In Defense of Peaceful Abortion Clinic Sit-Ins
Operation Save America
On May 13, 2017, eleven Christians trespassed onto the property of the last surgical abortion clinic in Kentucky to sit peacefully and blockade the doors. They refused to move. One troubled mother changed her mind and decided to keep her baby that day. The eleven Christians were soon handcuffed and arrested.
From 1986 to 1994, almost 80 thousand Christians were similarly arrested blockading abortion clinics from New Jersey to California, led Randall Terry and his organization Operation Rescue. His slogan was, “If you believe abortion is murder, act like it’s murder.”
How would you act if your son or daughter were being led into a concentration camp to be systemically starved and slaughtered, their body parts divvied out to researchers? The children killed in these abortion clinics are children of God created in His image. To us they are “the least” of humanity. We cannot hear their cries or see their bloody carcasses. But God hears, and God remembers. He loves them, and calls His people to lovingly defend them.
Proverbs 24:10-11 says, “Deliver those who are drawn toward death, And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Surely we did not know this,’ does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?”
First John 3 and 4 inform us that if we don’t love our neighbor as ourselves, then we don’t love God. That includes “the least” among us. If we don’t love “the least” – God takes it personally (Matthew 25). Jesus said that it would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you be drowned in the depths of the see than that you should harm one of God’s little ones. If you were being led away to unjust slaughter, would you want to be protected and defended? Well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Peacefully laying down our lives to try to protect the lives of children of God scheduled for slaughter is an act of love toward the preborn, an act of love toward God, and holds back the gavel of His judgment against our land.
Responding to Critics
There are many criticisms of Operation Rescue’s tactics of peacefully blockading abortion clinic entrances, preventing pregnant mothers from entering to murder their babies.
“Trespassing is illegal. God says to ‘Be subject to the governing authorities’ and ‘Obey every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake’ (Romans 13:1-4 and I Peter 2:13) As long as Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, we must obey.”
Romans 13 requires us to obey civil authorities, but in the same breath it describes the civil authorities to whom we owe obedience. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by… what? By every word of God. When we look at what God’s Word says about an issue, we need to look at everything it says, and come to it sincerely, pursuing understanding. Romans 13 says, “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil… he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
If we are obligated to obey the civil authorities in obedience to God, they are obligated to obey God too. If they begin to use the God-ordained sword to punish the innocent against God’s will and commands, and reward murderers, and become thereby ministers of Satan instead of ministers of God, they are no more worthy of obedience than a bomb-wielding terrorist in the cockpit of an airplane, or a father who sexually abuses his children. Might does not make right. All authority is delegated, but it is also conditional.
We should obey the ordinances of man for the Lord’s sake, but that does not include lawless ordinances. Who would assert that this biblical principle required Nazi guards to put Jews in ovens because they were ordered by a superior to do so? Or that it would require Christians to take “the mark of the beast” in the Great Tribulation?
When told to quit preaching in Jesus’ name, Peter said, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5). The Bible is full of heroes of the faith who disobeyed tyrants to obey God: Daniel illegally prayed openly, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego illegally refused to bow to an idol, the Hebrew midwives illegally refused to kill the male Hebrew babies, and Rahab refused her king’s order to inform him where the Jewish spies were hiding. These examples demonstrate that there is a higher law that takes precedent over the laws of men. Not every ordinance of man is obligatory. On the contrary, conscience obligates us to resist godless, satanic ordinances that dishonor God and deprive the innocent of their life or liberty.
One of the reasons that God’s people, Israel, suffered starvation, defeat in battle, and were enslaved in chains is “the children of Israel sinned against the Lord… and had feared other gods, and walked in the statutes of the heathen” (2 Kings 17). God doesn’t command His people to walk in the statutes of the heathen, in the lawless ordinances of the godless of the land, but rather, will judge them for it.
Moreover, Roe v. Wade is not “the law of the land.” It is a dangerous error to confuse law and lawlessness, as foolish an assertion to confuse God and the devil. Roe v. Wade is unlawful and non-binding for two primary reasons:
- Roe v. Wade violates the laws of God, which cannot be overruled by the opinions of men. Man-made laws, as Martin Luther King said, that do not square with the moral law of God are non-binding. The right to life is “inalienable” or uninfringeable. Leaders may dehumanize and kill the innocent, but it is not God’s will. It is a violation of His command, and an abuse of delegated authority. When government is rightfully restored, tyrants and government-empowered murderers are hung by the neck till dead a la Nuremberg Trials. The right to life cannot be legitimately or lawfully denied the innocent by tyrant or criminal without incurring divine wrath. Sooner or later, Retribution will come, either on earth or definitely on Judgment Day.
