In Old Testament times most, people were poor and lived at a subsistence level. Thus, leaving an inheritance (normally land) was vital to enable the following generation(s) to continue farming and raise livestock, without getting enslaved. The distribution of the inheritance was executed like this: usually, daughters did not receive land, for they commonly lived with their parents until they married, after which they benefitted from their husband’s land; but all sons received an equal portion of land except the firstborn son who got double:

If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have born him sons, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved wife, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he cannot treat the son of his loved wife as firstborn in place of the son of the unloved wife—the actual firstborn.  Instead, he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved as the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he was the beginning of his strength (generative power); to him belongs the right of the firstborn (Deuteronomy 21:15-17).

Only if there were no sons, daughters would inherit; with no daughters, the brothers of the deceased would be in line; with no brothers, the nearest relative would inherit (Num 27:1-11).

This law no longer binds in the New Covenant because polygamy is no longer acceptable. Second daughters are now eligible to receive the double portion if the deceased bequeathed it in their will. What remains is the principle of proportionality. The first son no longer automatically inherits either the double portion or the entire estate. Instead, the ‘firstborn’’ has an ethical responsibility, not a position granted by natural birth order.

It’s the reason why someone from the crowd said to Jesus: Master, order my brother to divide the inheritance and share it with me in Luke 12:13-21..” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:13-15) And the parable of the prodigal son: And He said, there was a certain man who had two sons; And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the part of the property that falls to me. And he divided the estate between them Luke 15: 11-32).

Ultimately, even if the land was sold at some stage, it remained in the family line as it reverted to them in the year of Jubilee when all debts were cancelled. All this is a background to the following Scriptures: Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren…. (Proverbs 13:22). Houses and wealth are inherited from parents…. (Proverbs 19:14) If we wanted to derive a law from the above scriptures to adhere to today, we’d also need to follow the biblical distribution pattern, i.e., giving only to sons and the oldest one a double portion, etc.

However, whilst especially in the subsistence-small scale farming sector land is still passed on to the next generation, it’s fair to say that biblical inheritance patterns are generally not followed at all. The reason may be that, especially in industrial countries, the entire economic landscape has changed leading to a different inheritance approach. Most people have no land and those who still have, rarely own productive grounds.

Children tend to leave their parents early and seldom carry on with the family business if there is one. They move to economic hubs where they build their own careers and mostly become financially independent. When they inherit real estate, these are typically sold. It provides a windfall for them that is not necessarily needed but welcomed to improve their living standards. The family property, however, is gone.

So, then what’s a biblical approach to inheritance today especially in the African culture?

The scriptures hint at the importance of handling wealth correctly, which applies to both parents and children: I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners, or wealth lost through some misfortune so that when they have children there is nothing left for them to inherit (Eccl 5:13-14).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with leaving a material or financial inheritance to our children if we can. Likewise, we also decide on the time of transfer. However, the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-31) shows that there are no guarantees as to how the children will see their inheritance (older son) or use it (younger son). The question is, have we prepared our children to handle it well?

When raised with kid gloves, children will, when they grow up, expect life to treat them the same way their parents did. But life is pretty tough! I have found that out the hard way, and I have observed the lives of many people whose parents treated them with unscriptural self-indulgence and I would say that, in varying degrees, they have all had difficult lives. To spoil your children is not kindness or love. The most unhappy and unfulfilled children are the ones with no discipline in their lives.  It was Spurgeon who wrote:

If you want to ruin your children, never let them know hardship. If you want to prevent them from ever being useful, guard them from every kind of work and do not let them struggle. Pity them when they should be punished, supply all their wishes, avert all their disappointments. Prevent all trouble, and you will surely train them to break your heart. If you put them where they must work, expose them to difficulties, purposely throw them into peril, then you will make them mature and ready for life.

We have to teach our children the values of hard work, integrity, honesty, diligence, patience, empathy, mental strength, frugality, tenacity and the importance of starting from scratch or small beginnings. We must prepare our beneficiaries to own and move estates forward because wealth is generational. I have seen through personal experience that many Asians teach children to have hands-on experience so that they can gradually leave ownership of their estates to them as they become mature.

John Chrysostom said,

If you wish to leave much wealth to your children, leave them in God’s care. Do not leave them riches, but virtue and skills. For if they have the confidence of riches, they will not mind anything besides, for they shall have the means of screening (hiding) the wickedness of their ways in their abundant riches.

Although it can’t be seen, counted, or measured, a spiritual inheritance is the most priceless gift you can pass on to your children and grandchildren. To be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and an atmosphere of prayer and reverence for the Word is to be stamped in youth with impressions that are of great value, even though sometimes the results looked for are long in appearing. A godly upbringing is a priceless heritage. 

Any financial inheritance is worthless and usually wasted quickly, if the spiritual foundation for dealing with it properly isn’t laid (Proverbs 20:21). After all, a material inheritance cannot be taken to eternity, but a spiritual inheritance helps to determine where the heir will spend eternity.

Teaching and demonstrating the biblical approach to money is a vital part of the heritage that parents should give to their children. It is even more important than material wealth itself as it may prevent the child’s destruction by money (1Timothy 6:10, 2 Timothy 3:2, Hebrews 13:5). For Christians, every inheritance remains the property of God and must therefore continue to be administered in His interest. Only the trustee has changed.

Thus, parents need to teach their children what good stewardship means, and be an example of what it means that you can’t serve God and money at the same time (Matt 6:24). Teaching God’s principles and ways, imparting spiritual truth and wisdom, is an inheritance of eternal value in itself, and must never be underrated (see Proverbs 1-7).

The most important and powerful inheritance parents can pass on to their children is to show by their own lives that God is an omnipresent reality; that He is trustworthy in every way including provision; that He is full of love, care, compassion and eagerly interested in His children’s success and fulfilment. If parents fail to do this, they rob their kids of an inheritance of everlasting value.

What about Stolen Inheritance?

Unfortunately, we live in an era of greed and materialism. I have had so many stories even through the personal experience of people who are having family discords, distress, endless wrangles and ultimately death in families because of inheritances. Robert Anderson explains a personal experience in his book Operating in the Courts of Heaven. He writes:

There was a lady very close to our family that was diagnosed with breast cancer. When this lady was 13 years old, her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she died at just 43 years of age. The disease had spread in her body just as it was now spreading in her daughter’s body. This friend of ours was 43 when she was diagnosed and also had a 13-year-old daughter. The parallels were astounding. I knew we were dealing with a generational, family curse.

When she was on her deathbed, her husband called me and asked if I would pray for her. I went to her home where there were already other people gathered at her bedside praying for her. I placed my hand on her head and as I began to pray, I felt the Father’s passion to heal this woman. It was unmistakable. I had felt this in many situations and knew it well. I prayed the best prayer I knew how to pray. I prayed with the unction and power of the Spirit of the Lord. It wasn’t a natural prayer; it was a supernatural one. Yet, twelve hours later, she died. She died at age 43, leaving behind a 13-year-old daughter – exactly as her mother had done! What a tragedy. It was only much later that I was able to explain why this had happened. At the time of my prayer, I did not know that this lady and her husband had connived to steal resources that belonged to someone else. Proverbs 26:2 says that a curse has to have a cause to alight. Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, So a curse without cause shall not alight.

