Posted on 06/11/2009 5:54:53 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Caught in a Crossfire
I write to you, not because I really expect you to repent. I write to you because you are a representative of others who are afflicted by the same revolutionary mentality. I write also to the churches that may have men and even women who think like you inside their own congregations. I would warn every church that has someone like you voicing such opinions publicly to excommunicate that person immediately. Because if people like Paul J. Hill go out to wreak their private vengeance -- their self- ordained, self-anointed vengeance -- against others in this society, and the church has not publicly excommunicated such people in advance, then the church of Jesus Christ will be tarred and feathered by the press for not having had the courage to deal with these law-breakers.
It is time for the churches to think judicially. It is time to bring an end to the theology of individual license and individual ordination. It is time to issue a warning against all the self-ordained civil magistrates with their shotguns and all the self-anointed home church, family-church ministers who are serving the Lord's Supper to their families.
This should not be regarded as a letter favoring abortion. It should surely not be regarded as a letter favoring legalized abortion. It should not be regarded by the public as being against non-violent resistance against abortion and legalized abortion. It is a letter which must be understood as a call to return to biblical law, a biblical doctrine of the covenant, and a concept of lawful order. It is a call to return to the doctrine of hierarchy and sanctions. I pray that this call will be taken seriously, for if it is not taken seriously, we are going to enter into a period in which vengeance is appropriated by individuals who are in rebellion against man and God, who are going to spread lawlessness on an individual basis into a society that is already committed to a rebellion against biblical law and against Christian principles. Godly people will be caught in the crossfire. The crossfire will be between the secular humanists who pay no attention to God's law, and therefore legalize abortion, and the self-anointed, self-ordained bringers of private justice who pay no attention to civil law or church law and who, on their own autonomous authority, are going to gun down the beneficiaries of the secular humanist order.
We are caught between the collectivized corporate evil of humanist civil law and the anarchistic autonomous evil of self- ordained revolutionaries. We are caught, in other words, in a crossfire between the autonomy-claiming one and the many. That is not where I want to be and where I want the church to be. The church had better begin taking steps to cleanse from its midst judicially all those who call for violence against individuals in the name of the community, when in fact in our present community, the community stands against God and against God's law. It does no good to take up the sword privately against representatives of an evil community or against the beneficiaries of an evil community. God's judgment threatens the entire evil community.
The problem is not the abortionist around the corner. The problem is the hearts of the people. The hearts of the people can be changed by prayer and perhaps by personally costly symbolic resistance. But the hearts of the people cannot be changed by gunning down the abortionist around the corner. That will set the hearts of the people in their wicked ways. Nothing will change for the better; it will only get worse. More babies will die. Then the judgment of God really will come.
This is a political fight, a judicial fight, but not a military fight. It is not a fight to "save one life today." It is a fight to keep the judgment of God from coming on the entire society. That is the meaning of Deuteronomy 21:1-9. We must take those verses seriously.
Dr George Tiller, the infamous Kansas late-term abortionist was shot to death the last Sunday of May 2009. At some point, comparisons will be made to the shooting deaths of Dr. John Britton and abortion escort/bodyguard James Barrett in the summer of 1994.
This thread series features a letter written to Britton's murderer, Paul Hill while he was awaiting trial for the killings (Hill was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed for the double-murder). The author is "Christian Reconstructionist" writer Gary North. The letter (published in book form under the title Lone Gunners for Jesus: Letters to Paul Hill) articulates a Reformed response to the question of whether the killing of an abortionist can be considered morally justified in Scripture.
Pt 1: Introduction
Pt 2: Judicial Theology
Pt 3: Murder, Defined Biblically
Pt 4: The Fundamental Issue
Pt 5: The Guilt of the Community
Pt 6: The Question of Judicial Representation
Pt 7: Community Standards
Pt 8: The Technology of Low-Cost Murder
Pt 9: Voices of Virtue
Pt 10: Perfectionism and Unlimited Guilt
Pt 11: Non-Violent Resistance
Pt 12: Caught in a Crossfire
Pt 13: Conclusion
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.