When You are as Old as Methuselah

Can you remember, when as a child, you thought that anyone who was thirty was really old, and anyone over sixty was approaching Methuselah’s age? It’s funny when you turn thirty your whole perception changes. If you are sixty plus, you, unlike those around you, cannot seem to think of yourself as being old.

The Bible has so much to say about getting old, and regardless of our perception of when that is, we would be wise to think about it. God describes the lives of many older people and how aging impacted their physical and spiritual life.

There is that decline of our physical health as we get older. Who has not heard of the failing eyesight of Isaac which allowed him to be deceived by the animal hairs his mother had placed on Jacob’s neck and hands? Later, Jacob himself died as a blind man unable to see because of his old age (Gen. 48:10). When David was seventy, the Bible described him as being “. . . old, advanced in years; and they put covers on him, but he could not get warm” (1 Kings 1:1). Read Ecclesiastes 12 to see the poetical description of loss of hearing, loss of teeth, trembling hands, fear of heights, inability to sleep and the loss of vision.

The Bible also describes the possibility of the decline of our spiritual health as we get older. I am not sure about the early life of the brother of the prodigal son, but I know that as the older brother he was beset with jealously, bitterness and a total disrespect for his father. Is there any story in the Bible more sad than the description of Solomon? “For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David” (1 Kings 11:4).

On the other hand, there are those verses describing the faithfulness of older saints. Think about Moses, who at the end of his life had a spirituality unmatched in the rest of his life. Think of Caleb, who at 85 was still actively trusting in the providence of God. Then there are those inspiring words of aged Paul, who saw death on the horizon and talked of how he had fought the good fight and run the race to the finish line (2 Tim. 4:7). He saw the crown of righteousness awaiting him and all who are faithful until death.

I especially love the way God described the life of Abraham. “Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age” (Gen. 15:15)—not at an old age but a good old age. There is a difference. As you age think about this. Will you die at a good old age?

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The Baseball Game Jesus Created

Just suppose someone made a perfect translation of the official rules of baseball and sent them to a distant land. When the people there received that rule book they were fascinated and decided to introduce this sport into their land. The baseball field was laid out according to the rule book with every distance measured accurately. The strike zone was learned and soon everyone knew that “It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old ballgame.” They knew balls and strikes. They knew the definition of a balk, the infield fly rule and a double play. Now think about this. Had then invented a new game? Or were they simply playing an old game in a new place?

Now suppose that in our own land everyone lost interest in baseball. There were attempts to make it more exciting with every team making up its own rules. Soon no one had any desire to watch or play the original sport. Suppose that the game stopped being played altogether and five hundred years passed. Then someone found the old rulebook and began encouraging others to get involved in the game. A baseball field was laid out with every distance measured accurately. The strike zone was learned and soon everyone knew that “It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old ballgame.” They knew balls and strikes. They knew the definition of a balk, the infield fly rule and a double play. Now think about this. Had then invented a new game? Or were they simply playing an old game at a new time?

In this same way, imagine a world where Jesus introduced a new “game” called Christianity. He gave a “rule book,” which was easily understandable, and soon the “game” was found throughout the first century world. Everyone knew the “rules” about salvation, the Lord’s supper, the works of the flesh, the fruit of the spirit, heaven, the return of Jesus and the daily life of Christians. They knew about His church, purchased with His own blood. That book was translated into many languages and the same “game” was found in many nations.

Imagine people beginning to change the “rules” to make it fit better into their definition of what a “game/church” should be like. Imagine the book being laid aside with every person feeling free to write his own rules. Soon it would be impossible to even recognize how Jesus planned for the “game” to be played.

Do you know what this church is about? We have taken the “rule book” and are doing all we can to play the “old game” in a new time and a new place. This should make the “Rule Writer” so happy! Come, let’s study His book together.

