http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14750&page=2

It hasn’t (yet) stirred as much flak as I expected.

The issue exposes our double standards and attitudes towards those with disability and if we are going to euthanase those in the safe-house womb then what are we going to do with the newly born and those who are older?

As Christians we must be clear in our thinking with respect to euthanasia and abortion (including “post-birth abortion”) otherwise we have no chance of stopping our society’s continued slide.

Do pastors have an obligation to educate and challenge with respect to these issues? You bet they do. In my view it is irresponsible not to – a failure of the watchman role that is every pastor’s role in this present moral climate.

Do we as Christians have a responsibility in our voting this Saturday in WA? You bet we do. We need to look clearly at which parties are promoting law reform particularly with respect to euthanasia.

Please pass this on – including to your pastors.

Lachlan Dunjey.

PS Vote Australian Christians [1]  and remember your vote goes on at full value if we don’t get elected

PS2 feel free to get mad at me – at least then we will have a debate.

PS3 have just read Joel. Scary. But we know what we must do.

First they came for the kids with Down syndrome, and I said nothing because my kid didn’t have Down syndrome. Then they came for the kids with haemophilia, and I said nothing because my kid didn’t have haemophilia. Then they came for the kids with osteogenesis imperfecta … Philip Burcham. See http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/03/04/3703049.htm

The three great risks to Western civilisation are:

• the rebellion against what it means to be created in the Image of God, a rejection of who God is and what it means to be human.
• the threat to marriage and family, the move to re-define male and female and thus ultimately destroy the fabric of society.
• the challenge to freedom of belief and to speak of what we believe – to speak the truth.

These three core elements are the basis of the Manhattan Declaration, the Westminster  Declaration and the Canberra Declaration.

It is the latter of these threats that should concern us most as Christians. We will be persecuted for telling the truth. As has happened elsewhere we will lose our freedom to pull our children out of classes that teach opposing values and we will even be limited in what we can teach our children at home. State indoctrination of our children is the end result.

What has brought this about? In part it is the New Atheism, in part the social engineers and left-wing ideologues, but more than anything else it is the homosexual push for same-sex marriage. Legalisation of same-sex marriage will be the catalyst for anti-discrimination tribunals to exercise control over Christian speech and belief.

Losing the fights against destructive embryo research, against abortion (no, we have not lost that yet), against euthanasia or eugenic selection would be tragic and we would be in moral free-fall but losing the fight against same-sex marriage will herald a new age of Christian persecution.

It seems that a vote is likely this coming week. I believe that if we can hold off the push for same-sex marriage this year the momentum will lessen as people become tired of the illogical arguments in its support. It is time to pray.

Lachlan Dunjey. 14 Sept 2012.

…Like many in this situation she had remembered dates, had thought about when her baby would have gone to school, become a teenager and possibly married and had children – her grandchildren

See http://www.thechristiannetwork.com/can-god-forgive-my-abortion/

Reflections on the Opening Ceremony 2012 Olympics

Yes, it was all there – the creativity, love, community spirit, the inspiration of song and music, international cooperation, national spirit recovering from tragedy, engineering, ingenuity, seemingly faultless programming and coordination, the emphasis on fair play and sportsmanship, the honour and excitement and sheer joy of being there in a spirit of freedom, the honour of being human.

Yes, it is a great honour and privilege to be human.

We share that honour with the Son of God who came in our likeness.

To be created in God’s Image with all that means, to share that with others, to see it in others – even just a little peek – is such a privilege and joy. And yes, it means all peoples and races and tribes and tongues. And yes, it means in all states of disability and dependency. And yes, it means from the beginning of life to its natural conclusion. And yes, it means that a new-born baby is worth more than a pig. And yes, it means that a babe in the womb also has that Image even though we cannot yet see its evidences.

And as we get excited by the Olympic spirit let us also get excited by the display of what it means to be human as evidenced by that spirit and what it means to be created in the Imago Dei.

And yes, let us get excited and motivated defending what it means to be human in the alienated and our most vulnerable, for all at risk, and renew our efforts for the unborn, for life itself.

———————————————-

Advance Notice: The National Day of Prayer and Fasting for 2013 will have the theme of LIFE and will take place on Sunday 10th Feb 2013. This will also herald the 40 Days of Life from Wednesday 13th Feb – Sunday 24th March 2013.

Today also happened to be the occasion of an international webcast on 40 Days of Life. David Bereit on that webcast, a founder of ‘40 Days for Life’, will be in Australia August and September. See http://www.lifenetwork.org.au/_blog/Events_and_Opportunities/post/Forty_Days_for_Life_founder_David_Bereit_in_Australia_Aug_Sep/

Lachlan Dunjey. 28 July 2012.

Humanity’s greatest crisis is the rebellion against what it means to be created in the Image of God, a rejection of who God is and what it means to be human.

Society’s greatest risk is the threat to marriage and family, the move to re-define male and female and thus ultimately destroy the fabric of society.

And the third great risk is to freedom of belief and to speak of what we believe – to even speak or show the truth re abortion or marriage or even quote scripture – and includes freedom of religion and liberty of conscience.

These three core elements are the basis of the Manhattan Declaration, the Westminster  Declaration and the Canberra Declaration.

And they are the basis of the new Breaking the Spiral of Silence at Life, Marriage, Religious Liberty.

Medicine is in the frontline of these battles:

• The push for legalised abortion with no restriction on time, method or reason
• Routine pre-natal diagnosis with implied embryo selection or abortion of the defective (even compulsory)
• Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide – unrestricted even for the non-dying (even compulsory)
• Re-defining the doctor-patient relationship to providers of medical services on consumer demand
• Overriding of doctor’s liberty of conscience with compulsory participation e.g. in abortion referral
• The selective repression of truly informed consent especially the abortion links with breast cancer and post-abortion syndrome
• Destructive embryo research; cloning; mixing of animal and human genes
• Definition of death particularly with reference to organ transplantation
• The health implications of re-defining marriage with respect to the effect on children, the destruction of the traditional family with a mother and a father, and restriction of freedom to bring up our children with our values
• The threats to freedom of expression in writing and speaking what we consider to be logic and truth especially with respect to medical aspects of marriage and family, sexuality and abortion. Threats include hate mail and personal accusation – even black-listing of doctors on Facebook

Doctors4Family has made submissions to the Senate (sub 229) and House of Reps on the medical aspects and implications of changing the Marriage Act to include homosexual couples and since publication of this on the Senate website we have been subject to written abuse from people pushing for change.

Why the battle for marriage is so significant.

Dear friends, the battle we face is enormous.

Items 1-10 above give the opportunity for reasoned debate even though definitions are changed in Alice-in-Wonderland style and when debate fails emotional blackmail comes to the fore (diabetic children in wheelchairs) and a degree of personal derogatory labelling (“you’re just religious”). When it is seen that there is no counter to rational argument we are just ignored by those with pre-set agendas (remember, that is why MPs with pre-set agendas must be voted out).

But all this pales compared with the bitter, abusive attacks from the homosexual lobby and threats of discrimination against anyone with the temerity to defend the age-hallowed tradition of marriage as exclusively between man and woman and children should have mothers and fathers.

