This past Lord’s Day was Sanctity of Human Life Sunday in many Southern Baptist churches. Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is an annual observance among Southern Baptists of the sacredness of each and every human life. Contrary to evolution, which reduces human beings to just another primate, the Bible teaches that human life is sacred and distinct from other life; therefore, it is deserving of a dignity not reserved for the animals. Human life is sacred because it was created by God, bears the image of God and belongs to God (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 100:3). It is human life alone that God values so much as to share His breath with (Genesis 2:7: Job 33:4), make wonderful plans for (Psalm 139:13-16; Job 31:15; Isaiah 44:24) and give His Son to redeem (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10).

Ironically, the day after many Southern Baptists observed Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building to begin the confirmation hearings of President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Samuel Alito. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are already threatening a filibuster against Alito if he shows the least little inkling of antipathy toward the Supreme Court’s infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision—the Supremacists’ morally bankrupt ruling that dehumanized the unborn child and legalized abortion on demand. Although abortion cases account for less than 1 percent of the Supreme Court’s workload, a woman’s right to exterminate her unborn child is the untouchable political fetish of today’s Democratic Party. Anyone viewed as a threat to the continuing carnage of the unborn in America will be treated like the unborn; that is, they will be ripped and torn to pieces. However, it will not be by abortionists, but by liberal Democrats, left wing special interest groups and the mainstream media.

In fear of life and limb, today’s Republicans consistently cower and retreat in the fight for the unborn. Oh, they talk the talk, but repeatedly fail to walk the walk. The minute the shooting starts they run for cover, leaving only the unborn exposed to the deadly fire of the radical left. To date, no Republican senator or congressman has ever proposed on the Senate or House floor a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Why then do pro-life forces belief Republican politicians are good allies in the fight against abortion when they regularly prove themselves to be more concerned about their political fortunes and poll numbers than about protecting the lives of unborn children?

Thanks to the disingenuousness of one and the decadence of the other, both political parties in America share responsibility for the greatest mass murder in American history, namely, the 45 million children who have been aborted since the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion. Most Americans neither fathom nor care to face the extent of our unspeakable crime against the innocents. Sticking our heads in the sand, however, will not avert our falling into the hands of an angry God whose wrath is a most fearful thing (Hebrews 10:31).

Americans pad their consciences and cover their eyes from approaching divine retribution by pleading ignorance. The whole issue of abortion hinges on the question of when life begins. Since there is no uniform answer to this most important question, Americans deduce that it can only be properly decided in the arena of individual choice. As the Supreme Court has ruled, each expectant mother has the right to decide for herself whether the child she carries is a precious human life or just a blob of tissue that may be carelessly tossed into an abortion clinic dumpster. Given such drastic diversity of opinion on this most important matter, it is inferred that none of us have the right to impose our opinion on others. Thus, we can claim to be personally opposed to abortion, while at the same time doing nothing to prevent the bodies of the unborn from being piled up on abortion’s pyre. We can even pat our tolerant selves on the back as we stand idly by during our country’s continuous slaughter of future generations.

America foolishly believes that our diversity of opinion and feigned tolerance acquit us from all culpability in the greatest crime ever perpetrated against humanity. Yet, this supposed smokescreen is easily seen through by an all-seeing God (Hebrews 4:13). Our opinions about when life begins are indeterminate, since we are life’s mere recipients. What we have to say on the subject is not determinative of the issue. The sole determining factor is God Himself, since He is the Author and Sustainer of all life (Acts 17:25, 28). As the Giver of life, God alone determines its boundaries and defines its parameters. Anyone who disagrees with the divine definition of life and dares to redefine life themselves in order to terminate the life of another is inevitably susceptible to a fearful judgment at the hands of God, the very God whose place they’ve usurped and whose most sacred gift, the gift of life itself, they’ve taken from a fellow recipient.

When it comes to the question of when live begins, the Word of God provides us with a clear answer. Far from being ambiguous about life’s inception, the Bible leaves us with no doubt about the status of the unborn in the mind of God. For instance, Jeremiah says that before he was born God had already “sanctified” and “ordained” him to be “a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). The Psalmist praises God for “fearfully and wonderfully” forming and fashioning him “in [his] mother’s womb” from the moment of his conception (Psalm 139-13-16). And the Apostle Paul goes back even farther when he teaches that the elect were “chosen” in Christ “before the foundation of the world” to “be holy and without blame before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4). Amazingly, you and I were not only alive to God from the moment of conception, but we were on the mind of God before creation.

In the light of the Bible’s clear delineation of life’s inception, abortion is seen as the monstrous sin that it is. With the blood of 45 million sacred lives staining our hands, and the stain growing darker every year (1.5 million abortions annually), everyday (3,600 daily), every hour (151 hourly) and every second (1 every 24 seconds), how can we hope to escape the angry vengeance of aborted children’s avenging God? Like individuals who treat the blood of Jesus as an unholy thing, nations who treat the blood of the unborn as unsacred are also facing a “certain fearful…judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour [all] the adversaries” of God (Hebrews 10:27).

When you couple the 45 million abortions performed in this country with the millions of others performed elsewhere in our world, you cast Christ’s claim that the Kingdom of God is filled with little children in a brand new light (Matthew 19:14). Furthermore, when one remembers the killing of Hebrew babies by Pharaoh at the time of Moses’ birth and the killing of Bethlehem’s babies by Herod at the time of Christ’s birth, one becomes aware of the fact that the slaughter of the innocents may serve as a prelude to divine dispensations. Well, they’re killing the babies again. Thus, one cannot help but wonder about the imminence of Christ’s return and the nearness of God’s judgment upon a Christ’s rejecting, sanctity of life trampling world.