What Happens When You Die?

 

What happens when you die?  I have written on this subject before, with the help of a lecture by David Bercot, former Jehovah’s Witness, now Anabaptist international speaker and author.   But since the subject is both controversial and important, I am trying again. This time I am getting the help of David Pawson, an international Bible teacher, also a former chaplain (from the Royal Air Force). Though he died at age 90, one of his lecture tapes still lives on in this discussion.  (Bercot is 72; I like the wisdom of the elders).  So I would hope you would open your mind, possibly to agree with his beautiful logic and wonderful allegory based on Scripture—as we prove that there definitely is an Intervening State between death and resurrection. 

Let’s begins with Luke 16:19-31.  I follow it with my paragraph note:

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day. ²⁰ But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full who of sores, who was laid at his gate, ²¹ desiring to be fed with 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 can be seen, there are two different areas in that place, one good and one bad.  For Lazarus, who has just died, he is comforted by Abraham, so he is on the good side; yet it is clear that he is not in heaven.  Since Lazarus did not go to heaven upon death, these verses are speaking of another place, between death and his heaven-resurrection. This means the resurrection evidently comes later, after this environment.  I’m suggesting that this place is an intervening state.  There are commentators that dispute this theory; they say the verses are a parable, which by definition is not to be taken as real-life.  They say that under the rules of parables, it’s OK to just get the main point, and ignore the details.  But it might not be a parable, since it names a person, which happens in no parable.  My more relevant question, though, is, since so little is known about the after-life, why would Jesus give us a false account of it?  This is a passage where Jesus tells more about what’s after death than all His teaching—so, due to the speech’s importance, why would He present an incorrect picture?  Something to think about.

Now to my “Cliff’s notes” on Pawson’s lecture.  He begins by posing this question:  What exactly happens to a person when they die? While alive, he has had two parts:  body and spirit.  Man (or woman), unlike the animal, is a unique combination of the physical and the spiritual. At death the body decays, but the spirit is loosed from the body; there is a separation between them. When we say “spirit,” we are not speaking of things secular, like “personality.”  Our spirit is us, and has a supernatural side. The body is really secondary; it is just an outer garment of flesh, etc. It lasts maybe 80 years, on average, before the “warranty expires.”  The spirit goes on much, much longer--into eternity.  The body can be described as a tabernacle—holding the most important part inside; or an “overcoat,” making the cemetery a “cloakroom.”  The outward man, as we grow old, is losing strength, but the inward man can be renewed every morning, thank God.  Because of the time involved, if nothing else, our focus while we live should be on the destiny of the spirit. Scripture is also abundantly clear that death does not mean any spirits are annihilated. As you will see below.

What happens to a man or woman when they die, besides the separation of body and spirit?  Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the body has a cursed fate, namely death (Genesis 3:19): “For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” The first thing in the after-life is, we (the real “we”) will leave the body and have conscious life solely in our spirit.  But this separation of the two parts of us is only temporary.  There is still coming a day, later, in which body and spirit join again.  For all of us Christians, this is the definition of the word “resurrection.” Resurrection is the gathering of flesh back together, joining the spirit again. Then the body and spirit, alive again, will be directed on a path that will lead to its final eternal place.  That reality, and a heaven with glorious things, makes Christianity unique among religions of the world.

Thinking further on the resurrection, we must remember that we follow Jesus. He resurrected as a body; so will we. He emphasized in Luke 24:39, and to Thomas, that He was not a ghost, not just a spirit; He was back in the body as well. Since we are to be like Christ, His death and later resurrection become His followers’ deaths and later resurrections.  This resurrection is the heart of our faith; yet some ‘Christian denominations,’ even some seminaries, teach by implication that a resurrection of Jesus could not have happened.  For that matter, all the other major religions besides Christianity teach that if a person goes beyond death, any conscious life is only as a spirit, with no body.  But Jesus was resurrected as a spirit and a body. Thinking of how we can in that day, walk about, and know each other, makes heaven more real, and more desirable.  Heaven is referred to as a place—it is not a ‘state of soul.’ 

