Counter Culture Revolutionaries
This is what is needed 200 years after the abolishion of the slave trade. Another evil has beset our culture, just as slavery was acceptable to 18th Century culture abortion is acceptable today to ours. History is full of counter culture revolutionaries who have fought for a cause and won, often against all odds. Jesus Christ led the way in the greatest revolution of all time and it’s now that a call to follow his example is ringing out. Nehemiah is another who succeeded because he didn’t just accept the status quo but took up God’s cause. William Wilberforce exhibited a revolutionary spirit birthed from a heart that was soft to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He is someone who changed the culture of his time, exactly what is needed in our day and age, right now. Some one needs to stand up today and fight for the abolishment of abortion like Wilberforce did for the abolishment of the slave trade, for as long as it takes to end it.
Today the world understands the evil of slavery, but that is due to a man fighting for 20 years for its abolishion. Today the world does not understand the evil of abortion because no one is standing up and speaking out and persisting for as long as it takes, for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years or more.
One secret of Wilberforce’s passion was actually facing the evil of slavery himself. He would take himself to see slave ships and the conditions slaves were kept in and how they were treated. He researched, read, spoke to knowledgeable people and listened to stories that would make your toes curl. He took others to see too and as they approached the slave ships a stench of death caused them to reach for their hankies to cover their faces. But Wilberforce had been changed forever by this scent and he would instruct his party to smell the smell of death in the hope that they would never be the same again.
Wilberforce’s secret is being carried out in Britain every day by hundreds of doctors who are in greater and greater numbers smelling the smell of death and refusing to perform abortions. It is no coincidence that it is the doctors who are leading the ‘abortion crisis’ in Britain as they come face to face with the evil of the calous murdering of thousands of babies year in year out. What is needed is for all of us to smell the smell of death, for the world to be convicted close hand of the attrocities being committed just around the corner in our local hospitals.
Of course at first, and perhaps until victory is sure people won’t understand and remain enemies. Like Nehemiah the enemy intimidated, sowed lies, disunity and fear. But Nehemiah persisted, persevered and succeeded. So too Wilberforce never gave up no matter how hard the assault against him was. His health was attacked, friends turned on him, he risked his reputation, looked ridiculous to the people, but like Nehemiah he had smelt the smell of death, had a cry in his heart and could never stop fighting for the cause of his God. And once the cause had been fought for and won, the lie was broken, people’s eyes were open and they could not imagine how slavery was ever allowed. Soon, if we rise up and stand as counter culture revolutionaries people will wonder how abortion was ever even conceived of, and they’ll praise the abolishionists. But its a long road, marked with price, agony, tears and an unalterable, dogged, unstoppable persistence that burns in the soul like an unquenchable fire. Those who’ve never really met with God, understood his heart, smelt the smell of death, birthed a cry in their heart for the cause will ever achieve it.