April 2003 Newslette

 
June 2003

Win the Culture or Win Souls? Which Do You Choose?

By the time you receive this newsletter we will be deep into the activities of our national event in Charlotte. Please look us up on the web: operationsaveamerica.org to find a daily update (with pictures) of how the battle is going. Though we have had a tremendous response nationally, with gentle warriors from around the country filling up hotel after hotel, the local pastoral response has been less than we had hoped. We have a few pastors who have taken a strong stand and are joining with us, but by and large, most have chosen to let the culture in Charlotte go to hell in a hat basket. Why? They have decided to win souls for Christ and leave the culture well enough alone. One doesn't get dirty that way.

The two (winning the culture and winning souls for Christ) are not antithetical. It is as we contend with this culture at the "gates of hell" that people get saved. Just ask Norma McCorvey (the former Roe of Roe v. Wade). Ask Dr. Barnard Nathanson (the founder of NARAL). Ask Sandra Cano (the Mary Doe of Doe v. Bolton). Ask Kirsten Breedlove, Carroll Everett, Mark Bomchill, and literally hundreds of other abortion industry employees who have given their hearts to Christ. What happened to them? They were touched by Christians living out their faith in the streets. They met Jesus through the dirty little Christians.

Keith Tucci likes to remind us, tongue in cheek, that we win more people to Christ by accident than most churches do on purpose in their "Evangelism Explosion" programs. The reason of course is because we are out on the streets and at the gates of hell being witnesses for the One who saved us. We confront the culture with Christ and people get saved. What a novel thought. One gets a little dirty and sullied this way, but it's God's way. The theology in the church house becomes biography in the streets. The Word becomes flesh!

Have you ever considered that we serve a "dirty" Savior: He didn't just stay in His clean heavenly sanctuary to save us. He didn't just vote Republican or hire conservative mercenaries to fight His battles for Him. He clothed Himself in flesh and came to this cesspool of a world Himself. He got dirty so that we could become clean through Him. That's right! He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. Jesus despised the shame of it all, so that a dirty wretch like me might be made clean. Now He calls us to get dirty, not with sin, but with blood, sweat, and tears, that through us He may save others. We are not our own. We have been bought with a price.

It appears that, here in the Bible Belt, the Gospel of Christ has been reduced to an, "Are you saved, Brother?" question, rather than a "storming the gates and taking the culture back for King Jesus" answer. "The abortion issue is just too divisive," the pastors say. "It is a dirty little business that we are not called to deal with." The mentality, of just getting people saved has totally eclipsed the theology that one is "born again" to serve Jesus and take back that which the devil has stolen. Rather than allowing the salt of the earth to penetrate our culture, we are allowing the culture of this world to dominate God's church.

This is true! We want to accommodate the world's way rather than confront it with the claims of Christ. "It's just not good form," we say. "We don't want to appear judgmental and mean-spirited, do we?" We would rather tolerate infants ripped apart, sodomy, and violence of the rankest order than come into conflict with the devil and his lies and defeat them in the Name of Christ.

You see, we get dirty when we do that. People will call us names. We will be misunderstood. We will get sued. We look like such fools. We will get crucified. Well, get over it! Jesus did.

The Bride of Christ in the Bible Belt has been bribed by the devil himself to be concerned only with one's personal salvation. Satan will gladly leave us alone and allow us to grow a great "church" so long as we leave the culture to him. That is exactly what he wants. It allows him to maim, mutilate, and kill, with virtual impunity because the Church of Jesus Christ has abdicated her responsibility to "rescue those who are perishing."

A Letter to the Pastors in Charlotte

Below you will find a letter written to the pastors in the city of Charlotte. Following that you will find an article written expressly for pastors, calling them to battle not only for souls but for the culture. These two items may be something you would like to share with your pastor. Both the letter and the article were written by Royce Dunn, the founder and director of Life Chain. He expresses our sentiments toward the pastors far more eloquently than we ever have.

