As a grade school Student each morning I joined fellow classmates in standing with my right hand held over my heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance followed by prayer. Part of that pledge includes “One Nation Under God”. At this point in time a very distinct line has been “drawn in the sand” making it evident for all those with eyes to see and ears to hear all over the world that The United States of American is no longer the nation our pledge claims to be. Even the “In God We Trust” imprinted and/or pressed onto our money is an empty claim of an exponentially increasing number of “self-proclaimed patriots”. The reversal of Roe verses Wade is not just about a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body nor is it about the rights of the unborn. Abortion has a much deeper root. It is a rejection of God Almighty and His standards. Make no mistake He will respect any choice we make, but there will be consequences. Each and every individual ever born will have a face-to-face meeting with God and be held accountable for the choices made.

There is a Heaven and a Hell. Noone will be in either one without making a choice to reside there. Keep in mind that there are forces of evil that are very active in an unseen realm very aggressively involved with our lives providing plenty of options for our consideration to make our choices seem “logical” and they even attempt to convince us they are official representatives of GOD! So why doesn’t God simply pick those HE would desire to share heaven with and bring an end to all this madness going on in the world today? To put it in far too simple terms HE wants men and women that choose to be with HIM by choice. To freely choose and follow HIM as citizens of Heaven here on earth. To be frank if we do not follow HIM here on earth, we will not follow Him anywhere.

As followers of Jesus, we are told in Matthew 28: (19) “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Abortion is not new to mankind. Jer. 1:5 records how God knew the prophet before he was formed in his mother’s womb. I contend that God Almighty is well capable and aware of who we are before being formed in our mother’s womb as well. Also given the attempt of mankind to allow for post birth abortion that we are no different than the cult practices of those who worshiped the “god” of Pan during the time of Jesus at Cesarea Phillipi at the headwaters of the Jordan River. A place my wife and I visited in 2,000, the place where Peter answered our Lord’s question about “who do you say I am?”

1 Corinthians chapter 14 deals with doing things decently and in order including Paul’s proclamation that women should remain silent.

James 1: 22- 25 states, “But be doers of the message and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves, because if anyone is hearer of the message and not doer, this one is like someone staring at his own face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. But the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues to do it, not being a forgetful hearer but a doer who acts, this one will be blessed in what he does.”

Without freewill choice we would be “mindless robots”. Almighty God does not want robots, instead HE requires that those who would spend eternity with HIM must do so by choice and then follow through with obedience to HIS laws. Like the person who looks in the mirror and then walks away without doing anything. That person has decided to take no action.

The law of liberty may be illustrated in a personal experience with an encounter of myself and two other friends when we picked up two hitchhikers that had the undeniable appearance of late 1970’s “Hippies”. My friends and I were hoping to share some pot with them in hopes of getting to share some of they might have, assuming their dress style would match our stereotype of them. As I rolled a joint, lit and pulled the first toke and then passed it to the first one in he took it and passed it to his friend who again passed it on without taking a hit.

When I asked why they passed the joint on the answer came without hesitation, “We don’t want any. Go ahead, don’t let us stop you. Jesus set us free. It’s not about being “against our religion” we just don’t want any.”

John 8: 31-37 “Then Jesus said… if the son sets you free, you will truly be free…”

In today’s world there are those that have life threatening addictions with family members and other acquaintances intervening with multiple agencies and treatment centers in hopes of establishing a socially acceptable lifestyle for the addict. Most fail. Some find a more acceptable addiction to replace the “high” all addicts seek to maintain, but in the end it still an addiction. The only freedom there is comes from Jesus.

Isaiah 61: 1 “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because Yahweh has anointed me, he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and liberation to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor…”

In the early part of Jesus’s ministry, he announced after reading the above verse that, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Who are the captives or those bound referred to in the verse of Isaiah? In the spiritual warfare raging around those of us engaged in making disciples as defined in what we call the great commission I would submit that addicts come to mind as primary “prospects”.

“Our mission, should we decide to accept it”, using the Mission Impossible cliche is to tell the captives and those who are bound that Jesus came to set them FREE. Should we choose not to follow Jesus and walk away from looking in the mirror of the law of liberty our path will automatically take us into the enemy “hive” or “collective” to use Star Trek language. Another way to say it might be even more familiar with the “Borg” claim, “You will be assimilated, resistance is futile”.

Luke 19: 10 “For the son of man came to seek and to save those who are lost.”

The temple will be rebuilt, and sacrifices will be in progress before the abomination of desolation can be fulfilled. Is the Anti-Christ aggressively violent against the followers of Christ? Or is he presenting himself as Jesus himself?