"The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." -- Senator Barack Obama, speaking to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007
Please read the legislation proposed - you can follow the link through http://www.nrlc.org/foca/index.html
OK - so here we go . . . This is NOT an attack on our new President AT ALL - if anything, it is a call to pray FOR him . . . so regardless of how any of us may have voted . . . PLEASE read on. It is a call to prayer now, today, without delay.
I've looked at plenty of the church's varied responses to the election - both positive and negative - and given my own feeble one but now I want to get going and call us into action. We have NO time to waste.
There are many arenas of concern that we all care a great deal about, including war, civil rights, racism, poverty, the protection of Israel , etc. All of them have great weight and can NOT be neglected. But I want to focus on the issue of abortion because it is the matter of the day. One of the fundamental issues in the elections for almost as long as I've had an awareness (which was President Nixon's Election) has been this issues of life.
Very squarely, since before I understood what sexuality was about, I already understood what abortion was. The fact of the matter is that I knew then that the very word implied an end to something that has begun. I have been a participant in it and would have had one myself if I was faced with it and the only reason I escaped it was that somehow I did not ending up being pregnant. So, from the get go, you all need to know that I am not sitting in judgment or wanting to poke at arenas of the heart that many of us have our own grief over. I have committed so many sins, I consider myself a master and I squirm when any one of them are mentioned, including this one, even though I am hid in Christ. My point then is not to point . . . it is to rally, to awaken, to encourage.
"What is abortion? Is it more than people say it is? First the dictionary definition of abortion; Expulsion or extraction of the fetus from the womb before it is viable, usually before the twentieth week of gestation. Truly, there is more to abortion than any young desperate women could really see. Abortion is killing a living being. Not only does it kill it, but it could harm the women and make it impossible to conceive later in life. The definition states that abortion takes place before the twentieth week. Did you know that the baby’s hearts begin beating on the eighteenth day after being conceived? Also, doctors have begun using EEG, to detect brain wave activity to determine death. If a baby’s brain has activity at about forty – forty-three days after being conceived, shouldn’t it be considered a living being, after that amount of time? A baby is a baby right away. A baby is defined with forty-six – forty-seven chromosomes. If the baby was still part of the egg and sperm it would only consist of twenty-three chromosomes. Within twenty days a fetus becomes viable. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. What the bible says about abortion, the Bible really doesn’t say anything directly towards abortion. . . . The only reason it didn’t say anything directly towards it was because it was a completely unthinkable thing back then. "
"This may surprise you but out of the 4,000 abortions a day in America alone- only about 3% are because of rape and health of mother alone. can you believe that? The majority are because the woman chooses not to have a child at the moment. I do have compassion for the woman. I counseled them for over 10 years- and some of them never realized how devastating an abortion can be to the woman herself. There are many physical risks, but the main risks are emotional and spiritual. I counseled women who have not forgiven themselves for what they did, even if the abortion was years ago."
The practice of killing our infants is likened to the ancient worship of Molech and it basically was done in the guise of "protecting the family". Although we may claim it is different, it smells the same and the blood still cried out from the land. Biblically, we see judgment regarding it quite clearly in the conquest of Jericho whose walls were fortified with the blood and bodies of children as a sacrifice. As a note, our generation has been called a Joshua Generation. Joshua's first major conquest was Jericho - the tearing down of its walls through obedience and worship. Our first major conquest must be the end of this practice and the tearing down of THIS wall.
" . . . of the inhabitants who occupied the fortified city-outpost known as Jericho can raise many questions in the mind of the careful reader. The higher critic has claimed for many years there was a conflict between the Bible and current archaeological data and that the claimed historicity of the sacred text was merely exaggerated colorful myth. Some liberal thinkers have viewed the Jehovah of the Old Testament as a deity who required appeasement and blood sacrifice to satisfy his capricious lust, while the New Testament god, in their view, is all about love, acceptance, and toleration. Then, the atheist uses the Bible to “prove” to the Christian that the god of his scripture is a warmonger and the murderer of innocent women and children, and even if he did exist, he would remain unworthy of the worship and adoration required to satisfy his huge ego.
Even many an ardent Bible believer has felt some uneasiness at the unashamed transparency of the sacred text. Along with this comes the struggle to reconcile the relationship between a good and benevolent God and the obvious presence of evil in the world, especially as it relates to the death of women and children.
Recall the youthful gusto with which many have sung the traditional American spiritual.
“Joshua fit de battle of Jericho ,
Jericho , Jericho ,
Joshua fit de battle of Jericho ,
An de walls come a tumbling down.”
Of course, in Sunday School, as we marched around the chairs and pretended to blow the ram-horns, we were definitely on the side of the “good guys.” On the other hand, Jericho and its inhabitants were the villains who deserved to lose their city, though we didn’t know why. Only much later did we come to realize there was a sober side to this deadly dance, which gave new face and fresh meaning to our childish play.
Let us consider the text as it reads in the Authorized Version of the Bible.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword. (Joshua 6:21)
Try as we might, there is no way we can dodge the dilemma by laying the event at the feet of an overly zealous Joshua leading a nomadic army of marauding, misguided Israelites. Nor can we sweep it under the rug by allowing for some kind of modified divine permission or restraint, which might absolve God from any direct culpability. The fact remains; it was a carefully calculated act with a specific goal in mind. Jehovah ordered it (Deuteronomy 7:2), and Joshua did it (Joshua 6:21).