Curses are pictured as sparrows and swallows flying around and looking for a place to land. They cannot land unless a legal right allows them to land. This woman had a curse in her family, that was circling her and looking for a legal opportunity to land and afflict her. She had actually confessed, professed and done everything she knew to do, to keep this away from her and her family for years. When she and her husband opened the door to this curse through their dishonour and thievery, the curse now had a legal reason to be able to land on her.

Micah 2:1-3 shows what happened in this situation.

Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So, they oppress a man and his house, A man and his inheritance. Therefore, thus says the Lord: “Behold, against this family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your necks; Nor shall you walk haughtily, for this is an evil time (Micah 2:1-3).

God says that if someone who has been granted power through trust, uses that power to steal away inheritances, a disaster can come upon them that they won’t be able to escape. This is what happened to this lady and her family. As a result of her participation in these deviant practices, the devil had a legal right to afflict her with a family curse.

The devil was legally allowed to take her life even though God’s passion was to heal her. The only way that the Lord could have healed her was if she had repented of that which she had done. Then the power of the curse would have been broken and God as Judge could have fulfilled His passion as Father, legally.

The activity of dishonour and thievery opens the door for the curse to come upon the perpetrators, especially to those in power in countries like Uganda with a corrupted land registry system, inefficient police force, corrupt lawyers, judges, political interference in land disputes, compensation etc.

However, we, disciples of the Lord Jesus, have been promised an inheritance which is imperishable beyond the reach of change and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for us (1 Peter 1:1-4).

If we seek like the people of the world, to increase our possessions, then those who are not believers may question whether we believe what we say about our inheritance and our heavenly calling. The Lord says the earth is a place where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. All that is of earth, and in any way connected with it, is subject to corruption, change and dissolution. No reality or substance exists in anything but heavenly things. Often the careful amassing of earthly possessions ends in losing them in a moment by fire, robbery, or change in the world markets.

Furthermore, in a little while, we must all leave this earth, or the Lord Jesus Christ will return. What use will earthly possessions be then?  Nothing is our own: time, property, influence, faculties, body and soul. ‘’ You are not your own (1 Corinthians 6:19). When we submit to the Lord, we surrender everything including our properties to Him to be ruled and disposed of at His pleasure. He owns it all.

Source of Image

One great writer has said that “Freedom’s deadliest enemy is irresponsibility.” Sometime back I was watching Joyce Meyer talking about the death of her younger brother on God TV as part of her message on the life of self-pity compared to a life of diligence and faith.

She said that she learned about her brother’s death after Los Angeles authorities called her in December about a week after Christmas, to inform her that they found him dead in an abandoned building in the city. He had been dead 30 days and his body was so badly decomposed that in order for the authorities to identify him, they had to have his dental records.

After a few days she received his cremated ashes and a few personal effects that included a pocket knife, empty wallet, key chain and broken watch. She imagined that he must have been filled with regret during the last days of his life for not making the right choices.

My personal effects and his are sadly different. What are your personal effects going to be when your time here is up?” she asked the congregants at the meeting. During her address, she compared her life with that of her brother’s to illustrate the point that it’s up to the person’s determination to follow God’s plan, not his circumstances, that allow him to reap God’s promises.

How one’s life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us, there is no man on earth or devil in hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

Joyce Meyer preached on the story of a man in John 5 who laid by a pool for 38 years; then  Jesus asked this man; “Would you like to get well?” The man didn’t respond with a clear yes, but with self-pity. He said “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

Joyce then related her story to her own life and that of her brother’s. For many years, Meyer had suffered from sexual abuse from her father, which led to her to become controlling, manipulative and rebellious.

She was saved at the age of 9 but didn’t live out her faith. It was later in her life that she heard the voice and calling of God to preach. Today, she is a world known preacher, selling millions of books and making a difference in other people’s lives.

Meanwhile, her brother David joined the Marine Corp and started taking prescription drugs. He married young and had a baby. He left his wife and refused to pay child support.

Meyer said she tried several times to help her brother but kept running away. During one point in his life, he received employment under Joyce Meyer and worked there for a few years until he was asked to pay $ 60,000 in unpaid child support.

He quit his job and went through a string of girlfriends and drug habits. Another time she helped him receive drug rehabilitation at the Dream Centre in Los Angeles, but after a few months into the program, he said it wasn’t for him.

Joyce Meyer said that both she and her brother came from the same bloodline, same family, in some aspects, both went through their own struggles. However, while she eventually took responsibility for her behaviour, her brother always ran away from his.

Joyce Meyer continued her message by saying that “even though the crippled man in the gospel story couldn’t move much, but during the 38 years, he could at least wiggle to the edge of the pool, whereas David just wanted to lay by the pool another year, feel sorry for himself, blame somebody and remain crippled, I got tired of laying by the pool and I decided to wiggle.”Joyce said.

Joyce said she wasn’t bringing up the story of her brother to be disrespect, but she believed he would have wanted her to speak about him to teach all of us a lesson.” She said there was a time she and her husband considered paying off his overdue child support, but she wanted her brother to show his commitment to working and not quitting the Job.

This story is similar to many stories of families around the world. We don’t want to take responsibility for our actions and worse still we blame everyone for our sins and mistakes.

The Lord God Will Restore The Years

The Lord is God is the meaning of Joel’s name. No matter what has happened in the past, the Lord is able to restore. In Joel 2: 18-27, the Lord urges the people to be glad rather than afraid. He promises Israel that if they really repent from their hearts, God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten.

This is a principle that applies today. Many of us regret the wasted years in our lives, but God says he will restore those years to us. But He will only restore the years that the locusts have eaten if there is true repentance.

The root of repentance is that we ‘change our minds’. So it is appropriate to say that if we repent, God will change His mind.

So as we look at this irresponsibility, we are seeing an escalation of breakdown in the family, communities, cities, and all the nations of the world. The whole world is reaping the consequences of an irresponsible humanity.

Almost every one of us are where we are today because that is where we have chosen, either subconsciously or consciously, to be. We are all good at blaming our mistakes on someone else since the fall of our first parents Adam and Eve.

As a man, Adam became the first spiritual leader in human history. He was given the responsibility of overseeing the garden and providing direction for his family. He was to be a steward over his resources and relationships. Unfortunately, he failed. Adam also mismanaged his God-given responsibility by remaining passive when he should have refused to eat the fruit which led to both of them sinning against God.

When God confronted him with this sin, he blamed Eve and the spirit of irresponsibility and blame entered the human race. Adam should have risked, stood up, and took responsibility by commanding the serpent to leave him and his wife alone.

When Eve picked the fruit, ate it and swallowed it, nothing immediately happened. But the Bible says she took the fruit and gave it her husband, who had received the original instructions from God, and when he ate of it, suddenly everything changed.

Death came, and the purity and holiness of our first parents was gone: “At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves” (Genesis 3: 7).

After sinning, Adam and Eve felt guilt and shame because of their nakedness. Because God planted eternity in the hearts of all men (see Ecclesiastes 3: 10), Adam and Eve also had consciences God had placed in their hearts, and this is what goes off when any one of us has done wrong.

When God came, He didn’t ask for the woman because of her sin; rather, He asked the man. It was at this time that Adam started blaming Eve and thereby forfeiting his God-given responsibility which led to a spirit of irresponsibility and blame entering the human race.