The second reason Roe v. Wade is unlawful and non-binding is:
- Roe v. Wade violates the U.S. Constitution, which grants the courts their power in the first place. Article 1, Section 1 declares “All legislative [law-making] powers shall be vested in a Congress.” If Congress has all of it, is there any left for any other branch? No. Our first Supreme Court chief justice, John Jay, said, “Any law repugnant [repulsive] to the Constitution is void.” The Supreme Court has no more right to make law than a police officer has to spank your kid, or a mayor has to take your car, or the president has to sleep with your wife. No power of man is absolute. Federal civil authorities have a limited jurisdiction, and the judiciary has the most limited of the three branches. The federal government is limited to powers specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, and any powers not granted to it belongs to “the states or the people” according to Articles 9 and 10.
To respect immoral judicial decisions that defy God’s authority to shed innocent blood is to worship an idol, for we worship the author of the standard by which we live. Jesus said to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God what belongs to God.” When civil authorities command lawlessness or deprive the innocent of their God-given rights, to submit unto them is to render unto Caesar that which only belongs to God. Only God is due unqualified submission. To bow to man’s law in defiance of God’s – that is sin and idolatry.
“The examples of the Hebrew midwives disobeying Pharoah, Peter disobeying the Jewish authorities, Shadrach and friends disobeying the order to worship an idol – these don’t apply to those who do sit-ins at abortion clinics because the government is not asking them to sin, as it asked those in the above biblical examples.”
Personally and corporately, we are required to partake of bloodguilt through taxation that funds abortion. We are disallowed from defending the innocent, and disallowed to love “the least” as we would want ourselves to be loved, upon pain of severe civil penalty. And corporately, we are required to sin by way of the federal judiciary forbidding the states to do their lawful, constitutional duty and prosecute and wield the God-given sword of justice against murderers.
States are not obligated to obey this lawless and immoral, and therefore non-binding judicial decision, and it is the job of the church to “teach them whatsoever I [Jesus] commanded you” and “obey God rather than man.” That means teach and demonstrate interposition and urge justice for the preborn. What is interposition? It is laying down our freedom and safety to interpose ourselves between the “least of these” and the offending criminals. It includes prodding the lesser magistrates to do their lawful sworn duty in defiance of tyranny to protect and grant justice to the preborn, thereby abating divine wrath for the shedding of innocent blood (Numbers 35, Genesis 9:6).
We do not believe it is a sin to not do sit-ins at abortion clinics. There’s a difference between something being biblically obligated for all, and something being biblically justified. We are all called to love our neighbor as ourselves, but we have different callings and consciences that guide us as we obey that command. However, where there is a wholesale cruelty and murder of an entire class of dehumanized people, as in the days of slavery in the colonial era, as in the days of the German concentration camps throughout Europe, and knowing such innocent bloodshed brings God’s wrath upon the whole land, God’s people are historically called to greater sacrifice to protect the innocent and pursue justice for them. It was Christians who risked death to illegally save Jews from the fury of the Nazis, and it was Christians who worked the Underground Railroad to illegally rescue runaway slaves from their whip-wielding masters and federal marshals who hunted them down. They are heroes of the faith, worthy of emulation not condemnation.
“The Bible says the pagans worshiped Molech, which included child sacrifice. When Israel was corrupted by this great sin, there is no record of any prophet or saint ever physically impeding child sacrifice.”
Has this person not read Jeremiah 19? God calls Jeremiah to the altars of Moloch, smash a pot, and prophecy its destruction. God called Gideon to take out the Baal pole of his father in order to receive God’s power to defeat the tyranny of the Midianites.
This is also an argument from ignorance. Jesus never specifically condemned the molestation of children, homosexuality, or Molech worship. Does that mean he justified it? No. He taught “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Every word – not just the red ones.
