The Wayside Pulpit No.16  

August 12th 1999

The Opening of the Kansas Senate in the USA 

On 23rd January 1996, Pastor Joe Wright was asked to open the New Session of the Kansas Senate in the Unites States. Instead of voicing the expected platitudes and generalities, this man of God uttered an impassioned prayer for the State and the Nation. The text of that prayer has been preserved. It was as follows -

    "Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance. We know your Word says 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that's exactly what we've done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values."

    [At this point a number of the legislators began to walk out of the assembly hall.]

    "We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism,

    "We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

    "We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbours' possessions and called it ambition.

    "We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honoured values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

    "Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

    "Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great State. Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the centre of your will. I ask it in the name of your Son, the Living Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen."

[Source - July/August edition of "Prophecy Today" Magazine.]

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While reading the article, 'The Democrats Find God' in the July 1999 edition of 'The Limbaugh Letter', Rush quoted an article in Salon magazine: 'Mysteries of Bill Clinton,' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Feb. 1, 1999. When Bill Clinton was asked who he considered his enemies...

(Salon) "His reply was immediate and abrupt: 'My only enemy is right-wing religious fundamentalism.'"

[Source - communication from Jim Bramlett, Orlando, Florida.]
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Yesterday was the day of the Total Eclipse of the Sun over Europe. It was an awesome sight for those who were fortunate enough to see it. But it seems that the word "Eclipsed" adequately describes the spiritual state of the American nation according to the evidence shown above. My wife and I believe the same is equally true of the British nation. . . . . But now see how events are transpiring in the State of Kansas - - -

Yesterday, 11th August, the Kansas Board of Education rolled back 140 years of traditional science teaching by erasing Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution from the school curriculum, an apparent signal victory for the creationists and religious conservatives. The vote was 6 to 4. It was a test case for the growing power of the creationist movement which rejects evolution in favour of the literal acceptance of the Book of Genesis.

One Board Member, Janet Waugh, said, "Evolution has been removed. Instead of Kansas's curriculum having more and more credibility, it will have less and less." Academic leaders had tried to dissuade the Board from rejecting Darwinism by insisting the move would "set Kansas back a century and give hard-to-find science teachers no choice but to pursue other career fields or assignments outside Kansas."

Tom Willis, Director of the Creation Science Association for Middle America, said about evolution, "It's deception. You can't go into the laboratory or the field and make the first fish. When you tell students science has determined evolution to be true, you're deceiving them."

In the past four years School Boards in Arizona, Alabama, Illinois, New Mexico, Texas, and Nebraska have tried to remove evolution from the State Science Curriculum with varying success. Textbooks in Alabama must bear a sticker saying evolution is "a controversial theory. . . . Any statement about life's origins should be considered a theory and not a fact."

[Information derived from today's edition of "The Times" Newspaper in Britain. We leave our readers to assess the implications of all the information in this W.P.]