Episode 102

Christians and other pro-lifers across the country rejoiced when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022. But there is yet more work to be done. The number of abortions taking place that we know of inevitably includes women who are a part of a church, or worse yet, profess Christ. That’s right, Christian women across the country are either getting abortions, considering getting an abortion, see nothing wrong with abortion, or are being pressured by others to get an abortion. What does this mean? How could this be? One likely explanation is that many (too many) in the Church may not be looking to the scriptures to lay out how we should be thinking about abortion. What does the Bible say about life in the womb? Is it even a life? Since the Bible does not mention “abortion,” how can we prove from the scriptures that it is sin? On this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we interview recurring guest Pastor Todd to get a clear understanding of God’s heart and decree on the issue,

If the doctor came back to me that was pro life, and he said to me, Todd, you must make a decision right now between the life of your wife and the life of this child because they both can’t survive. In my own heart, I believe I’m one flesh with my wife, and so that would be the decision that I would make.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay and I’m MCG, and we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 102 of the Removing Barriers podcast, and in this episode we will be sitting down with Pastor Todd to discuss abortion from a biblical perspective. Pastor Todd, thank you for joining us again and welcome back to the Removing Barriers podcast. Thank you very much for having me again. It is an honor to be on the podcast with you.

All right, well, let’s start out a little bit on the lighter side. Let’s define abortion. What do we mean by abortion? Because I think a lot of times this term is thrown around and it’s lumped in with a lot of different things. So what do we mean when we say abortion? Well, I think we could make a difference in definition between a miscarriage and an abortion. If a lady becomes pregnant, she’s with child and for some reason, either because of her health or the health of the baby after the baby is conceived, there are a myriad of different reasons why a lady might have a miscarriage and just simply means that she miscarried the baby. And so it did not come to the point where the baby could be born, but it was of no action or no intent of the mother that the incident occurs. I guess I would define it as being something that was in the hands of God and out of the hands of man. And so the term it as a miscarriage, a simple definition of the term abortion would be the willful and purposeful action to terminate a life after conception. And we understand that the length of time for a baby to be in the womb is approximately nine months. And so at some point in time during that nine months, an individual would desire to terminate that pregnancy or to end that pregnancy, could be in any one of the trimesters and is done in a number of different ways from early in the pregnancy right up until the end of the pregnancy, and they would terminate the life. And so it would be a willful and purposeful action to terminate that life.

That was my next question, because the medical term for a miscarriage is spontaneous abortion. And I remember when we experienced our first miscarriage, we had people come up to us and say, well, come up to me. I don’t think they came up to MCG, but they came up to me and said, oh, people are going to say you had an abortion but don’t believe them. That’s not right. And I thought, well, why would they think that? I didn’t do anything for this to happen. But I think it’s because there’s a little bit of confusion when the medical community calls it a spontaneous abortion. Some people might think the unintentional loss of the child is the same as the intentional killing of the child just because the word abortion is in the term. But I’m glad you cleared that up in order to define exactly what we’re talking about.

Pastor, it seems that there was a time when abortions were widely recognized as, at the very least, as the most undesirable option. Last resort world is on fire. There’s nothing else we can do. Last resort type of option. And of course in many cases it was criminalized no matter what the situation. It was undesirable no matter what the instance. But in recent years it seems that it’s morphed into this right almost as innate as breathing. It’s almost becomes so trivial in the sense that the gravity of what’s actually happening in abortion I. E. The death of the child, it’s almost treated as we’re nothing but the whim of the person carrying the child. That seems like a huge spiritual shift, worldview shift. How did that happen? Well, I really believe that you have to go to some deeper truth to understand where we are culturally. And I think part of that is an answer in Romans chapter one, where the further you get away from your Creator and the knowledge of your Creator, the more likely it is that you do things that are against the Creator. And when we understand that individuals have rejected God and the knowledge of God and then they’ve rejected the Bible and the knowledge of the Bible according to Romans chapter one, there’s really not much that’s outside of their human reach for what they will believe and what they will adhere to. And so where we have years and years ago, you take a generation of kids in the remove the Bible as a core piece of their school curriculum and you remove prayer as a core ingredient to their daily school life. It’s probably not that much of a surprise that just a few years later as you get into the then begin to undermine the totality and the value of life. And so again, as society gets further and further away from God, the knowledge of God away from His Word and the knowledge of His Word, there’s really no end or no shocking limit to what man will do and what man will justify. And so I believe that we had a general morality decades ago in our society where even if a person wasn’t a Christian, they still had a baseline morality. Now we’re living in an age and we’re living in a society and culture in which that baseline of morality is really gone. And so it is a wrestling match between basically adheres to the word of God and those that would reject any oversight that God would give.

Yeah, pastor, let me read an excerpt from a booklet by Clarence Sexton. The title of it is Abortion the Killing of the Unborn Baby. And let’s go read a small section and let you comment on that. He says here in a book by Carl Thomas entitled The Death of Ethics. Mr. Thomas shared a survey that was taken in TC. Williams High School, located in Alexandria, Virginia. He said this is a wealthy suburban area just outside of Washington, DC. The school district decided to establish a school based clinic. By the way, the school based clinic is one of the fastest growing franchises in America, Thomas continues, as do the other school districts in the country. A majority of the Alexandria school board and local politicians believe that making birth control devices available to teenagers who must still bring a note from home for the school and administrator to give them aspirin, will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases. Mr. Thomas said that they do not have to bring a note from home to get an abortion counseling. They do not have to bring a note from home to get contraceptives. They do not have to bring a note from home to be counseled by a guidance counselor to go to Planned Parenthood and get an abortion, but they do have to bring a note from home to get an aspirin. What an educational system. In an article for the Washington Post, Mr. Thomas wrote of the amoral attitudes of many modern teenagers who see nothing wrong with having sex and being outspoken about it. He says they are oblivious to any manmade or God made standards. This amorality is worse than a morality. But in morality there’s a standard to which one can appeal to to bring back doc errant with a morality. No one acknowledges the existence of any kind of standard at all. Your initial thoughts on that?

