Where We Stand
National Day of Protest Against Abortion 2015
Message Audio
"A Matter of Choice"
In May 2013, the Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell traded away his right to appeal a conviction in the killing of three infants for a sentence of life in prison.
Gosnell operated an abortion mill in Pennsylvania and another across the state line in Delaware. Evidence showed that he had performed many abortions of fetuses past the limit of 20 weeks in one state and 24 weeks in the other. But that was far from the most heinous of his crimes against man’s law.
To save time and money, rather than performing an abortion in some cases he induced labor and then terminated the life of what could no longer be called a fetus. Former employees testified that he snipped the spinal cord of the infant at the neck in what one said “amounted to a beheading.”
This man added that it was “raining fetuses” in Gosnell’s death chamber. He might have added that it was raining babies.
The 72-year-old abortionist’s decision to accept the life sentence and cheat the hangman was undoubtedly a wise one. But in agreeing to the trade-off he sentenced himself, one supposes, to hours in his cell each day pondering the injustice of it all – not so much because he was only trying to help women, as he testified, but because of the irony of his penalty.
In the case of a baby within the legal limit, if Gosnell had done his killing a few seconds earlier inside the womb he would have picked up $2,500 in cash, his fee for a late-term abortion, and a vote of thanks with no legal repercussions. Tick, tick, tick . . . and now it’s murder.
This is the society we have built. One reckless baby-killer goes to prison while thousands of others, more circumspect, continue the carnage. End a life within the womb and you’re a well-paid professional and a champion of women’s health; wait a few seconds and you’re a murderer.
“As you do not know what is the way of the wind,” we read in Ecclesiastes 11:5, “or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, so you do not know the works of God who makes everything.”
There is so much man does not know, and yet he would make himself master of God’s world. The Scripture passages that refer to life in the womb do so to illustrate the Lord’s omniscience and His sovereignty. He knows all things and directs all things. Here are two more, beginning with Jeremiah 1:5:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;” God tells His prophet. “Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations."
And now Psalm 139:15-16:
“My frame was not hidden from You,” the Psalmist tells God, “when I was made in secret . . . Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
So the Bible’s treatment of the fetus frames for us the ongoing struggle for control between God and man. The issue is life, which is at once the most fundamental and the greatest issue. God takes the position that He, as Creator of life, is sovereign over life.
Kermit Gosnell and thousands of other abortionists disagree. So do potential mothers who choose abortion and prospective fathers who encourage and abet and sometimes force those decisions. So do legislators who enact enabling laws and judges who twist laws to make abortions more convenient.
So do millions of voters who throw their weight behind “abortion rights.” All these depose God and enthrone man as arbiter of life and death.
The right to life, then, is about more than who lives and who dies; it is about who rules. Since the Supreme Court’s horrific decision in Roe v. Wade 42 years ago, man has sacrificed 50 million children, give or take, on the altar of his supremacy. The forces of death have learned well the wisdom of Josef Stalin: One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
In the United States, 25 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion, about 1.2 million annually. And why God has not ground our nation into the dust from which He made us long before now I cannot imagine. His mercy is far beyond my comprehension.
I could multiply horror stories from Gosnell’s cynical and lethal practice. I could cite more statistics. I could rail against court decisions.
Or I could tell stories of heroes in the fight for life – of abortion survivors and their adoptive parents or of the woman who repented of her role as an executive in a Planned Parenthood clinic and became director of a pregnancy assistance center.
Instead, I want to tell you a story from my own experience that has neither horrors nor heroes. I believe it speaks to the dereliction of the American church, and especially the Protestant church, that has contributed to the killing.
My wife and I lived in Houston at the time. We enrolled our only grandchild in a nondenominational Christian school for his high school years. The founding headmaster left after Caleb’s freshman year, and faster than you can say “mission creep” changes began to occur at Providence Classical School. In Caleb’s senior year we attended the Christmas program . . . and then I paid the acting headmaster a visit.
His name was Jon Weichbrodt; he had a son in Caleb’s class and I knew him reasonably well. I brought up two issues regarding the Christmas program, which was built around Handel’s “Messiah.” The first concerned a recitation by the lower school children, which referred to Mary not as a virgin but rather a “young woman” who was “with child.”
I noted that on any given day in history multitudes of young women around the world have been pregnant. When a virgin becomes pregnant, the power of God has erupted in the creation.
Mr. Weichbrodt said he had not noticed this apparent substitution but agreed readily that it amounted to theological error and assured me he would take steps to ensure that it was not repeated.
