of appeasing the guilt of the wounded conscience.
The “what” and the “why” that is being presented to our generation falls woefully and tragically short of the truth of the gospel and the reality of the power of the kingdom of God to bring deep and eternal change. This issue, of course, goes deeper than a politician from Illinois and reaches into the depths of what it means to be the church in this hour to a lost and broken world. The solution, of course, runs far deeper than an introduction of the weak to a strong God whose love is relevant to their struggle. It lies in our willingness to confront our sin, repent, and continually and daily appeal to God to do what only He can do. This is not the popular theological conclusion of the day however, and the journey of the heart towards voluntary love and voluntary weakness is repulsive and foolish to the strong. It is, in fact, as it always has been, since the first man went his own way in his attempt to attain knowledge and insight to the world apart from the Living God.
In conclusion, a year and a few months later, I want to suggest to some to examine the kind of government that Nelson Mandela established in South Africa and the impact, today, that those decisions had. While Nelson Mandela had a compelling personal story that inspired many, his governance and socialistic ideals had a dire effect on South African society. While many are inspired by the “faith” and ideals of Obama, they really have given little to no thought as to how those ideals and values will actually impact our society. I would love to see someone attempt to prove that Obama’s ideals and ideas are superior, are a consistent representation of a biblical worldview, or will actually bring positive improvements to a nation in serious decline. While a zeal for change is understandable - what kind of change will Obama’s faith produce?
David
October 20th, 2008
Obama’s Abortion Extremism
by Robert George
Oct 14, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama’s views on life issues ranging from abortion to embryonic stem cell research mark him as not merely a pro-choice politician, but rather as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.
Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress. Yet there are Catholics and Evangelicals-even self-identified pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals - who aggressively promote Obama’s candidacy and even declare him the preferred candidate from the pro-life point of view.
What is going on here?
I have examined the arguments advanced by Obama’s self-identified pro-life supporters, and they are spectacularly weak. It is nearly unfathomable to me that those advancing them can honestly believe what they are saying. But before proving my claims about Obama’s abortion extremism, let me explain why I have described Obama as ”pro-abortion” rather than ”pro-choice.”
According to the standard argument for the distinction between these labels,nobody is pro-abortion. Everybody would prefer a world without abortions. After all, what woman would deliberately get pregnant just to have an abortion? But given the world as it is, sometimes women find themselves with unplanned pregnancies at times in their lives when having a baby would present significant problems for them. So even if abortion is not medically required, it should be permitted, made as widely available as possible and, when necessary, paid for with taxpayers’ money.
The defect in this argument can easily be brought into focus if we shift to the moral question that vexed an earlier generation of Americans: slavery. Many people at the time of the American founding would have preferred a world without slavery but nonetheless opposed abolition. Such people - Thomas Jefferson was one - reasoned that, given the world as it was, with slavery woven into the fabric of society just as it had often been throughout history, the economic consequences of abolition for society as a whole and for owners of plantations and other businesses that relied on slave labor would be dire. Many people who argued in this way were not monsters but honest and sincere, albeit profoundly mistaken. Some (though not Jefferson) showed their personal opposition to slavery by declining to own slaves themselves or freeing slaves whom they had purchased or inherited. They certainly didn’t think anyone should be forced to own slaves. Still, they maintained that slavery should remain a legally permitted option and be given constitutional protection.
Would we describe such people, not as pro-slavery, but as ”pro-choice”? Of course we would not. It wouldn’t matter to us that they were ”personally opposed” to slavery, or that they wished that slavery were ”unnecessary,” or that they wouldn’t dream of forcing anyone to own slaves. We would hoot at the faux sophistication of a placard that said ”Against slavery? Don’t own one.” We would observe that the fundamental divide is between people who believe that law and public power should permit slavery, and those who think that owning slaves is an unjust choice that should be prohibited.
Just for the sake of argument, though, let us assume that there could be a morally meaningful distinction between being ”pro-abortion” and being ”pro-choice.” Who would qualify for the latter description? Barack Obama certainly would not. For, unlike his running mate Joe Biden, Obama does not think that abortion is a purely private choice that public authority should refrain from getting involved in. Now, Senator Biden is hardly pro-life. He believes that the killing of the unborn should be legally permitted and relatively unencumbered. But unlike Obama, at least Biden has sometimes opposed using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion, thereby leaving Americans free to choose not to implicate themselves in it. If we stretch things to create a meaningful category called ”pro-choice,” then Biden might be a plausible candidate for the label; at least on occasions when he respects your choice or mine not to facilitate deliberate feticide.
The same cannot be said for Barack Obama. For starters, he supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest. The abortion industry laments that this longstanding federal law, according to the pro-abortion group NARAL, ”forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead.” In other words, a whole lot of people who are alive today would have been exterminatedin utero were it not for the Hyde Amendment. Obama has promised to reverse the situation so that abortions that the industry complains are not happening (because the federal government is not subsidizing them) would happen. That is why people who profit from abortion love Obama even more than they do his running mate.
But this barely scratches the surface of Obama’s extremism. He has promised that ”the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act” (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed ”fundamental right” to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, ”a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined ‘health’ reasons.” In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would ‘’sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.”
It gets worse. Obama, unlike even many ”pro-choice” legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice. He has referred to a baby conceived inadvertently by a young woman as a ”punishment” that she should not endure. He has stated that women’s equality requires access to abortion on demand. Appallingly, he wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need. There is certainly nothing ”pro-choice” about that.
