Eleanor Bader of RH Reality Check has become aware of Operation Save America’s States of Refuge campaign. The RH Reality Check website is one of the hubs promoting abortion and the homosexual agenda, defiling our land and invoking God’s wrath upon our nation. Most of Bader’s article on States of Refuge then turned into a scathing review of the DVD we produced last year, The Abortion Matrix (see below).
I am often encouraged when the self-proclaimed enemies of God and take notice of what we are doing on the pro-life front. God’s precious creation, the imago Dei, or the “image of God,” is hated by His enemies simply for the reason that the existence of a Sovereign King over all creation threatens human autonomy. This simple truth explains why the Personhood of the unborn is so fiercely attacked by the Godless. The Apostles of the New Testament faced opposition from both the civil and religious authorities of their day. Their declaration that “Jesus is Lord” brought the early church into conflict with both the Jewish leaders and the pagan Roman officials.
The same pattern has held true throughout the ages.
William Booth, the British preacher who founded the Salvation Army, faced this kind of persecution. In the beginning, the Salvation Army was a church body formed along the lines of a paramilitary structure. Anyone involved in evangelism, pro-life efforts or Christian reformation ministries of any type ought to study the early history of the Salvation Army. This was a church dedicated to eliminating poverty and vice of all types. Booth was responsible for exposing to the public the underground trafficking of young girls into sex slavery that reached an epidemic proportion in England in the late 1800s. I am convinced that if Booth were alive today, he’d be at the forefront of the pro-life movement.
Although the Salvation Army is held in great esteem today as the largest charitable organization in the world, the evangelistic zeal of the early movement was opposed by the press, churches and the politicians alike. The Church of England was extremely hostile to The Salvation Army. One prominent politician went so far as to describe Booth as the “Anti-Christ. The press was hostile to The Salvation Army as well because their methods and message were widely misinterpreted. There was also suspicion about the Salvation Army’s motives, with Booth often portrayed as a charlatan only out to make money.
So there is really nothing new under the sun.But even if the newspapers of that day were scornful of Booth’s campaigns, he could see that any publicity – even bad publicity – would bring more people to his meetings and the pure message of the Gospel would win out.
This is why we can rejoice when God’s enemies – even those who suppose themselves to be religious people – mock, ridicule and oppose us. No effective Christian reform movement has begun without a great deal of persecution. We cannot be successful in stopping abortion unless we first are ready to lose our reputations and even literally die for the cause of Christ.
– continued
The same day that the review of The Abortion Matrix appeared in RH Reality check, Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, which is a much bigger deal with a Manhattan office and a print magazine, now wants to review the DVD. Understanding that bad publicity from God’s enemies is good publicity, I gladly sent her a copy.
Please agree with us in prayer that God uses their opposition, as David wrote in Psalm 7 speaking of God’s enemy, as “mischief that shall return upon his own head” (v. 16).
Here is Eleanor Bader’s take on the national States of Refuge campaign and The Abortion Matrix DVD.
STOKING FIRE: Extremist Anti-Choice Groups Plan Five-State Assault
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/03/01/stoking-fire-anti-choice-activists-have-begun-to-uniteBy Eleanor Bader
The fanatical fundamentalists are at it again. Not to be outdone by Catholic bishops clamoring for ever-increasing fetal protections, Flip Benham’s Operation Save America has teamed up with Go Stand Speak, LifeLink, Jeremiah Cry Ministries, Personhood USA, and Repent America to make five states-Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming-abortion “refuges.”
The five were chosen because each has just one reproductive health clinic. What’s more, the campaign to make these states abortion-free will link grassroots activism-raucous picketing, complete with billboard-sized pictures of bloody body parts—with a media crusade geared to maligning those who support freedom of choice.
According to OSA’s website, the groups will return to Jackson Hole, Wyoming from May 16th to 20th and will visit Little Rock, Arkansas from September 12th to 16th and Jackson, Mississippi from November 7the to 11th. They’ll also be in Charlotte, North Carolina during the Democratic National Convention, July 21st to 28th. As of this writing, both North and South Dakota appear to have been spared a direct appearance from OSA activists.
But lest you write off these protests as same-old/same-old, please know that they’re not. OSA’s latest effort comes with a newsworthy difference—scope. The group has not only done outreach to legislators in each targeted state, they’ve also contacted 950 evangelical churches to solicit financial and on-the-ground support.