My second concern involved the venue. The school occupied leased space and had no auditorium to accommodate an all-school program with parents and guests in attendance. For the Christmas program, it used space at the nearby campus of Faithbridge, a congregation of the United Methodist Church.
The UMC’s website states its support for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, formerly the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. The RCRC advocates for access to abortion without regard to church doctrine or moral concerns.
The UMC Book of Discipline, which I accessed on the denomination’s website, declares:
"The beginning of life and the ending of life are the God-given boundaries of human existence. While individuals have always had some degree of control over when they would die, they now have the awesome power to determine when and even whether new individuals will be born.
"Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother, for whom devastating damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy. In continuity with past Christian teaching, we recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures. We cannot affirm abortion as an acceptable means of birth control, and we unconditionally reject it as a means of gender selection."
Many points could be made in response; two must be. While any denunciation of abortion as a means of birth control is welcome, it is entirely possible to conclude that potential “devastating damage” to the “well-being of the mother” could justify abortion to terminate an “unacceptable pregnancy” in countless circumstances.
The language appears to be intentionally ambiguous to allow for just such an interpretation. Further, to assert that “we cannot affirm” abortion for birth control while “we unconditionally reject it” for gender selection is to make the former case less worthy of condemnation than the latter and so to dilute the repudiation of it.
Mr. Weichbrodt and I thrashed through the usual arguments. This particular Methodist church is more conservative, he told me, than the denomination at large. And on this issue, at least, so it is.
Citing two of the three passages I have quoted, Faithbridge declares on its website:
“We believe the life inside a mother’s womb is a living being and, therefore, we believe that the act of abortion is incongruent with God’s will (Ex. 20:13). At the same time, ours is not a message of guilt for past choices, but of grace—knowing God offers full forgiveness to anyone who repents of their (sic) sin and turns to Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:7; Col. 2:13-15).”
Any orthodox Christian body acknowledges that God’s grace remains on offer to all sinners, including those who commit murder. God pardons the taking of life whether within or without the womb when the sinner repents.
In the old days, many called an act “incongruent with God’s will” a sin. Perhaps that is the meaning intended here. In any case, these are fine-sounding words -- that do not for a moment dissolve the horror of the reality that Faithbridge knowingly and willfully promotes abortion through its denomination.
Mr. Weichbrodt said he could not identify any difference between using space in a church such as Faithbridge and in a public building such as a school or community center. Space is space. But a church is, or should be, consecrated space, and as such is indeed categorically different from a building which is not. It is the very nature of the church to be set apart for a holy purpose.
It is a modern tragedy that much of the church has thrown out the Old Testament (despite protestations to the contrary). Israel’s law teaches separation: clean from unclean, within the camp from without the camp, sacred from mundane, the Seed of the woman from the seed of the serpent.
When God the Son came to fulfill the law He did not erase distinctions; in fact, He fortified them. In His only act of rage described in our sacred text, He cleansed the temple, purging the building His Father had designated a place of worship of those who had contaminated it with commerce.
He did not condemn commerce but the mixing of it with worship. The New Testament does nothing to roll back the holiness of God or diminish the honor He is due from His people.
Our Lord’s earliest followers had no difficulty with this rationale. The Holy Spirit guided them in hallowing God’s name: holy things in holy places for a holy people who worshipped a holy God. God the Holy Spirit does not indwell us to make us so spiritual that we no longer live out our holy purpose in this world.
To be of the church, the ekklesia, is to be called out from this fallen world, separated from it to make God manifest within it. Those who lose themselves in this world deny God’s purpose for His church.
In church circles, this has somehow become a disputed idea. The jawboning goes on, and as it does so do the abortions. Since I had this dialogue with Mr. Weichbrodt, the Christian school he headed sold the land it had purchased for a campus and bought a tract from Faithbridge adjacent to the church’s campus. The bond grows stronger.
And I wonder. For one thing, I wonder if the American church will ever confess its complicity in the carnage of abortion. Condoning it silently, we have created an environment in which church-going women and girls abort at a rate only a bit below that of the female population as a whole.
A study by the Guttmacher Institute showed that about three-quarters of those obtaining abortions in 2008 reported a religious affiliation. Most prominent were Protestants -- 37 percent – followed by Catholics -- 28 percent. One in five abortion patients identified herself as born-again, evangelical, charismatic or fundamentalist. Of these, 75 percent were Protestant.
I wonder if the church will ever repent of its rationalizations and own up to its pretense.
On the National Review website, the Roman Catholic writer Kathryn Jean Lopez used the 2014 anniversary of Roe v. Wade to slam New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his farcical stance. He maintains that as a professing Catholic he can agree with his church’s teaching on the sanctity of life while, as an elected public official, he advocates expanded availability of abortion.