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Interview with Abby Johnson

On September 26, 2009, Abby Johnson held an ultrasound probe as she watched a baby in the womb recoil from a suction cannula while a doctor performed an abortion. That horrific scene caused Abby to leave Planned Parenthood. She is now working for a pro-life organization called Coalition for Life. Brad Harrub had the opportunity to talk with Abby recently. We hope our readers will appreciate (and share) this heart-rending firsthand account.
Brad Harrub: Please share with our readers some of your background and how you became involved in the abortion controversy.
Abby Johnson: I was a student at Texas A&M and went to a volunteer opportunity fair that they had every semester on campus. There was a woman there who was talking about planned parenthood. I really didn’t know anything about Planned Parenthood. I didn’t grow up in a community with Planned Parenthood. She began talking about Planned Parenthood and the services they provided. She did talk about abortion a little bit, but she told us that the primary volunteer duties were to escort women into the clinic whenever they were there for their abortion procedures. I told her that I grew up in a pro-life household. She told me she understood that, but the reason it was so important for women to have this choice was because if it wasn’t available then women would be having all of these illegal abortions and dying at this incredible rate. And I just thought this was terrible, so I thought to myself, “This is something I could get behind and it makes sense to me.” So I started volunteering.
I was a volunteer for about two years. I then became their campus intern—still a volunteer position—but I became the liaison between Planned Parenthood and Texas A&M. I did that for a year, and right before I graduated with my undergraduate degree from A&M, they asked me if I wanted to become an employee—a paid employee—of Planned Parenthood. I didn’t have any other job prospects coming up, so I said sure. I knew I wanted to get my master’s degree and they said they would work with me on that. So I went ahead and started working there. I worked there through the time when I got my graduate degree and just kept getting promoted and eventually ended up running that particular health center.
BH: So, you actually grew up in a “pro-life” family environment?
AJ: Yes, absolutely!
BH: Wow. So what do you think it was that helped you make that break and say: “I’m going to volunteer for Planned Parenthood?” Was there a certain phrase or hook she used, or something that she was offering that made it appealing?
AJ: Well, I think it was just the idea that if legalized abortion is not available and if these clinics are not available, then we are basically sending women to these slaughter-houses. And therefore women would be dying at this incredible rate. And for me—I’m a very compassionate person—to hear that was too much. To hear somebody say, “Women are going to be dying if this is not a legal option for women” was new. I’d never really thought about it in that way.
BH: Even though the statistics don’t bear out their scare tactic. So, in a weird, twisted kind of way you viewed yourself as “pro-life” but for older life, so to speak?
AJ: Right. Really that is the way they want to frame the argument. They don’t ever think about the unborn life, and that is intentional. They don’t want to think about the baby. They don’t want the clinic workers to think about the baby. They don’t want the women coming in for the abortions to think about the baby. They only want the women to think about themselves. And they only want the clinic workers to think about the woman sitting in front of them. And that’s very intentional.
BH: Obviously there is a single event that changed your perspective on life. Can you share what took place and how it changed you?
AJ: There were a couple of things. One was how the business model had been changing within the facility. They had really gone from a family planning and prevention model to abortion model. They went to, “Abortion is the most lucrative. It’s how we make the most money. We’re not making any money with the economy, so we see abortion as an opportunity to really up our income and up our revenue. So we need to get in as many women as possible to have these abortions.” So that was very troubling.
BH: Wow, that’s incredible to hear.
AJ: And so that was kind of the first thing. When I questioned that, it was really my fall from grace. That was when my supervisor told me abortion needed to be my number one priority. That I really didn’t need to worry about family planning and that I needed to get my head in the game for abortion. That’s when I told her abortion would never be my priority, and that family planning would always be my priority. That’s when things started to snowball for me.
On September 26 (2009), that’s when I actually saw an ultrasound-guided abortion procedure. Ultrasound-guided abortions are very uncommon. They are particularly uncommon in large abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood. If we are talking about abortion in terms of safe procedures for the woman, ultrasound-guided procedures are the safest procedure. It is the best type of procedure for the woman. There’s less risk of uterine perforation. These big places don’t want to do it because it takes more time.
This particular physician who was coming down that day is a private practice abortion physician. He has his own practice out of town and he was coming in to do abortions as a visiting physician that day. In his practice he only does ultrasound-guided abortions. The patient was a little further along in her pregnancy—about 13 weeks—so the doctor decided that on this patient he was going to do an ultrasound-guided procedure. For that procedure he needed an extra person in the room to hold the ultrasound probe, and that was me.
So they called me into the room and told me they would need me to hold the ultrasound probe on her abdomen so that he could see the uterus during the procedure. That was to be my job during the procedure. So we had everything in place, and I saw on the screen a thirteen-week baby. You know at thirteen weeks—even at ten weeks—what you see on the ultrasound is a fully formed baby with arms and legs. Everything is fully formed. If you can get a good profile view, you can see all of this.
