Evangelism Should Emphasize Repentance Again

A well-known evangelist, Ray Comfort, estimates that 80-90%, conservatively, of decisions for Christ in modern evangelism will thereafter lose their witness and not even attend church consistently.  He cites a detailed study of the 294,000 who “got saved” in a one-year crusade effort by a major denomination, Harvest, in 1991. They had 11,500 churches keeping close records.  (PS: Evangelism sweeps don't usually do this).  Only 14,000 of the 294,000 still attended church, only a couple years later. That’s a 95% loss rate.

He also studied the works of famous evangelists of the past—such as Wesley, Whitfield, Moody, Spurgeon, and Finney. Along with New Testament evangelists, Paul, Peter, Steven, and Timothy.  Their writings and sermon notes suggested a much higher number of people hanging on to their conversion.  Why has this loss rate gone stratospheric, he wondered?  One of the things he noticed was that in those days, the preaching by these great men would begin with how people have broken God’s Laws.  Then, after that was covered thoroughly in the sermon, the Good News was taught. This principle of sermon order has faded away, particularly starting in the early 1900s.  Nowadays, preachers--and seminary professors-- consider that the “You Have Broken the Law" sermon starter is just too negative, and have shied away from it.  Modern evangelistic theory (taught in Christian colleges) assumes that most people feel they are not worthy to be with God, so we have to emphasize God’s grace and love right from the start, to make them feel wanted, then explaining what Christ did on our behalf. The Prodigal Son (Luke 15) was the classic example of a good sermon, as they teach how the father accepted his son, though he wasted the inheritance, and still smelled of pigs.

Mr. Comfort came to the conclusion that the surveys mentioned above suggested the old ways were better.  What's more important, Scriptures seem to provide proof of his idea.  Psalm 19:7 says, in part:

The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul

Well, converting the soul is what we want in evangelism, right?  The Word lays it out plainly.  You present the Law.

Mr. Comfort gives us a parable.  Suppose you’re walking around, and someone pops up and says, “I’ve got good news for you!  Someone paid a $2500 fine on your behalf!”  Your reaction might be “What are you talking about?  That doesn’t make sense; I can’t think of what I did wrong, nor has anybody told me thus.”  They are not exactly in a receptive mood, or grateful, right?  The person would be offended, actually--before they got around to accepting the money.  BUT what if the following metaphor happened:  This person was clocked doing 55 mph in an area set aside for a blind children’s school nearby.  There were 10 clear warning signs stating that the speed limit was 15 mph.  What he did was extremely dangerous, negligent, and reckless, whether he knew about it or not, and a $2500 fine was appropriate and it was the law.  So this person was caught, and in court his ignorance of the law was brushed aside (that would never bring back the life of a child killed--besides, he had clear warning signs; he just never slowed down to read them).  He was told all the details of his illegality, and then told to pay the fine, and with agony he wondered whether he would have the money, how stupid he was to do that, how much his family would sacrifice their lifestyle—or even how he would tell them—when suddenly someone he didn’t even know stepped forward and paid it for him.  Now his reaction would be a definition of gratitude, right?  He might even want to make friends with this stranger, to see what motivated him to give so much so graciously.

As you can clearly see by the two parables, the second example--explaining what he did wrong, the Law he broke, with proper acceptance of that news, THEN giving him the Good News of One who has paid his debt, generates a much more positive response.  Well, that’s the principle they formerly used in preaching.  On the other hand, the other approach is what we have a great deal more of now.  Most people, hearing this more-recent approach, are offended—they don’t think they are bad sinners. (Which means they haven’t been taught about God, how He is perfect, and hates sin.) If I talk "grace-only" with a prospect, I pretty much can’t get away from insinuating that they have seriously broken the law, when they have usually deceived themselves into thinking they don’t think they have—and they resent our suggestion—and our indirectness. Or, they consider the idea that they need salvation foolish.  As Scripture says in I Corinthians 1:18:

…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing

Anyone “saved” by this method is more by emotionalism, since there is confusion about why they need to be saved and what the Good News really saves us from—but in the cold light of the days following, this emotionalism cools off to rejection more often than not.  Which is where the 80-90% falling away comes in.

Thus I need, in my preaching evangelism, to take the time to speak insightfully of the Ten Commandments and how Jesus took the sin a step further (read the Sermon on the Mount)--its violation in thought as well as deed.  Thinking about a woman lustfully, not only having sex with her; or hating someone, not only murdering them--and then to also cover Jesus’ commandments in the Gospels—i.e., to show the prospect that he has truly offended a just God—then he hopefully becomes, as James says in 2:9: Convicted of the law, as a transgressor; then the Good News of Christ’s paying our debt will not be offensive or foolish…it will be the power of God unto salvation.

Let’s look at each function of presenting God’s Law. We’ll start with Romans 3:19:

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 

Thus, one function of it is (1) to stop the mouth, presumably from excusing or rationalizing.  We don’t need to hear much of the prospect’s wisdom, justifying himself and saying, “there are plenty of people worse than me.” (He’s either deceived or just putting you off, really). We are the ones bearing the wonderful gift of good news, and need an opportunity to speak.
Secondly, Romans 3:20 says this:

...by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

The prospect needs to know the knowledge of sin, since self-defense and self-deception are rampant today.  We cannot assume that his sin is in the forefront (or even in the back) of his memory.  I John 3:4 says:   sin is the transgression of the law.  It would seem obvious that a person needs to know the law intimately in order to know if he has transgressed it, or has sinned.  Romans 7:7 declares this more forcefully:  I would not have known sin except through the law. 

Thirdly, in Galatians 3:24, the Law is not only to build our knowledge of sin, but, very importantly….the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. 
What this means, is, the Law doesn’t really help us in reconciliation with God…it shows us that we are helpless.  It doesn’t justify us, it just leaves us guilty at the judgment seat. But with the Law, when we see our sin, as God sees it, we see how we have offended God, and if hell is even brought up (which it almost never is nowadays), we are, deservedly, destined for hell.  Then we seek Him for some method of righteousness and deliverance.  Christ is that key, as a good evangelist will point the way.

When modern evangelism abandoned the "old" principle of discussing the Law and how Christ saves us from wrath, it needed to seek another reason to attract us to Christ. So they invented the term “life enhancement.”  Following Christ will benefit us.  We will have peace, love, joy, fulfillment, and lasting happiness. At this point, Mr. Comfort provides another useful allegory:
Two men are sitting in a plane.  The first is given a parachute, (the only one receiving the offer), and told that it will “improve his flight.”  He is skeptical and even thinking the flight attendant is wacko, as he knows that airlines only talk about "good times are ahead," but he puts it on—just as a trial.  But it weighs his shoulders, and gives him difficulty in sitting upright.  But he perseveres.  After a while, though, he notices that other passengers are laughing at him due to his unusual clothing accessory.  Feeling humiliated, he can’t stand it anymore, and he throws the parachute to the floor.  Disillusionment and bitterness fill his heart, because as far as he was concerned, he was told an outright lie.