So what does the Bible say about murder of children for Molech? Israel was conquered by her enemies and enslaved because of the bloodguilt from these slaughtered children, as God said repeatedly through the prophets (Numbers 35, Amos 5, Isaiah 1). And lesser magistrates can wield that sword of vengeance without the permission or even the knowledge of higher magistrates, and this will abate divine wrath (Phinehas in Numbers 25, for example.) Although there are no known cases where saints physically obstructed the sacrifice of children, there are cases where lesser magistrates (Moses, Josiah, Elijah, for example) employed the people to gather the murderers and idolaters together to execute them. That definitely implies physical force. Therefore, upon what biblical basis can we condemned peaceful physical force to defend the innocent?
“The only thing that has ever saved the lives of preborn children are laws that regulate abortion and incorporate exceptions to broaden our consensus to get those laws passed. Abortion bans and Personhood amendments have failed – no, worse than failed! Thanks to the judiciary overruling those laws and amendments, the judicial precedence has been strengthened in favor of abortion rights. Therefore, we must regulate abortion and incorporate exceptions into our ‘purist’ laws and amendments to broaden our consensus and gradually erode abortion rights until the High Court has a pro-life majority.”
In the rescue movement, it was believed that if enough Christians joined the sit-ins, a critical mass would rise that would elect leaders to replace judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade and the federal government would protect the preborn nationwide. When FACE Act made rescue and interposition too costly, and when the courts repeatedly strengthened pro-abortion precedence in jurisprudence, many pro-lifers focused their energies not on banning abortion, but on regulating abortion out of business, or making exceptions for rape, for incest, for maternal health, and for fetal handicap, to broaden the political consensus.
There are two primary problems, however, with attempting to curtail abortions by way of regulation and adding exceptions.
- Laws that say, in essence, “Do this and you can kill the baby” violate God’s law. Laws that allow the killing of some children stand in defiance of higher law and are evil, all good intentions notwithstanding. A law that requires an ultrasound before the abortion, for example, and then in the wording of the law permit abortions, is a lawless ordinance, even if it does save lives. A law that says innocent handicapped preborn babies may be killed, or that children conceived in rape and incest may be killed, though it may be necessary to get the broad consensus you need to get the abortion regulation bill passed, is a godless, evil law, even if it does save lives. God is the author of morality and justice, any law that dehumanizes the innocent and sheds innocent blood, or justifies any shedding of innocent blood, incurs His wrath, not His blessing.
The Ohio Heartbeat Bill is a good example of a law that, although it is marketed as a surgical abortion ban, is as godless as the Roe v. Wade decision itself (which also regulated abortion). The godless principles the Ohio Heartbeat Bill legalizes include: 1. Treating the preborn as subhuman through penalties that make killing a dog punished with greater severity, 2. Exempting accomplices, such as the mother, 3. The Bill specifically cites the federal judiciary as the standard of morality and justice, prescribing into law the unconstitutional supremacy of the Supreme Court over both the law of God and the state and federal constitutions. 4. The Bill does not criminalize abortion: if the abortionist does not document a fetal heartbeat in the medical record, and aborts the baby, it isn’t even a crime according to the Bill. If the abortionist documents a heartbeat in the medical record and does the abortion, only then is it a crime, which, of course, guarantees that no abortionist would ever document a heartbeat in the medical record.
What a waste of time and money! Especially since regulation bills are almost always overturned by the judiciary anyway.
And that’s the second reason attempting to curtail abortion by way of regulation and exception is problematic:
- The abortion regulation bills almost never survive the judiciary anyway. Almost all the laws that are celebrated by pro-life organizations as life-saving state regulations are overturned in court. We read their fund-raising letters and emails pushing for their regulation laws and celebrating them when they pass, but they don’t bother letting you know about its eventual overturned in court. It’s not a good way to raise money to let their funders know that all of it was for nothing. Abortion clinics shut down and the pro-life organizations celebrate their regulatory laws as the reason, but when abortion clinics consolidate their power – how is that a victory? The shrinking demographics explain how less babies die in abortion clinics: it is because less babies are conceived and because more and more babies are killed by RU-486 and over-the-counter abortifacients. Blood drenches our soil still, and the best of us still promote laws that justify some innocent bloodshed. Mourning, not celebration, is in order.
So if we must resist the judiciary to get even the most pathetic loophole-riddled, abortion regulation laws steeped in exceptions, passed and enforced, why not just defy the judiciary and protect every child statewide?