Their appeal to largely African-American congregations included a copy of Maafa 21, a 137-minute documentary produced by Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics Inc. in 2009. The film presents abortion and birth control as central components of a Caucasian plot to annihilate people of color; it further lambasts Planned Parenthood as a purveyor of racism and hatred of the poor. Predominantly white churches received The Abortion Matrix a 10-part, 195-minute film, released in 2011, that posits the reproductive justice movement as a satanic cult comprised of witches and goddess worshippers.
While I have no idea who bankrolled this undertaking, the missive that accompanied the DVDs – signed by Benham and OSA Assistant Director Rusty Thomas – is clearly meant to rev up the fire-and-brimstone set. The Civil War took 630,000 lives, it begins, as payback for slavery.
“What do you think the toll will be when God Almighty demands an accounting for all the innocent blood that America has shed since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision,” the letter asks.
Released to coincide with the 39th anniversary of the Roe decision, the letter came at a time of such intense anti-feminist backlash that even the most absurd anti-woman pronouncements seem capable of gaining traction. And rest assured, the just-released Abortion Matrix is nothing if not absurd. The more than three-hour long narrative takes swipes at supposedly anti-Christian lawmakers and leaders, among them Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Barack Obama, and Margaret Sanger – but saves its most shrill condemnation for clinic workers, AKA members of Wiccan religious orders.
“Witchcraft is endemic to the abortion industry,” narrator Eric Holmberg declares. “It is a key component in a vast conspiracy in the tradition of paganism.”
Luminaries of the feminist spirituality movement including Starhawk, Zsuzsanna Budapest, and Ginette Paris are slammed, not only as man-haters, but also as proponents of infanticide. As the film unfolds the kind of music typically heard in campy horror flicks envelops the viewer. Throughout, Holmberg describes a litany of evil. Looking the viewer straight in the eye, it’s as if he wants to share a dastardly secret. Yes, he assures viewers, the goddess Aphrodite demands child sacrifice-or, in today’s parlance, abortion. Close-ups of a Florida clinician’s bumper sticker-In Goddess We Trust-is, he says, proof of this phenomenon.
Abigail Seidman, the daughter of a Midwestern clinic worker turned anti-abortion activist, is trucked out as the star witness. Clinic employees, she rails, are heathens who see abortion as a necessary rite of passage. Among her more inane assertions: Each spring, several staffers at an unnamed health center intentionally become pregnant so that they can have abortions. This, she reports, is meant to appease the blood lust of the female deities these vixens worship.
Yes, that’s really what she says.
Toward the end of The Abortion Matrix a section called “Defeating Jezebel” reveals the filmmaker’s political intent: Activating the fundamentalist base to stop abortion by whatever means.
“Without out-and-out spiritual warfare, what are our chances for victory where one million children are sacrificed each year?” Holmberg bellows. The imperative to act is boosted by an injunction to “heavenize the world … Deliver blows as hard as we can hit … Nothing but forked-lightning Christians will count,” he concludes.
You can imagine Benham’s glee at seeing The Abortion Matrix. In fact, its presentation of God-fearing Christians battling Godless baby-killers underscores the message he’s been delivering for 35 years. Furthermore, by sending copies to churches and legislators he’s made clear that he sees the film as a useful tool in the campaign to make some states abortion free.
Whether fundamentalists will take Matrix – or, for that matter, Maafa 21 – seriously or laugh it off the screen is hard to predict. That said, Vicki Saporta, CEO and President of the National Abortion Federation, believes that Benham’s efforts are a direct violation of his current legal status.
“This effort is obviously meant to intimidate abortion providers so that they will stop providing care to women,” she begins. “It flies in the face of Benham’s 18-month probation which began in August 2011. At that time the judge ordered him to curtail his intimidating behavior.”
NAF is presently investigating this possible infraction. Meanwhile, if anyone knows how to turn antis into frogs, this seems like the perfect moment to cast a spell.
Five Life Changing DVDs
I’ve known several full-time ministers who were called to the pro-life battle as a result of watching Massacre of Innocence. States of Refuge distributed 1000 copies of the update to Massacre called The Abortion Matrix. It’s our prayer that the new version, which is a much improved, remade presentation with lots of additional material, will have the same impact that Massacre of Innocence did 25 years ago.
Please take a moment and click on the “more information” links and watch a few clips from these world-changing videos.
- Jay Rogers
Director, The Forerunner
See more DVDs like these at www.forerunner.com/store/store.html
