There is a very sad story I came across
as I hunted for items for TEMKIT children’s web and paper in an
old reader. I wept as I read it and then it remained in my mind
strongly as I began to see the parallels in so many things in our
world. I do not know the author, but here is the story.
"One spring when I was a lad, every boy in our neighborhood
had one or more slingshots. None of our mothers liked to have us
play with them. They said slingshots were dangerous, and they were,
for some windows were broken; and one or two little birds were
killed.
There was a bluebird that built its nest year after year, in an
elm tree close to one of our windows. One day, my mother saw a boy
shooting at it. He didn't hit the bird, but she made up her mind it
was time for the shooting to stop.
Not long after, little Willie had his eye almost put out. There
was a great fuss about it. There were pieces in the paper about how
slingshots were dangerous things. Then the police said that every
boy who shot would have to pay five dollars fine. The boys all
thought that was more than they could stand, so they stopped. Mother
gave me ten cents for my shooter, and then she burned it up.
The next spring, we thought we would have a little fun, and keep
quiet about it. James Barlow made a shooter for me, and it was a
first-rate one. I gave him my top and a skate strap and thirty
marbles for it. He said it would shoot equal to a revolver.
One day, I was wandering about the lower end of the garden with
my shooter. There were plenty of birds all around, but I did not
want to shoot at them, if I could find anything else to shoot at. I
got over the fence into another lot, but still there were birds
everywhere.
I shot a few times, just to frighten them a little. Then I heard
one sing beautifully right over my head. I couldn't see it very
plainly, and I really didn't mean to hit it, at all. I shot. The
sweet music was changed to a sad kind of little scream, and the bird
came falling right down at my feet.
How frightened I was! I picked up the poor little wounded bird. I
tried to make it fly or walk. But it could not. Its pretty eyes were
half shut, and it kept panting with its bill. It was a bluebird!
I knew I never could keep from telling mother, for when I did
anything wrong, I always felt as if I were lost till I told her. I
carried the poor bird through the garden up toward the house.
A drop of blood fell from its mouth right on to a great white
lily; that seemed looking up. to ask me what I had been doing.
Mother was standing near the back porch. I laid the bird on her hand
without saying a word. As I did so, it stopped panting, and was
still.
"What's the matter?" mother asked. But there was such a
lump in my throat, I couldn't speak a word. Then she saw the shooter
in my hand.
"Did you kill that little bird?" she asked in a tone
that I shall never forget.
I was frightened. I never heard her speak in such an awful voice
before. "You have stolen away this little bird's life,"
she said. "It was all the life it had. The Lord loves His
helpless little creatures. He gave them to us to make us happy, and
He will never bless those who are cruel to them."
Then she put the little bird up to her cheek. I saw tears in her
eyes. "Poor little bird!" she said, as the tears dropped
on to its feathers. She took the shooter, and laid it on the kitchen
fire. I didn't get any ten cents that time, you may, be sure.
"You may go to your room," she then said quietly.
I would a great deal rather have been whipped than have to go
away by myself and just keep thinking. I thought of all the
beautiful days of sunshine I had taken away from that poor little
bird. I thought how it would never fly through the air or sing in
the trees or see the flowers and the grass any more. I wondered if
it had a nest and baby birds, and what would become of them if it
had.
All of a sudden I thought of the bluebird that had come to build
its nest near us for so many summers. I jumped to my feet! What if I
had killed our own beloved bluebird! How I longed to go to the nest
and see! Oh, when would mother let me out?
It seemed hours before she came. The minute she came, I ran to
the nest. The baby birds all held their heads straight up, and
opened their big mouths. I almost knew their mother hadn't fed them
for some time. I fed them the best I could. That evening, I watched
to see if their mother would come. But she didn't.
Before I went to bed, I got a piece of soft cotton, and covered
them up. I thought if I took good care of them, they might live
without their mother. But in the morning, only two of them held up
their little heads to be fed, and before night they were all dead!
I cannot tell you how bad I felt. I think I must have felt like a
murderer. My sisters cried when they knew the little birds and their
mother were all dead. I said to myself, "I never want another
shooter. I'll never see another white lily but it will say to me,
`You killed that bluebird!'"
So how can the death of a sweet, innocent songbird parallel so
much? What does it mean to us? Why do some of us weep about this
pathetic story?
It is because, dear friends, that it represents the whole rotten
mess of sin in this world. It cries to us about the death of the
innocent; the corruption of the beautiful; the cruel betrayal of the
harmless and helpless things of God’s creation.
