The Resurrection of The… Death Culture
By Malcolm E Baker

We have just passed the season where Christendom celebrates the period of Christ’s Crucifixion. In this God made, God purposed event man has an eternal hope of salvation and peace with God. The Work of the Cross has been described as the Death of death. In today’s world of natural disasters, earthquakes, convulsions and convolutions we are living in a time of spiritual turmoil and decay. Today we are seeing that Western Civilization is retreating from a Christian-rooted culture of life to the pagan culture of death of pre-Christian Rome, and that we are experiencing a resurrection of death. We are seeing this in the various “mercy-killings” and the rise of the euthanasia culture in a growing number of European nations including Britain. We see it in the right-to-choose attitude towards abortion and the mindless way that life is treated in our deadly throw-away society, where the intricately complex human life being knit together in its mother’s womb is nothing more than a disposable piece of trash. The foetus is considered to be sub-human and an unnecessary inconvenience to one’s purpose of getting on and enjoying life. In our disposable society life itself is disposable. More often than not the killings are carried out by medical professionals under the rule of law made by professional politicians who regard themselves above the Law; that is the Law of God the Author of Life who has ordained that there should be no shedding of innocent blood. From abortion on demand, to a right to die, to a right to suicide in Holland, to involuntary euthanasia in the old folks homes on the old and dying continent of Europe, to America's death sentence for Terri Schiavo, the West advances steadily toward its own death. Someone has said that ‘As we find more and more justifications for ending life, we also find that not one Western nation has a native-born population that is growing. All are dying. Before century's end, the West ends, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "Not with a bang, but a whimper."’ While we are busy killing we are also ensuring and laying the foundation for our own demise.

Its all been done before

In 1942, just as German mental patients were being finished off, Dr. Foster Kennedy wrote his recipe for death in the official publication of the American Psychiatric Association. "Parents who have seen the difficult life of a crippled or feebleminded child must be convinced that though they have the moral obligation to care for the unfortunate creatures, the wider public should not be obliged ... to assume the enormous costs that long-term institutionalisation might entail."

Terri Schiavo, on orders from the court has been deprived of food and water for many days at the time I am writing this. She is still alive but is being denied the right to live. Many years after she fell into her coma, her husband suddenly remembered that Terri didn't want to live. There is no written will, no signature, and no directive. It is the word of one man who wants to get on with his life ... against the silence of one woman whose life hangs in the balance. The outcome of this situation will be a tsunami of death; a tidal wave that will race around the world. And like children with a new box of paints we will paint pretty pictures of death by force. It will be quiet. It will be compassionate. It will be merciful. But mostly, it will be profitable

Egypt’s Book of The Dead

"I have put before you today life and death, and you shall choose life." Dt 30:19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 2Ki 18:32 until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death!

God’s word and principle proved true as He led Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt and through the Red Sea. The Israelites obeyed God and crossed the sea into life, the Egyptians chose to go against God by choosing death, and died in the sea. Egyptian civilization was steeped in death. Its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, its very symbols, the pyramids, were gigantic tombs. We see this preoccupation and culture of death being exhibited through today’s Islamic terrorists.

Responsibilities of Guardianship

The husband of Terri Schiavo is her legal guardian, but sadly her medical records show that he may not have had her best interests at heart. It appears her teeth were not cleaned and five of her teeth had to be extracted.

A report states that Mr Schiavo melted down her wedding and engagement rings to make a new ring for himself. And Mr Schiavo now has a relationship with another woman by whom he has two children.

After Mrs Schiavo collapsed in 1990, her husband sued for medical malpractice and claimed that he wished to secure resources so that he could care for her for the rest of her natural life. The court awarded Michael Schiavo $300,000 for loss of companionship and awarded Mrs Schiavo around $700,000.

The report in The Times states that Mr Schiavo’s conduct since then does not suggest that he has exerted himself to provide the duty of care that he was awarded money to ensure. A year after winning his case on the basis that he wished to nurse his wife, he refused to allow doctors to prescribe antibiotics for a serious infection. In contrast to the position he held when suing for compensation, Mr Schiavo argued that his wife would not wish to live in her disabled condition. Had she died, Mr Schiavo would have inherited her $700,000.

Terri Schiavo’s parents, who oppose her husband’s desire to see her dead, have offered to take on themselves the burden of providing her future care. Mr Schiavo once barred them from even seeing her. And now that her death — at the time of writing — looks to be imminent, thanks to the court’s decision to back Mr Schiavo and deny her nutrition, her parents have had their wish for a Catholic burial overruled.

Michael Gove said in his report in The Times: “It is because I believe that tradition still has much to teach us that I am troubled by the fate of Terri Schiavo. She requires no life-support system to survive, she breathes unaided and needs no technology to perform any bodily function. She is brain-damaged, not brain dead. The sole outside intervention in her life is the provision of food and water by tube. Now that intervention has been stopped, at the request of her husband, she will slowly die of dehydration and starvation.

Even those found guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of capital crimes in Florida at least have the right to a speedy execution. But while there is still reasonable doubt about Terri Schiavo’s wishes she is condemned to a lingering death.

You do not, I say again, have to believe that God plays any part in the affairs of Man to see that something big has been forgotten in this case.”

