Blood Guild - Sanctity Life Sunday — Erlo Stegen

We thank you, Lord, for another opportunity to meet together, and we ask you to be with us. Work, Lord, in a marvelous way wherever the gospel is being preached, that this day would indeed be the day of the Lord.

The Biblical Sanctity of Human Life

Amen. In Genesis 9 verse 6, the Bible says, Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God he made man. Now, of course, that is no longer possible in South Africa. This biblical principle from the Bible here of whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, has been laid aside and has been destroyed.

Because modern-day rulers brush aside and destroy what is in the Bible. Today, this day of the 2nd of February 2003, this is celebrated or commemorated as Sanctity Life Sunday. In actual fact, it was the 1st of February.

The Christians in South Africa agreed that let's choose the 1st Sunday after the 1st of February. That is why it happens to fall on this day, the 2nd. It is now six years since the ex-president of South Africa, President Nelson Mandela, signed into law the abortion law that a mother can, without any judgment from the law, can freely abort her baby.

Abortion and the Shedding of Innocent Blood

And now until today, six years on, there have been 285 ,000 babies killed. Blood is being shed. In the Psalms 106, verse 38, it says, and they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters.

It is mind boggling. If it had said that they shed the blood of children of another nation, we might put it down to plain hatred or racism, but that people destroy the blood and kill their own sons and daughters.

It is this present government which has established the law that it is not sinful to kill your own son or daughter. But if you think of the tremendous guilt, think of the weightiness of this act of destroying that baby which is closest to your heart, in other words, killing your own son or daughter, I can only say, well, a woman is more courageous than the devil.

Satan knew what he was doing when he targeted Eve, for he knew that through Eve he could conquer the world. That you can gather together courage to go and kill your own sons and daughters and murder them.

A Mother's Grief Over Abortion

In America, in California, there is a certain woman, her name is Elaine. She and her husband have three daughters. Now, her story came to light in January 1990. When they received their third daughter, they were so glad and they praised God for such a gift.

They said, Lord, you have blessed us. In other words, we have a complete family now with three children. And she embraced her child to her bosom. And holding this child, she said, oh God, how great you are to have created such a perfect human being.

Now, she was embracing this child with her arms and she said that you've given us such a wonderful child. She was actually in a store shopping and was walking and she had her child with her. Then from the supermarket, she drove home, went home, it was after lunch.

She put her child into her seat, her brown-eyed little daughter, and she intended on driving home. But as she was driving, her thoughts ran to a subject that she was not used to thinking. Because before she had received this child, they had aborted two of their babies.

And then she thought about the two babies which she had murdered. She had very deep thoughts about it. And she thought along the following lines. These two children have never enjoyed the privilege of being embraced by the loving arms of their mother.

And neither has the mother enjoyed being able to embrace her two children. I murdered these two children. And she says how she had always tried to suppress these thoughts in the past. She never wanted to admit that they were actually children.

She had always just said it's something just to be terminated and thrown away. It's just an abortion. But when she got converted and became a Christian, immediately when she found the Lord Jesus, she knew that abortion was sin.

She had prayed just very lightly, Lord forgive me. But she had never experienced the grief and the mourning of having killed her own children. But on that day, as she was driving with the child on the way back from the grocery store, it so overwhelmed her that she stopped the car and parked to the side of the road.

And she wondered to herself, now that first child which I aborted, I wonder how old it would be right now. And the second one which I had aborted, I wonder how old it would be as well. What would they look like?

I wonder whether they would have brown eyes like my other three children. I wonder what they would have said about their three sisters. And she testifies of how while pondering upon those thoughts, the grief, the pain, the anguish that overtook her when she thought that this wasn't other people's children.

I didn't kill other people's children. I murdered my own children. She cried out in the car, oh, I have murdered my own living children. While they were in me, I destroyed them. She said the mourning that came upon her, the grief and the anguish, which was like a black cloud that just overtook her.

She said she experienced the pain that she had never ever experienced before. She said, I cannot bear this pain alone. And this guilt, I cannot bear alone. What will I be like before God having murdered my own two children?

And I have their blood on my hands. And she cried out to God, oh Lord, I've killed my own children. And she says, even while she was crying out, she was thinking of those two little children. And she called out and said, Lord, they've never felt the warmth of my loving human motherly touch.