The second man was given a parachute, BUT he was told a different reason, in alarming detail:  at any moment, without warning, a faulty flight could mean he would be jumping 25,000 feet off the plane. He takes it to heart: He doesn’t notice the discomfort of the parachute, because his mind is consumed with the thought of what would happen to him if he had to jump without it.  He develops a deep-rooted peace in his heart knowing that he shall escape a sure death no matter what happens.  He can deal with other passengers’ mockery—he knows that they need to do what he did.  He might even engage them in intense conversation about their need for this safety device.
You can see what we’re saying.  Under modern evangelism, this man-centered “improvement” approach is a guaranteed failure.  People will take on Christ as an experiment to see whether their life does improve.  But they get what the Scripture promises to the saved, at some points in their lives--temptation, tribulation, and persecution.  They are humiliated by others, disillusioned about not seeing a rosy path develop for them. They take off the Lord Jesus, and are rightly embittered. They are now inoculated against evangelism in the future, and their latter end is worse than the first. Modern evangelism has promised them what God has not promised.  The opposite of their expectation occurs.  After all, God has every right to test us to see if we can really endure.  Modern evangelism does not ask a crucial question:  Are we able to drink of the cup that Jesus drank of?
We should take the second parachute approach, boldly telling every man, as Hebrews 9:27 says:

it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment

He must understand the horrific consequences of breaking the Law. He must be told to escape the wrath which is to come, when God judges the earth in righteousness. The issue is not one of happiness, but of righteousness.  Then he will flee to Christ, and experience true peace and joy—the fruits of salvation.  But don’t speak of peace and joy as a “draw card” for salvation, or sinners will respond with impure motives, lacking repentance.  The man correctly taught will have much more motivation to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  When bad times come, he doesn’t throw off Christ—because his reason for taking on Christ is not for rosy paths, but to save him from future wrath.  He has been re-taught to ignore man’s reasoning.  If anything, trials will drive the true believer closer to the Savior—life will be that much better in heaven, and he will be looking more for heaven when life on earth gets miserable.

Mr. Comfort then told of an evangelistic crusade he preached in Australia.  He preached of the Law, Hell, and wrath.  He told of how few people came forward, and how the atmosphere felt tense. He felt the usual disappointment in people’s deafness.  Perhaps he thought of Noah, “a just man, perfect in his generations...walked with God” (Gen. 6:9), who despite being “a preacher of righteousness” (II Peter 2:5), never was able to save a single soul outside his family.  The Spirit lifted Mr. Comfort up, told him to simply carry on. Mr. Comfort confessed that this lack of results wore him down, and had pulled him, at one time period, unwittingly to preaching a man-centered Gospel—to get happier results. For that time he got lots of results—that was nice.  The original numbers of people “saved” are higher that way, and there is less tension.  People are happy to have Jesus take a turn at getting them out of the mess they’ve made of their lives. But--they are not clean from the wrath to come because we don’t tell them of the wrath to come.  That was a glaring omission in his message. In the end, people should be asking what David, what the Prodigal Son, and Joseph asked:  How could they sin against God? After all, He is also a God of wrath, and we can’t just ignore that—it’s one of His personality traits.  Real repentance is understanding that the great offense here is against God, not just “horizontal” repentance against your fellow man. Mr. Comfort calls this “horizontal only” approach “superficial and experimental.”  The prospect should be seeking something called “godly sorrow” to obtain true repentance, an important element in salvation.  As II Corinthians 7:10 says: …godly sorrow produces repentance.  In evangelism nowadays, we are missing discussing sin against God.

We have preached the cure without telling them of the disease.
AB Earle, who had 150,000 converts to his ministry in the mid-1800s, made the following quote:
I have found by long experience that the severest threatenings of the Law of God has a prominent place in leading men to Christ.  They must see themselves lost before they will cry for mercy; they will not escape danger until they see it.

Mr. Comfort has noticed that there are many people who have been “saved” several times, yet their lives don’t show change. They’re still fornicating, still blaspheming, and so on. What they’re likely doing is:  Using the grace of God for an occasion of the flesh. They sin, they might ask God to forgive them, they move on same as before. They don’t esteem the sacrifice and don’t understand how great the sin.  It means nothing to them to trample the blood of Christ underfoot. The problem is: They’ve never been convinced of the disease that they might appropriate the cure.

When you study the Word, you find that Biblical evangelism is always Law to the proud and grace to the humble.  Never do you see Jesus giving the gospel to proud, arrogant, self-righteous people.  With the Law, He breaks the hard heart and with the Gospel, He heals the broken heart.  God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. The proud and highly esteemed are an abomination to God (Luke 16:15).  Note who gets the good tidings in Isaiah 61:1.  The poor, the brokenhearted and the captives are those who are there spiritually:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound

Only the sick can appropriate a cure. In Luke 10:25-37, after being plainly asked "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus gave the lawyer Law.  Why?  Because he was proud.  Note v. 29 for that in part of the story below:

And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶ He said to him,“What is written in the law? What is your readingof it?” ²⁷ So he answered and said, “‘You shall love the Lordyour God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’and‘your neighbor as yourself.’” ²⁸ And He said to him,“You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.” ²⁹ But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  ³⁰ Then Jesus answered and said:“A certainmanwent down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves…(the rest of the story is of the Good Samaritan).

Jesus knew this Jewish lawyer didn’t like Samaritans.  Then the Master Debater came to the climaxing point:

³⁶ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” ³⁷ And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said to him,“Go and do likewise.”

The lawyer had no response—he could see his own lack of love, compared to this generous Samaritan.  He could see that he was a Commandment-breaker.  The Law has done its job again—stopped his mouth, maybe convinced him of sin.

Note that a similar event happens when the rich young ruler visits Jesus.  We read of it in Luke 18:18-23, where Jesus shies away from an easy response:

Now a certain ruler asked Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁹ So Jesus said to him,“Why do you call Me good? No oneisgood but One,that is,God.²⁰ You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’ ” ²¹ And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.” ²² So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him,“You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”²³ But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich.

Again, Jesus did not begin with the Gospel to this person. (Today, as soon as he asks, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” we would engage him in a salvation prayer).  But Jesus sees a proud person underneath (Note v. 21), who was not ready for the Gospel.  So in verse 20 the young ruler gets the Law—the “horizontal” part-- and is still convinced that he has never sinned (an advantage that only Jesus can claim, really).  Then Jesus slyly points out his lack of the first commandment (Thou shall have no other gods before me) by showing him that his real god is his money.  Once again, no argument. His mouth was stopped.

In contrast, we see Nicodemus, in John 3.  While a leader of the Jews, he was humble of heart, acknowledging the deity of Jesus (verse 2).  He receives the Gospel, and perhaps the greatest verse in His Word, John 3:16.

Consider also Nathanael, in John 1:47-51.  In him was no deceit.  Since that trait is a tool of the proud, he does not have that negative quality.  Plus, he acknowledged the deity of Christ (v. 49).  Jesus gives him the honor of prophesying about Himself and His future coming.  Part of His glorious good news. This kinder approach goes for the Jews who gathered on the day of Pentecost, in Acts 2.  These were devout (a word which denotes humility) men, v. 5.  What did Peter preach to them?  Not the Law, but the Gospel.  (But he doesn’t hesitate to lay blame on them for His crucifixion, v. 36).

Think of two verses to the great hymn, “At Calvary:” Years I spent in vanity and pride, Caring not my Lord was crucified, Knowing not it was for me He died  On Calvary.
By God’s Word at last my sin I learned; then I trembled at the law I’d spurned Till my guilty soul imploring turned  To Calvary. May God bless you as you search for His ways of presenting His precious Words to the lost in your environment.  In the light of our first few paragraphs, remember the saying:  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” There is a lot of insanity in evangelism these days. Acknowledgement:  Ray Comfort, “Hell’s Best Kept Secret,"   audio and book from Livingwaters.com.

Our God Don't Play

I would like to summarize Francis Chan’s great sermon, When God Doesn’t Listen.  Here’s praying you get as much out of it as I did.

He starts off saying, “God is a lot more serious about sin than I am. But I don’t want to be in a middle ground between God and where the worldly culture is; I want to stand where He is.  I want to warn people, ‘This is where He is.’ I want all that boldness.”

When you read I John, you can see the seriousness. God says, “I don’t care if you say you know Me…if you don’t obey my commands, you’re a liar….You can’t love the things of the world, and also have the love of the Father in you….You can’t say you love God if you hate your brother whom you can see…you can’t keep going on sinning if you’re really a believer…you’re not a real believer.”  Wow, really? Evidently I’ve had a lazy view of God; this is so radically different, let’s just start all over.  Every sentence Jesus says, let’s take it literally.  All these seminarians say, “Well, He didn’t really mean that literally.”  But read the book of Luke, fresh, and say, “If He really means this, what would my life look like if I took this literally?”  In our church culture, we soften things to our liking.  But God is not that way.

