Dr Alan Keyes
Colorado Springs, CO
Part 1

From Focus on the Family
Thursday, November 20, 1997

Mike Trout: The power of radio is its ability to create a theater of the mind; to, with the proper set-up and audio, put you the listener in a particular setting, and allow you to vicariously share in a special event.

Well, today on Focus on the Family we're going to seat you at a closing dinner for our Physicians Conference, which just ended recently. I wish we could introduce you to the doctors at your imaginary table, but there's just not time. Perhaps we can take care of that later.

Our host is psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson, and I'm Mike Trout.

Dr. Dobson: As we announced at the end of the broadcast yesterday, Mike, we're going to let our listeners hear a message today that was recorded last Saturday night by Dr. Alan Keyes, that I believe is one of the most impassioned and powerful messages that I have ever heard -- especially the concluding portion that we're going to hear tomorrow.

Mike Trout: This was a speech given at the final banquet, during that Physicians Conference. You know, I'm still hearing incredible comments in the hallways here at Focus at the Family, several days later, from those who participated in that final event.

Dr. Dobson: Mike, I don't know if the tape will convey it, but the audience that was there was stunned at the end of that speech. And the Physicians Conference itself was ordained by God; I really believe that, Mike. Every speaker and every event just seemed to have some kind of divine ordination on it. There were 800 physicians and there spouses here for four days. We had to turn away 300 more. We quit even talking about it and advertising it back in August. So there was an overwhelming response to this conference. And as with other Physicians Conferences we have done, it wasn't designed to be a medical meeting; it was a conference for medical families. And it was, if I may say so, a powerful experience for everyone that was in attendance, because there were just tears at every event. The presence of the Lord was just there, all week.

Mike Trout: There was a tremendous amount of prayer that went into this, and it's another example of how the Lord does answer prayer. We prayed for months about the physicians and their spouses who were going to come, and that the Lord would meet them at their point of need.

Dr. Dobson: That's true, Mike. Getting back to Dr. Alan Keyes. What we've been describing is kind of the background to that closing speech. People were pretty wrung out by this time, because there had been some incredible moments. And he delivered that final message in a way that I will never forget. And I'm looking forward to listening to it again now, on tape, the first half today, and the second half tomorrow.

Mike Trout: Right. Go ahead and take your seat, down near the front, if you'd like, and listen.

---

Dr. Keyes: I've been re-reading the account of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew. Now, I've got to tell you, I know He says His yoke is easy and His burden is light, but (if) you really read through this sermon with any kind of understanding, you've got to ask yourself, every now and again, "can we possibly live up to this?" I don't know. Because Christ, in spite of all the talk you hear these days about, you know, everybody wants to pretend that to be Christian is to be a compromiser, and that that is the meaning of compassion and forgiveness.

I don't see how you get that out of the Sermon on the Mount. I don't see one little iota of compromise anywhere in there. Not even a scintilla of it, do I see. I mean, He just comes right out; and He speaks with great love, and with great tenderness, but great, great clarity of principle. And He doesn't give one inch of the truth. He said, "let your light shine out before men," He said. "You do not light a lamp in order to put it under a bushel basket; You light it in order to put it on the lamp post, where it can shine throughout the whole house." Isn't that right?

But I ask you today, how many Christian folks in America do you think are putting the lamp up there on the lamp post, and letting it shine throughout this whole house? I have a feeling that it may be fewer than we think, because putting your lamp on lamp posts in this country today can be dangerous. "If the light that is in you be darkness": and I'll tell you, the light in this land is sure getting as dark as it can. And that darkness does not want lights on the lamp post. They see you putting a light on the lamp post, they're liable to string you up to that lamp post.

And we can see it going on in this country all the time, good people who stand up in order to decry the things that are wrong, point the way toward the renewal of this nation's moral heart and spirit, and no matter how pure their flame, there are those striving every minute to snuff it out. And so we live in a land where, in spite of everything, in spite of all the deep faith, in spite of the many prayers, the battle is still swaying, like we don't know which way it's going to go.

But I do wonder whether we are committed -- as committed as we ought to be -- to actually taking the power of that faith and making use of it so save our land. I don't know. There are people who seem to think that's not part of our vocation. As a matter of fact, I can remember one -- I don't think I'll mention his name, because I don't want to get into any sort of disputes and spats. -- but I remember back, I think it was last January, I was driving in and he was on the air. This was in the midst of the season when usually there are all kinds of things going on to promote the pro-life cause, because of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. And this individual actually spent several days on his radio ministry preaching along the lines that Christians shouldn't get involved in politics, shouldn't be involved in public life, making the case that "well, the early Christians were living in pagan times, far worse or at least as bad as our own, and those were the times in which the Apostle Paul wrote, and basically said that everybody should just do their business, and respect authority, and so forth and so on.