The Bible says: “The man replied, ‘It was the woman You gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it’” (Genesis 3: 12).  Not only did Adam neglect to establish and uphold God’s instructions, but he, transferred the responsibility for his fruit-eating decision to the woman, who had offered the fruit.

“God the woman You gave me… In other words, Adam was suggesting that God was responsible for the choice and decision that he made. If Eve had used other means of force to give the fruit to Adam, then the woman would have been responsible, but she didn’t force him in any way; it was Adam’s choice.

Where was Adam when the devil was tempting Eve? The Bible says he was standing right there beside her. “The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too” (Genesis 3: 6).

Men and women have the ultimate responsibility for their decisions. But since the fall, every one of us doesn’t want to take responsibility for our own choices, actions, decisions, situations, or circumstances. Instead, we find it easy to hide and blame others for our sins.

Maturity does not necessarily come with age; it comes by the acceptance of responsibility in every area of our lives.

Accepting responsibility for our failures is the substance on which success rests. No one can be responsible for success unless he is willing to accept responsibility for failure as well. This is true in business and marriage, as well in all other aspects of life.

Today is a new season of responsibility in which God is saying to each of us, whether your are poor, rich, Black White, Indian –no matter who or where you are-“Stop blaming the system, your parents your pastor, your former girlfriend or boyfriend and stop blaming your past. Get your act together, and accept responsibility.

We can’t change the past, but by God’s grace we can determine the quality of our future. We might not like the family into which were born, but we sure can by God’s grace determine the kind of home in which we rear our children.

The Garden of Eden has disappeared and, with it, the original order of creation. The Fall from innocence distorted all relationships, particularly between men and women, destroying the harmony.

Chronologically, Eve was the first to sin. That is because Satan (who is masculine) approached her first. Why did he do so? Divide to conquer; one is easier to tackle than two. The New Testament teaches us that it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and deluded and fell into transgression (2 Timothy 2:14).

Eve thought she was doing right because she was more vulnerable to being seduced in mind, whereas Adam knew he was doing wrong. So Paul’s practice of prohibiting instruction by women; however uncomfortable we may feel with his line of thought, seems to saying: Eve, as a typical woman, was liable to be misled and therefore more likely to mislead.

That Adam followed her with neither argument nor protest put him in the feminine role, which may explain why, theologically, Adam was the first to sin!

The New Testament holds Adam responsible for introducing sin and death to the human race (Romans 5:12), rather than Eve. This doesn’t mean that Adam is regarded as basically responsible for the whole situation, for her as well for himself.

He could and should have rebuked her and interceded for her. But instead Adam took a feminine role, and abdicated his position. Because of space and time we cannot debate whether God’s punishment fitted their crime.

The Fall introduced struggle into their respective spheres of activity. This word struggle became the watchword of men like Darwin, Karl Marx, Nietsche, Hitler and more recently those who advocate socialist and communist ideals.

Adam will be affected in his daily work, Eve in her family relationships. Note that the Fall did not introduce this differentiation, it merely damaged it:

And to Adam He said, because you have listened and given heed to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it, the ground is under a curse because of you; in sorrow and toil shall you eat of the fruits of it all the days of your life.

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:17-19).

Adam is addressed first, since he carries prime responsibility in the partnership. Banished from the garden to the field, he will only survive with great effort against opposing factors. The Bible doesn’t mention anything of his marital relations, nor is he told to rule his wife.

Eve is also punished, but in relation to her family. In childbearing (birth process rather than upbringing) her pain (physical rather than mental, and not menstrual) is to be increased (not introduced).  In relation to her husband her ‘desire will be to him,’ which means to control, manipulate, posses someone.

Having led her husband into sin, she must now live with a continuing urge to subordinate him to her wish and will.   His reaction will be not only to resist this takeover, but to use his greater strength to ‘rule’ her. Male domination is the inevitable result of this struggle for supremacy of wills. In Genesis 3:16 we read:

To the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your grief and your suffering in pregnancy and the pangs of childbearing; with spasms of distress you will bring forth children. Yet your desire and craving will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.

In these verses above lies the real explanation for the centuries of exploitation and suppression of women, against which feminism has been validly protesting for years to the point that feminist beliefs had led some people to seek to abolish gender distinctions. But do feminists seek power or principle?

The advent of rule to describe marriage was not the introduction of subordination but the exaggeration of it (in much the same was as pain in child-bearing increased). Responsibility for direction in the male became a reaction into domination.

The male-dominated garden is now a male-dominated jungle. Each sex sees the other as an object rather than a subject, to serve their own purposes. This situation can only be remedied by divine grace, by redemption rather than legislation or a feminist revolution.

God’s strategy is to plant on earth a community of men and women who will live as Adam and Eve did, in His creation order (except for their nudity, which will never recur, even in heaven).

The Woman was Made From Man..After Man and For Man

Woman was made from man, not dust. This might be thought to indicate the incompleteness of the man (and the reason he seeks union with a wife rather than parents in (1 Corinthians 11:24); but Paul uses this to support the headship of the man: “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man” (1 Corinthians 11:8), possibly recalling that she came from his side.

Woman was made for man; the reserve is not true (1 Corinthians 11:9). Her primary function is in relation to him; his was already established without reference to her ( (1 Corinthians 11:15).

And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it….Now the Lord God said, It is not good (sufficient, satisfactory) that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper (suitable, adapted, complementary) for him (Genesis 2: 15,18).

The word help in no way implies inferiority, since it is often used of God’s assistance. Neither does it imply identity, since God’s help is in terms of support, sympathy and strength-rather than substituting for man in his task.

The woman was made after man. His priority in time has other implications. The firstborn carries responsibility for and authority over later arrivals as Paul indicates in 1 Timothy 2:13.  “For Adam was first formed, then Eve; God names man (Genesis 5:2) and the stars. Man names the animals when God brought them to him.

He is not rebuked for taking this authority. Nor is it valid to object that woman is not a name since it is generic rather than specific. Adam called her Eve; a legacy of his action is to be found in a wife taking her husband’s surname after marriage.

God and man can relate face-to-face because they bear the same image, yet man is subordinate to God. The same dual aspect applies to men and women.

The underlying principle is that in Christ we are still male and female. We are still what God created us to be, so when we worship God we do so not as persons, but as men and women, willing to accept how God made us.

So transvestism is condemned in the Bible, for when men want to be like women and women like to be like men, there is a rebellion against how God made us. When we worship God as Creator, we come to him as his creatures, and so we need to let that difference be clearly seen.

Western culture is generally saying the exact opposite. It argues for the removal of many differences between men and women, and this belief is creeping into the Church. But men and women are different. We are complementary, of equal value and dignity and status in God’s sight, but with different roles, responsibilities and functions before God.

Controversial Teaching in Paul’s Epistles

Perhaps the most controversial teaching in Paul’s epistles concerns women. Paul apparently imposes strict limitations on the ministry of women. And that’s why Feminist theologians dislike Paul’s letters and according to David Pawson they make some of these claims:

Pseudepigraphical. Some say the letters are not by Paul but are a second-century forgery in his name. Thus they should not be part of the canon.

