"Would you have rejoiced when Adolf Hitler
died during the war?" Drake asked. "Or would you have said, 'Oh that is terrible for him to
be killed'? No, I would have said, 'Amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah, I'm glad
he's dead.'"
"This man, George Tiller, was far greater in
his atrocities than Adolf Hitler," Drake said. "So I am happy. I am
glad that he is dead. Now I am sad that he went to hell, because he had a
choice just like everybody else did. He could have chosen Jesus Christ and when
he died went to heaven. But he chose the devil. He chose to neglect, he chose
to reject Jesus Christ. And therefore on Sunday morning when he breathed his
last breath there in the Lutheran church, he breathed his last breath, and he
slipped into the presence of the devil. And I have a strange hunch and a
strange feeling that there is a special, superheated, super-hot place in hell
for people like George Tiller."
 |
The prayer does call for serious, serious
punishment on people. But I didn't call for that, God did. – Wiley Drake
|
Former SBC officer says
Tiller murder answer to prayer
By Bob Allen
BUENA
PARK, Calif. — While most pro-life leaders condemned the May 31 murder of a
controversial abortion provider inside his Wichita, Kan., church, one
former Southern Baptist Convention official called it an answer to prayer.
"I am glad George Tiller is dead," Wiley Drake,
the SBC's former second vice president, said on his Crusade Radio program
June 1.
Tiller,
one of only a few doctors in America who still performed a
controversial late-term procedure termed "partial-birth" abortion by
critics, was gunned down in the foyer of Reformation
Lutheran Church just after the morning worship service began. He was
serving as an usher for the congregation, where he was a long-time member.
 |
Persecute them. ... Let them be put to shame
and perish. ... Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. ... Let
his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. Let there be none to extend
mercy unto him, neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. –
Wiley Drake
|
Drake,
pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., called Tiller "a brutal, murdering monster" and said he is
"grateful to God" that the physician is no longer around.
"There may be a lot who would say, 'Oh that is mean. You
shouldn't be that way,'"
Drake said. "Well, no, it's an answer to
prayer."
Drake
said he prayed nearly 10 years for the salvation of Tiller, medical director of
the Women's Health Care Services clinic and an outspoken advocate for abortion
rights. About a year ago, Drake said, he switched to what he called "imprecatory prayer."
"I said to the Lord, 'Lord I pray back to you the Psalms, where
it says that they are to become widowers and their children are to become
orphans and so forth.' And we began calling for those imprecatory prayers,
because he had obviously turned his back on God again and again and
again," Drake said.
Drake
called Tiller "a reprobate" and a
"brutal, arrogant murderer" who "bragged on his own Web site how
many babies he had killed."
"Would you have rejoiced when Adolf Hitler died during the
war?" Drake asked. "Or would you have said, 'Oh that is terrible for him to
be killed'? No, I would have said, 'Amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah, I'm glad
he's dead.'"
"This man, George Tiller, was far greater in his atrocities
than Adolf Hitler,"
Drake said. "So I am happy. I am glad that he is
dead. Now I am sad that he went to hell, because he had a choice just like
everybody else did. He could have chosen Jesus Christ and when he died went to
heaven. But he chose the devil. He chose to neglect, he chose to reject Jesus
Christ. And therefore on Sunday morning when he breathed his last breath there
in the Lutheran church, he breathed his last breath, and he slipped into the
presence of the devil. And I have a strange hunch and a strange feeling that
there is a special, superheated, super-hot place in hell for people like George
Tiller."
 |
"Contemplate
that if Hitler falls into our hands we shall certainly put him to death. Not a
Sovereign who could be said to be in hands of Ministers, like Kaiser. This man
is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters no doubt
available on lend-lease."
|
Drake,
who served as second vice president of the Southern Baptist
Convention in 2006-2007, made headlines in 2007 for issuing a call for similar
"imprecatory prayer" — prayers from the Bible urging divine wrath on
the enemies of God — against leaders of Americans United for Separation of
Church and State. That was after AU asked the Internal Revenue Service to review
whether Drake violated tax law when he used church letterhead and his radio
program to endorse Mike Huckabee for president. The IRS investigated and cleared Drake of any wrongdoing last year.
