Anglican Church ends taboo on mercy killings

17 January 2005

            We have a problem in Christendom. The problem is groups that continue to present themselves as Christian after they have abandoned the fundamental tenets and ethics of the Christian faith. This is the case with leadership in the Anglican Church, in England. It separated from the Gospel of Christ for some time ago.

            Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC), and leader of the Anglican Church. He embarrassed Christians worldwide when he became a Druid just prior to his installment as Archbishop. Since then, as before, he repeatedly demonstrated that he should be considered as apostate concerning the faith. The most recent event (I say this knowing he does things that are wrong with such frequency something might be new I do not know about.) was when Canon Professor Robin Gill, a chief adviser to Williams, said people should not be prosecuted for helping dying relatives who are in pain end their lives. By virtue of his position we know he was speaking the ABC’s mind, but added evidence of this was earlier Gill was sent by him to testify to a parliamentary committee investigating euthanasia.

            A Christian biblical stance is that you do not take what you cannot give. Therefore, taking the life of a person even a loved one in great pain is wrong, even when the person wants you to do so. We do not know how God intends to use a person’s death for His glory, so using extreme measures to cut short a person’s life, even in their dying could have the effect of resisting the will of God.

My opinion is this move by the Anglican leadership is one designed to be ingratiating to people in England campaigning for new euthanasia laws. Canon Gill told The Observer paper that “There is a very strong compassionate case for voluntary euthanasia…” The word euthanasia basically means “happy death.” But how can causing a person to die in order to simply escape pain be a happy death? Often in so-called “mercy killings” people are denied the basic fundamentals such as food and water, to bring about the death. Anyone who has ever been unable to secure water can tell you that its absence causes suffering.

Of course the pro-euthanasia groups in England and elsewhere are applauding this new compromise in the Anglican Church. It is one more sign that the Church of England is joining the religion of Humanism, and abandoning the Scripture as its authority for faith and behavior. The Voluntary Euthanasia Society in England hopes clergy will join their cause, but as usual they want those who stand for the sanctity of life to keep silent. The best way to get attacked in this and other issues is simply to speak the truth. One of those truths is that in many cases where people have been granted by the courts the right to die in the past, when then able to die, they backed out.

Christianity is full of compassion for the suffering of the sick and terminally ill. We would not suggest for one moment that people should not be able to have their suffering relieved apart from putting them into a state where they are continually unaware of their situation or death is induced. Neither would we argue with a person not wanting to have extreme measures used to preserve their life when the body can no longer function on its own. These things do not interfere with the will of God being worked out in a person’s life as does causing someone to die, however painlessly. Life is the gift of God to give and take away, and the soul of man is uniquely His particular possession.

It does not matter whether a Christian organization shares the beliefs of the general public or not, what matters is whether the opinion held by its leadership is consistent with what the Word of God teaches. Compromise with the world by any church means that it is playing right into the hands of the Satan, the prince of this world. In the situation of being pro-euthanasia, the Anglican Church is also playing into the future plans of the man of sin called the Antichrist. How is this? The Antichrist, when he comes to power will make war with the saints according to prophecy. It is clear that those who will not go along with his agenda will be put to death. How reasonable will it be to present some of those eliminations as giving them a happy death because they are unhappy in that present world?