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by
Neal Horsley
IT IS TIME TO DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY
For over one generation, Christians in the USA have participated in events unlike any ever seen in the history of this nation. As God has been legally exiled from public affairs by the federal government of the USA, as activities defined as heinous sins in the Holy Books of God have been legalized by the federal government of the United States of America, Christians in this generation have built their homes and their bank accounts and their churches ever higher and bigger. While there have been frowns of disapproval from Christians at the historically unprecedented ousting of God, frowns that continue to this day, Christians have done not one thing with the power to arrest the desecration of the things of God in the United States of America. Nor have Christians created anything visible on the horizon that has not already been tried and failed so often that persisting to believe in their ability to arrest legalized abortion is the very picture of self-deception.
But instead of raising the banner of resistance higher, and setting their faces for battle, this generation of Christians, the generation that has acquiesced in this revolution against God, is training the next generation to follow their example of tolerating babies being legally butchered around them, tolerating this unprecedented desecration of the things of God, and tolerating it perpetually.
Such actions on the part of Christians prove that this generation of Christians, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, believe that God is willing to tolerate this revolution against His authority.
Such an idea is blasphemy against the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Hunger Strikes Happen When Christians Start Teaching People to Think Like Serial Murderers
By teaching people that God would have us tolerate the unjust legalized slaughter of the least human beings among us, we teach people to relate to other human beings exactly the way a serial murderer relates.
Scientists have long known that psychopaths like serial murderers view other people as objects created to fulfill the desires, appetites and fantasies of the psychopath. In other words a psychopath views you as a sexual vibrator...or, even worse, hamburger meat. To a psychopath other people fulfill one function in life: the satisfaction of the psychopath. To a serial murderer, the death of a human being is exactly equivalent to any of the other myriad activities of human life, activities like paying taxes, or going to the movies, or eating a good meal, or even telling people about their version of the gospel. To a serial murderer, all those activities are merely several options among many options generally equal in value. But some events are more important than others. For example, the murder of a human being. But a serial murderer doesn't get that distinction. By defining the death of another person as simply another event in a long series of events, all of which are generally equal in value, the serial murderer is able to avoid feeling guilt when he/she decides that the effects of murder--whether titillation or power or whatever--are personally attractive enough to justify choosing that activity rather than any of the other activities that might be chosen.
When Christians stand by and do not make stopping the unjust slaughter of innocent human beings their first priority, they act toward human beings with precisely the same value judgment as a serial murderer. Instead of acting like all human beings are of equal value to God and deserve exactly the same protection, Christians begin to treat other human beings as if their protection is simply one among many on a myriad list of options that God wants people to be concerned with.
And, in fact, if you will talk to the Christians around you and ask them to explain why they don't do more to stop people from killing the things those Christians call unborn babies, they will tell you that God gives people many different callings and that is not one God has called them to do. In that analysis is hidden the idea Christians around you use to justify doing nothing as unborn babies--things the Christians say are human beings--are legally butchered on a daily basis within easy driving distance of any of the Christians you speak to.
Can you see how such a definition of God's priorities devalues the lives of human beings and leaves them unprotected if the ruling group decides, as has been done to the unborn babies, to withdraw their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Instead of the protection of the least among us being taught as God's top priority, as was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 25, Christians who stand by and do nothing when human beings are in imminent danger of unjust death reinforce the idea that people are just another part of creation and not beings created in the image of God at all. Such Christians teach that the protection of innocent, helpless human beings is simply one option among an infinite variety of options.
Such an idea is the root of psychopathy, the root of the mind of the serial murderer. Yet Christians today teach it every morning they get up and decide to do nothing to protect the unborn babies in imminent danger of unjust death.
When Christians get so confused that they not only cooperate with the forces of evil but actually develop the theological justification for that evil, God will take the most drastic action to correct them. So drastic in fact that after God has moved His people to try many options and those options fail, God sometimes forges hunger strikes on the cold, hard anvil of despair.
HUNGER STRIKE COMES WITH A GUARANTEE
A serious hunger strike can guarantee some very specific results.
Today the vast majority of American citizens have erected barriers designed to prevent any message from reaching their consciousness except messages designed to reinforce their personal prejudices and justify their continuing collaboration with the status quo. Such a situation attracts hunger strikes like static electricity attracts lightning because serious hunger strikes get people's attention even when they absolutely do not want to give it.
The spectacle of people dying in public is the essence of news. At worst, the hunger strike will obtain at least minimal national publicity on the day the hunger striker finally dies; at best, the hunger strike will create a national uproar of publicity focusing attention on the causes behind the hunger strike, and that publicity will last for weeks, or months even, if there is more than one hunger striker with their life on the line.
If you don't believe these things happen with serious hunger strikes, you simply don't remember what happened the last time a serious hunger strike occurred in the English-speaking world.
The Lads In The Maze
The Maze was a British prison on Irish soil where members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other Irish paramilitary groups were interned. To resist being treated like ordinary criminals, IRA prisoners in the Maze engaged in various protests between 1976 and 1981. These protests included a "blanket protest" where inmates refused to wear prison uniforms, choosing instead to drape themselves in their blankets; and the "dirty protest" where prisoners smeared their excrement on their cell walls and on prison guards when given the opportunity. The violence that characterized relations within the prison led Irish paramilitary organizations to initiate a new policy of killing prison officers, of whom 18 were killed between 1976 and 1980.
In 1981, frustrated by their lack of success in the previous protests and feeling unable to continue the blanket and dirty protests indefinitely, and persuaded that the British authorities were no longer negotiating in good faith, a group of Irish prisoners went on hunger strike. Before the hunger strike was over, ten men died on the doorstep of the British government in one of the most turbulent periods in the tragic history of Anglo-Irish relations.
