LSN: More on a personal note: you got involved in this awhile ago, but how did you get involved in pro-life work, and what keeps you going?

Rose: I come from a pro-life family – I’m one of eight kids – and I first saw an image of an abortion when I was nine years-old in an old book in my home. Being nine years old and looking at this ten-week old child, I remember thinking, “how could anyone do this to a baby?” …..

LSN: As a side-note, you brought up seeing the image of that [dismembered] unborn baby at such a young age. As you know, there is a controversy within the pro-life movement about what sort of images to use. Do you think those images should be shown?

Rose: Certainly. I think those images are necessary to show the reality of abortion. Most Americans are pro-life, but I think few of them really understand the gravity of this issue, because they think, “it’s a sad thing, it’s a tragedy.” But I don’t think that many of them realize it’s a human rights injustice of the greatest scale. Part of that is because they do not have to see an abortion; they don’t have to see the victim of abortion.

The victim of abortion is totally hidden from the public. These abortions happen literally in utero, so because of that we as pro-lifers in our educational projects need to make sure the victim is seen, otherwise the reality of abortion won’t be understood. It won’t be understood for what it really is.

Read here the whole interview with Rose, who does undercover investigative reporting on illegal procedures at Planned Parenthood  centres in the US.

A high proportion of deaths classed as euthanasia in Belgium involved patients who did not ask for their lives to be ended, a study found.

More than 100 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in 'terminations without request or consent'.

Although euthanasia is legal in Belgium, it is governed by strict rules which state it should be carried out only by a doctor and with the patient's permission.

The disturbing revelation  -  which shows that nurses regularly go well beyond their legal role  -  raises fears that were assisted suicides allowed in Britain, they could never be properly regulated.

Read here

By Peter J. Smith  NEW YORK, March 11, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) 

Every day for the next four weeks passengers on New York City’s subway system will be encountering a message that is hard to escape: “abortion changes you.”

Spread throughout the subway trains and stations of the “Big Apple” are 2,000 posters that offer millions of daily riders a “safe place” for them to work out emotional struggles they may have after an abortion.

The campaign has nothing to do with politics: pro-life vs. pro-choice, or where public policy on abortion should be. Instead, the Abortion Changes You outreach deals only with the too-often-ignored reality that many actually do have grief – to one degree or another – after having an abortion.

Michaelene Fredenburg, 44, the founder of Abortion Changes You, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that the outreach is focused on reaching out to individuals struggling after an abortion, and on giving them a non-judgmental environment that can help them achieve healing and peace.

Read here

CCFON

AN On-Line survey conducted by the Marie Stopes ‘Reproductive Choices’ organisation -  which promotes and aids abortions – has revealed that 94% of respondents are  AGAINST changes in the law to legalise  Abortion in Ireland.

The organisation, in their summary of the legal situation in Ireland, states: “Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe where abortion is still illegal.  Every year thousands of Irish women who have made the decision that they are unable to continue with their pregnancy have to travel overseas, mainly to England, to get help with abortion.  This can be stressful and expensive. Woman may need to hide the fact that they are pregnant and going to have an abortion from family and friends.

Woman travelling overseas for abortion, include pregnant teenagers, women who have been raped or in a violent relationship, women whose life would be at risk if they continued with their pregnancy or women whose pregnancy has a foetal abnormality. At Marie Stopes Reproductive Choices we believe that the law needs to change and modernise to meet the needs of women in Ireland who request abortion help.”

However, in just one week since the organisation asked the public their views

(www.reproductivechoices.ie/Online_poll.aspx) on “Should abortion be legal in Ireland?, Yes or no.”, 94% said No and only six per cent said yes!

Andrea Minichiello Williams, Barrister and Director of Christian Concern For Our Nation said: “This on-line survey was brought to our attention and we were pleased that Marie Stopes was  giving people the democratic opportunity to make their views known.

“No doubt if the result had been 94% of people in favour of legalising Abortion in Ireland  Marie Stopes would have issued a press release and claimed support for their cause, however, the reality is the opposite.  We feel the information should be in the public domain.

