A warning to the president

Below is an excerpt from a sermon by Pastor Doug Wilson; the full text is below:

Mr. President, your past record, your campaign promises, your political affiliations, your supporters, your political philosophy, and your record since the election, all consistently indicate that your appointment to the Supreme Court will be a pro-abortion nominee, one who favors the continued recognition of a ghoulish "right" to slaughter the unborn. Your rhetoric, as displayed very recently at Notre Dame, hypocritically aspires to transcend this moral confrontation, sometimes disingenuously called "a debate," as though you are somehow above it all—but your record and actions indicate otherwise. You are radically down to earth in your complete support of unrestricted abortion rights. You are a thoroughly committed partisan in this sick war that adults have declared on children. This means that we have every reason to believe that you will decide, or that you already have decided, to nominate a pro-abortion judge to this vacancy. And so we come to the central point of this message, declared to you by a minister of Jesus Christ, speaking in His name and on His behalf. You may not do this thing. And if by the time this message is preached, you have already placed the name of such a person in nomination, you are commanded in the name of the Lord Jesus to repent, and withdraw that name from consideration. The one to whom you ultimately answer is the Lord Jesus Christ, and not the American people. And this Jesus, who is the Lord of all presidents and parliaments, kings and congresses, forbids what you are in the midst of doing. And so I say it again. You may not.

You said in the campaign that you did not have "a litmus test" for your nominees, but it is important for you to know and recognize that the Lord Jesus does have a litmus test for judges. He requires them to hate injustice and to judge righteously (Dt. 1:16), to defend the fatherless (Is. 1:23; Jer. 5:28), and to keep the land from being soaked with the blood of innocents (Hos. 6:6-8; Ps. 10:18). Judges must adjudicate with godly wisdom (Prov. 8:16). Judges must recognize that there is a Judge above them, one to whom they answer. The Lord is our judge, lawgiver and king (Is. 33:22). And judges who refuse to acknowledge the wisdom of heaven are judges that the Lord will bring down to nothing. He makes the judges of the earth as vanity (Is. 40:23).

Now at this point, you might be thinking that the best response would be to simply dismiss the insignificant messenger or herald, to shoo away the little bird. "Megalomania is never attractive," you might say, "especially in small town pastors." But this objection actually brings the biblical answer to this objection right along with it. This is what God does. This is His way. He chooses the despised of this world to confront the worldly wise, and He takes those who are small and insignificant and He works through them. The authority of a messenger always lies in the message itself, and in the authority of the one who sent it. The authority of an ambassador or herald works the same way. And in this instance, the authority of any minister with an open Bible is authority enough.

So hear the word of the Lord. You have no mandate to allow for the summary executions of anyone. You have no authority to make whether or not a baby is allowed to take a breath of air a matter of somebody else’s political "choice." That is not yours to give. You have no right to deprive anyone of life without due process. And to address the crowning hypocrisy in all of this, you have no authority to invert the meanings of empathy and cruelty. You have stated that one of the characteristics of your nominee would be "empathy." But the treatment that unborn children receive in this calloused and cruel nation of ours is a photo negative of true empathy. We dismember little children, we kill them with saline injections, we suck out their brains with high powered equipment, and you want a nominee who will keep this ghastly business going, and you want one who will call what he is doing empathy. But the prophet Isaiah has declared an authoritative word—"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!" (Is 5:20-21). Woe, in other words, to those who do exactly what you are doing.

Full Text