Rabbinical.Others argue that if these letters are from Paul, the teaching on women is a throwback to his rabbinical days before his conversion. As an old man he is returning to prejudices from his Jewish childhood.

Cultural.They argue that this teaching is purely cultural. If Jesus were alive today, he would have chosen six men and six women as apostles. The favourite phrase that sums up this position is to say that Paul was culturally conditioned. So Jesus’ choice of 12 men to be his apostles was tactful, because in his day it would have been offensive to have women apostles – an argument which fails to realize that Jesus never did anything merely because it was ‘diplomatic’! One of the compliments that the Pharisees paid him was, ‘You pay no attention to any man.’ If it had been right for him to do it, then he would have done it.

Heretical. Others claim that women were barred from teaching because women led many of the cults. The Church needed to distance itself from these practices, so it barred women from teaching. There is, however, no evidence to support this theory.

Educational.The next argument suggests that the lack of education for women in Paul’s day made it unwise for them to be in a teaching/ leadership role. But if this was true, Paul should not have let uneducated men lead the Church. In Acts, the Sanhedrin describe the 12 apostles as uneducated men, and so they were.

But when you read Paul’s letters carefully, he teaches that the gender differences between men and women still apply in the Church. We cannot deny that 1 Corinthians 14:33-38 is one of the most difficult passages to understand and 1 Timothy 1:11-15 is widely considered to be the passage most offensive to Christian women in the writings of Paul.

However, Paul’s prohibition relates to gender, not ignorance; and this is based on creation, not culture. The gift of teaching Christians requires spiritual rather than intellectual qualifications and is quite unrelated to academic ability or opportunity. We need to remember that Jewish Rabbis wouldn’t even let a woman learn at all, even though they had no Scriptural justification for doing so.

The church started from a handful of people around AD 52. Paul’s strategy for evangelizing an area was to begin his work in the Jewish synagogue in the city he was visiting. But there was no synagogue in Philippi, for there were less than the required 10 male Jews to form one, and so Paul met with a Jewish ladies’ prayer group instead.

Among the women was one who was to be instrumental in the work of the Philippian church – a businesswoman named Lydia. Originally from Asia, she sold purple cloth for a living. Acts tells us that she had slaves and a household and that the whole household was baptized.

In 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35, Paul is taking a Christian, not a Jewish, position, in teaching both sexes as Jesus did before him.  Women were not allowed to teach at all in the mixed congregation but in his letter to Titus, he encouraged them to do this on other occasions when men were not present.

Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service, not slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to give good counsel and be teachers of what is right and noble (Titus 2:3).

We also need to understand that preaching in those days was primarily announcing the gospel to unbelievers whereas teaching was addressed to believers something we call preaching in New Testament terms.

The general prohibition in 1 Timothy 1:12 to allow no woman to teach or to have authority over men is translated as to usurp authority. For a woman to direct a man was seen as an act of violence, because it violated the order of creation.  For that is the background on which Paul bases his prohibitions. They express quite literally the order in which Adam and Eve were created:

For Adam was first formed, then Eve; and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman who was deceived and deluded and fell into transgression (1 Timothy 1:13-14).

Eve was deceived and became a transgressor. Her assuming role of leadership had disastrous consequences and must not be followed by other women.

Though he excludes women from any activity involving leadership of men, he encourages women in many forms of ministry. Though his qualifications for eldership are male:

• Husband of one wife…
• Able to manage his own household…
• Temperate and self-controlled….
• Not given to wine…
• And not a lover of money insatiable for wealth and ready to obtain it by questionable means…..

Yet the ministry of deacons is open to all.  This is mentioned in the very next chapter 1 Timothy 3:11 and is confirmed by Deaconess Phoebe, Romans 16:1.

As a matter of fact, the whole chapter in Romans 16, he commends mostly women who have acquitted themselves in the work of the Lord. They bear the title ‘fellow’ worker colleagues of Paul (as were Euodia and Syntyche in Philippians 4:2; which means they shared in his mission of evangelism and church planting.

Conclusion

Woman is made from man. She therefore derives her being from him. Indeed, as the Bible indicates, woman is named by man just as he named the animals. Woman is made after man. He therefore carries the responsibility of the first-born. The significance of that will become clear in Genesis 3, where Adam is blamed for the sin not Eve, since he was responsible for her.

Woman is made for man. Adam had a job before he had a wife and man is made primarily for his work, while woman is made primarily for relationships.

This does not mean that a man must not have relationships or that a woman must not go out to work, but rather that this is the primary purpose for which God made male and female.

The fact that man named woman also shows how the partnership is to work: not as a democracy, but with the responsibility of leadership falling to the male. The emphasis is upon cooperation, not competition.

God made us men and women, and we need each other. He made us for different roles and responsibilities. In Genesis 2 we learn that the functions of men and women are different.

The Bible talks of the responsibilities of the man to provide and protect, and of the woman to uphold, encourage, assist and accept.

When men behave like women and women behave like men, we are distorting God’s creative beauty. So men are given the responsibility of leading. Although this is not popular teaching today, it’s there in Scripture. We can’t get round it.

Recommended Reading:

J. David Pawson, Leadership is Male

Derek Prince, Husbands and Fathers, The Marriage Covenant

Three Prayers for Prodigal Children

I once was that prodigal child — lost, angry, and struggling to find my identity. Hardened on the outside, but deeply hurting within. The pain of my choices was not only destroying me, but creating heartache within our family and severing my relationships with the people who loved me most.

By God’s grace, my parents did not give up on me — despite how tempting it must have been at times. Instead, they entrusted my life to God, prayed for my brokenness, and fought for me in prayers that God eventually answered.

Parents, if you are raising a seemingly hard-hearted, rebellious son or daughter (whether outwardly or inwardly), I challenge you to take up your arms, fight the spiritual battle that rages over them with all of your God-given strength, and refuse to give up on their life.

I encourage you to pray these three prayers over lost children.

1. Pray for a heart of brokenness, no matter the earthly cost.

It’s incredibly hard to pray for anything but a comfortable, successful, and pain-free life for our children. But as Christian parents, the greatest eternal good that we can pray for them is their salvation over their earthly happiness or comfort. We have to fight for them in this world filled with temporary pleasures, self-gratification, and blurry lines — entrusting their lives to our Lord — even if the path of salvation comes through pain.

I am eternally grateful that my parents loved me enough to pray for my brokenness, a brokenness that would lead to healing.

And my path of brokenness nearly killed me.

After a devastating loss of my identity as an athlete and hidden abuse from peers, my life spiraled out of control. I searched for identity and purpose in anything but Jesus. As self-destructive patterns drove me deeper into despair, I longed for an escape from this world, ultimately landing me in the protection of a hospital.

In that stark white hospital room, the choice before me was clear: be crushed by the weight of my sin or lay the broken pieces of my life at his feet. By his grace, he led me to my knees and has been redeeming those broken pieces ever since.

We will only be bold enough to pray a prayer of brokenness over our children when we ourselves have been broken before God and trust his love for our children and us. It’s only when we have completely surrendered our children to him that we can pray, “Father, use what you must to save my child from an eternity apart from you, no matter the cost.”

2. Pray against the enemy’s desire to have them.

A battle is being waged over our children’s lives. We have to fight for them, especially when blindness keeps them from fighting the battle themselves.

