Note: This video shows abortion clinic workers reporting on what was happening in their clinic – not the Gosnell clinic, but in another state. Please use discretion in viewing this video, as it contains graphic explanations of what was happening in the clinic.

There are two ways in which the murder conviction of Kermit Gosnell is one of the great legal and public relations scams of the century.

First of all, it was a legal scam because the he murdered thousands but was only prosecuted for three murders. Every single baby he aborted, whether it was six weeks or thirty weeks was a brutal killing since it is no secret that life begins at conception. It is a scam to pretend that only some abortions are murder.

Second, it is a public relations scam because what he was doing is happening everyday in abortion clinics and the press makes it seem that what was happening was an isolated case. See the evidence here that Kermit Gosnell is not an Outlier. The conviction gives the perception that somehow there are abortion clinics practicing murder and then there are those which are not; some are horrific and some are not; some are grisly and some are not, when in fact, all abortion clinics kill babies and the problem is not that a clinic is dirty and unkempt, and some of the babies were older, but that babies were being killed.

These scams, both legal and public relations, are the kinds of scams that dull the consciences of the American public, while pleasing the abortion rights crowd and the Obama administration.

It is always a blessing to find examples of men who finished well. David Livingstone is one of those men. The year before he died, his heart was still burning to obey Christ. On his 59th birthday, this great missionary to Africa made this entry in his journal:

19th March, 1872. Birthday. Lord, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. Sever any ties save the tie that binds me to Thy heart. My Jesus, my King, my life, my all, I again dedicate my whole self to Thee.

– from DAVID LIVINGSTONE (1813-1873)

Inscription: “This Engraving, for which I supplied the materials, represents my meeting with Dr. Livingstone at Ujiji, Lake Tanganyika; and is as correct as if the scene had been photographed.” – Henry Morton Stanley

Mark this well — the horrific logic of this judge’s decision will not remain in Canada. Indeed, it did not even start in Canada. Those arguments are already in place in the United States. If we will not defend life in the womb, eventually the dignity of every single human life is thrown over the fence.

The author of this Life News article concludes with this, “If the USA legalized euthanasia and had a similar killing count, the total number of doctor-administered deaths would be over 300,000 annually!” Christians have a way to think this through via one of the Ten Commandments – “Thou shalt not kill.” It is one of many verses in Scripture where God condemns this practice.

©iStockphoto.com/Anton_Sokolov

After many years of ministry to men, it is clear to me how simple men are. They all struggle with the same basic things. That’s one thing I like about working with men. Men are not complex. I have come across several summaries of the things that kill men off. I know a law enforcement professional who identifies these: Lying, Liquor, Lust, and Loyalty as the top four mankillers in his profession. They see these common denominators on the street all the time. I know an attorney who categorized them this way: Greed, Sex, and Power.  Here is my list: Fear, Lust, Anger, Feminism, and Abdication.

1) Fear 

He is constantly harrassed by fear because his god is not big enough to deliver him. He does not really believe that God is sovereign, so he is constantly obsessing over the threats to his security. He exists in a state of low-grade uncomfortability about himself and what might happen to him. He is an unhappy dad and a discontented husband. He is a lousy leader and no fun to be around. He sucks the joy out of the room – and the hearts of his wife and children.

Scripture: “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed…” (Ps. 46).

2) Lust

He has refused to starve the dragon of lust. Instead, he feeds that dragon enough tidbits to keep him alive and always waiting in the wings. This kind of man struggles with pornography because he has not had the resolve to deprive his eyes and ears of impure things. He watches movies that aren’t that bad and listens to songs that aren’t that good and as a result the dragon is strong and ready to devour. The fires of lustful passion are always smoldering ready to burst into flames at any time.

Scripture: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you” (Matt. 5:27-30). “Flee sexual immorality” (1 Cor. 6:18). “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things” (Phil. 4:8). ”I will sing of mercy and justice; to You, O Lord, I will sing praises. I will behave wisely in a perfect way. Oh, when will You come to me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart (Ps. 101:1-2).

3) Anger

God keeps sending imperfect people into his life, and he is angry about it. He is angry at his wife, his boss, his pastor, his brother, and his friend because he never learned that all of life is exposure to imperfect people. He never learned how to love those imperfect people. He is always disappointed in someone. He’s a one-way perfectionist. He demands perfection from others but is oblivious to his own flaws. He never understood that God sends people to him for his sanctification, not to stroke his ego. It has not occurred to him that God sent these inadequate people in order to magnify His grace and mercy through him.