But it gets even worse. Senator Obama, despite the urging of pro-life members of his own party, has not endorsed or offered support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, the signature bill of Democrats for Life, meant to reduce abortions by providing assistance for women facing crisis pregnancies. In fact, Obama hasopposed key provisions of the Act, including providing coverage of unborn children in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP), and informed consent for women about the effects of abortion and the gestational age of their child. This legislation would not make a single abortion illegal. It simply seeks to make it easier for pregnant women to make the choice not to abort their babies. Here is a concrete test of whether Obama is ”pro-choice” rather than pro-abortion. He flunked. Even Senator Edward Kennedy voted to include coverage of unborn children in S-CHIP. But Barack Obama stood resolutely with the most stalwart abortion advocates in opposing it.
It gets worse yet. In an act of breathtaking injustice which the Obama campaign lied about until critics produced documentary proof of what he had done, as an Illinois state senator Obama opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist’s unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability. This legislation would not have banned any abortions. Indeed, it included a specific provision ensuring that it did not affect abortion laws. (This is one of the points Obama and his campaign lied about until they were caught.) The federal version of the bill passed unanimously in the United States Senate, winning the support of such ardent advocates of legal abortion as John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. But Barack Obama opposed it and worked to defeat it. For him, a child marked for abortion gets no protection-even ordinary medical or comfort care-even if she is born alive and entirely separated from her mother. So Obama has favored protecting what is literally a form of infanticide.
You may be thinking, it can’t get worse than that. But it does.
For several years, Americans have been debating the use for biomedical research of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (originally for reproductive purposes) but now left in a frozen condition in cryopreservation units. President Bush has restricted the use of federal funds for stem-cell research of the type that makes use of these embryos and destroys them in the process. I support the President’s restriction, but some legislators with excellent pro-life records, including John McCain, argue that the use of federal money should be permitted where the embryos are going to be discarded or die anyway as the result of the parents’ decision. Senator Obama, too, wants to lift the restriction.
But Obama would not stop there. He has co-sponsored a bill-strongly opposed by McCain-that would authorize the large-scale industrial production of human embryos for use in biomedical research in which they would be killed. In fact, the bill Obama co-sponsored would effectively require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage that were produced by cloning. It would make it a federal crime for a woman to save an embryo by agreeing to have the tiny developing human being implanted in her womb so that he or she could be brought to term. This ”clone and kill” bill would, if enacted, bring something to America that has heretofore existed only in China-the equivalent of legally mandated abortion. In an audacious act of deceit, Obama and his co-sponsors misleadingly call this ananti-cloning bill. But it is nothing of the kind. What it bans is not cloning, but allowing the embryonic children produced by cloning to survive.
Can it get still worse? Yes.
Decent people of every persuasion hold out the increasingly realistic hope of resolving the moral issue surrounding embryonic stem-cell research by developing methods to produce the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells without using (or producing) embryos. But when a bill was introduced in the United States Senate to put a modest amount of federal money into research to develop these methods, Barack Obama was one of the few senators who opposed it. From any rational vantage point, this is unconscionable. Why would someone not wish to find a method of producing the pluripotent cells scientists want that all Americans could enthusiastically endorse? Why create and kill human embryos when there are alternatives that do not require the taking of nascent human lives? It is as if Obama is opposed to stem-cell research unless it involves killing human embryos.
This ultimate manifestation of Obama’s extremism brings us back to the puzzle of his pro-life Catholic and Evangelical apologists.
They typically do not deny the facts I have reported. They could not; each one is a matter of public record. But despite Obama’s injustices against the most vulnerable human beings, and despite the extraordinary support he receives from the industry that profits from killing the unborn (which should be a good indicator of where he stands), some Obama supporters insist that he is the better candidate from the pro-life point of view.
They say that his economic and social policies would so diminish the demand for abortion that the overall number would actually go down-despite the federal subsidizing of abortion and the elimination of hundreds of pro-life laws. The way to save lots of unborn babies, they say, is to vote for the pro-abortion-oops! ”pro-choice”-candidate. They tell us not to worry that Obama opposes the Hyde Amendment, the Mexico City Policy (against funding abortion abroad), parental consent and notification laws, conscience protections, and the funding of alternatives to embryo-destructive research. They ask us to look past his support for Roe v. Wade, the Freedom of Choice Act, partial-birth abortion, and human cloning and embryo-killing. An Obama presidency, they insist, means less killing of the unborn.
This is delusional.
We know that the federal and state pro-life laws and policies that Obama has promised to sweep away (and that John McCain would protect) save thousands of lives every year. Studies conducted by Professor Michael New and other social scientists have removed any doubt. Often enough, the abortion lobby itself confirms the truth of what these scholars have determined. Tom McClusky has observed that Planned Parenthood’s own statistics show that in each of the seven states that have FOCA-type legislation on the books, ”abortion rates have increased while the national rate has decreased.” In Maryland, where a bill similar to the one favored by Obama was enacted in 1991, he notes that ”abortion rates have increased by 8 percent while the overall national abortion rate decreased by 9 percent.” No one is really surprised. After all, the message clearly conveyed by policies such as those Obama favors is that abortion is a legitimate solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies - so clearly legitimate that taxpayers should be forced to pay for it.
But for a moment let’s suppose, against all the evidence, that Obama’s proposalswould reduce the number of abortions, even while subsidizing the killing with taxpayer dollars. Even so, many more unborn human beings would likely be killed under Obama than under McCain. A Congress controlled by strong Democratic majorities under Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would enact the bill authorizing the mass industrial production of human embryos by cloning for research in which they are killed. As president, Obama would sign it. The number of tiny humans created and killed under this legislation (assuming that an efficient human cloning technique is soon perfected) could dwarf the number of lives saved as a result of the reduced demand for abortion-even if we take a delusionally optimistic view of what that number would be.
Barack Obama and John McCain differ on many important issues about which reasonable people of goodwill, including pro-life Americans of every faith, disagree: how best to fight international terrorism, how to restore economic growth and prosperity, how to distribute the tax burden and reduce poverty, etc.