I remember my mom telling me the story of a time when I was standing in the kitchen with her, angry at the world, and taking it out on her. She looked at me and said boldly, “I am fighting for you, and I won’t let Satan have victory over your life!” After she spoke those words, I fell into a heap on the floor and burst into tears.

Although we don’t have a guarantee of our children’s salvation or the outcome we may desire, we can be confident that God is faithful to his promises and hears our prayers. One of the great weapons God has given parents to fight against the world’s pull and the enemy’s schemes over their children is to pray the way Christ did for Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31–32).

Although Peter was a believer and the children we are praying for may not be, we can still pray to God that he would rescue our children from the power of Satan, give them faith in Christ, and use their lives to advance the gospel and strengthen other believers.

3. Pray specific Scripture over their life.

Even if your child wants nothing to do with the truth and hates to hear the word of God, they can do nothing to stop you from praying Scripture for them. This is another mighty weapon God has given to parents.

My parents prayed Psalm 18:16–19 over my life and prayed it often:

He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters.
He rescued me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a broad place;
he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

It truly amazes me to look back and see how faithful God was to answer this prayer. I was drowning in self-destruction, abuse from others, rebelliousness, and sorrows too deep to understand at the time. God, in his mercy, drew me out of many deep waters, and rescued me from my own flesh and Satan’s desire for me.

As I sat in a hospital room, no longer wanting to live, God rescued me, brought me out into a broad place, and showed me that he delighted in me (despite my unworthiness). He has continued to be faithful to this prayer, upholding me through many deep waters and carrying me through many dark days.

Parents, no matter how far your child seems to be from Jesus or what path they are on, you can fight for their life with the powerful weapon of God’s word.

The Power of a Praying Parent

The truth is, while we must teach and train our children, and put boundaries in place, we have no control over their hearts. Ultimately, God alone can fill their hearts with a love for Christ and open their eyes to see the beauty and glory of who he is.

I am learning this on a new level and from a different perspective as I now face struggles with my own children that often tempt me to despair. But we are not helpless, and we are never hopeless. Whether our children are young or old, have soft hearts or hearts of stone, we have the power of prayer, God’s living word, and a sovereign God we can trust.

Our Father in heaven loves to take seemingly hopeless lives, like my own once was, and show himself merciful and mighty. Give your child the gift of prayer, and trust that God will use his or her life for his good purposes — growing and transforming your own life in the process.

Copyright © 2018 Sarah Walton–All rights reserved.

Cleansing Bloodlines in The Courts of Heaven

One of the things the devil uses against us the most is the iniquity in our bloodline. Most of us are aware of our own sins and transgressions. We know our own stuff. We recognize where we have fallen short.

However, things buried in our bloodlines can be a little more difficult to deal with. Remember that when Daniel and others were seeking to get Israel out of captivity and back to their inheritance, they repented for their personal sins and the iniquity of their fathers. Daniel 9:16–17 shows some of this repentance.

O Lord, according to all Your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us. Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of Your servant, and his supplications, and for the Lord’s sake cause Your face to shine on Your sanctuary, which is desolate.

Notice that Daniel made his supplication and intercession concerning their sins and iniquities for the Lord’s sake. In other words, he was pointing out to God His interest in this matter. God, as a covenant-keeping God, would want to see His people restored to their land and inheritance. He would desire His purposes in them fulfilled but also His reputation in them maintained.

When Daniel repented for the iniquities of the fathers, he was not seeking to change their eternal destiny. The Bible says it is appointed to man once to die and then to face the judgment. We find this in Hebrews 9:27.

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.

Every man will be recompensed for the life he has lived. Nothing can change this. However, repenting for the iniquity of the fathers removes satan’s legal right to use it against us. We are not seeking to change eternal destinies.

When we take responsibility for our own sins and the sins of our bloodline, we are dealing with the legal issues satan would use to build a case against us. We see this in the life of Israel as a nation. In Second Samuel 21:1, we see David discerning why there was a drought and famine in Israel for three years.

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, “It is because of Saul and his bloodthirsty house, because he killed the Gibeonites.

Saul had killed the Gibeonites with whom Joshua had made a covenant. You’ll remember that Joshua had not inquired of the Lord what to do about the Gibeonites when he encountered them. They made up a story that they were from a far-off land and had come to worship the God of Joshua and the Israelites.

In reality, they were a people living in the Promised Land who Joshua was supposed to destroy. They deceived Joshua, and Joshua entered into a covenant with them. Even though the covenant was made in deception, it still stood before heaven. Joshua and the leaders gave their word. You can find this story in Joshua 9:1–15.

Now, Saul has broken the covenant with the Gibeonites. This broken covenant had granted the devil the legal right to shut up the heavens and stop the rain. Saul had done this 70 years before the famine occurred.

Now, all these years later, there’s a famine because of a broken covenant from 70 years prior. David and all the people had been praying for three years for rain, yet none had come. When David understands why the famine has happened, he sets the covenant with the Gibeonites back in place. The Bible then makes an astounding statement in Second Samuel 21:14.

God heeded the prayer for the land. The same prayer that had been prayed for three years was suddenly answered. The difference was the legal right in the history of Israel to resist rain was revoked through broken covenants!

God could now answer the prayer of His people because the legal right in the spirit realm granting the devil power through a broken and dishonored covenant was now removed. If we are to see breakthrough, many times we must deal with the history of sin or iniquity in our bloodlines. The devil uses them as a legal right to reduce us to less than what God desires.

To discern iniquity in the bloodline, we should understand the nature of iniquity. The word “iniquity” in the Hebrew is the word “avon,” and it means something perverted. It means to be twisted. So iniquity in the bloodline twists the desires and purposes of God. It twists the moral compass of a person’s life. It twists desires from that which is good to that which is evil. Iniquity isn’t just about a single sin. Iniquity is about the twisting of nature. This is why when we are born again, we receive a new nature. Second Peter 1:4 tells us we have received the divine nature, or the nature of God Himself. It is God’s excellence and glory, 

By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Through the divine nature, we escape the corruption that is in the world. Yet that which we receive at salvation has to dominate and empower us. Even though we have the nature of God in us, the issues in our bloodline will try to work against us. Notice that the Apostle Paul in speaking to Titus gave him instructions about ministering in the Cretan culture. Titus 1:10–13 shows us a perversion in a bloodline that has affected a culture.

For there are many insubordinate, both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of dishonest gain. One of them, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.

Paul realized that even though these people were saved and born again, issues in their bloodline were still affecting them. Their culture had been twisted to be liars, evil beasts, and gluttons. Paul’s commandment to Titus was to rebuke them and challenge them to let the new nature in them arise. They could not conform to that which had fashioned their culture for generations. They had to deal with their bloodline issues so it didn’t continue to twist them and pervert who they were meant to be.

In dealing with bloodline issues, we should be aware of anything that twists the real intent of God for our family. For instance, the Cretans were not meant to be liars, evil beasts, and gluttons.

Generations of iniquity had fashioned them into this. Perhaps there are addiction issues in your bloodline. Maybe there are sexual issues there. Perhaps anger issues are present. Maybe there is violence. It could be anything.

I challenge people to look at themselves and their siblings, their parents, and their own children. Within these three generations, you will see bloodline issues. Begin to repent of these things.