And I think that that kind of argument is leading a lot of folks to stand back, to believe that it is somehow not the work of our Christian hearts to try to turn the power of faith into a healing power for this nation's ills. But I wonder: can that be true? Part of the reason we think that way is because we don't know who we are. We do not know who we are.

(transcriber's note: I think the speech may have been edited at this point, because of the somewhat abrupt transition to the question of Caesar.)

Does it ever occur to anybody in this country to ask who is Caesar here? Who is Caesar in America? Who chooses the ministers? Who decides who is going to make the laws? Who decides who will have the power to put folks on the bench, and decide in courts how those laws will be applied? Who has that ultimate authority in our land? Who is it who is God's anointed, in a temporal sense, to rule over this land that by His providence has been raised up in the history of the world? Who is it?

It's us! We, the people of the United States! And what on earth makes us think that, at the end of it all, He is going to judge us by just the standard of Lazarus, and not by the standard of David, and Solomon, and Saul? We will stand before the tribunal of God, and I think He's going to weigh in the balance many things. "I blessed you abundantly," He will say. "I don't know that there has ever been a nation in the history of the world more blessed than you folks were. In every crisis I was there, in My mercy, in spite of all your sins -- raised you up in abundance and prosperity. So, what did you do with all that? I believe I sent My Son; He reminded you that of those to whom much is given, much will be required."

If we are indeed the Caesar, the Pharaoh, of this land, we're not doing well. Just compare yourself to Pharaoh in the Bible. You know the story of Pharaoh. He was the one that Moses went to, to get the people of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt. Now, he was a tough customer; took a lot of convincing. You'll recall God had to send plague after plague against Pharaoh. One after another after another, they came: the frogs and the blood and all kinds of terrible things that were sent down upon Egypt. And after every one of them, what does the scripture tell us? After every one of those plagues, it tells us he kind of trembled for a minute like he was going to do the right thing, and then, it says, "and God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Isn't that what it says? "And God hardened Pharaohs' heart." Plague number one comes, "and God hardened Pharaoh's heart." And the blood, and the locusts, everything comes, "and God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Hardened Pharaoh's heart so much, it must have been the hardest heart in the Bible.

Does anybody here remember what it was that finally broke Pharaoh's heart? What was it, broke that hardest heart in the Bible? Smashed that adamantine heart? Even Pharaoh's heart.

The death of his first-born son, right? One child dies, and his heart is broken. Now I want you to reflect on something. Pharaoh had his adamantine heart broken because one child -- his first-born son -- was killed. How many of our sons and daughters have been lost to us in the last twenty-five years that the doctrine of abortion has dominated in this country? One? Ten? Hundreds? You and I know: it's not hundreds of thousands, but tens of millions, of our sons and daughters -- DEAD! And still our heart is hardened.

Now, you saw what God did to Pharaoh. What do you think is the judgment in store for us?

We read the story of the young lady in New Jersey, who allegedly -- I have to say that, right? -- went out into a rest room at her prom, and there delivered herself of a young child, which she is said to have promptly slain. She then went out onto the dance floor and ordered up her favorite tunes and danced the night away. Now, you read about that in the paper, you hear about it on the news, and I am sure that many Americans profess to be shocked: "What a terrible person! What a hardening of the heart!"

And yet, and yet, even those of us who say we care about these things -- think about it. What do we claim, then, as the most important issues that face our country? --

"Stock market's going up! Things must be doing pretty well."

"The world's at peace! We must be doing all right."

"The jobless rate is holding steady, going down; inflation isn't too bad."

"Our leaders come, and they talk to us about how they are going to cut our taxes, and have more money spent on the bridges and the roads and the schools; and that's what really matters."

"And meanwhile, we can make a little more money at the job, and we can build a better home; we can get a better car, and things can be more prosperous for new generations."

Are we not like that young girl? Are we not going out onto the dance floor of life, ordering up our favorite tunes, while we dance on the grave of millions of innocent dead?

This cannot go on. This cannot go on. Because our God is a loving, compassionate, merciful God, but as we can see from the scriptures, He has His limits. And today I believe that as a nation we are right up next to the abyss. Indeed, I believe already we can see large portions of our people falling into it. And yet we still act as if this is not the most important challenge that we face.

I saw this the other day. And I don't want to get "political" or anything on you. But I've got to say, I watch what's going on in the country and I do wonder. There was an election recently. I'm going to talk about it not because I'm for this or that candidate; It's over now, so we can't be influencing it or anything. But there's a lesson in it. There's a lesson in it.