But on abortion and the industrial creation of embryos for destructive research, there is a profound difference of moral principle, not just prudence. These questions reveal the character and judgment of each man. Barack Obama is deeply committed to the belief that members of an entire class of human beings have no rights that others must respect. Across the spectrum of pro-life concerns for the unborn, he would deny these small and vulnerable members of the human family the basic protection of the laws. Over the next four to eight years, as many as five or even six U.S. Supreme Court justices could retire. Obama enthusiastically supports Roe v. Wade and would appoint judges who would protect that morally and constitutionally disastrous decision and even expand its scope. Indeed, in an interview in Glamour magazine, he made it clear that he would apply a litmus test for Supreme Court nominations: jurists who do not support Roe will not be considered for appointment by Obama. John McCain, by contrast, opposes Roe and would appoint judges likely to overturn it. This would not make abortion illegal, but it would return the issue to the forums of democratic deliberation, where pro-life Americans could engage in a fair debate to persuade fellow citizens that killing the unborn is no way to address the problems of pregnant women in need.
What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama’s America is one in which being human just isn’t enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama’s America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: ”that question is above my pay grade.” It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator’s pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy - and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then.
In the end, the efforts of Obama’s apologists to depict their man as the true pro-life candidate that Catholics and Evangelicals may and even should vote for, doesn’t even amount to a nice try. Voting for the most extreme pro-abortion political candidate in American history is not the way to save unborn babies.
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics and previously served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He sits on the editorial board of Public Discourse.
Copyright 2008 The Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.
October 14th, 2008
Here’s a bit of a conversation I had recently related to an exchange about Obama and the issue of abortion…
First, the comment I responded to:
See thats just it, not MY thinking, not my understanding, God called me to the ministry that I do, and put on my heart to share the burden of those walking, living dead, in sin, to preach a gospel that gives them life in Christ.
I am fervently doing that so that my Lord will say WELL DONE, and my eyes will rejoice on that great getting up morning to see with HIM, the mothers now in glory reunited with all the souls of their little babies.
See if you could muster up just a jot of empathy, you could see the need of ministry to the mothers that have kill their little babies and are hurting.
How can you say you love them that you have not seen, and can’t help the ones you can see?
Here is my response:
I do appreciate that, and have ministered to and with those who have committed abortions - I have much compassion as we must for any who are in sin or seeking to be free from sin. Murdering your own child has a particularly devastating impact on one’s psyche and soul - I hate it; but have much compassion for the poor who feel trapped and hopeless.
It’s the same compassion I would have had for a Klansman in the 1960’s who was raised by rageful bigots and “knew not what he was doing”. The sin of racism and hatred was not excusable; changing the laws did not end racism. It did, however, begin to shift a culture. I think that was MLK Jr.’s point about the law and the heart related to the beatings he suffered. Would he rather have the heart? Sure. But he also fought for the law as well on the way to changing the heart - as one buys time for the other.
It’s also the same compassion I would have had for a slave owner in the 1860’s who was raised by wealthy landowners who argued about the devastation to the economy of the south and the “complex issues” surrounding the ending of slavery. I am thankful that, in England, William Wilberforce was not moved by such empty arguments - as noble and as lofty as some of them sounded. I am thankful that, in America, many were unmoved by political and economic rhetoric and fought for those who could not fight for themselves.
I think that it is a bogus and strange argument to pit the unborn against the born in legitimizing who is more worthy of our time and energy. To me, it is like pitting prayer against evangelism or social justice. How can one fight for justice and the poor without a deep life of prayer? How can one fight for justice and the poor without fighting for the most downtrodden, ignored group in all of history? It makes no sense to me. I happen to think that it is possible to fight for both.
Again, I find it unfathomable that one would be willing to hand over the next generation in the name of justice for the poor. That seems short-sighted at best, and cannot square with anything in the heart of God that I can find. And again, abortion impacts african-american babies more than any other group in the nation. We have to be fighting for a systematic infrastructure change that gives these babies a chance - not consigning them to heaven and fighting for their parents as we simultaneously excuse or permit a culture of convenience, easy answers, and murder. How is that helpful?
In fighting for life we establish value on the most important thing - which effects everything else in the value systems and culture of the poor and the hopeless as one builds for the future. In the same manner, fighting for an end to slavery establishes a value for freedom and equality among men that ended the charade of superior races and paved the way for a systematic cultural shift over time. No other social changes or improvements in the 19th century can compare to one that simply assigns value to another human.
In pitting social changes for the living against social changes for the unborn, you are sending a powerful message to the living about what is valuable on about five levels. In devaluing their babies for immediate, short-term change one is also communicating subtly that they are less valuable -though all of the rhetoric is that they are “more valuable” because they are alive. It rings hollow. It feels selfish. It lacks vision.
And frankly, I expect more out of believers, politicians, and the people of this nation in regards to true leadership that transforms a culture rather than elevating a false form of compassion that is really unsanctified mercy or human sentiment. And, I hope that you will forgive me and hear this correctly with tenderness - I expect more out of you.
Jesus’ answer to the issue of slavery and injustice to african-americans is not to place an african-american over the peoples in power and influence. His answer, the answer of true justice, is to deliver them from spiritual slavery and literal bondage and then establish them as a people as slaves to righteousness, serving those who enslaved them willingly in meekness, love, and forgiveness in a manner that glorifies God by doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with their God. It’s the most shocking, incomprehensible expression of the leadership of God that reflects the Servant of All who came to serve and not to be served.
I find that the answer that many in the African-American community are seeking related to justice falls so far short of the biblical model and lacks heavenly vision and heavenly wisdom, which is why there is confusion and wickedness amongst some of the top voices in our nation today. But for the African-American church to lead the charge in meekness, servant-heartedness, humility, and a unified call for life…what an impact that would have on the hearts of many.
It would glorify Christ and magnify His name.
