THE BLOOD CRIES OUT

Eden’s blood-soaked soil cried out against Cain.

The blood of slain prophets testified against religious bigots.

History’s town squares still remember the ashes and blood of the Spanish Inquisition martyrs.

Crusaders butchered across Europe and the Middle East falsely using Jesus’ name.

The beaches and fields and cities of two world wars have not forgotten the blood of nations’ sons and daughters.

Holocaust furnaces still reek of the blood and ashes of 6 million Jews.

Stalin’s Russia is embedded with the blood of several million of its own people.

Korea’s gelid mountains blotted up so much war blood.

How can one make a list like this without leaving out thousands of events and millions of people? Surely you have thought of more for the list.

Maybe it’s too much and you want to quit reading this...

The life-blood of blacks and whites murdered by Mau Mau fanatics and other haters permeate the dark soil of African jungles—including my boy-hood hero Jay Tucker and fellow missionaries in Zimbabwe..

Mao Tse Dung’s millions of victims spilled their blood into China’s lands.

Vietnam knows the blood of my friends and just last week added the blood of my younger brother as Agent Orange took his life..

Pol Pot’s insanity reddened the ground of Cambodia with millions of corpses.

Idi Amin butchered thousands.

Twin evils of famine and Jesus-haters have wetted the desert places of Africa with Christian blood.

Madman Saddam opened blood-gates into Babylon’s ancient soils.

Today, like most other days, Jesus-haters cut off the breasts of Christian mothers so they could not feed their babies in Sudan.

And just weeks ago Jean and I walked in the blood saturated abyss of genocide in Rwanda where a river of blood from 1 million lives drenched the land.

I can’t stop thinking about the blood.

Who can name a place that has not been bathed in human blood?

And even pandemic diseases like AIDS target the blood. Witch doctors tell men with AIDS to rape a virgin or a white person and the spirits will heal them. Their vile deeds infect innocent blood with HIV and the devil giggles in delight.

Shed blood is the hallmark and stench of evil.

Hell hates the blood. For the devil, Golgatha’s blood was his final defeat. It has never stopped flowing. Redemption’s arteries still gush.

Every drop of human blood the devil spilled in glee is much more than an evil toll, it is a down-payment on Heaven’s purchase. This world was Blood-bought at Calvary. A Greater Blood, His Redeeming Blood answers the cry of human blood.

Awesome the thought, God directs the current of that river of Blood through our human hands. Jesus’ blood is the ultimate currency, freely given, by which we can redeem—purchase back—the souls of men.

How dare we fail to invest it? Hoard it? Squander it? Ignore it?

To do so stains our own hands with the blood of the ones we refuse to tell.

The Blood cries out. Let’s answer the call.