Candidate was running for office. Somebody who had come in on a tax-cut platform. Now, I should preface this by saying that, if you know me then you know that I have never seen or met a tax-cut that I didn't like. I'm all in favor of tax cuts; I think they are great things. Let people have more of their own money, wonderful things will happen in the country. So if you are running on tax-cuts, I'll be all for your.

This person ran on a tax-cut platform, in the state of New Jersey, and got elected. Now, this person who got elected on this tax-cut platform had let everybody know that she was pro-choice, as they call it, -- pro-abortion, pro-death, in the real parlance of things -- but in the name of partisan this'es and that, and big tent philosophies, and all kinds of other stuff, I think a lot of folks, including a lot of folks who are professedly moral conservatives, pro-life, care about family issues, mobilized and said "we'll support this person."

And then, in addition, they mobilized and elected a legislature in the state of New Jersey that passed a partial-birth abortion ban. Now, I've got to tell you, I do not consider support for a partial-birth abortion ban to be any indication of real pro-life sentiment. It simply means that you are not willing to be a heinous, and disgusting, and repulsive extremist on this issue. But that is a step in the right direction.

So the legislature of New Jersey passes the partial-birth abortion ban. And this person who had been elected Governor of New Jersey -- whose initials are Christine Todd Whitman -- she then proceeds to veto, as Mr. Clinton did at the national level, this bill.

Now, in my opinion that is a very bad thing to do. And it is very bad in a precise sense. There aren't that many things we do in this life, where we know that what we have done is directly responsible for the deaths of human beings. As physicians, you know this burden every now and again. People in our public life, except they rise to the level of President or something, don't usually know it. But Christine Todd Whitman -- she knows it. Because between the time she vetoed that ban and the time the re-election campaign took place in New Jersey, 540 children died under the partial-birth abortion "procedure." Hmm.

But this isn't the worst of it, though. This isn't the point of the story. The point of the story is that when she came up for re-election, a whole group of folks -- some of whom I know well, some of whom I think are true and sincere champions of the pro-life cause and the moral conservative cause -- they heard an argument being made by folks that said, "well, you know, her opponent is pro-abortion; she's pro-abortion; nothing to choose between them; and therefore it's okay to go in and support her -- because she was for tax-cuts."

What is the matter with us? What is the matter with any of us? I don't care what label we wear; I don't care who we think we are. But either we are going to start to admit that the moral crisis of this country is the topmost challenge we face, the issue of life and death for this nation's future, or we won't. And if we are going to admit it, then under no excuse whatsoever can we ever countenance those who are willing -- not only to embrace the culture of death -- but to stand as its champions! There is no partisan excuse for that!

Mr. Kasich;

Mr. Engler;

Mr. Quayle;

Mr. Kemp;

Mr. Forbes;

Elizabeth Dole:

I don't know these people any more. They may be very nice people. But you are not going to tell me -- and I will not accept the view, and I hope that decent-minded Americans won't accept the view -- that we get to trade tax-cuts for innocent lives. I hope we won't accept the view that we're going to be so grateful to politicians for giving us access to our own money that we are willing to take it covered with the blood of innocent babies.

I don't want it, at that price! It is unacceptable!

The very week that that election occurred in New Jersey -- and I don’t think that this was a coincidence -- there appeared an article in the New York Times Magazine by a gentleman named Steven Pinker. It purported to be a piece on why mothers kill their newborns. And when you read it through, it turned out to be a piece on why it is really not possible to justify legal sanctions against mothers who kill their newborns.

It turned out to be a piece in which we see the beginning of that ultimate stage of the doctrine of death that underlies abortion -- the de-humanization not just of the life in the womb, but the life out of the womb, not to be referred to now as "infants," but as "neonates." And when we kill them, we shall not call it "murder," we shall call it "neonaticide."

Somebody's going to have to explain to me, one of these days, why it is that we believe that it changes something when we apply a label to it from Latin or Greek. What is the Latin word for "infant"? "Fetus" Why does an infant cease to be a human being because you call it a "fetus"? Why does an infant just born, a newborn, cease to be a baby because you call it a "neonate"? And why is the act of taking its life no longer murder because you translate it into a dead language?

Dead language. Dead baby. Is this an equation? I don't think so.

But this was what this man was up to. And he didn't do it in jest; he didn't present it as, you know, a "modest proposal" that we are supposed to think is extreme. He even cited supposed evidence that killing newborns is a deep-seated instinct, and that practically the first idea any mother has is to do away with her young. Cited supposed examples from our "anthropological record" and "history" for this.