The qualifier in this saga seems to be what is referred to in Genesis 15:16 as the “iniquity of the Amorites.” The nations that occupied Canaan had become so hideously debauched, so degenerate in custom and practice, that the judgment of God became imminent. We are told in the Mosaic account that God is preparing to act and His longsuffering is about to end.
For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. (Leviticus 18:25)
In the larger context of the writings of Moses, the Amorites are viewed by Jehovah as representative of the whole of Palestine . Further, it was as if they had become so saturated with corruption that the very earth itself spit them out.
Recent textual discoveries in Ugarit confirm the Scripture record of centuries filled with idolatry, sodomy, bestiality, sorcery, and child sacrifice. Consequently, each generation had polluted the next with idolatry, perversion, and blood. We must not read Deuteronomy 18:9–12 with an emotionless indifference in the way that some would read yesterday’s news. Parents offered up their children to the god Molech by fire. Child sacrifice is more than an unfortunate, ancient tribal custom. It is a hideous twisted ritual conducted by men who have reprobated themselves into beasts. Then again, the customs of Canaan are not really a quantum leap from ancient religious ritual to our current indulgence of “a woman's right to choose,” are they?
The problem of Jericho is easily solved. God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible just as He is. His self-revelation to Moses (see Exodus 34: 6–7) is very revealing:
And Jehovah passed before him and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth; keeping loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgressions and sin; and I will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children. . . .
Can we not see that God’s disposition is showcased in His longsuffering, equity, mercy, and patience? He never acts in a knee-jerk, capricious manner. Yet at the same time God reserves the right to be God, doing as He chooses when He wills and with universal authority over His creation. Even as he pleaded for God to spare the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah , Abraham declared, “Shall not the judge of the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). So, the answer to the problem lies bound up in the character of God as revealed in Scripture. Is there ever a time when divine genocide is justified? The answer must be “yes,” because the judge of the whole earth always does what is right. Scripture makes it abundantly clear that in time the longsuffering of God will transform itself into judgment if the warnings are not heeded.
A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge Of The Holy says it well:
Before the Christian church goes into eclipse anywhere, there must first be the corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.
Here are words from the Apostle Paul challenging us to think Biblically about the nature and character of God. “Behold then the goodness and severity of God.” (Romans 11:22)
We have no time to waste. If God releases us into judgment because we have sanctioned the death of 50 MILLION infants, He is right to do so and legislating the end of abortion was/is a good strategy and right in God's eyes - I believe in it - however, at the heart of it, we as a nation need more than law to keep us in line - in ALL arenas - we need a true change of heart and mind. Legislating that would only resolve part of the problem and I am still believing for the whole problem to be resolved with true awakening, a great deal of love and heart-felt repentance.
I just refuse to believe that we don't have the mandate right NOW to press forward even harder in praying for President Obama- RIGHT NOW while there is still time and his choices have not been solidified; praying that he would have a revelation of Jesus that is even more profound than he has already experienced - life changing and mind changing regarding these issues; that his decisions regarding the appointment of his advisers would be very, VERY wise; that the perspective in our nation regarding abortion would dramatically shift; that WE as a nation would hear the cry of the aborted and yet unborn and that the Supreme Court Justices chosen would be turned and righteously inclined; that the nation itself would make choices regarding bringing an end to abortion that will super cede legislation; that right views of relationships and standing by those who are faced with a pregnancy that is not embraced would grow in depth and beauty and commitment and that the Church AWAKEN and fight this battle together - on our knees in prayer and fasting and in our hearts with compassion and actions that demonstrate Christ!
We as a nation can still choose to end this whether it is legislated or not and I refuse to lay down in the face of a "lost" political battle when we are called to fight a war that is in truth a heavenly battle as well as an earthly, governmental battle. I can't look at this in any other way. I can't spend time pissed at the church or the nation or myself or any one else anymore than I already can be inclined to be and I struggle with that every day - for real. But it needs to end! I don't want to be an "angry man" any more.
In the end, biblically, God refines the Church and Israel in these circumstances of great darkness and her light WILL and MUST shine (Isaiah 60). I'm going hard after that. The leading voices may be entirely dead on in everything I've been hearing regarding increasing judgments upon the nation, but I will surely die if I place my eyes on anything other than squarely upon the Lord Jesus Christ and until God says otherwise to me, I believe we have no time to waste in the arena of grief, blame and confusion; we only see in part still and I am pressing on to keep up the fight until God says stop. In particular, I will love, bless and pray for Barack Obama with fervency RIGHT NOW!!!!! according to the wisdom Paul instructed us with and I will pray that the Church awakens into her true identity TODAY!
As a House of Prayer, we will continue to pray in this vein and if nothing else, perhaps the Lord will say - "That IHOP-LI . . .they may be a sorry-ass, sin-wrestling, motley crew . . . but they are relentless in trying to figure out love and unyielding in trying to live in Me . . . and they make me smile." That would be just fine with me.
"Strengthen your hands"!!!!!!!!!!!! Zechariah 8 (Thanks Pastor Marie)
Build the House of Prayer by BEING a House of Prayer
"Jesus, we plead Your Blood over our sins and the sins of our nation. God, end abortion and send revival to America ."
So . . . I'm still all in. How about you?
Love you MUCH, t
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