CANBERRA, February 14, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A capacity crowd has filled the Great Hall in Australia's Parliament House in Canberra with at least 800 people attending the National Day of Prayer and Fasting. Three-quarters of these had traveled from around the country, with satellite meetings taking place in other cities. The theme for this year was “life.”
Organizer Warwick Marsh said abortion and faith have an inverse relationship. The increase of one indicates the diminishing of the other.
“The goal of the National Day of Prayer and Fasting is revival and transformation. If we have revival and we are still killing our children at 100,000 per year, we are just kidding ourselves,” he said.
That means increasing faith is the way to decrease the number of abortions, he believes. “The answer of course is for the river of life to overcome the tide of death. This really is a spiritual problem and must be addressed by prayer, fasting and repentance – because we have all played our part in propping up the culture of death. The National Day of Prayer and Fasting (for life) and the 40 days for prayer and fasting that follow confirm this call, for God's intervention in our nation.”
Pro-life groups in Australia have traditionally had great difficulty getting churches to take up the message of protecting the unborn. By choosing a pro-life focus, the National Day of Prayer and Fasting has become a legitimate mechanism for engaging on the issue.
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In the mind of Warwick Marsh, “Most of the church has been asleep at the wheel on the issue of life. If it had not been for the Catholic Church, we would be killing hundreds of thousands every year. Speaking as a Protestant, it's time for evangelicals and Pentecostals to join their Catholic brothers and sisters in their fight against the powers of Hell and death.”
“The National Day of Prayer and Fasting for Life is a bold attempt to awaken the sleeping giant that is the church of the living God,” he said.
Reflecting on choosing life as the theme, Marsh said, “In 1981, I saw The Silent Scream and it ripped my heart out. Ever since then I've been passionate about the issue of abortion and the need to protect human life. In 1987, I wrote a song called “Don't Kill the Children,” and I've recorded it and sung it around Australia and all around the world…We all see this as one of the defining moral issues of our times.”