I want you to notice a few facts with me from this story: Was the
boy in the story a wicked and cruel person? Yes he was, but not
fully. His heart was broken by what he had done and he repented with
a true repentance that he never forgot. Never in his life did the
sting of remorse for his cruel, thoughtless and ignorant deed ever
fully leave him.
Although he knew he was forgiven, like Peter and Paul demonstrate
to us in their own experience, true remorse for sin will remain with
the honest child of God, until God removes the memories of it at the
‘time of refreshing’ (see Acts 3:19) In fact the closer we come
to the Lord, the more we see the beauty of His character, the more
we loath ourselves and mourn for sin.
This flippant spirit that says, "Ok, so I sinned, so what? I
asked for forgiveness and so it doesn’t matter! If I do it again,
it’s OK; I’ll just ask Jesus to forgive me. It doesn’t matter
at all what I do or don’t do." Anyone with this attitude has
no concept of true godliness at all. There is no way that they are
even forgiven.
I know this is not what is being taught these days, so here are
some texts to prove what I am saying. (Eze 16:63; Eze 16:61; Job
42:6; Eph 3:8; Ro 1:32; Ge 32:10; Ps 34:18; Ps 51:17; Isa 57:15; Isa
66:2). The truly forgiven never loose that sense of the enormity of
their transgression. Even in heaven, while we will not then recall
our actual sins, the sense of having needed mercy and a Saviour will
stay with the redeemed and deepen their appreciation of the Great
Gift of the Lamb of God.
"So will it be with all who behold Christ. The nearer we
come to Jesus, and the more clearly we discern the purity of His
character, the more clearly shall we see the exceeding sinfulness of
sin, and the less shall we feel like exalting ourselves. There will
be a continual reaching out of the soul after God, a continual,
earnest, heartbreaking confession of sin and humbling of the heart
before Him. At every advance step in our Christian experience our
repentance will deepen. We shall know that our sufficiency is in
Christ alone and shall make the apostle's confession our own:
"I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good
thing." "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me,
and I unto the world." Romans 7:18; Galatians 6:14. Acts of the Apostles
pg. 561
"I’LL DO IT REGARDLESS!"
What caused this boy to do such a cruel, and thoughtless deed?
Largely we would have to say selfishness. He was interested in his
own entertainment and did not have mind to consider at all the
results of his so-called pleasure. A big factor was also deliberate
disobedience to his mother and to the standards, which he as a
professing Christian should cherish.
The selfish heart bent on having its own gratification is blind,
deaf and stupid. The voice of conscience and the counsel of the
godly are rudely shoved aside by the desire for the enjoyment of the
moment. Proverbs has a verse that illustrates this state of mind
very well. It is talking about the adulterer. Proverbs 7:22, 23 "He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as
a fool to the correction of the stocks; Till a dart strike through
his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it
is for his life." Once the selfish desire has taken over, it
seems a person will go blindly after it regardless.
Oh the wickedness of the heart of man, no words can describe! "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9 Once it has chosen its
own course it will push forward no matter what. This is why the Lord warns us: "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall
suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." Proverbs 29:1
The strange thing is, that if confronted with the truth that to
persist in entertaining himself with a cruel weapon of destruction,
sooner or later would result in some horrible deed, he would have
loudly denied such a danger.
How often do we see this, tell a smoker he will surely suffer if
he does not give up his vile practice, and he will tell you that he
knows people who smoked for their whole lives and lived to a ripe
old age in comfort. He overlooks the fact that for one such case in
which this has happened, there are thousands who have gasped out
their final days in a hell of their own creating. Notice this quote:
"On every side, Satan seeks to entice the youth into the
path of perdition; and if he can once get their feet set in the way,
he hurries them on in their downward course, leading them from one
dissipation to another, until his victims lose their tenderness of
conscience, and have no more the fear of God before their eyes. They
exercise less and less self-restraint. They become addicted to the
use of wine and alcohol, tobacco and opium, and go from one stage of
debasement to another. They are slaves to appetite. Counsel which
they once respected, they learn to despise. They put on swaggering
airs, and boast of liberty when they are the servants of corruption.
They mean by liberty that they are slaves to selfishness, debased
appetite, and licentiousness. . . ." Maranatha, pg. 139
The more this boy had persisted in resisting his mother’s wise
counsel, the more he became solidified in his fantasy that it was
perfectly all right and no harm would come from it. Thankfully the
terrible shock of what finally did result, woke him up and he
repented. But how much better is obedience than repentance?
Why is it that the heart of man insists that he or she is
different than others? That although a thousand may fall from this
very sin, it will not bother him? I guess it is the terrible pride
that is the legacy of the fall, the same pride that made a lovely
angel into a demon.