When I look at church in America, let’s face it, there are so many of you who will participate if everything is just right.  You got to have the right speaker, the right music, the right programs; and on Sunday, it has to be the right time of day, it can’t be too long, and there better be something good going on for the kids.  And I want the people to be exactly like me, whose personalities I enjoy.  But are we playing a game here? God is more intense than games; when Scripture says ‘fear God,’ it really means fearing God.  When people advise us to pray, they say to just talk to Him, say whatever you want to say.  But I don’t see that in Scripture.  Ecclesiastes tells us to “guard yourselves as you approach God.”  Don’t make hasty vows; God’s going to hold you to them and deal with you not fulfilling them.

Truth is, sometimes talking to God is a waste of time--God isn’t listening to you.  God is actually disgusted by some of the prayers.

I had this guy who says his wife and he weren’t getting along; he had another job opportunity, so he was going to leave his wife and family—so he asks me, would you pray with me that I would just have a great new start?  And I go, “you gotta be kidding me right now, I’m not going to pray for you.”  Look at I Peter 3:7:

Husbands, likewise, live with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

Husbands, you treat her as a precious vessel, you protect her, you love her, you honor her…so that your prayers won’t be hindered.  God is saying, “That’s My daughter right there, so you better treat her the right way, or I’m not going to listen to you.”

One time we asked for prayer for healing, and a guy approached us for that. Later he said, “I’m living with this girl.”  So you claim to be a Christian and yet you’re sleeping around with this woman?  Let me ask you this:  If you were doing this with one of my daughters, would you have the nerve to come up to me and ask me for a favor?  No.  And you want me to join you in prayer? No; you should repent.   He is an awesome God, and will forgive. But God’s not going to listen to you right now.  Consider James 4:3:

 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

 This life is not all about us.  We’re a created being; we were created for Him.   We should ask God, “What do You want me to do?”  Look at James 1:6-8:

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. ⁷ For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; ⁸ he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

 If you have unconfessed sin, you may doubt that God is listening. If He is disapproving, you may not receive anything.  Such a person is double-minded. One eye on God, one on the world’s sin that he likes.

Is there anything better than answered prayer?--when you ask for something specific, and it actually happens!  And it couldn’t have been just circumstance, it was supernatural.  Isn’t that an awesome feeling?  “I actually talked to God—and He heard me all the way from heaven;" one out of seven billion people. He did it!”

But people have strange ways of doing things.  In Isaiah 58:5-9, people were fasting and praying, wearing sackcloth and ashes, so they could feel like asking God for favor.  His response was:

Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes?  Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the Lord?  ⁶ “(But here is) the fast that I choose: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke.  ⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out; When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh? 8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning, Your healing shall spring forth speedily, And your righteousness shall go before you; The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. ⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.

Do you think you’re going to suit up and bow before me, and think, “Ooh, what a humble guy I am.” Verse 6 shows what God really wants them to fast about.  That they would share their possessions with people in need, and not oppress them or look down on them. Then He would say, when you cry out, “Here I am.”  Then He would listen—and satisfy your needs. But it’s conditional. As James 5:16b says:

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

 A righteous man.

 Getting back to God’s seriousness, turn to Joshua 7.God had commanded Israel to destroy everything when they conquer the Amorites, but one man, Achan, didn’t—he kept some of the “accursed things.”  What’s interesting in Scripture is, “the anger of the Lord burned against the children of Israel.”  That means He was angry with All of them—over the sin of one man.  God allowed them to lose 36 men in a lost battle by retracting His favor. What does God say when Joshua asks Him, ”Why!?”  Verses 10-13, in part:

¹⁰ So the Lord said to Joshua: “Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? ¹¹ Israel has sinned… Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you.

So God allowed 36 men to die because of the sin of another man; and He even swore to abandon His people.  We find in verses 20ff that Achan did admit to his sin, keeping spoils of a piece of clothing and silver and gold, but he and his children were still stoned to death!  Only then was God willing to “turn from the fierceness of His anger.”  As Chan tells it, “Now you’re thinking, “that’s not fair”….but I try to learn God's way.  I turn to God and go, ‘I’m not as serious about this as You are, God.’  You wanted a purity among Your people, so much so that You would go that far…and the moment the sin was outside the camp, Your blessing returned to it.”

How serious are we about the purity of the church today?  Remember Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira?  They spoke a pretense, a lie, that they gave all the money to the church on a sale of land, when in fact they had kept back some (Ed: so the sin was lying, not that they didn’t give every penny to the church). But God struck both of them dead!  They just collapsed.  Scripture says in v.11,

…great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things.

 My God don’t play.

 Many of you have a problem here; “He can’t have such a high standard.” You also have a problem with Hell, with Him flooding the earth.  But these are about God’s seriousness about purity, and how sometimes He won’t listen. God gave us His Spirit so if we call on Him, we can indeed live up to that standard.  But we have to call for help.  You can’t be unrepentant.  We have a part we have to play in sanctification.  Just as He asked Joshua to help remove the sinner, He today asks His church to purge the unrepentant sinner from our gatherings. See Matthew 18:15 and other verses (see my blog on this progression).

There is a particular sentiment expressed by Mr. Chan that I would like to emphasize.  We’ll pick it up with I Corinthians 5:9-13:

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. ¹⁰ Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. ¹¹ But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. ¹² For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? ¹³ But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”

Mr. Chan makes a good point when he says, many of us were taught wrong on this.  We ARE supposed to judge…but those who are inside the church, who call themselves Christian.  We are not supposed to judge those who don’t call themselves Christians.  “The church has got it backwards.  We keep judging, Ooh, the evil world out there, the evil world…God says ‘Stop that! I asked you to look in your own midst, and get serious about the purity of the church, and get those defiant people out of there. I don’t want someone who is taking the name of Christ, and living that way…and you shouldn’t want that either.”  Look at Titus 3:10-11a:

Reject (have nothing more to do with) a divisive man after the first and second admonition, ¹¹ knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.

Confront him in love. Say, “It’s not just about you…you hurt us….When you got baptized, you joined the family here. My sin can have an impact on your life; and your sin impacts me—and sin could impact our prayer.” What’s the first word of the Lord’s Prayer?  The word "our."  It is about us as a family. There ought to be family love. In today’s world, “unity,” staying and doing things together, is ‘weird.’  Everyone likes to drift off, meet up with friends from their Iphone. Why not let the world see something different?  Nowadays, everyone ditches each other if someone bugs them. But family should stay together.  You’re living double lives if we hold something back from someone you profess to love.

As you can see, Mr. Chan holds a strong view on discipline within the church.  Praise God. Unfortunately, what often happens is, those people simply change churches. 

God is more serious than letting us let these things slide.  Our God Don’t Play.

The "Emerging Church" Has Some Real Problems

 I’ve been reading an excellent book by Thomas Horn (Blood on the Altar: The Coming War Between Christian vs. Christian). I sought further help on one of his subjects, the Emerging Church, online. So I internetted an interview between two giants in the faith:  John MacArthur (Author of 150 books, pastor, radio preacher, president of Master’s Seminary in Los Angeles) and Phil Johnson (Retired U.C.-Berkley law professor, father of the “intelligent design movement.”) They’re both in their 70's now, but their hands are on the pulse of the church—and they’re very, very concerned about the church’s faithfulness to Scripture. I thought I would focus on their concern and highlight part of their interview here.