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| Sands 5 May 81 66 days |
Hughes 12 May 81 59 days |
O'Hara 21 May 81 61 days |
McCreesh 21 May 81 61 days |
McDonnell 8 July 81 61 days |
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| Hurson 13 July 81 46 days |
Lynch 1 Aug 81 71 days |
Doherty 2 Aug 81 73 days |
McElwee 8 Aug 81 62 days |
Devine 20 Aug 81 60 days |
As men died one after the other, t he attention of millions of people around the world was drawn to Maze prison. Two of the hunger strikers were elected to British and or Irish Parliament while they were on hunger strike. Hundreds of thousands of people vicariously suffered with the men and finally came to their funerals to mourn them when they died.
 | Mourners walking with Bobby Sands to his grave. |
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Thomas McElwee Lying In State Pictures similar to these became a part of the ongoing world news coverage that went on for months as the men died one by one. |
IRISH HUNGER STRIKE SHOOK GREAT BRITAIN
After ten men died, the hunger strike ended. On behalf of the men who remained in Maze prison, a statement was released in the name of the remaining fighters. It read in part, "There were several reasons given by our comrades for going on hunger strike. One was because we had no choice and no other means of securing a principled solution to the four year protest. Another, and of fundamental importance, was to advance the Irish people's right to liberty. We believe that the age old struggle for Irish self-determination and freedom has been immeasurably advanced by this hunger strike and therefore we claim a massive political victory. The hunger strikers, by their selflessness, have politicised a very substantial section of the lrish nation and exposed the shallow, unprincipled nature of the Irish partitionist bloc...Our comrades have lit with their very lives an eternal beacon which will inspire this nation and people to rise and crush oppression forever and this nation can be proud that it produced such a quality of manhood..."
Bobby Sands was the first one to die. He kept a diary during his time of starving. The first entry in the diary said, "I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul."
Even the most valiant men tremble at the prospect of starving themselves to death...but strike they do.
WHY PEOPLE HUNGER STRIKE
Hunger strikes occur when every other method of resisting oppression and tyranny has been tried and failed. And hunger strikes occur because they might have the power to topple thrones.
The poet, Yeats, said in "The King’s Threshold,"
But before anyone thinks of toppling thrones with a hunger strike, a kind of frustration must grow, a frustration that is so debilitating that life itself appears no longer worth living unless change can occur. It will come as a surprise to most Christians in this nation but there are Christians around them--how many? God knows--who are literally sick to death of this collaboration with evil they are presently participating in. Some of these Christians have determined to end their collaboration with evil or to die trying. Such people are one step away from the kind of frustration that generates hunger strikes or worse.
THE SLOW BURN
It was a recent act of self-immolation like the ones above that led me to the thought process resulting in this message about a hunger strike.
A woman burned herself to death in front of an abortion clinic outside
The article continued, "Witnesses described the scene as horrific and unforgettable, with flames spurting from the human fireball about 10 feet high."
The article described the eye witness accounts, "Senior psychology major Jonathan Agner said he and three other students were stuck at a red light at the intersection across from the clinic and Xtra Fuel Gas Station gas station when they noticed the fire, 'I see the flames and then I see it moving from one spot to the other,' Agner said. 'That made me realize it wasn't a car. I saw a person moving, and I sincerely could not believe it was reality. It was one of the most - if not the most - horrifying thing I have ever seen.'"
The article continued, "Passengers in bumper-to-bumper traffic, including a school bus full of children, also witnessed the suicide. Employees and passersby congregated outside the strip of shops opposite the clinic to watch the rescue."
"Keena Williams, an employee at Atlanta Bread Company, said she "saw something orange" but thought it was a car fire at first.
"'I was just in shock," she said. "I ain't never seen anything like that before. I was shaking,'" the campus newspaper article concluded.
The story makes clear why the spectacle of a human being dying in public has the power to command the attention of all who view it. What is true with self-immolation is true of a hunger strike. In other words, if self-immolation--burning oneself to death--can be described as a fast burn, a hunger strike is a slow burn that carries with it all the effects of self-immolation.
For those who have decided that truly drastic measures are now called for if legalized abortion is to be arrested, a hunger strike has much to be said for it. All things considered, anyone frustrated enough to consider either self-immolation or a hunger strike as a way of commanding attention should always opt for a hunger strike. The slow burn of a hunger strike can have enormously greater impact than self-immolation because the time allowed to draw a crowd is increased from a short few minutes during which the body is burning to literally weeks during which the hunger strike unfolds. That additional time gives time for the spectacle to unfold.
But the main advantage of a hunger strike over self-immolation is this: Hunger strike is not suicide. While death from hunger strike is a possibility from the start, damage to the hunger striker is not a foregone conclusion. If the target of the hunger strike relents, the strike can conclude without serious damage to the hunger striker. Obviously the same cannot be said about self-immolation.
While a hunger strike is not necessarily an act of suicide, it does send a message of utmost seriousness. The message is one of fatal frustration with the status quo
HUNGER STRIKE AS LAST RESORT
When Bobbie Sands and his fellow Irish soldiers went on hunger strike they were not bluffing. They had no illusions about British compassion, about British love. They knew they would probably die, probably starve to death like they were on a desert island. Even though the British guards tempted them daily with platters filled with succulent foods denied to every other prisoner in the MAZE, platters placed on their laps and refused to be removed for hours, platters that were then taken and weighed to ensure that no food had been eaten by the starving prisoners, the lads in the Maze never ate it.
To Bobbie Sands and his fellow soldiers, the only possible way of getting enough people aroused to force a change of policy was by means of a hunger strike. They saw their hunger strike as a way to put a huge, glaringly bright spotlight on the great moral struggle between Irish justice and British oppression. As the world stood by and watched the British government do nothing while the men starved to death, the utter moral bankruptcy of the British government would be revealed. The criminals would be revealed not by the courts or judges, but by a trial of spirit within the cells of the Maze by men alone with their faith, and their courage, and their indomitable determination to stop the oppression or die trying.
So too in the battle against legalized abortion have a few people been willing to pay a heavy price. In attempting to deter people from killing unborn babies, serious sacrifices have been made, but the sacrifices have not abolished legalized abortion. See for yourself.
