Interview with Steve Lefemine (8.24.2006)

Christian Activist Pro-Life News: Counting the cost - 8.24.06

Volume 4, Issue 31 -- August 24, 2006

Dear Friends for Life,

I am blessed to share an exclusive interview with Steve Lefemine, pro-life missionary, director of Columbia (SC) Christians for Life, pro-life lobbyist and Congressional Candidate (District 2 - SC) with you.

As the LORD enables and provides, I will be sharing exclusive interviews by other pro-life activists/missionaries in future issues of the Christian Activist Pro-Life News. These men and women have counted the cost to follow Jesus in confronting the evil of our day -- the unmerciful destruction of human beings for reasons of selfishness, including the profitable business Planned Parenthood (and other baby butchers) have turned this abomination into and the tolerance of this evil by Christians in America. Yes, I said tolerance of this evil by Christians in America. My editorials/essays/newsletters have always been addressed to fellow believers as I understand that those dead in their sins (unbelievers) are spiritually blind. But, we are not blind and our looking the other way and not speaking out makes us a participant in this sin.

Michael Marcavage has a ministry called "Repent America" and I am thinking that we, the Church of Jesus Christ, had better be heeding his clarion call so God can bless America.

May God truly open our eyes to the guilt of blood which is upon our land, and may the Church be bold to confront the baby killers and those getting rich from the destruction of human beings made in the image of God by the hand of God. May we once more return to seeking holiness and repent of our flirtation/adultery with the world.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
(Rev. 18:4 KJV)

For the King,
Angela Wittman, editor

-------------------------------------------------------------

Counting the Cost – An Interview with Pro-Life Missionary Steve Lefemine (Columbia Christians for Life)


Q: Hi Steve, thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview for Christian Activist Pro-Life News. How did you first know that the LORD was calling you to become a pro-life missionary?

SL: The Lord has allowed me to be a full-time pro-life missionary for the last 14-plus years, since October 1991. Prior to that I worked part-time some, and lived off savings after having worked as an industrial engineer with an international tire manufacturer until August 1988. I left the tire company to work on the campaign staff of a Christian man running for Congress. He did not win the election, and I seriously considered an offer to become the plant manager of a new start-up plant. However, I had already become involved with Operation Rescue activities in Upstate South Carolina, after having gone down a couple times to the large national OR event in Atlanta in 1988, and the Lord was calling me into full-time pro-life work, which I committed in my heart to do in June 1989, while living in Anderson, SC. I would drive to Greenville, SC where there were three abortion centers at the time (today there is one), and hold signs and eventually sidewalk counsel there. After my savings ran out in January 1991, the Lord sent me to the state capital, in Columbia, where there were five abortion centers at the time (today there is one), and I began doing there, what I had done in Greenville. To support myself, I sold possessions, and worked part-time, mostly as a floor/rug flea-treatment serviceman ("Mommy, the flea man is here !"). Later that year, the Lord put it on my heart to depend on him by faith for provision (the discipling of another missionary was very timely and helpful here), which I did, beginning in October.

Q: How did your family and friends react when you told them what the LORD had put in your heart to do?

SL: Family reaction has ranged from support and encouragement from my mother, to other family members who essentially told me I was wasting my life. Some just see it now as this is what Steve does.

Q: For those who are new to the pro-life movement, please tell us what is a "Rescuer"? And have you personally placed yourself between the baby and the butcher? Were you arrested for doing this?

