A group of about 50 elementary students were touring their town on a field trip as the Walk Across America team arrived on the main street of Rifle, CO. The kids immediately spied Judgment the horse and Mercy the donkey and became very animated. When Flip realized that they couldn't come to the animals, he and Rusty brought the animals over to them. The kids loved them! Flip began to explain that his son Jonathan was carrying the broken Ten Commandments because our nation has broken all of God's commandments. He told them Shekinah was carrying a broken baby. He talked about Judgment the horse, then asked them, "Do you remember what animal Jesus rode into Jerusalem on?" At this point one of the teachers said, "Oooh, you can't say that!" Flip continued speaking to the kids asking how many of them loved Jesus. About 20 of them raised their hands.
Meanwhile, a man came out of one of the shops and started threatening members of the team, telling them, "you better get out of here or I'll throw you out!" He actually took hold of Curtis before finally going back inside and calling the police. The police spent about an hour getting everyone's names and questioning them about speaking to the students. Flip said they told Sgt. Miles of the Rifle, CO Police Dept. that they believed they were within their First Amendment rights to share the Gospel with the children on a public street. Sgt. Miles replied, "If a teacher doesn't want you to speak to her students, you can't speak to them. They own the kids while they're here!"
After the delay caused by their interrogation, they started walking up the street sharing the Gospel again. Flip said he began to see little kids darting across the street. Cars were stopping. He said there were no crossing guards and there was no adult supervision. The teachers were apparently sending kids running across the street to get them away from our team and out of earshot of the mention of the name of Jesus. He said the children were clearly in danger of being hit.
Flip said there is a connection between what happened on the main street of Rifle, CO, and what happened five years ago, almost to the day, at Columbine High School in Littleton , CO . April 20, 1999 , Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a rampage killing 12 students and a teacher. Prior to the killing spree, Eric Harris posted this on his web site "My belief is that if I say something it goes, I am the law, and if you don't like it you die... [I] feel no remorse, no sense of shame."
Flip pointed out that in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992), a joint opinion by O'Connor, Souter and Kennedy declared the following: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and the mystery of human life." With one stroke of the pen the Supreme Court of the United States of America discarded its historical reliance on a transcendent standard. It paved the way for Eric Harris to commit his heinous crime, for Eric was simply living out the belief the Supreme Court had stated in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.
The connection Flip mentioned is this: When the messenger is silenced at every turn as he was today, when adults rip God out of the hearts of children as they did today, when God is banished from school as, by all indications, has happened in Rifle, CO, at some point you can expect Columbine. When God is removed, the void is filled with drugs, gangs, condoms, violence and murder.
Flip said, "As we finished our walk with the kids almost getting killed running away from Christ, we stopped at the police station. There we met Martin C. Beeson, Deputy District Attorney of the 9th Judicial District." Flip said, "We told him the story of what happened, that the police told us if teachers tell you not to speak, you can't speak, and asked him if it was our constitutional right to speak to the kids. He told us, 'As long as you're not on school property or blocking traffic, the street, or the sidewalk, you're well within your rights.'"
"Now please understand," Flip said, "We are not standing on our First Amendment Rights in order to speak. We must speak! It is our duty and moral obligation to bring Christ to America ."
|