David Sliker
October 14th, 2008
I haven’t posted for a week or so because, late last week after finishing the latest round of teaching Old Testament Survey, my family hopped into our car for yet another cross-country trip. This time, we made our way to Beaufort, South Carolina for a funeral service for Tracey’s grandmother. Her passing was both swift and expected, the right time and all too soon - as these moments in time often are. She was saved, which is joyous and glad - and it was sweet to meet her pastor and some members of her Wednesday night bible study. My wife shared a little at the service, and it was fun for me to point out to our girls just how amazing their mom is. Her poise, joy, insight, and wisdom in the manner in which she shared about her grandmother’s role in shaping her heart was beautiful. I am proud and honored to be Tracey Sliker’s husband.
There isn’t anyone like her.
Then, a day later, I was introduced as the new Executive Director of TheCall, an assignment I will be jumping into fully beginning November 2nd, after TheCall California. On that Sunday the baton will be passed by the current holder of that post and I will begin another adventure in this bizarre life that the Lord has invited my family to enjoy. I am still 100% a senior leader at IHOP-KC via what we call our “Prayer Department” (where I give leadership to our second prayer room), will still be teaching at IHOPU (albeit much less than before), and will still be giving leadership to the Student Ministries Department.
I am, however, rather excited about this next assignment from the Lord because of the singular way in which I get to run with cool people that I love and serve Lou and Therese Engle in a tangible way.
As I look at the above list, I shake my head, aware that other changes are sure to come on the heels of this one. Yet I cannot deny that the Lord clearly orchestrated this latest move and I have been a passenger on a sovereign train whose destination is still unclear. I am trusting that the wisdom of what the Lord has done in placing me in TheCall world will become clear once the story unfolds a bit more and I have more information to understand His plans and purposes in this regard. So I am in the phase as things begin where I often find myself when He shifts and shakes my life in startling new directions - closing my eyes and holding my hands open to Him, waiting for Him to speak and give clarity.
Of course, there is an item missing from that list that will be glaring to three or four of you - whither the book I have been working on? Wherefore art thou, oh bane of my existence? Right now I am “stuck” and need to carve out the time and space to focus on finishing that project. I have no idea how I will do it. I have no idea when I will do it. I am convinced that, at some point, I will finish it. For now, however, I will anchor myself like a feather to the gentle breeze of the Lord that is carrying me to destinations and adventures that only He knows about. I can’t wait to find out what He has been thinking.
I have a few political thoughts and human nature thoughts that have struck me over the past few days that I might throw out there before continuing the Joel series. We’ll see. In the spirit of Joel chapter two…who knows?
David
September 30th, 2008
The Unsolvable Crisis
As we have seen in the previous section, God has orchestrated an inconceivably difficult scenario for the citizens of Judah to navigate while alerting them to an insurmountable, inescapable scenario that is bearing down on them soon after. God has created (and given freedom for the emergence of) for them, then, an unsolvable problem. As I write this, I feel as if I am watching my own nation decline and descend slowly into its own insurmountable issues - the sentences above form, then, an intensely personal lens by which I view the book of Joel.
As we speak, huge mortgage brokerages have been assimilated into the federal government that is already spending and borrowing at record deficit levels. Two more major banks, paragons of Wall Street for over a century, have either collapsed or are on the verge of insolvency. Millions of babies have been and are being aborted and my nation is seriously considering electing a leader whose primary agenda is to open the doors to greater numbers of abortions in the name of “reproductive rights”. Immorality is on the rise in terms of cultural normalcy and national slumber - what was unthinkable even a decade ago is becoming accepted and normal everywhere you look.
I am running out of places that are safe for my eyes. My heart is burning and aching over the absence of ideas that represent even a sliver of wisdom and hope that there are real solutions forthcoming to turn the tide of financial ruin, political impotency, infanticide, and cultural degradation wiping out the collective conscience of a generation of unsuspecting teenagers. I can now imagine what stirred the prophet Habakkuk to cry out for justice 2600 years ago. I cannot yet imagine the dread of God’s response bearing down like the unyielding tide upon Judah under the weight of judgment.
There Are No Answers
When one surveys the political scene or turns on the continuous news and talk cycle that is now dominating our airwaves, one is confronted with a truth that can be similarly hard to bear: no one knows what to do. A cult of personality has become a happy anesthetic. I do not begrudge our candidates their current strategy - what choice do they have? Admit to the American people that no leader, no government, and no people can find a solution to the avalanche that has subtly begun - and cannot be stopped? It is easier to distract in the safest, most generic way possible than to risk ridicule in presenting useless proposals that are like scooping a spoonful of water out of a sinking ship.
Israel’s history is littered with kings from the northern and southern kingdoms that attempted in vain to apply their collective gifting and intellect to formulate a way forward out of their national trouble and crisis. Every economic and political solution was considered, every human answer was proposed. Alliances, treaties, bargains, tributes, and all manner of overt and subtle maneuvering only accelerated Israel’s decline. God had truly hemmed her in, leaving her with only two options if she dared admit the truth. One of those options, of course, was to take the prophet Jeremiah’s counsel, not fight against the inevitable, and let the wave of judgment from God’s hand run its course.
There is Only One Answer
The other option was to heed the advice of Joel: turn with weeping, fasting, and mourning in appealing to the mercy of God. The terror of this course of action is that both prophets were correct. Not even Joel would prophecy a full turning of the Lord from judgment - Jeremiah spoke the truth. The best that Joel could offer the people at the stage of decline and crisis that they fond themselves in was to accept both truths: yes, judgment was coming and was inevitable. There were no solutions. There was no way to fight their way out, no alliance or no nation that could aid them now. Thus there was one clear thing that they must do if some were to survive what was coming: repent, gather, and pray.