Royce's home is in Yuba City, California. He has been a close friend to those of us in Operation Rescue/Operation Save America for several years. We are glad that we can bring to you some of his gifted writings. God's glory is revealed. God's glory is preserved. God's glory shall endure, through Royce's strong defense for our Lord's pre-born children.

Dear Pastor and Friend of the Unborn, June 2003

Before this letter reaches you, Satan will have targeted your response and is almost certain to parade his arsenal of excuses before you.

Please beware, for a momentous opportunity awaits you. On July 12-20, pastors in the Greater Charlotte Area will have the opportunity to seize incalculable victory for your city-and for America, also, through your exemplary witness. Key to that victory is leadership that only you the appointed "Watchmen" for Charlotte can provide, as thousands of wounded pro-life lay leaders across America would affirm.

I therefore respectfully urge you and your congregation to join Operation Save America's spiritual battle lines at three local death centers during July 12-20. Please, please do so, whatever the hurdles that Satan may erect in your obedient path. The July warfare may prove intense, but it will remain legal, compassionate, and assuredly God honoring.

The willful killing of each pre-born American citizen defiles God's holiness and defames His holy name, as God Himself set forth in Leviticus 18:21 and companion verses. Who can seriously doubt that legalized killing of the innocent has paralyzed the Church in our day and that the paralysis will end only when our nation's preeminent leaders-the anointed Shepherds of America-resolve to end it? Absent that resolve, legalized child killing will very likely end catastrophically for our country-as did the curse of slavery. Dare we risk that option?

For the Church to conquer legalized abortion, after three decades of apathy and denial, the excuses Satan has used to silence pulpits and immobilize pastors must cease. Looking forward to that day, I fervently hope the Body of Christ in Charlotte will bond with Operation Save America to drive the curse of legalized killing from your city and to set a standard for other metropolitan areas to follow. Thereafter, prospects for an historic revival throughout the Charlotte area-the revival you are probably praying for-will be greatly enhanced.

Thank you, dear friend in Christ, for reading this letter and for prayerfully considering my fervent plea. Indeed I extend to you my abiding appreciation.

They do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it - Jeremiah 5:28.

"In America today, the unborn are legally fatherless, due to Supreme Court rulings that have stripped fathers of all authority to protect their unborn children. That leaves only us, the Church, to be their father protector." Royce Dunn

Pastors of America,

As threat of war in the Middle East penetrates our thoughts and ancient nations dear to the 'prince of Persia' elevate terror to alarming dimension, America waits largely unmindful of the terrorism (war) that we ourselves have either waged or tolerated for three decades against the purest segment of our own citizenry. As a result, our proud republic now ranks among history's most willful destroyers of innocent humanity, with over 40 million pre-born Americans perishing as waste children, often within earshot of our worship centers.

For secular government to grant parents the "right" to kill their own children is unconscionable, yet that fact is overshadowed by the enduring lukewarmness of us who call Christ our Lord. For how long will we allow legalized abortion to defile God's holiness, and innocent blood to cry out from our land? Must pre-born Americans endure interminably the Church's acquiescence and continue to die by the millions?

Our Slavery-era Mentality

Surely our own words indict us. We eloquently declare pre-borns to be as precious as the little ones in our church nurseries, yet their brutal deaths cause most of us less grief than our sick house pets. Why so? We are victims of an historic spiritual stronghold that feeds on deception and denial. Instead of defending pre-borns at the Auschwitz nearest our church, we marvel that an earlier Auschwitz was permitted to endure in Poland. Of such denial, revered resistance leader Rev. Martin Niemoller noted in 1946: "Christianity in Germany bears a greater responsibility before God than the National Socialists, the SS and the Gestapo." Today, God looks not to secular government for an end to abortion in America. He looks to us the Church.