“The public’s view on this matter is clear. Ireland is clearly happy with the law as it stands and  it is for them to decide. In the past attempts have been made from Westminster to extend the abortion law to Ireland. This should be resisted. We hope the leadership at Marie Stopes’  will take heed of the result of this poll  and allow the life-affirming people of Ireland to live in peace from political interference on this  vital  issue regarding  the dignity of  life”

ENDS.

For further information:

Andrea Minichiello Williams: 0771 2591164

What I do know is that it is much more dangerous to publish a cartoon of Mohammed than to slice apart a Christian with a machete.

In a number of places around the world, it is open season on Christians. We read of Christians burned out of their homes and slaughtered in Pakistan. Most recently, at least 500 Christians were murdered in Nigeria. The attackers in all cases are Muslims, inspired by the warlike message of their Prophet. AFP reports on the Nigerian attacks:

—UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Washington led calls for restraint on Monday after the slaughter of more than 500 Christians in Nigeria, as survivors told how the killers chopped down their victims.

—Funerals took place for victims of the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos, blamed on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group. …

—"We have over 500 killed in three villages and the survivors are busy burying their dead," said state information commissioner Gregory Yenlong. "People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses — many of them children, the aged and pregnant women."

Do you remember the "massacre" at Jenin? Of course: Palestinians initially claimed that 500 had been killed, but it turned out that there was no massacre after all. In Nigeria, on the other hand, no one disputes that more than 500 Christians were slaughtered by Muslims. So where is the outrage? I don't know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian denomination in Africa. I'm a Lutheran, but I have never heard a single word from any church source, local or national, about the mass murder of African Christians. No one seems to care.

No doubt readers can refer us to some Christian sources–evangelical, most likely–who have tried to draw attention to the plight of Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia who are being exterminated. But any such effort has wholly failed to gain traction in the "mainstream" Christian community.

Why? I can't explain it. Maybe "mainstream" Christianity is dead, except as an appendage of secular liberal opinion. Maybe, as the world's largest religion, Christianity has become so diffused that New World Christians don't much relate to their co-religionists in Africa and Asia. I don't know. What I do know is that it is much more dangerous to publish a cartoon of Mohammed than to slice apart a Christian with a machete.

David & Carol Pileggi

P.O. Box 14037

Jerusalem, Israel

02-6733988 / 0522-869677

From outside Israel

+972-2-6733988

+972-522-869677

pileggi@netvision.net.il

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China and India together account more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing” women estimated to have died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition access or pure neglect ?or because they were never born in the first place, the Report found.  Read the UN Development Project here  

People were in deep sleep and woken up by about three this morning to meet with death. Men women children and pregnancies were all littered on the road as they were  killed as they were probably fleeing to God knows where. This is a premeditated killing in the worst way. Please continue in prayers for us. The cost of being a Christian is rising by the day.

+ben

The image (right) is from the slaughter of a few weeks' ago in the same general area. 

Updates will be found on the website of the Diocese of Jos here

Most people do not realise that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a devout racist, KKK supporter and huge fan of Adolf Hitler. Below is from a Matt Kennedy post featuring an article by Al Mohler:  'Black children are an endangered species?'  But first the Sanger quote, which comes from a letter written by Margaret Sanger to Dr. Clarence Gamble in 1939:

[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Read Matt Kennedy here 

Britain is in a poor position to condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh unless it accepts its history of drug dealing to China

1. The Hebrew midwives wouldn’t have disobeyed Pharaoh to save the baby boys;

2. Moses wouldn’t have confronted Pharaoh in order free his people from slavery;
3. Rahab wouldn’t have lied to save the lives of the Hebrew spies;

4. Nathan wouldn’t have confronted David about Bathsheba; there would be no Ps. 51;
5. Daniel wouldn’t have disobeyed the new law about prayer and there would be no story about Daniel in the Lion’s den;

6. Daniel’s friends wouldn’t have disobeyed the king’s decree and there would be no story about their rescue from the fiery furnace;
7. Esther wouldn’t have risked her life in an appeal to King Xerxes to save the Jews;
8. The wise men wouldn’t have disobeyed King Herod to protect Jesus;
9. John the Baptist wouldn’t have confronted King Herod about his adultery;
10. Jesus wouldn’t have called Herod a “fox” and told his followers to: “Render unto Caesar [only] the things that are Caesar’s.”