DETERRING PEOPLE FROM KILLING UNBORN BABIES
Most tactics designed to deter people from unjustly butchering unborn babies have been tried and failed. To see how attempts to deter people from killing unborn babies has failed, we need to glance at what we know about deterrence, then examine how we have applied that in the last three decades.
Generally speaking, the methods of deterrence are obvious because the methods have remained unchanged since time immemorial. You deter people by either physically restraining them from a particular action or by psychologically conditioning them so they will restrain themselves.
The list that follows demonstrates how methods of deterrance have been implemented in the attempt to deter people from killing their unborn children.
A. METHODS OF PHYSICAL RESTRAINT
1. Physically blocking access to abortion clinics.
2. Shooting or otherwise immobilizing Abortionists and Other Employees of Abortion Clinics.
B. METHODS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING DESIGNED TO DETER
1. Non Violent Confrontation
a. Pleading Outside Butchertoriums
b. Wanted Posters
c. Web sites like The Nuremberg Files
d. Abortioncams project
2. Mass communication using graphic pictures
Picture Above Was Broadcast to 11 million people on CBS
News with Dan Rather
3. Use of law enforcement officers
If you think about it there will be no pictures of law enforcement officers being used to deter people from butchering unborn babies. All the pictures that show the role law enforcement plays in the USA are like the one above where the local, State and federal law enforcement officers are arrayed to assist, rather than deter, mothers who go to butcher their babies. Like the soldiers who butchered the Lord Jesus Christ, the police officers of this nation butcher those the Lord knows are the least among us. Those pictures offer evidence demonstrating that the law enforcement officers in these presently united States of America have been turned into agents of the demons of murder rather than the defenders of innocent human beings. Instead of being a deterrent to murder as they were called by God to be, they protect the people butchering the babies. Like "good" Nazis at Auschwitz and Treblinka, they guard the butchertoriums as the smoke from the bodies cremated there, bodies of God's children unjustly killed, slowly rises to the heavens.
DETERRANCE TO ABORTION IS AT AN ALL TIME LOW
Anybody in this nation that wants to legally butcher their unborn baby can do so. The only deterrence activities operating today are a handful of people outside a few abortion clinics begging people not to kill their babies, and a few people holding pictures of dead babies in hopes consciences will be smitten by the images and deterred from butchering babies similar to the ones displayed. And that's it for the real deterrence.
There
are myriad, millions even, Christians who think their participation in non-deterring
political activities offers hope for
overturning Roe v. Wade. If they had watched the million women who
marched in
Review all those deterrence activities above. If you think about it you will recognize that most Christians--I'm talking about ninety-nine percent of the people who call themselves Christians--have done none of the deterrence tactics listed above. Even most of the ones who have tried them at one time, the ones who tend to call themselves "pro-lifers," have quit, or, in the case of Rev. Paul Hill and Jim Kopp and others like them, have been killed or imprisoned. After thirty-two years the abortion resistance movement in the USA has reached the place where deterrence to legalized abortion is at an all time low.
This present impotence can be traced to the fact that Christians in this generation have hired wolves in sheep's clothing, hacks who call themselves teachers, to sing lying lullabies designed to help the cattle--uh, I mean sheep--sleep at night and not hear the cries of the spirits of the babies who are being legally butchered all around them each day that passes.
Sad to say, from the earliest days of the Christian Church there have been Lapsi Christians who choose to work for Satan rather than risk their all for the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Irish Hunger Strike encountered a similar phenomenon from the Christian Establishment and described it this way: "Another facet of this hunger strike was to expertly expose the true face of the present lrish Establishment, consisting of the Catholic Church, the Dublin government and the SDLP...From the outset the Catholic hierarchy opposed the hunger strike even though they offered no alternative course of action...We contend that their position has at all times been established by political consideration rather than the Christian values of truth and justice. Therefore, their stance has been extremely immoral and misleading...Well may they hang their heads in shame, for they are a pathetic reflection of republicanism and the spirit that traditionally earmarked the Irish patriot's pursuit of nationhood and justice, and by their cowardly collaborationist and quisling stand on the H-Block issue they have debased the memory of generations of Irish freedom fighters who fought for a separatist Ireland. "
HOW I LEARNED WHAT CHRISTIANS WILL DO TO PEOPLE WHO TRY TO DETER
If you look at the list of potential deterrence procedures I outlined above, you will see that I have actively participated in two of the non-violent methods of confrontation designed to psychologically deter people from having an abortion. The Nuremberg Files web site and the Abortioncams web site were my work designed by me to not only deter people from having an abortion but to show other Christians how to participate in legal (at least at that time) actions that had the power to deter people. I expected that the abortion industry would fight me with all the power at their disposal. And they did.
But I was utterly blindsided when the Evangelical Christian "pro-lifers" joined with the abortion industry in doing everything in their power to stop me from legal activities that even the abortion industry leaders admitted had the power to deter people from butchering God's children.
To prove that I am not exaggerating, look at what Alan Keyes did to me when he had me as a guest on his national television program running on MSNBC. First, he told me that he was speaking for the entire "pro-life community." Then he told me to, "Stop it!"
And what was it he wanted me to stop? I had a web site called abortioncams.com that was being visited by hundreds of thousands of people each week. I had that traffic because virtually every news outlet in the nation from the Wall Street Journal to the major national network television news programs had told the nation about the pictures I was receiving almost daily from abortion clinics in over twenty States across the nation. The pictures showed the people who were going in and out of those abortion clinics on any given day. In other words, we were exposing the actual people who were "patronizing" the abortion industry across the nation.
Some of the people were obviously women going to kill their babies. You could usually pick them out because they would be doing everything possible to avoid being exposed by the cameras.
Why were they trying to avoid being seen by millions of people on the Internet?
While I could not see their hearts, I have a theory. I think they were trying to hide because they knew, deep in their soul, that they were acting like black hearted murderers of the most despicable kind--a woman who would kill her own baby for no other reason than to preserve her own personal, momentary convenience.