It was actually the kindness of the Lord to box in this proud, independent, gifted people and give them no other option but to cry out for mercy. God left them no other option but to examine themselves - how had their sin, their selfishness, and their arrogance bring them to the brink of extinction? How could they survive the coming wave of judgment at the hands of the Babylonian army? God’s answer to Habakkuk held the key: “the just shall live by faith.” In other words, regardless of the intensity of the threat against them, the promises of God would never fail.
Thus the one who stood confidently in the hope of God’s zeal for His promises would see them come to pass - even if they died before the fulfillment of those promises. Babylon could do their worst. Those who put their trust in the Lord would not be ashamed - even if God had to raise them up later on to see that trust vindicated. God is not the God of the dead - but of the living! Thus the sincere and the tender could stand with their fathers, the great patriarchs and prophets, and believe that God would prevail and that His mercy endures forever. Now, what hope wold they have as a nation? How could God’s promises for all the Israelites prevail?
Imagine the answer given today to the next President of the United States: “Mr. President, the only hope for the survival of our nation is if the people truly repent of their sins, fast, and pray in large gatherings in every state.” Imagine if that was the bill a trembling Senator presented on the floor of Congress. Imagine if the government agreed that there were no other solutions that could work but this one. And even then, who knows? What if our politicians presented this option to the people and honestly said to the people, “who knows?” God is a huge fan of political suicide for the sake of righteousness, in the hopes that some would respond and believe in the God that delights in mercy.
Joel’s Prayer for Mercy
Joel lays out for the people the importance of and the program for the national solemn assembly. It should be a consecrated (set apart) day in which the peoples fast before the Lord. Everyone should attend the assembly - the elderly, the children, even those who had planned weddings should cancel everything and gather to cry out four their future. The priests were to lead the way in weeping and mourning in front of the people. All should pray Joel’s prayer: “Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’” Joel has them take the same approach as Moses had once taken in appealing to the glory of the name of God amongst the nations.
Would it work? Would God leave a blessing behind?
God was ambiguous about whether or not the peoples of that generation would be spared. It was not clear, nor was it promised, that they would see the goodness of God in that time frame. The Lord, however, gives them even more than the potential survival of their nation as the motivator for their prayers and fastings. He also defines for them what the prophet means when He speaks of potential “blessings” left behind in the kindness of the Lord. God desired to do more than spare them from judgment - it was always in His heart to bless them extravagantly. The catalyst for true and wholehearted repentance must be knit to a hunger and a yearning to lay hold of the full measure of the blessing of the Lord on our lives.
Before examining the blessing itself, however, the question hangs in the air - even today , as our national resources grow more meager and slim by the day. Do we believe that He is gracious and merciful? Do we believe that He is slow to anger, and that it has taken a while in sin and compromise to reach this point? Do we believe that He is of great kindness and desires to relent from doing harm to those whom He loves?
With no guarantees - only the invitation to turn towards Him that He might, might, turn towards us - how much do we desire His mercy and His blessing on our lives and on our nation? How much is it worth to us - how much can we give? Joel asks this in a pointed way to an agriculturally devastated people - would they gather up whatever meager heads of grain and scattered grapes remain to make a grain and drink offering to the Lord? In their lack - or something beyond even lack - could they take their last remaining scraps of food and drink and offer it before the Lord in the hopes that He might perhaps relent and bless them?
How much do we actually believe that God desires to turn and relent from doing harm?
Next: Joel 2:18-27 and the heart of the Lord to bless His people
David
September 16th, 2008
The Great Trip Up
In Joel 2:1-11, we find one of the greatest exegetical “trip ups” of all time. I have found that it is nearly impossible to talk the convinced out of their viewpoint of this passage, regardless of logic, context, and grammatical flow. The “trip up” comes in verse 11: “The Lord gives voice before His army…” Thus, a strange confusion settles in upon reading that phrase. The whole meaning and purpose of the passage is handed over to make the army in question the church at the end of the age. The passage must then become spiritualized to make the details fit this conclusion.
The secondary problem is that the spiritualized details subsequently do not fit any other biblical descriptives of the church at the end of the age. Yes, I fully agree that the church at the time of the Second Coming will be on the earth, moving with great authority and power, walking without spot or wrinkle, walking in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God (A few examples from the scripture include: Eph. 4:13; 5:27; Rev. 8:1-5). There will be a great harvest of souls that emerge from the great tribulation in the final years of history (Rev. 7:9-17). There is much to be stirred about when considering God’s plan for the church just before the return of His Son according to the promises of scripture.
Most prominently, however, scripture describes a time of great martyrdom and intense shaking for the church as the nations of the earth rage against God. The predominant feature of the victorious church at the end of the age is that it will be victorious in love; or according to the designation of the book of Revelation, filled with those who overcome. The greatest wave of darkness, sin, corruption, lawlessness, and rage in all of history establish the backdrop of what Paul described as “perilous times” in the final days for everyone - including the church. That the church stands in loyalty and obedience to Jesus and does not waver or falter in that time is the testimony to the power of God to answer the prayer of Jesus in John 17:26 -
“And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”
Thus, while I agree that the church at the end of the age will be victorious, filled with grace and might in the Spirit of God, will disrupt the nations and the peoples with a message of the coming of the Son (with power, signs, and wonders that follow) - I want to state clearly that the greatest expression of victory for the overcoming church at the end of the age will be martyrdom and abandoned obedience to the Sermon on the Mount, even in the face of gross injustice. I do not foresee an army that runs over walls, breathes fire (well, except for two witnesses), makes the enemies of God turn white with fear, etc.
In other words, Israel is not commanded to “sound the alarm” because of an end-time army of believers. This makes little sense in terms of what the prophet Joel looked to communicate.
Whose army is it?