One of the biggest threats to God's church is, would you believe, a church movement called the “Emerging Church.” So let’s start by defining it. Wikipedia says: they are post-Protestant, post-evangelical, post-liberal, post-conservative, and post-charismatic. Further, the movement hates preaching; they believe instead on “conversation” with people. This is to emphasize its developing and decentralized nature, its vast range of standpoints, and its commitment to dialogue. VERY important note: There is no central creed in these churches. What those involved DO mostly agree on, is their disillusionment with today's church--and they support the deconstruction of modern Christian worship. They believe, instead, that there are radically diverse perspectives within Christianity that should be listened to. They say they are creating a “safe” environment for those with opinions ordinarily rejected by modern conservative evangelism. They believe that non-critical interfaith dialogue is preferred over "dogmatically-driven" evangelism. The movement “went public” in November 2004, when they were spotlighted in an article in Christianity Today. (I'm not saying Christianity Today likes their stance). But they’ve been around since at least 1996.

The second way to get to know how the Emerging Church, is by a few relevant quotes from their founding father, Brian McLaren. In a separate interview, after he "mistakenly" spoke of God in the male gender, he had this to confess: “This is as good a place as any to apologize for my use of masculine pronouns for God…I avoid (their) use because they can give the false impression…that the Christian God is a male deity.” On the subject of the atonement, Jesus’ sacrifice for us, he calls it a “violent view,” because it presents God as the “greatest existential threat to humanity.” On the return of Christ, a reader from Sweden asked: “If Jesus isn’t coming back…what about judgment or the resurrection?” His answer was psychobabble, but you can tell he's giving it a thumbs-down: “Jesus does say ‘I will come again.’…but I think it’s a mistake to assume that when he says those things, he means what we mean…with all our dispensationalist, premillennialist…or whatever categories. The hyperbolic imagery of the New Testament, moon turning to blood..etc. is political language, signaling the fall of powerful political luminaries. Also…Jesus didn’t come just to evacuate us from earth to a future heaven but to show us how to live and make this world more and more beautiful by following Jesus’ example which would eventually lead to God’s “kingdom come on earth.”"

You can see the attack on foundational Scripture there.

Another leader of the "Emerging" movement, Rob Bell, also attacks fundamental doctrine: he doesn’t believe Scripture was inerrant when he mentions his greatest discovery—“the Bible as a human product.” He also denied the reality of hell and promoted universalism (its definition: Everyone gets saved!) in his book Love Wins.**(see note below). In summarizing the movement’s view, he says “This is not just the same old message with new methods. We’re rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion…” Mr. McLaren agrees; he believes in inclusivism—that other religions (those that deny Christ as God) lead to salvation, too. For instance, he does not think we should convert Buddhists to Christianity; we should make “Buddhists followers of Jesus.” (Buddhism is usually atheistic, so a “Buddhist Christian” is an oxymoron. Acts 4:12 doesn’t apply any more, I guess.)

Now that we’ve read a bit of this strange group, let’s let John MacArthur tell what he thinks. He’s smarter than me anyway.  He first distinguishes the emerging church movement from Modernism. Modernism was a product of the Enlightenment during the Renaissance in which they made human reason, not Scripture, the determinant of ethics.  He says “out of that came the worship of the human mind, and (in effect, they were saying), the mind trumps God.” The Emerging Church, on the other hand, is post-modernism…In both cases, they assault Scripture. (This movement) "is a denial of the clarity of Scripture....they think we can’t really know what the Bible says. Whether it’s about sin or virtue...they don’t like rules, so their ‘out’ is…(they say) “Well, it (Scripture) is not clear.” This is just another way to set the Bible aside.”

Scripture claims to be clear, however, and God holds us responsible: ”A wayfaring man though he be a fool need not err.” (Isaiah 35:8). Dr. MacArthur also charges their leaders that “the reason they deny Scripture (clarity is because) men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19). The light is there, they hate the light, they run from the light. The issue is not that Scripture is not clear, it is crystal clear.” Dr. MacArthur charged them with running from the light because he believes they’re heretical—which he says later on in the interview.

I would like to take the topic of homosexuality to get a thorough example of their approach. I’m sure you know (unless your head is in the sand) that the homosexual agenda, they say, we should all tolerate, all agree with them, not finding anything morally wrong. Scripture, however, won’t let us do that. It’s condemned in Leviticus 18:22, where God says to men:

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.

As Romans 1 points out, it is among the worst deviations that men come down to, after God “gave them up” in their insistence to defy Him.

Scripture is crystal clear on this subject, is it not? Not according to Emerging Church leader Mr. MacLaren, who says: “Many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality. We’ve heard all sides but no position has yet won our confidence…that alienates us from both the liberals and conservatives who seem to know exactly what we should think…the biblical arguments are nuanced and multilayered, and the pastoral ramifications are staggeringly complex.” The phrase that sticks in my craw--"no position has yet won our confidence." Thus, they are saying, "Our judgment is the final word."  Their judgment trumps God, evidently.

But Dr. MacArthur insists that the truth is clear; it’s bad news for the practicing homosexual, but it’s still the truth. He says, “the truth is what I will defend. It’s not personal. I’m not mad at people. I’m not trying to protect my own little space. That doesn’t make me popular in all circles, it creates just the opposite.” He maintains that it’s impossible for Christians to agree with the latest world's view: “there is no possible accommodation …Christianity would have to be reinvented to accommodate itself to any pattern of (worldly) culture thinking.”

But Brian McLaren, a founding father of the Emerging movement doesn’t believe MacArthur has good motives. McLaren was asked again where he stands on the homosexuality issue in Leadership Journal in January 2006 (Leadership Journal is also produced by Christianity Today). His answer was anything but crystal, as usual, since he switched the subject to attacking motives of the questioners instead. He first accuses conservative Christians of, quote, “wanting to be sure that we conform to what I call “radio-orthodoxy,”(a slam on radio preacher MacArthur and others), i.e. the religio-political priorities mandated by many big-name religious broadcasters.” After spreading this bit of slander, he says “I hesitate in answering the homosexual question…there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest…we must understand the question beneath the question…we want to be sure our answers are appropriate to the need of the moment…We fear that the whole issue has been manipulated…by political parties…whatever we say gets sucked into a vortex of politicized culture-wars rhetoric...  I know what you guys' motives are, and I condemn them." (If their motives are to defend Scripture, that's reprehensible, I guess).  He suspects our motives in speaking against homosexuals are political, stir-up-the-crowd stuff.  There are those, frankly, who have that in mind.  So it's best to stick to Scripture.  We should also pay less attention to depending on political parties to maintain Christianity. He has a paranoia about that, some of it justified.

Really, a big question he touched on is, how do you evangelize the homosexual? They hate the church, feeling condemned if they just enter a conservative one. So they never attend. They avoid us.  But if we approach them, they may push us away, since we've become stereotypes to them. So we do not know them, unless they're family. The Emerging Church has decided to, as Dr. MacArthur says, "capture these ignored people by “sanctifying the (gay) culture." But the Bible doesn’t adapt to culture. It confronts culture. The Emerging Church, on the other hand, not only is unwilling to believe the clear statement of Scripture, but it wants to let the culture define what Christianity should be…whatever the current sin that needs to be tolerated in the culture is, they’ll buy into.”

Dr. MacArthur then talks again about big non-Biblical movements in history. He summarizes Pre-modernism: “there is truth and it comes from God; it has a supernatural source…men believed in God or they believed in the gods.” What follows is Modernism (which I’m figuring covers 1750-2000).  He summarizes it as: “there is truth and we can find it by human reason…not revelation from God, not the Bible, but human reason.” But Modernism wasn’t a good idea in practice: “the world got worse than it has ever been…the totalitarian world…fascism, Nazism, Communism, and the massacre of millions and millions of people in the name of human reason.” (For instance, most Lutherans didn’t have any trouble grabbing a gun to obey Hitler). Getting up-to-date, he says: “Now the idea of post-modernism says, “We give up. There may be truth, but we can’t know it. It may be from God, but we can’t know…so we embrace mystery…you have your truth, I have my truth…truth is whatever you think it is, whatever you want it to be, it’s intuitive, it’s experiential..but it’s not universal and it’s not knowable, universally knowable.” Mr. Johnson, the interviewer, responds, “That’s why these days the highest values, the sole remaining virtues, are things like tolerance, ambiguity, mystery..” (To me, calling this a “mystery” in post-modernism opens the door to searching in the occult; people still want plain answers to life's issues, which they're not getting in this psychobabble of Mr. McLaren.) Dr. MacArthur says, “Oh, Brian McLaren says ambiguity is really a good thing (Mr. McLaren has been quoted as saying, ”Certainty is overrated”)...it gives people a license to invent their own religion, really…no one is permitted to challenge it…it is wonderful if you want to sin without any guilt. And I think that’s at the bottom of this…they hate the light because their deeds are evil.”

