May 1, 305 AD, the most powerful
man in the world, Emperor Diocletian, stepped down from ruling Rome, only two
years after he had begun a systematic persecution to exterminate Christianity. Diocletian forbade worship, burned
books, arrested clergy and demanded pagan sacrifices. From Europe to North Africa, thousands were persecuted and
martyred.
Suddenly, Diocletian was struck
with a painful intestinal disease and resigned. Eight years later Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of
Christians.
In the fourth century, a monk
thought he heard God telling him to go to Rome. He followed a crowd into the Coliseum and saw the gladiators.
He realized they were going to
fight to the death. He cried out,
“In the Name of Christ, stop!” He made
his way through the crowd and climbed the wall into the arena.
As he was pleading with the
gladiators, one of them plunged his sword into his body. His last words were, “In the Name of
Christ, stop!”
Suddenly the gladiators stood looking
at this tiny form. In dead silence, everyone left.
That was the last battle in the
Coliseum. One tiny voice saying, “In
the Name of Christ, stop!” We should
be saying that today.
We can only hope and pray that with the recent disclosures
about Planned Parenthood’s practices that even those that do not believe in the
Creator of this world or his moral requirements will silently stand up and walk
out of the abortion/choice coliseum.
If ultrasound pictures showing what is going on in the womb and the casual/trivial
way the remains of the unborn are discussed is not enough to convince someone
to rethink their position on this issue, I am scared to think…….what would it
take?
When we found the German concentration camps, the horrors
they forced on millions that were an inconvenience to them and the uses they
made of their body parts supposedly in some cases for medical research, we asked
ourselves how could any civilized people do these things? I believe a day will come in which the
same question will be asked of our culture. How could they have killed millions
of unborn children and sold their body parts? But what also concerns me is that God will ask some
Christians why they were in the coliseum of death and gave tacit if not overt
approval to what was being done.
In Christ,
Shawn and Ann
P.S. Regardless
of your beliefs in this area, Ann and I are committed to loving you and praying
for you; we are both just sinners saved by grace and we believe in supporting
women that need help in having and raising their children instead of aborting
them. We do not believe in condemning anyone who has had an abortion. They deserve love and support just as
much as anyone else.