But to Alan Keyes, I was wrong to expose these people. And he expressed his disapproval in no uncertain terms. Alan Keyes said to me, “But I want to tell you quite bluntly that I think that what you are doing is wrong, that it’s harmful to the pro-life movement, that it represents the kind of tactic that will disgrace and discredit what we are trying to do, and that it involves a tactic that because it disregards what ought to be our own principle of care and concern for life is actually contrary to the truths we’re supposed to stand for. And I want to say quite bluntly on behalf of the pro-life movement itself, I wish you’d stop it.”
Keyes further explained why he wanted me to stop, “We ought to be representing the truth that converts the heart. And I’ve got to tell you, it seems to me that standing there, especially if you’re adopting a tactic that might convey to this woman, you don’t care about me, you don’t care if somebody comes and hurts me, that’s not going to open her heart to the truth. That’s not going to open her heart so that she’ll listen to the plea that God puts in our mouths on behalf of her child. We want her to hear us, not shut her heart against us.”
I then asked Alan Keyes, “Why don’t you say that to the policemen who we hire to go out and interrupt people who are about to commit homicide. The fact is you’re treating these people like they’re not fixing to kill their babies. No wonder they’re confused. No wonder they don’t understand that what they’re doing is a heinous sin.”
Alan Keyes did not answer my question. Instead he cut me off. And the program was over. He never spoke to me since.
Why did that scene occur?
Alan Keyes is a politician who aspires to national political leadership on the Republican party ticket. He ran for the Senate in the past election. When he rebuked me on national television, he claimed to be speaking for the entire pro-life community. It is reasonable to think his point of view reflects the point of view of most politically active Christian pro-lifers. As such, Keyes would never suggest that we the people dismantle our police force and refrain from using them to protect people in danger of being unjustly murdered because Keyes knows every citizen in this nation would think he went batty. But Alan Keyes did not even twitch when I pointed out to him that he was tacitly admitting he did not want policemen to stop women who were on their way to have an abortion. Keyes did not twitch because he knew what he was telling me was the consensus of the "pro-life" community. He was confident that he did not have to worry when I pointed out the glaring inconsistency in his argument because he was speaking for a generation of Christians who were totally unwilling to act toward people on the verge of killing an unborn person the way they acted toward people who were on the verge of killing born people. Alan Keyes was representing a hypocritical double standard that was so deeply entrenched that he did not have to worry for one second that my words pointing out the double standard would cost him anything that was important to him.
But what I told Alan Keyes was important, very important. If you don't think what I told Alan Keyes is important, note what is now happening in his life.
ALAN KEYES IS EXAMPLE OF AN ABSTRACT CHRISTIAN
When Alan Keyes interviewed me on his national television program, I don't think he understood the horrible consequences that happen to Christians who live as hypocrites. He did not know what happens to Christians when they start treating God as an abstraction rather than the One in whom they live and move and have their being.
Today Alan Keyes is being given the opportunity to learn what happens.
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On Tuesday, Feb 15, 2005, the nation learned that Alan Keyes daughter, Maya, is a lesbian--a "liberal queer" she calls herself. It is not surprising to hear that report. Alan Keyes's daughter is simply responding to the inherent hypocrisy that all Abstract Christians like her dad live in as a matter of course. |
Maya Keyes has listened all her life to her father talk about women--girls, mostly--who were going to kill their babies. And she has listened to Alan Keyes talk about how horrible and how horribly wrong it was for those girls to kill their babies. But Maya Keyes has also heard her dad talk to men like me, men who tried to warn him about the confusion being spread by people who claimed abortion was murder but were unwilling to talk about the lethal actions that Christians must logically take when innocent people are in danger of unjust, imminent murder.
Maya Keyes is not stupid. She saw the breakdown in logic contained in Alan Keyes’s double-standard when he talked to men like me, and she saw it for what it was. She realized that her dad said he believed in God and believed in what the Bible taught but she realized that when it came time to say and do those things that would actually cost her dad things that were important, her dad proved that all those things he said he believed were merely abstractions, things that existed to him only in his mind.
After all, the Bible makes clear that people who engage in sin without repenting will suffer punishments for eternity, punishments so horrible that we literally cannot imagine them. To use methods of deterrence, even law enforcement officers using lethal force, to deter people from actions that carry that kind of eternal punishment is a graceful act. But Alan Keyes called my attempt to defend actions with the power to deter people from killing their unborn babies wrong. When he did that, Alan Keyes proved that the punishments of hell were an abstraction to him, that he did not really believe the people engaged in legalized abortion were doing that which would land them in hell for eternity unless they were stopped. If he did believe that, his refusal to help me find ways to deter them proved that he could not love them enough to actually try to deter them from hell.
In other words, Alan Keys refusal to step up and take the heat that comes to those who try to deter hell bound people today proved that the things he really believed in are the same things that Maya Keyes believed in. Things like the needs of the flesh, and the desires to be accepted by the world, and by our peers. Those were the things that Alan Keyes demonstrated he believed in too. The only difference was Alan Keyes pretended to be serving God in his actions. His daughter Maya simply decided she would rather be honest than be a hypocrite like her dad. So she "came out."
Alan Keyes doesn't know it yet but he came out as well. He came out of the kingdom of light and began to work for the kingdom of darkness the moment he allowed himself to embrace a double standard that allowed him to justify treating the unborn people differently than he treats the born.
It is a horrible tragedy that Maya Keyes has to flirt with the reality of hell fire agony for eternity before Alan Keyes and all those millions of Abstract Christians like him begin to understand that it is not just the unborn babies who are at risk in our collaboration with the forces of evil in this nation, it is our own children as well.
CHRISTIAN REFUSAL TO DETER IS THE FOUNDATION UPON WHICH THE ABORTION INDUSTRY RESTS
The heresy of pacifism among Christians has a long pedigree but today the actions of Christians, while on the surface appearing pacifist, is not pacifist at all. Whereas pacifists withdraw from participation in the political arena, Christians in this nation actually comprise the very bedrock foundation upon which the entire edifice of legalized abortion is supported.