Well, let me springboard off of that. What you’ve read is kind of goes to what I said, goes all the way back to the 60s where you remove God in prayer from the school system, and the schools are thinking to themselves, this is a good route for us to take. Again, you don’t have the baseline morality. And so there’s no guiding principle that says need to inquire about the aspirin. We need to inquire about the abortion. There’s no guiding reference point for these people in these decisions. And here’s where that takes me. It takes me even back further to the Book of Genesis, and it takes you back to a Genesis one through eleven biblical worldview. I believe that God created man in his image, and he made us in the unique image where we are all triune beings body, soul, and mind. And God created us, and we’re unique. We must honor God with the things that we have in our life. If, however, secular school systems teach that kids came from a position of chance and a position of evolution, then they’re just here randomly. And therefore their body, their life, does not have any eternal consequence, and it will never be in a position of giving accountability for the way that it’s been lived. So the references that you gave to the educational system that in their mind says it’s okay for us to give opportunity for them to take lives and to do these things. But we’re going to get parental input for aspirin that all flows out of a mindset. That we’re here by chance. That we are the product of an evolutionary process. That we are here. We’re alive. We’re living. But when we die. It’s the end. And there’s no eternal consequence or no great creator that we have to give an account to. And so this is the challenge for us in helping people understand that it’s not just shooting out the abortionist mindset, but it’s really going down to the foundation of what makes them think that abortion is okay. And the foundation of what makes them think that abortion is okay is their evolutionary grounding. And the fact that we’re just a product of chance. And so it’s not really a life, it’s not really a baby. It’s just ending something inside of you that you really don’t want. And that’s why we hear all the time, women say, my body, my choice. If you have a baby inside of you and that baby is no different than your appendix, is no different than your gallbladder, then why is there any problem with taking out that baby? When we take out the gallbladder, we take out the appendix, we take out all these different things, and life still continues. Well, the truth of the matter is that when they say my body, my choice, over my liver or over my gallbladder, over my appendix, that is their body. That is a part of their body. But when you insert another living being inside that body, it’s not your body. Your choice. Your choice was made when you allowed the pregnancy to happen, and then that gave birth or conception to another body and another life. And so that’s where I think it’s very critical for us to understand that this entire educational system is out of whack because their foundation is on an evolutionary process. I hope that makes sense in going back that far for the understanding.

Yeah, definitely. And we do see this progression of sin because you mentioned Romans one earlier, and I think Romans one shows the progression of sin, especially the sin of homosexuality. And it seems like the sin of abortion and the sin of homosexuality kind of have this root in the same foundation where you reject God’s word and you upset man’s word. And if you believe, okay, well, we are product of chance, why can’t I love who I want and why can’t I expel something on my body that I do not want? Well, absolutely, and this is what I find is very interesting. So on one side, they use the evolutionary processes as a foundation for why they say it’s not really a life. And they use the evolutionary processes to just say, my body, my choice. I’m here by chance. There’s no restrictions on what I do with my body. But the interesting thing is that the lady that founded Planned Parenthood also used evolution as her basis for the decisions that she made with Planned Parenthood. And here’s the point. The lady that founded Planned Parenthood absolutely believed that there were degrees of race and she wanted to control populations of different racial ethnic groups by allowing abortions in what she considered to be lesser racial groups. And so out of one hand, they’re using abortion or they’re using evolution to say, we’re all here by chance. It’s not a life. There’s no accountability. We live this life. There’s no eternality. But then they’re turning around. And when she used evolution as the reason to abort, she actually was using it to end the lives of races of people that she did not like. I’m just baffled by how people don’t see that the founder of Planned Parenthood was one of the most racist people that has ever lived and people don’t understand that that’s actually the one that you should be the most upset about for the way that chosen to live out her life and presented her philosophy and founded this horrible organization. Yeah, that’s so true, Pastor. When you look up Margaret Sanger, she definitely has strong racist background. And not only that, and in episode 103 and 104, we’re going to talk about abortion from a social and legal perspective and get probably a little bit more into that. But if you look around, most of the Planned Parenthood clinics and stuff like that are in the poorer parts of towns and who live in the poorer parts of town. Well, the folks that you will consider, people of color you talk about, your blacks and Hispanics, tend to be living in the poorer parts of town. And if you drive in the rich areas of town, you don’t see any Boston clinics, quite honestly. You don’t see any title loan place. You don’t see any lottery. Come here, buy a lottery ticket and win big. When you go to poor parts of town, not only you have them making poor financial decisions, you have them aborting their babies, so keeping the population stagnant and all that stuff. So you definitely have a point there when it comes to Planned Parenthood.