The alarm must be sounded in the land of Judah - a graver threat than the locust “army” is coming to them. The initial army of locusts was a prophetic foreshadowing of a far more fierce and bloodthirsty army that would come to make the land desolate and barren. It would emerge as the most unstoppable and destructive army of its era - or any other era prior to that time, for that matter. Never had the peoples seen an army like this one. For as relentless as the locusts were, and as impossible as they were to turn aside, so would the incoming army come down upon the nation of Judah. There was no way for Judah to bargain or think their way out of the crisis that they were facing.
Why? There were two terrifying reasons that Joel presents to the Israelites that one must grapple with. First, the crisis was inescapable because it was part of the day of the Lord for them. They had always imagined that “the day of the Lord” would be the day in which God delivered the nations into their hands. Here, they are forced to confront the idea that the day of the Lord would also be a day of reckoning for them in their sin and rage against God and His ways. Secondly, the army was inescapable because it was the Lord’s army. God Himself had raised up this wicked, demonized, bloodthirsty army to judge the nation of Judah for their sin and rejection of God and His ways.
For Joel, there is no time to wrestle with the theological implications of such a statement. There is only time to sound an alarm, blow a trumpet, and alert the peoples, and hope that they are awakened to the coming threat in time. It would be the prophet Habakkuk who would wrestle with God over this issue: how could God raise up a people more wicked and unjust than the Hebrews to be an instrument of His justice and judgment? How could this wicked army be “the Lord’s army”?
Who can endure it?
This is the great question that God wants everyone to ponder when considering the magnitude and intensity of His day. In the perfection of His leadership, He allows the sin and wickedness of man to run its course if that is the direction men choose to take. He “hands” the nations over to their own rebellious ways. He thus allows the consequences of man’s sin to overtake them until they are completely hedged in and there can be no human deliverance from the problems that compound and multiply upon the nations.
The intensity of the fruit of sin, wickedness, and the descent into lawlessness demands justice and judgment to turn the tide and establish His righteousness. As Peter would later note, “judgment begins at the house of the Lord” in 1 Peter 4:17. As the Israelites would discover, no one is exempt from the dealings of the Lord to set things right where there is disorder and disarray. He will “shake everything that can be shaken”, as the prophet Haggai would note and the writer of Hebrews would echo (Hag. 2:7; Heb. 12:27).
Thus, the reason that God raises up an “outside agency” to shake the peoples and judge the wicked is that He places everyone through the fire of His dealings to produce either voluntary love or angry rejection. Throughout history God will then judge the entity He raises up to be His instrument of judgment. No one is exempt from the dealings of God to bring the peoples into the fullness of His plan and establish righteousness on the earth. In the end-times, according to Daniel 7, God will raise up the Antichrist and his armies to do to the church and to the nations what this ancient army did to Israel and the surrounding nations. In other words, this pattern of God’s leadership is one that has been consistent throughout redemptive history - and will be expressed again before the Second Coming.
Thus all are forced to examine their lives, if they have a heart to hear and respond to the alarm of the prophet, and determine whether or not they have the internal mechanisms needed to endure what is coming from the hand of the Lord. God allows and stirs unsolvable problems and hurls them at men and women knit to His desire to drive us back to Him in the place of prayer and repentance. In these first 11 verses of the second chapter of Joel’s message, God presents an insurmountable dilemma to His people.
The dilemma is that a people are coming, great and strong - an army the likes of which no one has ever seen before. It uses a scorched earth policy to burn everything they conquer in their wake. It leaves the conquered lands a desolate wilderness - and there is no escape from them. They have seemingly unlimited resources and discipline in their destruction - and the peoples faint with fear and agony at their coming. The analogy Joel paints of their relentless, orderly advance is one of a wave of insects invading a city and swarming through every corner. This was an analogy that the Hebrews now understood intimately.
A very great (or awesome in scope), and very terrible day has dawned for the people of the southern kingdom of Judah. Who among them could endure the trauma that was coming? Who among them cold stand in the face of insurmountable, inescapable terror? Who was the wicked and mighty army that was coming down upon them, the cause of Joel’s alarm? The Lord would reveal it to the prophet Habakkuk: the Chaldeans, or, as we know them today, the Babylonian army.
How could the nation endure?
Next: Joel 2:12-27 and the Divine Solution
David
September 15th, 2008
The word of the Lord comes to Joel
Disaster had overtaken the peoples of Israel - a locust plague had come, unlike anything the people had ever seen before. In a “typical” locust swarm, there can be as many as 60-100 million locusts per square mile. The “cloud” of a swarm can blot out the sun for some distance as the band can run for miles. A plague of locusts, then, could number in the billions and one wave can do immeasurable, incalculable damage to crops, land, water supplies; in essence one locust plague can devastate an ecosystem in the manner in which it consumes nearly all vegetation in a matter of hours.
In this instance, four waves of locusts descended, one after another, onto the Palestinian region. Devastated from the first wave, three more followed in brutal fashion, until nothing was left for the locusts to consume. First came the “chewing” locusts, who were then followed by the “swarming” locusts; in other words, the ravenous first wave was followed later by large swarms that descended en masse upon anything that was left. It would have been beyond disheartening - until the “crawling” locusts came, and ate any random scraps left on the ground or in hidden crevasses and nooks. Any hope or glimmer of joy would have been extinguished when the final wave of “consuming” locusts completely devoured any signs of vegetation that somehow survived the first three waves.
The land had been completely stripped bare - or beyond, if that could be possible. Joel spoke about the astonishing desolation throughout the early portions of his message to Israel - the food supply consisting of wheat and barley had “perished”, the “vine” or the grapes had “dried up”, all of the trees were gone, including the figs, apples, and pomegranate, as well as the palm trees.