Scripture: “But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matt. 5:22). ”Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). ”Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (Rom. 12:10). “For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (Jas. 1:20). Proverbs 18:14; 19:11; 22:24; 29:22; Ecclesiastes 7:9; James 1:19-20; James 3

4) Feminism

Many men are feminists at heart. They have “PMS,” which stands for “Passive Male Syndrome.” Except with men, it is not isolated to once a month. They get there honestly by simply growing up in a culture, breathing feminist air. Their brains have been pickled in feminist juices for so long that they don’t even know how deeply their thinking has been poisoned. From the time of their birth, they have been saturated with feminism via the media and their pagan education. When you breathe feminist air all your life as most of us have, it is almost impossible to be a real man. Its symptoms: They won’t lead. They won’t teach. They won’t cross up their wives.  They are afraid of their daughters. They won’t restrain their children. They are not willing to die for anything. They think, “Nothing is that important anyway. Hand me the remote.”

Scripture:  “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man” (1 Cor. 11:3). “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them” (Isa. 3:12). “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25-27).

5) Abdication

God has created men to play a role in this world that is easily abdicated. He has been appointed by God to be the lover of his wife and the teacher of his children. But he is disconnected with his wife because they are going different directions. He is not teaching his children because he is obsessed with his own pleasures (usually technology or sports or both). He does not walk and talk and live alongside his children because his attentions are elsewhere. That world out there, outside his family is bigger and more important to him. So he abdicates the primary for the secondary. He can get away with this one his whole life long, and no one will confront him about it. The church won’t say a peep. His friends give him a pass. This last one is different in this sense: The first three mankillers will eventually grab him by the neck and throw him to the ground and destroy him. These last two will not be so obvious. These are the most socially acceptable mankillers. However, as it turns out, it will mean that his wife and children will be grabbed by the neck and thrown to the ground.

Death to the Mankillers

These five mankillers are always lurking at the door of every man’s heart.

Thankfully, there is only one solution for a man. With one blow, the mankillers are knocked unconscious. It is the heart of the matter. This one thing destroys the ache of fear, weakens the dragon of lust, soothes the burnings of anger, incinerates feminism, and turns the hearts of fathers to their children. Jesus spoke of it in Matthew 22:35-40:

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

This is the heart of the matter: The power of Gospel love! Loving the Lord your God with all your heart is a summary of the message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It presents a clear statement about what it means to be a Christian. It describes the essence of genuine spiritual life. It is the foundation of all true faith. It exposes the centrality of love in the Bible. It explains the Gospel. It neutralizes mankillers.

I preached a sermon on this text, and you can listen to it here.

Cotton Mather writes with passion and clarity in Magnalia Christi Americana about the devastating thundering of God’s judgment upon lust running free. In an amazing section of this magnificent work, Mather says:

Wherefore, when it thunders, the voice of God in it is, “Put out the unclean fires of lust in your souls, lest I set you on fire by my dreadful thunders.” Again, there was Nadab and Abihu, who offered strange fire to God, and God punished them with a killing fire from heaven, in a hideous thunder-storm; so, then, when it thunders, the voice of God in it is, “Look well to all your sacrifices, lest my fire make you a sacrifice: See that you duly attend my worship, lest my thunder fall upon you.” Once more, there was Uzziah, who fell into an error in his management about the ark of God; and it seems as if a thunder-storm, suddenly coming up, kill’d him for it: Hence, then, when it thunders, the voice of God in it is, “Look to it that my ark and my word find no contempt with you, lest my thunder chastise you for your contempt.” What shall I say more? Corah was destroyed by thunder for his rebellion against God and Moses. Wherefore the voice of the thunder is, “Take heed of all rebellion against God and Jesus.” The Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, were confounded with desolating thunders, because they invaded and injured the
people of God. It is then the voice of the thunder, “See that you do no wrong unto an holy people, that have this artillery of heaven to defend them.” They that are such witnesses for God and reformation as Elijah was, have, as he had, the fires of lightnings to devour those that hurt them.

©iStockphoto.com/BrandyTaylor

One of the most important things we teach our children is how to work – how to take dominion. We have to realize that we face a multitude of daunting obstacles. We must face the fact that we live in a particular kind of world where people underestimate what children can produce; where parents are content to outsource their children to institutions where they produce nothing of tangible value; where the population actually hates work so much that they work 8 hour days and live for the weekends; where they hate to see children working as evidenced by the child labor laws in your region. So how do you teach your children how to work? It is a long discussion. I will be addressing these matters at Kevin Swanson’s Economics Conference in St. Louis next month. But here, my friend Charles Churchill offers some sound wisdom on the matter:

Same Journey – Different Results. They left at the same time, but one would return and the other would perish. This is the story of personal life, family life, church life, and business life. It matters how you proceed. Here is a dramatic example: the 1911 Antarctic expedition led by Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott. The destination of both men was the South Pole, but the results of their two journeys were radically different.