“By looking away,” she wrote, “we let evil happen and we are its accomplices . . . This is the battle today. This is his worldview and he’s not alone. As you see, even people who profess religious belief buy in. Indifference and surrender is buy-in, too.” So wrote Kathryn Jean Lopez.
Why go along? Brotherhood? Unity? Shall we all join hands and unite around acts “incongruent with God’s will”? Have we not a single Athanasius or Luther or Bonhoeffer who will stand and shout, “No more!”
Will we never say to those who speak of abortion out of both sides of their mouths, “Your actions speak louder than your words”? Do we hold politeness more precious than life?
I can hear you thinking: How far shall we go? Would he have me never speak to another Methodist? I know your struggle. I grapple in the same arena, even in my own family. I will say simply this:
In what are called the “culture wars,” power wears pink these days. The X chromosome shouts, “Fight or flee!” The Y purrs, “Compromise and conciliation.” In our day the order of the day every day is, “Make nice.”
Many say we’re the better for it, and in some ways we undoubtedly are . . . but I wonder. What would the unborn say, if they had a say? Can you hear their muffled voices? Listen now, and you’ll catch their cry. No other sound competes as the silent scalpel sunders.
And I wonder about something else. I wonder what counsel a certain unwed young woman named Mary – a virgin, by the way – who was “with child,” would hear from the church in our time.
It is not, of course, only the United Methodists who lend their names and prestige to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. The usual suspects, including the mainline Episcopalians and Presbyterians, have linked arms with them.
There are many more denominations and organizations, about 40 in all. Is one of them yours?
Now, about you . . . Whatever you have or have not done in the past, there is no better moment to act than this one. With its videos, the Center for Medical Progress is not only tilling the ground, it is planting the seed, watering and fertilizing.
What can you do? Some of you may need to hold your pastor accountable. Is he speaking out loud and clear on this issue? What is your church contributing to the fight for life?
You can tell your senators and congressman you will be most distressed if you see more of your tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood.
Because the mainstream media – notably including “The Durango Herald” – are downplaying or ignoring the horror on display in the videos, you can use social media to reach those who have stuck their heads in the sand.
You can press your friends on where their churches stand. Some of them may not know they are represented in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. You can ask them if the kind of church that denies God’s sovereignty over human life is where they want to be.
Bonhoeffer said it best: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” And, yes, you can and must testify of the love of Christ for all sinners, including those who have undergone or performed abortions, of His bottomless well of forgiveness from which the repentant may drink their fill. What would Mary hear from the church of our day?
The coalition, which abstains from value judgments on abortions, could easily see in Mary an unwed mother beset with what the United Methodist Church terms an “unacceptable pregnancy” that could visit “devastating damage” on the “well-being of the mother.”
Of course, if Mary had exercised her right of choice and had an abortion . . .
One Child changed the world. Here’s a value judgment I leave with you: It is good that God was born. Amen.
Reverend Edward W. Fowler
X marks the spot
Twinkling stars and many-colored sunsets, waves of grain and sparkling streams . . . the creation is a delight. Forever and ever, people have looked around them and wondered, how? And why?
Many have pondered all manner of things and gone off to look for God. There must be a God behind it all, a Reason who made it right . . . who divided darkness and light. But where’s the chart that shows the way, the spiritual compass that points us on the path?
It’s easy to get blown off course and to wash ashore in the enchanted land of belly-button gazing. To wander in circles seeking God within when all the while He is without. To lose the vision that launched our quest as we grow ever more entangled in the briar patch of our own understanding.
The purpose of the creation is to reveal its Creator.
That sunset is an excellent place to start the search. The God who made it is distinct from His creation, beyond and above. He chooses to enter it at various times in sundry ways, but He is never contained by what He has made.
He reveals Himself at His pleasure, and it has pleased Him to offer His creatures more specific information than the sunset provides. In days gone by, He anointed certain men to speak His truth into the world. He called them “prophets.”
The prophet called Moses carried God’s law down from the mountaintop to demonstrate God’s love to His people – for the law was always about love. A God of order made a covenant with His chosen nation and gave them His law to teach them how to love Him and to love one another according to the Creator’s purpose.
But His love extends to all His people and He planned from ages past to restore all who would accept His love to the relationship He had with His own
before sin corrupted it. His final prophet would reveal Him perfectly to all the world. The writer of Hebrews begins his epistle: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son . . .”
This Son is the perfect representation of the Father. The author of Hebrews goes on to call the Son, “the brightness of (His Father’s) glory and the express
image of His person.”