But what about this intervening state that I only mentioned?  It’s between death and resurrection.  The apostles and church fathers closest to Jesus believed it, and that is what they taught for several centuries.  But the church became large, and directed by an administration that distorted the intervening state with lies.  This led to Protestant denominations rejecting the intervening state totally, which was also bad, throwing out the baby with the bath water.  They tried so hard to just separate from Catholics.  So why do I want you to change your doctrine?  Because we expect to follow Jesus. He demonstrated the interval Himself with the time between His own death and resurrection

Let me give details to prove that there is an interval, from the time when our earthly life ends, to the later time of bodily resurrection.  There is a background point that I would like to give you first:  Resurrection happens to all of us Christians at once at His Second Coming.  We don’t appear in heaven in straggles, each showing up right after each of us dies, each asking, “Where do I live, do I get into a wedding feast?”

I’ve suggested that, in the interval between death and group resurrection, we exist solely as disembodied spirits.  Before and after that interval, we are in two parts—body and spirit. Let’s prove that “spirit-only” idea--by starting off with Jesus Himself.  There were only 3 days between His death and His resurrection.  Fact is, He did not spend His 3-day interval in heaven.  We don’t know all that He did, but I Peter 3:18b-20 puts Him in this status:

….being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹ in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

Jesus’ spirit, in the 3 days, preached to those spirits in prison, evidently some of those wiped out by Noah’s Flood (Genesis 7).  (Since Greek did not distinguish capital or small letters, I took the liberty of smalling the word “spirit” for Jesus, to demonstrate that He was a spirit speaking to spirits.  If the Holy Spirit was involved, it would read “made alive by the Spirit.”)  I have no idea why He preached to those in prison; it was a unique case (this does not give you the opportunity to think, “see, we all get a second chance”), but my point is, Jesus’ spirit and the spirits of those “in prison” were the only things going on in that 3 days.  Jesus was in a spirit state for those days, without a body.  He could communicate as a spirit, and He was conscious as a spirit. 

We can learn more from the Apostle’s Creed:

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended into “hell" (or "hades" depending on the translation). On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

There is confusion about the word hell, or hades, in different editions of the Bible. By mistake, Tyndale combined two completely different Greek words as one English word, “hell.”  One of those Greek words is correctly translated “hell.” But the other Greek word is totally different; it should be translated into “hades.”  Because of this error, hades has a bad rap; people think it also means hell.  But it is not anywhere like hell. Hades is defined as “the realm of all departed spirits,” and temporarily housed good Lazarus, as well as the bad rich man—and Jesus too.  Jesus was there, as the Apostles Creed says, for those 3 days between death and His resurrection, as a spirit. Before and after, He had a body.  As it was with Jesus, hades is the correct name of the location of all Christians between death and resurrection as well—namely, as a spirit only.  Let me repeat this:  Hades has all departed spirits—Christian and those who rejected Christ. So it has two completely different subsections, one good, the other bad. Read the verses at the top and you’ll get that scene. Fix it in your brain, because most Protestants don’t follow this doctrine now.  In any event, after the 3 days, He was resurrected, His spirit returned back into His body, making it alive, and shortly after that, as the Apostles’ Creed says “…He ascended into heaven.”  Note: He went to heaven with a body.  Also please note that we will follow this example, too:  We will spend time, as Jesus did, in a conscious state as a spirit, hopefully in the “good’ side of hades.  Then, at a future date, the day of the Second Coming, Christ calls us from the clouds to be with Him in heaven. It may be centuries after our death, or it may be hours, depending on when we died—anyway, those who are Christians are resurrected, all at once, rejoining body and spirit, and we ascend to heaven for the wedding feast (I have another book that suggests it will be a Passover feast, based on Luke 22:15-16).  Heaven, to stress it again, is for bodied beings.  That’s how Jesus went; that’s how we all will go.

I also want to stress that hades, on the good side, is not near the earth’s core, nor it is a dark place.  There could be, in fact, two completely different locations for the good side and the bad side.  All we know for sure on that, is “there is a great gulf fixed” (Luke 16:26) between the two, and no spirit can cross from one to the other. In our Luke passage of Lazarus, they could see each other on opposite sides.  But they were in the supernatural realm, so, as a spirit, anything’s possible; maybe we could see the other side thousands of miles away.