Drake
also made news during his term as an officer of the nation's second-largest
faith group when the Southern Poverty Law Center found his name on an Army of God Web site endorsing a
"Declaration of Support for James Kopp."
Kopp
was convicted in 2003 of second-degree murder for the 1998 sniper killing of
Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician/gynecologist who performed legal abortions at
a clinic in Buffalo, N.Y.
Drake
said in 2007 that he never signed any such document and claimed he had never
heard of Kopp until the controversy. Drake said "killing
a doctor that is a baby killer is never right," because "two wrongs
do not make murder right."
Steve
Wetzel, who posted the statement originally on a Web site called Missionaries
to the Unborn, said there was some confusion, because some people sent
e-mails supporting Kopp believing he was innocent and being railroaded by the
government and were later shocked when he confessed to the crime.
Law-enforcement
officials arrested Scott Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kan., shortly after the
murder. He reportedly had been a vocal opponent of abortion rights, and
relatives and his former wife described him as mentally disturbed in several
news reports June 1 and 2.
The
SBC's top ethicist condemned Tiller's murder. "Murdering someone is a
grotesque and bizarre way to emphasize one's commitment to the sanctity of
human life. People who truly believe in the sanctity of human life believe in
the sanctity of the lives of abortion providers as well as the unborn babies
who are aborted," Richard Land, head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious
Liberty Commission, said in a June 1 Baptist Press
release. "Clearly the killing of abortion providers is unbiblical,
unchristian and un-American. Such callous disregard for human beings brutalizes
everyone."
During
his June 1 radio show, Drake tried unsuccessfully to call several leaders in
the anti-abortion movement before managing to contact Troy Newman, president of
Operation Rescue.
"We're
so close to the situation here in Wichita, and out of deference for the family
that is grieving, no matter how brutal he was, he never really deserved to be
treated like that," Newman said of Tiller.
"It
just defies the pro-life ethic to take human life," Newman said. "The
pro-life ethic is that we honor and cherish human life, from the moment of
conception to natural death. The only thing that can interrupt that would be a
judicial decree by the magistrate, and it didn't happen in this case. This is
vigilantism, where one man became judge, jury and executioner. It's horrible."
Drake
said he agreed that it was wrong for Tiller's killer to take the law into his
own hands, "but people ask me, 'Are you happy that he's dead?'"
Drake
told listeners he found parallels between Tiller's church and a story from
World War II about a church that would overhear Jews being taken to the death
camps in passing trains. During one service, he said, the pastor asked people
to sing louder so they couldn't hear the screams of people on their way to
Hitler's ovens.
"That was a Lutheran church," Drake said. "Now
here was another Adolf Hitler scenario. Here was George Tiller brutally
murdering babies nearby.... He began to attend, to give some validity to his
life I guess, a Lutheran church. And instead of the Lutheran church saying, 'We
don't want you' or 'You need to repent and turn to Jesus,' they said 'Sing
louder,' because he was singing louder about putting more money into the
offering plate. He was putting thousands of dollars into the Lutheran church
and they said 'Sing louder.'"
"I
for one am a happy camper," Drake said. "I am glad."
 |
Let us join Paul and declare anathema upon
anyone who loves not the Lord Jesus. (I Cor 16:22) – Wiley Drake
|
Tiller's
church posted a statement on its Web site deploring the violence that had taken
place in its facility and asking for prayers for the church and Tiller's
family.
The
statement also condemned "any notion that violence against another human
being is an acceptable way to resolve differences over any issue. We must
always strive to engage in peaceful discussion. Our faith calls us to this. Our
humanity demands it.
"In
this time of uncertainty, we stand firm in the promises of Jesus Christ:
forgiveness, hope, love, and new life, even from death. We pray for healing and
peace to be restored. We offer our thanks for the many prayers of support from
across the country. Your words of encouragement are a blessing to the people of
Reformation Lutheran Church and Wichita."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
ABP Managing Editor Robert Maru contributed to this story.