As you exhaust these, then ask the Lord for any further revelation you might need. If there are no more realizations, then be at peace. You can only deal with the knowledge you have. I tell folks that when you have dealt with everything you know, then use Colossians 2:14. It says that God made us alive with Jesus:

Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

The “handwriting of ordinance” refers to that which the devil is using to build a case against us. After I have prayed over everything I know and discern, I ask that Colossians 2:14 be applied to my life.

I ask that every case against me, known or unknown, be dismissed, based on what Jesus did for me on the cross. I have seen great results simply taking this by faith and executing it.

Here is a prayer that can be prayed to come before the Courts of Heaven and cleanse our bloodlines.

Lord, as I come into Your Courts, I stand before You. Lord, I thank You that what Jesus did for me on the cross now speaks on my behalf before Your Courts. I repent for my own personal sins and transgressions, but I also bring the iniquity of my bloodline to You. I ask that anything the devil would legally accuse me of would now be revealed.

I bring my bloodline to You through my father (name your father) and through my mother (name your mother) all the way back to Adam and Eve. I ask that anything that the devil would legally be bringing against me would be known.

I repent of all iniquities I have discerned naturally. (Deal with each issue separately. Go through them one by one, repenting of that which has twisted the bloodline and generations.) I now ask for the blood of Jesus to speak for me and my bloodline. I ask that any and every legal right of the devil to use these things would now be revoked. Thank You, Lord Jesus, so much for Your blood that speaks for me.

I repent for any and all iniquities I discern in my bloodline through my father and my mother prophetically. I ask that anything that needs to be exposed in my bloodline would now be seen.

Anything the devil, as my legal opponent, would bring against me, I ask that he be made to show it. [Be sensitive at this stage to anything you see, hear, or feel. Anything that is discerned, whether you know about it naturally or not, repent of it.]

I also, Lord, thank You for Colossians 2:14 that declares You took away every case against me on the cross. I ask, Lord, that anything known or unknown would be removed. I ask that the right of the devil to legally use this against me is now revoked. Thank you so much for nailing all these things against me to Your cross. I receive it and accept it in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Copyright © 2019 Robert Henderson Destiny Image–All rights reserved

President Trump says he is pro-life but believes in abortion for babies conceived in rape and incest. Trump tweeted:

As most people know, and for those who would like to know, I am strongly Pro-Life, with the three exceptions — Rape, Incest and protecting the Life of the mother — the same position taken by Ronald Reagan.

Pro-life leader Rebecca Kiessling, who was conceived in rape, responded on her Facebook,

I did not deserve the death penalty for the crime of my biological father. Ask Rick Perry about his conversation with me and how my story pierced his heart he said and that he could not look me in the eyes and justify the rape exception any longer. I’m sure if you met any one of the 800 of us from Save The 1, you would also have a hard time looking us in the eyes and then telling us that we did not deserve equal protection.Strongly pro-life? Mr. President, if you can kill an innocent baby who has no guilt for being conceived in rape and incest, why not kill all the others for other stupid reasons? God calls you to save victims of oppression, and such babies are such victims! Do you want someone killed? Target RAPISTS, not innocent babies!”

Trump is not alone in saying the Alabama law on abortion went too far. CBN and 700 Club Founder Pat Robertson, a staunch abortion opponent, called the Alabama law “extreme,” and should be “legal in case of rape and incest” in spite of the fact his show interviewed Rebecca Kiessling two times to tell her testimony of how she was conceived in rape.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNpRlczGHOw]

In response, to Pat Robertson’s comments, Rebecca Kiessling,  said,

Pat Robertson @700club, I deserved equal protection. Child sacrifice is an abomination. The child shall not be punished for the sins of the father! You’re wrong to say Alabama’s abortion ban was too extreme for not having a rape exception. You had me on The 700 Club twice, including airing my story. So you values my faith testimony, just not my life?!”

Lila Rose, who runs the pro-life advocacy organization Live Action, responded to Trump’s tweet by thanking him for the pro-life advancements his administration has made. But she argued that in order to be pro-life, “we must be 100% pro-life.”

A child of rape or incest is not a 2nd-class citizen,” she wrote in the tweet. “No woman or girl is served by abortion or immune to its trauma, including survivors of rape and incest.”

Live Action’s Twitter account responded to Trump’s tweet by posting a video of a testimony provided by Jennifer Christie, who was raped on a business trip and impregnated.

Rape or incest are horrible situations, and abusers need to be held fully to the law — but abortion is not the path to healing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VU6FfaO6AA]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k2_UQP1V4Q]

In another tweet, Live Action also reminded followers that Valerie Gatto, former Miss Pennsylvania, was conceived in rape.

Her mother was brutally attacked at knifepoint when she was 19 — but rejected abortion.

Ryan Bomberger, a pro-life activist who himself was conceived in rape and adopted by a loving family wrote an article responding to criticisms of the Alabama law titled “I am the 1 percent used to justify 100 percent of abortions.”

My biological mother was raped, yet she rejected the violence of abortion. I was adopted and loved instead. I’m not the “residue of the rapist”, as Senator Vivian Davis Figures described those like me who were conceived in rape. I couldn’t control the circumstances of my conception. Could you, Senator? 

When it comes to rape and abortion, how do you heal violence with more violence? Let’s be real here. Even if Alabama’s Human Life Protection Act had a rape and incest exception, the confused Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers would still be out in full force. Fake feminists need to exploit tragedy to promote their false equality. And they never seem to find space in their screeds to talk about punishing the actual criminal — the rapist.

As an adoptee who grew up wanted and loved in a multiracial family of fifteen and as a happily married adoptive father with four children, I’m here to say there’s another side of this painful issue.

There are others like me who were conceived in the violence of rape, like my friend Rebecca Kiessling, an attorney and passionate defender of life. There’s the former Miss Pennsylvania, Valerie Gatto, Trayvon Clifton, Monica Kelsey, Jim Sable, Pam Stenzel, and many more whose stories offer a different perspective than mainstream media’s myopic pro-abortion view. There are women who became mothers from rape who courageously chose life, like Jennifer Christie, Liz Carl, and Rebekah Berg.

I mean, who really are the extremists here? Those who think that every human being has the right to life? Or people who celebrate the needless slaughter of one million innocent humans each year in America?

Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who founded the ex-abortion worker ministry Then There Were None, responded to Trump’s tweet with a photo of her adopted son.

My son was conceived in rape. I would love for you to meet him, @realDonaldTrump, and tell me how his life isn’t as valuable as my children conceived in love,” Johnson tweeted.  He deserved to live and I’m so thankful that he does. If we allow some children to die because of certain circumstances, then we become eugenicists,” she wrote. “No better than Hitler.”

Here I might add James Robinson, the famed TV Evangelist, James was the result of a forcible rape of his mother…. But he and his wife have dedicated their lives to serve humanity by feeding millions living in Africa.

We can’t choose the family we were born into, but we can choose Who we belong to. Despite the means by which all of us came into this world, it is clear that we all have value and worth in God’s eyes and we all contribute significantly to society and glorify Christ with our gifts and talents.

It’s one of the most common claims used to defend abortion. But what about the bodily rights of the preborn baby?