Who would you say are the ones that have Terri’s best interests at heart, her parents or her husband? In the Old Testament, King Solomon ruled that the mother who had been willing to give up her baby to the woman who had kidnapped the child rather than see the baby cut in half should have the child. Who do you think Solomon would have found for in this case? What does your answer say about the world and society today? The answer is not the end of the story. The God who purposed the Cross did so to bring in a whole new creation, “Behold I make all things new.” Rev 21:5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. 2Pe 3:13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. Rev 21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. Rev 22:7 Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book. Rev 22:12 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. 2Pe 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness

Occult and New Age origins of the death movement

Evidence is growing in the US that will expose the entire, ever-enlarging death movement of which most Americans are not yet aware.

The issue will expose the movement's bizarre occult and New Age underpinnings, physician-assisted suicide, the increasingly common euthanizing of newborn babies in Scandinavia, and much more – including abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and other aspects of the life issue. It's literally a "life-and-death" issue, and promises to go far beyond previous journalistic explorations.

We must be alert to what is happening in our world. We are being conditioned to accept the culture of death. Some years ago people would have abhorred what is happening today with abortion and with euthanasia. Today we involve ourselves in it with hardly a thought. We are brainwashed into believing that evil is good and good is evil. Why save a life when you can take one? It is more blessed to take than to give – unless what you are giving is to cause death! Jesus came to give life – Jn 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. It is no wonder that our laws today come down on the side of the criminal while the victim ends up in prison. We are aiding and abetting the thief. It is the doctrines of the thief that kills the unborn, the elderly and the infirm and we are allowing this to happen.

In Britain, a change in the law on euthanasia has been stymied by the imminent general election and a Lords committee split down the middle report by the select committee set up to examine Lord Joffe’s Bill – which aimed to legalise assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia for those in the last months of a terminal illness – has concluded that there is no time for it in the present parliamentary session. But it called for a debate on the report and said that, if a similar Bill comes up in the next session, it should go straight to a committee of the whole House.

Supporters of euthanasia welcomed the conclusion. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society described it as “a momentous day for terminally ill patients who want greater choice”.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who chaired the Lords committee, hinted that a Bill permitting assisted suicide – where the doctor provides a lethal prescription and the patient makes the choice over whether to take it — had a better choice of success than one that also legalises voluntary euthanasia, where the doctor is responsible for both prescribing and administering the fatal dose. Lord Joffe’s Bill would have made both procedures legal, subject to stringent conditions. The patient would have to be terminally ill, mentally competent and suffering “unbearably”. If assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia were treated separately, Parliament would have the option of choosing one, both, or neither. The report estimates that, were assisted suicide to be legal in Britain, it might involve about 650 deaths a year. Voluntary euthanasia might involve as many as 13,000 deaths, if the law in the Netherlands is a guide. In fact, the figures would be lower if the Bill applied only to England and Wales, as Lord Joffe has proposed.

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a Professor of Palliative Medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine, rejected a claim by the Voluntary Euthanasia Society that the report was a green light for a change in law.

“The more we heard, the more concerned I became,” she said. “To make killing a therapeutic option is crossing a Rubicon. So much depends on the quality of palliative care — if it is poor, patients are thrown into despair, but if it is good, they are empowered and can have a good quality of life.”

RIGHT TO DIE

As many as 15,000 people a year could kill themselves in assisted suicides if the euthanasia laws are changed, it has been claimed. Charlotte Vincent, a Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship spokeswoman, said: “The experience in the Netherlands (where more than 1,000 patients are killed by doctors each year without their consent) demonstrates that progression to involuntary euthanasia is a real danger if the law is changed.”

A retired Baptist minister plagued by debilitating insulin-dependent diabetes, bowel and skin cancer has called for the legalisation of euthanasia.

Rev Geoffrey Morris, 74, said: “A soldier in battle confronted with a colleague dying in agony from his wounds is almost morally obliged to shoot him or leave him with a loaded gun to shoot himself.

“Yet dying patients can’t expect of doctors engaged in the same battle for health a merciful end to their agony. There is something wrong here. Even suffering animals are humanely dispatched.”

Suggestions that euthanasia should be legalised were condemned by the Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship.

After all that happened to the disabled Florida woman, particularly in the final weeks of her life, Sproul feels the Church in America needs to wake up and recognize the serious threat to life and liberty that is operating in the very midst of the nation's system of government.

“I think it's time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence again,” the theologian says. "We have some serious problems with the fundamental structure of government in the United States, and there need to be some serious changes. And my prayer is that this is what happens." ;

“We have an ethical crisis in this country, one that's not going to go away, with respect to the sanctity of human life."

The Christian author and minister believes the manner of Terri Schiavo's death reflects changes that have taken place in American culture since the 1960s. He notes, "Many years ago, Harold Lindsell described American culture after the revolution of the 60s as a 'neo-pagan culture.' I think now what Terri Schiavo's death marks is the transition to a neo-barbarian culture."

Barbarians, according to various encyclopaedia sources, are defined by sociologists as those social parasites who prey upon civilization, sometimes enslaving others or looting and plundering, in order to survive at others' expense. And according to Sproul, America's "civilization" is beginning to look more and more like that.

"I think that's where we are," the minister says. "We've become barbarians, because what we've just witnessed is the wilful starving and dehydration of a living human being." And lamentably, he adds, even many Christians believed it was right for the state to sanction the brain-damaged Florida woman's death.

Sproul says the Church needs to rise to the occasion of this crisis and fulfil its role as the conscience of the nation, before it is too late. He is urging Christian citizens to take a stand against euthanasia – against the barbaric "culture of death" that threatens to overwhelm the mainstream America's ethical sensibilities.

The death-wish has gripped the Western world. If Christians will not stand against these doctrines of hell in the here and now we will have to explain the reason why in the here-after. Source: Pointers Magazine May 2005

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