First they called for "free love." It was the sixties and we lusted for fornication—sex before marriage. The movement was loudest in Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock, but fornication quickly spread across the country—including the Church. Not that any church had been vigilant to preach against, admonish, and discipline fornication prior to the sixties, but by the beginning of the seventies any preaching against, or discipline of, fornication in the Evangelical church had ceased. Inter-Varsity Press issued a book by a seminary prof that approved of what the prof sold as responsible fornication. The prof was popular and his book was a bestseller, so if seminaries and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship called for the reappraisal and approval of fornication, what preacher was going to preach against it or appeal to his elders for its rebuke and discipline? Thus fornication took over the Church and Christians yawned. Heavy petting that stopped just short of intercourse was the sweet spot of maintaining our ability to claim Christian faith while giving in to our lusts.
Next they called for "a woman's choice." It was the seventies and we lusted for the blood of our unborn children. The movement was loudest in the American Law Institute, the American Medical Association, and the National Abortion Rights Action League. In time, the Supreme Court did the bloody work the lawyers and doctors were calling for and issued their infamous Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion from conception to birth across every one of the fifty states of this Union. Child sacrifice quickly spread across the country—including the Church. Following Roe v. Wade, the Evangelical church was silent. It was the day of "law and order" and, as Evangelicals saw it, the Supreme Court was our authority and they had declared "a woman's choice" a fundamental human right, so abortion must be OK. The Roman Catholics had opposed the groundswell calling for abortion prior to Roe v. Wade in 1973, but during the buildup Evangelicals were silent and following Roe v. Wade we continued to be silent as abortions went above 1,500,000 per year. Evangelicals contracted the bloodlust ourselves, joining our pagan neighbors in sacrificing our children to Molech.
Then, at the end of the seventies, C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer joined forces and went on a barnstorming tour across North America calling for Evangelicals to repent of our participation in the holocaust. We lived in Boulder at the time and I remember their appearance in Denver where Schaeffer decried Evangelical pastors and parachurch leaders' indifference to the slaughter. He told us when he and Koop's tour arrived in Chicago, he himself personally called fourteen Evangelical leaders in Wheaton asking them to come and listen to what he and Koop had to say against abortion, but not one of them was willing. A few years later, Inter-Varsity Press issued a book written by some prof who approved of child-murder in this and that case, and thus child-murder came to the Church. Yes, across the intervening thirty-five years, the practice of child-slaughter within the Church has been somewhat hidden...
This begins a new category of posts I've planned for years, but put off. If you visit an old cemetery, you'll see dotted across the landscape tiny gravestones with little lambs carved on the top. Jesus commanded Peter, "Tend my lambs" (John 21:15), and His command includes these little ones. Isaiah prophesied about our Lord:
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