“Until we elect enough Republicans who will appoint enough pro-life judges to overturn Roe v. Wade, states can never successfully pass an abortion ban.”
It is a myth that Republicans appoint justices who will protect the preborn as full persons under the law. The Court that gave us Roe v. Wade in 1973 was comprised of seven republican appointees and two democratic appointees. The professing pro-life president Ronald Reagan gave us Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy – two judges who consistently favor abortion rights and deny the right to life of preborn children. George Bush the First, another professing pro-life president, gave us David Souter, who previously served as director of a hospital that performed abortions, and turned out to be yet another consistent pro-abort who denied the right to life of preborn children. George Bush the Second gave us Samuel Alito, who when he presided over the New Jersey Court of Appeals ruled New Jersey’s wildly popular “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” unconstitutional, and cited Roe v. Wade approvingly. John Roberts, Bush the Second’s second appointment, turned out to be the deciding vote in favor of abortion-funding Obamacare. True to form, our present Republican president has given us Neil Gorsuch, who in his confirmation hearings confessed that he believed the unborn was not a person under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. He said that if Trump had asked him if he would overturn Roe v. Wade, “I would have walked out the door.”
The pro-life organizations who knowingly and repeatedly lied to the public about these judicial candidates are responsible for the misplaced faith in the failed strategy of working to elect Republicans who will in turn appoint pro-life justices. If history is any indication of the future, even if the Lord were to tarry a thousand years, this strategy will never protect the preborn in the United States. On the contrary, we should ignore the lawless and toothless Roe v. Wade decision and leaders should protect the innocent within their lawful jurisdiction as they are oath-bound to do.
Pro-life leaders should repent for providing cover for abortion-justifying “pro-life” presidents and candidates, should cease being content with crumbs from the federal government, and accept nothing less from any candidate than the immediate abolition of abortion, at the local level, the state level, and at the federal level. To equivocate on this is to be an accomplice in the American Holocaust. Our leaders have a biblical obligation to protect the innocent with their delegated authority within their lawful jurisdiction, and they should keep the oath they take to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which says a person may not be denied the right to life or liberty without a trial by jury.
“Trying to rescue babies threatened with abortion through peaceful sit-ins has been tried before and failed.”
With that argument, Israel would have never entered the Promised Land, the colonialists would never have rebelled against England’s King George and founded the United States of America, and we would never have banned slavery. That the rescue movement failed to successfully protect every preborn child through love and through law may not have been because we tried rescue and interposition, but because we gave up. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Act, passed by Clinton in 1994, was largely responsible for the end of the era of clinic sit-ins. Instead of a night or a week in jail, rescuers faced years. Perhaps right then was when the pro-life movement was camped at the foot of the Jordan River, at the very edge of the Promised Land, and we believed the ten false spies who said we couldn’t do it, instead of the two true ones who said, “If God be for us, who can be against us!” Maybe if we’d have loved not our lives unto death in 1994, abortion would have soon ended and we’d have liberty and justice for all.
Regardless, failing then is not an excuse for surrendering without a fight now. Making peace with child sacrifice is not an option. We must end abortion, or God promises judgment upon the United States of America.
“Jesus is coming soon, and the world is going to get more dark and evil in the days before His coming. We can’t save the world through passing laws and political action or civil disobedience. Our job is to preach the Gospel until He returns.”
A man reclines by the hotel swimming pool reading a good book, when his brother asks him to watch his young son till he can return from the restroom. The father is not gone more than thirty seconds when the child stumbles into the water and starts screaming and struggling to stay afloat, sinking over and over into the water. The man only briefly looks up from his novel, barely giving notice. Finally, the father of the child hears the struggling and comes sprinting to the pool and dives in, but unfortunately he retrieves his drowned child.
Tears stream down the father’s face as he clutches his dead son. “Why didn’t you help my boy!” he screams.
“It wasn’t my kid, it was a good book, and besides, Jesus is coming soon.”
The point is clear. The reality of the soon-coming Savior does not negate our obligation to love our neighbor as ourselves and to do unto others as we would be done by them. The second coming of Jesus should motivate action and rescue and missionary work, not be used to justify complacency and apathy. God said in Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 that He shut His ears to Israel’s prayers and shut His eyes to their worship as long as the innocent were slain among them and justice was not done.