What pervert who is molesting children, or addict stealing to
satisfy a habit, ever thought when first his feet turned from the
narrow way, that he would be like this? NO, the fantasy of our minds
is that we can play with sin and not be hurt. We can caress the
adder and not be bitten. It just does not work that way. The path to
destruction begins with just a small step from the path of right.
FANTASY AND THE HEART OF MAN
The words ‘fantasy’ and ‘imagination’ are exalted today
like never before. People are led to believe that the ultimate in
living is to have a fantasy world, and children who excel in ‘making
up stories’, are lauded and praised, instead of being warned
against the dangers of falsehood.
Fantasy and imagination are not the same things. Imagination is a
gift needful to our creative mind. God gave it to us so we could
plan, reason from cause to effect, and figure out ways and means to
accomplish our tasks. As a tool it is valuable; but as an end in
itself-it becomes dangerous and when it
is master in our lives-it leads to
misery, insanity and destruction.
Fantasy is an illegitimate child of imagination; however highly it may
be exalted in our dying society-it is
falsehood, plain and simple. No lasting good ever comes from
falsehood! He who loveth and maketh a lie; will have his part in the
lake of fire! (See Revelation 22:15).
So many fight against and deny the warnings we were given against
fiction and novel reading, which of course apply even more to
movies, TV entertainment and drama. But I want to warn you that
those who rise up in defense of this subtle danger-have been bitten by it themselves, and the poison of the bite of
novels and fiction cloud the spiritual mind and put a veil over the
eyes.
I know from bitter experience, it takes entire abstinence from
this stuff, deep repentance, and the power of the Holy Spirit
cleansing the mind to ever be able to really see the heinousness of
fiction and fantasy-once you have been
in the habit of indulging. Like the drunk who slurs out when warned
against his deadly addiction; "Thersh nutin’ wrong with a
shmall drink jesh to relax myshelf"; so the novel and movie
addict will defend his habit to the end.
Now what does ‘fantasy’ have to do with the ‘blood on the
lily?’ Fantasy is the veil that prevents the person bent on
indulging his desires from seeing the true results of his course.
And you don’t even have to read fairy stories or watch movies to
get this type of fantasy! Your wicked mind will just make it up for
you when you try and rationalize why it’s OK for you to do what
you really KNOW you should not do.
This boy in the story indulged the fantasy that he knew better
than his mother, who was older and more experienced than he—and
more even than the police officer! He fooled himself that there was
no harm in aiming a deadly weapon at an innocent life.
Movies and fiction help deepen this rationalizing tendency of man
as when we read or watch people who do wicked things in the stories
and end up happy and honored anyway. This implants into our minds
doubts that the Word of God really means all it says. Every
fictional novel and movie inevitably has woven into its plot
somewhere the question of the serpent, "Yea, hath God
said?"
Years ago I moved to another province and took up residence near
the family of my in-laws. I met a young nephew, 16 at the time, who,
with his pals had a deep love for air-rifles. This boy had never
learned to love or respect God’s little creatures and this had a
lot to do with what he did. But no man is totally bereft of at least
some promptings from the Holy Spirit that the innocent and helpless
are not to be ruthlessly tortured and destroyed.
But he and his friends would go out hunting and killing all the
little songbirds until the valley around his home was a silent,
dismal tomb, bereft of the music of heaven. What made them so cruel
and sadistic? Later I learned from his own lips. They were living
out fantasy in their play. They pretended the little birds were
alien enemies and they made up their stories as they ruthlessly
murdered the little feathered jewels.
One day, before I knew that these boys did this; I found one of
the little dead birds near our home, just as this youth, who lived
next door come in sight. Heartbroken to see the little corpse, I had
picked it up and stood weeping audibly as I contemplated the sad end
of the pathetic little songster. The boy was stunned. Suddenly the
rosy clouds of his fantasy world were pierced by a shaft of truth
and it dawned on him how disgusting was what he had been doing.
Never again did he make the innocent to suffer to play a part in the
fantasies of his mind.
It is sad that most people who indulge their desires, their lusts
and their fantasies never do wake up to reality. They just go on
excusing and rationalizing and fantasizing until they are as vile as
the devil that leads them on. Even those who rape and sodomize
children hold to the fantasy that their hapless victims enjoy the
torture they inflict on them.
WILLFUL IGNORANCE
It is true that much suffering results from ignorance; but it is
also true that most ignorance is willful ignorance. The Bible has an
oft quoted warning: "My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge:" Hosea 4:6. But it doesn’t stop there-"because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject
thee," and still it says more-"thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy
children."