11. Peter and the Apostles would have obeyed the authorities and would not have said: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29);

12. St. Paul would not have appealed to Caesar in his own legal defense (Acts 25);
13. Ignatius would have obeyed the emperor and escaped the lions in the Colosseum;
14. Polycarp would have obeyed the governor and not been burned at the stake;
15. Justin would have appeased the governor and escaped martyrdom in 166 A.D.;
16. Cyprian would have appeased the emperor and escaped beheading in 258 A.D.;
17. Telemachus wouldn’t have given his life to stop the gladiator fights in 404 A.D.;

18. Becket wouldn’t have challenged Henry II and been murdered in 1170 A.D.;
19. The English nobles wouldn’t have challenged royal tyranny in 1215 A.D.;
20.  Luther wouldn’t have told the emperor: “Here I stand.  I can do no other;” nor would he have translated the Bible or started the Reformation;

21. Tyndale wouldn’t have translated the Bible and been burned at the stake in 1536;
22. Robert Raikes wouldn’t have challenged British child-labor laws to begin the Sunday School movement in 1780 in an attempt to reach children for Christ;

23. John Wesley wouldn’t have championed abolition and prison reform;

24. William Wilberforce wouldn’t have labored for twenty years to stop the slave trade;

25. Abraham Lincoln would never have signed the Emancipation Proclamation;
26. Mary Slessor wouldn’t have fought the vicious, entrenched tribal customs in Africa;
27. Amy Carmichael wouldn’t have rescued girls from Hindu temples in India;
28. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cory ten Boom and hundreds of other Christians would never have risked their lives to save Jews from the concentration camps and gas ovens;

29. Martin Luther King Jr. would never have challenged racial segregation;

30. There would have been no abolition of slavery; no prohibition against prostitution; no prison reform; and no restrictions upon abortion, infanticide or euthanasia.

Dr Norman Lund is a High School teacher in Seattle, WA.  Norm and his wife Judith have three daughters. He did his Ph.D. in Systematic  Theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Canada.  
Email: nlund@oxfordtutorials.com

Condoms Encourage Promiscuity which Leads to More Infections: Namibian Bishop

Bishops also lambast Western media for spreading "abuse, lies and hate or derogatory propaganda"

ROME, October 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The belief that condoms are an effective means of stopping HIV/AIDS is "unrealistic" and groups pushing condoms in African countries are making the problem worse by encouraging promiscuity, "which leads to more infections," a Namibian bishop said last week.

The bishop also claimed that foreign experts are using the media and government funding deliberately to conceal the failure of condoms to prevent the spread of the deadly disease.

Bishop Joseph Shipandeni Shikongo said at the African Synod that is currently taking place at the Vatican that while the Catholic Church has "an extensive HIV/AIDS program" in Namibia, the government’s "expatriate expert advisors" have access to greater funds and access to the media of TV and radio to influence the people to use condoms. "Thus secular and relativisitc views of sexuality are propagated," he said.

"For them, the most predominant concern is to prevent infection; and the most important means is the condom … The failures of this means is deliberately ignored or explained in dubious ways."

The AIDS rate in Namibia is 15.3 per cent of the adult population, with a total of 200,000 people living with AIDS according to 2007 statistics.

Bishop Shikongo also pointed to the practice of pharmaceutical companies that he says are using African countries as a dumping ground for drugs that "are not approved" in the countries where they are manufactured. Citing a report by the World Health Organisation, the bishop mentioned the hormonal contraceptive Depo Provera, saying that some drugs are being sent to Africa for "experiment."