The reason I am dwelling on this article is because I don't think things like this should be taken lightly. The danger we are in, in our society now, is that some fellow like this writes a piece like this in a supposedly respectable journal of opinion, and that piece is read by some judge -- say the judge in the Amy Grossberg case. And, push comes to shove, that judge wants to find some way to justify whatever perverse sentiments may be grasping at his gut when he has to make some key decision in that case, and he grabs this rationale out of the New York Times in order to show us how "difficult" it is to justify legal sanctions against mothers who kill their newborns.

And in the context of the article, Mr. Pinker not only talks about mothers who kill their newborns. He talked about folks who had written, back in the seventies, about what a great boon it would be to humanity if parents had a little while to make up their minds about their children. Maybe a week or two -- make sure everything turned out all right. And during that "window," you would be able to snuff out the life of your "neonate" without any repercussions.

And now, it appears, we are going to have a debate about it! We are going to "discuss" whether parents have the right to kill their children, and at what stage it shall be tolerable. And this is not some other country, some other time. This is not some obscure unknown, writing in some journal in the backwaters of our minds. This is a serious argument, in a supposedly serious elite, establishment newspaper, presenting to us what I am afraid is going to be the next awful stage of our degeneracy.

=================

Mike Trout: What a chilling spot to drop into a message. This is Focus on the Family, and we are sharing with you a presentation by former Ambassador Alan Keyes, given last Saturday night here at this ministry to a group of physicians who were with us for several days during a conference, a physicians conference -- over 800 physicians and their spouses joined us -- and we're only halfway through this powerful presentation, as Alan leads us through the road map that has taken this nation to such a heinous point in its history.

Dr.Dobson: Mike, it shook me because it put into words everything I've been feeling. I couldn't articulate it that well. And it just described my concern for my country.

It took me back, in fact, to the early 1970's, and on through the seventies and into the early eighties, when Dr. Francis Schaeffer was talking about abortion. And he was the first to recognize that there was a connection between abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. He said they are all linked, that the sanctity of life either comes from the Creator, or else life is a result of mindless evolutionary processes, and therefore when it is inconvenient, or it's unproductive, or it's costly, you can simply get rid of it. You can murder it. And then you can call it a "constitutional right." And so for our judges to call abortion a "right" is automatically to move inexorably toward the other two. And that's what we are seeing. Just as Dr. Schaeffer said, that now we have the state of Oregon voting a few weeks ago that you can kill those who are aged, and those who are no longer productive. And just a week or two later you have the New York Times coming out with this argument, of all things, to be able to kill our babies, and declare that a right too! Let's have two or three weeks when parents, without passion and without guilt, and without legal sanction, can murder their babies!

How can God bless a nation that does things like that? I tell you, Mike, if I understand anything about Him, He is not only a God of love, but He is a God of justice. And His infinite justice demands his wrath in response to evil, and those who would wallow in it in this way. And I fear for my country.

Mike Trout: You've just shared what you were thinking about; let me share what I've been thinking about. There are many people who are listening to us who are unfamiliar with much of what Alan Keyes has just said. And they are in the same place that so many folks were in, in 1973, when the Supreme Court was making abortion legal. We are marching toward these horrible decisions and changes in our society, and so many folks don't know about it.

Dr. Dobson: Mike, I remember in 1973 when that came down: I didn't protest. It kind of upset me; I though[t] it was wrong; but I didn't protest. And I didn’t have any idea what the significance of that decision was. And we don't realize the significance of this euthanasia law in Oregon, and these other things that are occurring right around us. What we are doing is denying the moral authority of the God of the universe. We cannot survive as a democracy -- and I think not as a nation -- while we are doing that.

Mike, I do beg our listeners to write us, and respond to what they have heard today. If this goes past people, if this doesn't stick in the hearts of people, if this doesn't move people deep down inside, we are in worse shape than I fear we are.

We're out of time, Mike; we'll hear the balance of the speech tomorrow.

Mike Trout: Our address, so that you can get in touch with us and share your thoughts, is Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80995. Or call us at 1-800-232-6459. The title of this tape is "Rekindling the Torch of Liberty." Use that when you request the cassette.

Also, Alan Keyes is the Founder and President of an organization called the Declaration Foundation. If you'd like further information about that outreach, we can send you a complementary information sheet; again, when you write us or call us.

KEYES 2000!!!!!!

Your donation now will make it possible for Dr. Keyes to run for President in 2000.

Send e-mail to davidq@SoCA.com to find out how you can help.

Part 2
Alan Keyes Showroom