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The Christian and Politics A World Divided And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that
kingdom cannot stand. Peter Karavas Which U.S. political party should Bible Students support: the Democrat, Republican, or some other party? This is like asking the Apostles which political/religious group they support: Pharisees, Sadducees, or Herodians. As Bible Students our support is with our returned Lord and the kingdom he is establishing, not for the present “heavens” and “earth” reserved for destruction (2 Peter 3:7). During this Gospel age the Scriptures admonish Christians to stay separate from earthly entanglements:
There are no New Testament examples of Christians entering the political arena. Citizens of heaven must not become entangled in the politics of this earth. An earthly ambassador must not interfere in the politics of his host country. Those of the new creation are being prepared for a future work as earth’s kings and priests (Revelation 20:6). They are to be patient, submit to God’s time table for changing the world, and not walk ahead of the Lord as King Saul did when he personally offered sacrifices to God because Samuel was not there (1 Samuel 13). Saul paid dearly for this transgression. There are those who are working hard to make America a “Christian Nation.” Although we may sometimes admire their good intentions, they are moving ahead of God by working against his plans to destroy the present heavens (religious arrangements) and earth (civil government) (see Daniel 2:44). Polarization of American Society When terrorists struck the United States on September 11, 2001, Americans came together in grief and resolve, rallying behind President Bush in an extraordinary show of national unity. But when Hurricane Katrina hit last year, the opposite occurred: Americans divided along sharply partisan lines in their judgment of the president’s and the federal government’s response. In a speech after the 2000 election, Bush said, “I am optimistic that we can change the tone in Washington, D.C. … I know America wants reconciliation and unity. I know Americans want progress. And we must seize this moment and deliver.” Yet the tone in Washington has only gotten worse and more partisan during the years of the Bush presidency. Over the years, leadership of the Democrat party has shifted to the extreme left, favoring various disjointed special interests, including pro-choice, pro-homosexual, affirmative action, the feminist movement, national health care, more taxes and bigger government. Since clearly presenting this kind of platform would alienate too many voters, their approach has been to focus on attacking the president and the Republican party. The president has shunned unity, preferring confrontation over conciliation, while favoring policies superficially aimed at deepening support among his conservative base at the expense of ideas that might produce bipartisan consensus and broader approval among the people. The Republican party has attempted to take over the center as well as trying to hold the conservative right. This “be more things to more people” approach has won them votes, but for how long? A growing number of conservative voters are losing patience with the president and especially the Congress, feeling they are giving lip service to conservative principles, but showing little backbone in supporting and promoting those ideals. Bush’s greatest bipartisan accomplishments are probably the “No Child Left Behind” education act, prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients, and his promotion of huge federal relief for Hurricane Katrina victims. Many conservative Republicans have come to view Bush as a fiscal Democrat in Republican clothing. Instead of the old “Reaganomics” supply-side approach of cutting both taxes and spending, Bush has cut taxes only slightly and increased spending dramatically. As is now abundantly clear, out-of-control federal spending cannot be covered by any economic growth generated by tax cuts. Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries increases the profits of big corporations while simultaneously putting Americans out of work. Over the years, as liberals have been unable to promote their agenda through legislation, they have tried to achieve their goals through the appointment of activist judges, who are anxious to implement changes by legislating from the bench. As the war on terror continues, many conservatives feel President Bush’s recent commitment to securing the southern border with Mexico is more of a reaction to pressure than a deep personal concern. Conservatives are also afraid it will not stop terrorists from crossing the border and may encourage an even greater flood of foreign workers who want to become citizens so they can later bring their relatives to benefit from our welfare, education, medical, and social services. As politicians have become focused on power and pork-barrel spending, the interests of the people and the nation have gone by the wayside. A “house divided against itself shall not stand” (Matthew 12:25). All of these conflicts before us represent elements of the Lord’s great army rising up, the ultimate end of which will result in anarchy and the dissolution of present systems. Rise in Power of the Religious Right Over the years the so-called “religious right” has gained and lost ground. The Christian Coalition was founded in 1989 by television preacher Pat Robertson to take over the Republican party from the bottom up. In an interview with the Denver Post in 1992 Pat Robertson said, “Our aim is to gain dominion over society … [and] take working control of the Republican Party.” Although the Christian Coalition has been remarkably successful at getting its favored candidates elected, the organization is now considered a sinking ship and has been surpassed by Focus on the Family and The Family Research Council. By election time in 1994, the Christian Coalition had distributed 40 million copies of the “Family Values Voter’s Guide” in more than 100,000 churches nationwide. 