On January 12, an army of law enforcement personnel and other government authorities in Hot Springs, Arkansas, removed seven children from the home of a “former pastor,” apparently for the presence of Master Miracle Solution (MMS) in the home. (For more about MMS, see the next report.) Heavily armed state troopers, sheriffs, and DHS agents descended on the home of an unsuspecting Hal and Michelle Stanley to execute a search warrant based on an anonymous tip. It is said that thirteen government officials were involved in this heavy-handed action. After finding the MMS, the officials took the children into custody. Ten days later, a judge found sufficient cause to keep them in custody, and the next hearing was scheduled for February 12. The Stanleys are Bible-believing Christians of some kind, home schoolers, home churches, Tea Party promoters, and self-professed “preppers” who grow their own food and are preparing for some type of end-times catastrophe. We don’t know their doctrinal stance or how far they take their “prepping” or what their attitude is toward government, except that we are told that “they avoid most contact with the government” (“Judge Refused to Allow Stanley Family Children to Go Home,” medicalkidnap.com, Feb. 9, 2015). Hal Stanley has five children by a former marriage and nine by his current wife. Two of the nine are in college. One of his older sons is an agnostic who has criticized the family. The Stanleys are definitely caught up in every type of “extremism,” at least in the eyes of modern society, and MMS has every sign of quackery. (See our new book The Bible and Diet, available in print and free eBook editions from www.wayoflife.org.) But this is no justification for the removal of children from what appears to be a caring, God-fearing home on a flimsy charge. No evidence has been given that the children were “poisoned” or abused. Hal Stanley told officials that he is the only one who took MMS, and hopefully that is true. I am convinced that MMS is complete quackery, but even if the entire family were taking MMS, the current action amounts to government thuggery. To our knowledge, no one has died consuming MMS, but large numbers of people have died from government-approved medical therapies. We think of the horrible side effects of government-approved cancer therapies. The fundamental issue here is how much power the government should have over people’s lives and who has authority over the children. There is zero evidence that the government is capable of caring for children better than loving parents, even loving parents with some quacky but apparently non-destructive ideas. The U.S. government is quickly becoming an enemy to the very type of people who founded the nation. (Friday Church News Notes, February 6, 2015, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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