MARK DAVIS PICKUP AVAILABLE TO SPEAK ABOUT CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING

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CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING:

        By Mark Davis Pickup

Addresses and interactive workshops are available via Zoom, Skype, etc.

A new way to have guest speakers

[1]

What are Christians to make of suffering? After sin has been confessed, and suffering continues, what then?  C.S. Lewis said: 

 

“Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God, or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t.”[2]

 

Mark Davis Pickup has suffered from aggressive multiple sclerosis (MS) for close to 40 years. The disease took him from being a healthy and able-bodied man to chronically ill and disabled. Weeks, months, and even years of convalescence gave him time to prayerfully reflect and seek to understand God’s purposes in his anguish. He knows Christ’s love and knows God is good. There must have been meaning or purpose to Mark’s protracted suffering. There is, and he reveals it in his new live online presentation available through video conferencing platforms such as Zoom. Mark has stopped travelling.

 

For more than 25 years Mark spoke extensively across the United States and Canada promoting the sanctity, dignity and equality of all human life, and against assisted suicide & euthanasia. He has spoken widely about the natural human dignity that is ours in Christ. Mark is available to address your group, your conferences, churches or community outreach about finding Christ in our Suffering via conferencing platforms. 

He addressed politicians and legislative committees (both Canadian and American), university forums, hospital medical staffs, religious and denominational leaders, community groups and organizations about the importance of Life and disability issues, and a Christian perspective on suffering. In the wake of Canada and 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia legalizing assisted suicide, Mark continues to speak out about the sanctity of human life and building a culture of Life—and life-affirming responses—in our culture of death and despair. He is available to address your next conference or event.[3] Mark gave the keynote addresses to the U.S. National Right to Life Prayer Breakfasts in 2001, 2005, and jointly with his wife LaRee in 2010.

 

In 2018, God did a wonderful thing for Mark and answered Yes to his prayer: After more than 15 years of paralysis (triplegia) and dependent on an electric wheelchair, he regained the use of his atrophied legs, compromised right arm and useless hand. He’s walking! His right arm and hand are fully restored! In the aftermath of decades of horrible, slow creeping paralysis, Mark has a fresh perspective of those stormy years and calamitous times. Like the crisp clean smell in the air after a violent thunderstorm, it has become evident that Christ was always there even in the darkest times when the tempest’s black clouds darkened the world, and terrifying thunderclaps muffled that still small voice. CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING speaks to the grief of adult-acquired disability and disease, both for the individual and those who love them. CHRIST IN OUR SUFFERING speaks to finding meaning in anguish. 

 

CONTACT:  HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca

Why consider conferencing live speeches, sermons, workshops, or other presentations with Mark Davis Pickup?

- Precisely because they are live and in real-time.

- Conferencing allows Mark to speak anywhere in the world.

- Expense: Hosting organizations or churches are not faced with flight costs and travel-associated costs. 

- They are interactive, allowing for Q&As and discussions. 

“Mark Davis Pickup has lectured so widely here in the U.S. that a lot of people know him and have tremendous respect for him.”— Dr. Dianne Irving, former career-appointed bench research biochemist/biologist (NIH, NCI, Bethesda, MD), an M.A. and Ph.D. philosopher (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.), and professor of the History of Philosophy and of Medical Ethics. 

 

“I met Mark Pickup in the early 1990s, and we became good friends. When I met him, he could barely walk using two canes because of his progressive MS. Over time, I observed his physical condition worsen, to the point he became triplegic, that is, was only able to use his left arm. He had no use of his legs whatsoever. I am convinced that Mark’s dramatic improvement is a miracle. What else could explain a man in the later stages of MS being able to walk again and ride a bicycle? Mark is a very prayerful Christian, and I believe his faith was answered as a sign for the world.

Wesley J Smith

Host, Humanize Podcast https://humanize.today

Chair, Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism

Washington, D.C.

 

HLM

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[1] Photos: Top left Mark Davis Pickup speaking at a fund-raising banquet for a Christian hospice, Lansing, Michigan. Photo right: Mark being interviewed by Canadian national Christian TV program about a miracle God gave him to walk again after 16 years in an electric wheelchair and paralysed. 

[2] C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, (New York, Bantam Books, 1980), p. 50.

[3] Venues should have a large screen. Workshops should be interactive for Q&A

UNPROVEN SOCIETAL EXPERIMENTS

 

When Queen Elizabeth was a young girl, she witnessed the great sacrifices entire nations made to protect western Christian civilization—its institutions, customs and laws and mores during World War II. Later, as the Queen, she watched the horrendous systematic dismantling of western Christian civilization after the war.  even to the point where progressives now deny there ever was a Christian civilization. (Tell that to the families of the 861,000 British, Canadian, American and Australian soldiers who died to protect Christian western civilization from the jackboot of Axis tyranny.)  Progressives, the left, and secular élite who populate centers of learning and influence have made an art form out of revising or rewriting history.

CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION: 

 

But there are some things they can’t write out of history, such as the famous speech Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave to the British people on the eve of the Battle of Britain in 1941. The great man rose in Parliament and said:

 

“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and that long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared about will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, more sinister, perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for 1000 years, men say ‘This was their finest hour.’” [My emphasis added]

 

There is no record of parliamentarians or the public shouting down the Prime Minister protesting that there was no Christian civilization. There was a general societal consensus that western civilization was Christian, and people were willing to give up their lives to protect it. No longer. 

 

Post-war progressive ‘boomers are in charge now. They want to progress Christian civilization out of existence, without a shot being fired—well, not many—and replace it with an abominable Brave New World rooted in egocentric narcissism, and nihilism fueled by raw power of an elite political, government, economic and social structure of the left intent on imposing a given ideology, by force if necessary, on the masses. Hedonistic progressives will restore state-sanctioned abortion and expand to state-sanctioned assisted suicide and euthanasia. Canada has already done this, giving unrestricted abortion under the euphemism "reproductive choice" and euthanasia by lethal injection under the euphemism Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Canada is so supportive of killing the most vulnerable at both ends of the life spectrum, we pay for every abortion of unwanted children and very lethal injection of the disabled, the mentally and terminally ill (Canadians being euthanized has skyrocketed since euthanasia was legalized in 2016.

 

Eu’phem/ism n. substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for a harsh or direct one.    — THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY

 

“The word “euphemism” comes from the Greek eu, “good,” and pheme “speech” or “saying,” and thus means literally “to speak with good words or in a pleasant manner.” Euphemizing is generally defined as substituting an inoffensive or pleasant term for a more explicit, offensive one, thereby veneering the truth using kind words.” [My emphasis added.]  — The Wordsworth Book of Euphemism 

 

 Progressives of the boomer generation are skilled wordsmiths at veneering the truths they don't like or do not fit into narratives supporting their sociological agendas or ideology. They gave their offspring the same skill. Their grandchildren are not so skilled. They simply shout down all opposition, set cities on fire and demand the police be defunded so their anarchy can continue unabated. Mob rule.  

'G'

As I mentioned above a newer catchphrase is “Love is Love.” It was used by the homosexual lobby for gay marriage. Great slogan but is it true? What are its parameters, or are there any? I know from personal experience it’s not always true. I knew a high school schoolteacher I’ll call G. He was an excellent teacher and was even voted teacher of the year. G had an affair with a fourteen-year-old student. (Think of Mary Kay Letourneau with the genders reversed.) He left his wife and four children to be with her. His family was heartbroken and have scars they will carry to their graves, but he got what he wanted. As he said, “love is love.” 

 

There was no doubt He loved the young girl. He boldly and unashamedly proclaimed his love for her. (Mind you, I remember him making the same proclamation twenty-five years earlier about his wife.)  G’s love for the girl was so strong he stood stiff-necked against the law social censure and professional punishment. He stood defiantly before the judge and was sent to prison, which was the correct response. He betrayed the trust of parents and his profession and cultural standards. G was a pedophile, and pedophilia is still anathema. Will it always remain so? I wonder.

TWISTED MORALITY 

 

In a time such as this with ever-shifting morality or abandonment of long-established morality, will pedophiles eventually be seen as a persecuted group deserving government protection? Someone may say that will never happen because pedophilia hurts children. So does divorce and that has become commonplace. So does abortion and that has become commonplace. Our perverse culture has twisted it into a right. Children always seem to pay the highest price for unproven social experiments by their elders, designed for the benefit of their elders. 

 

I remember fashionable slogans of the 1960s that were largely unchallenged by any progressive and open-minded person: “If it feels good, do it” was used to justify sex outside marriage or opposed to it. “Don’t knock ‘till you’ve tried it” was meant to justify drug use or sexual experimentation Progressives of the day bought into it all with enthusiasm. They thought themselves so enlightened, throwing off the shackles of restraint. “Free love” was a phrase used to promote promiscuity without responsibility. It was neither free nor was it love. It carried a very high cost in sorrow and broken hearts, disease and death, and it certainly was not love, it was lust. The 1960s were an unmitigated social disaster. But so typical of progressives, they won’t admit mistakes that were regressive.

 

The disastrous 1960s were just the preamble to the disasters of the 1970s. I know that looking back as an old man. A traveller may take a wrong road but when he discovers it, he does not keep going. He turns around and goes back. Our culture has taken a wrong road that intentionally deviated from the Judeo-Christian moral consensus that made the western world great. It’s time we retrace our steps and return to the right road. 

The ancients were right: Marriage is between a man and a woman, where the marriage bed is not defiled. Children need their mother and their father. They need to be raised in an environment of Biblical love, nurture and protection of a family in a home where the Holy Spirit abides. That is God’s formula for people to truly thrive.

MDP