Reformation
Gender Killing: The Next Stop on Abortion’s Slippery Slope
Our cowardly legislators in Washington D.C.–actually 168 of them (including seven Republicans)– took an infamous vote last week, failing to stop “gender profiling” in the lucrative abortion business. The House of Representatives fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the human fetus.
The vote was 246-168, a sizable positive majority, but thirty votes shy of the two-thirds majority that was required for passage.
The legislation would have made it a federal crime to perform or force a woman to undergo a sex-based abortion, a practice that is common in some Asian countries where families wanting sons abort female fetuses. It is common under the “one-child” policy in China–which sparked Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and his family fleeing to the United States on May 19.
Now he may regret his decision. Our own leaders have become like the godless communist Chinese rulers–not willing to stop the slaughter of innocent babies for almost any reason.
Most pro-abortionists don’t like the term “slippery slope.” They say it’s a straw man argument that doesn’t apply to real life moral issues.
Well, it’s time for a much-needed reality check on the slippery slope of abortion. We’ve arrived near the bottom of the cliff where nearly all selfish choices are okay to kill babies–including if you don’t want a “girl.”
The pro-choicers said it wouldn’t happen. It did.
Maybe this is the real war on women.
Abortion has become so commonplace in the world over the past forty years that we’ve become numb to its chilling reality and effects. Abortion is by far the greatest form of genocide ever invented. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there have been anywhere from one to two billion abortions worldwide since 1970.
Let that number sink in: One to two billion people.
Please forgive the impreciseness of the figure, but abortions have always been hidden and clouded in mystery by those who perform them–so the true number is nearly impossible to come by. But few dispute that one to two billion is an accurate global estimate.
That means in your town or city, one-sixth to one-third of the population has been quietly murdered during your lifetime.
Ponder that thought for a moment.
I live in South Kitsap county, Washington–an area that is home to 60,000 people. Statistically-speaking, some 10-20,000 human beings have lost their lives in my area through abortion since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973.
Ten to twenty thousand. That’s a staggering number of people.
It’s the same percentage in your town, city, and nation. One sixth to one third of all the people around you have perished in the past four decades.
Do you care? Have you forgotten what evil we tolerate through the holocaust of abortion?
I’m in Los Angeles this week with my family. This morning I purchased a Los Angeles Times newspaper to catch up on world events. On page A-8 there was a lead story entitled, “Seattle in the Grip of Violence.”
Obviously, the story got my attention because we live near the Emerald City. The subtitle to the article read, “A rampage that killed five prompts the city to confront a wave of often deadly gunfire.”
The lengthy story chronicled a spate of murders that have taken place in the city of Seattle this year. The most recent was the senseless killings of a mentally disturbed man named Ian Stawicki who walked into an artsy University District cafe last week and used a gun to murder five people before finally shooting himself in the head.
These murders are tragic and horrific. The story describes the fear and anxiety that now exist in the Seattle area because of the uptick in murders. There have been 21 murders in Seattle during the first six months of the year. That’s the same total for all of 2011.
Twenty-one people murdered. That’s a grievous situation.
But let’s bring ourselves back to reality. Seattle has a population of over 600,000 people. Using the Guttmacher statistic on global abortions as a guide, then the real murder count in Seattle since 1970–through abortion alone–has been one to two hundred thousand people.
That’s 2500-5000 a year.
That’s a heck of a bigger number than twenty-one. And it’s not just a number. It represents the precious lives of real people, just like you and me, who have been cruelly killed through abortion.
To feel the reality of this, let’s go back to my area across the water from Seattle for a moment. According to the global statistics, our region has quietly erased the lives of ten to twenty thousand human beings during the Abortion Holocaust. Imagine a person with a gun, terrorizing the neighborhoods of South Kitsap every day for the past forty years.
It amounts to killing one or two people every single day for forty years! Can you imagine how the residents of the area would feel if that had been the case?
That’s the reality of abortion. Now let’s return to “sex selection” in abortion.
I was in China twice last year–and will be there again in about five weeks. Last July I was in a gathering of about four thousand young people where the evil of aborting females in China was exposed. At the end of the presentation, hundreds of Chinese girls stood, saddened and weeping over the loss of millions of their fellow females because of China’s sex selection abortions.
The boys and fathers also stood to embrace and confort the girls. In China today, because of gender profiling abortion, 58% of the nation are males–an immense problem in coming years. Yet, as I saw at the youth gathering, even the girls who have survived felt marginalized and unwanted.