1994 was the year Republicans won control of Congress for the first time in forty years and made a huge gain in State Legislatures. In 2000, 75 million voter guides were sent out to support George Bush. Up until 1994, Democrats held strong majorities in both houses of most State Legislatures. In 1992 Democrats had majorities in both bodies of twenty-five legislatures, Republicans eight. In 1994, Democrats had majorities in eighteen, Republicans, nineteen. By 2003, Democrats had sixteen, Republicans, twenty-one. Out of forty-five new members in the U.S. House of Representatives and nine in the U.S. Senate in 1994, roughly half were Christian Coalition candidates. In 2002 candidates backed by the “religious right” won eighteen new House seats, and eleven Senate and Gubernatorial elections. Most of the Republican leadership of the U.S. Congress consistently receives 100% scores from the Christian Coalition. Thirty-eight out of fifty-two Republicans in the U.S. Senate received a 100% rating from Family Research Council in 2003 and forty-one out of fifty-one senators received 100% from the Christian Coalition in 2004. Prophetic Scriptures “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Revelation 16:13,14). In the face of impending anarchy, the three unclean spirits croak the harmonious teaching of the beast (Papacy), dragon (civil power), and false prophet (Protestantism), which is that both the civil government and the clergy have authority over mankind. To prevent collapse, each system will foretell dire results for any failure to obey its counsels. The three most prominent characteristics of a frog are pomposity, an air of superior wisdom and knowledge, and continual croaking. Like frogs, they will croak from pulpits and platforms, and through the religious and secular press. Ultimately, the masses will throw off the yoke of the church as well as the state, since both will be leagued against their cherished ideas of liberty and equality. The Lord’s great army will bring about the destruction of the present social order. Here are words from the from the 1897 book The Battle of Armageddon: “Anarchists, Socialists, and hot-headed radicals of every school of reason and unreason, will be in the forefront of that battle” (Forward, p. xiv). John the Baptist In the type John the Baptist pictures the true church, Herod the civil power, and Herodias the papacy. John declared to Herod, “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife” (Mark 6:18). We, like John, must by our teachings and example declare unlawful any proposed union between church and civil government. At the prompting of Herodias (Papacy), Herod (civil government) bound John (the true church) and placed him in prison. This typifies the coming restraint of the church’s liberties. Herod’s promise of up to half his kingdom to Salome (daughter of Herodias) illustrates the future desire of civil government to gain the support and approval of the Protestant churches as a federation. Governed by boundless ambition, Herodias realized her position was insecure so long as John lived. Fully in sympathy with Roman Catholicism, united Protestantism will become her tool in the destruction of the most loyal servants of God. The Three Hebrews In Daniel chapter 3 we have the account of the three Hebrews thrown into the fiery furnace. Nebuchadnezzar pictures civil government and the great image of gold symbolizes the coming Protestant federation, cooperating with the Papacy. The dimensions of this image were sixty by six cubits, reminding us of the number of the beast which is 666 (Revelation 13:18). The religious unity of the Babylonian empire was to be demonstrated by a general worship of the golden image. Worship of the symbolic image is to be a great test or trial upon professing Christians in the end of this age. The time is fast approaching when the religious liberty we now enjoy will be greatly restricted and the work of disseminating truth interfered with by combined civil and ecclesiastical power. In Daniel 3:8 the three Hebrews (representing the true church) were accused by the Chaldeans, mystical advisors to the king (Daniel 2:5,10) and who represent leaders of the Protestant federation. In verse 15 King Nebuchadnezzar gives the three Hebrews a second chance to live if they would just worship the golden image. As with the John-the-Baptist type, civil government will not be anxious to destroy the true church in the flesh; but the religious leaders will be the main instigators. The fiery furnace symbolizes the great and final time of trouble. The soldiers casting the three Hebrews into the fire were themselves consumed by it. Likewise in the picture of Daniel and the lion’s den, the men who accused Daniel were cast into the lion’s den along with their families. These pictures seem to point to the final destruction of Christendom: “And a strong angel took up a stone as it were a great millstone and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with a mighty fall shall Babylon, the great city, be cast down, and shall be found no more at all” (Revelation 18:21, ASV). In the experience of the three Hebrews the people were to worship the image when they heard the music play, representing the false message of obeying the Church-State union. Notice how Revelation teaches that this message will cease. Just as the king blessed God when he saw the three Hebrews delivered from the fiery furnace, so the kings of this world will ultimately bless God and welcome the resurrected church in the new kingdom arrangement.
Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and
she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild
with the help of the LORD.” Kornelius Fil In the spring of 1997 people all around the globe heard the news that a sheep named Dolly had been cloned. This information raised interest in this particular animal as well as in the whole process of cloning. Before this event, cloning was an umbrella term used by scientists to describe different processes for duplicating biological material. Now the term is well known even to elementary school children; when used by the media the term usually is used in the sense of reproductive cloning, which means producing a genetically identical copy of another organism. This whole event became a catalyst for a wide-scale debate on the ethics of cloning, in which both political factions and Christian churches were strongly engaged. It resulted in new laws being introduced in most developed countries. What should be our attitude toward these events? To answer this question we need to have basic information on what cloning is. Our body contains trillions of cells. The center of each cell is the nucleus that holds genetic information coded in DNA, the “blueprint” specifying the structure and functions of our whole body. Although our body contains cells in various shapes and sizes depending on their functions, all contain the same genetic information, the same DNA. One of the exceptions to this rule is the male and female reproductive cells. These contain only half of the typical cell’s quantity of DNA. During fertilization these cells fuse to form a zygote, the first cell of a new organism, which again contains the “full” amount of DNA: half are from the father’s reproductive cell and the other half from the mother’s. During the formation of reproductive cells various processes take place to mix the genetic material. That is why each of us has unique DNA and why we are genetically different individuals. One exception is a case of identical twins; the DNA of each twin is exactly the same. That is because each originates from a single zygote, the cell that at the beginning of its existence split into two, or rarely even more, parts initiating the growth of further organisms. Cloning resembles this process which is why it can be referred to as natural cloning. Dolly the sheep was cloned using a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. The nucleus of an unfertilized sheep egg was replaced with the nucleus of another cell, which belonged to the “mother” of Dolly (actually in this case it was more like an older genetic twin). By doing this, the moment of fertilization can be omitted: the egg acts as a zygote which, when placed in the proper condition found in the uterine cavity, divides and forms an embryo. That embryo can be implanted in the uterine wall and after some time forms a normal fetus. This procedure is not as simple as this brief description might imply. Dolly took 267 attempts of nuclear transfer just to create one clone. Dolly was not the first cloned sheep. Another had been cloned before but in a process that used nuclei from embryo cells. The first cloned animals were frogs, and that happened in the 1950s. What was so unusual about Dolly was that she was cloned from a nucleus from an adult sheep’s udder cell, a specialized cell. To create an entire organism, the nucleus had to reverse its differentiation to use its full genetic information. So far, at least eight mammal species have been cloned; Dolly is certainly the best known. Human Cloning Could the same thing be done with human beings? Theoretically, it can. But it is still a long way from theory to reality. First, the development of an egg cell with an implanted nucleus into a multi-cellular organism is protected by various, poorly-known mechanisms. That is why numerous attempts to clone many species result in failure. The cloned frogs never advanced beyond the stage of a tadpole for what are still unknown reasons, though the research has lasted several decades. Another flaw of cloning is low efficiency. In the cloning of Dolly the efficiency ratio was 1:267, a number that is below 0.4%. The amount of research and expense connected with cloning is not justified by the results, as scientists get only, at most, two living offspring for every hundred experiments. Assuming it would be the same with human clones, this means one surviving human clone would also produce the death of many embryos that never developed. Furthermore, about a third of the cloned animals are affected by a “large offspring syndrome” meaning parts of their body, sometimes even the whole organism, is abnormally large. This state is not only a threat for the life of the clone but also for its surrogate mother in whose womb the clone is growing. Cloned animals have a higher rate of infections and tumors. Because of a lung tumor and advanced arthritis, Dolly was euthanized at the age of six, barely half the average life span of a Finn Dorset ewe. It is probable that Dolly may have been suffering from premature aging, possibly caused by the fact her DNA was six years old at the moment of birth (that was the age of the genetic material’s donor). The same problems cloned animals face are likely to be found in human cloning. More importantly, we do not know what impact cloning has on mental development. This may not be important in the case of animals, but surely it is for healthy human beings, unless of course mankind wants to pay to support multitudes of disabled people which could likely be the result of human cloning. With all the unknowns associated with human cloning, no responsible scientist or physician currently supports the idea to do it. Even the researchers from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Dolly was cloned, warn of trying to do it. That is why human cloning is illegal in the USA and all the European countries, even for medical research (the United Kingdom is the only exception). Nevertheless claims have been made that the first human beings have already been cloned. Although there is no evidence to substantiate such claims, experts admit that given the pace of human cloning research and the commitment to the project, even if such news is false, we will likely see clones born soon, unfortunately with huge physical and emotional risks to the babies created. Why Clone Humans? Why would anyone want to clone a human being? Some see cloning as a way to bring deceased people back to life. These might be parents or