Last updated on 1/1/99

Viewpoint Brief Bible Study #90
		JESUS calls US to be members of His church
The Christian religion is the worship and service of Jesus Christ. It’s not Mary we worship, but her Son. We worship neither saints, angels, a law code, nor even God’s Spirit. It’s JESUS who is to be honored. The Bible is our guide.

SOME MEN Try to be Like God!
MARVIN OLASKY is editor of WORLD Magazine, a weekly newsmagazine every Christian should be reading (See their web site at www.worldmag.com, which includes info on how you can subscribe). In the issue dated 1/10/98, he writes about The abortion society -- How Johnson and Blackmun tried to be like God --  He says,

John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and the drug-praising novelist Aldous Huxley all died on the same day, November 22, 1963. That nonharmonic convergence has led to some fanciful yarn-spinning by popular philosopher Peter Kreeft concerning after-death discussions among the three.

Ten years later, another sad day for America brought another curious combination. Lyndon Johnson died on the same day -- January 22, 1973 -- that the Supreme Court decided that throughout the U.S. unborn children could be legally killed on the mother's command. The ex-president's death, in fact, received greater play in many newspapers than the news of green lights for the grim reapers of the womb.

It is curiously appropriate that obituary notices concerning one immediate death and millions to come should appear on the same day -- for the same mentality concerning the Constitution (of the U.S.) underlay both the errors of the Johnson administrations and the tragedy of the Supreme Court's abortion decision.

Here is what LBJ (Lincoln Baines Johnson) once said about an experience he had while a college student in San Marcos, Texas: "I was given a test by this history professor or political science professor, I forget which. The question he put on the blackboard was this: 'Discuss fully what the federal Constitution has to say about education.' So I did, and I must have gone on for 10 pages or so. Well, I got that paper back with a big red 'F' across it. And the professor wrote on the paper, 'The constitution doesn't mention education.' Well, I decided right then and there that if there wasn't anything in the Constitution on the subject of education, there ought to have been. And I decided I was going to do something about it. If you look back on the bills that were passed during my administration, I think you might say that I have."

That's exactly what the Supreme Court did with abortion. It preposterously pretended to find a constitutional right to kill children. But everyone knew that Justice Harry Blackmun and company were merely enshrining their unbiblical preferences. Mr. Blackmun's decision ostensibly refused to declare when human life began, but in practice it did exactly that, because hunters do not deliberately shoot at an object in the forest if it might be a human being. (If the object living within the womb of a mother-to-be is a human being, sensible men surely won't deliberately kill it. So the "justices" were declaring fetuses as being non-human, and unworthy of protections afforded to human life.)

Lyndon Johnson liked to tell a story about a minister who lost his sermon notes. The preacher told his congregation, "I'm very sorry that today I have no sermon prepared. I'll just have to speak as the Lord directs. But I'll try to do better next Sunday." President Johnson occasionally promised to do better than God (particularly when it came to warring on poverty), but the Supreme Court regularly went to arrogant extremes.

Lyndon Johnson predicted that acceptance of his programs would lead to an end to the divisions of rich and poor within the U.S. Harry Blackmun believed he was settling an issue that threatened to divide the U.S. Both, instead of speaking as the Lord directed, spoke as leading social scientists and cultural priests of the period desired. But their declarations of "peace, peace" could not create peace where there was no peace.

Why should anyone be surprised at this? In 1822, Thomas Jefferson predicted in one letter, "I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the U.S." He so strongly expected the demise of Christianity that he wrote in another letter later that year, "I trust that there is not a young man now living the U.S. who will not die a Unitarian."

Mr. Jefferson was wrong, as was journalist H. L. Mencken in 1925 when he predicted, following the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee, that fundamentalist churches would soon be extinct.

Twenty-five years ago, liberal journalists predicted that abortion peace was at hand. The Des Moines Register on January 23, 1973, said goodbye to "emotion-charged hearings" on abortion, and the Milwaukee Journal declared that "politicians and policemen and judges" would no longer have to be concerned with the "distractive issue." In the years since then, whenever it had setbacks, liberal journalists have written obituaries for the pro-life movement.

Why should anyone be surprised that despite all the predictions, despite all the disappointments, the battle to save the least among us goes on? What we all need to remember, as we think of the enormous setback 25 years ago and the struggles since then, is that Lyndon Johnsons and Supreme Court justices come and go, but Jesus Christ is supreme on earth as in heaven, and the final victory has already been won!

What do YOU think?
  Brief Bible Study #90 from Ray Downen. To go back to Viewpoint's first page, click < here.   Or go on to Viewpoint Study #91.           For Ray's concluding remarks, click HERE.