Well, this was a good profile view. I could see everything from head to foot. And then I saw the probe—called a cannula, that is hooked up to the suction machine—I saw that go into the woman’s uterus. And then I saw it jab into the side of the baby. Then, in just a few seconds, I saw the baby begin to react to that jabbing. I saw the baby’s arms and legs begin to move. The baby was trying to get away from the probe.
BHrad: Wow. I have to ask this because I’m sitting here trying to imagine it for myself: What were you going through internally at that point?
AJ: Well, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I felt sick to my stomach. I realized what I was about to look at and I realized what I was about to see. And that’s when they turned on the suction. A baby at that age has a perfectly formed backbone. The last thing I saw was the backbone going through the cannula on the ultrasound screen. I’ll never forget what it looked like on the screen. You know how they say with a train wreck you don’t want to watch but you can’t stop looking at it? That’s what it was like for me. I didn’t want to look at it, but I couldn’t stop looking at the screen. When I saw that baby moving, it was like he was waking up and then trying to get away from the cannula.
I immediately thought of all the women I had lied too. You get a lot of questions in the room. As a counselor in the room with women, they ask you questions before they go back for their abortion procedure. One of the things they ask you frequently is, “Is my baby going to feel this?” Every time I had told them no. Because I really didn’t think the baby would feel it. Planned Parenthood had told me they wouldn’t feel it, so I told them no. I immediately thought about all the women I had lied to. I was thinking to myself, “What if I had told them the truth? What if I had known the truth— would I still be here at this job? Would those women have chosen an abortion?” What kind of difference would it have made if we had all known the truth? Why are they trying to hide this?
BH: So obviously your beliefs have changed. What would you say today, here at the end of 2009, are your beliefs on this controversial topic?
AJ: I’m firmly pro-life. The other day I went out in front of an abortion clinic for the first time on an abortion day. It was a good feeling to be on the other side of the fence. But I have a very unique sense of what is going on inside that clinic and what those women are feeling, because I have sat there and looked in their faces.
BH: So what would you say? Let’s say you have a 15-year-old or a 20-year-old or even a 30-year-old that is currently pregnant and not sure what to do? What would be your words of wisdom at this stage?
AJ: I’ve been asked that a lot. A lot of times women choose abortion out of convenience. In fact, most of the time they think that abortion is going to be a quick fix. They think an abortion is going to make their lives easier, and I know that is not the case. It is not a quick fix. It is not something you just do and it goes away. It will be with you for the rest of your life. If they are a young person or a person of any age and they don’t have children—many women who choose abortion are in their younger years—that memory of the child they aborted comes back to them when they are holding their wanted children. People have asked me, “What would you have said differently to those women you were counseling with?” I would have said, “Your baby does have a heartbeat. No matter what you’ve been told, your baby does have a heartbeat, and your baby is going to feel what is happening to it during the abortion. Your baby is going to feel that pain. And, when the abortion is finished, somebody is going to have to go back and reassemble the baby that was in your uterus. And they are going to know if it was a boy or girl. This is very real. This is not just a mass of tissue. This is not just a glob of cells. This is a real baby in your uterus.”
BH: What are the secrets in the abortion industry that many never hear about? Obviously you’ve touched on one that most people know that maybe we don’t admit—and that is a lot of this is about money.
AJ: Oh yeah.
BH: But what are some other things, having “been there and done that,” that you can share?
AJ: It is so much about money. But also, anytime there are any complications they will do anything to keep that woman quiet, including paying her money to keep her quiet.
BH: Now when you say complications, you mean medical injury.
AJ: Yeah. They will pay her off to keep her quiet. Which is sad, because then we never know about those tragedies of abortion. There are so many times that women are injured from an abortion— they’ve had botched abortions— and instead of going to the media so that other women can hear their stories, they are paid off. They are required to sign a statement saying that they will not go public with that information. In some states, like Texas, there are laws where they will come and ask the woman if she wants to view the ultrasound. If she does choose to view her ultrasound, and let’s say she’s 10, 12 14, weeks pregnant, they will not show her the full profile of her baby. They may only show her…
BH: A leg.
AJ: The leg. If you are a layperson looking at the ultrasound, you don’t know what that is. And they’ll say, “That’s it. See you can’t see anything.” Because they don’t want to give her the truth. They call themselves pro-choice. But it’s not really about giving women honest choices. There are just so many things they are not honest about. For instance, they never go over all of the risks about abortion when a woman comes in. They never talk about all of the options. They don’t normally ask, “Have you considered your other options?”
BH: Have you ever seen someone coming back after an abortion procedure who is emotionally torn up?
AJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. The abortion industry’s answer to that is that the person is weak or that they were emotionally unstable to begin with. They don’t believe in post-abortion syndrome. They believe that for a normal person, you’re going to do fine after the abortion. They really just dismiss women that have regrets after an abortion, and they just think something is wrong with them.