Benjamin Watson is a highly respected veteran tight end in the NFL. He retired for a few months then recently came back to the game, signing with the New England Patriots, the team that drafted him in the first round back in 2004. Ben and his wife Kirsten are committed followers of Jesus.

In this video, Kirsten Watson explains how to respond to “My Body, My Choice” and reinforce the pro-life argument for the most vulnerable members of society.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcZ6IOjNbi0]

As Kirsten says, someone’s helplessness or dependency should motivate us to protect her, not to destroy her. Some years ago the attention of our entire nation turned to Baby Jessica, the little girl trapped at the bottom of a deep well. The amount of human resources poured into saving her was vast, but no one doubted whether she was worth it. What touched our hearts more than anything was her helplessness and vulnerability.

When we are thinking accurately, we realize that a helpless person deserves help precisely because she is helpless. It is a sad commentary on society when a child’s helplessness and dependence on another is used as an argument against her right to live.

Copyright © 2019 Randy Alcorn–All rights reserved

She’s 24, with an infant daughter who is the product of rape. And she’s made a video for a pro-life campaign called Choice 42.  Choice 42 explains it is a grassroots organization of the Durham outreach, founded by Laura Klassen. According to the website:

CHOICE42 is pro-woman, pro-baby, and pro-life. Our main objectives are to create awareness about the humanity of pre-born children, and to provide support to women who are facing unplanned pregnancy or dealing with post-abortion trauma.

Our website is supportive, information based, and includes Canada’s largest nation-wide database of pregnancy help resources. CHOICE42 encourages women to be fully educated about their options and to realize that though it is their choice, they are making a choice for two.

It further explains:

Babies in the womb are human beings from the moment of conception. Though modern science proves this, many Canadians still buy into the lie that a baby in the womb is a ‘blob’ or ‘clump of tissue.’ We show the public what pre-born babies look like and what they are doing in the womb.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv_lZww8CG8]

I am a mother to an angel and my angel was born out of rape. I decided I wasn’t going to let an innocent life pay for one man’s attempt to hurt me. She hasn’t hurt me. Her intent is just to enjoy her life.

Louise says she has an issue with people who believe abortion is justified in the case of rape.A life, she explained, already has begun.

Undoing the process seems very detrimental to me. … For me to go and intentionally take away someone’s chance at life wouldn’t sit very well.

She explains her daughter has “brought me so much joy.”

Every day I wake up to a beautiful smile. I feel like the most optimal version of myself. It’s just given me super strength. I’m very happy and I love being a mother.

What about those facing a similar trauma?

There is hope beyond just healing….Don’t give up, because if you survived such a traumatic experience and you were gifted with a miracle, then clearly you have more potential than you would ever know.

The same guidelines apply when it’s not rape, too, as Megan explained.

She’s 22  and had already booked her appointment for abortion after she discovered her pregnancy.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5sk2Ra8kic]

“I have never been so scared in my entire life,” she said, fearing her dreams and ambitions were gone. But she was told her child “has a purpose and a meaning. This baby has a life.”

And those words stuck with her.

So I decided to choose life,” she said. “She’s worth it. My baby is worth it.” She continued: We’re going to make it. I’m going to make it.”

And her daughter, Serenity Grace, is “the definition of her name. “When I hold her and look at her, and I think about what could have been and that I almost made the choice of not keeping her, I just, I can’t, I’m so thankful that she’s here today.”

To others, Megan said: “Your life is not over. The dreams you had … you can still have and do.”

Trapped: Here is another short film on Teen Pregnancy

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA2JYVxF48Q]

Those words were Ernest Hemingway’s response to a question of what the most compelling story he could write in six words would be. Yes, many thoughts can be brought to my mind at those six words, but I think I am archaic and old-fashioned, living longer than I would like, in a world I hardly recognize – and I am only 60.

I am sickened by the daily parade of wickedness that has taken over the hearts and spirits of much of this country, if not the world. I am ashamed to be governed by representatives, such as Gov. (Dr.) Ralph Northam, D-Va., and those like him who can tolerate the infanticide.

States that already have liberal exceptions for the murder of the unborn, and even newborn infants, and others considering the same “rights” stand and cheer for death. It’s surreal. Now the United States Senate has defeated a bill protecting live-born aborted babies.

It seems such a short time ago. 1973. I was a freshman in an all-girls Catholic high school in Maryland. Those were the ’70s, free love, rock ‘n’ roll. We were no strangers to Planned Parenthood.

They did provide us with birth control pills without the knowledge of our parents. Interestingly, the clinic was in a poor area downtown, making it a bit more difficult for the girls in my sphere to access. (We know now that Margaret Sanger, the mother of Planned Parenthood, had intended abortions to be easily accessible primarily to blacks to limit the births of black children.)

I had friends who had abortions during those years. One girl had several. I heard that after she married she was never able to get pregnant, and I often wonder if she thought of those babies she might have held.

These were never planned pregnancies. Frightened girls were assured it was a simple procedure. Just a few hours. You go on with your life. The story back then was the cells could not feel pain; it was just tissue, like a cyst.

Then, in 1984, the movie “The Silent Scream” came out and was shoved out of the public view as fast as it possibly could be. No internet then. Those who saw it, never forgot. You watched the ultrasound as the fetus backed away from the suction tube, tried to hide, tried to scream. Horrifying.

No one ever wanted to see the pictures of aborted infants. The media would not show them. There’s a reason for that. It is sickening to see tiny, bloody arms and legs, torso, head. Then of course there’s a reason for the uproar against ultrasounds prior to abortion – again, it is hard to deny your own eyes and ears. Hear the heart beating, see a tiny baby, very much alive. A tiny person in every sense of the word.

Choosing to abort after viewing an ultrasound is every bit premeditated murder. There is the saying “Every abortion stops a beating heart.” So we can understand why the proponents of abortion want women to remain ignorant. There is money to be made. So even with the knowledge that the unborn can feel pain, and their organs can be harvested for financial gain, our wicked representatives declare it is a “woman’s right”! What about the female infant? What of her rights?

We are speeding down the slippery slope. Now we are at the point where a (pediatrician) politician (Dr. Northam) has no problem with abortion at any month, and is actually recorded in a radio interview declaring he is OK with killing a newborn, likely squirming, crying, cold and shocked by the strange bright new world it has just entered from the warmth and darkness of his mother’s womb.

A full-term birth, something Dr. Northam had undoubtedly witnessed many times, makes it all the worse. And now, those with voices, such as his, decide whether the child lives or dies. What if the newborn could speak, rather than cry? What if the infant could say, “Let me live!”

What then would these masters of the universe (the girl/woman and the doctor) decide? What is the verdict? Life or death? At this point, I am sure New York is considering the release of Kermit Gosnell, abortionist, convicted of murdering aborted live infants. Acquit him? Give him a license and let him get back to work?

I cannot keep quiet. How can this be? What person in his or her right mind cannot be tortured by the very thought of such an act? Have we grown so cold and callous that this is meaningless? If that be true, all life is meaningless, worthless for many.

We are like the beasts, perishing. And for the most part, that seems to be what we are witnessing in the world today. Yet, let’s not forget the pleas for the beasts! Even dogs and cats are given more consideration, as we are bombarded with constant reminders and request for donations to help the plight of animals at the hands of cruel, heartless humans.