He also charges, “It’s not a theology; (they say they) don’t "teach"…and the word “sermon” scares them… no, we want to have a conversation. But the only part of the conversation they don’t like is when you say, ”That’s wrong. That’s sinful.” So their conversation...never has an objective…that’s another way to negate the Word of God. I say, you can deny that (the plain Word)  is from God. But don’t tell me God has spoken but He mumbled. The worst thing we could do would be to soften the edges of what really is clear in Scripture.” (They claim) “the Bible is irrelevant, you can’t stand up for an hour and exposit the Word of God, you’ve got to tell them stories… To quote one of their leaders, “The bible (small “b,” to them ) is no longer a principal source of morality as a rulebook. The meaning of the Good Samaritan is more important than the Ten Commandments —even assuming the latter could be remembered in any detail by anyone…” By the way, some of the most revealing McLaren quotes are on this website: http://carm.org/brian-mclaren-quotes-ignorance-bliss-theology.

Dr. MacArthur feels that (they should say) “since we don’t know what it means, why would we teach?  Nobody has a right to impose on anybody else their ideas.” They take a sort of reverse humility in confessing their ignorance. To turn truth on its head, they believe that if someone claims to know what Scripture means, they have committed an act of pride. To quote MacArthur:  “It is an attack on the clarity of Scripture and they elevate themselves as if this is some noble reality…which they call humility…(it’s) a celebration of ignorance.”

They also have this feature: “They’re really, really aggressive at tearing down the church, tearing down historic theology...that have been a part of the church’s life for centuries…that’s the lowest level of assault there is. Anybody can shred and destroy without having to build something back in its place…(they) just shred what people believe and walk away, leaving chaos everywhere…the egotism of it is pretty frightening. And the church is filled with people who have no foundation.”

He gives a few words of warning to people out there looking for a church home: "I don’t think a person should go to a church that isn’t answerable to a doctrinal statement…(if you do), you need to get out of there because you’re at the whim of a guy who can invent anything he wants any time. This entrepreneurial approach to the church is a very serious breach…" (There) “may be Christians who are seduced by this; in their ignorance they are the children tossed to and fro, carried about by every blowing wind of doctrine.” (Ephesians 4:14). Mr. Johnson, the interviewer, says: “And every man does what’s right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6). Dr. MacArthur maintains that young people from a denominational church that often lacks life and fails to exposit Scripture, these are the likely victims of this movement: “I don’t think (the Emerging Church) is nearly as appealing to the non-churched people as to the marginally churched young people."   The young are attracted to Emerging movement; they "are reacting to the superficiality and…the legalism of (their church).”

Dr. MacArthur speaks again to the clarity of Scripture. (Jesus) “says things to them in His day like this, ‘Have you not read? Have you not heard what Scripture says?’ He didn’t say to them, “Oh, look, I know why you’re having a tough time with Me, because the Old Testament is so hard to understand.” Then he brings up the example of the Gentiles, who were totally ignorant of the Old Testament…"Paul (who assumes the regular people are smart as he) builds these massive cases of understanding the Christian gospel based on the sacrificial system from the Old Testament…Thus, to come along and say that the Bible is not clear is then to accuse God, and (accusing) the Scripture itself of claiming something for itself that it can’t deliver. (Charging God like that is) pretty serious.”

**Note: Mars Hill Churches was the focus of the Emerging movement.  But Rob Bell was removed as senior pastor of his Mars Hill church in Michigan in 2011 after his beliefs were revealed in the book Love Wins. But he has come back, preaching at sold-out conferences in the U.K. and Ireland lately.

Another important name in the movement is Mark Driscoll.  He was removed from a separate Mars Hill pastorate in October 2014, most particularly because he called women "penis homes" and other misogynist remarks--plus, he's being charged with plagiarism.  It was also revealed that church money was used to pump up his book sales so he could make the NY Times Bestseller List. But he has come back, after taking in $1.1 million in donations in 2 years, he built a $1 million church in Phoenix, and has even been called upon to evangelical conferences.

Brian McLaren is still going strong, too:  His latest book, The Great Spiritual Migration, includes the following crazy quote:

“Christianity, we might say, is driving around with a loaded gun in its glove compartment, and that loaded gun is its violent image of God. It’s driving around with a license to kill, and that license is its Bible, read uncritically. Along with its loaded gun and license to kill, it’s driving around with a sense of entitlement derived from a set of beliefs with a long, ugly, and largely unacknowledged history.”

Acknowledgement: Thomas Horn, Blood on the Altar and Christianity Today

Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger

 Planned Parenthood is the oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of abortion, sex education, and birth control services in the world.  It now operates in 150 nations. But the story of Planned Parenthood could never have begun without the story of Margaret Sanger.  It was her impetus, her drive, her single-minded obsession that eventually gave birth to the giant baby-killer.  She died in 1966, but Planned Parenthood has grown and achieved far beyond her greatest dreams.  Yes, from 1978 til’ now, Planned Parenthood has murdered over 7 million babies. What an accomplishment. (Results prior to 1978 were not kept—typical of the organization’s sloppy accountability even until today).

Well, which side of Margaret Sanger’s  story would you like to hear?  My local library has a book in the Juvenile section, no less, that is unrelenting in its praise.  She was a wonderful, progressive woman—according to them.

But my library does not have the book that I chose to review:  Killer Angel, by Dr. George Grant. He is the author of over five dozen books on American history, politics, theology, and social issues.   This book  is a “Cliff’s Notes” of his great work, Grand Illusions, an even more  thoroughly documented biography of her effect on mankind.  She is up there with Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler—and living in the same time period, no less—if you want to find out who was the greatest murderer of innocents the world has ever seen.   How could she be lavishly praised in most of our secular literature, while the other homicidal tyrants are vilified? I maintain that it’s because our culture has silent agreement with her.  That would be another paper.

Her story begins predictably enough.  Born in 1879 in Corning, New York, daughter of Irish Catholic parents, the sixth of eleven children, her home life was never happy.  Her father drank, beat his sons, and worked sporadically, so they suffered much from hunger and privation.  He was a radical atheist, and mocked the religious devotion of his neighbors and his wife.  Margaret was baptized and confirmed in secret in by her mother in 1893, and had a spark of religion; but her mother’s death and father’s cynicism turned her into hatred of religion by the time she was 17.

Grown up, at first she was a material girl.  She was bright and manipulative, pushing her way up the ladder. She married into money at age 29 to William Sanger, an architect.   She had three children soon after.  They lived in Manhattan, but she was restless of housekeeping and kids—so she convinced William to move from their suburban neighborhood to a chic neighborhood where there was lots of shopping and a real night life.  Once they moved, her husband, a free-thinker, immediately began attending Anarchist and Communist meetings in Greenwich Village.  Margaret tagged along, unimpressed—she mocked the rag-tag revolutionaries.  But she listened to the well-honed speeches by John Reed, who learned his trade from Russian Bolsheviks, and she was suddenly tuned in.  She shed her bourgeois habits and plunged headlong into the maelstrom of rebellion and revolution.  She began farming out her kids to friends and neighbors, and went into hospitality, regularly inviting Communists and liberals into their home for meals and talk. Outside of those get-togethers, she had almost no connection with her husband.  She joined the Socialist party—a conglomeration of Mugwumps, Anarchists, Progressivists, and Communists--and volunteered to be a women’s union organizer.   She then formed a special attachment to the words of Eugene Debs, who raved about the evils of Capitalism, and who ran several times for president (though one of his campaigns was run from his penitentiary cell).  But on women’s issues, he was in favor of sexual liberation, feminism, and birth control--subjects that were right in her wheelhouse.