SL: A "rescuer" is someone who rescues babies from being butchered at the child-murder-centers. That includes doing the sit-ins ("rescues") that many thousands of Christians and other pro-lifers did in the late 1980's and early 1990's, as well as sidewalk counseling outside the death camps. Today, those who display the graphic pictures of abortion on the streets are rescuing children. Those who work in the crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies are rescuing children (I am adopted myself). Beginning in 1989, I was arrested numerous times for sitting in front of the doors of child-murder-centers in several different cities and states, including SC, NC, Washington, D.C., and NY (Buffalo). I've also been arrested several other times, including: while leading others to display graphic signs on the public sidewalk (Florence, SC); while praying on my knees on the sidewalk outside the White House as part of a prophetic witness after President Bush had recently authorized federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (when 19 pro-lifers were arrested on September 8, 2001, three days before 19 Islamic terrorists allegedly hijacked four planes to fly them into buildings); while interposing in August 2003 with 20 or so others around the Ten Commandments monument placed in the Alabama Judiciary Building in Montgomery by Chief Justice Roy Moore, which was later removed; and on other occasions as well. I was charged once while preaching (Columbia). I wish that "Church" Christians had a better understanding of the price being paid, and the battles and war being fought, by Christian pro-life "rescuers" around this country, in many cities and states, to preserve our God-given liberties of free speech, peaceable assembly, and freedom of religion. I wish the Church of Jesus Christ would wake up to the serious threat to their lives, liberties, families, faith, and fortunes in America today !

Q: What are some of the other consequences you have experienced for your Christian witness and actions to protect the preborn babies from death?

SL: As I expressed above, I have experienced being arrested many times. I also have been physically assaulted a few times. I have been asked to leave an evangelical church, not for disciplinary reasons, but because of what I believe are biblical stands on holding Christian politicians accountable, birth control, and the God-ordained roles of men and women. There have also certainly been financial consequences over the last 17 years during the time that I have been involved in full-time pro-life work. While working in industry, I had a $40,000-plus annual salary (in 1987); in 2005, as a pro-life missionary, my personal monetary income was about 1/4 of that. There is a cost to telling the truth, and acting upon it. Jesus said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." I found my life in Jesus by losing it for my own purposes, Hallelu-Yah !!! Jesus also said, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Amen.

Q: Please tell us a little about "Columbia Christians for Life" and why you founded this ministry?

SL: As I said earlier, the Lord sent me to Columbia from Anderson, SC in 1991. That first night, on February 1, 1991, I asked Him, now that I was here, what did He want me to do ? I felt His answer to me was, go and do what you've already been doing. In other words, do in Columbia, what I had been doing in Greenville when I commuted to the abortion mills from Anderson. The next day I went to all five abortion centers at the time in Columbia, and did not see any Christian presence at any of them (I learned later there was one faithful group of men from an Anabaptist Church who came out Saturdays to one or two of the death centers to street preach, and I believe God used them mightily). That began a regular presence first at one abortion mill, which eventually closed after the abortionist was killed in an auto accident in 1995. Another abortion mill that the Anabaptist street preachers had gone to years earlier, and that we went to occasionally, went bankrupt and closed in 1995. Another mill that we had established a regular presence at, closed in 1999 when the Christian wife of a landlord who had just died of disease, refused to renew the murderer's lease, and he did not find a new place to rent. As we started a regular sidewalk counseling presence at Planned Parenthood, a smaller abortion mill across the street also shut down in 1999, leaving Planned Parenthood's murder center the sole free-standing death camp in Columbia, beside the smaller number of child-murders being committed at area hospitals. In 1990, there were over 5,100 child-murders-by-surgical-abortion reported in the Columbia area's then five abortion centers. In 2004, there were 1,335 such murders reported in the one remaining Planned Parenthood murder center. Columbia hospitals are still killing some children as well.

In the meantime, and over the years, the ministry has expanded to include outreach to 15 area government high schools, and the University of South Carolina, making almost 200 visits outside these area schools since 1997, while passing out over 10,000 packets with over 50,000 pieces of literature, tracts, etc., with the biblical truth about the sanctity of human life, abortion, chastity, and the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (Messiah). Since 2002, we have also been distributing brochures with the biblical truth that homosexual acts (sodomy) are sinful. The weekly "Show the Truth" witness with the large graphic signs is another ministry activity at busy intersections during morning drive time. And during the months that the South Carolina Legislature is in session (early January to early June), I have been involved with working to get the Right to Life Act of SC passed (a bill to ban all abortion in SC) since it was first introduced in 1998, and began working to de-fund abortion and birth control and sterilization funding from the SC state budget in 1997.

