In January of this year, I felt that the Lord showed me two distinct things. These were described in great detail in my Roe v. Wade 40th anniversary post, “Divine Deadline.” One was that God was setting His deadlines for abortion. The other had to do with dishonest or inaccurate scales.
The past three months have presented an extraordinary series of state-level legislative efforts that have left the pro-abortion lobby reeling back on its heels. I believe the deadlines are, in fact, now manifesting, and it gives me great faith that God is moving right now in answer to much prayer. I have been pondering more about the scales, though.
Proverbs 11:1 says, “Dishonest scales are an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight.” This theme is repeated several times throughout Scripture.
When the Lord highlighted this to me in January, I understood that in this case, Roe v. Wade had tampered with our weights. These new false weights have made it so that we cannot accurately weigh the value of human life. Our scales are off, and subsequently more and more of our values are as well.
I think there is another dimension to the scales, though, and it has to do with God’s scales—His justice. There is no question that the ugliest parts of the abortion industry are being exposed right now in increasing measure. The debate in the last few years has centered on birth control and so-called women’s health. These are huge topics, for sure, but something has emerged in the meantime.
We as a nation are now revisiting late-term abortion and infanticide, in spite of the fact that Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA) in 2002. We’re revisiting it because there appears to be an increasing number of examples where BAIPA isn’t preventing the abortion industry from murdering constitutionally protected Americans. While this is obviously an enormous legal question for the nation to grapple with, I believe God is using infanticide to pierce our hearts and speak to us about abortion as a whole. God is weighing our response.
The stories that came out of the Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia were horrific. Recent undercover videos of abortionists LeRoy Carhart and Cesare Santangelo are nauseating. Take a few minutes and read a May 8 in-depth National Review Online report of events surrounding abortion facilities in Florida: “Abortion’s Underside.” Think these heinous stories are unusual in an otherwise pleasant and safe abortion industry? Don’t be naive. They are not.
News is now breaking of another “house of horrors” in Houston run by an abortionist named Douglas Karpen. Last week, Texas Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst called for a full-scale investigation after three former employees came forward with horrifying testimonies and photographs.
In fact, on March 26, Planned Parenthood representative Alisa LaPolt Snow argued publicly for infanticide. Planned Parenthood argues for less and less regulatory efforts at every level, in spite of the fact that Gosnell’s house of horrors happened because of—as the grand jury identified—a “regulatory collapse.”
In Gosnell’s “anything goes” environment, fewer regulations are not the answer. If you think about it, Planned Parenthood has to argue that way. Their severely flawed logic demands that they protect their murderous ideology at every level. That’s why I think Planned Parenthood has to own up to guys like Kermit Gosnell instead of acting like he’s an anomaly. Their efforts to decry him after the guilty verdict are a feeble attempt at damage control. In fact, every person calling themselves “pro-choice” must own up to Kermit Gosnell. Certainly, President Obama must own up to him, given the fact that as an Illinois senator he voted in support of infanticide.
Don’t like that idea? Good. It should be disturbing. I think God is dragging out of its horrid den the most vile form of the pro-choice movement. He is laying it before America and asking, “What do you think?” I’ll go a step further and say that God is dragging this thing out specifically in front of the church and asking, “Is this sin?”
I shudder when I hear mainstream media commentators like Marc Lamont Hill admit, “I do think that those of us on the left have made a decision not to cover this trial [Gosnell] because we worry that it’ll compromise abortion rights.”
Political and ideological allegiances surface in moments like this, kicking truth, law, health and integrity into the ditch. Will we look away? Will we consciously ignore it? Will the church ignore it? I think God is looking for a definitive response right now. Can I even say that He is demanding a response? What we do next is of huge importance, and I believe heaven is watching closely.
In the last post, I closed with the words of revivalist Charles Finney, and I’ll continue that here. In his lecture “Hindrances to Revivals,” Finney discussed the church’s divine responsibility to respond to the slavery question. The same words hold true for us today regarding abortion and revival.
“It is impossible that [the church’s] testimony should not be given, on one side or the other,” Finney said. “Their silence can no longer be accounted for upon the principle of ignorance, and that they have never had their attention turned to the subject. Consequently, the silence of Christians upon the subject is virtually saying that they do not consider slavery as a sin.
“The truth is, it is a subject upon which they cannot be silent without guilt. The time has come, in the providence of God, when every southern breeze is loaded down with the cries of lamentation, mourning and woe. Two millions of degraded heathen in our own land stretch their hands, all shackled and bleeding, and send forth to the church of God the agonizing cry for help.
“And shall the church, in her efforts to reclaim and save the world, deafen her ears to this voice of agony and despair? God forbid. The church cannot turn away from this question. It is a question for the church and for the nation to decide, and God will push it to a decision” (emphases added).
This article originally appeared on Bound4Life.org.
Matt Lockett is a full-time missionary serving as the director of Bound4LIFE and the Justice House of Prayer D.C. Follow @mattlockett on Twitter.
See an error in this article?
To contact us or to submit an article