Remember the Parable of the Talents? The servant who was entrusted with a talent of money by his master went and hid it in the ground, for fear of losing it before his master’s return from his journey (Matthew 25)? The return of his master was not a happy occasion for him, for he was cast out into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
“Operation Save America has worked with pro-life folks who practice violence against abortion doctors and clinics.”
Everyone who works with Operation Save America must take an oath of non-violence before being accepted to minister with us. Just as the abolitionist John Brown’s attack of a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, was used to discount the abolitionist movement, the violent acts of a few are often used today to denigrate the peaceful, non-violent acts of those who interpose and rescue to protect the preborn. Just as the abolitionist movement to ban slavery should not have been discounted because of the violent acts of a few, similarly, the violent acts of a few against abortionists and abortion clinics should not discount the motives or actions of those who interpose and rescue lovingly and peacefully.
The New Paradigm: The Immediate, Total Abolition of Abortion, Enforced by Lesser Magistrates
This is God’s will with regard to abortion: “It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18). Not one! Can we pray with sincerity, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” when we work for laws that contradict God’s will? Can we honestly say God’s will is our will when we work for laws that end with the wording, “You can now kill the baby?”
The Bible says if we ask anything according His will, we will have it. “If we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: and if we know that He hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him” (I John 5).
The Bible says if we don’t get what we’re praying for right away, keep asking and keep believing you’ll get it, and you will (Luke 11, Mark 11).
When the pro-life movement didn’t get an answer to our prayers to end abortion, what did we do? We shook hands with the devil and worked for laws that said, “Do this, and then you can kill the baby.” In so doing, we’ve been coopted. And we wonder why we can’t inhabit our Promised Land! At the foot of our Promised Land of “liberty and justice for all”, we turned tail in disbelief to wander the wilderness.
There is an alternative to compromising God’s will and law in pursuit of a democratic consensus through abortion regulation and adding exceptions.
The answer is found in Ezekiel 22. If you read it you will see God’s threats against His people for the shedding of innocent blood. He raises the paddle for their punishment, and they spurn Him still. Even His priests have turned against Him in persecuting the prophets and in comforting Israel in spite of the shedding of innocent blood in her midst. In spite of these threats and promises of judgment, God says, “I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them, I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord.”
God looked not for a majority, not for a democratic consensus, but for a man. In Numbers 25, Phinehas was that man, who through wielding his blade quenched the wrath of God on the people. Josiah was that man, who through putting an end to the child sacrifice in the tribe of Judah provoked God to spare Judah and not deliver her up to her enemies as He did the northern ten tribes of Israel.
This principle is confirmed in the Book of Judges. When Israel had a godly judge who governed by the law of God, they enjoyed freedom. When they were governed by the godless who walked in the statutes of the heathen, they lost their freedom. We don’t need to compromise our way to a consensus to abate the wrath of God against us for the shedding of innocent blood – we need justice for the preborn. That can be accomplished through state leaders without the permission of the federal judiciary.
The law of God confirms this principle. Deuteronomy 21 teaches that when a person is murdered in the countryside, a line is drawn to the nearest city. The leaders of that locale were then made responsible for avenging the guilt of innocent blood through justice. If they failed, the citizens under their jurisdiction could suffer divine judgment. It wasn’t Jerusalem, the Capital of Israel, that was responsible to punish the murderers. No, it was the local criminal justice system.
This is similar to the system our American forefathers founded. Murder isn’t a federal crime any more than rape or theft is a federal crime. Justice must be rendered, but it is outside of the jurisdiction of the federal government to do it. If you give your friend the authority to mow your lawn with your lawnmower, does he also have the authority to spank your kids and be the head of your wife? No – his authority is delegated and limited, and to exceed his jurisdiction is to criminally usurp power you did not grant him. The federal government is likewise limited to specifically enumerated powers in the Constitution. The federal government should not let states legalize the killing of the innocent. It is ultimately the duty of the community nearest the crime to prosecute murderers to abate bloodguilt. That is the rightful, constitutional jurisdiction for criminal justice.