Please note that we are not “anti-gay” in our defence of marriage. It is the very essence of marriage that is being attacked – to broaden its scope and strip it of its intrinsic significance. There are also those who want to broaden the scope to multiple spouses and also take out the fidelity provision “to the exclusion of all others”.

The consequences of this attack are so serious in terms of threats to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to bring up our children with our own values (and not be subject to “diversity/sensitivity re-training”), and also ultimately democratic rule. The push for same-sex marriage – for ultimate approval and acceptance of homosexuality as the norm – is ultimately a rebellion against what it means to be made in the Image of God and His plan in creation and procreation and to silence with all the weight of the law any voices raised in protest – and to label such voices as lacking sensitivity, as hate speech, as being vilifying and discriminatory.

For Christians it will mean that we will have to accept our children being subject to education of the homosexual lifestyle, being encouraged at a young age to declare their sexuality, diversity education re families and with no right of objection. Home schooling will have to incorporate such instruction and children will be tested to ensure that they have “learned”. Christian organisations will no longer have exemption from anti-discrimination measures. Any attempt to use scripture to argue our position will be labelled as intolerance and vilification.

Please do not dismiss these warnings as scare-mongering. Should we be surprised? No, as Jesus said on the way to Calvary “if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Should we be in despair? No, because He also said “when these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28).

Why is the attack so bitter?

There are (sadly) many Christians who genuinely and “lovingly” support the push for same-sex marriage. But they fail to see the consequences for society and in particular for Christian freedom. That is because they don’t understand the fundamental rebellion and spiritual battle that is intrinsic to this – and of which most “gay” people have little idea.

John Yates puts it so well “the oppositional but complementary nature of heterosexual gender identity is written into the very framework of the order of the universe and the peak of the Creator’s genius. The challenge is far more profound than most Christians realise. This is a claim (for same-sex marriage) that God did not create His Image as male + female, it is an attack on the very existence and nature of God. The spiritual warfare around this issue is very intense.”

So, my friends, please carry the burden in prayer. Please pray for those who have made submissions and who will be appearing before the Senate committee hearings. And for me – I will be appearing before the Melbourne hearings this coming Friday 4 May to argue for case for Doctors for the Family.

Lachlan Dunjey. 29 April 2012.

Reflecting on evil and Jesus’ words on the way to Calvary “if men do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when the tree is dry?”

I have also been listening to Nonna Bannister’s “The Secret Holocaust Diaries” (published 2009) and am once again appalled at the face of extreme evil. Nonna allowed her husband to publish the diaries after her death because she wanted “the world to know so this would never happen again”. Not for the faint-hearted.

In a recent sermon http://www.chooselifeaustralia.org.au/life/2020-vision-a-look-at-why-and-what-we-must-now-do-in-2012-part-2/ I wrote:

As a result of Nazi Germany the world met together to see what could be done to prevent the atrocities of Nazism from ever happening again and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drawn up to ensure these things would never happen again.
And you know what I am going to say – we have overthrown this lesson of history and are wilfully going our own way again. As you have heard from me before we have introduced bills of rights into Victoria and ACT and deliberately excluded the unborn human from both these bills (see http://www.medicinewithoutmorality.info/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/09/Human-Life-as-the-Imago-Dei.pdf).

So where am I going with this reflection? I am concerned at the lack of condemnation of evil by church leaders, especially when it comes to just simply telling the truth about what is happening in our country so that Christians will be better informed at election time and vote responsibly. Pastors tell me that their parishioners know what is happening but as soon as I quiz the pastor himself it is obvious that he does not know the true extent either – and does not want to hear any more.

Pastors need to know the true extent of evil in our government and society. And they need to tell the truth. And they need to condemn.

It is not enough to preach the gospel and then to be mute in the face of evil. As Martin Luther said:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.

Why was it that Herod hated John the Baptist so much that he put him in prison and then allowed him to be beheaded? It wasn’t just because he had disciples and was calling for repentance. Herod hated him because he told the truth and condemned Herod.

Why was it that the Pharisees and priests hated Jesus so much that they wanted him killed? It wasn’t just because he had disciples and was calling for repentance. They hated him because he told the truth and condemned them for their hypocrisy as white-washed sepulchres.

We must not fail to tell the truth and condemn where necessary. If we fail to be watchmen we will be held responsible. In the face of evil, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out and the “confessing church” was formed. The established church failed dismally – apparently even Martin Niemoller in the early phases.

Where are our voices of condemnation? They are conspicuously silent – particularly at election time.

Yes, we must seek to change our nation by bringing people to Christ. And, yes, we also need to tell the truth, to inform those who do not know, and to condemn evil. And when it comes to election time we must not pussy-foot around the truth just so we don’t offend people.

http://www.chooselifeaustralia.org.au/life/where-was-the-christian-vote-in-the-federal-election/

Lachlan Dunjey. 9 April 2012.

Six weeks ago I presented to you a scenario  of where we might be in the year 2020. In light of that this is a look at how we got to where we are now and what we must do to guard our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Things have galloped on with two Australian ethicists hitting world headlines talking about “post-birth abortion”. As we said six weeks ago, this is not a new thing but we have sanitised it a little by calling by a different name. Do I have your attention? Instead of calling it infanticide, call it post-birth abortion.

The logic is impeccable. After all, if we can de-select (kill) pre-term babies in utero legally up to term for no reason, as in Victoria, then there is a logical consistency in de-selecting the “post-birth” baby – the newborn – for the same reasons or lack of reasons before it becomes “really human”, before it develops self-awareness – up to 4-6 weeks according to these ethicists, and others such as ex-pat Aussies Professor Julian Savulescu in Oxford and Professor Peter Singer at Princeton. There are also the advantages of giving the post-birth “thing” an anaesthetic as we de-select it and we can examine it properly first to make sure we are not de-selecting it in error. Did we happen to mention infanticide? No, of course we didn’t.

You will remember that this is only one of a series of scenarios presented along with the loss of freedom to speak of what we believe. We will have lost the freedom to respectfully disagree. We are losing it now.

So what is going on here? Fundamentally this is a rejection by people – many of whom do not believe in God at all let alone have a healthy sense of fear of God – of who God is, His Creation, the creation of male and female and of mankind being created in the Image of God.

Commenting on one essential part of this rebellion John Yates writes “the oppositional but complementary nature of heterosexual gender identity is written into the very framework of the order of the universe and the peak of the Creator’s genius. The challenge is far more profound than most Christians realise. This is a claim (for same-sex marriage) that God did not create His Image as male + female, it is an attack on the very existence and nature of God. The spiritual warfare around this issue is very intense.”

Where has the pressure come from? It’s a peculiar mix.

• For SSM it’s the push by mainly radical homosexuals, comprising a small proportion of the <2% of population that call themselves homosexual, for acceptance and respectability
• The left pushing for “equality”, anti-vilification measures and no-discrimination, freedom (for anyone but Christians), freedom to abort, euthanase
• Closely related to the above, the “revisionist/elite”, determined to experiment with social engineering, anti-family, marriage can be anything you like, children do not need fathers and mothers, children should be brought up in community centres and subject to indoctrination
• The “anti-anything-Christian” lobby – atheists and others with an axe to grind
• The Greens – freedom to do and be anything you like and don’t you tell us otherwise
• Emily’s List – personal autonomy at any cost – even at the cost of the human child I am carrying
• But why the ordinary person in the street, the people who go out to see the Pride marches? An anti-God “we will do what is right in our own eyes” and flaunt it group, but also a wishy-washy “this will be fun” group.