Let me make sure you get the point: Christians in this nation long ago became the force behind the perpetuation of a status quo that included the daily legalized butchering of thousands of unborn babies conceived by God to live as citizens of the USA. Christians became the power perpetuating legalized abortion because instead of finding new and more powerful ways to deter people from abortion, those millions of Christians who call themselves pro-lifers did everything in their power to stop people who used any of the methods outlined above that had the power to deter people from having abortions.
Over the past three decades Christians and Christian leaders have defined a point of view that literally cast anathema on any tactic with the power to deter people from butchering babies and effectively excommunicated any Christian who participated in those deterrence activities. I know these thing because I have been so excommunicated; my actions have been made anathema.
The refusal of the present leaders of the pro-life movement to participate in activities that have the power to deter people from abortion makes those "pro-life leaders" nothing more than extensions of the abortion industry. To see the evidence that proves that accusation, look closely at the most recent moves made by the Demoncratic Party in the USA.
The Pro-Life Position on Abortion Is Now Supported by the Democratic Party
The
Democrats elected Howard Dean chairman of their national party on
With those words, Howard Dean moved the Democratic Party into precisely the rut that has been carved out by the pro-life movement for over three decades. Like the pro-lifers, Democrats are “not pro-abortion” and also like the pro-lifers, Democrats are in favor of allowing women to make up their own minds about abortion.
Are you surprised I say that pro-lifers are in favor of allowing women to make up their own minds about abortion? You think pro-lifers want to change the law and force people to stop having abortions? If that’s what you think, you are ignoring facts that are obvious if you will take your blinders off and let your eyes see. Reread what Alan Keyes said to me in the interview I quoted above. Keyes was clearly admonishing me because I was trying to use force to deter people from butchering their babies. For over three decades, pro-lifers have proven that not only will they refuse to support people who want to force people to stop having abortions, they will do everything in their power to stop those people, even to the point of killing them as they did to the Rev. Paul Hill.
While the vast majority of pro-lifers say they want Roe v. Wade to be reversed, every time people have tried to do things that actually had the power to deter people from having abortions, the pro-life community has not only failed to support it, but actually fought against it in exactly the same way Planned Parenthood and the remainder of the abortion industry fought it. The evidence proves conclusively that pro-lifers, in lock-step with Howard Dean and the Democratic Party, do not want the law to stop women from making up their own minds about abortion.
If you think that makes pro-lifers hypocrites, the dictionary is on your side: that’s exactly what hypocrite means.
It is this double-minded, duplicitous hypocrisy that has turned the pro-life movement into simply an extension of the abortion industry, a nay-saying paper tiger that instead of abolishing legalized abortion actually profits financially from legalized abortion in exactly the same way, if not the same degree, as the abortion industry itself.
Every day I pray the Holy Spirit move me to have the courage and the wisdom to find and then do what comes next in deterring people from legalized murder. To that end, I have thought long and hard about a hunger strike.
A HUNGER STRIKE WILL NOT MOVE PRO-LIFERS TO CHANGE IMMEDIATELY
I have few illusions about a hunger strike's ability to move Christians to defend unborn babies. I know full well that pro-life Christians who for over thirty years have been trained to stand by and tolerate the most innocent, helpless, most vulnerable and attractive little babies on earth to be torn limb from limb by the millions will not likely be moved to action by the prospect of some crusty old man like me dying a slow starving death. In fact, if my only target in my hunger strike was my ability to generate compassion among my fellow Christians by the prospect of my slow, emaciating starvation, I would not think about a hunger strike for one second longer. I know these people too well. Rather than be moved to compassion by the prospect of my hunger strike, the Christians will simply double their efforts to ignore me even more effectively than they do today. And the pagans will have a hearty laugh around the water cooler. No doubt they will be moved to fashion new and creative jokes, cartoons even, about the old erstwhile fat guy who found a sure fire solution to his overweight problem...or some such.
But there is another One here who might be moved to compassion, One who has the power to take even the cold-hearted people of the United States of America and rouse them to the protection of the least among us.
But before we explore that question, let's take a long, hard look at the idea of having a hunger strike.
THE DILEMMA OF A HUNGER STRIKE IN THIS NATION TODAY
I know if you've read this far, you are beginning to realize the actual dilemma that the idea of a hunger strike brings to light. That dilemma can be seen by comparing the Irish experience to what can be reasonably anticipated to happen in this nation should a similar hunger strike occur.
There is a huge difference between the Irish experience prior to the Hunger Strike in Ireland and any Hunger Strike in America today. Vast numbers of people in Ireland were passionate about Irish Independence from Great Britain. Their concern consisted of more than self-serving lip service. That tradition of concern went back for generations and had been tested over and over again as families sent their sons out to battle the impossibly overwhelming military might of the British. The Irish people were accustomed to seeing their sons die in pursuit of Irish Independence.
In this nation, the only people we are accustomed to see die are the helpless, unborn babies. (Well, actually we don't "see" them die, but somewhere in the back of our collective mind, we know they are dying nonetheless).
And we are most accustomed to this. So accustomed in fact that the idea that anybody has a duty to die trying to stop legalized abortion is at least one of the definitions found in American dictionaries for the word preposterous.
It is preposterous to expect a hunger strike to rouse anything like the attention roused by the Irish hunger strike. In fact the opposite effect is likely to occur. Where we saw the Irish people immediately rally around the lads in the Maze, it is reasonable to expect the American people to do everything in their power to literally ignore any serious hunger striker against legalized abortion. What with all the practice the American people have had in ignoring the daily butchering of babies around them, it is only prudent to assume that the American people might well be able to totally ignore a hunger striker in exactly the way the American people ignored the woman who burned herself to death in front of an abortion clinic a few weeks ago. And that was some serious ignoring. We still don't even know her name.
So it is clearly not wise or prudent, or even expedient, to think that a hunger strike in this nation will have the power to command the attention of the American people.
