THE PILGRIMS:
The word of God establishes the divine institution of the family. The Pilgrims,
steeped in the word of God, were committed to the family. This nation under God,
founded by the Pilgrims, was founded on the institution of the family. While the
Spanish conquistadors sought after gold, and others came for fish and furs, or
for exploration and adventure, the Pilgrims came that they might raise their
families in the fear, nurture, and admonition of the Lord. They came that they
might raise their families in Christian liberty. Today, however, in the land of
the Pilgrims, the family is an embattled institution. One of the major assaults
on the family today is the cry for ABORTION ON DEMAND. A cry that seeks to
supercede the God-given family with the right to murder infants in the womb.
THOU
SHALT NOT KILL:
Any study of the issues involved in abortion or in euthanasia (mercy killing),
its logical corollary, necessarily involves a study of the sixth commandment. In
this commandment God reaffirms that he alone has the right of life and death.
God as the Creator and giver of all life reserves for himself the right to take
life. All taking of human life outside of the law of God constitutes murder. If
abortion is a breach of the sixth commandment then all those parents and doctors
who have part in it should be legally tried for murder. If abortion and
euthanasia violate God's sovereign control over life and death then all who have
complicity in those twin evils must stand before the judgment throne of Jesus
Christ as murderers.
However, before we can apply the “Thou shalt not's” of God's commandments, three questions must be answered: 1) What is human life, and in the case of euthanasia what is death? 2) When does God's law permit the taking of human life? 3) Does a fetus, an infant in the womb, constitute human life? We shall seek to answer all three conclusively from the only standard of absolute truth given unto men, God's infallible word as found in the Scriptures.
LIFE AND DEATH:
We are not here concerned with plant or animal life, but with what constitutes
human life. In Ecclesiastes 3:21 Solomon distinguishes between human and animal
life. Solomon declares that the soul of man goes up at his death, but the spirit of a beast remains in the ground. The human soul is what distinguishes
human life. In Genesis 2:7 we read, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
" The body is only material, dust of the earth, but when God breathes
into it a soul, then it becomes human life. This is paralleled by Ezekiel's
vision (chap. 37) of the resurrection, where the Spirit of God breathes over the
valley of dead bones and restores them to life. Clearly, the union of the body
and soul constitutes the commencement of human life. Similarly, the Bible gives
us a definition of death, which is the separation of the body and soul. The
classic example of this is Christ's death on the cross where he yielded up
the ghost. Crucifixion is a long and lingering death and normally takes
days, but Christ died not of physical causes, but by laying down his life as a
ransom for many. Also, when Christ miraculously raised Jairus' daughter from the
dead the scriptures say, “And
her spirit came again.”
Obviously, therefore, it left her at death and was restored to her by the
power and intervention of the Son of God.
Unfortunately, man has substituted his standards of life and death for God's. Doctors speak of heart stoppages as constituting death, lawyers speak of a cessation of brain function (electrical impulses in the brain), and psychologists speak of personality tests as determining the absence of human life. All of this has removed the protection of human life from the eternal, unchanging rock of God's law to the quagmire of human opinions. God's law would certainly rule out every conceivable form of euthanasia proposed. Also, since medical science has no method of detecting the presence of the soul, this leaves the strong possibility that some if not all of the heart transplant cases may constitute murder in God's sight (Ed. Note: At the time terminal patients on the verge of death had their hearts removed and made available to another patient in need of a transplant). As the scripture saith, "There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."
THE LAW:
The scriptures say, "The wages of sin is death" and "Vengeance
is mine saith the Lord, / shall
repay." God, the author of life, is also the judge of all the earth. He
has declared, "it is appointed unto
men once to die, but after this the judgment." God alone has the right
of life and death and his law is the only standard for the taking of human life.
Those who idolatrously worship all life would reduce us to vegetarianism, and
show their contempt of God and their love of evil by defending the murderer from
justice. God has entrusted civil government with the sword (Romans 13) to
exercise capital punishment on certain criminals. God has given all men the
right to kill in self defense (Exodus 22:2). On a national scale, war, both for
self defense or to punish national crimes, is a justifiable taking of human
life. All other taking of human life not sanctioned by God's law must be called
murder.
THE FETUS:
The last question is, does the fetus represent actual human life. According to
the Biblical definition of human life, that question now becomes, does the fetus
have a soul. If it does, then it actually constitutes a human life and is under
all the protection of the sixth commandment.