BH: We appreciate more than you know your willingness to talk. And we are so thankful you are speaking out for pro-life. I’ll say this, I think there is a truth out there that is not getting out. I think if more women armed themselves with what you are revealing here, we would have less abortions going on than we have today.
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Interview with Dr. David Menton

[Dr. David Menton received a Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University. He served as a biomedical research technician at Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota (1960-62). He served as associate professor of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (1966-2000) and was then appointed as associate Professor Emeritus of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine (July 2000). This year Dr. Menton produced a new DVD series titled The Evolution of Darwin: His Science. We asked Dr. Menton to spend some time with us and share his thoughts on Darwinian evolution given the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species.]

BH: You own a unique copy of an early edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species. What does the introduction to that edition reveal?

DM: In the 6th edition of Origin of Species they invited W.R. Thompson to write the introduction. Thompson was one of Canada’s leading biologists. W.R. Thompson warned the publisher that you probably don’t want me to write this introduction because it will not be a hymn to Darwin. They thought, this sounds interesting, so they encouraged him to go ahead and write it. In that introduction he said, “A long enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin of Species was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculations.” That, to me was the biggest hit we took from the whole Darwinian mentality….Darwin speculated without limit. And it’s this limitless speculation that I think W. R. Thompson is talking about. Thompson went on to say, “The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel, and the shifty devious histrionic statements of Thomas Huxley.” It’s obvious when one reads Darwin’s writings that his boo
k is little more than story telling.

BH: Having studied Darwin’s book, what problems come to mind to you in regards to his work?

DML One of the major problems is with the title of his book. Most evolutionists will contend that Darwin never dealt with that particular issue—the origin of species. He took a lot of antidotal evidences, things he saw, and merely assumed that they would somehow, in the course of time, be explained by variation and natural selection. But he didn’t really account for it….Also, Darwin could see variation in animals. Now remember this was not speculation or theory, this was his firsthand observation. He saw tremendous variability. And because he knew nothing about genetics, he thought that this variation that he could observe was without limit. So ultimately his observations lead him to the wrong conclusion that variation could change things from say birds to a different type of bird, and then even a different animal altogether.