While we delay, our hypocrisy screams at us and ushers us back to a period in our nation's history when an insufferable Civil War eventually stood against an evil that the Church of that era refused to confront. Must the Church experience God's insufferable strategy for ending legalized abortion? Encumbered by our view of Auschwitz and by excuses we trade among ourselves, we are content to be largely spectators to even greater bloodshed today. If we are in the battle at all, we are likely to be in the safe zones, where only opinions and values are at risk instead of flesh and blood boys and girls.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted that no civil law compels the Church to defend the defenseless but that a moral law in Holy Scripture surely does. Today that moral law underscores both our freedom and duty in Christ to end legalized mutilations of pre-born children, through nine months of pregnancy. Yes, we deplore partial-birth killings, yet we seem unaware that first and second trimester abortions are more desecrating than partial-birth, and our measured response suggests to the world that we are not easily repulsed by any abortion method.

"Who is My Neighbor?"

Much as the Church did not deem the abolition of slavery its calling, many Christians do not find it their duty to help end abortion. God surely assigns callings to His children, but the call to meet a prevailing urgent need applies to each of us. If other 'causes' have 'maxed out' our time, would a military invasion by a foreign power alter our priorities, including our church, job, and social calendars? If so, who can doubt that Satan's invasion of over 40 million wombs, plus all of the collateral damage to our nation, has already fully equaled or surpassed the destruction of a massive military invasion?

"Aren't we already pressing the abortion battle?" one may ask. Indeed for years Christians have defended pre-born life through purposeful outreaches, but we have done so with reserved urgency and have failed to reduce surgical abortions substantially, not to mention the numerous unrecorded abortions from deadly contraceptives, which even pro-life congregations continue to disregard.

Pastors, Please Lead Us!

The war against the unborn is surely winnable. In any year we commit, the Church can end legalized abortion and bury the ominous myth sustaining Roe v. Wade - the myth that abortion is a 'necessary evil.' For victory to be ours, two formidable weapons await our use. In righteous hands, they defeat the mightiest foe. They are weapons of divine origin, fueled by truth, mercy and courage. Their humble names are Integrity and Resolve.

With those weapons available to us, pro-life's most crucial need is leadership that pastors alone can give. We the laity realize that only the Church can end abortion and that only the pastors of our land, our spiritual shepherds, can inspire and guide us to victory.

Of pro-life's battlefronts, none is so vital or as neglected as the death centers. Shepherds, please lead us wandering sheep, millions of us, legally and peacefully to our nearest abortuaries, to befriend, counsel, and pray "on site with insight" - and to demand, through our multitudes, protection for those who have no other father protector. Whenever abortuaries open their doors, we must be there until abortion offends the conscience of our nation once again, as does slavery today.

It may seem the Church is currently saying, "No, no, we will not go" to the death centers, but that perception knows not the readiness of the laity to follow bold pastoral leadership. To be certain, Satan and his allies will continue to do all they can do to deter the Body of Christ from the killing facilities, yet if our integrity and resolve are anchored firmly, abortion's curse can be lifted up from our nation in any year that we commit, and the cry of innocent blood can subside. Then our government will restore protection for our youngest citizens, and the Preamble of our Constitution will again speak with undefiled truth.

If We Fail To Act

The Church will either end legalized abortion, or it will destroy the America we treasure. What else so paralyzes our national conscience, devastates our families, bonds with homosexuality and pornography, devours our youth, and, by one analysis, drained $41 trillion from our economic base.

Will evangelism suffer if we focus on the precious unborn? No, it will strengthen greatly. Is not prayer the answer to abortion? Not according to Proverbs 24 and Matthew 25 or the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. But won't God send another awakening and deliver us? Surely we dare not risk what an awakening from God may involve. And let us recall that He finally withheld deliverance from Israel and Judah who refused to "plead the case of the fatherless to win it."

Pastors of America, help us the laity hear the plea of innocent blood crying out. Please provide us anointed guidance. May God empower you through firm reliance on Him, and may we follow with humble and grateful hearts."

Thank you, Royce Dunn. Keep pressing the gates in Jesus' Name, you Saints of the Lord,

Flip