I spent hours that night putting my arms around these precious Chinese girls letting them know that they were special–and that the death of their “sisters” had been wrong, cruel, barbaric.
Now this same form of gender-based abortion is rearing its ugly head in America. First it was early term abortions under the guise that fetuses were”not fully human,” just clusters of cells. Then it became later term abortions (did age in the womb really matter?). Next up was partial birth abortions where our little ones are partially removed from the womb in order to kill them. And now it’s come to “sexual preferences.
“If I want a boy, you die!”
A slippery slope–really, a deadly lie that we’ve foisted on ourselves for decades.
All of it–not just the sex selection choice–is based on bare, bald selfishness. If I don’t want a baby, you die. If I don’t want to carry you long-term, you die. If I don’t want a girl, you die. Of course, the reverse is also true–if I don’t want a boy, then you die.
What’s next? If I don’t want a boy or girl that has your father’s eye or hair color, then I’ll kill you until I get one that looks like me?
All of this charade is diabolical nonsense.
The one hundred and sixty-eight US representatives who didn’t have the guts to stop sex-selection in abortion need to be removed from office at the polls in November. Don’t believe their nuanced excuses about “excesses” in the bill or other concerns.
We need leaders who stand up for the right to life. It is the first of all human rights.
National Right to Life legislative director, Doug Johnson, had this to say about the shameful House of Representatives vote: “We are heartened that a strong majority of House members voted to ban performing or coercing abortions for the purpose of eliminating unborn babies of an undesired sex—usually, girls. Shamefully, President Obama, and a minority of 168 House members, complied with the political demands of pro-abortion pressure groups, rather than defend the coerced women, and their unborn daughters, who are victimized by sex-selection abortions.”
Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy laments that God’s people have allowed America to careen down the slippery slope of abortion for far too long. He said this about the gender-based abortion vote:
The Secular Take-over of America
Last week I submitted a 300-page manuscript for my doctoral thesis. Its working title for future book publication is The River, and it details the five worldviews about God, why four of them are false, and how they all came from a common source.
One of the five philosophies that is battling for global supremacy is secularism. I analyzed atheism/secularism/humanism in depth for the thesis–and my studies were very enlightening. First of all, I didn’t realize there were Asian and Western versions of atheism. More on that at a later date.
The western form of secularism is in mortal combat with the Judeo-Christian worldview in the United States. This battle has been escalating for about fifty years.
However, the principalities of evil behind the lie of secularism went for the “jugular” last week when President Obama became the first president in history to endorse homosexual marriage.
This was a desperate attempt to complete the secular takeover of America. Here’s why.
First, a little history of secularism.
Man-centered atheism/secularism comprises one of the five worldviews that go back to ancient times. Yet, there has been a substantial surge in global atheism in the past four decades. What is atheism? An “atheist” says there is sufficient evidence to show that God does not exist. An “agnostic” says there is insufficient evidence to know whether God exists or not. A “practical atheist” is a person who lives as if God does exist.
I use the word “secularist,” (worldly; supreme attention to the things of this life), as synonymous with “atheist.” The term secularism was first coined by in 1846 by George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906). If you combine the numbers for both “atheists” and the “non-religious,” the total number of secularists is about 20% of the world’s population.
Atheism developed as a fourth false tributary of the river of God’s original truth. Human beings were becoming more civilized (less dependent on God’s protection), educated (philosophical about life), industrial (more prosperous), technological (more creative), and scientific (understanding how the world works).
This growth in human development brought a mystical humanism to the East and rational secularism to the West. Both exalted man. Some replaced God with the State.
Atheism or secularism is one of the newer “religions” in the history of man–though there have been people in all ages who denied the reality of God. In the past three hundred years, we have seen the following Western forms:
- The violent French Revolution which came out of the European Enlightenment.
- Nazism under Adolph Hitler and Fascism under Mussolini.
- The various communist expressions including the Bolshevik Revolution in Russian and Mao Zedong in China.
- The social democracies of Europe (a further expression of the Enlightenment).
For much of this period, America resisted secular impulses due to its rich Christian heritage, three powerful spiritual awakenings, and active church involvement in the social issues of the day (such as the issue of slavery in the 19th century).
However, in the 20th century, the Church’s presence began to shrink from the public square and by the 1960s, due to secular indoctrination in the schools, universities and society at large, the Baby boom generation cast off the biblical worldview via the sexual revolution and its many anti-authority expressions.
Atheism/secular was gaining strength and flexing its muscles.
The acceptance of Darwinian evolution as the only theory of origins allowed to be taught in the schools gave secularists a hands up on the new generation who accepted the immoral standards of their parents and took them even further.