BH: When you hear individuals celebrating the anniversary of Darwin’s birth or the anniversary of his book Origin of Species what goes through your mind as a scientist and a man who taught medical students for years?

DM: As you know, this is the Year of Darwin. Some evolutionists have said that we’re beating a dead horse—that they have moved on. But in actual fact, things haven’t changed greatly from Darwin’s view of variation, which he couldn’t account for. Why there would be variation. Darwin had no understanding of genetics. Gregory Mendel was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and we should be celebrating Gregory Mendel’s contribution to biology. They were huge compared to Charles Darwin. There is simply no comparison. Can you even imagine modern biology without Mendelian Genetics? But it is quite easy to imagine biology without Darwinian evolution. Indeed, I didn’t use it in my career. It contributed nothing to my understanding of biological systems. It contributed nothing to the lectures I gave to medical students over thirty-four years covering perhaps every organ in the body during that time. It rarely contributed to lectures given by my colleagues to medical students. And it certainly didn’t contribute to my published research.

BH: You have a new DVD titled the Evolution of Darwin. Share some of the icons you dismiss in your presentation.

DM: What I’ve been doing lately in a new talk is going through Darwin’s Origin of Species with his tree of life—which he showed and has become an icon. For instance, if you go to London and visit the Darwin exhibit at the Natural History Museum, they prominently show a page from Darwin’s notebook written in 1837 showing this tree. He did this after returning from a voyage on the Beagle. He was only 28 years old at the time. He showed this misshapen tree with branches going here and there and terminating. He had branches labeled with A, B, C, and D, all coming from a number 1 at the bottom. He had no indication of what that first life form was. He never even attempted to try and understand what it was other than to say that maybe it occurred in some warm little pond. At the top of the tree he wrote, “I think” indicating this was merely a guess.
This was what he proposed. The interesting thing was that his ideas were not widely accepted among the scientific community of his day. They were more readily accepted by laymen. Many scientists of his day wanted to believe what Darwin was speculating about. I think specifically of men like Thomas Huxley, who was a great champion of Darwin even as he did not believe what Darwin said. He couldn’t account for the origin of species. He wasn’t convinced that variation and natural selection could explain it all. But Thomas Huxley, being an atheist, found the materialist explanation very attractive. Never mind that Darwin’s mechanism didn’t actually work in his view. Still, he championed it because it was going in the right direction—getting away from divine intervention. Certainly Darwin moved things away from divine intervention.

BH: Darwin placed a number 1 at the bottom of his evolutionary tree of life. But a survey of his work reveals he had no clue what that number represented.

DM: It’s interesting in talking about that very first origin of life, which Darwin couldn’t account for, in a letter to Joseph Hooker in 1871 (after The Origin of Species had been published) he noted, “It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life. One might as well think of the origin of matter.” Darwin had no idea of that initial origin. It’s interesting that today many evolutionists say the origin of life isn’t even related.

BH: I’ve experienced that personally on several different occasions during my Question & Answer sessions, where evolutionists or atheists try to defend the idea that evolution is not concerned with the origin of matter. They recognize that their theory can’t explain the very existence of matter, and so they try to remove it from the equation.

DM: And yet, their theory does deal with this. After all, they prescribe to the Big Bang, a theory that tries to teach how everything came from nothing. For instance, I was involved in a dispute when I was still in St. Louis with a local school board over the teaching of evolution in a particular community’s high school and what the book said. I happened to comment in passing on how there is no information regarding the origin of life. The biology teacher at this particular high school stood up and said: “This is just a typical tactic from a creationist. They bring up a straw man on the origin of life. We don’t even deal with the origin of life in our biology class at the high school.” That really went over effectively with the audience—as they thought this was really a non-issue. A few days later one of the parents with a student in the class sent me a big fat manila envelope. When I opened it up there was the entire chapter xeroxed from their book regarding the origin of life. This parent wanted me to see that this teacher had been lying through his teeth. It was one of the largest chapters in the biology book that he was using in his class.

