Totalitarian Tolerance is Nothing New

The inflexible forces of tolerance have scored another victory against intolerant speech. French actress Brigitte Bardot was fined 15,000 euros for the statement: "I've had enough of being led by the nose by this whole population which is destroying us, (and) destroying our country by imposing their ways." She was referring to the Muslims of course, specifically to what she views as their inhumane killing of animals. So to demonstrate she was wrong, the government imposed the fine for even writing the statement.

This is where the politically-correct movement is heading in the United States and Canada too. We musn't criticize Islam. We can't preach against homosexuality or we risk going to jail (in Canada and some states). Those who work against illegal immigration are called racists.

Many would also love to silence pro-life activists. Have we forgotten the police brutality against Operation Rescue and other pro-life people participating in peaceful civil disobedience? Or the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law that was finally struck down for violating first amendment rights? Or the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that limits political speech?

In the pro-life movement, we look back to the anti-slavery movement of the 1800's for inspiration. They faced much worse restriction of their first amendment rights than we have seen. In the 1830's, the postal system in many parts of the country refused to deliver "incendiary publications," such as those that criticized slavery. John Quincy Adams fought for years to overcome Congress' gag order that kept them from even considering citizens' petitions against slavery. Anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, Ill., because he refused to stop his abolitionist writing. And the unlawfully-elected proslavery government of "Bloody" Kansas made mere possession of Uncle Tom's Cabin a crime punishable by death.

Repression wears many "respectable" faces. Today it is the face of tolerance. Evil must not be criticized, for that would make someone feel bad. So evil and oppression go on while too many nice people enable it by their silence. Martin Luther King, Jr. condemned the silent compromise with racial oppression, and the leaders of the Moral Majority movement condemned the silent compromise with other forms of evil, such as sexual immorality, perversion, and abortion.

Ms. Bardot has pledged that she will not be silent on the Islamic takeover of her country. Respectable citizens of France may be too polite to say what she says, but when they go to bed worried that the Muslim riots will spread to their city, they have to know in their hearts that she is right. Tolerance of evil is always easier, but we must always stand against that oppression that would silence all dissidents, whether in the name of tolerance or for any other reason.

Perhaps King Solomon put it best: "They that forsake the law praise the wicked, but such as keep the law contend with them."

And again: "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord."


Wesley Wilson is the President of Let Her Live, a nonprofit dedicated to saving babies by showing the beauty and value of life to women considering abortion. Please learn more about the Let Her Live pro-life billboard campaign. Donations are tax deductible.

Nothing is Too Hard for God

Our assistant pastor preached an encouraging message entitled "God Can" last Sunday night from the question of the Israelites in Psalm 78:19: "Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?" The theme of the sermon was that nothing is too hard for God.

That's an important truth to remember as we fight against abortion. Sometimes we despair of ever seeing abortion on demand become illegal in the majority of our states. But nothing is too hard for God, and He is a God who hates child-killing.

Could it be that we have not because we ask not? How much do we labor in prayer against abortion? Sometimes we neglect prayer because it seems so simple. "Anyone can pray, but I want to do something greater for God." But no one who has practiced the discipline of prayer would say that it is easy. Dedicated, fervent prayer his hard work--perhaps the greatest work we can do. Prayer should not be our only work, but little work for God can be accomplished without it.

The battle is the Lord's, and He gives the victory, but it is not without human participation. People spiritualize the account of David and Goliath and talk about how God can kill the giant in your life. God gave David the victory, but David had to face the giant and put all his strength into throwing that fatal stone. God let the giant blaspheme until a man of courage put his life on the line to stand up for righteousness.

My wife and I talked with a friend recently who observed that man's free will must be very important to God. As much as God hates sin, He allows people to practice it while He draws them to the point of repentance. Rather than forcing His will in our lives, He leads us to voluntarily give our wills to Him.