children who die prematurely. But can cloning really bring back life? Of course not! Only the heavenly Father and his son possess that power, and they will use it at the right time to bring forth everyone from out of their graves. Were one to successfully clone a person who had just died, the result would only be a genetic copy of that person, a “twin” separated in time and experience by a specific number of years and multitudinous life-shaping events. Perhaps some like the idea of cloning to duplicate those with exceptional abilities, geniuses with a sharp mind or people with unique physical abilities resulting in great achievements in sports. This sounds terrifying since the natural development of a child is full of surprises as to character, temper and abilities. Do we want a breeding program in which only exceptional individuals are produced and channeled into specific purposes? Some see cloning as a way to aid couples with infertility problems. Infertility is a serious problem among some married couples, but surely not to be solved using such doubtful techniques. Cloning would only provide an identical genetic resemblance to one of the parents, making the child more like an identical twin. It parodies the well-known verse, “In [the] place of your fathers will be your sons” (Psalm 45:16). Although full of hardships, the best way for a Christian couple to solve the problem of their inability to procreate is to adopt children who do not have parents to care for them. These reasons for reproductive cloning show it is mainly egocentrism that leads people to consider doing it. Ignoring God’s Laws A problem arises when, in order to achieve a goal, God’s law and advice must be ignored. The desire to learn about the world and the principles by which it is ruled turns into “pride of life,” one of Satan’s tools to subdue mankind (1 John 2:16,17). Eve was enticed into tasting the forbidden fruit when the “serpent” told her a partial truth: “The day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Moreover, “The woman saw … that the tree was desirable to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). The adversary tempted our Lord using the same methods. He tried to get Jesus to do a simple thing just to demonstrate that he was capable of doing it, that he had the power. Satan wanted Jesus to cast himself from the top of the temple; he even quoted words from a psalm to prove that he would not have been hurt in any way. But had he done so, our Lord would only have proved that he had been over-reaching the privileges given to him, that he was simply too proud. The Son of Man did not succumb. His answer was short but full of strength: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7). Is human cloning against any of God’s commandments? There is no clear prohibition in the Bible banning this procedure. But reproductive cloning could harm the fundamental structure of our society, which is the family. We read: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24, KJV). God wants successive generations of children to be conceived and brought up in a consciously embraced relationship. Cloning excludes a man as a necessary part in bringing forth life and reduces the woman’s role to an “incubator” for a growing life, a life that need not be related to her. When we look at the fall of the institution of marriage, the growing number of divided families which results in the constant moral degradation of successive generations, one might prefer to not imagine the consequences of being able to create children without either a father or a mother. Therapeutic Cloning In addition to reproductive cloning, there is another type called therapeutic cloning. This is a process by which a person’s DNA is used to grow an embryonic clone. However, instead of inserting this embryo into a surrogate mother, its cells are used to grow stem cells. Stem cells are totipotent which means any kind of tissue or organ can be grown using them. It is presumed that this procedure could help those who suffer from disorders such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. The ethical problem is what to think about the embryonic stem cells that emerge from this process. There is no fertilization in therapeutic cloning and it does not result in the birth of a baby; the whole procedure of creating embryos takes place in a laboratory environment. However, what emerges out of this nuclear transfer is an embryo, which, if put in favorable conditions—a uterus—would produce a fetus and, after the passage of time, that fetus could be born as a baby. Although there is no literal fertilization, it is replaced by nuclear transfer. As we have already seen, not every life begins with a separate fertilization; identical twins are the result of single fertilization. The Bible says that life begins long before we actually see a baby: “The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named me” (Isaiah 49:1; see also Job 31:15; Psalm 139:13-16; Jeremiah 1:5; Galatians 1:15). This does not allow us to consider any of the techniques that manipulate embryos as being in accordance with God’s will. This is the biggest argument against human cloning. It is surely a great objective to strive to find a cure that would heal any sicknesses that trouble mankind. But this must not be done when the price is the suffering, or even the death, of other individuals, particularly those not able to protect themselves. Fortunately there does appear to be a way to gain the benefits of therapeutic cloning without the controversies associated with embryonic cells. Scientists have discovered there are cells scattered all over the body that are capable of developing into many different cell types; they are a kind of “repair kit” for the body. These researchers now must find a way to identify these adult stem cells from among all the other cells in one’s body and then stimulate them to differentiate in some desirable way. It is these adult stem cells that are responsible for the success of bone marrow transplants used to treat leukemia. There is also experimental use of such cells to generate healthy heart muscle cells for those with chronic heart disease. The use of umbilical cord blood is a similar alternative. But we know that whatever mankind succeeds in doing, it can bring only temporary relief to the troubled human race. The permanent cure can only be found in God Almighty and his kingdom. That is why we long for the day when “the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). |