BH: Are modern-day scientists any closer to knowing what Darwin’s “number 1” represented?

DM: You know, today if I were to search around and see what the scientific community thinks about the origin of life I don’t think I could do any better than going to someone like Dr. Paul Davies who is at Arizona State University, head of the department of Astrobiology…. Paul Davies, writing in New Scientist, vol 163, p. 2204, September 1999, said, “How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software. And where did the very peculiar form of information needed to get the first living cell up and running come from. Nobody knows.” So we can actually join Charles Darwin today at where he was at the bottom of his evolutionary tree of life with a number 1 that was circled—but no knowledge of what that 1 represented.

[Dr. David Menton received a Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University. He served as a biomedical research technician at Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota (1960-62). He served as associate professor of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri (1966-2000) and was then appointed as associate Professor Emeritus of Anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine (July 2000). This year Dr. Menton produced a new DVD series titled The Evolution of Darwin: His Science. We asked Dr. Menton to spend some time with us and share his thoughts on Darwinian evolution given the 150th anniversary of Origin of Species.]
BH: You own a unique copy of an early edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species. What does the introduction to that edition reveal?
DM: In the 6th edition of Origin of Species they invited W.R. Thompson to write the introduction. Thompson was one of Canada’s leading biologists. W.R. Thompson warned the publisher that you probably don’t want me to write this introduction because it will not be a hymn to Darwin. They thought, this sounds interesting, so they encouraged him to go ahead and write it. In that introduction he said, “A long enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin of Species was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculations.” That, to me was the biggest hit we took from the whole Darwinian mentality….Darwin speculated without limit. And it’s this limitless speculation that I think W. R. Thompson is talking about. Thompson went on to say, “The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. This is already evident in the reckless statements of Haeckel, and the shifty devious histrionic statements of Thomas Huxley.” It’s obvious when one reads Darwin’s writings that his book is little more than story telling.
BH: Having studied Darwin’s book, what problems come to mind to you in regards to his work?
DML One of the major problems is with the title of his book. Most evolutionists will contend that Darwin never dealt with that particular issue—the origin of species. He took a lot of antidotal evidences, things he saw, and merely assumed that they would somehow, in the course of time, be explained by variation and natural selection. But he didn’t really account for it….Also, Darwin could see variation in animals. Now remember this was not speculation or theory, this was his firsthand observation. He saw tremendous variability. And because he knew nothing about genetics, he thought that this variation that he could observe was without limit. So ultimately his observations lead him to the wrong conclusion that variation could change things from say birds to a different type of bird, and then even a different animal altogether.
BH: When you hear individuals celebrating the anniversary of Darwin’s birth or the anniversary of his book Origin of Species what goes through your mind as a scientist and a man who taught medical students for years?
DM: As you know, this is the Year of Darwin. Some evolutionists have said that we’re beating a dead horse—that they have moved on. But in actual fact, things haven’t changed greatly from Darwin’s view of variation, which he couldn’t account for. Why there would be variation. Darwin had no understanding of genetics. Gregory Mendel was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and we should be celebrating Gregory Mendel’s contribution to biology. They were huge compared to Charles Darwin. There is simply no comparison. Can you even imagine modern biology without Mendelian Genetics? But it is quite easy to imagine biology without Darwinian evolution. Indeed, I didn’t use it in my career. It contributed nothing to my understanding of biological systems. It contributed nothing to the lectures I gave to medical students over thirty-four years covering perhaps every organ in the body during that time. It rarely contributed to lectures given by my colleagues to medical students. And it certainly didn’t contribute to my published research.
BH: You have a new DVD titled the Evolution of Darwin. Share some of the icons you dismiss in your presentation.