For further proof on an intervening state, what did Jesus say to the dying thief next to Him on the cross?  The thief had a request: "…remember me, when you come into your kingdom." (Luke 23:42).  Jesus replied: “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”  Is paradise heaven?  Actually, no.  As I will prove, paradise is the good side of hades; it’s just a second name for the good side of hades.  The Greek word translated “paradise” is used 4 times in Scripture; none of them imply heaven, though one seems close.  The Greek word translated “heaven,” on the other hand, is used 531 times, and everywhere implies what we think of heaven (except the higher atmosphere, for instance, in Genesis creation).  Different words, ‘way different meanings—again.  The thief was thinking the kingdom of heaven.  But that, as Jesus knew, was far in the future, upon resurrection.  Jesus promised him something of great comfort now, as soon as he dies; namely, he will go to paradise.

Where, and what is, paradise?  One argument that most hold, but I don’t, assumes paradise is heaven.  They quote II Corinthians 12:2-4:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. ³ And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— ⁴ how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words…

They argue that paradise must be heaven, since it refers to the “third heaven,” and has what sounds like a favorite rapture phrase, “caught up.”  Well, the Second Book of Enoch says (yes, non-canonical, but I’ve spoken in other blogs on how Enoch is quoted in Scripture, so it’s reliable) that the Third Heaven is not “heaven” as we know it (despite how it is translated). It is described as a location "between corruptibility and incorruptibility" containing the Tree of Life, "whereon the Lord rests, when he goes up into paradise." The phrase “between corruptibility (ie, life on earth) and incorruptibility” (which we have in heaven), suggests an in-between interval, does it not?  It’s also noteworthy that a very good Interlinear New Testament (In Greek, with English subtitles, the best resources of all resources for proper translation), uses the phrase “caught away” to paradise, not “caught up.”  So, their “proof” for “paradise=heaven” is weak. (I can’t help it that most translations and commentaries that use “heaven” have a doctrine they’re trying to push on us here.) The Tree also appears in Revelation 2:7, where it is associated with paradise there too. This buttresses the reliability of the Enoch argument against “paradise=heaven.”

The other 3 times the word “paradise” is used are, in Luke, to the thief, which we’ve already discussed; and, from Hebrew, for the Garden of Eden in Genesis.  The fourth use of it is in Revelation 2:7, in the phrase the “Garden City of God,” so translated by Messianic Jews.  The word “paradise” actually originated in Persia; it actually means a garden, especially a king’s garden. (The Tree of Life would be ideal there, as well as Enoch’s statement that it is where Jesus rests—a garden would fulfill that function). We have thus dismissed, or reduced, the argument that paradise=hell.  My one last remark to poke holes in the “paradise=hell” argument, is to ask; is paradise a garden, or is it heaven?  A garden is not heaven.  Does it make sense that the word “paradise” has totally different meanings in different Scriptures, a garden in one place, heaven in another? No, it doesn’t. While a garden is not heaven, it’s close to it, as we’ll see below.

I would like to argue that paradise must be the location of the “good” side of hades. That’s what Jesus meant to the thief. Now let’s talk about the true meaning of the word, garden.  We can learn much from Pawson’s allegory, which I quote most of what’s below.

If you think of that garden around Buckingham Palace, with that high landscaped wall around, you may have only gotten a glimpse of the garden from the top of a double-deck bus in your tour through London.  Anyone can go into it, but only upon invitation by the Queen. The garden is not the Palace; it is not the father’s house; it is close by it.  It is not a place of rooms.  So when Jesus talked about us being in His Father’s house in the future, with many rooms, He is not talking about paradise, the garden, but He is talking about entering into the Father’s house, which happens at our glorious Resurrection, which, as we’ve seen, is later.  Note that He said, “I will come again” (John 14:2-3) to receive us, and then we will live with Him in the father’s house.  That’s when we go to heaven.

So what Jesus was telling the thief was, “If I can’t take you now into the Father’s house, I can take you now into the King’s garden.”  So, death puts us in the garden, which we’ve also called paradise, and placed in the intervening state--which is actually a step up—the garden is much nearer to the king’s house than we can be while alive. So, you could say there are three stages:  stage #1 is at the top of the bus, and catching a glimpse of Buckingham Palace in the distance; that represents the life we enjoy here.  Stage 2 is right after death, to get inside the Garden, nearer to the palace (this represents the interval, where we, as a spirit only, are in the good part of hades, also called paradise, the garden—which you can enter, if you are a real Christian).  Stage 3 is to get right inside the Palace itself, and to live in the room reserved for you as a follower of Christ (heaven, the ultimate destination). Thinking of it like that, you’ll see that death means we’re in the garden, or paradise, which will be much better than anything we have here—especially since we might be actually meeting, perhaps daily, in close fellowship with our loving Lord, as the King takes His daily walks into the Garden for rest.  Fellowshipping like He did at first in Eden (Genesis 3:8). 