We have an all-powerful, just, holy God who hates sin and injustice. But instead of eradicating it Himself, He usually waits for men and women to yield themselves and perform the actions that He would have them do. He allows us to do His work. What a privilege!

Instead of placing the truth of His Gospel in every heart and mind, God uses human preachers, missionaries, friends and neighbors. Rather than stopping the slave trade or ending abortion by Divine intervention, he leads His people to work against it for decades and stop it that way. The Church is God's tool of choice. Truly, the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

The movie Amazing Grace has focused attention on the life of the great man of God and British abolitionist William Wilberforce. I'm a little dismayed when I hear people ask, "Where is our Wilberforce?" Don't look for him. Be the Wilberforce! You may not have his position, but you have influence somewhere. Use it.

Wesley Wilson

The Party of Death

At last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference, controversial conservative commentator Ann Coulter said, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards."

She later said that it was a joke. She wouldn't insult gays by comparing them to Edwards.

Both conservatives and liberals are attacking her loudly.

A few days earlier HBO's Bill Maher said on Real Time, "I'm just saying that if he (Vice President Dick Cheney) did die, other people, more people would live. That's a fact."

When Barney Frank commented that some people were saying that the bomb that killed numerous people in Afghanistan but missed Cheney was wasted, Maher said, "That's a funny joke."

Would he have thought it was a funny joke if said about some Democratic congressman or senator or someone running for the presidency? If Coulter's comments were out of line, why wasn't everyone as incensed about Maher's calling for the death of the current vice president? Unless it's because the Democratic Party has become so entrenched as the party of death that it isn't even controversial?

Death as a solution is nothing new to the Democratic Party. It was their answer to runaway slaves in the 1800s. If the slave tried to escape, beating, branding, selling into the living death of being sent "down the river," or killing were common answers to the problem.

At the threat of Abraham Lincoln's being elected and putting a stop to the expansion of slavery, they cried for the death of the union and tried to kill it.

From Reconstruction into the Civil Rights period, the Ku Klux Klan kept the Negro in line. One former Ku Klux Klansman holds high office in the Senate, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Lynching was the answer to the "uppity" Negro who stepped out to assume independent manhood. The leading opponents of civil rights were Democratic governors and senators in the South.

Then came abortion. The Democratic Party leaders are to the man (and woman), pro-aborts. They've never found a method of killing the unborn too gruesome to support, including partial birth abortion in which the baby is partially delivered. Then scissors are stuck into the child's brain to kill it. The abortionist delivers the dead baby and throws it away. The Democratic Party leadership, on the whole, has voted time and time again to oppose any limitations on partial birth abortion.

Many in the pro-life movement have warned that the abortion mentality would spread and it has. It has increasingly spread to handicapped infants born in hospitals. The solution to the problem is to let the handicapped die.

Nor has it stopped with the death of the infant handicapped. Remember Terri Schiavo, the young brain-damaged woman who was ordered starved to death. The Democratic Party was outraged when Republicans in Congress tried to intervene on the side of life for Terri and the parents who wanted to care for her.

Several years ago a Democratic governor in Colorado said, "It's the duty of the elderly to die and get out of the way." Since then several states have passed legislation allowing the elderly to be put to death at their request.

In the last few years Democratic spokesmen, media personalities, and celebrities have written books and produced films that have called for the assassination of President George W. Bush, Vice-president Dick Cheney, and Senator Jesse Helms and his entire family. They voiced hopes that former Attorney General John Ashcroft would die of a serious illness and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife would feed him so much high-cholesterol food that he would die from it.

Congressman John Murtha has called for our troops having supplies, training, and equipment denied to them which would mean more deaths of our soldiers and of the Iraqi people.

What has happened to the Democratic Party? Some Democrats have laughed these verbal assaults off. Rarely have we heard the Democrats attack their own or demand more civility as the Republicans have done. But many rank-and-file Democrats have wondered where the party of FDR and JFK went. It started out as a party which supported earning its bread at the sweat of another man's brow. Its position has evolved to earning its votes by draining the blood from another man's heart.