Unfortunately, the early rescue movement was largely void of the emphasis on the lower magistrates keeping their oath to protect the innocent within their lawful, local jurisdiction in defiance of tyranny. Randall Terry’s focus on federal remedies may have limited the impact of the rescue movement. The rescue recently led by Rusty Thomas in Kentucky was different. It was prefaced by a one and a half year campaign to prod the Kentucky leaders to protect the innocent and defy judicial lawlessness. The Kim Davis rallies and concomitant lesser magistrate campaign in Kentucky to defy the courts on same-sex marriage really plowed the soil there. I know one state Representative who purchased 2,000 of Matt Trewhella’s books The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate to distribute to pastors and to those in all three branches of Kentucky state government.
Those who rescue and interpose today, those who work tirelessly for Personhood amendments and abortion bans don’t just want to save a baby or two with their sacrifice. They don’t just want to impact the culture. They don’t just want more press and more people to join them. They don’t just want rewards in heaven. They aren’t motivated by the thought of gradually eroding abortion rights and the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade. No. They want equal rights for preborn people, and they want it now.
There must be justice for the preborn now in order to abate the wrath of God on the land now. For that, we only need a lesser magistrate to defy the lawless and immoral federal judiciary and do their sworn duty to protect the innocent within their lawful jurisdiction. The interposition and rescue of these slaughtered children by God’s people can empower the hand of the lesser magistrate – the Sheriff, the Statehouse speaker, the governor, the mayor – to choose between protecting the innocent or sitting idly by while the innocent preborn are slaughtered and their righteous rescuers are persecuted.
History reveals similarly: the federal government didn’t even begin to think of ending slavery until Ohio and Wisconsin defied the Dred Scott decision, the Federal Fugitive Slave Act, and protected the “illegal” runaway slaves via the Underground Railroad. Poland, Hungary, and Romania did not protect the Jews until Christians laid down their lives to interpose and illegally rescued those being led away to slaughter.
It is my opinion we will never end abortion at the federal level until states begin to defy the federal government in obedience to God. States, however, will probably never begin to defy them until we, the church, through word and deed live out the historical Christian doctrine of interposition ourselves and use our example to instruct the civil magistrate on his before God to defend the lives of the preborn. This is the new paradigm that demands our states ignore and defy Roe vs. Wade, establish justice, and abolish abortion now.
Conclusion
Interposition and rescue is the pattern of the cross: victory over sin, death, and hell through sacrificial love.
“Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren [Satan] is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto death” (Revelation 12). How do we see God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done, and trample the devil underfoot? Sin-cleansed hearts who proclaim God’s love and truth, with courageous, sacrificial love can demolish the demonic strongholds of child sacrifice and the shedding of innocent blood.
Trying to rescue children scheduled for slaughter through interposition, whether on the public sidewalk or by crossing on the death camp’s property to demonstrate “no greater love” can set powerful Kingdom realities in motion. When the church lays down its life to stand in the gap between the offending criminal and the victims whose life is threatened, Jesus can lead justice to victory (Matthew 12:20).
Civil disobedience, which is in reality Biblical obedience, can, without a doubt, be a Biblically justifiable means to protect the innocent. Rescue can and has provoked others to love and good works. It has saved many lives (a baby was saved due to the Kentucky Rescue) and it has shut down many death camps. Rescue can also postpone divine judgment and perhaps inspire the lesser magistrate to do his duty and abate bloodguilt and judgment.
By God’s grace let’s provide an island of light in the midst of this land overflowing with darkness. Let’s give Him a reason to show mercy to a remnant. Let us pray for a lesser magistrate to rise, do justice, and stand in the gap before the land. When he rises to defy tyranny and protect the innocent, let us rally to support and encourage him. Let us pray and act as if the freedom of our children depends on it. It actually does.
About the author: J. Patrick Johnston is a family physician, the father of ten home-educated children, and the author of ten novels. He directs Personhood Ohio and the Association of Pro-Life Physicians. His wife is the social media video-blogger the “Activist Mommy.” He produced The Reliant which is a family friendly action film starring Kevin Sorbo, Brian Bosworth, and Eric Roberts, and is based upon his novel The Reliant (www.TheReliantMovie.com). The movie will release to theaters probably in the winter of 2017/2018. His first novel The Revolt of 2020 provides a fictional account of how interposition and rescue forces the lesser magistrate’s hand to resist the feds and protect the innocent preborn, protect marriage, and preserve our Christian heritage. It is the first of a Trilogy that includes The American Tyranny of 2020 and The Uncivil War of 2020, and is available on amazon. Operation Save America’s annual July event has been on the calendar of the Johnston family since 2004.
