Monday, January 05, 2009

 

Lou Engle sees Abortion and his Commission as Wilberforce saw his

The Unborn Still Cry Out
How should pro-life Christians view the 2008 election?
Many people in America, including some of my best friends, would probably not agree with what I say here. Most have been conciliatory regarding the results of the recent presidential election and have counseled unity and peace.
But I stand by the words of Dutch politician, journalist and theologian Abraham Kuyper: “When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.”
I have not been afforded the option of debating politics and reason around election results. Five years ago while I was reading the biography of British statesman William Wilberforce, God supernaturally apprehended me and called me to raise up a prayer movement for the ending of abortion, and I am under divine restraint to obey that commission.
I understand my friends’ conciliatory responses, but when I consider that 50 million babies have been killed since the ruling handed down in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion and that the incoming president plans to ensure the ongoing legality of this march of death, I cannot live in peace. It is easy to counsel peace when you are not the object of the abortionist’s forceps and scalpel. But for me, peace with the legal killing of unborn children becomes sin, and battle is my calling.
Hundreds of years of equivocation over the issue of slavery brought us into a divine collision with heaven’s justice in the civil war, and I believe this nation is headed toward another collision. Why? Because much of the church has for years halted between two opinions over abortion. In this election we have bowed the knee to Baal and chosen prosperity over posterity.
Wilberforce argued concerning the murderous slave trade of his time: “There is a principle above everything that is political, and when I reflect on the command that says, ‘thou shall do no murder’ believing the authority to be divine, how can I dare to set out any reasoning of my own against it? And when we think of eternity and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that could make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?”
I believe we have reasoned around God’s command, “Thou shall not murder,” in this election. And I believe there are eternal, individual and national consequences that will rest upon us all because of it. None of us can point the finger; the cry for mercy must sound louder now than the cry for change.
In the days of the biblical characters Ahab and Jezebel, the culmination of wickedness came when the government set up altars to Baal, legalizing the sacrifice of children to Molech and sanctioning state-sponsored sexual immorality. Both of these altars were at the forefront of our recent election: the altars of abortion and same-sex marriage.
In electing Barack Obama as president, we have strengthened the first altar of Baal. We have chosen a man with a 100 percent NARAL and Planned Parenthood pro-abortion rating who has promised to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which would outlaw any interference in providing abortion at will. He has also said he will reverse President Bush’s executive orders on abortion, orders that have prohibited U.S. finances from supporting abortion internationally. Now we will be funding worldwide abortion, thereby incurring further national guilt.
Obama has stated that he wants to make abortion rare, but the executive orders he plans to implement say otherwise. In fact, the language he has used in declaring the plans to make abortion rare is the same type of language that Martin Luther King Jr. decried as gradualism. To King, gradualism always meant never, and so it will be with the ending or limiting of abortion.
With our choice of president, we have also strengthened the second altar of Baal. Obama supported same-sex marriage in the recent ideological battle in California. For those who voted for the marriage amendment in that state and also voted for Obama, take note: You have chosen a man who has promised to appoint judges sympathetic to the gay agenda—the very thing you thought you were voting against.
But I am not in despair. When Ahab and Jezebel rule, God raises up an Elijah company: Yahweh separatist prophets whose allegiance is not to Republican or Democrat, to race or gender, but to the Word of God. God will not turn a deaf ear to 50 million cries from aborted children and the cries from millions of women who have suffered the effects of abortion. If it takes us 50 years to end this thing, as it did Wilberforce to end slavery in England, then so be it.
In May 1789, Wilberforce spoke to the House: “I confess to you so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did its (Slave Trade) wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. … Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I effected its Abolition.”
Like Wilberforce, Elijah was raised up with a burning zeal to confront an apostate government and a vacillating church. Let this be the spirit of the pro-life revival movement today. No retreating from the battlefield—we must continue the fight.
But how? What can we do to wage the war against abortion in our nation?
We must follow the pattern of Elijah’s revolution. First, carrying a spirit of love, not hate, we must be exceedingly zealous for the Lord. We must allow the crisis to drive us to desperation and a holy passion for God and His purposes. We must shake off materialistic slumber. The future of our children and our society is at stake.
Second, we must think generationally. It became obvious to me during this election that we have lost the next generation to moral relativity.
It took Elijah’s revolution two generations to overthrow the reign of Ahab and Jezebel. We must actively train a new generation of leadership and not entrust the discipleship of our sons and daughters to the morally relativistic professors in our Christian universities. We must raise them in the furnaces of prayer and fasting. We must anoint a generation of Elishas.
Third, we must let this election be a call to prayer and fasting such as we have never seen in America. Abortion is a spiritual battle. The blood of babies is not another sociopolitical issue. Blood fuels the demonic realm, and before heaven it demands a day of reckoning. We must have a spiritual awakening to turn the hearts of this nation—and I believe we will have it if we pray.
As my friend Allen Hood prophesied, “Let it be said that in the days of the rule of President Obama, stadiums were filled with prayer and fasting.” We must raise up a grass-roots prayer and activism movement among the young. Bound4LIFE ( http://www.bound4life.com )is a movement we launched four years ago that is spreading across the country carrying this youth mantle for the ending of abortion.
We must pray for Obama. He is not our enemy. My heart has been going out to him in prayer because racism is raising its ugly head, and he has received many death threats.
Pray for his protection. Pray that God would give him wisdom. If God could change Nebuchadnezzar by haunting him with dreams, He can change Obama. Our mandate is not to curse but to pray for those in authority (see 1 Tim. 2).
Fourth, we must return to the basic commandments of the laws of God for society to flourish. Our pulpits must preach them and train a generation to vote according to them. God’s remedy to the social decline in Malachi’s time was first of all remembering the Law of Moses.
Fifth, men must stretch themselves out in fasting and prayer over their “dead children” and raise them from the dead. The book of Malachi declares that Elijah will come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. The church must arise with an explosion of adoptions.
Today, homosexual couples are adopting thousands of children. This is their time and their moment, they believe. Who wants the babies more in America? The pro-life movement must take this on as their main mandate. Every church must adopt a Crisis Pregnancy Center. We must fuel the compassion movement with our finances by raising up pregnant mothers homes.
Finally, we must raise our voices and speak out for righteousness. We must preach it, pray it, prophesy it, praise it and print it until the forces of hell cannot hold back the Word of life.
Of his God-given mandates Wilberforce declared, “God has set before me two great objectives, the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of morals.” God has set before me two great objectives as well: “God, end abortion, and send revival to America.” Let this be the battle cry of the pro-life movement in America today.
Lou Engle is founder of The Cause USA and co-founder of TheCall, an international prayer and fasting movement.

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