Part II- The Birth Pains
Recently I wrote a series on the fetal research industry, which explained where a lot of aborted babies ended up—in a research lab. However, there is more to it than that. Those lab remains, as well as the babies not used in research, have to be disposed of properly (or should be). As the news this year has been flooded with earthquakes and the oil spill, devastating the land and seas, I began to look at the biblical consequences of bloodshed upon a land. If the spiritual and the natural meet, what could that look like?
Technically, the remains of the baby are disposed of as organic medical materials or medical waste. While we have heard stories such as the babies in a river in China and other horrific examples, there is allegedly a protocol, which involves incineration. I realize this sounds horrifying. It should because it is.
The Bible has much to say about bloodguilt. Leviticus 17:14 says “…for the life of all flesh is its blood.” God tells Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). The Lord clearly says that a land that sheds innocent blood is accountable. And while many like to dismiss it as Old Testament law, the fact is, Jesus says in Luke 11:50 “that the blood of all the prophets which was shed from the foundation of the world may be required of this generation.” Matthew 24 details the coming trials upon the earth, and Revelation details 21 judgments that are to come. But most striking to me is Numbers 35:33 which says: “So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.”
A horrifying picture of this emerged for me as I read this article. In part, it describes this sickening scene:
… in Aurora, Colorado, where former owner-operator Dr. James J. Parks, M.D., reached what one had thought was the nadir of disposal practices: grinding buckets full of 15 to 22 weeks’ gestation babies through a hand-cranked, old-fashioned meat grinder until they took the consistency of "multiple tubes of pink toothpaste," able to be flushed down sink drains.
Facts like this make it easy to see how literal words like “bloodshed pollutes the land” really are. Further, the way that medical research waste is supposed to be disposed of generally involved incineration, but this is not without controversy:
The concern that environmental groups have with incinerating medical waste arises because one of the byproducts is dioxin, "one of the most dangerous substances known to man" according to a February interview with Karen Perry of Physicians for Social Responsibility in New York. "We call it a persistent pollutant because it builds up in the body fat of animals. It’s been called a human carcinogen,” she said. (source)
Indeed, dioxins are a devastating pollutant with a damaging history. If bloodshed produces dioxins, then bloodshed pollutes the land, literally, as well as spiritually. Whether flushed down drains, dumped in the garbage, or burned, it doesn’t take a science whiz to realize that there are mass implications of 52 million babies being transformed from child-with-value to human carcinogen. Even the average 4th grader would realize this can’t be good for a land.
One of the judgments of God I have spent a lot of time studying is earthquakes, simply because I lived through a rather large quake and experienced the terror that comes with being jolted to the reality that even the ground is not stable. As I study scripture on bloodguilt with theories on earthquakes the parallels strike me. Before you accuse me of being like the Muslim cleric or being insensitive, consider some facts.
Earthquakes are the great scientific mystery. No one really can explain them, though there is some knowledge. Predicting them is rare, though it’s actually happened in history. And common denominators don’t tell a whole lot. But a couple of the factors scientists find in quakes stir me as I study what God says about a land polluted with innocent blood.
In his academic research book, The Next New Madrid Earthquake: A Survival Guide for the Midwest, William Atkinsondiscusses a couple theoriesabout quakes, such as dilatancy, when bulges of pressure build up within the earth and, essentially, the earth explodes. He also talks about the common denominators before earthquakes, such as clear water becoming murky and a “strong noxious odor, not unlike sulphur, like gas seeping from the ground” (59).He goes on to discuss studies where researchers tried to create quakes to see what triggered them, and cites the US Army in 1962 which tried injecting contaminated wastewater from nerve gas into the ground and found that “pressurized waste water had triggered disturbances”(60). So chemical pollutants are a common denominator in earthquakes. We can’t predict them much, but we can find this link.
While earthquakes are only one of the ways in which God judges a land, they are a significant one. John Wesley, in 1730, wrote a sermon called “The Cause and Cure of Earthquakes,” in which he lays forth that God does judge the land through earthquakes. That doesn’t mean that every quake is a direct judgment of God, and it doesn’t indicate that abortion is the cause of that judgment, but, likewise, we would be in denial to ignore the fact that the land is polluted with the blood of the unborn and this will bring judgment. Clearly, one of the modes God uses is earthquakes, as demonstrated in Revelation, more than once (Rev. 6:12-13, Rev. 16:18). And what’s more a picture of the earth responding to what’s in it. The earth is the Lord’s and all of its fullness (Ps. 24:1); it’s not separate from God; it’s part of Him.
We often see the land as some natural substance and the spirit realm as another, but they are all God’s. And what we do with the land matters, something we see clearly in the natural picture of the oil spill in the Gulf. Bloodshed, fetal remains obtained through murder, pollutes a land and that blood cries out from the ground (Gen. 4:10).
So what happens to a land that kills its innocent babies, uses them as lab research and incinerates them into our ground? If this literally creates toxins, then it’s not a far reach to imagine that a land that has absorbed 37 ½ years of toxins could have adverse natural reactions that could trigger other environmental disasters?
As I’ve read the oil spill reports, I’ve noticed it’s been called the most catastrophic “man-made disaster,” but if that’s the case, we have to include the pollution of the land due to abortion as the same. If the literal results of abortion are to dispose of toxins and gases into the land, and the now the oil spill is emitting its own toxins and gases, we can see Romans 8:22 come to life:
“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”
Few would disagree that we are in the Matthew 24 season of birth pangs. Indeed, it’s almost possible to see the earth itself groaning for His return.
Next up, signs of the times in groaning for His return.
Click here to read Part 1.
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