As Christian morals crumbled, so did the American family.
Now in the beginning of the 21st century, the map of America has changed. Many say we are now a 50-50 nation. What they mean is that half of the country still believes in America’s traditional Judeo-Christian roots and the other half leans more toward the secular view of life. They argue this is the source of political and social gridlock that we now regularly experience.
Here’s what’s really happened. For America’s first two hundred years, probably 80% of the population were either committed Christians or accepted the biblical worldview as best for society. Another 7-10% were atheists (either in philosophy or practice) and the rest were “other.” But both of these groups accepted the majority worldview and the blessings that it brought to the nation.
Today, however, 80% of Americans still profess to believe in God, but philosophical atheism has grown to about 15% of the population, and other religions have been added to the mix. Instead of the secularists appreciating the blessings of Christian culture, there has been a deliberate attempt by a powerful minority to devolve the United States into a secular majority nation–following the path of Europe.
The growing secular minority is bigger, bolder, more organized, and being led by demonic forces who passionately desire to completely destroy the biblical foundations of America’s Christian liberty.
On a human level, the secularists want to forcefully take over America.
Ignace Lepp, author of Atheism in our Time, tells us how things have changed:
“Contemporary atheism, at least in the developed countries of Christian civilization is distinguished from the atheism of other times and other civilizations above all by its extension. It is no longer a phenomenon of a few individuals protesting the taboos of society, nor the privilege of a minority who consider themselves especially ‘enlightened’ in the manner of the eighteenth century rationalists.”
“It is the common lot of at least a considerable portion, if not of the majority, of our contemporaries and is well on its way to becoming the common norm of society. The intellectuals were the first to break with traditional faith; the bourgeois followed them; then came the masses, and, finally the peasants.”
Secularism has become so brazen that in 2012, for the first time in American history, there are even rallies to promote disbelief.
On Saturday, March 24, 2012, some 20,000 atheists demonstrated in Washington, D.C. for a “Reason Rally” protesting religion. British scientist and leading proponent of atheism, Richard Dawkins, was the headliner. He didn’t appear until five hours into the event, but when he strode to the podium, the crowd cheered wildly.
He announced: “We’re never antagonistic toward religious believers; we’re antagonistic toward religious belief. There is no good, honest reason to believe in a god or gods of any kind, or indeed in anything supernatural. The only reason to believe something is that you have evidence for it.”
The crowd whistled and cheered for his familiar lines such as: “I don’t despise religious people. I despise what they stand for.” And, “Evolution is not just true, it’s beautiful.” Then Dawkins called on the crowd not only to challenge religious people but to “ridicule and show contempt” for their doctrines and sacraments, including the Eucharist.
Outrage was the parlance of the day. Television host Adam Savage told the masses: “There really is someone who loves and protects me and watches over my actions — It’s me!”
Friedrich Nietzsche is probably the greatest philosophical proponent of secularism. Here is the goal that he expressed many years ago:
“We have killed God. The most sacred and powerful force the world has hitherto possessed now bleeds beneath our knife…The grandeur of this act is too great for us. Is it not necessary that, as a result of this act, we become gods ourselves?”
Now you know the meaning of the rise of the “secular state” under Barack Obama and a few presidents that preceded him. Man is now god and the state is his fulcrum of power.
Obamacare was a major secular “grab” to control the American economy. If it remains law, it will destroy America’s ability to prosper and be a blessing to the nations of the world.
Homosexual marriage is the latest “grab” in the secular takeover of America. If inaugurated on a federal scale, it will completely destroy the religious and social foundations that Americans have enjoyed for centuries.
The spiritual powers that have deceived our current leaders showed their true colors this week by motivating Barack Obama to become the first president in history to support homosexual marriage. Yes, he did it because he’s a secularist at heart and it helps with fund-raising. But overall, it was a desperation move because he could badly lose the coming election–as well as the Supreme Court ruling on healthcare this summer.
Both of these defeats would greatly retard, if not stop the secular march to control America. So the spiritual enemy of America got mad and threw all the dice on the table. You can hear the demonic echo: Let’s stop our quiet deception and go for the jugular. We can destroy America only through belittling its faith, squashing its economy, and dismantling the family. Let’s go for it!
There is no sainthood in this decision. It’s purpose is to destroy. And I really don’t ultimately blame the president–but the spiritual forces of wickedness behind him.
