IS THIS LOVE?

Hugo McCord

I am honored to be asked to preach this morning (10-15-2000) at the East Side Church of Christ, 9030 N.E. Glisan, Portland, OR 97220. Likely this is the last sermon of an 89 year old wobbly preacher, getting more and more forgetful.

The situation reminds me of the 98 year old apostle John still trying to preach in Ephesus. Physically, he was unable to stand; he sat in a chair. Mentally, he had failed so that he repeated over and over four words: “Children, love one another.” It is thrilling to realize that John’s failing mind still magnified love, of which in earlier years he had written: “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). And John was one of the apostles to whom Jesus had said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another” (John 13:35). As I was growing up I heard people speak of the United States of America as a “Christian nation,” which made me happy. But I have lived too long. The greatest virtue of a Christian nation is love, but now my country, killing unborn children legally (the Supreme Court, Roe vs. Wade, January 22, 1973), is loveless.

Long before this American nation came into existence, a similar loveless nation was Ammon, east of the Jordan River in Palestine. The Ammonites worshiped an imaginary god called “Molech” (1 Kings 11:7). To please his Ammonite wives Solomon built “a high place,” an altar, in “the mountain that is before Jerusalem” (Mount Olive) to worship Molech (1 Kings 11:7). The ceremony at the altar was called giving one’s “seed to Molech” (Leviticus 20:1-5).

One of the meanings of the word “seed” is children (cf. Genesis 3:15). Horrifying is the thought that on the altar the worship ceremony to Molech was not a burning sacrifice of a lamb or goat, but of little children! (Deuteronomy 12:31). Such was an “abomination” to “Jehovah,” because “their sons and their daughters” they burned “in the fire to Molech” (Deuteronomy 12:31).

Those worshipers loved Molech more than they loved their children, and is paralleled in America today by millions of people who love their sex lives more than they love their children!

In 1994, at the “National Prayer Breakfast” in Washington, D.C., with President Clinton present, a lady, not a mother, styled “Mother Teresa,” made a speech:

The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. ... So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want.

President Clinton listened to the lady’s speech, but he is still an abortionist, though I am sure he is glad that his mother did not believe in abortion; she was “pro-life,” not “pro-choice.” Yet he has twice vetoed a proposed law sent to him by Congress that would have banned partial-birth abortions.

To carry out the partial-birth abortion, an abortionist delivers a live child up to the neck, then punctures the base of the skull with a pair of scissors and inserts a catheter to suck out the brains and collapse the skull (FIRM FOUNDATION, February, 1998, p. 23).

The May 11, 1975, issue of the WASHINGTON POST contained an “Open Letter to the Supreme Court” authored by 209 physicians which stated:

We physicians reaffirm our dedication to the awesome splendor of human life--from one-celled infant to dottering elder.

In the WAlDRON NEWSLETTER (September, 2000) Jim says:

Between the date of the Roe v. Wade decision (Jan. 22, 1973), which legalized abortion on demand, and today more than 35,000,000 American (black, brown, pink, red, white and yellow) babies have been slaughtered like so much vermin. Annually more than 1.2 million continue to be killed. See ALMANAC 2000, NEW YORK TIMES, 122 East 42nd Street, NY, NY 10168. ...

On June 28, 2000 the United States Supreme Court ruled in a five to four decision that the law in Nebraska to ban partial birth abortion was not constitutional.

Four justices of the Supreme Court thought that the Nebraska law is constitutional. It is refreshing to know that one of those four, Justice Clarence Thomas, the only African-American, made it clear why he opposed abortions, writing out a description of a partial-birth abortion:

“... the physician will grab the fetus by its feet and pull the fetal body out of the uterus... the head will be held inside the uterus... While the fetus is stuck in this position, dangling partly out of the woman’s body, just a few inches from completed birth, the physician uses an instrument such as a pair of scissors to tear or perforate the skull. The physician will then either crush the skull or will use a vacuum to remove the brain and other intracranial contents from the fetal skull, collapse the fetus’ head, and pull the fetus from the uterus” (Jim Waldron, ibid., quoting from NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE NEWS, Suite 500, 419 Seventh St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20004, August 2000).

In the 1996 January issue of THEREFORE STAND, p. 8, W. Terry Varner, Editor, a gospel preacher named Douglas Hoff, with two children and one on the way, was quoted as saying:

From Genesis to Revelation the expression “with child” is used twenty-five times to describe a pregnant woman. Since my wife is “with child,” we really have three children, right now.”

I hope this morning, in my speaking to you after services, that each of you in this audience will notice the beautiful lapel pin on my coat. About four years ago Walter Masters, an elder of the Hillview Terrace congregation (Box 785, Moundsville, WV 26041-0785), in a visit to our services here at Eastside, took off this lapel pin and gave it to me, telling me it was a replica, a duplication, of the exact size of the perfectly formed feet of a child in his or her mother’s womb only ten weeks after conception! The pin is exactly three-eighths of an inch long. I have found out since he gave me his pin, that everybody may have one free of charge by a toll free phone call (1-800-858-3040) to the Heritage House, 919 S. Main St., Snowflake, AZ 85937. Ask for what they call a “Precious Feet” pin. The Heritage House, along with your pin, will send a card saying:

When people see your Precious Feet pin you have the opportunity to share about the humanity of the unborn. At 10 weeks an unborn baby is perfectly formed--right down to the toes! All that is needed is time to grow. The unborn cannot speak for themselves. You speak for them by wearing your Precious Feet.

A shocking newspaper headline about what is happening in America to the bodies of many aborted babies: “Fresh baby body parts for sale in America” (THE WASHINGTON TIMES, National Weekly Edition, November 15-21, 1999): “Eyes and ears go for $75, and brains for $999. An ‘intact trunk’ fetches $500, a whole liver $150.” Is this love? Yes, “the love of money” (1 Timothy 6:10, a “root of all evils.”

10-8-2000