Let’s go back to this, though. You said that because the fetus in the womb is another body that the woman shouldn’t have the right to choose or to terminate that pregnancy. Many Christians believe that God gave us a free will. Shouldn’t this free will be transferred to the woman’s right to choose? I think that’s a great question. We do have a free will and that will came to us from Almighty God in creation. God created us not as mind numb robots. He created us as with a free choice or with a will to decide for ourselves. In other words, we go to Genesis, chapter three, and the Bible says clearly that Eve was deceived, but Adam made a willful choice. He knew the right way, chose to disobey it. And there are a lot of areas of life in which we’ve been taught the right way. So we’ve been exposed, as the New Testament says, to the wording and principles of the law that God ordained. And whenever we step outside of those rules and laws that God ordained, we are then making a willful choice to disobey what he has set down for us. And so, yes, I do have the right to choose. So tonight I have the right to choose to do what is right according to God, or I have the right to choose what is wrong. But in both cases, while I have the right to choose, I don’t have the right to choose my consequences. And this is part of the problem that people have as well. Instead of us approaching it and saying, I choose not to get pregnant or to not take the path on which a pregnancy would result, people have said, I want to live anywhere I want to live and then I want to control my consequences. And God does not operate that way. He gives us the free choice and we can choose to do right. And that’s what he says to us in Deuteronomy. I set before you life and death. I set before you right and wrong choose you this day what direction you’re going to go. And so it’s not the opportunity for me to choose. And then I do wrong. And then I step in and say, okay, now I’m going to choose my consequences. Because God says, yes, you can choose right or wrong, but you don’t get to choose your consequences. And that’s part of it is man wants to participate in sin, but then they don’t want the results that that sin would bring them. So another example would be drunk driving. Man wants to go out and drink as much as he wants at the bar and then get behind the wheel and drive. And while under the influence, he has an accident and takes the life of someone. And when he takes their life, then he wants to say, well, I didn’t have anything to do with it because I was inebriated, I was under the influence. Well, you have to back it up and you have to say yes, but you made the choice to initially go to the bar and take the first drink. And once you took that first drink, you were saying, I will accept all the consequences that could possibly flow from this initial decision.

So I looked up a stat today, and this is from May of 2019. I thought this was very interesting. 85% of abortions are the result of an unmarried couple. Oh, wow. 15% of abortions happen where the husband and wife terminate life of a baby. So 85% of the abortions are actually the result of what is already level of disobedience to what God has said was right and wrong in the word of God as it relates to the home. And men and women, teenagers, young adults, adults, married individuals, they want to have physical intimacy outside of marriage, but then they don’t want to dare have any of the consequences that come from it. So we see sexually transmitted diseases. We see heartache that flows in a family when a husband commits adultery against his wife. We see individuals that get pregnant. And with all of these circumstances, they’re the consequences that flowed from an initial decision because God did give us that opportunity to choose. Yeah, I didn’t notice that. Finn begotten finn. It was amazing to me because it speaks to the heart of the real matter. The real matter is God said flee fornication what is fornication. Fornication is physical intimacy outside of the boundaries of marriage. So God designed one man, one woman for one lifetime. And 85% of the babies that are aborted are the result of physical intimacy outside of the boundaries of marriage. And that is what is so revealing to me in the heartache that is affecting our homes and our society today.

Pastor, would you develop that thought further? The lack of Biblical, the lack of the fear of God in our society, the lack of adherence to biblical standards and how these initial decisions that we make trickle down and create environments and scenarios where we set ourselves up to make even more terrible decisions. Because like the Constitution, the Bible never mentions abortion. So how can we prove Biblically that abortion is wrong? And I think the key to answering that question is in what you said, having that biblical worldview and having the fear of the Lord guiding our steps. Would you go ahead and develop that thought further, please? Okay, well, let’s talk about if we believe that we are the product of chance. So I had nothing to do with me getting here, then I can live any way I want. I can love whoever I want, I can have children, I can abort children. I can do whatever I want to do. Why? Because I’m the sole proprietor of my product of chance. So I’m the sole owner of whatever happens to this. But I’m never going to give an account for that which has been entrusted to me. Here’s the opposing view I would present to you from the word of God as we look to the Bible, and we want clarity from the Bible on the matter of abortion. We first of all have to go to genesis one and two and we have to accept that God made man in his image. So we are the product of a special designer. Psalm 139 the Bible says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And we are reminded that in Jeremiah, chapter one and verse number five, that God knew Jeremiah in the womb. He called Jeremiah in the womb and said he was going to make of him a great prophet. And I don’t know if that’s the exact wording, but that was God’s desire for Jeremiah’s life. Psalm 51 the Bible says that David recognizes that God knew him in the womb and he said, in sin did my mother conceive me. He recognized that from the time he was born that there was sin in him. We find in Genesis chapter 25 and verses 20 and following that we have a divine ultrasound. There were no ultrasound machines in the days of Isaac and Rebecca, but God supernaturally revealed to Rebecca that as she was dealing with twins in her body, it’s as though God gave a divine ultrasound and said, you’ve got two nations in your womb. Something was going on. There was a wrestling match between the two boys and from their appearance after they were born, it doesn’t sound like they were identical twins. They sound very much different. And so there was a wrestling match between the two. But God gave them insight and said, there are two boys or two nations in your womb. And then we understand, for example, in Luke chapter 141, when John the Baptist was in the womb and the mother of Jesus came to the house where John the Baptist was in the womb of Elizabeth. The Bible says when Mary entered, that the babe leaped in the womb of Elizabeth, again indicating the life that God had provided and God had given. So let me summarize that by saying this in the womb, they are fearfully and wonderfully created by Almighty God in his image. They can feel, they can sense pain, they can get sick, they can be scared, they can respond to music. All these things are showing emotions. And all these things from the earliest vantage point are revealing to us that God in fact has placed inside of the mother another living human being.

And if I could just add this in, and this is not from the biblical perspective, but just from the nature of science and medical things. I remember when my wife and I went for our first ultrasound on our first boy and how exciting it was to see the movement and to see the heartbeat. We recall when they demonstrated, oh yes, he’s doing well. Everything is tracking towards a certain time of birth. Everything. It brought so much excitement and not one time in looking at that ultrasound that I think to myself, my wife just needs to have this vestigial organ removed or this piece of additional skin. No, when you see it on an ultrasound, it really speaks so greatly to the fact that this is an additional life. The reason I say all that is to say this technology is outpacing the abortionist argument. Technology is revealing to us in both what they see in the womb and then what they can do when the babies are born and they can keep that baby alive and continue to have it to develop and they survive. I have two teenagers that were in my teen department down in another ministry. One of them was born and they were £1 when it was born. The brother was like a pound and a half when it was born, and they were just thriving teenagers doing great. In fact, the male in that scenario was about six four, weighed about £320. Wow. Wound up joining the Marine Corps and trimming down and becoming a tank operator. And so I just can’t imagine when they told me the story that they weighed about a pound when they were born because they were so foreign to what we saw in the lives of these two kids. I’ll give you another example. In Thailand, we have some friends that gave birth to a daughter, and it was very early in the 21st, 22nd week that the baby was born. And it was like four months premature. And that young girl has survived and is thriving and is now twelve or 13 years old. And so technology is outpacing their argument that it’s not a life, that it’s not a human being, because they’re able to save the life of the child earlier and earlier in the process of the pregnancy. And ultrasounds are demonstrating, and now they have 4D ultrasounds, they’re demonstrating to us that it is a genuine separate life and it’s not just some additional piece of skin or something that just needs to be removed. So I hope that gives you kind of the biblical perspective.

I also wanted to say this to you as well. We could look to proverbs chapter six, verses 16th through 19th. And I think it’s very interesting, these six things that the Lord hate. And one of the things that he mentions there, he says hands that shed innocent blood, so God hates the shedding of innocent blood. And I don’t know if there’s a more appropriate example of an innocent person whose life has been taken than that of those taking an abortion.

All right, you’re listening to the Removing Barriers podcast. We’re sitting down with Pastor Todd and we are talking about abortion. A biblical perspective. We’ll be right back.

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Alright Pastor Todd, let’s get back to it. It has been estimated that since Roe v. Wade, 80 million babies have been murdered via abortion. Back then, a majority of an American population would identify as some flavor of Christianity in quotation marks. So is it safe to say that Christians quotation marks again or Christian women are getting abortions as well? How could this happen? Well, I believe that there are Christians that are getting abortions. There’s no doubt people that would buy into the world’s philosophy and would accept that abortion is a reasonable way out. It’s interesting that I think many claim Christ until they have to answer for what about their actions. So it is to me at how many people claim Catholicism, but they don’t want what Catholicism teaches. The same thing is true for us in Biblical Christianity. They want to claim that they know Christ when it comes to a matter of their salvation. But when we see their actions, their actions don’t actually back up their follower of Christ. Right? But we can’t be surprised about this. The closer that we get to the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, the rarer that the Bible believing, Bible following Christian that they will be found. And if I can give you this example, we now have drag queens that are supposedly pastoring in Christian denominations. We have Christian denominations that are wrestling over whether or not abortion is actually representing Christ well to the community, because we’re now renting to girls a way to end something that they didn’t intend when they got pregnant. And we’re just seeing a day in which people claim Christ, but they reject the dictates of the Word that came from Christ. So that is what I call kind of pop Christianity where they have this mindset that says we’re followers of Christ, but you can’t be a follower of Christ if you reject His Word. That is the foundation of actually being a follower of Christ. So you can tell me all day long that you’re a follower of Christ, but if you don’t follow what he said in His Word, then you’re not following Him. If you love me, keep my commandments definitely. So I can’t demonstrate love to Christ and then break the commandments that he’s given to us. So they are diametrically opposed.

So let me ask you this. Over the years just mentioned Roe v. Wade, the first ruling of Roe v. Wade before it was kind of a stripped down with Casey versus Planned Parenthood. The justices had this weird Viability standard where if it wasn’t this trimester, then this can happen, second trimester, this can happen, then Casey kind of come along and kind of. Remove that when we consider viability, of course, because of the advancement of science. That is strange, I think now with what? Twelve weeks? After twelve weeks is viable. I’m no medical expert, but I think it’s somewhere around 12, 15 weeks it might be viable. I’m not 100% on that. When you say viable, you mean viable outside the womb. Right. I see. I would say that that’s probably around I don’t know that they’re viable until probably 20 to 22 weeks right now with technology. But I could be wrong as well, because I’m not a medical doctor. But I think it’s a little bit further because you have to think in terms of the heartbeat, I think, shows up a number of days, and then they start to develop all their different legs, arms, head, eyes, all those kinds of things are developing along those lines. But I do not know the exact viability or how the youngest has ever been that survived. Right. So let me say to you that way, but it’s getting younger and younger because of technology for them outside the womb. So go ahead. Right. I’ve heard they’re 22 weeks. But anyway, the question is, if the baby is not auto fetus, it’s not viable, and the mother removed that fetus from her room, why is it considered killing when he wasn’t viable? Well, I believe to answer that question, we would have to consider the difference between a finite man’s understanding and an infinite God’s understanding. So I believe that in some of these questionable arenas, we have to commit it into the hands of an infinite God. So let me give you an example, a first hand example from dear friends of ours that were told during pregnancy that the baby that she was carrying was not viable, that she probably would not be able to carry him to full term, that if, in fact, he was born, he would have multiple health issues, and if he survived, he would not survive very long. They just gave him the worst case scenario, and the husband and wife began to pray about it, and they just said, we’re going to trust God because he’s infinite, and we’re not going to rely upon our own understanding because we’re finite. And she willingly carried the full term and gave birth to a young baby boy that did have a number of health issues, but all the health issues were repairable. And so he had some corrective surgery on his feet, he had some other corrective surgeries on his eyes or things like that, I believe. And now he’s doing fantastic. And you would look at him as a junior high boy and not know that anything happened to him during pregnancy, and he’s just a great young man. Well, if they listen to the doctors at the time, the doctors at the time said, we’re going to end the life of this fetus because it’s in the best interests of the mother. But the mother said, no, we’re going to trust God who’s infinite and can do what we cannot do. And they gave the baby the opportunity to go to full term and to be born, and God brought into the world a wonderful young man. Well, they would have been deprived of that young baby boy if they had listened to doctors and others that advised something very different. And so I do think that where we’re looking at it from a very finite position. It’s very, very difficult for us to be dogmatic about the viability when God can intervene and do what we cannot do, and God can see what we cannot see, and God obviously knows what we do not know.

I absolutely love that you say that, Pastor, because at the heart of women making not just women, but people making the decision to end a pregnancy on account of what doctors have said is a shift from trusting in God to trusting in man. Now, I don’t mean to downplay the absolute blessing it is to have medical professionals who are able to help us understand what’s going on with our fallen bodies, how we can maximize health. But when we start making decisions that affect the life of unborn children because of a test or a screening and a doctor’s opinion, the suggestion of whom would mean the end of the life of the child, that’s where we start getting into terrible spiritual waters. Trusting in man and not trusting in, as you said, an infinite, all powerful God who has the last say on what’s viable and what’s not, not just who’s viable and who’s not. I’m so glad you said that because we mentioned earlier in the podcast this huge spiritual shift, and perhaps the excessive trust in the words of men and not enough fear of God is at the root of that. You also mentioned earlier in the podcast how the decisions that we make now will have lingering effects and it will set us up to make even more terrible decisions later on. Just thinking about the statistic you shared about how 85% of abortions are the result of pregnancies situations outside of wedlock, and I thought about how the church in general has ceded a lot of ground to the lost. We’ve lost the spiritual influence you mentioned, the taking out of prayer and Bible curriculum in our schools. We’ve ceded our universities to the secular. We’ve seeded many of our churches have fallen to liberalism, and we’ve seeded to everything secular. And all of these things are having such a detrimental, catastrophic effect on the church. I’m kind of long winded I’m going to bring it all together because think of our most prestigious academic institutions in the country harvard, Columbia, Yale all of them have a very similar history in terms of being founded with the express purpose of training clergymen and then later on training the general population for the purpose of Godliness and being equipped to do Godly work. But as the years went on, you get a liberal professor here, a liberal president there, and then many years later, in 2022, all sorts of Godless ideologies and ideas and philosophies are coming out of these institutions that were initially established as distinctively Christian. And so it’s sad to see that happen. And when you were describing that, the utter foundation of our biblical world view. The country’s biblical founding has been eroding under our feet for many, many, many decades now. And this is part of the reason we see the craziness that’s happening here and now. So with that in mind, I would imagine that there is never a time when a genuine Bible believing Christian should ever consider abortion. Am I wrong about that?

Well, I don’t see any avenue by which the abortion is trusting God for the life of the child. So here’s my point. Is it true that we see in Scripture that God opened wounds? Yes, I think we would agree that the Bible clearly shows that God opened wounds. Yes. Is it true that God closed wounds? Yes, it’s clearly true that God closed wounds. Is it also clearly obvious that God brought condemnation about those that ended the lives of babies once they were born? Yes, that’s true. So do we trust then, that God who opens rooms and closes worms and desires to protect children once born? That same God is also in control of the nine months where they’re in the womb? And I would have to say, yes, God is in control because that same God who can override everything else and give birth or give the conception of a child, that same God desires for us to trust Him if he is the one that has brought about the process of the pregnancy. Now, it’s also recognized that there were many people that gave birth in the word of God outside of marriage and outside of the ideals that God had set. And yet God blessed those individuals when they chose to honor Him once they were given life. So we see a number of individuals, for example, the baby that was born to Tamar when she had a child by her fatherinlaw in the Book of Genesis, and she conceived a child. The Bible says that Tamar was included in the line of Christ. And yet that baby, I think everybody today would say, oh, well, that’s kind of the scenario in which you probably should be forced into an abortion or have an abortion. That very child was in the line of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we do see examples like that over and over again where there were horrific circumstances in the Bible. We see fathers that had children by their daughters, horrific circumstances. But as we read the word of God, we learn this principle that God never asks us to do wrong in order to make something else right. So it’s important for us to choose the right, even if difficult circumstances have happened to me, right.

So let me ask you this, Pastor, as we look at that, because a lot of their pushback to the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court in June of 2022, a lot of pushback was that woman, now we’re going to be second class citizens. They are going to die because they can’t get abortion. And we just look at is the time a Christian woman should ever consider abortion. And you give some different things. You talk about incest, especially there with the daughters of Lot and also Tamara, what about medical complications of the mother? Let’s say ectopic pregnancy? Is that an abortion? A woman has a two ball pregnancy. The baby is not viable. They can’t transplant that baby to the uterus. If the baby continues to grow in the tube, the baby plus the mother is going to die unless there’s medical intervention, is having a medical procedure to remove an ectopic pregnancy that will kill their fetus and spare the life of the mother, is that acceptable? Is that abortion? Well, I’m not speaking from a medical doctor position, so I don’t want to at all presume to understand all this, but I believe that if my wife and I were in that position, we would absolutely seek out the wisdom of a pro life doctor. We would pray and leave it in God’s hands and then have as many other people praying for us as well to have wisdom. But if it was not a viable pregnancy. And if I had pro life doctors telling me this baby is not going to survive. Or it’s a decision between the life of your wife and the life of your son. I believe and this is a very difficult decision. And this is very rare to let me just say that I don’t think that this probably occurs that often with our technology as it is today. But if this were to occur, I believe that my first responsibility would be to my wife, because we’re one flesh, and my second responsibility is to the life of that child. But again, the chances of that actually occurring, I think would be very, very rare. And it would have to be bathed in great prayer. It would have to be bathed in great wisdom from people that had an understanding of the complexity of the situation, and then we just would enter it relying upon God. But if the doctor came back to me that was prolife, and he said to me, todd, you must make a decision right now between the life of your wife and the life of this child because they both can’t survive. In my own heart, I’m one flesh with my wife. And so that would be the decision that I would make. But it would be something that each husband and wife would have to make for themselves.

And keep in mind, in the word of God, there were wives and ladies mothers that sacrificed their lives for the life of their child. For example, Jacob and Rachel. The Bible says that Rachel passed in the birthing process for Benjamin. So we don’t know the entirety of the dynamic there. But just in my own heart that’s what I would do. But that would be after just be after so much prayer and exhaustion of other resources and other avenues and I would not be listening to someone that was just out for the passing of the baby and just quick to run to an abortion. So the premature taking of the life of the child. So I know that they use those remote samples to say that it ought to be justified. And then they say things like, well, what about in the terms of rape and incest? There was a lady that just ran for Senate up in the state of Pennsylvania and my father in law is very well acquainted with her story, but she was the product of a rape of her mother. And I believe with all of my heart that her name is Kathy Barnett, that she is today rejoicing that her mom, in spite of the horrible issue that occurred to her, that her mom chose life and her mom is given birth actually to a great lady who is now capable of running for a high elected office in the United States of America. And that speaks to a very difficult decision, but it does not put a horrible decision onto the baby that had nothing to do with it. And so that is a tough decision. But there are a lot of ways that that young person can be helped if it was a situation of rape and they could recover from the horrible nature of the rape but give life to something that is good out of that horrible nature of rape.

Yeah, I mentioned the book is Abortion the Killing of the Unborn Baby by Clarence Sexton. Already? And he adjust that a little bit in that book. But one of the things he said he believes, and I’m just paraphrasing here that churches and other Christian organization needs to provide avenues and families for crisis pregnancy, so to speak. So like a situation where the person is rate in the case of incest, incest is well, I was going to say always right. But I guess at times it might not be, but it’s always bad, let’s put it that way. So what should the church be doing in adjusting some of these things? Because I feel a lot of times the folks that are pointing fingers at the church and say, oh, you oppose the abortion but then you’re not providing anything to help these mothers that find themselves in a situation where they are pregnant and they need help. What should the church be doing in that situation? And should there be organizations, should families in the church be open to adapting children? Expound on that yes. I’d be in total agreement that there are ways that a church can be a help or a hindrance to that one that gets pregnant. And we would use the terminology probably that would cover the most for the majority of these, they’d be girls out of wedlock. And I definitely believe that we as a church should link ourselves up with a great crisis pregnancy center, one that is not just in it for the saving of the baby, but one that’s in it for the saving of lives. I think that’s an important avenue. I think then it’s also important to provide counselors that can help these individuals out of a sinful choice, but don’t compound the sin with more sin. And so I think we’ve probably been poor at this in fundamentalism and days gone by where we’ve almost put the scarlet letter on both the mother and the offspring. And while it’s a shame that they’ve had the sin that they’ve had, you cannot forever penalize that child for the sin that they had nothing to do with. And so we’ve probably done a lot of damage to young girls that found themselves in very difficult positions. But instead of us giving a loving hand up and not removing the consequences, not saying, oh, it’s no big deal or anything like that, we’ve probably not done ourselves a great deal of good because of how we’ve treated the young ladies that have found themselves in these positions. And I work actively with several in our church that are seeking adoptions and adoption processes, both for babies inside the country and babies outside the country. In my own family, we have experienced both the blessings and the difficulties of adoption. Five of my eleven cousins, so almost half of my cousins were adopted into my family. And we’ve seen the great joys that come from adoption, and we’ve seen many of the sorrows that have come from adoption. And does adoption work? Yes. Can it work all the time? Yes. But there are still challenges when you have the adoption route and you take that path. So I think it’s clear to say from everything that you’ve said so far.

