Land laments devastation that Amendment 2 brings
CAPE GIRARDEAU – When Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, noticed that Missourians had voted for the constitutional advancement of embryonic stem cell research, he knew that the words of warning he spoke here Nov. 1 were fully applicable.
Land talked about how damaging Amendment 2 would be when he gave the keynote address to messengers at the 172nd annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) at the Show Me Center on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. On Nov. 7, the amendment was approved by 51 percent of the electorate.
“God is not going to bless a nation that in some kind of Clintonesque, it depends on what the meaning of is is, tries to pass an amendment to a state constitution that says it’s an anti-cloning bill when it gives a constitutional right to clone embryos and then to kill them,” Land said.
A state that legally clones human beings and kills them for the so-called benefit of other human beings is choosing the moral equivalent of death, evil and cursing, Land said. He preached that message Nov. 1 out of Deuteronomy 30:15-19. He hoped to motivate voters to choose life, good and blessing instead, and many of them wound up doing that on Nov. 7. Ultimately, though, not enough of them did, which leaves our land in peril.
“We are at a fork in the road as a nation,” he said. “We are at a fork in the road as a state. We are at a fork in the road as Christians. We can choose life and blessing, or we can choose death and cursing.”
America is beginning to look like a nation with no vision, Land said. In Proverbs 29:18, people who attempt to live like that wind up perishing.
“They’re like chickens with their heads cut off,” Land said. “They just run in different directions. They run amuck.”
Land advanced the idea that Americans have problems of the heart, soul and spirit. Only God can provide a remedy.