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The Apostles Peter and John were put in prison for preaching the Gospel in the Temple (Acts 3:1-26; 4:1-3). Then they were examined by the Sanhedrin, Israel’s highest court of law. Then the court

“commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18).

“But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye” [judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God] (Acts 4:19).

“So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them” (Acts 4:21).

Then the Apostles went to pray. Here is what they prayed,

“And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word”
      (Acts 4:29).

“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together…and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

“Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him… and were filled with indignation, And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison” (Acts 5:17-18).

“But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:19-20).

“Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people” (Acts 5:25).

“And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we straitly [strictly] command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine…” (Acts 5:27-28).

“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Twice the Apostles Peter and John were commanded by law not to preach the Gospel in the Temple. Yet twice Peter and the other Apostles disobeyed the law of man, and went right back into the Temple, and preached the Gospel. There are two lessons from this passage of Scripture that I will bring out this morning.

I. First, abortion would have been outlawed long ago if famous preachers
had followed the example of the Apostles in Acts 4 and 5.

4,150 children are killed by abortion every day in the United States of America. 51 million have been killed in the last 35 years. Every day – including Christmas Day – 4,150 American children are killed, many of them boiled to death in salt water in their mothers’ wombs. I personally heard one woman say, “They didn’t tell me it would take all night for my baby to die. I could feel her kicking and dying inside me all night long.” I must say that I broke down in tears as I wrote this, “I could feel her kicking and dying inside me all night long.” That happens to four out of every seven African American children. Four out of every seven die horrible deaths like that. “I could feel her kicking and dying inside me all night long…They didn’t tell me it would take all night for my baby to die.”

Nancy Grace, a TV “newswoman,” ends every one of her programs showing the number of casualties in Iraq. The total number of deaths of our soldiers in Iraq is displayed on the TV screen at the end of each of her programs. Last night it was 4,130. That is about the same number that die every day in their mothers’ wombs!

The “peace in our time” British Prime Minister Chamberlain was fooled by Hitler. But Churchill dared to call him “a monster of wickedness” (Decision magazine, September 2008, p. 39). And that is what I call these abortionists – including abortion supporters who are running for any office – “monsters of wickedness.” Find out who stands for abortion. You’ll know which ones I’m talking about.

I once held the body of a beautiful eight-pound African American girl. A pro-life worker put her gently into my hands. She was preserved in formaldehyde. She was taken out of a little box and placed on a towel, and the baby’s body on the towel was put in my hands for a few moments. She had been scalded to death in the womb of her mother at seven-and-a-half months old. “They didn’t tell me it would take all night for my baby to die...I could feel her kicking and dying inside me all night long,” a woman said to me who had the same experience. My God! How could we have let this go on for 35 years?

What have our preachers done? They have told us to pray. They have told us to vote. Some of them have told us to hold up picket signs. And we have prayed. And we have voted. And some of us have held up those picket signs. But the killing goes right on! Praying and voting and holding up picket signs will not stop this genocide, will not stop this slaughter. 

The former editor of Christianity Today, Dr. Harold Lindsell, said, “Abortion on demand is one of the sure signs that our culture is pagan” (Harold Lindsell, Ph.D., The New Paganism, Harper and Row, 1987, p. 151).

What have our preachers done to confront and evangelize what Dr. Lindsell called “the new paganism”? Nothing of a practical nature. They vote. They pray. Some of them hold up picket signs. They tell us to vote and pray, and some say to hold up signs. But they are afraid to do anything else to stop the bloodshed.

Dr. Martin Luther King died for his cause. Today it is popular to say he was right to act for the “little people” who had no national voice. Very few people today think Martin Luther King was wrong. But which leading African American preacher has done as much to stop the genocide today? Which leading white evangelical preacher has acted with enough intensity to stop the Abortion Holocaust? Why has no nationally-known preacher of either race done as much for aborted children as Dr. King did for the downtrodden Black people of America?

If Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Joel Osteen, James Dobson or some other famous preacher had spent a few nights in jail, like Dr. Martin Luther King did for the Black people in the 1960s, surely abortion would be over or at least severely restricted by now. But the best of our leading evangelical preachers, and others, have lacked the passion and conviction to stop this slaughter when it was possible. Jerry Falwell raised money to build his university, but he never went to jail to stop the murder of babies, as Dr. Martin Luther King went to jail for liberating African Americans from racist Jim Crow "laws." All Jerry Falwell did was raise money to build his university! That's all Don Wildmon does as well. He just raises money. He doesn't even put it in a university. Where does he put it? Does he use all our money just to send mailings? Mailings will not stop the Abortion Holocaust! Mailings have been sent for 35 years without anything changing!  

What do you think would have happened if Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, or the pastor of one of the other megachurches, had led a non-violent march of hundreds of Christians to a non-violent sit-down demonstration inside the U.S. Senate chamber or inside the Supreme Court? How about going inside Arlington National Cemetery? How about going inside the Lincoln Memorial? What about marching right through a line of police, as Dr. Martin Luther King did in Selma? What would have happened if they had gone inside the House of Representatives and sat down on the floor and preached the law and the Gospel to those wicked men who run Washington? That’s what the Apostles did! They went back again and again into the Temple. Each time they were arrested they went back inside the Temple and preached. What if our leading preachers had done as much as the Apostles did? What if they had gone inside the U.S. Senate or inside the Supreme Court building? You know the outcome would have been different. You know America would not be in the moral and economic mess it is today! You cannot kill 51 million American children without being judged by God.

Does that sound too radical? I don’t think so. It sounds to me like the classical patriotic movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It sounds to me like Jimmy Stewart standing up against the crooks in Washington, D.C., standing for the little people, those with no voice of their own. It sounds to me like democracy - the kind of thing you would expect decent preachers to do to protect the lives of little babies in the United States of America.