Complete and utter desolation
We can easily connect to the trauma and stress on a society that occurs when wheat and barley “perish”. Two critical grains that make up a significant portion of the food / bread supply were wiped out, most likely within hours. Any stray grains that might have provided hope to build on for the future were gone. Were there even any seeds left to plant? The same loss of morale and introduction of despair accompanied the loss of the “vine”, or the grapes. Wine was a critical part of the diet of those who populated the region as well as a key part of their economic health and trade.
But what about the trees? It would have been horrifying to lose all of the fig trees, as they were among the hardiest and sturdiest of trees, particularly in the desert regions. In a land that consistently found itself in a water crisis, in which the two rainy seasons dictated the health of a nation from year to year, figs were the one food that could be counted on regardless of growing conditions. They were easy to dry and preserve. They were inexpensive and highly nutritious. To witness four waves of locusts consume them all was to see jobs, livelihoods, and a critical food source in a time of drought disappear from the land.
The palm trees, of course, provided critical resource for structures and furniture, and the leaves could be woven to provide all manner of baskets, mats, brooms, beds, ropes and other kinds of furniture. The dates from the palm trees were a food source, the juices from the trees were fermented into wine. The ancient palm tree was the equivalent of a modern Wal-mart in terms of the many purposes the trees served within Mediterranean societies. Imagine every single one of these important trees wiped out in four waves - to the point where the trees were beyond barren, but stripped bare through the bark. The branches of the fig tree, for example, had been “stripped bare and thrown away; its branches made white”.
A nation of drunkards had their wine forcefully taken from them; the priests had no grain or drink to perform the offerings and no oil for the lamps. As noted earlier, even the seed had “shriveled” and wasted away. The storehouses were empty. The animals were dying from lack of food - they were “groaning” and restless, “suffering punishment”. The horrific conditions led to a terrible drought and brush fires throughout the plains and fields. The land was crippled and the agrarian society a wasteland. As Joel noted, “Surely the joy has withered away from the sons of men”. Any joy or gladness had been “cut off” from the house of their God.
The day of the Lord is at hand
Joel boldly identifies the cause of their suffering: this was “destruction from the Almighty“, or El Shaddai - the “most powerful God”. There could be no other explanation for the four waves of destruction - this was a God-ordained event. His day was at hand - what did this mean? He had humbled His own people - why? Joel does not make the reasons for the destruction clear. There are hints of what the Lord will require of them later on in his proclamation, but unlike the other Old Testament prophets, he does not give a clear description of their sin and true condition before God. Joel is only concerned with what has happened as a sign of what is coming - and he has an urgency stirring him regarding the only solution that can deliver the people from further, more comprehensive destruction.
He is calling them to action - the reasons for the destruction of the land and the greater destruction to come must have been clear to the people. In other prophetic books, such as Hosea, the prophet declares to the people why judgment is coming as most were so ignorant of the law of God that they had o sense of right or wrong. Judgment would have overtaken them, and they would have had no clue as to why such a thing would occur. With no sense of law or morality, why would God declare them to be in rebellion? Hosea answers the question to give them a context for why trouble is coming.
Again, Joel does no such thing. He simple declares that trouble has come, that the Lord has done it, and that the people must gather to the house of the Lord to fast and pray. The proclamation is so direct and urgent that, again, one must assume that the people know full well their wickedness. The second option is that, in the timing of Joel’s proclamation, the people have almost run out of time. The tidal wave of greater judgment is approaching quickly, and there is no time to persuade the people to repent - Joel must simply declare it, and hope that the people respond in trembling before the Lord who has struck them.
Thus the issue of the first chapter of Joel becomes clear: God struck the people intensely to get their attention. Does He have it? Would they take Him seriously and call a fast? Would the people turn to Him? As the proclamation unfolds, we find that their immediate, and their ultimate, future and destiny hang in the balance of their response. In the moment, however, it begins by acknowledging that God has done this terrible thing - and has done so to drive the people into His house in a spirit of fasting. He has forced them to be solemn and sober in a way that they had not been, according to the earlier description of drunkenness and carousing. Their feast and celebration has come to an end.
It was now time to confront their God - and sobriety, consecration, and solemnity were required to have the conversation that was about to unfold.
Next: Chapter 2:1-14 - the Negative, Destructive Army of Judgment is Coming
David
September 10th, 2008
Overview of Joel
As I stated in my last post, the format of the book of Joel is fairly straightforward and easy to follow. Even the parenthetical aside in chapter 2:18-27 isn’t that confusing; it highlights the zeal God has for HIs people to “sign up” for the only solution that matters in the face of great crisis and impending judgment. Through the prophet Joel, God is giving the divine “counterpoint” to impending judgment and trouble - not only can crisis be averted or minimized through prayer, but great blessing and abundance can come as well through God’s invitation to gather and pray.
So, to say it again, the progression for the book of Joel can be understood as follows: disaster has struck, and it is a small crisis designed to gain the attention of the nation of Israel so that they will begin to prepare for an even greater crisis to come. This crisis is a military invasion that will do more than cripple their resources and make life difficult - it will threaten to wipe them out as a people altogether. To prepare for this coming invasion, God invites them to gather together and pray in massive solemn assemblies that acknowledge their need for divine intervention - everything else should be shut down to prioritize these solemn assemblies, even weddings.
If they gather, the Lord will do more than relent from doing them harm through judgment - He might even leave a great blessing behind! That atmosphere of blessing, as I said earlier, is described in detail: He will establish them in their promised destiny and cause the land to overflow with resource that will cause them to forget any hardship from the previous natural disaster. The Lord desires to establish them in the right way through the vehicle of prayer and humility - which makes it critical that they say “yes” to the invitation He has extended.
There is an immediate turning and blessing that the Lord wants to give to them as a people - but even if they do not respond immediately, God has a plan to establish them “afterward”, or in the future. He is going to pour out His Spirit on everyone, stirring up the nations into a global conflict that repays the nations with vengeance for how they have dealt (and will deal with) Israel. He is going to stir up the nations to such a degree that they will gather against Him and declare open war! It is in that context that the Lord will ultimately bring about the “blessing” Joel had spoken about earlier and ultimately deliver and vindicate His choice of Israel.
