Apes and Their Rights

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s parliament voiced its support on Wednesday [June 25th] for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament’s environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project. (You can read the rest of the article here if you’d like…)

Now it is expected that this will become law in all of Spain, and on the Great Apes Project [or GAP] website, this action is already being touted as a “victory”. Oh, and BTW: Here’s part of what GAP’s “Declaration on Great Apes” says, “We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. The community of equals is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law. Among these principles or rights are the following: 1. The Right to Life, 2. The Protection of Individual Liberty, and 3. The Prohibition of Torture.”

Well sure, apes ought to enjoy the right to life…just like all our unborn babies in this country and in this world…oh wait, many unborn babies DON’T have that right that’s being extended to apes.

Okay…but apes do deserve their individual liberties protected…I mean, after all, their forefathers mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and their sacred honor for their nation, and many of them shed their own blood for freedom…oh wait, wrong species! Hmmm…I wonder if apes think the 2nd Amendment is unconstitutional…?

No, I don’t think apes should be tortured either, but I think they now ought to have the right to get and hold down a job and pay taxes instead of “freeloading” on the zoo-welfare system! I mean, if apes are “that much advanced”, have them GET A JOB! Oh wait – we don’t really push that “agenda” here in our country. So I guess if we see many more apes with no jobs coming to our country, the welfare rolls will swell that much more. I know, let’s just tax “the rich” and corporations, and we can also sue fast-food restaurants.

What’s wrong with this picture??? How far has man removed himself from God? Have we forgotten Genesis 1:26, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Man, made in the image of God, is a higher being than any animal. There were no animals created in the image of God, and no man evolved from any ape! That’s not boast or brag, that’s just BIBLE! Ah but wait, I’m supposing the Bible would have to be held as God’s Word and believed…but this won’t be when man is far removed from God!

The Gospel of Humanism

In his sermon, Ten Shekels and a Shirt, the late Paris Reidhead, missionary in Africa, proclaimed that most professing American Christians serve themselves while pretending to serve God.  His sermon addresses Humanism (the belief that the purpose of life is man-centered) and its invasion upon, what Mr. Reidhead called, Western Christianity. He preached:

Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the philosophical stenches that’s crept up through the grating over the pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion and it is an utter and total contrast with Christianity….I’m afraid that it’s become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it’s this: That the end of all being is the happiness of man, which has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist…Everything is for the happiness of man! And I submit to you that this is unchristian. Didn’t God intend to make man happy? Yes. But as a by-product and not a prime-product. Christianity says, “The end of all being is the glory of God.” Humanism says, “The end of all being is the happiness of man.”

Friends…how many people today who claim the Name of Christ – who call themselves “Christian” – are held to this philosophy!

Personally in the field where the Lord has me, I’ve met more than my share of “professing Christians” outside our congregation that would fit in very well at the “Me-First, What’s in it for Me” Church. There are those who do what they want, rather than do what the Lord says needs to be done. There are also others who profess to know the Lord as their Saviour, but when pressed for a testimony, their reason for coming to Christ was that, for example, their life was “going nowhere”…WHAT??? “Yes, my life was going nowhere…I got a divorce, I was depressed, I had no joy, and I felt like ending it all…so I turned to Jesus to make it all better”. [Note: I just recently heard this “testimony”].

Now please help me out here…I thought the Lord Jesus Christ left His Throne in Glory, poured Himself and all His attributes into flesh, was virgin-born into His own Creation, lived a perfect, sinless life, endured cruel mockings and scourgings and a cross, DIED, was buried three days in a borrowed tomb, ROSE AGAIN AND WAS VICTORIOUS OVER DEATH, and later on ascended back unto the Father in Heaven…so that: GOD WOULD BE SATISFIED IN HAVING MAN’S SIN DEBT SETTLED BY HIS SUBSITUTION!

I know this happens frequently in our day…there are preachers and churches who promote this false, feel-good and make it all better, humanistic “gospel”! How many people will die religous, will die professing Jesus Christ on their lips, will die trying to follow the Lord’s commandments [see Matt 7:21-23], all because they came to Christ in hope of feeling better about themselves and to improve on their situations? They did not come to Christ with contrition and confession of their sin…I had a person tell me that he’s been saved for years – he even had a time and place for his “conversion” – but when I asked him if he saw himself a sinner when he came to Christ, he replied, Certainly not!” THEN WHY COME TO CHRIST? A person goes to the grocery store…to buy groceries; a person goes to a restaurant…to have a meal; a person goes to Christ…because his life’s going nowhere??? Because he’s lonely and needs a friend??? Because he’s heard that Jesus can give great joy and make his life better??? IS THIS TODAY’S GOSPEL??? It sure isn’t the Gospel of the Bible!

It is the Gospel of Humanism! It is a gospel that says salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can out of life. Christ’s “main goal” [if you will] was not to give man joy, but it was to glorify God! [John 13:32; 21:19; etc.] AND IN FACT, that ought to be man’s goal as well! “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” 1 Cor 10:31.