God fires a shot across the bow of America

Editors Note:  The ability to speak in front of a crowd is a common gift for many of us, but there  is a ceratin class of oratory skill and delivery that is a rare gift indeed.  Dr. Alan Keyes has that gift.  It is one thing to read the speech he gave in front of several hundred physicians at a conference in Colorado Springs in the fall of 1997, it is quite another to hear it on tape.

I believe that at this juncture in our history, the Lord God has raised up a modern day voice in the wilderness to deliver a God ordained message to America.

Time, our time, our national time, is fast running out...

I urge you to share the below speech with family and friends at the very least.  Better yet, obtain the audio copy, make copies and send them to people you know.

Focus on the Family, Thursday, November 20, 1997

Mike Trout:  The power of radio is its ability to create a theater of the mind; to, with the proper set-up and audio, put you the listener in a particular setting, and allow you to vicariously share in a special event.

Well, today on Focus on the Family we're going to seat you at a closing dinner for our Physicians Conference, which just ended recently.  I wish wecould introduce you to the doctors at your imaginary table, but there's just not time. Perhaps we can take care of that later.

Our host is psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson, and I'm Mike Trout.

Dr. Dobson:  As we announced at the end of the broadcast yesterday, Mike, we're going to let our listeners hear a message today that was recorded last Saturday night by Dr. Alan Keyes, that I believe is one of the most impassioned and powerful messages that I have ever heard -- especially the concluding portion that we're going
to hear tomorrow.

Mike Trout:  This was a speech given at the final banquet, during that Physicians Conference.  You know, I'm still hearing incredible comments in the hallways here at Focus at the Family, several days later, from those who participated in that final
event.

Dr. Dobson:  Mike, I don't know if the tape will convey it, but the audience that was there was stunned at the end of that speech.  And the Physicians Conference itself was ordained by God; I really believe that, Mike. Every speaker and every event just seemed to have some kind of divine ordination on it.  There were 800 physicians and there spouses here for four days.  We had to turn away 300 more.  We quit even
talking about it and advertising it back in August.  So there was an overwhelming response to this conference.  And as with other Physicians Conferences we have done, it wasn't designed to be a medical meeting; it was a conference for medical
families.  And it was, if I may say so, a powerful experience for everyone that was in attendance, because there were just tears at every event.  The presence of the Lord was just there, all week.

Mike Trout:  There was a tremendous amount of
prayer that went into this, and it's another
example of how the Lord does answer prayer.  We
prayed for months about the physicians and their
spouses who were going to come, and that the Lord
would meet them at their point of need.

Dr. Dobson:  That's true, Mike.  Getting back to
Dr. Alan Keyes.  What we've been describing is
kind of the background to that closing speech.
People were pretty wrung out by this time, because
there had been some incredible moments.  And he
delivered that final message in a way that I will
never forget.  And I'm looking forward to
listening to it again now, on tape, the first half
today, and the second half tomorrow.

Mike Trout:  Right.  Go ahead and take your seat,
down near the front, if you'd like, and listen.

================

Dr. Keyes:  I've been re-reading the account of
the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew.  Now, I've
got to tell you, I know He says His yoke is easy
and His burden is light, but (if) you really read
through this sermon with any kind of
understanding, you've got to ask yourself, every
now and again, "can we possibly live up to this?"
I don't know.  Because Christ, in spite of all the
talk you hear these days about, you know,
everybody wants to pretend that to be Christian is
to be a compromiser, and that that is the meaning
of compassion and forgiveness.

I don't see how you get that out of the Sermon on
the Mount.  I don't see one little iota of
compromise anywhere in there.  Not even a
scintilla of it, do I see.  I mean, He just comes
right out; and He speaks with great love, and with
great tenderness, but great, great clarity of
principle.  And He doesn't give one inch of the
truth.  He said, "let your light shine out before
men," He said.  "You do not light a lamp in order
to put it under a bushel basket; You light it in
order to put it on the lamp post, where it can
shine throughout the whole house."  Isn't that
right?