In days of old, it’s also true that near to the king’s palace was a dungeon.  Continuing the interval metaphor, the prison, like the garden, was not inside the palace.  So there is, in the interval, a distinguishing of people between two conditions, one good, one bad.  Both were in hades.  Which part we live in, the garden or dungeon, reflect choices we made while alive about Jesus Christ. True, we cannot begin to imagine what the ‘dungeon’ or the ‘garden’ are like in detail or in fact—but think of a prison, think of a garden, you get the right feel of the two sides in the interval.  Take the prison first:  It will be a place of segregation—from most of civilization and from God. Judas will be there, since Scripture says that when he hanged himself, he went to “his own place.”  That, of course, doesn’t mean his house. Some of the angels will be there, the ones who followed Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12ff), and we’re told twice in the New Testament that God has already put those angels in custody—the prison we’re talking about.  The other thief will be there.  While there is segregation from some, there will be plenty of people, but no God.  Some people in this world are perfectly happy to get on without God, and to get away as far as possible from God’s people.  They don’t like Christians, or the Christ whom we worship.  Well, they’ll get their dearest wish.  There will also be suffering there, some due to persistent heat; but what the rest is, or if heat is for everyone, we do not know. (Scripture suggests some sins are worse, or less bad, than others.)  Based on Luke’s Lazarus, spirits will remember their own identities and the past, so for Christ-rejectors there will be a burdensome regret.  Regret in knowing that your life is over, that death has sealed your decisions, that your future course is set, and there is really no altering now.  Three things can be said about prison, which we know definitely.   First, the occupants cannot go back from that prison to life itself—our Lord clearly said this.  Second, they cannot go forward to the garden; they are in custody, awaiting appearance in court—and there is no bail.  No second chance; so I urge you to make your decision for Christ now, you don’t have a clue about when you die.  Many good people are in prison (see other blogs on that); and many good people die young. Young people think they are invincible. Hopefully I touched you with a fear of God, which Scripture says we all need to be saved.

For either the garden or the prison, our spirits need not have to worry about “where is it?”  Being spirits, spatial dimensions don’t apply. I did mention before about the third heaven for Christians, which is not the actual heaven yet, but we’re getting close.  But to the more relevant question, “are we awake or asleep?” I need to address a false doctrine, soul sleep. 

Actually, there are a number of passages in the New Testament that say the dead are asleep (such as Acts 7:60 or I Corinthians 15:51). Physically, a person seems asleep when they are dead; so when the apostles use the word “asleep” in this context, everyone understands he means simply death—so the phrase is an idiom. I’m maintaining that our spirits are still alive.  But if we die and then soul sleep, the next thing we know after death is waking up for the resurrection.   But we would be missing out on something great; namely, fellowship with Christ in between.  Now I’d like to mention another proof of the interval. Please don’t misinterpret this, as most Protestants do; Paul said, “I would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”  He wasn’t talking about heaven because he said, “away from the body.” (Remember, heaven is for bodied beings).  The only other condition after death is the interval, so he had to have been talking about that.  So, he was looking forward to fellowship with Christ in the interval state. 

Getting back to soul sleep, if I’m unconscious, I can’t fellowship with Him.  Unconscious fellowship is an oxymoron.  That doesn’t attract me one bit.  Instead of sleep, I’m better off alive—because, as alive, I am conscious and can be talking with Christ, even as a spirit. Finally, we are on thin ice if we apply the word “sleep” to spirits. I suggest spirits cannot sleep—sleep is a physical function; only bodies can sleep.

 In the spirit, we can also look forward to conscious fellowship with any of His people, too.  Did you know that Abraham was a Christian?  Jesus said “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.”  But for me to talk with Abraham?…hmm.  The lineup of people waiting to do that is probably already longer than at Disneyworld.  And how does he feel, repeating the same stories?  Well, we have an eternity, so he will, I guess, enjoy it as much as I to hear it. Maybe he’ll do it in groups, like conducting seminars every so often.  We’ll be with David, and Joseph, and Moses…it’s the king’s garden party!   