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON PRESENTLY ON THE SCENE
But as I mentioned earlier there is One here who can be guaranteed to pay attention. That is the One the Bible calls The Holy Spirit, or The Holy Ghost, or the Paraclete as He is called in Greek. If nobody else actually believes it, I know for a fact that a hunger strike would get His attention.
How do I know that?
Well I know enough about the Bible to know the Bible teaches that there is nothing that slips by the Holy Spirit unnoticed.
Job 28:20 "Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell? 21 It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air. 22 Destruction and Death say, ‘Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.’
23 God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, 24 for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. 25 When he established the force of the wind and measured out the waters, 26 when he made a decree for the rain and a path for the thunderstorm, 27 then he looked at wisdom and appraised it; he confirmed it and tested it. 28 And he said to man, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.’"
WHY HAS THE HOLY SPIRIT NOT DONE HIS JOB?
Of course, there is nothing really accomplished by a hunger strike if all the Holy Spirit does is notice that it is happening. Unless the Holy Spirit responded to the hunger strike so as to make the hunger strike worthwhile, the only point to the hunger strike would be the sharp, cutting point of hunger to the strikers themselves.
For a hunger strike to be effective, the Holy Spirit would need to be aroused to action, action that the Holy Spirit is not presently taking.
I confess that one of the main points of confusion that I have been struggling with for years concerns why the Holy Spirit has not already intervened with power in this ongoing holocaust being waged against the least among us. I have been confused because the Scripture makes it clear that the Holy Spirit would normally get immediately and powerfully involved in situations like this one.
To see my point, notice what the Lord Jesus Christ said would be the job of the Holy Spirit who would be left here on earth when the Lord Jesus Christ bodily ascended to heaven, there to sit on the right hand of the Father. In John 16:7, Jesus said, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. 8And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment..."
I have been confused for some time because one thing seems obvious to me: this world is not being reproved of sin. In fact, it is obvious to me that instead of being reproved, sin is being allowed to grow unchecked until it has reached a state of virulence and of arrogant boldness unmatched since the days of Caligula, if ever. And to top it all off, the Christians in this generation have committed themselves to fighting those who actually rise up to deter the sin, rather than help them.
How can we explain the Holy Spirit in times like these?
I confess I have been tempted to think that the Holy Spirit has fallen down on His job. Or maybe He's simply sleeping, I am tempted to think, or taken a vacation. The temptations are with me on a daily basis because I know as sure as I know the sun came up this morning that the only One who has the power to move this generation of Christians to raise their snouts out of the trough Mammon has given them and actually begin to do the will of God rather than worship Mammon is the Holy Spirit Himself.
The thing that is most confusing to me is how the Holy Spirit allows the vast majority of Christians to totally confuse people about the priorities the Lord Jesus Christ defined. According to Scripture, one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit was to remind us of all that Jesus had said. John 14: 26But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
I am understandably confused when Christians in this generation are allowed to ignore the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ said the only ones who would be allowed into heaven were those who made the protection of the least among us their first priority. I am further confused when Christians are allowed to twist what Jesus taught us about loving our neighbor by redefining neighbor to refer, not to a person in danger of imminent death, as was the subject of the story Jesus told about the Good Samaritan, but to create a private interpretation that changed the meaning of neighbor from a person in danger of imminent death to any person who could be perceived as having a need at all. In this way Christians were able to justify doing whatever they wanted to do and define it as a calling from God even though their "calling" totally ignored what the Lord Jesus Christ had said about God's priorities, about God's definition of neighbor.
What was most confusing about all this was Christians were allowed to get away with twisting the words of the Lord Jesus Christ and they apparently had no consciousness whatsoever of sin when they did it.
The Holy Spirit is supposed to reprove the world of sin, that's what the Lord said. When Christians were able to get away with totally redefining God's priorities so they had no immediate responsibility to intervene to protect the least of God's children when that person was in danger of imminent death, I had to question why the Holy Spirit was not doing His job.
I
considered the possibility that when the Lord Jesus Christ said the Holy Spirit
would reprove the world of sin that maybe "the world" in that statement did not
include the Christians who were twisting God's priorities. But that
possibility was obviously illogical. When Christians ignore God's word and, instead of
obeying God, do the opposite, Christians become as much a part of the world
as they ever were before they opened their mouths and made faith pronouncements
about the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, Christians who defy God by
refusing to obey His priorities are just like the world in everything but
name. Nominal
Christians might someday end up in heaven but, as the Apostle Paul told the
carnal Christians at
Where was the fire of the Holy Spirit, I asked myself, the fire that was to show this generation of Christians how they have twisted God's words so that they no longer have a duty to protect the least among us when the least among us is in danger of imminent death?
So why doesn't He do that which only He can do?
I really do not know. The one thing I do know is I am growing very tired of collaborating with this sin that has become my lot as a citizen of these presently united States of America.
Considerations like those kept taking my mind to a story the Lord Jesus Christ once told about a widow woman who had a problem with a judge who was sleeping. The more I thought about that story the more I began to wonder whether a hunger strike might be what comes next.
Luke 18:2[The Lord Jesus Christ] said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’" 6And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"
The story is a very important one because it literally binds God to bring justice to the earth when a person, one person, one single chosen one of God, cries out to the Lord for justice long enough and in a way that is bothersome enough to move the Lord to action. Such a story is a great tool of faith because the story creates a situation where in order to fulfill an act of faith, the person only has to know God well enough to know that God will do what He says. In other words, know God well enough to know that God is no liar.
I know God that much.
That story about the persistent widow has been resonating with me for a long time because it gave me an answer to why God has not brought about justice here in the United States of America. The message in the story makes it clear that if God's justice is missing on earth, it is because God's chosen people have not cried out persistently enough for Him to bring His justice. So, if I understand the moral of the story, I apparently have not been persistent enough in my prayers, have not cried out loud enough or long enough for justice in this generation.