The Apostle John calls Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word – in one sense that the Greek-speaking world of that time understood that term. It meant the Reason that gives order and meaning to everything in the universe. St. John wrote: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Finally, God has given us His written word, which reveals in both Old and New Testaments not only His creation of the world but also His unfolding plan
for its redemption. St. Paul describes the Bible: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16).
St. Peter weighs in: “. . . no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).
So God is never far from those who seek Him. It’s just a matter of looking where He may be found.
Reverend Edward W. Fowler
Who’s your Daddy?
God gave us this world to reveal who He is – and He is our Provider and Protector. Yes, Protector. He made Adam and Eve safe and secure in the Garden of Eden. It was their grab for the forbidden fruit that invited sin into the world – and with it pain and peril, sickness and death.
The Bible calls Satan the tempter (Matthew 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 3:5). He lured our first parents into sin and he lies in wait for us and our children as well. And he is not content with physical death. The trophy he prizes is our immortal soul.
The devil would trick us into betraying God and giving up life in the glory of His presence forever. In the Bible, “death” is sometimes a stopped heartbeat and a stilled brain; elsewhere it is separation from God, the Giver of life. Both dangers are real. We must simply see them both for what they are.
The parent who takes the eternal view of what is best for her children will also make a distinction between fleeting treasures and lasting ones. Those first treasures are usually the pleasures of this world. Some of them are good and wholesome. God gave the creation to man for his enjoyment.
We should put it to that purpose while keeping the end-game (as it seems to us) in view. If we refuse to acknowledge the Creator as we consume the delights of His creation we will run astray. Our Lord Christ instructs us in the Sermon on the Mount:
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
The good news for fallen humanity is that the God who is our Creator is also our Redeemer. When we call upon the name of our Lord Jesus for salvation, He cleanses us of the sin that keeps up from the Father’s presence. God is restoring His world to its original pristine state – but better. As the last Adam, our Lord Jesus, is better than the first, so will God’s world in the end be better than at the beginning.
The Garden of Eden was magnificent; the New Jerusalem will be better. We will spend eternity there in the presence of our Lord, who is our Creator and Redeemer. He promises that when we arrive in His heavenly city He will wipe every tear away.
All He asks of us is that we place our trust in Him – in the saving work He has done on the cross.
We must keep our precious children out of harm’s way in this life as much as we are able. But as we do, let us not lose sight of that eternal home. Only there will they dwell in perfect security, and they will enjoy it forever. They need our Lord’s church on earth today to prepare them to spend eternity in His kingdom that has no end.
St. John reports on the New Jerusalem he saw in his vision:
“But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it” (Revelation 21:22-24).
Only there will we know true safety and everlasting peace.
-- The Reverend Edward W. Fowler
‘Train Him Up in the Way He Should Go’
On any number of occasions, David almost lost his life before he gained his crown. No one tried harder to eliminate him than mad King Saul. When David was desperate for the help of a friend, he did not turn to a Philistine or a Moabite. He looked instead to a trusted peer from his own “church.”
That friend was Jonathan, Saul’s own son, who “loved (David) as he loved his own soul” (1 Samuel 20:17). Jonathan put his own life on the line – and survived his father’s attempt on it – to save his friend. He succeeded, and when they parted he said:
"Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, `May the LORD be between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants, forever'” (20:42).
Friends like that are hard to find.
In their day and in ours, however, another kind of friend is easier to attract than head lice – and potentially much more damaging to a kid’s head. This sort has probably come under the wrong influences. He has certainly chosen the wrong path for the wrong reasons.
And he wants to lead one you love down that path after him.
As our culture deteriorates around us, as our nation turns its back on the biblical values that made it strong, the parent’s job seems to become more difficult and nerve-wracking by the day. More unchurched kids means more kids operating without a moral compass – and on the prowl for new partners in crime.
“Train up a child in the way he should go,” the Bible tells us, “and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
David’s son Solomon, the wisest king, wrote those words 3,000 years ago. They are as true today as they were then.
A child will get her training somewhere – in the school bathroom or on a street corner, in the home or at church.
A child will receive his training from someone – drug dealer, gang leader, parent, teacher or pastor. As a decaying culture
stacks the deck against parent and child, both need all the help they can get in equipping themselves with spiritual armor.
God, being God, can hit a home run with a crooked stick any time He chooses. The impossible for us is child’s play for Him, and
He has performed signs and wonders in countless lives throughout history.
In the normal course of events, however, God uses His people as His agents in performing His work – including the raising of godly children. He expands His kingdom by using loving, Bible-believing, God-fearing parents to bring along the next generation of Christians. Put another way, He assigns us the role of training the precious ones He entrusts to us in a way that reflects His
glory.