We will believe in angels, for sure.  Actually, they will be at either place; Lucifer’s angels in prison, and God’s angels to guide the recently deceased to their new destination in hades.  (Maybe they would uses “temporary help” angels for doing that in wartime.) So, if you’re a believer, right after death, you look up—and the first thing you see is an angel!  The angel will carry your spirit to new places. Even if you die alone, with nobody who cares, nobody to help you…even if an unwanted baby or child dies—God has angels waiting on the other side to care for you, and make you smile.  I assume Christ will be there. Though He spends time with His Father in heaven, He is omnipresent —He has the capacity to be present in more than one place.  No clones, no mirrors, no doppelgangers.  Our God is supernatural in every way.  Praise Him for His unmatched love in this wonderful future.

The Problem of Celibacy in the Priestnood

 Dr. John MacArthur  delivered a 2002 sermon on the Roman Catholic priesthood, which later appeared on You Tube.  It is theological at the beginning, historical in the middle, and empathetic at the end.  It may sound judgmental, but please read it to the end.  That was not what it was intended to be.  Here is a summary of his words: 

Let’s talk about the issue of celibacy.  Celibacy is an obligatory law to be a priest. But a poll shows that 70-80% of Roman Catholics believe that the priests should be allowed to be married. The Magisterium (Catholic official doctrine) defends celibacy partly on Matthew 19:12 where Jesus said ‘there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.’  The Apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 7, also says in times of extreme distress, being single is better.  Catholic thinking was, you don’t have to worry about the wife and the family’s safety, so you can give your entire focus on the Lord, even in poverty.  But I question all that.  Paul also says in the same chapter that in normal times it’s better to marry than to burn with passion.   Actually, those verses make it very clear that overall, marriage is preferable to singleness.  Some tried to twist the Scripture so as to make Peter into an unmarried man.  In I Corinthians 9:5, where Paul says, “Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas” (Note:  that’s another name for Peter) He clearly had a wife.  The Catholic Bible says, “…a believing sister....”  But the Greek word is “wife.” Twisting Scripture to make it agree to doctrine. Thus, making celibacy mandatory is utterly unbiblical. Here’s an interesting reference to celibacy in I Timothy 4: 1-5: 

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons…having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, ³ forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. ⁴ For every creation of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; ⁵ for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

Paul is saying, those who forbid marriage (or certain foods on Fridays) are advocating a doctrine of demons (with the exception of economic or political extremes, such as persecution).  They are listening to deceitful spirits.  I really believe that Satan has managed to control this element of the Catholic system.  The Bible clearly says that marriage, like food, is to be sanctified, and received with gratitude—because marriage comes from God. 

Celibacy grew slowly in the Catholic world; it started in the 2^nd century.  It had a pagan history already in places like Asia and Buddhism.  The 3^rd century saw the theology of Gnosticism becoming popular—they emphasized that ‘matter’ (like the body) was evil.  Its followers took the path of scorning the things of the flesh. It was felt that attainment of the highest levels of spirituality was only possible if the body’s needs or desires were supplanted.  Many took vows of poverty, of chastity, of obedience, of stoic diets, even of silence.  Many other groups felt that Mary remained chaste, a virgin, so they followed her.  The truth is, she had a whole family with Joseph (Matthew 13:55-56, as any version reads.  Assuming Joseph had a family before he met Mary has no Scriptural support.)  Others followed Christ, who was celibate. But forcing celibacy among bishops, priests, and deacons happened first in Spain around 390 AD; Catholic supervisors were simply told they would be deposed if they kept their wife and children. Nevertheless, celibacy spread and completely dominated Catholicism in the West by the 5^th century.  But east of Constantinople (Istanbul today), the Orthodox churches never took to it and later split. 

It was finally made canon in 1079.  But widespread sexual sin followed. Quoting a reliable historian:

This mandate generated all kinds of immorality.  The abodes of priests were often dens of corruption.  It was common to see priests frequenting taverns, gambling, having orgies, and speaking blasphemy.  Many priests kept mistresses; and convents became houses of ill fame.  In many places the people were delighted at seeing a priest with a mistress because the married women would be safe from him.  