How could this have been happening? Because we have been alseep and in denial. I have been reminded this last week of the opposition that Amy Carmichael experienced when she wrote of the pioneering work she was doing in India in rescuing small girls from temple prostitution – people in England not only reacted with denial and disbelief but withdrew their support.

I remind you of the response by the German people when told of what Hitler was doing “no, no, that cannot be, we are German” until it was way too late.

The Small Picture and the Big Picture.

It seems weird to call it the small picture but I mean the already present, everyday picture of abortion, embryo selection and de-selection, eugenic selection aborting cleft lips and >90% of Down Syndrome babies, mid and late-term abortion without anaesthetic for the baby, the tearing apart of mid-trimester babies and then re-assembling the bits to make sure it is all there, the horror of partial birth abortion when the scissors are shoved in the baby’s neck so the sucker can be put into the brain and the brain sucked out so the skull can collapse and the head be delivered through a not fully dilated cervix, babies “accidentally” born alive and then left to die, clandestine euthanasia against the person’s will – there’s more but that’s enough.

But that’s just the “small” picture.

All of these things are just the outcomes of our attitudes and way of thinking, that there’s a value we can put on life as to whether it is worth living – an attitude of doing our own thing, of doing what is right in our own eyes, of rejecting God, His creation order and of ourselves as created in His image.

You know the OT history of the people of Israel, how they worshipped idols – making their own “gods” – and then they put things right to an extent and then they rejected God again and this cycle was repeated many times.

We have done the same.

As a result of Nazi Germany the world met together to see what could be done to prevent the atrocities of Nazism from ever happening again and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drawn up to ensure these things would never happen again. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person…

And you know what I am going to say – we have overthrown this lesson of history and are wilfully going our own way again. As you have heard from me before we have introduced bills of rights into Victoria and ACT and deliberately excluded the unborn human from both these bills.(see http://www.medicinewithoutmorality.info/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/09/Human-Life-as-the-Imago-Dei.pdf ).

The defence that the authors of the paper on after-birth abortion have raised has been thesimple logic of the argument that if we approve of X for certain reasons then we must also approve of Y with the same reasons and that they weren’t actually recommending infanticide – they were just exploring ideas. But as another writer has pointed out “ideas have consequences” and often what starts as an idea leads to a claim that such may be a human right.

And that – as another author has already pointed out – leads us to the reality of the “slippery slope”.

And as a part of that reality there is the slide from permission to compulsion. Permission becomes Compulsion.

When Permission Becomes Compulsion

• Homosexuality is legalised so then it is permitted in school curricula and then it is compulsory for children to attend – yes, fathers put in jail for refusing; Toronto school board forbidding parents to withdrawing their children from pro-homosexual education because it violates their human rights policy.
• Criminalising of those who disagree – either by speech, or refusing bed & breakfast, or adoption to same-sex couples, or fostering to Christian families, or hiring of campsites or church facilities.
• Homosexual “marriage” legalised/permitted leading to compulsion of registrants, then ministers, then use of church buildings.
• Abortion is legalised/permitted, then it becomes compulsory for doctors to participate or perform.
• Abortion being legal and permitted, it is then applied to eugenic selection “under the radar” and then becomes the norm (as for Down Syndrome) and the expectation (refusal brands you as being a “genetic outlaw”), and then compulsory – genetic cleansing of our society by genocide of a whole group of people.
• Killing people by euthanasia is legalised/permitted, then it becomes the expectation (the “duty to die”), then compulsory for sickness, disability or even age. Funding disallowed for palliative care but allowed for assisted suicide (as in Oregon).

I was reminded recently of the British psychotherapist who was set-up by a client pretending to be homosexual who wanted help to be free of his homosexuality. She (the therapist) offered to help him in line with his request to be free. She was reported to the governing association and reprimanded and ordered to attend re-education classes. Her crime? Instead of working with what the client wanted – the usual thing – she should have refused and affirmed him in his lifestyle that his homosexuality was entirely normal and that he did not need deliverance. Now such instruction also of course contradicts the usual rule of working within the patient’s frame of reference. This just shows how far the homosexual agenda has penetrated society and organisations. The radical homosexuals have been extraordinarily successful. Some churches of course have agreed with them.

OK, this is the picture, big and small – what must we do? We talked last time about the need of personal holiness to survive such times as are ahead. And we left with the challenge: what else apart from having our focus on God, spending time with God, and setting our hearts and minds on heaven do we need to do? And the answer was, well, maybe nothing.

But today I want to look at some other things that must arise.

First, let me deal with the issue of voting so we can get it out of the road. Those who understand what has happened in Victoria in particular with the passage of legislation that not only permits evil but compels evil will understand the matter of “defining issues”. You will also know that, no matter what logic we employ, we cannot change the minds of some MPs because that is why they are there, and we must exercise our Christian responsibility at the ballot box when it comes to vote. And we must understand the opportunity we have in Australia in the power of the preferential voting system to throw these people out. We must not fail to prevent evil at this level.

This last week we have seen the launch of Australian Christians http://australianchristians.com.au/ This is a re-branding of CDP with a stronger appeal to people of all churches. We are aiming for federal Senate seats.

Now, whatever your thoughts are at that level, let’s leave it behind us.

Another practical point is that we must stay awake.

We must not repeat the failures of 9/11, the Vic bushfires and WA bushfires:

The US Congressional inquiry found that there was a failure to realise the threat, a failure to be organised and watchful, a failure of communication, a failure to share information, and a failure of imagination. But all of this is dependent on the need to realise the depth of evil.  The co-chairman said: “The fact is we just didn’t get it… we could not comprehend that people wanted to kill us…”  This in spite of the statement in a 1998 staff memo by an intelligence head that said: “We are at war.”

We need to understand the times. So we need people to be watchmen. In this congregation. We must not continue in denial of what is happening. It would then be too late as the people of Germany found out. And be watchful for yourself – keep those lamps burning. Remember the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

Three more personal attitudes – very briefly:

• Fear of God. A proper sense of awe and respect for the great God who is also our Father and loves us with a holy love. We should have great fear of turning away from Him and of missing out on His blessings. The paradox is that when we continually surrender to Him we are free as the old song says Make me a captive Lord and then I shall be free (but we need a new tune).
• We need to  have a proper sense of grief, to be in mourning. We need to be appalled.  We need to recover the ability to shudder, to recover our sense of horror, shame and grief. To have this as a continuing underlying sense but also an ability to enjoy the day – every new day as a gift.
• We need to be desperate. Be holy.  Be distinctive. The gap is widening in belief, in behaviour and in what we have to offer. Be aggressive – intentional if you like – in our evangelism. Make a difference!