"It is said that Africa is most exposed to these kinds of medicines because of the limited capacity to investigate, test or monitor as to what is happening."

Hope Award:  I Am a Treasure lavishes the love of Christ on women in the sex industry | Emily Belz 

LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles. Near midnight. Industrial buildings. Empty streets. Full parking lot. Men wander into a nondescript building, "Fantasy Castle." Bouncers stand at the door. Inside, on stage. women dance to earn their rent. Men watch in the dark. Booze, perfume, and loneliness.

A group of young women with fistfuls of flamingo pink gift bags approach the bouncer and offer him cookies—yes, cookies. This is the second strip club they have visited, pulling up in a church minibus: They have five more on their list as they canvass neighborhoods north of Long Beach, south of Compton. The bouncer takes the cookies and lets them inside to the bar, the customers, and the dancers, who are all lined up on the stage.

Read here:

I was given just enough George Muller to inoculate myself. I kept hearing the same recycled incident in which his orphanage has no bread or milk for the next meal, and the needed provisions turn up on his doorstep immediately after prayer. With this token praise of the miraculous we establish our credentials. But whether by a conspiracy conscious or unconscious, the rest of the Muller story is carefully kept under wraps.

Everybody knows the 19th-century Prussian founded homes for poor children in Bristol, England, but I never heard why. The care and spiritual training of orphans was only the secondary reason. The first was apologetic, in the most glorious sense: "Our goal is to show the world and the Church that even in these last evil days, God is ready to help, comfort, and answer the prayers of those who trust in him" [emphasis added] (The Autobiography of George Muller).

Read here

When more traditional people with a developed understanding of moral guilt learn about the substitutionary atonement and forensic justification, they are comforted. But these classic doctrines have profound implications for race relations and love for the poor, since they destroy all pride and self-justification.

When more liberal people hear about the kingdom of God for the restoration of the world, it opens them up to Christ’s kingship demanding obedience from them in their personal lives. In short, every gospel form, once it hits home, opens a person to the other points of the gospel made more vividly in other forms. 

by Tim Keller   Hat-tip:  David Virtue
www.leadershipjournal.net

VOL: This article speaks directly to Mrs. Jefferts Schori statement at GC2009 that individual or personal salvation is a Western heresy.

The gospel has been described as a pool in which a toddler can wade and yet an elephant can swim. It is both simple enough to tell to a child and profound enough for the greatest minds to explore. Indeed, even angels never tire of looking into it (1 Peter 1:12). Humans are by no means angels, however, so rather than contemplating it, we argue about it.

A generation ago evangelicals agreed on "the simple gospel": (1) God made you and wants to have a relationship with you, (2) but your sin separates you from God. (3) Jesus took the punishment your sins deserved, (4) so if you repent from sins and trust in him for your salvation, you will be forgiven, justified, and accepted freely by grace, and indwelt with his Spirit until you die and go to heaven.

There are today at least two major criticisms of this simple formulation. Many say that it is too individualistic, that Christ’s salvation is not so much to bring individual happiness as to bring peace, justice, and a new creation. A second criticism is that there is no one "simple gospel" because "everything is contextual" and the Bible itself contains many gospel presentations that exist in tension with each other. 

Read here
 

Are poor people poor because they’re paying the price for their own personal failures—or because the systems in which they find
themselves have been broken and have failed the people within them?

It is, of course, an age-old question. Authors Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, in a brand new book called When Helping Hurts, note that political conservatives have tended to stress the former explanation, while liberals have emphasized the latter. Which, they ask, is correct? 

Before jumping to their answer, I can’t help thinking how different the responses might be right now, if I posed that question to all of WORLD’s readers, from the answers I might have gotten 18 months ago. If a whole lot of us find ourselves poorer than we were at the end of 2007, how many of us are admitting that our new "poverty" is the result of our own failures and bad decisions—versus those of us who are complaining that a broken system has let us down?

Read here