This celibacy requirement began under Pope Gregory VII. If you ask, “Why did he do this?”  The answer is political.  The priest, if married, was immediately separated from his wife and his children—permanently--AND it was required that all his property was confiscated.  Priests, up to that time, were very influential, very powerful people. They had wealth, passed it down through their families, and it accumulated, giving families power and influence.  The Pope determined that priests controlled too much wealth, and the Church should take it.  Because if the Church was going to have more power than the State, if it wanted to rule the world, it needed to take wealth and property away from the people in power. (The number-one landowner on the planet today is the Church).

In 1123, they went further and declared all existing marriages among priests invalid.  Women were cut loose with no means of support, and many of them died of hunger.  Some were suicides; some turned into streetwalkers. But the Church accumulated massive wealth. The people, largely illiterate and poor, enthusiastically supported this dictum. (Get back at the rich priests!) They scorned, even attacked and mutilated the priests when they refused to obey. The disobedient priests were run out of town and exiled. If they wouldn’t give up all their property, the Church would exile them and confiscate their property.  Their children were designated as illegitimate, and their wives were often buried in unconsecrated earth. 

So it was all about power, about avarice, about a system that wanted to engulf the earth—a horrible story surrounding an unbiblical, pagan doctrine.  In an Oxford Encyclopedia entry under the Reformation Age, Hans Hildebrand, editor, Oxford University Press, 1996, wrote that the priests, without a wife now, often lived with a long-term concubine, and received special dispensation from their religious supervisor so as to have their children legitimated. But this, too, changed in the late 12^th century when concubinage was prohibited.  Some clergy responded to this latest dictum by rioting.  Enforcement of this meant women from reputable families no longer entered into relationships with priests, knowing that it could never be called a valid marriage.  But the priests often could not withhold their sexual desires, and defied the mandates by simply using discretion in their sexual relations.  Denied any release, and usually unsaved, they still slid into gross corruption. 

Keep one thing in mind:  a vow of celibacy does not mean you are bound to a promise of chastity.  Canon law does not require sexual chastity; it only prohibits marriage.  You don’t break the law of celibacy by engaging in sexual relationships.  Because of its ‘lesser’ importance, they decided that absolution for sexual relations comes by pardon from a fellow priest.  That’s all you have to do to get it expunged! (Sorry, but God doesn’t so easily absolve this unbiblical ‘law.’)  If a priest wanted to get married, on the other hand, absolution has to come only one way—from the Pope.  Why this inequality of treatment?  Because they care more about a priest who marries, and the impact that will have on the power of the system, than they do about a priest who commits sexual sin.  Marriage is far worse for the system than sexual sin, because it threatens the Church’s power and property.

In light of all this, how can the Church hold that marriage is a sacrament, the way that they compromised it? Their most holy people—priests and nuns—are denied this sacrament.  The Council of Trent, which solidified Catholic doctrines to counteract the Reformation, pronounced anathema (damnation) on all who teach that the marriage state is preferable to celibacy. But Jesus even said, ‘Not all men can bear that.’  Paul said, ‘It is better to marry than to burn.’  In the eyes of the priesthood, considering they were still often taught that the flesh is evil, they often perceived that sexual desires is inherently unclean—so, they were (and probably are) filled with guilt.  And unable to give good advice to families.

Lorraine Boettner, in a book on Catholicism, writes:

Henry VIII of England, in 1535, appointed commissioners to inspect all monasteries and nunneries.  So terrible were the cruelties and corruptions uncovered, that a cry went up from the nation that all such houses without exception to be destroyed. 

True, Henry wanted to dismiss Catholic theology so he could continue to divorce and remarry, but he couldn’t have gotten away with destroying their housing without approval of the people.  We conclude that priests were still actively involved  with sexual sin.  By the way, having men who are trying to suppress their minds, in monasteries with other pent-up men, and all day, every day, listening to people in confessionals describing their own iniquities, sexual or otherwise—is that a healthy environment?  How can the priest think holy thoughts?  My heart goes out to priests. Boettner’s book further says, ‘The largest collection of books in the world on the subject of sex is in the Vatican Library.’  (Who checks them out?!)  Seriously, better that they could go to prison, when found guilty; at least they have a time limit on their sentence, so they can get out and lead a normal life.

