commentary: A Body in Motion


John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 01-Nov-14; Sermon #1238c; 16 minutes

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As this week began, the thing that was biggest in terms of news in the United States at that time was the Ebola crisis that is going on in Africa and is creating a crisis (or at least a lot of excitement) here in the United States. One of the exciting things going on is that there is a dispute between the federal government and state governments. In addition to that, the federal government's warnings regarding Ebola were deficient—so said an awful lot of people. The deficiency had to do with how contagious is it. The government, through the CDC, was saying that it was not all that dangerous as long as you did not come in direct contact with somebody else.

But toward the end of the week, cooler heads prevailed, and the government did a turnabout in their explanation regarding the contagion level of Ebola. They admitted what was actually in their policy at the very beginning, and that is that Ebola can be spread from a distance. One can be infected by it because if someone sneezes the Ebola germs are spread by means of droplets. It seems as though there is a difference between being airborne and being spread by droplets, and this they never explained. "Airborne" means that the Ebola germ can be carried and remain alive for distances, even though the germ dries up. It remains infectious.

An example of an airborne disease that everybody is familiar with is measles. Measles can float around in the air or land on something and be there for a good while, and you can become infected by it by it because it is airborne. However, being spread by droplets is different.

What they admitted to was, yes, it can be spread by droplets, and those droplets can alight on something like a door knob or even a piece of clothing, and remain there for a while alive and infectious. It's not like an airborne disease which can remain alive for quite a period of time because the Ebola germ tends to die fairly quickly. But it can be spread in that way.

The rest of this commentary has nothing at all to do with Ebola. But there is a connection, and I will make that connection, because by the end of the week my mind was arrested by something. It said to me, "I should have known that this was going to happen," and I'm sure that this thing that I'm going to tell you about that you have probably thought of it as well. But now it is being confirmed in news reports.

One of the major things that we are learning in this nation at this time is that this nation, calling itself "Christian" and believing it has always been Christian, has never been Christian. I mean, from the get-go, it has never been Christian. This was not something that was planned by the people who founded the nation, it was just something that they believed and the citizenry of the country believed at the time that these people and they themselves (the citizens) were also Christian. They just had the wrong ideas, the wrong doctrines, and so forth. And the founders, though pretty moral as judged by today's standards, did not know what a Christian is and neither did the citizenry.

A Christian is characterized, distinguished, and identified and sanctified by the combination of what he believes and how he lives his life. So, people just do not know what a true Christian belief is. The founders did not know. But the notes surviving from their deliberations while forming the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution reveal that what they believed was not what you or I would call "Christian." It was an honest deception; they just did not know any better. They did not plan for that to occur. They simply did not know any better.

They all agreed—almost unanimously agreed—that religion must be practiced in the American culture, but had no idea whatever to signify as to the specifics of what they should permit to be practiced within the culture. Just as the culture is in the United States, they were all over the place in their beliefs. Sincere men, pretty moral men, but their beliefs and practices were different from one another. This is why the Constitution especially says almost nothing about religion. There are just no specifics there. They just knew what they did not want. They did not want a model of the Catholic Church. That was one thing that was sure. They did not want that to occur. And that's why they worded things the way that they did.

Some of those people were Deists. Deists are people who believe that God created and then walked away, more or less leaving man to fend for himself with little or no guidance. Now, we should understand; we should know, and know that we know, that that statement is absolutely not true. God is governing constantly. He is not just leaving mankind on its own. He is involved in His creation. But that shows you how far off the beam that they were.

But even from the beginning, morally speaking, the culture began slowly to deteriorate, to degenerate. Until it was so bad, we were fighting a war against each other: the civil war. The worst war this nation has ever been in followed that moral beginning that we had. That's how quickly they went downhill morally over an issue that affected their emotions enough.

The nation recovered pretty much, but over the last 50 years or so, things have really gone downhill again rapidly and there is no indication on the surface that it is going to change. It is going to continue to go down.

Here is one of my evidences that this is occurring. Back to Newton's First Law of Motion: When a body is in motion, it tends to remain in motion unless something turns it aside. Now, let's remove the word "body" out of there. How about an idea? How about a concept? How about moral codes or standards? If they are in motion downward, then unless something happens to change it, it's going to continue in the same direction that it is while it is moving. That's what's happening here. This is where a body in motion remains in motion, and this is our morality.

I believe that the average university student would very likely be bothered (if he bothered to think about about it) and then made a comparison. He would think of himself to be better educated than the founders of this nation. Research has shown those men were very well-educated, academically and scholastically. They were not well-educated religiously, but they were well-educated in things that matter to the founding of a nation. But today's college students would think that they were probably better educated than the founders. But is it possible that they would be making a bad comparison—an apples and oranges comparison, comparisons that really did not match? Because they would be drawn, through their evolutionary thinking, to think that computers, other electronic inventions, automobiles, buses, airplanes, rockets to the moon, would tend to indicate that they were better educated than those people who founded the nation 225 or 230 years ago. That would be a bad comparison to make because that would be indeed an apples and oranges comparison.

Guess what college students are beginning to believe? They are beginning to believe—it's more than just beginning; it is developing—that post-birth abortions are something that should be permitted. Do you hear what I'm saying? That means that after the child is born, it ought to be legal to put the child to death. That's infanticide. This is growing in the universities.

What is it going to take to stop this body of an idea and change it and turn it about? And it is growing. It is not something that is just stagnantly waiting there or anything; it's growing. And one of the reasons that they give is, "Well, when the child is born, it's not self-aware." Remember when abortion was begun, one of the big arguments was, "When is a fetus—when is it still legal to be able to kill that thing? When does it turn into a real baby in the mother's womb?" And so they argued whether it was at three weeks, three months, six months, or whatever. Now, you see, as that idea has progressed since 1972, now it's, "When can we kill the baby after it is born?" You see the direction that it is headed—that kind of thinking?

Incidentally, when polled, these people who are in favor of this. . . .Incidentally, the poll took place on Purdue University campus, Ohio State University campus, the University of Central Florida, the University of Minnesota. These aren't fly-by-night universities. Now they are saying, "Well, when does the baby become self aware?" Well, the age that these people are picking out his age four. And so, any time up to age four, it would be legal to have a post-birth abortion.

A body in motion tends to remain in motion.

My question is, why stop at age 4? Why not decide that it's okay to kill anybody who has a birth defect at age 20 or 25? They were born crippled or maybe they were born in some way that their mind was not quite right. Are you beginning to get the point? There is no stopping this. We already have historical examples, as in Germany, where it became legal to kill a person because they were Jews or they were homosexuals or whatever the state decided.

That's the direction that we are headed in. What's it going to take to stop it?

JWR/aws/dcg

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