I don't know how to cry much louder. I've cried so loud that most people are doing everything in their power to silence me. I've cried so loud and so gratingly that if I had given the people of this nation sufficient grounds for doing it, I would already be incarcerated in some place where nobody but my fellow prisoners and the guards could hear me when I cried out about the babies being butchered around me, about the desecration I have been collaborating with every day I walked around outside a prison cell.
So maybe it isn't the loudness of my cries that have failed to move the Holy Spirit to bring His justice, maybe I've cried loud enough but just haven't cried long enough yet for my persistence to move the Holy Spirit to action.
Fact is I'm sixty years old. I've watched this desecration continue for over thirty years. I look at the Christian leaders in this generation and I see them advocating nothing except tactics that have been tried and failed so many times that only a very young person with little or no experience in these matters or a self-deceiving moron could believe we are presently doing anything that has the power to deter people from the sin we the people have "legalized."
What I see makes me cry all the louder. But time is no longer on my side. Compared to the time I've had so far, I don't have much time left to cry.
When all these things came into focus for me, that's when a hunger strike began to make some serious sense to me. Since a hunger striker will die without food in a little over two months, a hunger strike not only raises the volume of the crying much higher than ever before but it also puts a time factor into the equation that was not there before.
As I pondered these things, it was impossible for me to ignore that a hunger strike would be a way to massively ramp up my crying out to the Lord for His intervention. A hunger strike is a way of "crying" that has few equals. If God is waiting for his people to cry better than we have in the past, then a hunger strike is a cry about as loud and as serious as a cry can get. Maybe God was waiting for us to launch a hunger strike as a cry for Him to bring His justice to this generation.
So I pondered that idea for weeks. And I arrived at a conclusion. I needed help to decide what God wanted me to do.
I could not trust my own independent judgment without risking not only my life but risking offending the Holy Spirit. That's because I could not see a way for me to enter a hunger strike alone without there being a possibility that I was doing it in response to selfish ambition rather than in response to godly ambition, an authentic movement of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a serious need to perform, a need that has driven me all the days of my life. But God does not call people to perform selfish deeds, God calls people to perform deeds that fulfill the will of God.
Even though I could not be sure God was calling me to launch a hunger strike, I could not get the idea out of my mind. Too many things in the idea linked directly with what Scripture teaches about God's priorities.
A hunger strike could be a way of crying out more vigorously to God, but could I be sure that the cry would move the Holy Spirit to bring justice to the people of this generation? Even more to the point, did I really want to see the justice of God brought to this generation?
THE GHASTLY JUSTICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD
Many times in the past there have been individuals who everyone, including the individuals themselves, believed to be true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ but who turned out to be anything but.
For individuals who were lying about their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, individuals who were wolves in sheep’s clothing, the Holy Spirit has made their traitorous deception clear in ways that were truly gruesome to behold.
For a prime example take Judas Iscariot. Judas was seen by the nation of Israel to be a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, trusted so much in fact that he was assigned the task of carrying the money the entire group of Jesus's disciples depended upon for their daily bread. And it was not just the nation of Israel that believed Judas to be a loyal follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, Scripture makes it clear that Judas himself believed himself to be a loyal follower of the Lord. Yet the day came when Judas hanged himself because he came face to face with the fact that he was the traitorous enemy of the Lord, an enemy exactly like those who had wanted to kill the Lord. That knowledge, the knowledge of his own self-deception, was more than Judas could bear, and in a final act of contrition and/or despair, Judas displayed a saving grace when he demonstrated to the remainder of recorded history what such a duplicitous traitor like himself deserved for his perfidy.
For another example, take Ananias and Sapphira. They were people who lacked even the grace finally revealed in Judas in that when they were caught in their deceit against the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit smote them dead on the spot rather than allow them to escape to practice their traitorous duplicity among others elsewhere.
The point should be clear: the Holy Spirit will find out those who claim to be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ but are actually liars who are traitors against Him. And the Holy Spirit will be ruthless in punishing them in ways too ghastly to be imagined accurately. That is the final point of every story the Bible tells about hell.
HAVE YOU LIED TO THE LORD
How many Christians do you know who, like Ananias and Sapphira, claim to have given everything they have to the Lord Jesus Christ, claim to have surrendered their all into the possession of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Think about our actions as Christians in this generation and you will see, if the Spirit be with you, that we are doing exactly what Ananias and Sapphira claimed to do. They claimed to have sold their most valuable possession and they claimed to be giving all the proceeds from that sale to the Lord. But Ananias and Sapphira did not follow through. They did not give everything they had to the Lord. They held a portion back; and then they lied about it to the Holy Spirit.
Can you see the shocking insult that was to the Holy Spirit? Ananias and Sapphira were treating the Holy Spirit of God as if He had no more knowledge of their affairs than did the ordinary person; they were treating the Holy Spirit as if He was simply another person, one who could be lied to, could be deceived, could be chumped like the most gullible peasant on earth.
Such effrontery caused the Holy Spirit to strike them dead on the spot.
The Christians around them got the point immediately. Scripture says a great fear came upon the Christians. They immediately realized that each and every one of them had claimed to have given the Lord Jesus Christ all they possessed. Had they actually given their all to the Lord? It is doubtful: most likely those Christians were just like us. But in the face of what happened to Ananias and Sapphira, and the great fear that fell on the hearts of the Christians around them, it is likely they soon turned over whatever they had tried to rat-hole from the Lord for a rainy day.
All you have to do is open your eyes and if the Holy Spirit is with you, you will see that this generation of Christians has been lying to the Lord Jesus Christ. This generation of Christians has no more given all it possesses to the Lord Jesus Christ than Ananias and Sapphira did.
The proof of it can be seen in the fact that the least of those people created in the image of God and conceived by the Lord Jesus Christ to live here among us as citizens of the USA are being legally butchered anytime any mother of an unborn baby gets an urge to kill them.
For over three decades, Christians who claim to have given their all to the Lord Jesus Christ have stood by and used their mouths to explain to the world why their Lord Jesus Christ wants them to tolerate the legalized slaughter of the least of God’s children.