But I ask you today, how many Christian folks in
America do you think are putting the lamp up there
on the lamp post, and letting it shine throughout
this whole house?  I have a feeling that it may be
fewer than we think, because putting your lamp on
lamp posts in this country today can be
dangerous.  "If the light that is in you be
darkness":  and I'll tell you, the light in this
land is sure getting as dark as it can.  And that
darkness does not want lights on the lamp post.
They see you putting a light on the lamp post,
they're liable to string you up to that lamp post.

And we can see it going on in this country all the
time, good people who stand up in order to decry
the things that are wrong, point the way toward
the renewal of this nation's moral heart and
spirit, and no matter how pure their flame, there
are those striving every minute to snuff it out.
And so we live in a land where, in spite of
everything, in spite of all the deep faith, in
spite of the many prayers, the battle is still
swaying, like we don't know which way it's going
to go.

But I do wonder whether we are committed -- as
committed as we ought to be -- to actually taking
the power of that faith and making use of it so
save our land.   I don't know.  There are people
who seem to think that's not part of our
vocation.  As a matter of fact, I can remember one
-- I don't think I'll mention his name, because I
don't want to get into any sort of disputes and
spats. -- but I remember back, I think it was last
January, I was driving in and he was on the air.
This was in the midst of the season when usually
there are all kinds of things going on to promote
the pro-life cause, because of the anniversary of
Roe vs. Wade.  And this individual actually spent
several days on his radio ministry preaching along
the lines that Christians shouldn't get involved
in politics, shouldn't be involved in public life,
making the case that "well, the early Christians
were living in pagan times, far worse or at least
as bad as our own, and those were the times in
which the Apostle Paul wrote, and basically said
that everybody should just do their business, and
respect authority, and so forth and so on.

And I think that that kind of argument is leading
a lot of folks to stand back, to believe that it
is somehow not the work of our Christian hearts to
try to turn the power of faith into a healing
power for this nation's ills.  But I wonder:  can
that be true?  Part of the reason we think that
way is because we don't know who we are.  We do
not know who we are.

(transcriber's note:  I think the speech may have
been edited at this point, because of the somewhat
abrupt transition to the question of Caesar.)

Does it ever occur to anybody in this country to
ask who is Caesar here?  Who is Caesar in
America?  Who chooses the ministers?  Who decides
who is going to make the laws?  Who decides who
will have the power to put folks on the bench, and
decide in courts how those laws will be applied?
Who has that ultimate authority in our land?  Who
is it who is God's anointed, in a temporal sense,
to rule over this land that by His providence has
been raised up in the history of the world?  Who
is it?

It's us!  We, the people of the United States!
And what on earth makes us think that, at the end
of it all, He is going to judge us by just the
standard of Lazarus, and not by the standard of
David, and Solomon, and Saul?  We will stand
before the tribunal of God, and I think He's going
to weigh in the balance many things.  "I blessed
you abundantly," He will say.  "I don't know that
there has ever been a nation in the history of the
world more blessed than you folks were.  In every
crisis I was there, in My mercy, in spite of all
your sins -- raised you up in abundance and
prosperity.  So, what did you do with all that?  I
believe I sent My Son; He reminded you that of
those to whom much is given, much will be
required."

If we are indeed the Caesar, the Pharaoh, of this
land, we're not doing well.  Just compare yourself
to Pharaoh in the Bible.  You know the story of
Pharaoh.  He was the one that Moses went to, to
get the people of Israel out of their bondage in
Egypt.  Now, he was a tough customer; took a lot
of convincing.  You'll recall God had to send
plague after plague against Pharaoh.  One after
another after another, they came:  the frogs and
the blood and all kinds of terrible things that
were sent down upon Egypt.  And after every one of
them, what does the scripture tell us?  After
every one of those plagues, it tells us he kind of
trembled for a minute like he was going to do the
right thing, and then, it says, "and God hardened
Pharaoh's heart."  Isn't that what it says?  "And
God hardened Pharaohs' heart."  Plague number one
comes, "and God hardened Pharaoh's heart."  And
the blood, and the locusts, everything comes, "and
God hardened Pharaoh's heart."  Hardened Pharaoh's
heart so much, it must have been the hardest heart
in the Bible.

Does anybody here remember what it was that
finally broke Pharaoh's heart?  What was it, broke
that hardest heart in the Bible?  Smashed that
adamantine heart?  Even Pharaoh's heart.

