Life Advocate Departments - Postcard from the Edge

September/October, 1997 Volume XII Number 8

Postcard from the Edge

Marjorie Reed, out; Others, in
by Michael Bray

As she is released from federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut in September, Marjorie Reed will have completed eight years of confinement. She follows Curt Beseda (almost thirteen now with his six month reinternment last March for refusing to take psychiatric drugs) in the descending order of released convicts. (Beseda is also being released this month under, hopefully, less oppressive parole conditions.) Dennis Malvasi and John Brockhoeft follow, each released after about six years in. These have borne witness to the Truth by their deeds. And as they are released, others take their places. There will always be witnesses to the Truth.
There are more Christians being prosecuted at this moment for forcefully and effectively attempting to stop abortion than there have ever been contemporaneously at any other time over the past 24 years. In California, Dick Andrews and Peter Howard; in Montana, John Yankowski; and in Virginia, James Mitchell. These are but a few of the names alleged to be associated with the 17,000 bombings and arsons performed against abortuaries since 1977. (Indeed, the Lord has been gracious to preserve a goodly sum of defenders from the jail experience.) Most authors of such noble deeds remain known but to God and, presumably, a few other discreet and trustworthy souls. But in His providence, some have been brought into the light and they bear witness through their suffering for righteousness' sake.
The federal government, like Nero reborn, grows in its animus toward those who affirm the rule of Truth above itself. It despises as insurrectionary any claims that there is actually a Law-giving God who reigns over all. It, therefore, will not hear the "justification defense" which stands upon the claim that a Law above the state (which Law the states have historically accepted) permits certain lifesaving deeds. Acceptance of such a claim cannot be tolerated; it would mean the subordination of the state to God. It would, quite simply, signify a regression to that old, now-intolerable order and return unwanted meaning to our quaint Pledge of Allegiance. It would, to be sure, threaten the newly Supreme Court-established secularist order.
But the states are complicit by their abject genuflection before the more powerful central government. They have surrendered the principle of federalism summarized in the Tenth Amendment and retained sovereignty over little more than the distribution of driver's licenses and plates. (To be fair to civil rulers, the churches which dwell in their dominions do not give them any direction in matters of justice and righteous resistance to federal tyranny.)
Like many of the fifty lap dog states of the Union, Virginia recently gave up anti-abortion rescuer Jennifer Sperle for prosecution and imprisonment by the federal government on the basis of the "commerce clause." (It seems that if an abortionist buys some slaughtering tools from another state, a federal case is to made out of a local arson issue.) Virginia has also given up James Mitchell for the same cause. (His trial is in September.) What a contrast between the Virginia of today and the incipient colony. The First Charter (1606) granted by King James commissioned the Virginia Company to engage in work which would tend to the "Glory of His Divine Majesty, in propagating the Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government."
(My oh my, what a nasty mixing of not only church and state, but church and business. Alas! How could such bigotry and imperialism produce any good?) Such a Law-based society produced a world power in a few centuries. And, it produced a principled federal system which respected the biblical laws of the states. The result was the development of the most free and just society the world has ever known (until a change began about 35 years ago when federal courts threw out oaths to God in court and prohibited the states from having their school authorities invoke the blessings of God in schools).
So the tables have been turned. The federal government has enthroned itself as god and its courts have become the imperialists and bigots (as quisling churches, failing to recognize the conflict between civil authorities and the usurpation of state authority by the federal government, have sided with the federal government against the legitimate rights of the states. The biblical command to obey authorities has been preached to the people as a command to treat any capricious federal court edict as the law of the land). Infidels rule in the courts and the savages who slaughter children are protected by them. Yes, those who "live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God" now rule the land. They have replaced God and His Law with their own miserable, odious, and blasphemous edicts.
But there are lights yet shining in the darkness. Marjorie Reed has endured eight years, keeping her eyes on the prize, pressing on. On October 18, 1992 after three years of imprisonment, she wrote about the additional charges she had just been sentenced for:

"The Judge was a different man when he sentenced me [this time]. He stated that I was 'morally right though legally wrong.' That is a first for a federal judge . . . There were lots of prayers and letters to Judge Walenski. He said that I was a danger to people's lives and a risk to society when he sentenced me three years ago.

"The Judge's statement made the news. The mill owner said that it was a slap in the face to 20,000 women of northwest Ohio and an invitation for anyone to get a can of gasoline and a pack of matches."

Amen. Marjorie Reed has remained faithful and prayerful to the end of her long separation from her husband, Bob and son, Jamie. And her witness will have the effect that God, in His providence, chooses. Her life demonstrates the fact that there are witnesses to the truth in this time when savage abortionists are protected by infidel judges. As long as this American holocaust continues, there will be Christians in jail for trying to stop it.

Thank you, Marjorie. And may the Spirit strengthen those who are taking your place in bonds.