Who Will Hear Their Cry?
I woke up this morning with an annoying, interfering pain. The epicenter was located just beneath the surface of a beautifully crowned tooth. The crowning took place about six months ago. My dentist said, “We’ll watch it, because it is a borderline situation. It may require a root canal later; let me know how it goes.” Well, now when I chew, I notice it. I have flossed around it, water-picked between it, applied fluoride…and the pain continues. Like the big baby I am, I sense I am avoiding the inevitable. I fear my only relief is to allow my good dentist to go beyond my nice crown finish and get to the root of the matter, literally. Yikes! Uncomfortable, yes - but the comfort I will probably receive shall be well worth it.
In the hub-bub of political conventions of the summer with the well orchestrated sound-bites and posturing, I wake up with a pain. In the interviews with candidates and their trumped up pundits, I feel the smarting like an exposed nerve. In every cognitive chewing political process, it’s always there like a tooth crying for a root canal. “What is always there?” you may ask. Allow me to set another example before you.
When my oldest son, Jonathan was born, he had an eight day delay in his circumcision. I was fine with that, because he was circumcised on the prescribed Old Testament method of waiting until the eight day. I shall never forget that moment almost twenty-two years ago. His Jewish doctor strapped him to a mold that was in the shape of a miniature cross. The arms were out-stretched and Velcro-downed; the feet were brought together and secured in the same fashion. Our pediatrician was very talkative, explaining he did this often for Jewish families in a special service. He pulled the razor sharp scalpel out and while waving it in the air with the confidence of a fencing master, leaned over my son to administer the act, when he pulled up, looked back at me and said, “You know some have wondered if the child feels any pain from the circumcision.” And just as quickly, he wheeled back around and administered the quick surgery. Jonathan’s arms and legs pulled against the restraining straps with all the strength an eight day old boy could muster. With white trembling fists, scarlet red face, quivering little tongue, and heart-wrenching cry that echoed through the hallways, the doctor approached this horrified father who writes these words to you and asks, what was for all practical purposes, a rhetorical question, “Well, Rev. Pope, I think he felt it, don’t you?” I sadly affirmed his comment. In other words, there was no doubt. A few years ago, a film was made that showed the face of an unborn child in the beginning stages of an abortion. The grimacing face, the opening of his mouth that was attempting an audible expression of the undeniable discomfort. I think he or she felt something, don’t you? The name of the film was entitled “The Silent Scream.” It was shown to teams of doctors, political gatherings and religious meetings. Their was an uproar, there were comments, but still after all the years since Roe verses Wade of 1973, the silent scream continues, but few and fewer hear or care to hear the pain. I wake up with it, live with it and go to bed with it. I pray the Supreme Court Justices hear it. I pray America will listen carefully. Every day in America the unborn are dying. They have no voice to be heard unless you speak for them.
Out-right voices on the left are continuing to speak out for people who bring the pro-creative process to pass, often times due to promiscuity. These voices do not request - they demand a mother have the “right” to take the life of the child she does not want. The right is strangely quiet about the right to life of the unborn these days and seem to only comment about it when asked or at best make it part of a long list that includes tax cuts. I am appalled that the life of our babies are part of a list with things, that in importance cannot even compare and, when we stand before God, will not even matter.
My heart is broken when the self-proclaimed atheist son of one of our greatest presidents of the twentieth century gives a speech demanding rights for research that may ultimately open the door for life to be pro-created for the sole purpose of experimentation. If it works, to extend or make better the lives of selfish people who are willing to be “kept going” with a so-called quality life by using spare parts of a small stolen life that is never going to experience life beyond the womb or petri dish.
One man running for office has a reputation for representing “the little guy” in court trials, but says nothing about the little voice making the inaudible scream. Another man has been threatened with the possibility of denied communion because of his stance on abortion, but his associates remind us that he is a devout man of faith. These are strange, sad days of a relativism and rationality that says, “I care,” but only for those I deem worthy of life. We live in a contradictory day that espouses a faith in the God of life but denies that very life for the weak and helpless of our society.
In the ancient days of the Bible there was a practice among the heathen to take their babies and throw them in the sacrificial flames to a false god such as Molech to appease his wrath and earn his favor and feigned prosperity. This practice of the heathen was hated by God and was named as an abomination when his people followed this most ungodly practice. Because of God’s love for the children and hatred of this sin, judgment would fall upon the peoples who mercilessly took the lives of their own children. Please note the following three passages that deal with this:
“Twenty years old was Ahaz when he began to reign, and reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem, and did not that which was right in the sight of the LORD his God, like David his father. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, yea, and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel” (II Kings 16:2,3).
“And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. And now therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence” (Jeremiah 32:35, 36).
“Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?” (Ezekiel 16:20, 21).
I ask you the same question the Lord asked His people, “Is this a small matter to you? Notice God said, “Thou hast slain my children….” Just today I received a brochure from a man running for our House of Representatives who espoused his belief in the family and rights of the unborn, however, we need more than this. We desperately need the President of the United States to be a man who is on the same page with God on the matter of protecting our children from being sacrificed to the selfish “Molechs” of our society. The supreme Court Justices of The United States are aging; who will replace them? May God give us a president with the heart of God and will mercifully appoint judges who will assure the basic constitutional rights for the smallest of our citizens. May we live in a country where once again we all are assured life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God may be putting America through a test of biblical proportions, much like He did in days of old with Hezekiah, "God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart" (II Chronicles 32:31). And may God give us the compassion as well as the wisdom to obey the admonition of Deuteronomy 30:19 "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."
- Pastor Pope -