The death of his first-born son, right?  One child
dies, and his heart is broken.  Now I want you to
reflect on something.  Pharaoh had his adamantine
heart broken because one child -- his first-born
son -- was killed.  How many of our sons and
daughters have been lost to us in the last
twenty-five years that the doctrine of abortion
has dominated in this country?  One?  Ten?
Hundreds?  You and I know:  it's not hundreds of
thousands, but tens of millions, of our sons and
daughters -- DEAD!  And still our heart is
hardened.

Now, you saw what God did to Pharaoh.  What do you
think is the judgment in store for us?

We read the story of the young lady in New Jersey,
who allegedly -- I have to say that, right? --
went out into a rest room at her prom, and there
delivered herself of a young child, which she is
said to have promptly slain.  She then went out
onto the dance floor and ordered up her favorite
tunes and danced the night away.  Now, you read
about that in the paper, you hear about it on the
news, and I am sure that many Americans profess to
be shocked:  "What a terrible person!  What a
hardening of the heart!"

And yet, and yet, even those of us who say we care
about these things -- think about it.  What do we
claim, then, as the most important issues that
face our country? --

"Stock market's going up!  Things must be doing
pretty well."

"The world's at peace!  We must be doing all
right."

"The jobless rate is holding steady, going down;
inflation isn't too bad."

"Our leaders come, and they talk to us about how
they are going to cut our taxes, and have more
money spent on the bridges and the roads and the
schools; and that's what really matters."

"And meanwhile, we can make a little more money at
the job, and we can build a better home; we can
get a better car, and things can be more
prosperous for new generations."

Are we not like that young girl?  Are we not going
out onto the dance floor of life, ordering up our
favorite tunes, while we dance on the grave of
millions of innocent dead?

This cannot go on.  This cannot go on.  Because
our God is a loving, compassionate, merciful God,
but as we can see from the scriptures, He has His
limits.  And today I believe that as a nation we
are right up next to the abyss.  Indeed, I believe
already we can see large portions of our people
falling into it. And yet we still act as if this
is not the most important challenge that we face.

I saw this the other day.  And I don't want to get
"political" or anything on you.  But I've got to
say, I watch what's going on in the country and I
do wonder.  There was an election recently.  I'm
going to talk about it not because I'm for this or
that candidate; It's over now, so we can't be
influencing it or anything.  But there's a lesson
in it.  There's a lesson in it.

Candidate was running for office.  Somebody who
had come in on a tax-cut platform.  Now, I should
preface this by saying that, if you know me then
you know that I have never seen or met a tax-cut
that I didn't like.  I'm all in favor of tax cuts;
I think they are great things.  Let people have
more of their own money, wonderful things will
happen in the country.  So if you are running on
tax-cuts, I'll be all for your.

This person ran on a tax-cut platform, in the
state of New Jersey, and got elected.  Now, this
person who got elected on this tax-cut platform
had let everybody know that she was pro-choice, as
they call it, -- pro-abortion, pro-death, in the
real parlance of things -- but in the name of
partisan this'es and that, and big tent
philosophies, and all kinds of other stuff, I
think a lot of folks, including a lot of folks who
are professedly moral conservatives, pro-life,
care about family issues, mobilized and said
"we'll support this person."

And then, in addition, they mobilized and elected
a legislature in the state of New Jersey that
passed a partial-birth abortion ban.  Now, I've
got to tell you, I do not consider support for a
partial-birth abortion ban to be any indication of
real pro-life sentiment.  It simply means that you
are not willing to be a heinous, and disgusting,
and repulsive extremist on this issue.  But that
is a step in the right direction.

So the legislature of New Jersey passes the
partial-birth abortion ban.  And this person who
had been elected Governor of New Jersey -- whose
initials are Christine Todd Whitman -- she then
proceeds to veto, as Mr. Clinton did at the
national level, this bill.

Now, in my opinion that is a very bad thing to do.
And it is very bad in a precise sense.  There
aren't that many things we do in this life, where
we know that what we have done is directly
responsible for the deaths of human beings.  As
physicians, you know this burden every now and
again.  People in our public life, except they
rise to the level of President or something, don't
usually know it.  But Christine Todd Whitman --
she knows it.  Because between the time she vetoed
that ban and the time the re-election campaign
took place in New Jersey, 540 children died under
the partial-birth abortion "procedure."  Hmm.