But He does not leave the parent on an island. He gives her the church as a caring community called in Scripture the “body of
Christ.” This body reaches out to offer instruction, encouragement, nurture, wisdom, a ready ear, a soft shoulder, many kinds of help . . . and, most of all, love.
Our Lord’s church devotes herself to drawing more into His kingdom and supporting their growth. An ancient theologian wrote, “He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church as his mother.”
And why would anyone, facing the obstacles to effective parenting that confront us today, attempt to raise her kids without the spiritual and practical aid the church offers? Get them to church – and set their feet on the path of peace.
And Your Point Is . . .?
If Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the answer, what’s the question?
Some say it explains how prehistoric bugs morphed into men, but no one says it tells us how life began.
If life just began . . . somehow . . . spontaneously . . . spasmodically
. . .
Well, then some of Darwin’s conclusions may be correct. Nature selects which species go on and which die out.
Survival belongs to the fittest. The strong consume the weak. Some races deserve to thrive while others must disappear to make room for their superiors.
But then we must face more questions. Does any person have any purpose beyond trampling others to get what he wants?
If doing good matters, what is “good”? And who sets the standard? Is morality possible? Is moral judgment merely what the majority decides at this moment or is it grounded in eternal truth? How do we explain conscience?
Adolf Hitler seized upon Darwin’s scheme and determined, logically, to improve it. If the eradication of the weak is inevitable, why wait on nature? Hitler accelerated the process. And why not? Darwin made no secret of his conviction that the black race, demonstrated inferior by its lack of progress vis-à-vis whites, was doomed to extinction:(http://creationwiki.org/Darwin_himself_was_racist_%28Talk.Origins%29).
Our culture screams at you and your children that life holds no purpose. Life’s a beast and then
you die. Given the Darwinian underpinning of our cultural understanding, we shouldn’t wonder why.
Solomon, the wisest king, considered the matter in the Book of Ecclesiastes and came to a different conclusion. He had seen the vanity of life Darwin would codify in his theory so many centuries later. Solomon concluded there is much man cannot know, that only God can know. Man, therefore, must place his trust in God and find ultimate purpose in Him.
Yet there is so much we can know. God created man – the Hebrew word is adam – in His image. He scooped up dust and formed it into man, took a rib from the man’s side and shaped it as woman. God desires that all His image-bearers – everyone ever born – heed His call, “Be holy for I am holy.”
And our Father provides the way to holiness for His fallen creature: trust in the sacrifice of His Son that pays our debt and allows us to appear before Him as though we had never sinned. Taking Jesus Christ’s holiness as our own, we enter into His kingdom
today and into life everlasting tomorrow.
Our morality is not up for a vote and it is not subject to change. It is rooted in God’s word. Our life is not cramming ourselves with food, drink, sex and power, nor is it making ourselves “good” in our own eyes. It is living for the One who made us and saved us and joining Him in His eternity. Our life has purpose.
Our God is a God of order who calls His people to a life of order – according to the morality rooted in His love.
If Darwin got it right, all flesh is one flesh – fish and fowl, monkey and man. If human flesh does not bear the image of God, it may be aborted before life outside the womb begins or put down before natural life ends. No overarching morality governs our choices. In the end, the strongest survive and the weakest die out. Chaos reigns.
If Darwin got it right.
Did he? Or did God?
It can only be one or the other.
The Reverend Edward W. Fowler
Twinkling stars and many-colored sunsets, waves of grain and sparkling streams . . . the creation is a delight. Forever and ever, people have looked around them and wondered, how? And why?
Many have pondered all manner of things and gone off to look for God. There must be a God behind it all, a Reason who made it right . . . who divided darkness and light. But where’s the chart that shows the way, the spiritual compass that points us on the path?
It’s easy to get blown off course and to wash ashore in the enchanted land of belly-button gazing. To wander in circles seeking God within when all the while He is without. To lose the vision that launched our quest as we grow ever more entangled in the briar patch of our own understanding.
The purpose of the creation is to reveal its Creator.
That sunset is an excellent place to start the search. The God who made it is distinct from His creation, beyond and above. He chooses to enter it at various times in sundry ways, but He is never contained by what He has made.
He reveals Himself at His pleasure, and it has pleased Him to offer His creatures more specific information than the sunset provides. In days gone by, He anointed certain men to speak His truth into the world. He called them “prophets.”
The prophet called Moses carried God’s law down from the mountaintop to demonstrate God’s love to His people – for the law was always about love. A God of order made a covenant with His chosen nation and gave them His law to teach them how to love Him and to love one another according to the Creator’s purpose.