Yes friends, it is fantasy and willful ignorance that destroys
and keep destroying until—and only if—the sins are turned from decidedly, repented of deeply and
henceforth the person lives only by every word that proceeds out of
the mouth of God. It is not in man to direct his own path.
MORE BLOOD ON LILIES
In the age in which we live, we are deluged by the blood of the
innocent, and yet we fool ourselves that we are more highly
civilized than former generations. If that be true-then we are more guilty than any generation that ever lived before
us! Today cruelty is practice on a level our ancestors never
imagined!
The consuming of flesh as food has always been connected with
more or less cruelty. It was never part of God’s plan that man
should live by consuming the carcasses of dead birds and animals.
Even though at times God has permitted the eating of meat, it was
always with great warnings and not without its curse.
But what about today? If ever it were true, human beings have now
truly become ‘Riotous eaters of flesh!’ (Proverbs 23:20). And now
thanks to the bloody monster of modern agra-business, flesh is
cheaper than ever before, allowing indigenous peoples in some
countries that formerly ate very sparingly of meat, to indulge
frequently. This is also bringing upon them the curse; diseases that
formerly only plagued the rich.
What is sweeter, more innocent and helpless than a newly hatched
chick? Picture it fighting its way out of the shell peeping in baby
tones to the mother it will never see. Now what happens to this
little bit of life?
If it is an egg-laying breed, these chicks will be tossed into
huge trays were they go to sorting. Sometimes they fall from the
tray carts to the floor and are crushed or half crushed on the floor
by feet or cart-wheels.
Cold and unfeeling hands will seize it and check for gender. If
it is a male, it will be thrown into a bin or bag like a piece of
garbage. There it will struggle for life, peeping frantically for
aid from a mother that is probable dead herself by now.
It will flutter and struggle for breath as more and more of its
brothers are tossed in with it. Finally the new life that struggled
so hard just to be born into this cruel world, will be crushed or
snuffed out by suffocation. One alternative to this is that the chick
will be tossed alive into a meat grinder auger and ground into pet
food.
What if it is a female? Well then it will have the end of its
beak cut off, a very painful process, done so it will not be able to
peck. Sometimes the handler cuts off too much beak and the little
bird starves to death by a feeder because it cannot eat. What’s
one bird one-way or another? Almost worthless in the eyes of its
tormentors. Speed is what counts, mass production is the game.
Often the claws of its tiny feet will be removed also with no
anesthetic, then the suffering little bit of life will be placed in
crowded conditions until it reaches the age to start laying, just a
few months in today’s hybrid birds.
Then it will be roughly shoved into a tiny cage with several of
its sisters where it will spend its short life eating an unnatural
diet, laced with drugs to keep it alive and laying eggs until abused
nature gives up and the bird dies or it is torn from its cage to
face even worse horror.
It is natural for a bird to want a nest to lay its egg in and to
have privacy-so you can imagine the
anxiety that occurs in the young bird as it feels its first egg
coming and it can’t get to a nest or even a quiet corner. It tries
to drive away its sisters, who are in the same boat. Finally the egg
comes and the hapless bird sees it roll away down the cage and out
of sight.
They can hardly move in these tiny cages stacked tier after tier
and they spend the few month of their lives in foul smelling
buildings. Never do they see the sun, breath fresh air, or get to
walk and scratch in the grass. If their claws have not been severed
as chicks, they often grow long and become entangled in the mesh of
the cages. Birds sometimes thirst or starve to death inches from
food or water-but unable to reach it
because their feet are caught in the wire. No-body cares—they are
worth only pennies apiece.
What happens when the number of eggs per day begins to drop off?
Well egg chickens are not much good to eat, their worn-out pathetic
little bodies are too thin-so often they
are torn from their cages, sometimes leaving a toe or leg behind,
and shoved into shipping crates and shipped to pet-food factories
where they will follow their little brothers into the meat grinder,
or you may find pieces of their tortured flesh in soup and pies.
Note: the normal life-span of a chicken is 10-15 years!
What about broilers? If possible the life of meat chickens is
even worse and when at a few months old they are crammed into
shipping crates and loaded by the thousands onto a truck to go to
slaughter, the cruelty boggles the mind! Here is a letter about this
very thing:
I could write volumes on the sickening subject but I will include
just one more quote to show you that innocence receives no
consideration in agra-business today! This is about an eye-witness
account at a Kentucky Fried Chicken slaughterhouse. You may not like
to hear about it-but God does not accept
willful ignorance as an excuse!