DM: What I’ve been doing lately in a new talk is going through Darwin’s Origin of Species with his tree of life—which he showed and has become an icon. For instance, if you go to London and visit the Darwin exhibit at the Natural History Museum, they prominently show a page from Darwin’s notebook written in 1837 showing this tree. He did this after returning from a voyage on the Beagle. He was only 28 years old at the time. He showed this misshapen tree with branches going here and there and terminating. He had branches labeled with A, B, C, and D, all coming from a number 1 at the bottom. He had no indication of what that first life form was. He never even attempted to try and understand what it was other than to say that maybe it occurred in some warm little pond. At the top of the tree he wrote, “I think” indicating this was merely a guess.
This was what he proposed. The interesting thing was that his ideas were not widely accepted among the scientific community of his day. They were more readily accepted by laymen. Many scientists of his day wanted to believe what Darwin was speculating about. I think specifically of men like Thomas Huxley, who was a great champion of Darwin even as he did not believe what Darwin said. He couldn’t account for the origin of species. He wasn’t convinced that variation and natural selection could explain it all. But Thomas Huxley, being an atheist, found the materialist explanation very attractive. Never mind that Darwin’s mechanism didn’t actually work in his view. Still, he championed it because it was going in the right direction—getting away from divine intervention. Certainly Darwin moved things away from divine intervention.
BH: Darwin placed a number 1 at the bottom of his evolutionary tree of life. But a survey of his work reveals he had no clue what that number represented.
DM: It’s interesting in talking about that very first origin of life, which Darwin couldn’t account for, in a letter to Joseph Hooker in 1871 (after The Origin of Species had been published) he noted, “It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life. One might as well think of the origin of matter.” Darwin had no idea of that initial origin. It’s interesting that today many evolutionists say the origin of life isn’t even related.
BH: I’ve experienced that personally on several different occasions during my Question & Answer sessions, where evolutionists or atheists try to defend the idea that evolution is not concerned with the origin of matter. They recognize that their theory can’t explain the very existence of matter, and so they try to remove it from the equation.
DM: And yet, their theory does deal with this. After all, they prescribe to the Big Bang, a theory that tries to teach how everything came from nothing. For instance, I was involved in a dispute when I was still in St. Louis with a local school board over the teaching of evolution in a particular community’s high school and what the book said. I happened to comment in passing on how there is no information regarding the origin of life. The biology teacher at this particular high school stood up and said: “This is just a typical tactic from a creationist. They bring up a straw man on the origin of life. We don’t even deal with the origin of life in our biology class at the high school.” That really went over effectively with the audience—as they thought this was really a non-issue. A few days later one of the parents with a student in the class sent me a big fat manila envelope. When I opened it up there was the entire chapter xeroxed from their book regarding the origin of life. This parent wanted me to see that this teacher had been lying through his teeth. It was one of the largest chapters in the biology book that he was using in his class.
BH: Are modern-day scientists any closer to knowing what Darwin’s “number 1” represented?
DM: You know, today if I were to search around and see what the scientific community thinks about the origin of life I don’t think I could do any better than going to someone like Dr. Paul Davies who is at Arizona State University, head of the department of Astrobiology…. Paul Davies, writing in New Scientist, vol 163, p. 2204, September 1999, said, “How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software. And where did the very peculiar form of information needed to get the first living cell up and running come from. Nobody knows.” So we can actually join Charles Darwin today at where he was at the bottom of his evolutionary tree of life with a number 1 that was circled—but no knowledge of what that 1 represented.
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What could the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) mean to your family?

The Governmental Potter

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.” John F. Kennedy penned these words of truth, and they serve as a vivid reminder of the importance of our children. Paul, through inspiration, admonished the fathers in Ephesus bring their children “up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4). The Bible is replete with both commands and examples of the parental responsibility of rearing children to fear God and keep His commandments. Indeed, children are unmolded clay that will forge future governments, businesses, and the church. However, if many politicians have their way, the molding process for those children is about to be transformed and placed squarely into the hands of the government.