There are those who would fight to keep a cat alive and yet encourage the abortion of a human infant. Supposedly, that which separates mankind from animals is the conscience and sense of morality. Very few animals kill their own young. Think about that.

There was a movie in 1973, “Soylent Green,” which portrayed a future wherein those over a certain age were mandated by the authorities to check in at a planned death clinic to be euthanized. There were very few jobs, and the people were dependent on food doled out by the authorities called “soylent green.” It’s campy, but worth a watch, starring Charlton Heston with Edward G. Robinson (in his last role).

But looking at society today, what happens, what is the consequence, when an entire generation of people, a taxpaying workforce, is missing from a nation? For 60,000,000-plus babies have been killed by abortion since 1973.

It makes it easier to see what’s coming: the fully accepted legal practice of (assisted) suicide and eventually, forced euthanasia of those deemed elderly and/or disabled by the ruling class.

Things are going to get much worse. I don’t see this ship turning around. If you agree, now would be the perfect time to seek the LORD.

For whoever finds me, finds life,
And obtains favor from the LORD;
But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul;
All those who hate me love death. (Psalm 8:35-36)

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” (Psalm 53:1)

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

Karyn Rochford lives in southern Virginia and has had numerous editorials and opinion articles published by local newspapers and internet news outlets. She self-published “Lessons In The Garden” in 2014.

Copyright © 2019, WND-All rights reserved

Scripture tells us, “… if a man is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, watching yourselves, lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1).

Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, recently celebrated and signed into law the radical “Reproductive Health Act” he promoted with Hillary Clinton. This allows full-term, unborn babies to be aborted by even non-doctors for any reason up until the moment of birth. Totally viable, developed children in the birth canal face the death penalty, although New York prohibits it for criminals, while doctors and nurses who refuse to do abortions now find their jobs in jeopardy.

Mr. Cuomo, a “Catholic,” lives with a woman outside of marriage and is endorsing sinful, barbaric behavior contrary to biblical teaching and upheld by authentic Christians and people of other religions worldwide, in addition to being expressly prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church.

Regardless of motivation or manipulation, he’s involved in grievous transgression, needs prayer and someone to restore him to moral sanity. To think that baby boys and girls 7, 8 and 9 pounds delivered early, cooing and crying can be exterminated or simply abandoned on a table to die is an incomprehensible injustice.

My Manipulated Friend

My wife and I have had a very dear friend of decades who was manipulated and caught in this same area of serious deception. Because the time of passive Christianity – when pastors and people aren’t “salt and light” as Jesus directed but instead sit on the sidelines, silent on moral issues – must end, I asked Corrine if we could share her story to help educate and awaken multitudes. What follows is her experience in her own words.

I was raised in a large, church-attending family, but at an early age I began resisting parental and church guidance. Being raped at age 12 preceded three years of teenage rape by my employer. These sad events coupled with my promiscuous lifestyle resulted in my having five abortions, three performed illegally at what I was told were women’s “health care clinics.”

I was taught that abortion was wrong, but I rationalized that “If abortion is legal, then it must be OK.” The abortions resulted in depression and a feeble suicide attempt as my conscience bothered me, but not enough to avoid the widely available procedure. Many girls I knew or met in the clinics, like me, were using abortion as a form of birth control.

The counseling and procedures were the same in each abortion clinic where girls who had prior abortions talked about them as insignificant. We were given birth control pills after the procedure, which promoted more promiscuity. While demonstrating the procedure on a plastic model of an empty uterus, the preborn baby was described as “tissue” or like a “blood clot being removed.” “It’s like having a wart removed! Here today, gone tomorrow.

I hemorrhaged after one abortion and, if I had gone home, I would have died. Before the fifth abortion at 11-weeks, in an attempt to quell my nagging conscience, I asked if I could see the “tissue” when finished. The personnel looked at each other quizzically, then complied with my request.

After the abortion, the nurse approached me with gauze in her hand. “See, it’s only tissue!” Lifting my head, I peered into her palm and underneath the small blood clots I noticed what looked like tiny fish bones. Pointing to them I asked her what they were, and she quickly folded the gauze, saying abruptly, “Oh, probably just an early formation of a rib cage” before pitching the blood-spattered gauze into the trashcan.

My soon-to-be husband Rick and I met each other in the waiting room where I tearfully lamented, “I saw ribs! I saw our baby’s ribs!” I withdrew emotionally for hours that turned into days. The image of our child’s tiny rib cage confronted me with the truth about what we had done, and it haunted me perpetually.

Thank God for people who faithfully share the Gospel! A few months later, Rick and I responded to the Good News, repented of our sins and accepted God’s merciful gift of forgiveness to start a new life in Christ. There still were residual effects of what I had done, and when people mentioned abortion, the pain resurfaced.

Rick and I were married in a Christian church. Pregnancy eluded us, which was a painful reality. My doctor expressed serious doubt that I could conceive and stated that if I did, I would most likely miscarry due to the scar tissue and other related issues.

Then one day while reading my Bible I came upon the story of Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who at age 90 miraculously conceived Isaac! After a church service I asked my pastor to pray that I would be healed of infertility from the abortions. He compassionately inquired of how many abortions, and I painfully admitted “Five.”

This pastor counseled me regarding God’s mercy, and we prayed together that God would heal me and free me from ongoing guilt and pain. Thanks be to God because that same evening, Rick and I conceived our first son!

Still struggling with remorse at times, I wondered what my aborted children would’ve looked like and what they could’ve become. Guarding my thoughts, meditating on Scriptures and studying factual pro-life literature provided to me, God guided me in the healing process.

The truth would come out about the clinics that lied to me and to scores of naïve and desperate girls and women. The deception, prior to seeing these truths, preceded a second time of my near death, if it had it not been for God’s miraculous intervention.

Once while driving, blinded by tears and a cloudy mind, thoughts of despair and hopelessness brought me to a point of considering plowing into a large trash dumpster on the road. Just before it happened, I sensed a still small voice say to me, “Are you going to kill another one?” I knew this was the Lord’s voice reminding me that I was pregnant with my third child!

On our journey, Rick and I have experienced ongoing revelation of God’s love, mercy and grace. We’ve also been blessed beyond measure with not just one … two … three … four … five … six … but seven children as gifts from God after experiencing the loss of our little ones prior to our growing family!

As our longtime friend and pastoral guide Larry Tomczak says, “Here’s the deal”: The most repeated verse in all the Bible, stated 26 times in Psalm 136 alone, “His mercy endures forever.”

We’ve experienced His grace in a phenomenal way and encourage everyone to believe it and join with millions awakening to the abomination of abortion-on-demand that must once and for all be stopped in our generation.

Abortion is a money-making enterprise for Planned Parenthood and those involved. The tragic reality that our taxpayer money is channeled to them in subterfuge is a national disgrace and abomination before God.

We should all be grateful to God and support with our prayers and finances crisis pregnancy centers, adoption and those raising money to adopt; along with voting only for politicians who uphold the sanctity of human life. No matter how clever abortion marketing and deceptive terminology, the abortion industry continues to foster the genocide of generations.

May we be intentional in looking for and steering those pondering abortion to crisis pregnancy centers with compassionate servants spreading Christ’s message and Corrine’s to rescue multitudes.

Copyright © 2018 Larry Tomczak WND-All rights reserved.