But this isn't the worst of it, though.  This
isn't the point of the story.  The point of the
story is that when she came up for re-election, a
whole group of folks -- some of whom I know well,
some of whom I think are true and sincere
champions of the pro-life cause and the moral
conservative cause -- they heard an argument being
made by folks that said, "well, you know, her
opponent is pro-abortion; she's pro-abortion;
nothing to choose between them; and therefore it's
okay to go in and support her -- because she was
for tax-cuts."

What is the matter with us?  What is the matter
with any of us?  I don't care what label we wear;
I don't care who we think we are.  But either we
are going to start to admit that the moral crisis
of this country is the topmost challenge we face,
the issue of life and death for this nation's
future, or we won't.  And if we are going to admit
it, then under no excuse whatsoever can we ever
countenance those who are willing -- not only to
embrace the culture of death -- but to stand as
its champions!  There is no partisan excuse for
that!

Mr. Kasich;

Mr. Engler;

Mr. Quayle;

Mr. Kemp;

Mr. Forbes;

Elizabeth Dole:

I don't know these people any more.  They may be
very nice people.  But you are not going to tell
me -- and I will not accept the view, and I hope
that decent-minded Americans won't accept the view
-- that we get to trade tax-cuts for innocent
lives.  I hope we won't accept the view that we're
going to be so grateful to politicians for giving
us access to our own money that we are willing to
take it covered with the blood of innocent babies.

I don't want it, at that price!  It is
unacceptable!

Dr. Keyes:  The very week that that election
occurred in New Jersey -- and I don’t think that
this was a coincidence -- there appeared an
article in the New York Times Magazine by a
gentleman named Steven Pinker.  It purported to be
a piece on why mothers kill their newborns.  And
when you read it through, it turned out to be a
piece on why it is really not possible to justify
legal sanctions against mothers who kill their
newborns.

It turned out to be a piece in which we see the
beginning of that ultimate stage of the doctrine
of death that underlies abortion -- the
de-humanization not just of the life in the womb,
but the life out of the womb, not to be referred
to now as "infants," but as "neonates."  And when
we kill them, we shall not call it "murder," we
shall call it "neonaticide."

Somebody's going to have to explain to me, one of
these days, why it is that we believe that it
changes something when we apply a label to it from
Latin or Greek.  What is the Latin word for
"infant"?  "Fetus"   Why does an infant cease to
be a human being because you call it a "fetus"?
Why does an infant just born, a newborn, cease to
be a baby because you call it a "neonate"?  And
why is the act of taking its life no longer murder
because you translate it into a dead language?

Dead language.  Dead baby.  Is this an equation?
I don't think so.

But this is what this man was up to.  And he
didn't do it in jest; he didn't present it as, you
know, a "modest proposal" that we are supposed to
think is extreme.  He even cited supposed evidence
that killing newborns is a deep-seated instinct,
and that practically the first idea any mother has
is to do away with her young.  Cited supposed
examples from our "anthropological record" and
"history" for this.

The reason I am dwelling on this article is
because I don't think things like this should be
taken lightly.  The danger we are in, in our
society now, is that some fellow like this writes
a piece like this in a supposedly respectable
journal of opinion, and that piece is read by some
judge -- say the judge in the Amy Grossberg case.
And, push comes to shove, that judge wants to find
some way to justify whatever perverse sentiments
may be grasping at his gut when he has to make
some key decision in that case, and he grabs this
rationale out of the New York Times in order to
show us how "difficult" it is to justify legal
sanctions against mothers who kill their newborns.

And in the context of the article, Mr. Pinker not
only talks about mothers who kill their newborns.
He talked about folks who had written, back in the
seventies, about what a great boon it would be to
humanity if parents had a little while to make up
their minds about their children.  Maybe a week or
two -- make sure everything turned out all right.
And during that "window," you would be able to
snuff out the life of your "neonate" without any
repercussions.

And now, it appears, we are going to have a debate
about it!  We are going to "discuss" whether
parents have the right to kill their children, and
at what stage it shall be tolerable.  And this is
not some other country, some other time.  This is
not some obscure unknown, writing in some journal
in the backwaters of our minds.  This is a serious
argument, in a supposedly serious elite,
establishment newspaper, presenting to us what I
am afraid is going to be the next awful stage of
our degeneracy.
 