A piece of legislation is quietly resurfacing in the United States that Christians need to familiarize themselves with. All countries except two (the United States and Somalia) have adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). As such, America is under heavy pressure to adopt this treaty and join the other nations that have signed on. While this basics of this treaty sound appealing—protecting children from various types of abuse and neglect—the truth reveals that veiled under legal jargon is the undoing of the American family home. This treaty places strips away parents’ rights and elevates children’s rights, allowing the United Nations to dictate how American children are brought up.

A quick history lesson

From the beginning of our country’s inception there has never been a question as to parents possessing the right to raise their children. Parental rights were so fundamental and basic that not much thought was ever given to laws declaring the parents’ rights. Even though parental rights are not specifically mentioned in the United States Constitution or the amendments, there have been several court opinions that make it clear that the state does not control the upbringing of children. For instance, eighty years ago the Supreme Court declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925). More recently the Court upheld this line of reasoning with the declaration that the “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established It was unspoken that parental rights were a part of the fundamental foundation of our nation’s heritage.

Change is in the wind

Those rights are in real danger of being completely stripped away. Because of the UNCRC status as a “treaty,” the U.S. Constitution mandates that it is supreme to any state laws regarding children and parents. Thus this treaty would supersede any state law. And sadly, this treaty has the support of many Washington politicians.  For instance, President Obama supports the UNCRC, as does Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In fact, Clinton has been promoting this treaty for over twenty years. One of the most liberal senators in office, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has “promised” that this treaty will be ratified during this term of Congress. So exactly what changes do these politicians want to bring to the American family? Carefully consider what the UNCRC proposes:

  • Good parents would no longer be entitled to the legal presumption that they act in the best interests of their children. Instead, the government would have the authority to overrule all parents on any decision concerning the child if the government believed it could make a better decision.
  • Parents could no longer spank their children—even in the home.
  • Children would have the legal right to choose their own religion. Parents would be permitted only to give advice.
  • Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
  • Christian schools that refuse to teach “alternative worldviews” and teach that Christianity is the only true religion “fly in the face of article 29” of the treaty.
  • Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the UNCRC.
  • Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.
  • A murderer aged 17 years and 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
  • America would be under a binding legal obligation to massively increase its federal spending on children’s programs because it states the nation cannot spend more on defense than on children’s welfare.
  • A child’s “right to be heard” would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.

(Adapted from “20 Things You Need to Know About the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child” )

An Experiment Gone Bad

Several years ago, Washington State tried to adopt an UNCRC-type policy for their state. The result was a legal nightmare for both parents and children. As evidence, consider the following two cases that occurred as a result of the law as reported by Michael Farris on www.parentalrights.org:

Case #1 A thirteen-year-old boy in Washington State was removed from his parents after he complained to school counselors that his parents took him to church too often. His school counselors had encouraged him to call Child Protective Services with his complaint, which led to his subsequent removal and placement in foster care. It was only after the parents agreed to a judge’s requirement of less-frequent church attendance that they were able to recover their son.

Case #2 In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter’s participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter’s life by grounding her.

But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent’s actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was “conflict between parent and child.” Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.

Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila’s parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.

In an interview years later, Shelia stated that what the court should have done was rebuke her and send her back to her parents. By breaching the door open into our homes, the courts have allowed more and more judges to deny the role of parents, opting instead for governmental intervention for the family. If the UNCRC passed it would give Congress the power to directly legislate on all subjects necessary to comply with the treaty. The family home would become a ward of the federal government. It would also set precedent and become the largest shift of power from the states to the federal government in American history.

“What Can We Do About it?”

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently by Christians is this: “What can we do about it?” That’s a valid question, and one that needs to be addressed whenever problems are presented. The three things I would strongly urge Christians to consider are: (1) contact your state representatives and let them know you don’t want them supporting this treaty; (2) visit www.parentalrights.org and read the information they have on creating an amendment to protect children by empowering parents through the passage of the Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (While I’m not one who favors adding lots of amendments to our Constitution, I think this one is now necessary); and (3) help get the word out. Isn’t it time Christians stand up and protect our most valuable resource?

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