She tried labor activism for a while, and even midwifery.  But she met Mabel Dodge, a trust socialite, and began rubbing shoulders and talking with the high-income intellectuals like Eugene O’Neil, who introduced her to free love.  As typical, she jumped in feet first.  She had already suggested to her husband that she would like to sexually experiment with different partners, but despite his puzzled hurt, she often resorted to free love to quench her hunger for meaning in life.  Her husband tried to change things by taking her to Paris, but there she spent much time in learning advanced contraceptive methods.  She abandoned her husband—and her marriage—and returned to New York now looking for income.  She decided to become a writer.  Her first issue of The Woman Rebel (its subheading:  “No Gods and No Masters”) showed the darkness of her mind.  She denounced marriage as a “degenerate institution” and sexual modesty as “obscene prudery.”   Two of her issues even defended political assassinations.  But she mostly wrote about contraception and sexual liberation.  One issue irresponsibly recommended “Lysol douches” and “heavy doses of laxatives” to stop pregnancy.  She was promptly served with a subpoena indicting her for lewd and lascivious articles.  Five years in the federal pen awaited her.  She fled the country under an assumed name—her Socialist friends forged her a passport.  She had to get a permanent babysitter for the three inconvenient children.

While she was a fugitive in England, she was fascinated by lectures on Thomas Malthus (the man is still considered an economic guru, by many).  He maintained that population would always grow faster than production of food, and land available.  This would cyclically lead to a crisis shortage of food, resulting in massive deaths—either by war or by famine, so there would be enough food for fewer people.    Unfortunately, Malthus decided that the only responsible social policy was to managerially limit the growth in population. (But he was totally wrong on his growth in food assumption--productivity innovation has been vastly successful in providing enough food). Listen to his mind-blowing suggestions to "solve" the food problem:  “All children born beyond what would be required must necessarily perish…we should facilitate…this mortality…by encouraging destruction.  Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits…we should crowd more people together, and court the return of the plague…and build their villages near stagnant pools.  But above all, we should reprobate (disapprove of) remedies for diseases, and restrain those…much mistaken men who use charity, relief, and missionary outreaches.”  Note that most of these monstrous suggestions would kill the poor--and, by the by, he figured the well-to-do would thrive.

This unbelievable idea (the opposite of Christ, who protected the poor and sick) was destined for unpopularity in a moral culture, but…Neo-Malthusianism that arose later, developed palatable arguments that saved the day for Malthusians. (I.e., they developed excuses to cover up their death-theology).  The thesis was, again:  the physically unfit, the poor, and the incompetent were the ones “chosen” for suppression and isolation.  The “Neos” felt the best way to gradually eliminate them was through teaching them three things:  contraception, sterilization and abortion.  Well, Margaret agreed with this (prejudicial) doctrine and began preparations to lecture and educate the world.   In order to take the moral “high ground,” she reasoned that she should preach on how these three unholy solutions would lessen the threat of poverty, sickness, racial tension--all "due to" over-population.  “As has been scientifically proven,” she added.  A lie. Plunging headlong for scientific "proof," she read up on all the quack science of the day:  Phrenology (the idea that the shape and size of the skull proves mental ability and character), craniometricism (we can determine race and gender by the shape of the skull), Oneidianism (free love), lambrosianism (the idea that criminals have low foreheads, close-set eyes, and small pointed ears), Hereditarianism (the idea that heredity plays a significant role in determining character and human nature).   They also believe in the power of genetics to solve many human social problems), and Freudianism (sex, of course).

But her favorite offshoot of Malthusianism was Eugenics, the idea that while we want to control breeding, we also want to increase desirable heritable characteristics.  Let others talk about restricting immigration or cutting off welfare; let others experiment with sterilization that produced nothing but sad stories that blew apart families; let others suggest an “extra-child tax,” or elimination of medical subsidies to “oversize” families, or eliminating paid maternity leave; but her thing was to help eliminate “bad racial stocks” and to “engineer the evolutionary ascent of man.”  Very noble.  In fact, many universities loved the Eugenics idea so much that her groups were endowed with departments that taught eugenics—we’re talking Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford in particular.  (Where have the Ivy League schools gone?!) Funding was provided by the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations.  Regardless of the big names, this was immoral; it was malevolent voodoo science; it was genocide, it was White Supremacy, because they zeroed in on the poor and the minority races to eliminate, as we shall see.

Hitler picked this eugenics idea up himself and extrapolated it--kill the Jews, and you have improved the Aryan race.  What is less known is that he forced sterilization, encouraged free sex among the virgin girls that looked Aryan, and also killed the mentally ill and disabled.  Genocide became the wave of the future at the time (in the early 1920s)—I’m sure Stalin wanted to achieve the same noble goals when he killed fifteen million Russian and Ukrainian kulaks (rebellious peasants who resisted forced collectivization). Mussolini killed four million Ethiopians, two million Eritreans (Russia massacred them too), and a million Serbs, Croats, and Albanians.   And I should say that Hitler didn’t stop with Jews; he killed two million Slavs and a million Poles—both pollutants to the Aryan race.  At this time Mrs.Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which would in 1942 become Planned Parenthood (they went international in the late 1940s).

She also wrote a book, The Pivot of Civilization, a disgusting 284 pages of turgid, hateful words.  The book, like Malthus, hates charitable organizations—“they help spread misery and destitution…dangers which have today produced their full harvest of human waste.”   She unashamedly called for the elimination of “human weeds,” calls for the “cessation of charity,” for the segregation of “morons, misfits, and the maladjusted,” and for the sterilization of “genetically inferior races.”  (This was before abortion was legal).  Lest you question who she had in mind, she later writes that the “dysgenic races” included “Blacks, Hispanics, Amerinds” (Native Americans), and, would you believe, “Fundamentalists and Catholics.” (Such a book, if written today, it would be labeled racist and hate speech.)   But the book drew rave reviews.  If you were non-Aryan, if you were Red, Yellow, Black, or certain Whites, all were noxious in her sight. (She had some of Hitler’s cronies over for dinner from time to time—it was obvious she agreed with their genocidal plans.)  Later, she planned to have Planned Parenthood deliberately place the abortion clinics in particular neighborhoods with these minorities.  Or, as she called them, “these feeble-minded, syphilitic, irresponsible, and defective” people.

These statements, only slightly subdued, made her a star among the influential intelligentsia in England.  With the help of Havelock Ellis, whom she adored for his radical ideas and his unusual bedroom behavior (though he was impotent, he staged orgies, established a network for homosexual liaisons, and helped provide mescaline and other psychotropic and psychedelic drugs). The two of them plotted what would be politically expedient to broaden her popularity base.  It was decided she would have to tone down her rabid pro-abortion and socialistic stance (remember, this is still only in the 1920s), and she needed to take charge of her children once again, to show that she had family values.  But she could keep pounding on Eugenics in her lectures, since it was popular.  Thus prepared, she came back to America to launch a brilliant public relations campaign.  The authorities were intimidated to drop all previous charges; then she went on a 3-month speaking tour here.  She garnered controversial press coverage everywhere she went—but the upper income crust in America loved her, as did England.  This was right after the Great War, and people were doing everything they could to remove the scars of war—they were drinking, dancing, and forgetting.  Predictions for the future of America were bright.  Racial hatred was still active (this was only 40 years after Reconstruction.)  Many theologians chimed in that we were entering in the Biblical Millennium.  But her enthusiasm and popularity led her to be too bold—and she made a mistake.  She set up an illegal birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of New York—populated, of course, by immigrant Slavs, Latins, Italians, and Jews.  But within two weeks, the clinic was shut down as illegal—but she was only sentenced to 30 days in the workhouse. No problem.  As soon as she was released, she founded a new organization, the Birth Control League, and began to publish a new magazine, the Birth Control Review.