Now, if we are going to get involved in any way then we must realise that apart from what we do, this is an area of spiritual warfare as John Yates affirmed. Prayer then is foundational. Prayer at special times by ourselves, prayer at special times with others, prayer at meal time, prayer with visitors, an underlying attitude of prayer at all times. There is something very special about corporate prayer at special times and being tuned to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in such things.

I am reminded of what is attributed to Augustine Pray as though everything depended on God, work as though everything depended on you.

Remember, what we are dealing with here is a fundamental rejection of God’s plan. In prayer we are warring against principalities and powers, against rulers in high places.

But this is a serious and dangerous business.

The more we become involved in the prayer and activities of breaking down strongholds the more we will be attacked. One might even wonder whether it would be better to be a complacent Christian, but that is not an option and has as a consequence it’s own slippery slope. Please do not choose this road.

What sort of attacks? Sexually – either adultery or pornography, greed, power, pride. Shared problems, shared danger, even shared highs – these can all be a danger. Someone of the opposite sex who understands and listens. It is so sad to see leaders fall. But there are also difficult ethical situations where one compromise leads to another.

So what must we do? With an appropriate degree of fear and humility and a sense of our own inadequacy, we must beware of the slightest complacency, the slightest letting down of our guard in boundary keeping, the slightest lapse of concentration when we’re driving, in every aspect of everyday life.

Further we need to watch out for each other. We need to challenge, confront and restore. We need to encourage each other and we need to be accountable. In our work – including our work for God – we must also take time for spouse and family. Nurture your marriage.

There always was and always will be a spiritual battle going on until Christ comes. For now, in Australia, it seems to be more intense and I have sought to illustrate this intensity today. We have highlighted attitudes: being awake, to have an appropriate and continung sense of grief – mixed with joy, how to vote, and to be desperate in our personal relationship with God. Finally, with a call to be involved in this battle through prayer and to be prepared for the attacks that inevitable follow.

Lord, in Your strength, keep me focussed on you, dependent on you at all times, lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil. Help me through Your Holy Spirit to be faithful in this warfare through prayer. Please Lord, for my sake because You love me but primarily for the honour of Your Name don’t let me bring Your Name into disrepute and may Your Name be glorified in our nation.

Lachlan Dunjey. Morley Baptist Church, Western Australia 18 March 2012.

Where might we be in the year 2020 and how then shall we live now? (Edited sermon delivered Morley Baptist Church WA 5 February 2012.)

Eph 5:15,16  Be very careful, then, how you live–not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Feeling very unworthy I want to talk today about personal holiness.

But first I want to frighten you into realising how necessary this is.

In the busyness of our ordinary everyday living we seem not to have time for personal holiness and we seem to not realise or we prefer to ignore the serious moral decline in our country. I understand both – particularly the feeling of uselessness that comes with our inability to change things.

So why am I so serious? What is so frightening? Let me introduce by crystallising the three major internal threats to our future and then we will look at where we might be in the year 2020.

What are the threats?

Humanity’s greatest crisis is the rebellion against what it means to be created in the Image of God, a rejection of who God is and what it means to be human.

Society’s greatest risk is the threat to marriage and family, the move to re-define male and female and thus ultimately destroy the fabric of society.

And the third great risk is to freedom of belief, liberty of conscience, and freedom of speech.

(all encapsulated in the 3 great declarations http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/ http://www.westminster2010.org.uk/declaration/ www.canberradeclaration.org.au)

So where are we going? Where might we be in the year 2020?

• “de-selection” of embryos, mature foetuses and late term unborn babies for reasons of eugenic selection of all disease or defect – Down Syndrome will be no longer (watch for the headlines: “Medical breakthrough! Cures on the way…”)
• imperfect newborns are “de-selected” before self-awareness up to about 4-6 weeks of age. (The logic is that if infanticide was legal then we could allow the baby to be born and be properly examined before making the decision to terminate it. So there are two reasons for supporting the legalization of infanticide – we can then be sure of the diagnosis and the baby gets the benefit of anaesthetic as we “de-select” it.  And then we can also use good organs for transplant purposes. Perfectly logical. Yeah, right…)
• mixing of animal genes with human genes for research or reproduction
• organs are taken from cloned foetuses and mature clones bred for the purpose
• organs are taken from patients with catastrophic cognitive impairments but not actually dead
• pro-life pregnancy counselors are no longer available due to strict licensing
• euthanasia and physician assisted suicide (PAS) is readily available for non-dying people, even for existential distress in teenagers, and extended to the involuntary
• funding is limited for palliative care treatment in favour of euthanasia and PAS
• upon reaching a certain age assessments are made of usefulness to society – health funding is limited except for euthanasia
• doctors are un-insurable by medical defence organizations unless they agree beforehand to participate in euthanasia and PAS
• doctors are de-registered and unable to practice if they refuse to perform such procedures that become legal
• specialties of paediatrics, O&G, anaesthesia, geriatrics, and oncology can be accessed only by doctors who compromise on abortion and euthanasia
• schools that refuse to implement the full detail of the National Curriculum are progressively de-funded, then de-licensed and declared illegal
• foster parents refusing to allow their children to attend classes teaching homosexuality as a valid option have the children taken away
• prospective foster parents and adoptive parents are deemed unsuitable if they believe that marriage is for male and female
• natural parents who instruct their children in Christian values are fined on the grounds they are inciting hate crimes and vilification and if they refuse to comply with court orders have their children taken from them
• all home schooling is illegal so Christian parents do not “infect” their children with Christian values
• Christian camp grounds are forced to accept bookings from homosexual groups or penalised and de-licensed
• all those who have license to marry are forced to do homosexual marriages or be de-licensed
• students attending Theological colleges – “Approved Training Institutions” – that don’t accept the new standards are not eligible for financial subsidy
• teaching or preaching that marriage is male and female results in fines or, for repeat offenders, jail

There will be tolerance of all things except Christian belief. There will be total silencing of any Christian expression or opinion which is all regarded as intolerance, hate speech and bigotry, as we have seen with Margaret Court. In certain instances we will be forced to choose between our careers and our convictions. We will not even be able to voice our protest that we protest and do not have a voice. Even prayer for others or our nation – if it is seen – will be regarded as intolerance.We will then have no recourse other than civil disobedience.

You find this hard to believe? It can all be backed up with what is happening already here and where things have got to overseas. Why and where the attacks are coming from is for another time.

(Just this week in England there is a move to shut down pro-life preg counselling and just yesterday a retired general in US was refused permission to speak on the value of prayer for leaders at a prayer breakfast because of his Christian beliefs.)

Can we turn this around? Yes, I believe we can and I’ll talk about that in weeks to come.

Today, in the light of these things, I want to talk about our attitude to God and personal holiness.

We have just celebrated communion. Yes, we need to constantly remind ourselves who God is, what He has done through Jesus Christ, and we need to remind ourselves and each other.

Be Awestruck Every Day…
Jesus, who calls us “brothers”, is our High Priest,
sitting in power and majesty at the right hand of the
throne of God, making intercession for us!!
Incredible!
Every day, remember.
Be awestruck.  Be grateful.  Be humble.
And persevere in the
knowledge of this amazing fact

And then, be desperate. Be desperate in searching to know God more and more and to integrate that attitude into your daily lives. Now I am well aware that for some of you my “be desperate” message is the last thing you want to hear, that your passion is already to love God and that you are plagued with feelings of inadequacy and failure. And the message that I bring out in my counselling for you is

I
do not
have to
struggle

And that also is true.