Q: Do you have support from the churches in Columbia, South Carolina?

SL: At the present time, there are no churches supporting the ministry of Columbia Christians for Life, as churches. And there are no churches supporting me as a pro-life missionary. In history future, when this American abortion holocaust is over (either by grace through the faith and obedience of God's people; or, through divine judgment (foreign invasion and war, as in 2 Kings 24:1-4), this issue of the insufficient involvement and response of Christian churches to the murder of over 3,000 babies a day in America will be a great question, and I believe, will also be a matter of great reproach to the Name of Jesus Christ. There are a few individual Christians who are personally involved, themselves, on the street with ministry work, including the pastor of the church I presently belong to, and a 77-year-old woman who is my most faithful companion on the streets in Columbia, both at the sole remaining abortion mill (PP) in Columbia, and at regular weekly "Show the Truth" witnesses with the large signs. There is also a small team of faithful Christians who provide monthly financial support who have enabled me to continue in this work. Without God's provision through them, I would not be able to continue as I have. And then there are many individual Christians and some pro-life non-Christians (Catholics), who have also given, intermittently, or occasionally, or once ! God uses it all to continue the work of His ministry here on the streets, at the abortion mill, at the anti-Christ government schools, and in the State House here in Columbia.

Q: Please give us a brief summary of the Right to Life Act of SC and tell us where the legislation is at today?

SL: The RTL Act of SC is a bill to recognize the legal ‘Personhood’ of all pre-birth human beings, at fertilization, with no "exceptions." This bill would ban all legalized child-murder-by-abortion, because the SC State Constitution, in Art. I., Sec. 3, already protects legal ‘persons’ from being deprived of life without due process of law, and the RTL Act would inarguably, place all pre-birth human beings in the same protected status. The bill was first introduced in the SC House and the SC Senate in 1998. It has been an active bill in the SC House every year since, passing the SC House for the first time in April 2005, albeit with a 'fatal flaw' rape exception amendment that was unfortunately agreed to on the floor of the full House. The bill went over to the SC Senate, had two public hearings in May 2005, and then sat dormant all throughout the 2006 legislative session, where it died (was killed) by the inaction of the Republican-majority SC Senate (26 Republicans to 20 Democrats). The subcommittee which killed the bill in the SC Senate was chaired by a Republican, and four of the five Senators who could vote on the subcommittee were Republicans. So the bill essentially died at the end of the session in June 2006. An abortion ban bill would have to be re-introduced for the 2007 session to start the process all over again. I pray that some form of principled, no-exceptions, abortion ban legislation will be introduced in the South Carolina state legislature again for next year.

SC's Republican-majority State Senate kills the SC baby-killing ban bill

Q: And last, but not least, please tell us how we can pray for you and support the ministry of Columbia Christians for Life?

SL: There are so many things to pray for, and so many ways to provide support - for any who are willing. But God's first needs the believer's "avail-ability" before He can use that believer's "ab-ility." Certainly here in Columbia, there are many, many, many ways a person can help part-time or full-time, from home or in the CCL office, on the street at the abortion mill, outside the government schools, or at the SC State House. But before God can use the believer's abilities, will that person make themselves available to be used by God ? We need people (Bible-believing, born-again, evangelical Christians), prayer, fasting, presence (at the "gates"), time, talent, and treasure devoted to this rescue, mercy, and justice effort. There are a million and one things Christians could do IF they made themselves available to be used by God in this historic, fate-of-the-nation-in-the-balance struggle. The question on the table, as it has been for the last 6,000 years of human history, "Yea, hath God said,...?" (Gen. 3:1).

Pray for Repentance, Reformation, and Revival of and through God's people (Christians).

Jesus Christ (Messiah) is Lord of the "Gates" (Matthew 16:18)

Steve Lefemine, pro-life missionary
dir., Columbia Christians for Life
PO Box 50358
Columbia, South Carolina
CCL@ChristianLifeandLiberty.net
www.ChristianLifeandLiberty.net
www.RighttoLifeActofSC.net
August 23, 2006