Despite criticism from evangelist Billy Sunday, she still garnered praise from people like Theodore Roosevelt, and got her intellectual friends—H.G. Wells, Pearl Buck, Julian Huxley, Havelock Ellis--to write articles for her.  It became a popular magazine.   By 1922, her fame was secure, and she went on a round-the-world lecture tour.  She took a less-radical stance.  She could no longer publicly talk about the “choking human undergrowth of morons and imbeciles should be segregated and sterilized,” —but that statement WAS recorded in the Review and in private discussions.  But, think how all you needed to know about the mindset of Hitler was to read Mein Kampf (it was quickly translated into English), so all you needed know about the real mind of Margaret was to read the Birth Control Review.  It had articles of Fascist diatribe, of limiting immigration—by race; and Margaret herself wrote favoring concentration camps for all “dysgenic stocks.”  By her estimation, as much as 70% of the population fell into her undesirables.  Margaret and her cohorts really had their work cut out for them in their goal to limit these people.

But they were more than up to the task. Later, in 1939, she designed a “Negro Project,” as she called it, in response to requests from Southern states’ public health officials—as she called them, “men not generally known for their racial equanimity”—yet she was willing to work with them.  As she put it, “the mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously…the increase among Negroes, even more than among Whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit.”  Her group wanted to hire three or four “Colored Ministers…with engaging personalities…to propagandize for birth control.”  She wrote, “The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the Minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”  (This is the testimony of a friend and feminist, Linda Gordon, in her book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 1974, page 229ff.)  Further, she said, “Let’s appear to let the colored run it.”  Another compatriot said, “I wonder if Southern Darkies can ever be trusted with…a clinic …except under white supervision.”  (This reminds me of a quote by G.K. Chesterton, a theologian and philosopher, the only intellectual voice at the time opposed to her ravings: “Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other’s”).  Thus, this was a ruse concocted to get blacks to cooperate in their own elimination.  Sadly that project was quite successful.  Margaret’s dream of discouraging “the defective…from their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning” was beginning to be fulfilled.

In 1925 she hosted an international birth control conference, in which the attendees for the first time were together in claiming a high goal of unrestricted abortion in every country as soon as possible.  One of their themes was captured succinctly n the following group statement:  “The dullard, the gawk, the numbskull, he simpleton, the scatterbrain are amongst us in overshadowing numbers—intermarrying, breeding, inordinately prolific, threatening to overwhelm the world with their useless and terrifying gel.”

Despite her stunning success, Margaret was miserable.  During one of her many long absences, her daughter caught cold—and died of pneumonia.  Her reaction was to forget by having more sex—and she began indulging in the occult.  She attended séances, and applied into a Rosicrucian gathering (they claimed occult powers and knowledge).  She also dabbled with Theosophy (they believed in karma and reincarnation).  And she married again—in 1922—into big money; this time, to a Mr. J. Noah Slee.  But first she made him sign a prenuptial agreement that she would have her own apartment, feel free to come and go as she pleased, have friends in behind closed doors—and he would have to phone her from the other end of the apartment or seek her secretary to ask her for a dinner date.  I don’t know how he could have missed her intent here, but the milquetoast signed.  Slee never saw too much of her after that.

She may have been terribly unhappy, but she was terribly rich now too.  As befits her obsession and work ethic, she spent most of his money on her cause—traveling and getting in front of every microphone she could—day or night. She was a tenacious organizer.  She applied for every grant, appealed to every foundation, and pleaded for funds from many corporations and—from charity organizations, no less.  Planned Parenthood got its name and began reaching out for affiliates in 1942.  Her greatest coup was when her organization got a tax-exempt status from the IRS.  So she got treated as a charity.  How ironic, considering how she felt about them.

In 1938, Sweden became the first free nation to revert to abortions (Stalin and Hitler did it coercively).  The forebear of Planned Parenthood jumped into their countries with clinics.  They also persuaded Sweden to accept their sex-education programs for schools.  Knowing Mrs. Sanger’s sexual perversions, we can imagine what that might include.  More European nations allowed abortions over the next 18 years.

When Adolf Hitler’s holocaust was laid open in 1945, she backpedaled and covered up her many ties to Hitler’s cronies.  She spent strongly on a massive propaganda blitz aimed at the U.S. middle class; she emphasized patriotism, personal choice, and family values (imagine that from her). She won additional endorsements from Eleanor Roosevelt and Katherine Hepburn.  And from Albert Einstein, Nehru, John Rockefeller, Emperor Hirohito, and Henry Ford (a notorious anti-Semite).   But none of these encomiums gave her any joy.  By 1949 she became addicted to both drugs and alcohol.  She was quietly removed from the Board several times, but they found that they couldn’t survive without her.  She forced their hand by dying in 1966, at age 86.

But Planned Parenthood lived on, and carried her legacy with the same driving spirit as hers.  In the 1960’s, even the middle class loosened up its morals in the U.S.  In 1967, the American Medical Association began calling for the decriminalization of abortion.   So much for the Hippocratic Oath.  About the only powerful opposition voice in this time came from Pope Paul VI, in 1968, whose encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the sanctity of life.  But pretty much everyone ignored traditions--it was the late '60s, right?  Several states loosened restrictions on child-killing procedures (such as, “abortion is OK to preserve her mental health, “etc)—Colorado, California, and North Carolina for starters.  By the end of 1971, half a million legal abortions were being performed in the U.S. each year.  That’s half the rate today, yet it was two years before Roe v. Wade fully opened the doors.

Planned Parenthood also used Sanger's moral legacy (an oxymoron)--in 1970. Here’s how they did things in the Philippines, where abortion was illegal. Planned Parenthood  offered “menstrual extractions”—vacuuming the uterus—and the procedure was done by those who were not medically qualified.  It was still an abortion, but a tricky play on words enabled them to still kill the baby and avoid the legalities. The authorities let them get away with this simple deception.  They were more brazen in Brazil, where they knew there was a lack of legal enforcement.  Despite sterilization being illegal, they performed it anyway—on 20 million every year at that time.  An internal directive from their office in London (this fact was uncovered in 1981), gave them the OK on deceptions like this.  It said “…action outside the law, and even in violation of it, is part of the process of stimulating change.”  But still they have this great image to the public. The organization is coated with Teflon, I guess.  In a recent video entrapment, they violated three laws, where they were caught (1)  selling dead baby’s body parts, (2) through partial birth abortion, many beyond state limits; (3) without the mother’s consent to the act of manipulating the abortion procedure.  They got off scot-free—despite admitting to these things on tape; then they had the audacity to sue the video investigator.  He had to pay $200,000.  This horror happened  because  their  federal judge had, in the past, helped open and run a Planned Parenthood clinic.  My question is: Where were the Christian churches?  If we cared, giant protests should have happened.  And:  Who determined that this federal judge would decide the case?  Of course, the public knows nothing and cares nothing about this case. Fifty-two percent of Americans now favor Planned Parenthood.

Our tax money actually pays Planned Parenthood over $570 million a year to run their grisly service.  (They want to pay less).  They kill over 320,000 babies annually. ( A big part of the near-million murders annually here).  Despite their arguments about a range of services they provide, abortion consumes 94% of their expenses.  Let no one kid you—they are about profit.   Smaller clinics are staying in business by adding chemical abortions with RU486 to their offerings, often via non-nurse, non-human presence.  I'm speaking of web-cam hookup with an abortionist at one of the larger mega-clinics. This is a cost-saver, since they don’t need local expertise.  But none of this makes abortion safer–in fact, it increases the danger to the mother–but it does make more centers profitable.

