Washington Post 1.22.09
Lou Engle
Hope, Change for the Unborn
Two days ago our nation’s first African American president, Barak Obama, was escorted onto a regal platform before the masses of America. He put his hand on the Bible (the actual Bible Abraham Lincoln used for his oath) and then briefly made his inaugural oath to protect the Constitution.
Borrowing from the theme of President Obama’s inauguration, it seems that today we have a new Abraham Lincoln and are on the brink of witnessing, in all its glory, “A New Birth of Freedom” for America. It is amazing how we can honor the heroes of justice in our past and stand in the very shadows of their memorials but not learn the lessons that history taught.
Engraved on the walls of Lincoln’s monument are the words of his second inaugural address, “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”
Abraham Lincoln most certainly drew his inspiration from Numbers 35:33 (“So you shall not pollute the land where you are, for blood defiles the land and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it except by the blood of him who shed it”) as well as Genesis 9:5-6 (“Surely for your life blood I will demand a reckoning… Whoever sheds mans blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.”)
Lincoln came to understand that the Civil War was God’s divine discipline upon a people and a nation who refused to live according to God’s laws. Lincoln was aware that the Civil War was a day of reckoning for the horrific injustice of slavery and the shedding of innocent blood done in the name of economic gain and racial oppression. If what Lincoln came to conclude was true, and if 600,000 men died on the battlefields of the Civil War for the blood of slavery, what will it mean if God brings a day of reckoning for the shed blood of conservatively 48 million aborted babies since Roe v. Wade 1973?
If Abraham Lincoln was right in his assessment of the Civil War, then the shedding of innocent blood is a most serious offense against the One who creates, sustains, and loves life. Anyone who has seen the graphic pictures of abortion know that this is a shedding of blood and blood does not make a distinction between an unborn person and a born person. This issue of blood takes abortion way out of the realm of choice.
So now, while proclaiming a new day of freedom, President Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, and in so doing would be ruling exactly for that which President Lincoln stood against, the lifeblood of the slave. This is a harrowing moment in American history. While Obama has promised to make abortion rare, the FOCA will remove every restriction of abortion from conception to possibly born alive infants. To remove law is to remove restraint. Law restrains evildoing. It can’t change hearts but it can prevent many from shedding innocent blood.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that he couldn’t keep a person from hating him but through legislation could keep him from beating him. The laws of God are good for society and for the well being of its people. The passing of FOCA would be an act of lawlessness in the highest degree and will only increase and magnify the tragedy of abortion to children, to mothers and society.
The Constitution that governs this nation was founded on the belief that no man’s freedom can come at the cost of another and all men deserve to live free of repressive edicts, fear of death, and tyrannical oppression.
And so we go on refusing to learn from history demanding our own choice and our own freedoms at the cost of the most innocent of all, the unborn child. We call on President Obama to listen to the voice of thousands of Christians who voted for him under the impression that he would make abortion rare. Live up to your word for the sake of America.
Lou Engle is co-founder of The Call, an evangelical effort to gather young adults to pray and fast for revival. In 2004, Engle planted the first Justice House of Prayer in Washington, D.C. JHOPs have emerged in San Francisco, Boston, New York and San Diego.