And make no mistake about it, abortion is the number one reason for the mess we are in. Abortion is the number one reason God is taking His hand off of our country. The number one reason our economy is in turmoil and we face a terrible depression is because, in our greed and desire for personal peace and prosperity, we have allowed the extermination of 4,150 babies each day to go on for 35 years without a national outcry as serious as that led by Dr. Martin Luther King! We need a nationally-known pastor to do something more than lead a demonstration or attend the pro-life rally in Washington in January. Abortion is the national sin of America. We need a leading pastor willing to go to jail like Dr. King, so our unborn children can say,  

Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty! We are free at last!
  (Martin Luther King, Jr., Ph.D., "I Have a Dream," 8/28/1963).

But this has not been done. God's hand is being taken off of our country. The economy is in chaos. Our enemies are rising. Our monetary system is failing. No President can save us now. Abraham Lincoln gave the reason for God's judgment on a nation:

We have forgotten the gracious hand that preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. We have become too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Abortion would have been outlawed or severely restricted long ago if America's leading preachers had followed the example of the Apostles in the fourth and fifth chapters of the Book of Acts. That is the first lesson we learn from those chapters.

“Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people” (Acts 5:25).

II. Second, the young people in our nation would have been evangelized
long ago if Christian people had followed the example of the Apostles
in Acts 4 and 5.

The Apostles were put in prison, by the highest court of law in Israel, for evangelizing in the Temple. The court

“commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18).

“But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye” [judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God] (Acts 4:19).

“So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them” (Acts 4:21).

Then the Apostles went to pray. Here is what they prayed,

“And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word”
      (Acts 4:29).

“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together…and they spake the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

“Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him… and were filled with indignation, And laid their hands on the apostles, and put them in the common prison” (Acts 5:17-18).

“But the angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors, and brought them forth, and said, Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life” (Acts 5:19-20).

“Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people” (Acts 5:25).

“And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, Saying, Did not we straitly [strictly] command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine…” (Acts 5:27-28).

“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Twice the Apostles were commanded by law not to evangelize in the Temple. Yet twice they disobeyed the law of man, and went right back into the Temple to evangelize the lost.

“Then came one and told them, saying, Behold, the men whom ye put in prison are standing in the temple, and teaching the people” (Acts 5:25).

Then the Apostle Peter said to the court,

“We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Someone may say, “You are teaching civil disobedience.” Not really. Not completely. Not in all situations. I am teaching a Baptist distinctive – freedom of speech, freedom to speak, freedom to evangelize – anywhere, at any time! That’s why our Baptist forefather John Bunyan was put in prison for twelve years for “preaching without a license” from the state. John Bunyan suffered for twelve years in a dungeon to earn us that Baptist distinctive – freedom to evangelize anywhere, at any time, in any circumstance. Go out and do it! God knows that the young people in our colleges, in the malls and on the streets, need desperately to be evangelized and brought into our churches. That is why Jesus Christ said,

“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

And Jesus Christ said,

“Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23).

Go out and do what Christ told us to do! Let us stand and sing hymn number 7 on the song sheet. The words were written by a great mission-hearted pastor, Dr. Oswald J. Smith.

Give us a watchword for the hour, A thrilling word, a word of power,
A battle cry, a flaming breath That calls to conquest or to death.
A word to rouse the church from rest, To heed the Master’s strong request.
The call is given, Ye hosts, arise, Our watchword is, evangelize!

The glad evangel now proclaim, Through all the earth, in Jesus’ name;
This word is ringing through the skies: Evangelize! Evangelize!
To dying men, a fallen race, Make known the gift of Gospel grace;
The world that now in darkness lies, Evangelize! Evangelize!
   (“Evangelize! Evangelize!” by Dr. Oswald J. Smith, 1889-1986;
      to the tune of “And Can It Be?” by Charles Wesley, 1707-1788).

We are seeing with our own eyes the decline and fall of the American Republic. We are living at the beginning of the end of our nation, and our greed-filled, materialistic way of life. The economy is in chaos. Many will be permanently out of work. As the economy collapses, riots will take place in our cities. And don't forget, Iran will have the atomic bomb - and use it!

And what will Osama bin Laden do next? Will he send his men with a radioactive "dirty bomb" smuggled in the back of a truck, and set off from a distance, to destroy one of our major cities? When the "dirty bomb" goes off the city will be so polluted with radioactive dust that no one will be able to live in it. Millions will flee for their lives. Tens of thousands will perish. We are seeing with our own eyes the decline and fall of the American Republic. 

As America crumbles into ruins about us, there is still time for you to come to Christ. He is God in human flesh. He has atoned for your sin on the Cross. He has risen physically from the dead. He is alive in Heaven today. He is the One who can save your soul and pluck you like a firebrand from the flames of judgment that are about to fall on America. Come to Christ. And come into the local church. Don’t drop out of church to study for exams or do something else. Budget your time when you study. Make time for God. Make sure you are in church every Sunday. I pray that you will come to Christ, that you will be converted, and come into the fellowship of this church. Then you will be part of the solution to our national crisis.  Come to church every Sunday. Become a productive, hard working person, and help us save this church and our beloved nation. That is my prayer for you in the coming time, the frightening days ahead for us all. Amen.

(END OF SERMON)
You can read Dr. Hymers' sermons each week on the Internet
at www.realconversion.com. Click on “Sermon Manuscripts.”

Scripture Read Before the Sermon by Dr. Kreighton L. Chan: Acts 5:25-29.
Solo Sung Before the Sermon by Mr. Benjamin Kincaid Griffith:
“Here Am I” (by Dr. John R. Rice, 1895-1980).