The Catholics still teach priests a divided system, which is not in the Bible; the natural, or secular, and the spiritual. Only the spiritual was pleasing to God. While the natural man is satisfied in the day-to-day mundane, the ideal was the mystic, who disdained the day-to-day issues.  To him, the natural events were viewed as a hindrance.  For the priest and the nun in monasteries or convents, withdrawal from everyone was the only way to truly develop the spiritual. BUT in God’s eyes, there is no difference between the sacred and the secular, in seeking spirituality.  Scripture tells us that whatever you do, whether to eat or drink, you do it all to the glory of God (I Corinthians 10:31).  You don’t serve God better by withdrawing from the world.  Jesus even prayed, ‘Father, I’m not asking that You take them out of the world, but to protect them from the evil one (John 17).  The Catholic doctrine of celibacy, as we have seen, given our sinful nature, had actually the opposite effect; it forfeited the reality of developing the spiritual life.  Forced celibacy introduces hindrances that will diminish, even pervert, most peoples’ spirituality.  Charles Hodge wrote the truth about marriage in his Systematic Theology:  

It is only in a married state that some of the purest, most disinterested, and most elevated principles of our nature are called into exercise.  All that concerns filial piety and parental and especially maternal affection depends on marriage for its very existence.  It is in the bosom of the family that there is a constant call for acts of kindness, of self-denial, of forbearance, and of love.  The family therefore is the sphere best adapted for the development of all the social virtues, and it may be safely said that there is far more of moral excellence and of true religion to be found in Christian households than in the desolate homes of priests or in the gloomy cells of monks and nuns.     

To introduce another element, latest surveys say that 50% of new priests are homosexuals.  But these men are predators, tempting the pent-up priests already there.  The thing that’s so sad about the priests is, he gave up all relationships, so he has no past to bring with him and treasure it.  His family name, without a child, has no future, so he has no legacy, and no binding family life. This is truly sad. 

A Scripture often misapplied is in Luke 14:26, where Jesus says:

 If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

This verse is often taught to mean that Jesus told us to cut ourselves off from family.  It is instead a hyperbole, much like Matthew 19:24, where the likelihood for a rich person to enter heaven is compared to a camel going through the eye of a needle.  It’s not impossible for the rich to enter heaven, just difficult. Likewise here: Jesus is not saying to cut off and hate wife, mother, etc.  He is saying that our love for Him must greatly exceed our love for our wife, etc.  To the point that if your wife or your mom rejects Christ, you should still trust Him and endure persecution, even if you’re abandoned by your family by so doing. But it does not teach to cut priests off from family. Priests are broken, shattered, tragic, disconnected people.  They are victims of a terrible system. It is a soul-destroying process. 

On the elephant in the room, pedophilia: A recent survey shows that the average male homosexual offender will abuse 150 boys.  (The average heterosexual violator will abuse 20 girls or women).  Abusers of children don’t quit, they can’t quit.  The Church should have taken lightning action to eliminate this—but they’re spending most energies on hiding it and just moving these awful priests around.  Pedophilia is not where a priest begins, it’s the end of a long, long, pornographic conduct trail. Pedophilia is the caboose on the train. You don’t start your sin there—you end there. The deviation, after awhile, still doesn’t satisfy anymore as at first; so, often, the age of the child-victim has to get younger, so as to increase his excitement.

About the nuns:  There is a corrupt system to proselyte young women to become a nun.  The confessional is the recruiting booth for the convents. The best ‘prospects’ for nuns are women who are coming off of a shattered relationship. The Church looks for a sensitive soul who comes often to confession, often attends Mass.  So they prey on these women in their time of weakness, offering them that they can be like the Virgin Mary, having a secondary virginity. Or they will emphasize that the young woman could be married to Christ, and experience no betrayal of trust.  They have 60 days to give their possessions to the Church. For her to renounce the family is harder than for the men.  She has to kill all maternal instincts, which are God-given; she has to put to death the idea of being cared for by a man, which is God-given.  In the end, the nun is one of the most remarkable products of the Catholic Church; she is really a slave—she occupies hundreds of hospitals, or she teaches—either way, is poorly-paid; likewise in parochial schools and orphanages; one who is willing to offer her life (this would fill Communist leaders with jealousy). I’m surprised Amnesty International doesn’t raid those places.

There is no way we can strike an alliance with this system.  We need to rescue these people, both priests and nuns, and give them the real Gospel which does not depend on works to get saved. Give them freedom and deliverance in Christ.  

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.