In repentance and rest is your salvation;
In quietness and confidence is your strength.

I guess if we wrap that up together then it is to have a deep underlying passion to put God first. But some of us at least need to hear the “be desperate” message. We’ll call it “be passionate”

How do we do this?

Be awestruck every day
Be passionate
Time with the Father

How did Jesus do it? Time with His Father. And we must do the same. How do we do it? I have no pat answer for that for a busy family with getting kids off to school – if you need to sleep in on Saturday morning then maybe up an hour earlier on Sunday and spend an hour with God. You don’t know how to spend it? Read OT and NT then go through your church directory. I hope you pray with your kids every night and pray for them again in that special time. But each day there should be a time of committal. For me it’s much easier – I start work later cos I’m the boss and I get up earlier so it’s rare that I miss that time and when I do miss it I also miss it. What will you do this week? (Pause.)

You get tired? Yes, it can be an effort. The disciples fell asleep in the garden when Jesus was in torment. And so our prayer can never be a reflection of our own strength. We must constantly be dependent on God – and that is where God wants us to be.

This coming Sunday a day of prayer has been called 10am-4pm to pray for our country. I hope you may be able to squeeze in a ½ hr for our nation. And, of course, part of the prayer focus is for people to know Jesus and that brings us to the importance of the Great Commission to witness and preach at every opportunity.

Eph 5:15,16  Be very careful, then, how you live–not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Thankyou for the work you do in teaching the children. That is so important a task to safeguard our future. And I know you shroud that work in prayer so I’m conscious that there is a lot of unseen prayer that undergirds our ministries. But sometimes there’s more

In the evening services we have been hearing about heaven – yes, the final of the three is tonight – and so we have been reminded of such verses as Col 3:1,2 (NIV) Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

Be awestruck every day
Be passionate
Time with the Father – prayer and listening
Set your minds on things above

And if we are setting our hearts and minds on things above that will give impetus to our evangelism and teaching of the young.

We also must therefore be prepared, ready for Jesus to return today or tomorrow, ready to give an answer to those who ask and be conscious of our responsibility to “preach the Word in season and out of season”.

We need to be continually listening to what God has to say to us. I am reminded once again of the Times Square Church being forewarned of Sept 11th.

“A month before, our leadership was impressed by the Holy Spirit to cancel all special speakers and scheduled meetings.  We cancelled our missions convention and city-wide youth rallies.  We shut things down and called the congregation to prayer. We have experienced an unusual visitation of the Holy Spirit as a result.  On one occasion, we sat in total silence for over one hour.  People speak in hushed tones.  There was soft weeping, with people coming forward and kneeling, reaching out to the Lord.  These are the manifestations of a Holy Ghost visitation: a holy, awesome silence, and weeping and fervent prayer in every service.  The Holy Spirit revealed to us that the divine silence in our meetings was a preparation for the trying times ahead.”

Are we ready for that?  Now of course there are sovereignty of God issues here.  God moves in His people in His time and He knew the target was New York.  But it also means that the church was ready.

Be awestruck every day
Be passionate
Time with the Father – prayer and listening
Set your minds on things above
Are we ready? Are we prepared?

Are we ready? What else apart from having our focus on God, spending time with God, and setting our hearts and minds on heaven do we need to do?

Well, maybe nothing. Because if we really have that right I reckon everything else will fall into place.

However, there’s one thing more. I remembered last night what it was that stimulated me to ask a few months ago if I could preach, and it was the reports of increasing alcohol abuse in teenagers deliberately setting out to get drunk and the concern that this is causing. OK, I don’t need to remind anyone about the dangers of binge drinking but we all play a role in this in education and by example.

Our friend Paul says that all things are free, but not all things are beneficial and we should take care of our weaker brother. Our very practical mate Peter exhorts us to self-control – you’d expect that wouldn’t you?

• prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled 1 Peter 1:13
• be clear-minded and self-controlled  why? so that you can pray 1 Peter 4:7
• be self-controlled and alert  why? so you can resist the devil 1 Peter 5:8

Why?  Why self-Control? Peter is very practical:

• so you can pray
• so you can resist the devil
• so you are prepared for action
• so you can be holy and
• so you can be clear-minded in your thinking

Be awestruck every day
Be passionate
Time with the Father – prayer and listening
Set your minds on things above
Are we ready? Are we prepared?
Be clear-minded and self-controlled

Because of the problem that alcohol causes in society, keeping in mind the weaker-brother principle, and acknowledging that even a small amount of alcohol can interfere with clear mindedness and being able to resist the devil, there is a good case to be made for alcohol-free Christian events and even personal abstinence.

I know there will be disagreement on this – even within this fellowship.

However, these are critical times. This is not a time for complacency, self-justification or argument. In the light of what lies ahead – in the light of 2020 – the bar has been raised and we each need to re-examine these things.

Let us not fail to encourage each other. Let’s do that today during morning tea and lunch.

Lachlan Dunjey, February 2012.

Excerpt from Breakpoint http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/18531 Jan 11,2012

Dr. Stephen Anderson teaches philosophy at A.B. Lucas Secondary School in Ontario, Canada. His students had just finished a unit on metaphysics and were about to start one on ethics.

To jump start the discussion and to “form a baseline from which they could begin to ask questions about the legitimacy of moral judgments of all kinds,” Anderson shared with them a gruesome photo of Bibi Aisha, a teenage wife of a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. When Bibi tried to get away from her abusive husband, her family caught her, cut off her nose and ears, and left her to die in the mountains. Only Bibi didn’t die. Somehow she crawled to her grandfather’s house, and was saved in an American hospital.

Writing in Education Journal magazine, Anderson relates how he was sure that his students, “seeing the suffering of this poor girl of their own age, [they] would have a clear ethical reaction,” one they could talk about “more difficult cases.”

But their response shocked Anderson. “[He] expected strong aversion [to it], … but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused . . . afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize,” as he said, “any situation originating in a different culture. They said, ‘Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.’”

Anderson calls their confusion and refusal to judge such child mutilation a moment of startling clarity, and indeed it is. He wonders if it stems not from too little education, but from too much multiculturalism and so-called “values education,” which is really just an excuse for moral relativism.

Wow! As CSLewis said in those memorable 3 lectures at Durham University in 1943 now titled The Abolition of Man, the move away from moral values in teaching would lead to “men without chests”, lacking moral formation and moral character.

J I Packer, in his brilliant article Surprised by Lewis in Christianity Today Sept 1998, writes:

The Abolition of Man was the waving of a red flag at an oncoming juggernaut that would reduce education to the learning of techniques and so dehumanize and destroy it, tearing out of it that which is its true heart. The attempt was ignored, and today we reap the bitter fruits… The inner desolation and desperation that young people experience as subjectivist relativism and nihilism are wished upon them in schools and universities is a tragedy.

Lewis, in his lecture, writes:

The practical result of (such) education… must be the destruction of the society which accepts it. Stepping outside the (moral values), they have stepped into the void.  Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men.  They are not men at all: they are artefacts.  Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of man.