But His love extends to all His people and He planned from ages past to restore all who would accept His love to the relationship He had with His own
before sin corrupted it. His final prophet would reveal Him perfectly to all the world. The writer of Hebrews begins his epistle: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son . . .”
This Son is the perfect representation of the Father. The author of Hebrews goes on to call the Son, “the brightness of (His Father’s) glory and the express
image of His person.”
The Apostle John calls Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word – in one sense that the Greek-speaking world of that time understood that term. It meant the Reason that gives order and meaning to everything in the universe. St. John wrote: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Finally, God has given us His written word, which reveals in both Old and New Testaments not only His creation of the world but also His unfolding plan
for its redemption. St. Paul describes the Bible: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16).
St. Peter weighs in: “. . . no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).
So God is never far from those who seek Him. It’s just a matter of looking where He may be found.
Reverend Edward W. Fowler
Who’s your Daddy?
God gave us this world to reveal who He is – and He is our Provider and Protector. Yes, Protector. He made Adam and Eve safe and secure in the Garden of Eden. It was their grab for the forbidden fruit that invited sin into the world – and with it pain and peril, sickness and death.
The Bible calls Satan the tempter (Matthew 4:3; 1 Thessalonians 3:5). He lured our first parents into sin and he lies in wait for us and our children as well. And he is not content with physical death. The trophy he prizes is our immortal soul.
The devil would trick us into betraying God and giving up life in the glory of His presence forever. In the Bible, “death” is sometimes a stopped heartbeat and a stilled brain; elsewhere it is separation from God, the Giver of life. Both dangers are real. We must simply see them both for what they are.
The parent who takes the eternal view of what is best for her children will also make a distinction between fleeting treasures and lasting ones. Those first treasures are usually the pleasures of this world. Some of them are good and wholesome. God gave the creation to man for his enjoyment.
We should put it to that purpose while keeping the end-game (as it seems to us) in view. If we refuse to acknowledge the Creator as we consume the delights of His creation we will run astray. Our Lord Christ instructs us in the Sermon on the Mount:
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
The good news for fallen humanity is that the God who is our Creator is also our Redeemer. When we call upon the name of our Lord Jesus for salvation, He cleanses us of the sin that keeps up from the Father’s presence. God is restoring His world to its original pristine state – but better. As the last Adam, our Lord Jesus, is better than the first, so will God’s world in the end be better than at the beginning.
The Garden of Eden was magnificent; the New Jerusalem will be better. We will spend eternity there in the presence of our Lord, who is our Creator and Redeemer. He promises that when we arrive in His heavenly city He will wipe every tear away.
All He asks of us is that we place our trust in Him – in the saving work He has done on the cross.
We must keep our precious children out of harm’s way in this life as much as we are able. But as we do, let us not lose sight of that eternal home. Only there will they dwell in perfect security, and they will enjoy it forever. They need our Lord’s church on earth today to prepare them to spend eternity in His kingdom that has no end.
St. John reports on the New Jerusalem he saw in his vision:
“But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it” (Revelation 21:22-24).
Only there will we know true safety and everlasting peace.
-- The Reverend Edward W. Fowler
‘Train Him Up in the Way He Should Go’
On any number of occasions, David almost lost his life before he gained his crown. No one tried harder to eliminate him than mad King Saul. When David was desperate for the help of a friend, he did not turn to a Philistine or a Moabite. He looked instead to a trusted peer from his own “church.”
That friend was Jonathan, Saul’s own son, who “loved (David) as he loved his own soul” (1 Samuel 20:17). Jonathan put his own life on the line – and survived his father’s attempt on it – to save his friend. He succeeded, and when they parted he said:
"Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, `May the LORD be between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants, forever'” (20:42).
Friends like that are hard to find.
In their day and in ours, however, another kind of friend is easier to attract than head lice – and potentially much more damaging to a kid’s head. This sort has probably come under the wrong influences. He has certainly chosen the wrong path for the wrong reasons.
And he wants to lead one you love down that path after him.
As our culture deteriorates around us, as our nation turns its back on the biblical values that made it strong, the parent’s job seems to become more difficult and nerve-wracking by the day. More unchurched kids means more kids operating without a moral compass – and on the prowl for new partners in crime.
“Train up a child in the way he should go,” the Bible tells us, “and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
David’s son Solomon, the wisest king, wrote those words 3,000 years ago. They are as true today as they were then.
A child will get her training somewhere – in the school bathroom or on a street corner, in the home or at church.
