The Eerie Significance of the Number 17 in Our Culture of Death
Seventeen.
That’s the number of students killed at Marjory Stoneham Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day, just a few weeks ago.
It is also the number of counts of premeditated murder which a former student, Nikolas Cruz, was charged after he legally purchased the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle he used in his six-minute murder spree, before putting it down and hurriedly walking out of “Building 12” with the fleeing students.
Seventeen is the average number of years of limited life-experience of gun-control-minded, student activists David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, and the others being sponsored by left-leaning news media and activist organizations funded by socialist-billionaire George Soros.
It is also the number of years since 2977 lives were lost in the Twin Towers attack on September 11, 2001, and the rise of militant Islam, both of which has cheapened the perceived value of human life in our modern “culture of death.”
With approximately 900 abortions performed everyday by Planned Parenthood (323,999 reported abortions by PP in 2014), 17 is also the number of years in which 5.5 million human fetuses will currently be intentionally killed with taxpayer funding in our “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Perhaps the real horror in the murdering of those potential-filled young students in Parkland started with these abortions statistics. Here were 17 human lives which were not aborted by Planned Parenthood in 2001. Yet, the selfish, amoral “culture of death,” in which Planned Parenthood participates and perpetuates, culminated with their deaths, just the same.
May God help us. {eoa}
Ordained to the ministry in 1969, Gary Curtis served as part of the pastoral staff of The Church on The Way in Van Nuys, California for 27 years (1988-2015). The last 13 years of this time, he was the vice president of Life on the Way Communications, Inc., the church’s not-for-profit media outreach. Now retired, Gary and his wife have been married for 51 years and live in Southern California. They have two married daughters and five grandchildren.