Our Inability to Grasp the True Problem
Ultimately, when it comes to Israel and her destiny and calling, God cares about three things - that she prays and repents (does justly) with a tender, “torn” heart (loves mercy), and fasts, weeps, and mourns (walks humbly with her God). I am, of course, connecting Micah 6:8 with Joel 2:12-13. Why? There are many opinions and conversations about “justice” in our day and what it means to “walk justly”. What did God have in mind when He spoke to Judah about her corruption and oppression of the poor? Was He inviting His people to create social programs and community development projects that addressed the needs of the overlooked?
No - He called them to begin their journey into “doing justly” in a manner that loved mercy and thus walked humbly with their God. ”Loving mercy” is such an important concept to infuse into our hearts and our understanding that Jesus twice urged the Pharisees to go and learn what this phrase meant: “God desires mercy, not sacrifice.” There is a strangely messianic zeal that seems to be expressing itself throughout the body of Christ in this hour related to the subject of justice. Compassion ministries with a zeal for justice are helpful, but seem to be missing some of the really big problems that are facing the church and society at large that cannot be solved with money, time, and gifting alone.
The greatest problems our nation faces echoes the issues that plagued ancient Israel. We are bandaging the gaping wounds of our society with helpful programs that ultimately are not that helpful. While a solution is better than no solution, God’s solution is ultimately the one that ranks as the highest priority to attain. There have been many good ideas that have been advanced in the name of God, Jesus, and Christianity - yet how many have actually embraced the first commandment (“Love the Lord your God…”) as the highest and best way to lay hold of the second (“Love your neighbor as yourself“)?
Too many leaders and visionaries see the church as a resource to solve the issues of injustice and inequity that threaten the poor and the oppressed. The highest calling of the church is to exemplify and evangelize a Man and His leadership, or His ways. We preach Jesus, yet forget that with the King and His Kingdom comes a lifestyle that is a critical part of full citizenship and relationship. The church must do more than talk about Jesus - she must express the authentic life and power that comes from walking intimately with Him. To imagine that we lay hold of the understanding, mindsets, lifestyle, and power that comes with being a citizen of another kingdom automatically is the greatest of assumptions that grossly ignores our weakness and broken thinking and reasoning.
The true problem is not that men are poor, oppressed, and hungry in their need. The true problem is that men are sinners who would destroy one another without God’s mercy and grace. What solution does the church have to offer a people that would consume themselves in the depths of their wickedness?
The Simplicity of God’s Complex Plan
The layers of obstacles that hinder us from truly identifying the root issues and problems facing our nation also detract from our ability to lay hold of the only anointed solution: prayer, fasting, repentance, and humility. The issues of poverty, oppression, and injustice that stir the soul to action and demand “change” cannot be solved by any man, any group, or any church. We need wisdom from heaven that cannot be gained casually, quickly, or cavalierly. We need solutions from God that transcend our natural inclinations and exceed the boundaries of our time, money, and gifting.
Yet in our natural arrogance, we imagine that more money, time, and gifting equals more involvement, busyness, and active engagement with the problems that we face. The prophet Joel offered a radically different course for the strong: be weak. He would later juxtapose this invitation to the prideful, angry response of the nations at war with God who are weak: be strong. Church, this is not the hour to be strong. This is not the hour to flex our resource and be problem-solving, task-doing, social activists. This is the hour to be weak. To pray, to fast, to repent, and to tear our hearts and acknowledge that we are part of the problem - not the gifted, wealthy, powerful solution.
We need eye-salve.
It’s so simple, anyone can participate: simply pray. Ask God for mercy. Ask God for help. Ask God to turn the hearts of the wicked and stir them to love the poor. Ask God to turn our hearts and stir us to love the poor. The Israelites were not called to band together and start societies dedicated to feeding the poor and building homes for the homeless. They were called to repent. Imagine the oddity! Imagine a senator standing on the steps of Congress and acknowledging the tragedy of poverty and oppression that is happening in our nation - and calling the church to repentance! These are not natural “dots” to connect, and yet this is exactly what God had the prophet Joel declare to Israel all those years ago.
The simplicity is found in the response of the people to tear their hearts, repent, and pray and fast. Within the words of Joel, we find the first and best response to national crisis. The problems and the solutions are too complex for us to grasp, and too many are content to throw sad into an ocean hoping to build a bridge. God would have us stare at the ocean of wickedness that leads to injustice and national crisis and be humble. He would have us call Him into the fight - and in doing so we end up more fully joining His team rather than imagining that He would bless ours.
The complexity is found in the multiple layers by which prayer takes hold and begins to “work”. We begin to connect with more understanding to the true issues. We begin to connect with the manner in which we hinder the work of God with our own wickedness. We begin to connect with our great lack. We begin to truly mourn and long for God in a way we did not when we busied ourselves trying to affect a short-term solution with short-term impact. We begin to connect to solutions that take longer to see expressed but lead to eternal impact. True blessing, power, and glory can be released to a people that have been humbled and are humble.
The wisdom of God’s solution is found in the brilliant way He involves corrupt, broken, weak human beings in being part of the solution to a cosmically difficult problem. He does all the work to get us into the place of prayer and then intervenes in our crisis because we prayed. What could be more astonishing? What could be more loving? Surely not the faulty and sentimental notions of love that are corrupting the thinking and the planning of well meaning, but ultimately disconnected and irrelevant, leaders around the body of Christ that are trying to find every way possible out of the crisis they find their nation facing.
Every possible way but one - and the only one: massive gatherings of prayer, fasting, and repentance that turn God’s people to turn a nation.
David
September 8th, 2008
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