"Based on a chilling eyewitness account of sadistic torture
and routine cruelty at a T--- chicken slaughterhouse in ---, People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling for
prosecution of T--- Foods and five of its employees on charges of
cruelty to animals. ____ a T--- slaughterhouse employee for more
than five years, contacted PETA to alert the group to the extreme
animal abuse that he had witnessed, including birds being blown
apart by dry ice bombs and intentionally scalded to death by the
hundreds, (by people who deliberately turned off the stunning
machine to watch the birds suffer!) and large chickens having their
legs broken to fit them into shackles that are too small." See
http://kfccruelty.com/index.html .
Multiply this incident by thousands and you see only the tip of
the magnitude of horror. And what does this do to people? Even at
best the slaughter-houses are nightmares of suffering and how do you
feel about rubbing shoulders with persons in society whose chief
delight is in finding more ways to torture helpless, suffering birds
or animals??
I have talked a lot about chickens here, as it seems people don’t
equate them with feeling, living, God-created creatures! Even many
‘vegetarians’ cling to eating poultry and eggs and so are apart
of this mind-boggling cruelty. But no aspect of the flesh industry
is less horrible.
People do you think God is out to lunch? Do you think He is deaf,
blind and ignorant of what is going on in the name of flesh-eating?
If you can close your eyes to the chicken trucks; if you can turn
your head when you pass these ominous buildings that dot the
countryside where you have to know thousands of suffering birds are
imprisoned-so you can eat their flesh or
eggs as a treat; do you think God turns His head and ignores it?
If ever there has been a curse for those who devour the flesh of
their fellow creatures—and there has
certainly been in the past—there is
certainly a curse on it today! More and more disease is bouncing
back from the tortured birds and animals onto the humans that devour
them.
Even among humans the innocent suffer for the sin of the guilty.
Children don’t know the facts; they don’t know that the food
they devour at MacDonald’s or other fast food spots, thinking it
is a treat, actually comes from suffering and tortured animals and
birds! And yet there are many cases of little ones dying horribly or
being damaged for life from disease acquired in meat. It is time we
wake up from our appetite’s clamor and see the blood on the lily!
Refuse to put the flesh of an innocent and tortured bird into your
mouth or onto your table!
SEARED AS WITH A HOT IRON
"…having their conscience seared with a hot
iron;" 1 Timothy 4:2
What is the ‘hot iron’ that sears conscience until it ceases
to feel at all? It is selfishness and lust, that’s what it is. It
is the attitude that says, "I don’t care, I will have what I
want to eat, and I will satisfy my lust, no matter who suffers for
it and no matter who tells me not to!"
There are a few steps between the boy who shoots song-birds as a
part of his play-acting and the men who deliberately torture
helpless birds and animals in slaughter-houses—but not many. And there are a few steps from that to men who coldly
sit at councils of power and decide what they can do to grind a bit
more dust from the heads of the poor so as to enrich themselves; who
play with the populations of the earth for their own advancement and
profit-but not many! It is all the same
sin, the sin of pride, lust, self-indulgence and willfull
ignorance.
This morning I received two Kiddie-Porn emails—I quickly erased
them without seeing more than the title—but one said it was a seven year old and the other a four year old—and you could watch them being molested… it is only an inch
from watching to doing! Indulging lust and passion, even a little
bit is like opening a dike—the torrent
will wash you away.
Friends, God is not out to lunch—what
we sow; we will reap! Indeed we are reaping it big time—we are starting to reap the whirlwind!
THE ULTIMATE ‘BLOOD ON THE LILY’
Almost two thousand years ago, the ultimate of purity and
innocence was nailed to a cross outside Jerusalem. Sweeter than a
bluebird, purer than a lily, more innocent than a baby, He was the
ultimate of loving kindness. He lived only to bless others; His
hands were never outstretched except to bless; He was the humble
servant of man’s necessity.
We can’t even comprehend such beauty of character! It is only
as we get glimpses of it that we are brought to realize the
horribleness of the sin that nailed Him to the cross—because He got in the way of ambition and pride.
Oh friends, don’t you hate sin? Don’t you see what even a
little selfishness and prideful lust leads to? There is only one who
can chain up the beast of human pride, indulgence and lust; and it
is the one who went humbly to His death—victim of the same.
"…God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:" Romans 8:3
Jesus didn’t die so that God could turn a blind eye to sin and
the suffering it causes both to guilty and innocent—He died to
condemn sin! And He lives to give you total victory over it.
God will destroy sin. Can’t you see why? He will destroy it in
you if you let Him and co-operate with Him; or He will destroy you
with it—if you persist in clinging to
it—refusing to hear His entreaty:
"Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no
pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from
his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will
ye die, O house of Israel?" Ezekiel 33:11
THOUGHT:
