Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say near the end of his life.

He would say, we have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds.

We have been drenched by many storms.

We have learned the arts of equivocation and pretence.

Experiences made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open.

While conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical, are we still of any use?

We shall not need geniuses or cynics or misenthropes or clever tacticians, but rather plain, honest,

straightforward men.

Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough?

And our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough for us to find our way back to simplicity

and straightforwardness.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the man murdered by the Nazis in April of 1945, hung naked Flossenberg

prison for his failed assassination attempt and involvement on the life of Adolf Hitler,

understood that it was the abdication and silence of Christians in the church in Germany

that led to the horrors of the Holocaust.

We have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds.

His final words before being hung were to say, this is the end for me, the beginning

of life.

We are here today at the Love Life Washington Conference, North of Seattle, to raise up

simple, straightforward thinking men and women who see evil before them and they say enough.

I'm going to stand in the middle of the road of the culture of death with a big sign

that says, stop, I will draw the line right here and I will say you will go no further.

...