Make no mistake. There’s only one group that desires to “take-over” America–and it’s not right-wing Christians. It is a powerful minority of secular radicals–inspired by spiritual darkness–who want to force a man-centered version of civilization down the throats of the Judeo-Christian majority that is barely hanging on for dear life.
Will they succeed in this generation? God only knows. We are called to humble ourselves, pray, vote for wise and godly leaders, and to resist evil.
And hope that a fourth great awakening may yet halt the tide of the secular takeover of America.
Fiscal Insanity and the National Day of Prayer
I’m in Washington, D.C. for the National Day of Prayer. There are many important gatherings this week both here and all around the nation.
The main prayer event will be a large gathering in the Cannon House Office building from 9-12noon on Thursday. Many leaders of government will be there. That same evening a cross-section of the “Church of the City” will gather on the west steps of the Capitol. The crowd will represent a broad rainbow expression of the Body Christ from many diverse ethnic backgrounds.
I’m been coming to America’s National Day of Prayer since it began in 1988. This year our youngest son, Jason, is along with me for a graduation trip. Shirley and I just completed twenty-five years of home schooling. What does America’s future hold for Jason and coming generations?
I’m fearful that woefully inept financial policies that our nation is currently engaged in–and their devastating consequences–will overwhelm our son’s generation (and ours) if we don’t get our house in order.
We live in a time of “fiscal insanity” that many of our current leaders seem oblivious to, that could lead the United States over an economic cliff. The danger signs include:
- Sixteen trillion dollars of staggering federal debt.
- One trillion more in national debt added each year, with no end in sight.
- The liberal U.S. Senate has not produced a budget for over three years.
- The college-educated of our nation owe over one trillion dollars in student loans.
- 46% of Americans spend more money than they take in each month–with 600 million active credit cards in use (or misuse) in the United States.
Fiscal insanity–including debt–is a symptom of wrong priorities (wanting more than one can afford), an immoral spirit (thinking immediate actions won’t have long term consequences), and a lack of trust in God (to guide and provide for our needs).
We need to pray for God’s perspective, change our ways both individually and nationally, and elect some leaders who will have the guts to do what’s right in the coming years.
I encourage you to start with yourself. Are you content with what you have? Do you live within your means on a monthly or annual basis? Is your debt-level prudent, and do you have a plan to be debt-free in the coming years? Are you using you time, talents and money wisely to glorify God in your life?
Check out this web-site for a sobering look at the personal debt crisis in this nation. Each of us must start with ourselves, admit our mistakes, ask God’s forgiveness and change our ways. Then we must get up off our knees and help bring our nation back to common sense and self control.
Next, I direct your attention to the Heritage Foundation who give us a helpful visual glimpse of the fiscal insanity the nation faces. Click on this link to view eight eye-popping charts that really tell the story of the danger we’re in.
Heritage and Daily Events also give great insights on the foolishness of the political theater that is currently taking place. Here are some excerpts:
Heritage Foundation
“‘Fairness,'” an elusive idea normally exploited by spoiled children, is now the foundation of the Democratic Party’s economy policy. If implemented, anyone earning $1 million a year or more would be required to pay at least 30 percent of his income in taxes. That would help reduce the deficit by raising $31 billion over 11 years according to congressional tax analysts — 2.8 billion a year, or less than a day’s worth of new debt incurred by Washington.”
“And the wealthy did not create our debt; government did. Government — this administration in particular but all of them in general — is, by nature, risk-averse and never deals with the consequences of its failed ‘investments.’ It is the un-entrepreneur. Really, should the head of an organization that annually spends $1.6 trillion it doesn’t have be setting the parameters for a discussion on ‘fairness’?”
Daily Events
“President Obama…[is] laying out his case for the Buffett Rule, a plan to drastically raise taxes on successful Americans and small businesses. The core of his argument is that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. It makes for great populist rhetoric, especially when families are hurting and angry under today’s high unemployment, but the result is terrible policy. Worse, it’s a distraction from the big issues facing the nation, like the deficit, the economy, jobs, gas prices, health care, and on and on, none of which are addressed by the President’s proposals, and none of which he wants to talk about.”
“Will the President’s tax hike at least tackle the country’s fiscal problems? No, it won’t.
According to a recent analysis by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the Buffett Rule would raise a mere $47 billion over ten years. Meanwhile, President Obama’s budget calls for adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt. That means that the Buffett Rule will only cover one half of one percent of the President’s new spending. Soaking the rich cannot get deficits down, only spending reductions can do that.”
