Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch Reformer, once said, “When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin: you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.”
I would not normally want to voice my deepest convictions in this public forum, knowing I may create controversy and alienate friends, but when I read a recent article by a well-known great man of God who has deeply blessed the church, I felt compelled to respond.
Recently, well-known pastor John Piper wrote an article saying that he probably can’t vote for President Trump because he perceives the president to be morally unqualified for the position.
I suppose Piper would not have voted for Cyrus with his harems or Jehu with his idols either, but God had another idea. He called them His anointed. They were anointed to fulfill God’s purpose.
Daniel 4:17 states that “the Most High rules over the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever He wills and sets up over it the basest of men.”
Piper went on to state that, in his subjective opinion, Trump’s base life, his unrepented-of sins and vulgarity, are bringing more death to this nation than legalized abortion. I don’t know how he could scripturally support such a statement, but I know this: William Wilberforce, the great parliamentarian who ended the slave trade in England, about whom Piper wrote a brilliant brief biography, once said, “There is a principle above everything that is political, and when I reflect on the command ‘Thou shall do no murder,’ believing the authority to be divine, how can I dare to set out any reasoning of my own against it? And when we think of eternity and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that could make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion and of God?”
Wilberforce believed he would be held eternally accountable for any of his political actions and votes that countered or were weighed more heavily than the command, “Thou shalt not kill.”
It is one thing to write a biography of praise about a man, but it is duplicitous not to honor his faith code. Piper has certainly raised up his own subjective reasoning over the most foundational divine command in Scripture.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in His own image” (Gen. 9:5-6).
It seems obvious to me that Piper has not been staggered by the terrifying implications for both individuals and nations laid out in the Scriptures concerning the doctrine of the shedding of innocent blood. By encouraging thousands of Christians to consider not voting, or—even worse—make way for a candidate who supports abortion up to nine months, John Piper (and those in agreement with him) are like the four members of Parliament in William Wilberforce’s day who, when the slave trade could have been ended years earlier by their votes, instead opted out of voting and went to an opera.
How much death, torture and human agony could have been averted?
If now, in His providence, God is seeking to remove this horrifying offense of abortion as He did with slavery, then over the next four years Trump could be a Lincoln-type president, and the legalized slave trade of abortion could be no more—or America will face a terrifying day of reckoning.
If 650,000 men died on the Civil War battlefields because of the offense and bloodshed of slavery, what will that day of reckoning be for the blood of 62 million unborn babies?
I believe Piper is only judging by what his eyes see and cannot recognize what God is pressing for in this “pregnant throbbing moment,” the ending of state-sanctioned murder of the innocents. It has been said that God is not a single-issue voter, but sometimes He is a single-issue judge.
Many issues faced America during the Civil War, but God was “trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” to judge one thing: the vile atrocity of American slavery.
Meanwhile, in this election season, thousands of Christian nonvoters are rejoicing in the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett but can’t honor the man God raised up to appoint her, along with hundreds of conservative judges in lower courts. This election is not a referendum on the character of Donald Trump. It is instead a referendum on where the church will stand on the most foundational biblical moral pillar of society, “Thou shalt not kill.”
So nonvoters, enjoy the opera while the slave trade of abortion languishes another 20 years or more, and we and our children are swept away in the day of reckoning.
Blood is on our hands. If the great men of the church don’t understand the surpassing evil of the abortion holocaust, then maybe the great women of the church will. Let the Deborahs and Esthers arise. And may the sons of Issachar rally to their side. {eoa}
Lou Engle is an intercessor for revival and the visionary co-founder of TheCall, a prayer and fasting movement responsible for gathering hundreds of thousands around the globe.
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