A child will receive his training from someone – drug dealer, gang leader, parent, teacher or pastor. As a decaying culture
stacks the deck against parent and child, both need all the help they can get in equipping themselves with spiritual armor.
God, being God, can hit a home run with a crooked stick any time He chooses. The impossible for us is child’s play for Him, and
He has performed signs and wonders in countless lives throughout history.
In the normal course of events, however, God uses His people as His agents in performing His work – including the raising of godly children. He expands His kingdom by using loving, Bible-believing, God-fearing parents to bring along the next generation of Christians. Put another way, He assigns us the role of training the precious ones He entrusts to us in a way that reflects His
glory.
But He does not leave the parent on an island. He gives her the church as a caring community called in Scripture the “body of
Christ.” This body reaches out to offer instruction, encouragement, nurture, wisdom, a ready ear, a soft shoulder, many kinds of help . . . and, most of all, love.
Our Lord’s church devotes herself to drawing more into His kingdom and supporting their growth. An ancient theologian wrote, “He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the church as his mother.”
And why would anyone, facing the obstacles to effective parenting that confront us today, attempt to raise her kids without the spiritual and practical aid the church offers? Get them to church – and set their feet on the path of peace.
And Your Point Is . . .?
If Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the answer, what’s the question?
Some say it explains how prehistoric bugs morphed into men, but no one says it tells us how life began.
If life just began . . . somehow . . . spontaneously . . . spasmodically
. . .
Well, then some of Darwin’s conclusions may be correct. Nature selects which species go on and which die out.
Survival belongs to the fittest. The strong consume the weak. Some races deserve to thrive while others must disappear to make room for their superiors.
But then we must face more questions. Does any person have any purpose beyond trampling others to get what he wants?
If doing good matters, what is “good”? And who sets the standard? Is morality possible? Is moral judgment merely what the majority decides at this moment or is it grounded in eternal truth? How do we explain conscience?
Adolf Hitler seized upon Darwin’s scheme and determined, logically, to improve it. If the eradication of the weak is inevitable, why wait on nature? Hitler accelerated the process. And why not? Darwin made no secret of his conviction that the black race, demonstrated inferior by its lack of progress vis-à-vis whites, was doomed to extinction:(http://creationwiki.org/Darwin_himself_was_racist_%28Talk.Origins%29).
Our culture screams at you and your children that life holds no purpose. Life’s a beast and then
you die. Given the Darwinian underpinning of our cultural understanding, we shouldn’t wonder why.
Solomon, the wisest king, considered the matter in the Book of Ecclesiastes and came to a different conclusion. He had seen the vanity of life Darwin would codify in his theory so many centuries later. Solomon concluded there is much man cannot know, that only God can know. Man, therefore, must place his trust in God and find ultimate purpose in Him.
Yet there is so much we can know. God created man – the Hebrew word is adam – in His image. He scooped up dust and formed it into man, took a rib from the man’s side and shaped it as woman. God desires that all His image-bearers – everyone ever born – heed His call, “Be holy for I am holy.”
And our Father provides the way to holiness for His fallen creature: trust in the sacrifice of His Son that pays our debt and allows us to appear before Him as though we had never sinned. Taking Jesus Christ’s holiness as our own, we enter into His kingdom
today and into life everlasting tomorrow.
Our morality is not up for a vote and it is not subject to change. It is rooted in God’s word. Our life is not cramming ourselves with food, drink, sex and power, nor is it making ourselves “good” in our own eyes. It is living for the One who made us and saved us and joining Him in His eternity. Our life has purpose.
Our God is a God of order who calls His people to a life of order – according to the morality rooted in His love.
If Darwin got it right, all flesh is one flesh – fish and fowl, monkey and man. If human flesh does not bear the image of God, it may be aborted before life outside the womb begins or put down before natural life ends. No overarching morality governs our choices. In the end, the strongest survive and the weakest die out. Chaos reigns.
If Darwin got it right.
Did he? Or did God?
It can only be one or the other.
The Reverend Edward W. Fowler
Growing Up Christian Is Hard to Do
If the government chose to take a constructive interest in religion for once, it would require a notice to be posted on the front door of America’s unraveling churches: Warning – Attending this church may be hazardous to your child’s spiritual health.
We have seen an epidemic of young people raised in the homes of church-going parents falling away from the faith after leaving the nest. It shows no sign of abating. Might the reason be that no one has taught them who Jesus Christ is?
In the New Testament, we find letters addressed to congregations that are wavering in their faith in time of persecution. The real problem is a flawed concept that devalues the person and work of the Lord. If they knew the Christ as He truly is, they would remain steadfast.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews, for example, wants to convince these members that their original commitment to the Lord was valid and worth holding fast.