In their book Great by Choice, Jim Collins and Mortin T. Hansen give a side-by-side comparison of the two men and their expeditions. They were very different, and they had very different results. Here’s some of their findings:

Roald Amundsen		Robert Scott
• Methods: Learned proven methods from the Eskimos.		• Methods: Used methods that were not fully tested like “motor sledges.”
• Preparation: Rigorously prepared for his expedition by training and even experimenting with “raw dolphin meat.”		• Preparation: Did not prepare well during the years approaching the journey.
• Tools: Used dogs in the Antrarctic.		• Tools: Brought ponies which to do not work well in freezing conditions.
• Disaster Ready: Prepared for unseen events with food, by using flags, and even by bringing extra thermometers.		• Disaster Ready: Did not use flags to remember the way back, didn’t have large amounts of extra food, only brought one thermometer.
• Steady Progress: Averaged 15.5 miles/day no matter what the weather was.		• Steady Progress: Would sometimes drive hard on good days and sit on bad days.

Even though they started the journey “within days of each other,” Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on December 15, 1911, 34 days earlier than Scott did on January 17, 1912.

In the end, God brought Amundsen and team back from his journey, but Scott and his entire team died frozen in Antarctica.

Great by Choice then gives an analysis of people whom the book terms “10Xers” or (“people who built the 10X companies”). The authors say that it is not the basic ideas of more or less creativity, vision, etc. that made some people stand apart but rather what the authors describe as “a triad of core behaviors: fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia. Animating these three core behaviors is a central motivating force, Level 5 ambition.”

God raises up men and sets them down. However, we are to use the gifts of mind, body, strength, and soul that God has given us to act with discernment and preparation.

Proverbs 22:3 says, “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.”

Half the miseries and disquietudes, half the interruptions of conjugal peace and domestic felicity, arise from desires too ardent, and hopes too sanguine; both parties, at their first entrance into the nuptial state, especially in youth, are apt to form to themselves ideas, very inadequate and disproportioned to the condition of human life; to entertain delusive notions of a romantic and visionary paradise, where the earth is cloathed with perpetual verdure, the flowers never fade, and the fruits are immortal; but when instead of this, they begin, perhaps in a short time, to feel the thorns springing up under their feet, when they perceive the fruits to wither, and the verdure to decay, they are filled with unreasonable wonder and astonishment; they had accustomed themselves to look for nothing less than uninterrupted health, constant success, invariable harmony and affection; they suffer, therefore, not so much from the evil which they have, as from the want of that which they have not.  At the beginning of the voyage, the sky is generally clear, the waters calm and unruffled; but to conclude from thence that we are to fail through life without storm or tempest, is, to the last degree, absurd and unreasonable. It is the duty and the interest of both, therefore, and especially of him who sits at the helm, to prepare against the worst, to steer the vessel with all possible care and diligence, and conduct it safely into the harbor of peace and felicity. From, Sermons on the Relative duties, viz Introductory Sermon on Domestic Happiness, preached at Queen-Street Chapel, Rev Tho. Francklin, DD, Vicar of Ware in Hertfordshire and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty.  Printed for T. Davies, In Russel Street, 1770

There is nothing more important in the Christian life than the way in which we approach the Bible, and the way in which we read it. It is our textbook, it is our only source, it is our only authority…You can easily read [Paul’s] Epistles and be no wiser at the end than you were at the beginning because of what you have been reading into what Paul says, wresting them to your own destruction. Now that is something which we must always bear in mind with regard to the whole of the Bible. I can be seated with the Bible in front of me; I can be reading its words and going through its chapters; and yet I may be drawing a conclusion which is quite false to the pages in front of me.

There can be no doubt at all that the commonest cause of all this is our tendency so often to approach the Bible with a theory. We go to our Bibles with this theory, and everything we read is controlled by it…If you read half a verse and emphasize over-much some other half verse elsewhere, your theory is soon proved. Now obviously this is something of which we have to be very wary. There is nothing so dangerous as to come to the Bible with a theory, with preconceived ideas, with some pet idea of our own, because the moment we do so, we shall be tempted to over-emphasize one aspect and under-emphasize another.

D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959-60), 6-7.