So, parents, Christian teachers – in all schools – Sunday School teachers, leaders – whoever you are – be not afraid! Hold your Christ standard high. Let Jesus be our example in tolerating tax collectors (!) and sinners, not condemning the woman taken in adultery, not condemning the criminal on the cross or other penitents, but very condemning of the leading astray of the people by the Pharisees, very condemning of any who would cause a little one to fall or who would seek to impose their own lack of moral values upon others.

Lachlan Dunjey. 14 Jan 2012.

I’m pretty sure the first thing I knew about Lachlan Dunjey speaking on “Good News” was when I saw the program on the web. Now hang on guys, why not pick on Job or Jeremiah? Hey Jeremiah – we’re sick of all this stuff you’re blogging, how about telling us some good news! Yeah, well they did say that to Jeremiah too and they shoved him a well. You’ve read my blogs on grief and mourning and warnings to the churches. You know I don’t bring good news – I bring bad news and warnings of more to come.

Well that’s not wholly true. I have also informed you of the various declarations including the recent San Jose Articles and today I will tell you about the Doctors for the Family and other items.

But it is also true that I have written about grief and the fact that we all should have an appropriate sense of grief for what is happening here and overseas – far worse – but we hold this in tension with the fact that every day is a new day – allegedly hotter but we will all be cooled by the rising sea levels anyway – and that we live in the luckiest country in the world even though we will all get skin cancer from the sun and if we cover up we will all be vitamin D deficient and get osteoporosis and crumble into a heap of dust but if we take vitamin B12 as well as D at least we may reduce our Alzheimer’s and able to torture our children for even longer by having them support us – now, where was I?

Yes, we do live in the lucky country. Europe is in free-fall financially, demographically and more importantly morally. The USA has signs of hope – the pro-life movements are stronger than ever; the younger generation – and I believe this is true here too – has an intrinsic concept that life does actually begin at fertilisation, that un-born babies actually are human too, and that a “person’s a person no matter how small” (where is that from? From the movie Horton Hears a Who by Dr Seuss – and there have been a lot of other good news movies out recently including pro-life), and that Roe v Wade should be overthrown. Yes, there are winds of change in the USA.

We are servants of the King. The King is returning and before Him every knee shall bow. Hey, the news doesn’t get any better than that. How lucky are we to be His children and His servants – well, it’s not luck at all but you know what I mean.

We can of course hold grief and joy in tension. Grief for the world as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (have you read Eric Metaxas’ book on Bonhoeffer? You must – that is very good news) wrote from prison shortly before his execution “…taking on not just our own sufferings but those of God in the world, watching with Christ in Gethsemane,” but also having joy for today in all that God gives us.

And as we consider the things that are wrong, God reminds us Who is in charge.

God answered Job from the eye of a violent storm.
Who set the cornerstone
While the morning stars sang in chorus
and all the angels shouted praise?
And who took charge of the ocean
when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb?
That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds,
and tucked it in safely at night.
Then I made a playpen for it,
a strong playpen so it couldn’t run loose,
And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place.
Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’

And yes, much of our good news is reaction to bad things happening as immortalised by Dicken’s famous lines “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times” from Tale of Two Cities.

It is good news that you’re here today. Because at least you know not only who to vote for but how to vote – and so many still don’t understand our preferential voting system and think their vote will be lost if they put us first. They get scared at the last moment and put their major party of choice no.1. They also fail to realise their Christian responsibility in looking at what I call DEFINING ISSUES. When governments legislate to permit evil that is a defining issue. Worse, when governments not only permit evil but legislate to compel evil – as did the government of Victoria in the 2008 abortion legislation – that SURELY IS A DEFINING ISSUE. And the good news is that the bad MPs were targeted in the next election and the government was changed although many of Victorian Liberal are also on the wrong side of life.

But the bad news is that these things were pointed out prior to the federal election, that Emily’s List MPs played a significant role in Victoria as Candy Broad who introduced the abortion bill is a founding member of Emily’s List, and that Julia Gillard was not only a founder but wrote its constitution, that Julia Gillard would almost certainly be beholden to Bob Brown should she win and would therefore compromise on issues like same-sex marriage and instead of ruling a change to the Marriage Act out would cave in to a conscience vote – all this was pointed out but we had great difficulty in making it known. It was a matter of great frustration that Christian magazines published nice articles about how Christians could look at elections but failed to point out these issues.

I thank God for the Australian Christian Values Checklist www.christianvalues.org.au/ and for the people that helped put this together. That’s good news. If there’s a choice between being nice and telling the truth, surely we must tell the truth. I thank God for Saltshakers and Family Voice and Life Ministries and Bill Muehlenberg.

Have you read Bill’s book? You must. It tells the truth about bad news but its good news that it is now out there. Has the main stream media (MSM) taken any notice? No, it is silent – that’s bad news.

“Can you catch the eye of the beautiful Pleiades sisters,
or distract Orion from his hunt?
Can you get Venus to look your way,
or get the Great Bear and her cubs to come out and play?
Do you know the first thing about the sky’s constellations
and how they affect things on Earth?
“Can you get the attention of the clouds,
and commission a shower of rain?
Can you take charge of the lightning bolts
and have them report to you for orders?

Serious bad news is that UN agencies are pushing abortion to third world countries as allegedly UN policy. This is untrue and it is because of this that the San Jose Articles were drafted http://www.sanjosearticles.com/

It is now commonplace that people around the world are told there is a new international right to abortion.

Those who receive this message are people who have the power to change abortion laws; parliamentarians, lawyers, judges and others.

Those delivering this message are influential and believable people; UN personnel, human rights lawyers, judges and others.

The assertion they make is false. No UN treaty makes abortion an international human right.

Even so, the assertion is gaining traction around the world. The high court of Colombia changed their country’s abortion laws based on this false assertion. More are considering such a change.

The purpose of the San Jose Articles is to provide expert testimony that no such right exists. The San Jose Articles were prepared by a group of 31 experts in international law, international relations, international organizations, public health, science/medicine and government. The signers include law professors, philosophers, Parliamentarians, Ambassadors, human rights lawyers, and delegates to the UN General Assembly.

San Jose Articles

• Article 1. As a matter of scientific fact a new human life begins at conception.
• Article 2. Each human life is a continuum that begins at conception and advances in stages until death. Science gives different names to these stages, including zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and adult. This does not change the scientific consensus that at all points of development each individual is a living member of the human species.
• Article 3. From conception each unborn child is by nature a human being.
• Article 4. All human beings, as members of the human family, are entitled to recognition of their inherent dignity and to protection of their inalienable human rights.  This is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other international instruments.
• Article 5. There exists no right to abortion under international law, either by way of treaty obligation or under customary international law.  No United Nations treaty can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing a right to abortion.
• Article 6. The Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) and other treaty monitoring bodies have directed governments to change their laws on abortion.  These bodies have explicitly or implicitly interpreted the treaties to which they are subject as including a right to abortion.
• Treaty monitoring bodies have no authority, either under the treaties that created them or under general international law, to interpret these treaties in ways that create new state obligations or that alter the substance of the treaties.
• Accordingly, any such body that interprets a treaty to include a right to abortion acts beyond its authority and contrary to its mandate. Such ultra vires acts do not create any legal obligations for states parties to the treaty, nor should states accept them as contributing to the formation of new customary international law.
• Article 7. Assertions by international agencies or non-governmental actors that abortion is a human right are false and should be rejected.
• There is no international legal obligation to provide access to abortion based on any ground, including but not limited to health, privacy or sexual autonomy, or non-discrimination.
• Article 8. Under basic principles of treaty interpretation in international law, consistent with the obligations of good faith and pacta sunt servanda, and in the exercise of their responsibility to defend the lives of their people, states may and should invoke treaty provisions guaranteeing the right to life as encompassing a state responsibility to protect the unborn child from abortion.
• Article 9. Governments and members of society should ensure that national laws and policies protect the human right to life from conception. They should also reject and condemn pressure to adopt laws that legalize or depenalize abortion.

