His Hand is on the Door

To the Black Church of America, Pt. 2

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

Entry Filed under: current events, politics, prayer movement