Pastor. That abortion is not okay in the instances of rape and other things along those lines. And don’t let me put words in your mouth. But a lot of people on the left. Well. A lot of people. Maybe just not people on the left. But a lot of people would say. Well. I’m pro life personally. But in the case of rape or incest or things of that nature. It’s okay to have an abortion. But it sounds like you’re saying, again, going back to that principle of the sovereignty of God and these things and the choosing of doing right even though all of the circumstances surrounding a pregnancy are wrong, all of these things should point a woman toward choosing life. But should Christians be abolitionist on the issue? Should we pursue an end abortion right now, all cases abortion is illegal in the country forever right now. Or should we gradually pursue an abortion, like a little win here, not abortion, but the abolition of abortion? A little win here, a little win there. We compromise with heartbeat bills and all these different things, or should we be abolitionist on the issue? Well, I think we work towards the abolition of abortion, but we recognize that it’s not a singular decision by us to end it altogether. So the Supreme Court has allowed us to take back control of the decision in our own states, and they’ve actually allowed it to be a representative form and decision making, which is right, and it’s gone back to the states because it was not clearly delineated to the federal government in the Constitution. And so I think we continue to work actively in our state to protect every life we can. But it’s just like every other sin. We’re never going to eradicate sin. So I’m working towards never seeing another DUI and never seeing another DUI death on the highway. But are we ever going to eradicate DUIs? I’m working towards not having anyone else murdered. But are we ever going to eradicate murder? I’m working towards eradicating anyone stealing or anyone lying or anyone committing adultery. We want to work towards the eradication of all those things, yes, because we want to convert the sinner from their sin to the Savior. So, yes, we’re working towards that eradication, but ultimately, this is the nature of man and his sin. And so I don’t believe that we’d ever see the total eradication of these things. In fact, I dare say Two Timothy, chapter three, tells us that it’s only going to get worse. It doesn’t mean, though, that we give up the fight while we still have breath within our souls.

That’s so true, Pastor. If I could go back to one thing, though, that you said there just a minute ago, Jay. I do believe that it’s been well proven that ladies that have an abortion are always affected by that abortion for years to come. As bad as abortion is, and now let me give you another one. As bad as a rape could be upon the life of an individual girl, and I believe it to be horrific, I believe it to be just one of the most vile things that can happen to a young lady. What if out of that horrible thing, god blessed that individual with a life that perhaps would be adopted by somebody else? But you made something good out of what someone else meant to be evil? So some man did a horrible. Horrible act and committed a wicked deed against a girl. But instead of her compounding it by committing the abortion and adding to her own guilt. What if she carried that baby to full term and afforded another family who was not able to have children. The opportunity to have life and the opportunity for that baby to be born and raised and then to influence other people around it. What if instead of compounding our sin, we reduced our decision making against God and we made good decisions? I think it goes back to what Joseph said. Joseph said, ye meant to do evil against me, but God meant it for good. Amen. And so we see in the scriptures were definitely individuals meant to do harm to another person, but God brought about good things out of it. It’s almost impossible to really convey that to that girl that’s been raped in the moments after a rape. But if they did conceive and if they could bear with a great support group the nine months of delivery, I believe that there are a lot of people in this nation that would raise that child and give it life, and therefore you would not have the guilt doubled by both the rape and the follow up abortion. Just my opinion.

Yeah, definitely, Pastor. But I’m going to take one exception to what you said, Pastor, because you said if the family would adopt the baby that can’t have kids, what about the family that can’t have girls that would adopt a girl? Oh, that’s not a bad idea. That is not a bad idea. I can be on the lookout for you as well,

Pastor. Before we go onto the next question, I was hoping to ask you, I didn’t realize this, but there are some ectopic pregnancies pregnancies outside of the womb that are actually successful. I didn’t know that. I just saw this here, on this article here, that there are some ectopic pregnancies or pregnancies outside the womb that are successful. And I wondered, you went back to talking about how if it were you and your wife personally, you would have people praying for you, bathing it all in prayer, realizing that God is the one who has the ultimate say. But I guess in order to explain the question better, at what percentage of possibility of life would you say, oh, okay, it’s okay to have an abortion as opposed to not? And I wonder if perhaps maybe why some Christians are having abortions is because they’re approaching the problem from a pro con sort of evaluation instead of the saint the Lord type of evaluation. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that, because, for example, I didn’t realize that pregnancies outside the womb could be viable. How would we even know that? We wouldn’t even know what the outcome could be. Having a topic pregnancy is not necessarily a death sentence to the fetus. You know what I mean? Well, I think it depends on and again, none of us are medical professionals, right? But the following tube is not designed to expand like the uterus is. It only becomes dangerous if they’ve internal bleeding and the follow up, two ruptures. If that happens, that’s the end of the fetus, and if there’s not medical intervention very soon, the mother is going to likely die. So I think in that situation, I would agree. Pastor, seek out a doctor that pro life, lack of a better term. Sure. I would say Christian doctor and get good medical advice and be there with prayer. Because to me, if you get to the point where the following tube is ruptured and stuff like that, it’s a no brainer, right. It’s a medical emergency at that point. Right.