His approach is to feed them Christology. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the perfect image of the Father and the perfect priest and sacrifice. As priest, He represents God’s chosen to the Father, pleading their case in a way the priesthood of Israel could
not. As sacrifice, He makes the once-for-all offering to the Father that purges the sin of all who come to Christ in faith.
And in 21st-century America?
Few have learned the Christ of the Bible. One of the devastating consequences is the flight of our precious children from their
faith.
How many parents raise their children in a Christian home only to watch them skitter off into atheism, agnosticism or Eastern mysticism as they head off to college, the armed forces or the work force? How many of these parents have relied on their church to nurture their kids’ understanding of Christianity?
And how many of those churches have taught them no Christology at all? For these youngsters, church has meant skits; all-night lock-ins filled with movies and games; enough pizza parties to make pepperoni junkies of them, and mission trips to the inner city to do a little painting or the border to get in the way of the missionaries.
Jesus? He’s my homeboy.
Doped up on empty slogans such as “I have invited Jesus into my heart,” they graduate to the “worship” service for their teen-age years. In many cases, the preaching there does no more to fortify their faith than the silly stuff they just left.
The Baptist theologian Dallas Willard wrote, “Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership . . . Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.”
Liberal churches began playing fast and loose with God’s word long ago. They are far from alone today. On the Sunday before Christmas a few years ago, I attended a service at a Southern Baptist church. It consisted of a skit about cinnamon with no application whatsoever to any biblical theme, the pastor’s line-by-line exegesis of that Christian classic “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and a video of a mission trip to India.
Here’s a different approach: Teach our dear ones that Jesus Christ is the One by whom and through whom all things are made, the Savior of the world and the One who will judge all people when He returns. Instruct them in the meaning of “I am the way, the truth, and the life: No man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6).
Might they then find Him worth holding on to when they leave the nest?
The Reverend Edward W. Fowler
If the government chose to take a constructive interest in religion for once, it would require a notice to be posted on the front door of America’s unraveling churches: Warning – Attending this church may be hazardous to your child’s spiritual health.
We have seen an epidemic of young people raised in the homes of church-going parents falling away from the faith after leaving the nest. It shows no sign of abating. Might the reason be that no one has taught them who Jesus Christ is?
In the New Testament, we find letters addressed to congregations that are wavering in their faith in time of persecution. The real problem is a flawed concept that devalues the person and work of the Lord. If they knew the Christ as He truly is, they would remain steadfast.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews, for example, wants to convince these members that their original commitment to the Lord was valid and worth holding fast.
His approach is to feed them Christology. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the perfect image of the Father and the perfect priest and sacrifice. As priest, He represents God’s chosen to the Father, pleading their case in a way the priesthood of Israel could
not. As sacrifice, He makes the once-for-all offering to the Father that purges the sin of all who come to Christ in faith.
And in 21st-century America?
Few have learned the Christ of the Bible. One of the devastating consequences is the flight of our precious children from their
faith.
How many parents raise their children in a Christian home only to watch them skitter off into atheism, agnosticism or Eastern mysticism as they head off to college, the armed forces or the work force? How many of these parents have relied on their church to nurture their kids’ understanding of Christianity?
And how many of those churches have taught them no Christology at all? For these youngsters, church has meant skits; all-night lock-ins filled with movies and games; enough pizza parties to make pepperoni junkies of them, and mission trips to the inner city to do a little painting or the border to get in the way of the missionaries.
Jesus? He’s my homeboy.
Doped up on empty slogans such as “I have invited Jesus into my heart,” they graduate to the “worship” service for their teen-age years. In many cases, the preaching there does no more to fortify their faith than the silly stuff they just left.
The Baptist theologian Dallas Willard wrote, “Contemporary American churches in particular do not require following Christ in his example, spirit, and teachings as a condition of membership . . . Most problems in contemporary churches can be explained by the fact that members have not yet decided to follow Christ.”
Liberal churches began playing fast and loose with God’s word long ago. They are far from alone today. On the Sunday before Christmas a few years ago, I attended a service at a Southern Baptist church. It consisted of a skit about cinnamon with no application whatsoever to any biblical theme, the pastor’s line-by-line exegesis of that Christian classic “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and a video of a mission trip to India.
Here’s a different approach: Teach our dear ones that Jesus Christ is the One by whom and through whom all things are made, the Savior of the world and the One who will judge all people when He returns. Instruct them in the meaning of “I am the way, the truth, and the life: No man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6).
Might they then find Him worth holding on to when they leave the nest?
The Reverend Edward W. Fowler