Treaty monitoring bodies, United Nations agencies and officers, regional and national courts, and others should desist from implicit or explicit assertions of a right to abortion based upon international law.

When such false assertions are made, or pressures exerted, member states should demand accountability from the United Nations system.

Providers of development aid should not promote or fund abortions.  They should not make aid conditional on a recipient’s acceptance of abortion.

International maternal and child health care funding and programs should ensure a healthy outcome of pregnancy for both mother and child and should help mothers welcome new life in all circumstances.

Hey, this is very good news. I think from memory they have also been presented to the British Parliament.

Bad news is that homosexual marriage (let’s be real about this and say homosexual instead of same-sex marriage) may be allowed federally but the good news is the collective voice in opposition. If we do manage to preserve the Marriage Act 2004 definition of marriage being between a male and female voluntarily entered into for life, the bad news is that it will only be a little while before the Greens try again.

The good news is that the ACL now has 73000+ names for the Save Marriage Petition.

More good news is that just this Wed evening (16 Nov 2011) Doctors for the Family was launched www.doctors4family.com.au (and you might recognise the handiwork of Guennadi Moukine in this).

The very good news is that God definitely has a sense of humour in created beings:

“The ostrich flaps her wings futilely—
all those beautiful feathers, but useless!
She lays her eggs on the hard ground,
leaves them there in the dirt, exposed to the weather,
Not caring that they might get stepped on and cracked
or trampled by some wild animal.
She’s negligent with her young, as if they weren’t even hers.
She cares nothing about anything.
She wasn’t created very smart, that’s for sure,
wasn’t given her share of good sense.
But when she runs, oh, how she runs,
laughing, leaving horse and rider in the dust.

Especially good news that you already know about is the formulation last year of the three – nay, four – great declarations.

The Manhattan Declaration http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/ set the scene, the Westminster http://www.westminster2010.org.uk/ followed and the

Canberra Declaration http://www.canberradeclaration.org.au/ followed again – each one establishing the intrinsic value of human life, the need to uphold marriage and to preserve freedom of belief and speech.

I said in Brisbane earlier this year:

Humanity’s greatest crisis is the rebellion against what it means to be created in the Image of God, a rejection of who God is and what it means to be human – and I agree with Sven that the frontline of this battle is abortion. Congratulations Sven (good news from Sweden) on what you are doing in showing what abortion is. And Bill (Muehlenberg) highlighted the country’s knee jerk reaction to the horrifying images of cattle slaughter. I wrote 2 years ago about the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan and abortion

How can it be that we betray the most helpless of humans? Our animal activist friends get really upset when they see a dolphin or whale foetus cut from its mother and rightly so. Yet these are frequently intact and have not been shredded or pulled apart. How can it be that our society is so schizophrenic that we get upset about dolphin slaughter yet rabidly defend our right to kill our unborn babies? How can this be?

It may be that this battle too may be won with word pictures and visual images and a new generation will thank us and wonder why the truth was withheld for so long.

So, thankyou Sven. And, by the way, I think we are changing the culture on this one – I sense we are winning. OK, that’s humanity’s greatest crisis.

Society’s greatest risk is the threat to marriage and family, the move to re-define male and female and thus ultimately destroy the fabric of society.

And the third great risk is to freedom of belief and to speak of what we believe – to even speak or show the truth re abortion or marriage or even quote scripture – and includes freedom of religion and liberty of conscience and that brings us to medicine’s greatest challenge.

And as we said yesterday these three core elements are the basis of the Manhattan Declaration, the Westminster  Declaration and the Canberra Declaration.

But I said there were four declarations and the fourth is the Conscience in Medicine Declaration http://www.conscienceinmedicine.net.au/

We, the undersigned, seek to maintain the ethical independence of the medical profession and the liberty to practice medicine according to our conscience.

• We believe it is in the patient’s best interests for doctors to adhere to a code of ethics that is independent of any standards set by governments or practices that may be permitted by legislation.
• We believe that as health professionals we have a duty to educate and inform fully so that best management decisions can be made and that such may include a refusal to comply with patient demand where such is inconsistent with good medical practice.
• We further believe there are times when the patient request cannot be complied with because it conflicts with our integrity and ethical stance.
• It is our right and obligation to practice medicine according to our conscience. We will not engage in or facilitate procedures or practices that we believe are in conflict with our conscience.

And in yesterday’s good news there was a blog from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) in England announcing in response to a meeting in London to be addressed by none other than our own Dr Philip Nitschke there will also be a meeting in York with Dr John Patrick from Canada – a tireless campaigner for good who has been to Australia at least three times. So, remember, next week Nov 23 in Clifton Parish Church in York at 7.30pm for those who might be taking a quick trip to England.

More good news from the USA just to give some figures:

During the Clinton years, 56 percent of Americans described themselves as pro-choice, while only 33 percent of us self-identified as pro-life. But in just a decade and a half, the numbers have completely shifted.

According to the most recent Gallup polling, pro-lifers edge out those in favor of legal abortion by 47 to 45 percent. Half of all Americans agree that abortion is morally wrong.

And the news gets even better. Following a ground-breaking Nebraska law last year that bars late-term abortions because of the risk of fetal pain, five other states have passed measures outlawing nearly all abortions after five months of pregnancy. Legislatures in Kansas Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, and Oklahoma this year have enacted abortion bans after 20 or 21 weeks. The laws allow for exceptions when the mother’s life is at risk or she faces severe physical impairment. (from Breakpoint)

Just three months ago I highlighted the contrast between the celebration of Emily’s List at the rejection of amendments to the Victorian abortion bill

• parental consent for girls under 18 years
• mandatory reporting of suspected sexual abuse
• a “cooling off period” for women considering late term abortion
• provision of medical care for aborted babies born alive
• anaesthetic for babies aborted late term
• compulsion of doctors to refer for abortion to a doctor who they know will be in favour
• banning of partial birth abortions

Arizona on the other hand has passed a law that requires

• parental consent for minors
• a “cooling off period” of 24 hrs with provision of full and accurate information by a doctor
• medical professionals cannot be forced to perform abortions if it contradicts their religious or moral beliefs

noting that partial birth abortions are banned in the US anyway.

Amendment rejection: “victory for women” Emily’s List.

Amendment acceptance: “victory for women” in Arizona.