Well, and let me give you this example, too. Let’s pretend that the doctors told my wife right after we got married and we were trying to get pregnant. Let’s pretend that the doctor said, look, your body, your health, you just cannot risk getting pregnant. It would potentially end your life. It would do all these things and so forth. Well, I’ve got two ways that I can look at that. Well, the word of God says that I’m to be one flesh with my wife. And so I can go about it as the husband and I can say, I don’t care what the doctor says. We’re going to have physical intimacy and we’re going to get pregnant and we’re going to have a baby and we’re just going to trust God. Well, I believe that the better path would be, I want to take care of my wife. And if the best of the medical doctors say that this is too dangerous, poor wisdom, it could end my wife’s life, I believe that’s where I would need to be very sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit and not just telling my wife, bless God, we’re going to do this, and it doesn’t matter what the medical community says. So on one hand, I’m telling you that, yes, I want to listen to the medical community, but at the same time, I don’t think that gives me cart blanche to just be some dictator in what is in the best interest of my spouse. Let me give you another example. We had a dear friend that was with us in college, and he and his wife, they had a baby that had a condition. And the doctors told them that the condition was like one in 5 million, but that soon after the baby was born, it would pass away. And so they said, you can choose to end the pregnancy or you can allow it to go to full term and you can carry it, you’ll hold it, and then it’s probably going to pass away. Well, sure enough, they gave birth and the gentleman’s name was John. They gave birth and sure enough, a few days after the baby was born, it died. After the birth and passing of that child, the doctor said, hey, that was one in a million. It would never happen again. But the exact same thing happened with their second child. Oh, wow. And I know this because the young man who this happened to his brother was the youth pastor at the church where I was serving. And so we were kind of up to date and up to speed on everything that was happening. Well, in both of those circumstances where they lost the babies, it’s obvious that it was in God’s hands and people could pray and people could desire some other outcome, but it was obviously in God’s hands. But after that second one was born, my point is this it would have had to come down to a discussion between husband and wife about what they were going to do in the future because can you keep putting your wife through this kind of challenge and difficulty? And that’s where I just believe that it has to come down to the husband doing his service to the wife and not being like some kind of dictator in what’s best for her body and health and the fact that they need to be one flesh together. So I hope I’m making sense there when I chat that out with you. But it is an interesting dynamic where husbands, I think you do have to spend time thinking about what’s in the best interest of your wife and how to care for her physically. Yeah, definitely. I would agree. And there are definitely times where we can’t cover every medical emergency that could happen during pregnancy. And I think many times we just need to trust God on this matter. Yeah, there’s an interesting stuff here,

Pastor, because a lot of times when we talk about the issue of abortion in society and looking at it from a biblical perspective, a lot of times Christians tend to turn to the political process of let’s go and voting pro life people. Let’s get rid of those politicians that want to legalize abortion up to nine months and stuff like that, or even kill the baby after the baby is born if the parents decide they don’t want to have the baby and stuff like that. Pastor Sexton says something in this booklet that I’ve been saying for a while. He said, the greatest work we do is the work of winning lost souls to Christ and teaching them from God’s word how to live the Christian life. The person who believes the Lord Jesus Christ and follows him will not choose to have an abortion. And my thing is this is not even just an abortion issue. Many times Christians try to solve stuff politically so much that they forget that it’s the heart of the person that needs to be changed. And that can be changed to the gospel of Jesus Christ by soul-winners going out there and winning souls. So my question as we wrap this episode up, Pastor, what should the church be doing to continue to fight to get rid of abortion? Should that be politically? Should that be soul-winners? Should that be someone standing aside of the road with a pro life sign? What. Should the church be doing in this fight? I believe we should take our cue from what the Lord said in Luke chapter one or no Luke chapter two. I’m sorry? Luke chapter two. When they asked the Lord what he was doing in the temple as a twelve year old young man, he said, I must be about my father’s business. And I believe that as a believer, the way that you change a person, a community, a city, a county, a country, is by winning people to Christ. Amen. If you win people to Christ and you see them disciples and you form local New Testament churches, you’ll change a community. Now, I happen to live in a country that affords me the capacity to vote in freedom. And so I believe it is my responsibility as a believer to be active in the individuals that will shape what’s going to happen to me in my community as it relates to my laws and my constitution. But regardless of what happens to them, I don’t believe that the ultimate victory will be one unless these people come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior. In other words, I have two options. I can spend the rest of my life trying to get everybody to stop abortions, or I can spend the rest of my life trying to get people one to Christ. Amen. And if I win them to Christ, the abortions will take care of themselves. If I win them to Christ, the drunk driving will take care of itself. If I win them to Christ, the physical intimacy outside of marriage can be taken care of. So I just look at all those aside fruits that come from a very corrupt root. And I believe God’s given me one life, and that one life has to be lived to see these individuals get saved. Because regardless of their view of abortion, they’re going to spend eternity someplace. And I could make everybody a conservative. I could make everybody in the country a liberal. We could change everybody’s party affiliation and they’d still be lost in their sins and go to hell. And that’s the real key, is helping these people understand what really counts for eternity. And so I do believe that it’s actually winning them to Christ. And in fact, I’ve changed much of my prayer life as a result of that desire. And I pray more faithfully for our politicians to be exposed to the saving grace of Jesus Christ than I even pray for them to make a good decision about this political matter or that political matter. In other words, I’m not so as concerned about the price of gasoline and what it’s costing me in my wallet as I am on whether or not the leadership of our country, the leadership of our state, actually knows Jesus Christ as our Savior. Amen.

Pastor Todd, thank you for joining us on the Removing Barriers podcast. All right, you guys, thank you so much for letting me join you. I hope it’s been a good one.

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