=================

Mike Trout:  What a chilling spot to drop into a message.  This is Focus on the Family, and we are
sharing with you a presentation by former Ambassador Alan Keyes, given last Saturday night
here at this ministry to a group of physicians who were with us for several days during a conference,
a physicians conference -- over 800 physicians and their spouses joined us -- and we're only halfway
through this powerful presentation, as Alan leads us through the road map that has taken this nation
to such a heinous point in its history.

Dr.Dobson:  Mike, it shook me because it put into words everything I've been feeling.  I couldn't
articulate it that well.  And it just described my concern for my country.

It took me back, in fact, to the early 1970's, and on through the seventies and into the early eighties, when Dr. Francis Schaeffer was talking about abortion.  And he was the first to recognize that there was a connection between abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.  He said they are all linked, that the sanctity of life either comes from the Creator, or else life is a result of mindless evolutionary processes, and therefore when it is inconvenient, or it's unproductive, or it's costly, you can simply get rid of it.  You can murder it.  And then you can call it a "constitutional right."  And so for our judges to call abortion a "right" is automatically to move inexorably toward the other two.  And that's what we are seeing.  Just as Dr. Schaeffer said, that now we have the state of Oregon voting a few weeks ago that you can kill those who are aged, and those who are no longer productive.  And just a week or two later you have the New York Times coming out with this argument, of all things, to be able to kill our babies, and declare that a right too!  Let's have two or three weeks when parents, without passion and without guilt, and without legal sanction, can murder their babies!

How can God bless a nation that does things like that?  I tell you, Mike, if I understand anything about Him, He is not only a God of love, but He is a God of justice.  And His infinite justice demands his wrath in response to evil, and those who would wallow in it in this way.  And I fear for my country.

Mike Trout:  You've just shared what you were thinking about; let me share what I've been thinking about.  There are many people who are listening to us who are unfamiliar with much of what Alan Keyes has just said.  And they are in the same place that so many folks were in, in 1973, when the Supreme Court was making abortion
legal.  We are marching toward these horrible decisions and changes in our society, and so many folks don't know about it.

Dr. Dobson:  Mike, I remember in 1973 when that came down:  I didn't protest.  It kind of upset me; I though it was wrong; but I didn't protest. And I didn’t have any idea what the significance of that decision was.  And we don't realize the significance of this euthanasia law in Oregon, and these other things that are occurring right around us.  What we are doing is denying the moral authority of the God of the universe.  We cannot survive as a democracy -- and I think not as a nation -- while we are doing that.

Mike, I do beg our listeners to write us, and respond to what they have heard today.  If this goes past people, if this doesn't stick in the hearts of people, if this doesn't move people deep down inside, we are in worse shape than I fear we are.

We're out of time, Mike; we'll hear the balance of  the speech tomorrow.

Part two...

We are already -- not only at, we are hurtling
over -- the brink.  The yawning abyss comes up at
us, in arguments dressed up as "scientific."  But
you know one of the most significant things that
was said in this piece, and the one that most
arrested my attention, was that the other shoe
finally dropped, in this piece, as to what the
whole pro-death culture really means for America.

I'd gotten a hint of it some months back, when a
lady had written a piece -- I think that was in
the Washington Post -- in which she had
acknowledged that, in point of fact, the pro-life
forces -- she being a pro-abortion person -- had a
point, that we had to take seriously that mystery
of life within the womb; that pro-abortion people
would have to begin to acknowledge that that was
indeed a life that had some claim to respect.  And
they were going to have to seriously answer this
argument being made by the pro-life forces.

And her answer was very simple.  She said "what
we'll have to make clear to them is that some life
is worth more than other life."  Very simple.

And now the other shoe has dropped.  Because
that's just an assertion, isn't it?  Now along
comes Mr. Pinker, and in the last couple of
paragraphs of his piece he has an allusion to the
rationale for taking the lives of these infants.
He says:  "The moral philosophers say. . . . "
Now, this piece was not footnoted.  I would have
been really intrigued to see the footnotes here,
to see what moral philosophers he was talking
about.  Because, given what he was about to say,
it seemed to me that they must be the immoral
philosophers, but he claimed that they were the
moral philosophers.  "The moral philosophers say
that the right to life comes from certain morally
significant traits that we humans happen to
possess."

