God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

Black historiographer, Carter G. Woodson, introduced the first Negro History Week in February, 1926, “to inspire us to greater achievement.” It is now the end of Black History Month. I ignored it for too long, but I resolved a few years back to use this month as an opportunity to restore the colors of our national portrait that were bleached out of text books of my youth.

My first response when reading of Black heroes in battle, laureates in the arts, researchers in medicine, innovators in education, science and business, is to wonder at God’s unmerited favor. In spite of the moral blindness reflected in slavery and the crimes against humanity that it produced, the odious segregation that followed in its wake, and the malingering malignancy of racism that remains as constant as sin itself, God made the least of these, under the worst of circumstances, the source of immeasurable and ongoing blessings to the American people and to the world. This week I read a long list of patents given to Black Americans. Among them, a Black woman, Alice Parker, invented and patented the heating furnace in 1919 and a Black man, Frederick Jones, in 1949, invented air conditioning. These two alone made everyday life and labor bearable and a hundred fold more productive for us all.

My second response is to shake my head in wondrous praise that a people so enslaved and oppressed by a Christ-witnessing people, instead of becoming a bitter force against the gospel, not only received the gospel in mass numbers, but advanced it with great power. George Liele, granted his freedom in 1773, became a slave of Christ as a missionary to Jamaica. He established a church of 3,000 souls by 1784. In 1807, Lott Carey, bought his freedom and then spent it building a church of 800 souls in Richmond, Virginia. He later served as a missionary to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Around 1790, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones were on their knees praying, in their assigned place in the balcony of the church:

“We had not been long upon our knees before I heard considerable scuffling and low talking. I raised my head up and saw one of the trustees…having hold of the Reverend Absalom Jones, pulling him off his knees, and saying, “You must get up-you must not kneel here.” Jones asked to finish his prayers first but the trustees threatened forcible removal. We all went out of the church in a body and they were no more plagued with us…Soon after, we were filled with fresh vigor to get a house to worship God in.” (The Black 100, 29)

This lead to the formation of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia in 1794 and the establishment of the first national Black denomination that continues to this day with over 2,000,000 members, 8000 ministers, and 7000 congregations in more than 30 nations in North and South America, Africa, and Europe. How these have hastened the day of our Lord’s return!

Twenty five years from now, in 2033, should God grant it, I will be 77. I expect to celebrate Black History Month even more by then. There are people alive today, within the Black Christian community, that are pioneers and prophets. I expect history to show them forerunners in arousing the Black Church to provide the impetus for victory in the greatest moral challenge of this current age; making abortion as unthinkable as slavery.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King has crisscrossed the land for years now, sharing her own experience of abortion and the painful confession that in this, she had blindly committed the same sin as slavery. She devalued human life and turned it into property to be dealt with according to her own whim. Her honest testimony is crucial. Shedding innocent blood rightly makes God angry and makes all our prayers short of lamentation and confession a vain waste of breath. “Though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood!” (Isaiah 1:15). Our own unconfessed blood-guilt over abortion produces silent pulpits and a church so weak that it can only dream and endlessly talk about the church achieving a muscular faith that produces personal holiness and social impact. But when the secret is outed, the gospel finally makes sense—joyful, conscience-cleansing, doctrine-loving good sense. There can be no forgiveness for the shedding of innocent blood…except by the shedding of innocent blood. But the blood of Christ satisfies the just demands of a God rightly offended by the sin of child-sacrifice. And the blood of Christ can satisfy the stained and stricken conscience; “how much more will the blood of Christ…purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God,” (Hebrews 9:14). By 2033, I expect that King’s honest testimony will prove liberating to thousands, and that tears will yield to resolve; that the natural extension of the civil rights movement is the prolife movement.

African-Americans, Dr. Johnny and Pat Hunter started L.E.A.R.N. in the 1990’s; and called abortion “black genocide.” They have documented the ethnic cleansing nature of the abortion industry by pointing out the racist/eugenics philosophy of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger and her targeting of minorities for abortion, forced sterilization and contraception. While this explicit racism may be a thing of the past, they point out that 9 out of 10 abortion business are now located in urban neighborhoods. And while only accounting for 12% of the female population, African-American women suffer 36% of all abortions. The meet tirelessly with denominational Bishops and local Black pastors equipping them to lead their church and community to cherish and defend life and to reject those who traffic in human blood. By 2033, I expect the Black Church to lead the way in making abortion history.

African-American, Sylvia Johnson, created a “best practice” pregnancy help clinic in Houston starting in the 1980’s. For nearly 25 years she has been quietly cross-bearing for the child-bearing. By 2033, I expect the Black Church to have opened similar clinics in the most abortion-targeted neighborhoods of our cities. Where they open, abortion businesses close—because most women resort to abortion more than choose it; and when they are provided help they choose life. By 2033, I expect Black History Month to include these three as among those who blessed our nation by calling the church to “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Psalm 82:3-4). If God’s patience abides, I expect the nation will make abortion, like slavery, history, soon after.