Debbie W. Wilson

Debbie W. Wilson is a human rights advocate, speaker, and author of Christy Award-winning thriller Tiger in the Shadows. Her weekly prayer list for the persecuted church can be found on the home page of Bound Together Ministries.

God's Message to the Unborn

Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord: "The Lord looked down from His sanctuary on high, from heaven He viewed the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners and release those condemned to death." Psalm 102:18-20.

It struck me as I was reading this verse that the oracle the psalmist is about to write is for the unborn and those not yet conceived. Both of these though, are “a people” in the psalmist’s eyes.

It also makes clear for all future generations to see that the Lord is a God of justice and mercy. He heard the groans of the prisoners in America some 150 years ago and He freed them. From His sanctuary on high He hears the groans of the brick kiln slaves in India, the child sex slaves in brothels in Cambodia, the Africans in Sudan enslaved by Muslims, and many others around the world. But He is using groups like International Justice Mission to free them.

Right now He sees from heaven the most innocent among us being condemned to death every day in the abortion mills. But even as you read this, He is also using crisis pregnancy centers, hotlines, clinic protesters, National Right to Life, and many others to release the condemned.

Our God is a God of compassion. Let us be His instruments of justice and mercy.

Felicia Wilson

Go Down, John the Baptist

The images of slaves and the yearning of the spirituals have not left me from Ken Burns' documentary, The Civil War. We didn't watch the whole thing but those images and sounds linger yet. So mournful as they pleaded to God for freedom.

The thought struck me at the time that God could not have heard those prayers and pleas year after year, left those people in the horrors of slavery, and remained a just God. His justice, His mercy, and His love demanded an answer. That answer was a civil war in which "every drop of blood drawn with the lash ...(was) paid by another drawn by the sword."

It is the end of February, Black History month. Today when we hear those beautiful spirituals, we realize that many of them arose from broken hearts of ruptured families, broken bodies of those beaten by the lash, and courageous spirits who refused to remain slaves. They passed the messages of freedom on through spirituals. "Go Down, Moses" heralded Harriet Tubman's courageous rescues. "Follow the Drinking Gourd" guided many to freedom after they learned the song.

Yet today we look at another attack on African-Americans. However, this attack destroys the future of African-Americans by killing off future generations. It is the tragedy of abortion on the black community, expedited by Planned Parenthood and its abortion clinics conveniently placed in black communities.

Peggy Harshorn of Heartbeat International "points out that black women represent 12 percent of the female population in the country but have one-third of all abortions. For every five African American women that get pregnant three will have abortions." (Ertelt, Steven, "African-Americans Lament Lack of Blacks in Pro-Life Movement," LifeNews.com, Feb. 1, 2006)

In 2004 in New York City, over 29,000 black babies were born. In that same year,
nearly 40,000 black babies died at the hands of abortionists. I'm not a great researcher or a statistician, but I can't help wondering how that compares to the number of African-American slaves killed in any one year in the inhuman crossings from Africa or due to the whips and the lynchings.

A Moses can't go and pull those babies to life and freedom from their mother's wombs. What we need now is a John the Baptist to turn the hearts of the fathers and mothers back to their children.

A line from the film Amistad has always stood out to me. John Quincy Adams asks the young lawyer defending the Amistad Africans. "What is their story? He who tells the best story wins."

We need poets and writers who can tell the story of the unborn of every race to stir our imaginations to their plight as Harriet Beecher Stowe did for slaves with Uncle Tom's Cabin. And we need musicians to reach us with their voices and give the struggle of the unborn a voice that breaks our hearts with the yearning for life.

Debbie W. Wilson

Debbie W. Wilson is a human rights advocate, speaker, and author of Christy Award-winning thriller Tiger in the Shadows. Her weekly prayer list for the persecuted church can be found on the home page of Bound Together Ministries.