“When it comes to the biggest problem America is facing — a weak economy and high unemployment — the Buffett Rule would weaken the economy and make matters worse. Heritage’s J.D. Foster and Curtis Dubay write that the tax would fall most heavily on job creators (who pay taxes at the individual rate) and confiscate their resources that would otherwise be used to start new businesses, grow existing businesses, and hire more workers. As a result, economic growth will slow down right along with job creation.”
“The President says, ‘This is not about a few people doing well. We want people to do well, that’s great. But this is about giving everybody the chance to do well.’ Really? Raising taxes on the rich, weakening the economy, somehow gives everybody the chance to do well? Raising taxes on anybody somehow gives everybody the chance to do well? This is absurd even by the low standards of American political rhetoric.”
“Here’s what you really need to know about Obama’s plan. Under the Buffett Rule, businesses and families earning $1 million will pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate. The President says those Americans aren’t paying enough, and as proof he points to billionaire Warren Buffett’s secretary who reportedly pays a higher tax rate than her uber-wealthy boss. But right from the get go, the President is distorting the facts.”
“How can President Obama get away with saying that Warren Buffett pays lower tax rates than his secretary? Many wealthy Americans who have done well like Buffett receive dividends and capital gains — a form of investment income that is subject to multiple levels of tax. First, the investment income results from investment. This capital didn’t appear out of thin air. It was earned and taxed previously, often many times over at rates up to 35 percent.”
“Then, once invested, it generates income that is taxed at the corporate level at a 35 percent rate, and then it’s taxed again at the individual level at a 15 percent rate on dividends and capital gains. The combined rate on corporate earnings alone is over 45 percent, and this is all after the first layer of tax.”
“One way to think about this is to imagine you’re driving down a toll road, and you pay three separate tolls. The first toll of $3.50 is when you get on the highway. Then after a few miles you pay another $3.50 toll, and when you exit there’s a final toll of $1.50. A reporter asks you as you leave the last tollbooth how much toll you paid. What’s the most accurate answer — what you paid at the last tollbooth or what you paid altogether? Obviously, feeling some $8.50 lighter in the wallet, the correct answer is to respond with the total.”
“Conveniently for him, President Obama only talks about the last level of tax, the 15 percent portion, leaving out the rest. He only wants to talk about the last toll paid, not the total, and that’s how he makes his disingenuous argument. And all of this leaves out the final tax that many wealthy Americans pay — the death tax, which is set to return to its 55 percent level in 2013.”
“Then there’s the inconvenient fact that if you look at only the last level of tax, the data show clearly the highest-earning families and businesses in America are already shouldering the vast majority of the country’s tax burden. Heritage’s Curtis Dubay writes that the top 1 percent of income earners — those earning more than $380,000 in 2008 — paid more than 38 percent of all federal income taxes while earning 20 percent of all income. Meanwhile, those in the top 10 percent ($114,000 and above) earned 45 percent of income and paid 70 percent of all taxes. By comparison, the bottom 50 percent of income earners — those earning less than $33,000 — earned 13 percent of all income and paid less than 3 percent of federal income taxes.”
And once again from Heritage:
“Like clockwork, the President has returned to his favorite policy solution: raising taxes. When gas prices went up, he called for higher taxes on oil companies. When he wanted to try to create jobs, he called for higher taxes to pay for stimulus spending. When health care needed a fix, he called for higher taxes to fund Obamacare.”
“If President Obama truly wanted to be fair, he would pursue tax reform like The Heritage Foundation’s “New Flat Tax,” included in its Saving the American Dream plan. It’s simple, coherent, and comprehensive, encourages saving and investment, offers relief for seniors, and helps low and middle income families purchase health care and pay for higher education.”
“Leading with effective policy solutions, though, isn’t the name of the President’s game. Rather, his goal is to concoct a distraction from his failed leadership. Under his watch, the U.S. Senate has failed to pass a budget for the last 1,078 days, the House unanimously rejected Obama’s latest budget, and meanwhile the national debt is closing in on $16 trillion.”
“Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are careening toward implosion, gas prices have doubled, the economy is underperforming, 12.7 million Americans remain out of work, and the President’s signature legislation — Obamacare — has never been more unpopular. Instead of offering solutions, the President is offering class warfare..”
The myopia of our leaders toward our nation’s fiscal insanity is stunning. But in other ways, it’s not. We, the American people are also blindingly addicted to getting “something for nothing” and living beyond our personal means as well.
This National Day of Prayer may we wake up as individuals and as a nation, humble ourselves, and pray for God’s forgiveness. Then, let’s have the backbone and faith to reject this pathway of fiscal insanity, and restore God’s blessing to our individual families and nation.