Ponder that.  Ponder that.  Is this where we are
now?  Have we become the people who believe that
our claim to rights -- our claim, even, to the
most fundamental right, to life itself -- is based
on "certain morally significant traits that we
humans HAPPEN to possess"?

Because if we now believe this, it means that we
have abandoned all our greatness.  We have
abandoned all the truth that makes us what we
are.  We have abandoned all the premises that
constitute the common ground of our national
identity, and the just ground for our national
hopes.

Because in the beginning of this nation's life,
they didn't tell us that our rights come from
"morally significant traits" that some humans
"happen to possess."  --  didn't say that at all.

I’m rather glad they didn't.  As a matter of fact,
I have to tell you that I am personally deeply
indebted to them for not saying that.  Since if
they had, there could have been no cause to
abolish slavery, there could have been no headway
made to end racist discrimination.  Why?  Well,
because in the 19th Century my color made me
morally insignificant.  I did not have the morally
significant trait that was required for respect.

But you see where we are going, don't you?  He
makes the argument explicit that, of course,
neonates do not possess these morally significant
traits.  You see, once we have come to the
conclusion that our rights come from morally
significant traits, there are two questions.  What
are the traits?  And who decides who has them?

Now, I am sure that the person who wrote this
article is pretty sure that he is going to be Al
Gore's appointee on the commission that decides
our morally significant traits.  And I’m sure that
it gives him great comfort to know that he'll be
the one who makes it up.  And probably, judging by
the culture that he comes from, an appreciation
for fine wines and a willingness to read the New
York Times instead of go to church will probably
be a morally significant trait.  And I'm quite
sure that those who are childish enough, still, to
entertain a belief in Almighty God, and to fall
down on their knees at the name of Jesus Christ --
that's probably going to be considered a sign of
incipient insanity, if not senility.  Will we
still be morally significant?

And all such ideology aside, how gray does your
hair have to be, before it becomes a sign that you
have lost that morally significant trait which is
youth -- the ability to truly enjoy the "quality
of life"?

You see, when they come to us and they say we have
the right to kill our children so that we can
enjoy, without any degree of constraint, sexual
license and indulgence, some people can pretend
that that liberates.  But I think finally, when
they come to offer us the right to kill ourselves,
and to kill our newborns, and to kill our
grandparents, it's time we begin to wake up and
understand:  we are not being offered rights; we
are being offered death and self-destruction in
the guise of rights.  And it's time that we
understood that that will mean the destruction of
our nation.  There is no more important cause than
to defeat these lies.

But how?  How shall we defeat them?  I could have
a good time up here, I'm sure, going through the
catalogue of all the things that you and I
probably hold in common as dreadful shadows over
our land.  Some of the things that folks don't
want to talk about, right now, including the
tremendous assault on our moral decency that comes
in the guise of "civil rights" for homosexuals.
This is another one of those instances:  first you
say that our rights come from morally significant
traits, and then you try to define as a right that
which must be considered the object of moral
judgment and consideration.  Does this make any
sense?  Why do we accept it?

Someone comes forward and says "my sexual
inclination -- you can't discriminate against me
on those grounds.  It's just like race."  Why do
we accept this drivel?  I do not understand it.
Have we lost our minds?

This morning I got up.  I was, as you can see, a
black person.  When I go to bed this evening, I
will still be a black person.  In between, you can
make strenuous efforts to dissuade me of this
fact, but it will not do any good.  In fact, they
used to call us "people of the colored
persuasion," but I've got to tell you, persuasion
has nothing to do with it.  I believe that it is,
in fact, an injustice to treat as morally
significant conditions over which human beings
have no moral responsibility.  That's bigotry;
that's prejudice.

But what's going to happen to this society when we
start to treat as if they are such conditions,
behavior and conduct that has traditionally -- and
that must, in civilized society -- be considered
the subject of moral judgment.