Instead, they've only felt cruel hands destroy them and dismember them. She said, I longed for my children. But it was too late. She said, the pain I could not bear myself. She said, I could hardly drive the car because of the floods of tears.

She said, she felt like the hills and the mountains could just fall upon her and hide her. And she said, hills fall upon me for great is my sin. And my guilt is so enormous. And right there and then, she remembered Isaiah 53, verse three, verse five, that's verse five.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. She said, O Lord Jesus, that you died on the cross.

You died, Lord, to pay for my guilt, my debt of my wickedness. She said, as she was crying out to the Lord, and also glancing at her little three-month-old baby in the car, which was blissfully asleep, and was the very picture of health.

She said, oh, but the other two I murdered. You see, sin, before you do it, appears nice and attractive. And Satan entices you through it. For she had had those abortions for convenience sake. She didn't want to have two children before she got married.

And she wanted to enjoy with her husband freedom. She didn't want the commitment and the accountability that comes with having to look after children. She wanted freedom. And so that's why she had them killed.

More than 95 research has shown of those mothers who have abortions do it simply for convenience sake. They don't want to have to go to the trouble of washing nappies and all the things that go with having babies.

They don't do it because they've been raped, or just because they want to have nice times and be immoral, or because she is threatened with death should she continue with the pregnancy. No, they kill it simply because they don't want the babies.

Winning Others to the Lord

However, the time comes when if you've murdered your own child, you will grieve. You will be in anguish and in pain calling upon the hills to cover you. You see when a person mourns like that. Now we've heard about the power of God which we can receive to conquer sin.

Yes, there is that power to be the witnesses of Jesus. Just two Sundays ago, I mentioned that statistically should you, through the power of God, just win one person a year and each one wins another one just per year.

In 33 years, the whole world can be won over for the Lord. I invited you here in the congregation to write me a letter and say what you are doing about it, what the Lord is doing in your life, and regarding you winning others to the Lord, the state of your life.

And I want to say thank you to the many who did write. I really appreciate it. One person then commented to me afterwards that he had expected that after that question of how many have you won, I would go over to the next question is how many have you chased away?

How many have stumbled through your life? Maybe you should do a count and look at the people. The people have not been helped. The ones who've said, if this is Christianity, I don't want it. You heard it mentioned by Uncle Friedel, how he said in Scandinavia, that pastor said there are many that will be won over by the message and will fully accept it.

But there are also many who will reject it. There are those who don't want to part from the world, don't want to part from their sinful ways and them making themselves up to be unnatural. Their body piercing in different parts.

After all, go and study the Bible and see what the Bible has to say about body piercing. And you'll find that even our young people are being enticed by those who come from the world and try and meet them at funerals and places to try and fish them and bring them into the fashions of the world.

Faith Expressed Through a Young Woman's Life

But I say to you, if you want the world, then go, go right into it. If you want to swim in that water, we don't need such people. But those who say, Lord, I need your power, we want such people. Yesterday, a girl was buried in the Kingscliff area.

She had studied here at Domino's Savita, the mission school. And she had been a help to us at Radio Kwesi in the past. And when she was teaching in an area in the border of Swaziland, she was bitten by a mosquito.

Just a small, minor little thing, but she was buried. She was buried yesterday and she's like one of our own children. Are there DSS children here? Well, recognize then that this is a possibility. We didn't expect this girl to leave us suddenly, so quickly.

Those who had been to her funeral yesterday came and told me about it last night. And they said they heard marvelous things about this girl at her funeral. There were those who came from far from where she had been and said, this girl was so different that she was so unlike others, even though others had come to her and said, but why are you different?

Why don't you dress and follow the fashions that we are doing? And she said, well, that's not for me. One person even came by plane to the funeral and said, I've come all this way, coming by plane because of the nature of the skill.

She was so different. The clothing that she wore was just so different. It told me what she was like. Some young people say, but can clothing have faith? Well, it shows what you are made of. Now today, also in Kingscliff, a boy of 11 years of age is being buried.

The Call of God Can Come at Any Age

Do you see your boys that you can be called by the Lord, even if you're small? Lingani. He had simply been walking from school after school had finished, walking home and was knocked over by an Eskim vehicle.