Well the day has finally come when those Christians, exactly like Judas Iscariot, are going to have to face the fact that there is not one whit of difference between themselves and the people who actually drove the nails into the wrists of the Lord Jesus Christ, not one whit of difference between themselves and the man who one day long ago actually sucked snot from his nose into his mouth and then spat it into the face of Emmanuel, the One they claim to be their Lord.
This generation is so confused that even Democrats who have provided the bedrock support for the slaughter of the least among us can now join with the pro-life movement
And with that joining, the circle is complete. Everyone who has actually been responsible for the perpetuation of legalized abortion in the USA is now in bed together.
THE TIME WHEN IT IS BETTER TO BE A PAGAN THAN A CHRISTIAN
Have you ever thought about the fact that there are times when it is a benefit to have never claimed to be a Christian. People who never claim to be Christian usually have to wait until they die to face the wrath of God for their idolatry. Prior to then the law of man is the agency God has ordained to be used to bring them in mind of the terror that awaits them if they do not repent. So all they have to worry about is the law of man.
But Christians are not like that. Like Ananias and Sapphira, Christians who have claimed to give their all to the Holy Spirit, yet have in fact lied to the Holy Spirit, sometimes are forced by the Holy Spirit to realize what Ananias and Sapphira felt like, what Judas Iscariot felt like. Ananias and Sapphira did not have to wait until they died to face the wrath of God. The Holy Spirit made them see it while they were still in the flesh. They were killed by that knowledge.
Have you lied to the Holy Spirit?
If so, a hunger strike might well be a way for you to demonstrate to the Lord that you now know what repentance actually requires. As this article should make clear, I'm well on the way to seriously considering a hunger strike for myself because, Lord knows, I've lied for a long time about surrendering everything I own to the Lord Jesus Christ.
IS IT TIME TO DIE FOR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST?
Could it be that the time has come for me to give my very life for the Lord Jesus Christ?
A hunger strike might cause the Holy Spirit to get up and do something that He is not presently doing. The story about the persistent widow and the unrighteous judge certainly seems to suggest that outcome.
But then the story also points out that such outcomes require faith.
It seems obvious that a person who entered a fast to the death believing that the Holy Spirit would interrupt it by bringing justice that is missing today, would be exercising a serious kind of faith.
Of course there would be no guarantee the Holy Spirit would act. But then that is what would make the action an act of faith.
The Holy Scripture is clear that even an unjust judge can be aroused to good action by persistent cries. The Scripture story makes clear that the Righteous Judge who is the True and Living God can be relied on to do the same and that right quick.
But the Scripture does not say God will do it in response to a hunger strike. And the Scripture certainly does not say God will respond in time to deliver the hunger striker from death.
Those unknowns make the prospect of a hunger strike most dangerous.
But there is one thing that can be said in a hunger strike's defense. If in fact the Holy Spirit would be aroused to bring His justice in response to the hunger strike, it would mean that the justice would be surely coming soon. It only takes about 60 or 70 days for even a strong man to starve to death. If the Holy Spirit honored the hunger strikers as legitimate criers out for justice like the ones told about in the story of the persistent widow, then it is reasonable to think serious changes would occur in the United States of America in about two months time from the start of the hunger strike. That means the hunger strike sets in motion a time frame for the Holy Spirit to act in that is knowable and short enough so most people alive today would see the outcome, an outcome that would include the justice of God being revealed in this nation.
That's a startling prospect, one that caused me to think deeply enough and seriously enough about a hunger strike to write this article. But I haven't started a hunger strike yet.
I just don't know what to do. I'm having such a hard time understanding whether the Lord Jesus Christ wants me to proceed so that, to resolve the matter, I thought about putting out a fleece. Here's the fleece I considered: if any of the people recently named by Time magazine as the 25 Most Influential Evangelical Christians in the nation would take the initiative in leading the hunger strike, then I would dive in as his number two striker prepared to see the Holy Spirit bring justice to this nation or...die trying.
As soon as I really examined that idea, I realized how unrealistic it was. I was thinking about looking to the 25 people who had actually taken the lead in forming the last 30 years of Protestant Christian life in America. The idea that any one of those people would now do something that might actually cost them their life when they had spent the last three decades developing a theological justification for doing what amounted to nothing in the defense of the innocent unborn, well that idea was about as stupid an idea as I'd ever let clank around inside my brain. So I pulled back that fleece in a hurry because the Lord does not count something as a true fleece if we know the answer in advance.
But I didn't give up the idea of the hunger strike.
FLESH: THE CENTRAL STUMBLING BLOCK IN A HUNGER STRIKE
One of the reasons I'm having such a hard time getting this idea in perspective can be traced to the fact that I'm a really fleshy guy, a natural born hedonist. I can think of nothing more humiliating to me and demeaning to the Lord than starting a hunger strike then backing down because my flesh would not go through with it. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that problem. Take another look at the picture of me at the head of this article and you'll see what I've decided would be required for me to have a chance to follow through on this idea.
In other words, I have no illusions about my flesh. I'm far, far from the level of frustration of the lads in the Maze. Even though I sometimes feel imprisoned in this sinful nation, I love life in this world about as much as a man can love it. To boot, I'm healthy as a bear, feel good all the time except when I'm weeping at the desecration around me, have a family to make any man's heart beat with joy...all things considered, I just don't trust myself to carry through on a hunger strike.
That's why the first thing I'd do if I see that the Lord wants me to go forward with it is stitch my mouth shut with some kind of heavy gauge cat gut or wire that will make it impossible for me to take solid food. I suspect that is just one of an ongoing series of steps I'd have to take before I could actually mortify my flesh enough to get it to carry through in a fast to the death. But even if I have to wire the flesh shut to make it cooperate, I'm believe I could carry it though if that's what the Lord wants me to do.
I'm still trying to understand that. What do you think about it?
If I don't hear from you, when you find out that I've wired my mouth shut, you'll know a serious hunger strike is occurring and the Holy Spirit might be ready to let loose the hounds of heaven.
February 15, 2005
Contact me at nhorsley@charter.net
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