I keep hearing these arguments as if it is a
scientific thing that we're talking about.  We're
going to establish it as a scientific and
genetically based fact that there are people who
come into the world with some kind of gender
confusion difficulties -- you know, females in
male bodies, and doing all these other strange
things that they were talking about at the Beijing
Women's Conference.  I myself have not seen
anything that suggests that they are making their
case very well, in scientific terms.  But let's,
for a moment, for the sake of argument, pretend
that they were.  What difference does that make?

I think it has been known for a long time -- as a
matter of fact, for almost as long as human beings
have had any kind of moral consciousness
whatsoever -- it has been understood, to put it in
the old, simple terms, that we have an animal
nature; that this animal nature is kind of built
in; it comes with the equipment.  And that it
tends to push us in directions.  I mean, they say
that sexual inclinations this way and that are
some kind of genetically based and uncontrollable
condition.  Ask any red-blooded male what they
generally feel like doing when a really
good-looking woman walks past, and I think you get
a little symptom of the animal nature.

Has it ever been the case that the existence of
that animal nature -- what St. Paul called "the
law in our members" -- served as an excuse for
ignoring the law in our conscience, the law in our
heart, the law writ there by the finger of God?
It has never been the case that the existence of
that nature exonerated us from moral
responsibility.

This is the real revolution that is taking place.
They are coming forward to tell us, not that we
must accept homosexuality, but that we must accept
the premise that sexual inclinations, sexual
behavior, cannot be subject to moral judgment.
And don't let anybody fool you:  if you make that
allowance for homosexuals, you have made it for
all "sexuals," of any kind, whatsoever.  What
right does a homosexual have to come forward and
say we must tolerate their sexual inclination,
with an adulterer standing next to him, saying
"tolerate my sexual inclination," and a pedophile,
"you must tolerate my sexual inclination":  all of
them based on the same animal nature, the same
genetically-determined, biologically-based
inclinations?

Does that biology exempt us, then, from the law of
God?  If we accept the premise that it does, then
we shall surely destroy any possibility of
civilized life in this society.  Think of the
institutions that depend on the concept of moral
responsibility:  fidelity in marriage; the
innocence of children.

And what is worse, think what happens if we take
this view, which we are having of sexual passion,
and start to think for a minute:  why are we
singling out sexual passion?  Is sexual passion
the only kind of passion that has a root in our
animal nature, as it used to be called?  I don't
think so.  I think at least since the fifties it
has been pretty clear anger has such a root -- the
aggressiveness, the urge to kill people, has such
a root.  So if we are going to exonerate the
sexual inclination, why not the anger
inclination?  Why not the jealousy inclination?
Why not the resentment inclination?  Let's go
through the whole range of human passions and
exonerate each one, because it is rooted in a
nature that they claim is beyond our control.

Once we have done so, you will realize that what
is really going on here is not the liberation of
some people to their sexual inclinations.  It is
the redefinition of our human condition in such a
way that human freedom, and the human capacity for
moral judgment and choice, is denied.  And once we
have denied our capacity for moral judgment, our
capacity for moral responsibility, all talk of
liberty and freedom and choice is nothing but a
game played by those who have power, to dupe those
they intend to keep without it.

Is this what we shall allow our country to become
-- a shadow-play of freedom for the benefit of
those who mean only to oppress?  This is what we
shall become, if we surrender to this slavery of
lies, to this tyranny of passion.

There is a way out, though.  Our Founders showed
it to us, right there at the beginning.  It's a
way back.  But if we take it seriously, then those
of you in this room today, and many more like you
in America, you are far more important, far more
critical, to the future of this nation than
perhaps you may believe.

There is only one thing that can get us back on
the right track.  We've got to go back to the
beginning.  We've got to put side-by-side with Mr.
Pinker's lie that our rights come from certain
morally significant traits that we happen to
possess, we must put next to that lie the shining
truth on which this nation was founded.  We must
hold it up, clearly, sincerely, unequivocally.  We
must, at every juncture, present it once again as
the truth to the American people, who are being
tempted to forget it.

Our rights are not happenstance.  They are not the
consequence of some fortuitous concatenation of
events.  They come not either from our will, from
our judgment, from our decisions, from our laws,
from our constitutions, from our presidents, from
our judges, from our justices -- no human will, no
human judgment whatsoever, is the source of those
rights.