Why are we paying half a billion of our tax money a year to allow Planned Parenthood to kill babies?  Shockingly, 62% of Americans are against defunding Planned Parenthood. We conclude that they like their tax money used this way. 70% of Americans now favor the way Roe v. Wade went.  So we conclude that Americans don’t have much to say against abortion.  No moral anchor! This is America now.  This despite the fact that science is crystal clear on the baby having a separate life from the mother; and you are killing a separate human when you abort.  Why is Planned Parenthood the only organization with a tax-exempt status that is allowed to spend $12 million every two years to elect Democrats—when political bribery by charities is a violation of the law?  Nobody cares.  The unborn need a bigger voice—like God. Since we have not defended the innocent, since we had no mercy on them, God will have no mercy on us--or the babies' murderers--mothers and doctors.  We have judged the babies that they are not worth living.  So God will judge us.

Refugees are Not the Bad Guys

 Article of JAN 26, 2017, UPDATED

If we are pro-life, we are pro-refugee. Over 79 million people have been forcibly displaced in recent years; let's be Christian and do something about it

Updated portion: The Wall Street Journal reported today (3/9/22) that over 2 million people so far are refugees from Ukraine, in less than two weeks. More than half of them go to Poland. Not only that, Russia has been bombing them as they walk and drive in trying to escape. Also, in a recent blog, I wrote on how the Western powers (like the USA and France), in a conference called to order on that subject, refused Jewish refugees from Germany in 1938, even though it was certain that they would be further persecuted, even murdered by Hitler. Which happened on a planned scale beginning two years later. Finally, migrants trying to escape gang-related kidnappings, and political and economic crises in Haiti are foundering, even dying, in rough waters off the Florida coast. This was human smuggling that frequently goes bad. I can understand why they seek illegal immigration--who would want to stay in our 200 detention centers? There are over 30,000 people on any given average day in those facilities. 93% that are assigned there spend over 6 months, some as long as 4 years there. It is usually decided that many do not have a great "reason" to flee their country, so are deported back to there. Evidently skyrocketing kidnapping and gang killings are not an "acceptable" excuse. The following article that I first blogged was made under President Trump, whose great campaign promise was that he would tighten up on allowing refugees and immigrants. I still like the man, but when it comes to this, My question is, Why? Is our Christianity so shallow that we cannot have new people? Our abortion levels are still high (much higher than Covid, which freaked us out--but we don't freak out over the genocide of our littlest innocents, though they have a soul). Plus, our young people do not want babies til' later, so our "replacement ratio" of new births to replace those that die is now 1.6 per mom. But we need that level at 2.1 to keep the population stable. A declining population is bad news for the economy; just read up on Japan for proof on that. Plus, we are crying for workers, when people are retiring early and women have kept at home. In the lodging and restaurant sector (where many refugees and immigrants work), the current job openings are over 1.5 million; new hires are about equal to the number separated, so that's not the solution to the problem. These new people's spending habits would help us (they get off of welfare quickly, and are an add, not a subtract, from the economy). After all that rational talk about reasons, let's look at the compassionate heart God wants us to have, as well. 

Original article by Ed Stetzer

Late in September, 2020, an announcement was made for the next fiscal year (Oct.1, 2020-Sept 30, 2021).  President Donald Trump said he would admit no more than 18,000 refugees from around the world in fiscal year 2021, a significant drop from the cap of 110,000 for 2017 (set by Pres. Obama), 45,000 for 2018, and 30,000 for 2020.  The reason for the trend is partially Covid, no doubt, but there have been no adjustments in 2021 by Pres. Biden, as the world gradually opens up; and the downward spiral began before Covid took hold.  And it is, after all, possible to test everyone for Covid before they enter.  In any event, we think the trend is a tragic decision.

“Most refugees from the Middle East are women and children who have suffered the assaults of ISIS terrorists and civil war,” said National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) president Leith Anderson; “We have the opportunity to rescue, help, and bless some of the world’s most oppressed and vulnerable families.”  Many of these are from Syria and Afghanistan, but there are increasing numbers displaced from Central America.  Perhaps the saddest situation is Venezuela.  Death from starvation or nutrient deficiencies, and frequent unavailability of water, goes on all the time.  Add to this the entire economic collapse under Hugo Chavez, a totally inept leader who doesn't seem to care.  There's plenty of violence, and the country is nearly torn by civil war.  Yet of their 5.4 million refugees, we are blocking their arrival--because they don't fit our definition of "refugees." Almost all their displaced have ended up in other Latin American countries or the Caribbean.

It is not wrong to be wise and cautious. But...too much of the policy is driven by unfounded fear of refugees.  Yes, it is to be expected that terrorist attacks around the world and in our country, including the Orlando and San Bernardino shootings, would cause all of us to pause long enough to consider what kind of world we live in and how best to ensure safety for ourselves and our families. But those were not refugees.

There is a 1 in 3.64 billion per year chance that you will be killed by a refugee-turned-terrorist in a given year. If those odds concern you, please do not get in a bathtub, car, or even go outside, which have equal odds of harm. For contrast, there were 774 tragic murders in Chicago alone last year compared to 0 people who were killed last year by a jihadist-style terrorist attack.

Fear is a real emotion, and it can cause us to make decisions we wouldn’t have otherwise made.   But at the core of who we are as followers of Christ is a commitment to care for the vulnerable, the marginalized, the abused, the wanderer. And fear cannot replace that core—as a matter of fact, we are the ones who proclaim that we have hope rather than fear.

Today, millions of people have had to flee home, safety, family, and livelihood due to threats of violence. In fact, according to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, 1 in every 113 people in our world today has been forcibly displaced from their homes. And each of these have names and faces and lives and stories. This is propitious moment for action in which God is calling us to be the people He has called us to be in hard, but life-changing ways.

If America bans refugees, it makes a statement to the world that we don’t want to make. It is the picture of someone wealthy who sits, arms crossed and turned away from the plight on the helpless, the homeless, the broken.

We must do better.  Jesus addresses this in Luke 16:19-31; please read it prayerfully:

 “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and [a]fared sumptuously every day. ²⁰ But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, ²¹ desiring to be fed with [b]the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. ²² So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³ And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. ²⁴ “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ ²⁵ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’ ²⁷ “Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, ²⁸ for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ ²⁹ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ ³⁰ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ ³¹ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’ ”

As you can see, our God does not look kindly on ignoring those in desperate straits.

My friend Scott Arbeiter, President of World Relief, says this about the impact of the proposed Executive Order: “Since refugees are women and children, this keeps families separated, and thus punishes people.  But we as a nation are fighting to end abuse.”

Scott and I are not alone. Last year, more than 100 evangelical leaders, including Rich Stearns, Stephan Bauman, Jo Anne Lyon, Frank Page, Alton Garrison, Jamie Aten, and Sue Elworth, signed a statement which says, in part, “We will not be motivated by fear but by love for God and others.”

There is no more critical time than now for God’s people to instead turn towards the helpless, the homeless, the broken, with open arms and hearts, ready to pour out every ounce of love we can muster.

Sure, conversations with our neighbors are sometimes hard as we express our solidarity with the refugee and those who are broken and in need of safety and dignity, but we must pursue what is right anyway. We are pro-life, but we must remember all that entails, from conception to death and each moment in between.

I am pro-life—and that includes for refugees. Recently, many of us focused on the unborn, and rightly so, but I’m also here to stand up for the born, made-in-God’s-image, refugee as well.

God help us be the people He’s called us to be in this generation, in this moment.  In the meantime, #WeWelcomeRefugees.

Acknowledgement:  Ed Stetzer and Christianity Today