He died. If you're knocked over by a vehicle and killed, you don't have the chance and the opportunity to still make right. You can't go to your mother and say, mother, I'm sorry for the things I did or dead.

Forgive me for those things. You instantly dead. They had asked me to personally come to the funeral. And also two different funerals yesterday, I'd been requested to come. But doctors have told me, be careful.

Your foot, which has been recently operated on, if you do not give it the proper rest it deserves, may end up being permanently damaged. So yesterday I sent my respiratory. I said, you preach in my place today.

I know. And I said, you preach as if I am there. Injure in a mall. I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for my to my brother for what he said about Martin Luther's rules of when you stand up to preach, stand up firstly courageously, secondly, and it says literally in German, open your snout and preach boldly.

But thirdly, quickly finish what you have to say and sit down. But I think some preachers go the wrong way when they imitate me in preaching a long time. They preach too long. I don't know whether they are trying to imitate me.

Euthanasia and Accountability Before God

Now, he who spills man's blood, by man shall his blood be spilt. That is God's rule. And I've been requested to make special mention regarding this topic since today is Sanctity Life Sunday. Now, just look, if you smoke and drink and spoil your body, you are destroying the temple of God and the Bible says God will destroy you.

And then remember that that which is of the soul is of far more importance than the body. I was in a certain hospital these days. When I first went in, I saw a mother. She ran to me. She said to me, I found salvation through you.

She ran to me in a way that I thought she was about to embrace me. She stood before me. She said, I want to tell you that when I was young, I got saved through the ministry that you were giving. I found the Lord and today I'm married.

I'm the wife of a preacher. Then her husband came. A dromany. And he said, and he said, you are my father, that I heard the gospel was through you, that I got saved was through you. What? For six years, I'd been a preacher in Malalani.

Now I'm a preacher in Pretoria. I said, did you know that I'm now, um, we have, of course, he's about to open the station at Malalani. He said, be in contact with me. Let's arrange together because there are a number of farmers in that area who have found the Lord and who are genuine Christians, and they will really stand by you in this work.

That is wonderful. It's wonderful to find people enthusiastic and zealously running up to one saying, we found the Lord through your preaching. I got saved through your word. You know, 16 years. Um, that I met them in hospital was because their 16 year old son had just been driven over by a lorry coming back from school, or he had run across the road.

This lorry ran right over him and his head, but he's out of danger. The doctors say that those in a coma with a burst blood vessel, they have all hope that he'll recover. Yes. And I said, well, how wonderful the Lord's ways.

I went to that hospital to visit another patient in here. We meet with them. Dr. Albie is not here this morning in the service. Okay. He has been asked by a Jewish group to address them in their synagogue today in Durban.

Now, I remember the Jews actually worship on the Sabbath and not on Sunday. We Christians worship on Sunday because Jesus rose on Sunday morning, but they don't believe in Jesus that he rose. And that is why they still keep to the old Sabbath.

They have asked Dr. Albie to address them on the subject of mercy killing or euthanasia, because in South Africa, there is the bill that is up for debate in our parliament, which will legalize passive euthanasia.

And active euthanasia. Remember that if you participate in euthanasia in any way, giving support to those who push for those types of things, and often it's also because of convenience. The young people or children say, Oh, our aged parent is so old and it's so inconvenient.

We can't go on holiday. And it's such an expense. You are guilty of the shedding of blood. And even if this government should try and destroy this law and legalize what God has said is illegal, God's word abides forever.

And if you remember that God will get hold of such people who destroy and kill and shed blood, even if the law doesn't get to you, God will do it one day. And remember that you are also guilty, even if you don't actively get involved in euthanasia.

But if you support and vote for the people who bring in such laws, you are guilty. You are headed for the same hell if you identify with that sin. Don't blame me. It's the Bible which says that, for instance, it says that if you see somebody sinning and you do not warn them, his blood will be called to account.

Your hands will be guilty of his blood. That's why I don't want your blood on my hands. This is a command to repent. If you obey, you will live. If you disobey, you will die. Let's stand to our feet. We thank you, Lord, for all that we've heard.

I thank you, Lord, for your working up that malalane, the people coming down from the hills to listen to your word, to be reconciled with you, to get right with you, the living God, and overseas countries.

And those places and countries who open their doors and beg for the preaching of your word, that we should come and share your word. Lord, continue to work in a marvelous way. Amen.