When this nation was founded, they pointed the way
to truth, and we must find the way back again:  We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal and endowed -- not by their
happenstance, and not by their laws, and not by
their conditions, and not by their constitutions
-- but by their Creator, God, with their rights,
with their dignity, and with the grace to overcome
those passions which stand in the way of the right
exercise of those rights.

We are creatures of God!  We are children His
hand.  And because we are His creatures, and
because we are the children of His hand, we can
claim our liberty.  We can recognize within
ourselves that capacity for moral choice and moral
responsibility which comes not from our strength,
but by His grace.

And that is why we have to begin -- with boldness
-- to declare to all the people of this land that
truth which was so clearly seen by our Founders:

Without faith, there is no freedom; without God,
there is no liberty.

This is the truth.

God bless you.

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Mike Trout:  Well, if you were with us last Saturday night, you would have been on your feet with over 800 physicians and their spouses, as they responded to Alan Keyes and said "Amen; we're with you, brother!"  What a powerful message!  We
have featured the second half on today's edition of Focus on the Family.

If you missed the beginning of his speech, I hope you will write to us and ask for a cassette copy.

Dr. Dobson:  Mike, people stood and applauded for I don't know how long.  I mean, Alan sat down, then he stood up, then he sat down, and people were still on their feet applauding.  And there was so much going through my mind as I listened to what he had to say.  And he was articulating so much of what I have felt, but have not put it into those particular words.

Let me end with a thought of my own that relates to that matter of the sanctity of life, which was kind of the centerpiece of what he was talking about in both halves of this message.  In Washington, DC, right near the Lincoln Memorial, there is, of course, the Vietnam Memorial, with some 58,000 names inscribed on it -- the names of
Americans who died in that horrible Asian war. And the monument is over 500 feet long; it's 10 feet high.  And people come to that place to trace those names with their fingers, and to weep and to mourn and to express their respects to these fallen men.

But Mike, if we had such a monument with the names of each baby that we have murdered here in the United States alone -- and it goes around the world; every country, almost, is doing this -- but here in the United States alone, since the Supreme
Court handed down that awful decision, January 22nd, 1973, that memorial would not be 500 feet long.  It would be stretch nearly 50 miles long. It would extend outside the city limits of Washington, DC, and on into Baltimore.  And now we're going to begin killing the elderly, and the sick, and the unproductive.  And then, little babies, whom you can hold, and cuddle, and suckle.

And I feel like falling on my face before God and asking for forgiveness, apologizing to Him for our immorality.  Because every one of those names is engraved on His great heart.  It's not a memorial that you can see, but you can be certain that it's there.  He saw every one of those babies.  He knows them, by name.  And He will not hold
blameless those who spilt their blood.

Perhaps, Mike, perhaps, people can understand my utter revulsion, my regret, over the books that are being written and published now, and the articles that a well-known Christian columnist is publishing, that tell the brothers and sisters of the faith to withdraw from the public arena and confine their activities to their churches and
their parishes, to let someone else decide the policies that are going to prevail in this great representative form of government, to imply that somehow we are second-class citizens, that the Constitution does not give us a right to lobby for what we believe or to express our point of view, or to try to defend the defenseless.

I want to tell you, I will speak for the innocent, the defenseless, the voiceless, as long as I have breath within my body.  And Focus on the Family is going to fight to defend the principles of righteousness as long as I'm at its helm.

And I'm very grateful to Dr. Alan Keyes for helping to articulate those principles in such an unforgettable way on these two days.  And I do trust that our listeners will take those words to heart.

Mike Trout:  AND, share them with others.  Get a cassette copy of this presentation from Alan Keyes, and review it again yourself, and pass it along to someone else.  What a marvelous ingredient you then become in this whole process of getting the message out.

This is Focus on the Family.
Our address is
Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80995.
Or our phone number is
1-800-232-6459.

The cassette title is "Rekindling the Torch of Liberty."  Both days, of course, will be on that tape.

And then Alan Keyes is the Founder and President of an organization called the Declaration Foundation.  He has woven his passion about the Declaration of the United States throughout his message today, whether you knew it or not.  If you
would like more information about the Declaration Foundation, we have an information sheet we'd be happy to send to you, as a gift from this ministry.

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