It is hard to understand the opposition of Emily’s List women to the proposed amendments. They all made sense. Surely one would want to anaesthetize a late-term baby about to have its brain sucked out by a partial birth abortion. Surely for a 14 year-old schoolgirl one would want to look at the possibility of abuse and the reporting of same. Such opposition I think will be thought very strange in years to come.

Now remember: just under 60% of female Labor MPs across Australia are members of Emily’s List including two state premiers – Anna Bligh in Queensland and Lara Giddings (another founder) in Tasmania – and our Prime Minister. They are a significant force in our nation and it is going to become increasingly difficult for any non-member female to gain pre-selection. Can we turn this situation around and let Labor know we will not vote for any candidates supported by Emily’s List? Or is it too late?

“Who do you think set the wild donkey free,
opened the corral gates and let him go?
I gave him the whole wilderness to roam in,
the rolling plains and wide-open places.
He laughs at his city cousins, who are harnessed and harried.
He’s oblivious to the cries of teamsters.
He grazes freely through the hills,
nibbling anything that’s green.

We are getting slightly better at propagating truth but there are serious limitations. We can show pictures of slaughtered animals but not of slaughtered babies. The “possible” evidence that abortion can give an increased risk of breast cancer by up to 1/3 is unreasonably repressed and denied as is also the evidence for post-abortion syndrome but in Sept this year the British Journal of Psychiatry published an article (Dr Priscilla Coleman) showing that abortion increases the risk of severe mental disease by 81% and that almost 10% of all women’s mental health problems are directly linked to abortion.

Good news that we are getting the truth out there.

CMDFA has published a booklet on euthanasia and the ethics committee is currently finalising one on conscience.

http://www.christianconcern.com/ the Christian Legal Centre is an organisation in UK that is well worth subscribing to. On that site you will read that the Christian couple fined 3600 pounds for refusing B&B accommodation to a homosexual couple are now being heard in court; that 83% of church-goers are opposed to the Conservative Party plans to legalise homosexual marriage; and parents are rebelling against their children being exposed to lessons on sex for pupils aged four and plans to teach homosexuality to six-year-olds.

There’s more good news. Fred Nile and Paul Green were elected in NSW election. Fred is amazing – 30 years in NSW parliament and he pours out press releases several times a week it seems – and they are good. We are grateful to God for the life of Elaine Nile who died just recently 17 October and who herself was in parliament for 14 years. A wonderful and honourable lady.

Paul Russell in SA of http://www.noeuthanasia.org.au/ has been able to work with other movements (SA lawyers, MBA of SA, Medicine With Morality, CMDFA) and provide significant opposition to the moves to legalise euthanasia. We have provided confusion. They introduced a series of amendments in a hurry to convince everyone that the euthanasia bill had nothing to do with euthanasia but then we pointed out that the amendments would seriously impact on palliative care and so they equally suddenly pulled all the amendments.

Seriously incompetent is the only word for it. And the worrying thing is that there is another bill already in the wings. What do you do with incompetent politicians who are not willing to listen and understand? You throw them out.

The tide is surging in Mississippi where just this week a vote was being taken to amend the constitution of that state stating that “person shall include every human being from the moment of fertilisation” – the Mississippi Personhood Amendment. Unfortunately it was rejected after severe opposition by abortion lobby.

“Have you ever travelled to where snow is made,
seen the vault where hail is stockpiled,
The arsenals of hail and snow that I keep in readiness
for times of trouble and battle and war?
Can you find your way to where lightning is launched,
or to the place from which the wind blows?
Who do you suppose carves canyons
for the downpours of rain, and charts
the route of thunderstorms
That bring water to unvisited fields,
deserts no one ever lays eyes on,
Drenching the useless wastelands
so they’re carpeted with wildflowers and grass?

Hey, we changed state government with our preferences and 5 new pro-life people got elected.

We defeated cloning in WA.

We defeated euthanasia in WA.

And Jamie van Burgel got a magnificent vote.

Let us be very clear – Christian values are under attack. We must defend them

Jesus made it very plain in His prayer in John 17 that we will be hated for who we are, merely because we are Christians. We will be hated for what we stand for, the upholding of truth, and this year for simply stating the truth that marriage can only be between male and female.

Values that we hold to be “self-evident” and established securely in the international covenants like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – that came to be to ensure that the atrocities of WWII and Nazism would never, ever be repeated – are being discarded and ignored where they do not suit these agendas. At risk are liberty of conscience, freedom of speech and belief, and the intrinsic value of all human life including the unborn. Eugenic selection with abortion of even minor congenital abnormalities is now commonplace. What is wanted is complete control over life and death. Freedom of speech on issues that concern our faith and moral values in society is probably the most serious that will impact on our future as we will not even be able to declare what we believe. Also under threat is the freedom to choose teachers of like-minded values for our children.

We are in a war zone. Yes, it involves us in a battle but our weapons are weapons of peace and prayer and faith and perhaps most of all to tell truth.  There is no violence here nor any incitement to violence – our weapons are the antithesis of violence.

And we know where the battle is going. We know the consequences of wrong actions in our legislatures yet many MPs have no idea or they keep ignoring the realities.

What do we need to do?

It sounds like a truism but first and foremost we need to be informed. Then and only then can we understand the times, and – like the men of Issachar – know what to do. Those who understand need to inform others. I have compiled a Chronicle of Shame for our nation. It makes for sobering reading.

We need to get among God’s people and inform them. We need to take the “watchman” role – telling the truth, informing, challenging, to be ambassadors committed to help others to understand the times

• In our homes as husbands and wives, as mothers and fathers, as grandparents
• In our everyday work
• In our churches
• In “mountains of influence” inside our work and in the community and recruit those already in mountains of influence
• Public role – in the village square and marketplace; to be a visible Christian presence and to have an audible Christian Voice

There is a significant role for the Mighty Men’s Conference in this, for mighty men to be watchmen to overcome the paralysis within our churches that hinders us in being effective politically. Many leaders seem to have a fear of alienating people when telling the truth about what is happening, that they will be seen as telling people how to vote. But a practical outworking of the informing role is to understand political policies and “hidden” agendas; to understand our responsibility in voting and of our preferential voting system so that votes are not wasted.

There is an object lesson for Christians in the failure of intelligence to warn of September 11^th.  The US Congressional inquiry found that there was a failure to realise the threat, a failure to be organised and watchful, a failure of communication, a failure to share information, and a failure of imagination.  But all of this is dependent on the need to realise the depth of evil.  The co-chairman said: “The fact is we just didn’t get it… we could not comprehend that people wanted to kill us…”  This in spite of the statement in a 1998 staff memo by an intelligence head that said: “We are at war.”

And we need to be the Voice that continues to stir.

I close with God’s word to Jeremiah when he was tired

“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”

Oh dear! But God has the last word:

“Are you the one who gave the horse his prowess
and adorned him with a shimmering mane?
Did you create him to prance proudly
and strike terror with his royal snorts?
He paws the ground fiercely, eager and spirited,
then charges into the fray.
He laughs at danger, fearless,
doesn’t shy away from the sword.
The banging and clanging
of quiver and lance don’t faze him.
He quivers with excitement, and at the trumpet blast
races off at a gallop.