Man's problem is original sin, the corrupted
and depraved nature transmitted to him from his first parents that fell into
sin. David confesses that he was born in sin and conceived in iniquity. To be
born of Adam is to be born under the wrath and judgment of a holy God. Hence
Christ told Nicodemus, "Ye must be born again. " By the irresistible grace and
power of the Holy Spirit men must be regenerated and born anew of the Spirit of
God and become new creatures in Christ, the second Adam. When this occurs there
is no appreciable physical change in their bodies, but men receive a new nature,
a new heart, in other words a NEW SOUL! Now clearly only one who has a soul can
be regenerated and receive a new one. Clearly, the salvation of God through
Jesus Christ applies only to members of the human race. If the power of the Holy
Spirit can be present in the womb, if an infant yet unborn can be regenerated,
then all unborn infants possess souls, constitute human life, and ALL ABORTION
IS MURDER!!!
The prophet Jeremiah was such an infant. Of him God declares, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb l sanctified thee, and l ordained thee a prophet unto the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5). Jeremiah was sanctified by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and prepared and ordained of God to be his prophet while he was yet in his mother's womb. In such a case ABORTION would not only have been MURDER, but would have been the destruction of God's chosen instrument, the martyrdom of God's ordained prophet. John the Baptist was another such infant. Of him the scriptures declare that he leapt in the womb for Joy at the presence of his Savior still in the womb of his mother Mary (Luke 1:39-45). Who could deny that the Spirit-filled fetus of John the Baptist was a person in that holy moment? Who can deny that one unborn infant leaped for joy at the presence of another unborn infant in whom he recognized the Son of God, the Lord of Glory, his Savior and his King. ABORTION in either of these cases is a crime too horrible, too blasphemous, too Satanic to even be contemplated. How any professing Christian can justify abortion boggles the imagination of anyone who, with John the Baptist, and later the shepherds of Bethlehem, also see in that infant their Lord and their King.
FROM
CONCEPTION?
There will always be the doubters and the scoffers. There will always be the
Pharisees seeking to make the law of God of none effect. They will cry out yes,
but at what time: six months?, six days?, six hours? For them, too, God's word
has a resounding, unequivocal answer: FROM THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION!!!
In Judges 13 we have the story of Samson's birth. It is an amazing account. An angel appears unto Samson's mother and tells her that she shall conceive and bear a son. She is told that the child "shall be a Nazarite from the womb to the day of his death. "Then the MOTHER is instructed, according to the law of the Nazarite (Numbers 6), not to drink any wine or strong drink or to eat anything unclean. She is given these instructions BEFORE CONCEPTION. Obviously, God felt that from the MOMENT OF CONCEPTION anything defiling the mother would defile Samson and would constitute a breach in his Nazarite vows. For God, human life starts at conception. Remember, we are discussing God's creation, God's law. God is the standard. In his sight even the "morning after contraceptive pill" is MURDER!!!
THE PUNISHMENT:
The laws of Moses contain God's criminal code. They give his penalties for the
violations of his law. In Exodus 21:23 the penalty for accidental abortion is
given and it is the death penalty, "life
for life. " If that is
the penalty when a man's violent actions hurt a woman and accidentally
precipitate a miscarriage in which the infant dies, what must be the penalty
when the deed is planned and executed for MONEY!!!
God's law in Deuteronomy 22:6-7, like many of our modern hunting laws, extends protection to the unborn of even animals. And the breach of any of God's commandments carries God's penalty with it.
JUDGMENT:
Over twenty years ago nine men on the United States Supreme Court banned God's
law and God's word from the nation's schools. America has reaped the reward of
such folly. Now that same court has replaced God's law with its law and has
legalized the slaughter of the innocents. These men, behaving as gods, have
arrogated to themselves the power of life and death and have struck down every
state statute extending protection to the unborn. Literally hundreds of
thousands of such legalized murders take place annually in America, drenching
the land in innocent blood. Shall not the eternal, unchanging, holy and just God
that avenged the innocent blood of Abel and the innocent blood of Naboth, be
avenged on such a nation as this? Our land is defiled, and the blood of
thousands cries out to heaven from the soil of America for justice. Our land is
polluted with blood, and God's law states that only the blood of the murderers
will cleanse the earth of the innocent blood of the victims. We must return to
God. We must return to God's law. We must return to Biblical justice. But if
not, there is still divine justice, and shall not the judge of all the earth do
right? If America does not repent of this innocent blood, then she must take her
place in the ashes and scrapheaps of history with those pagan empires of old
that also murdered their babies in the womb. GOD IS NOT MOCKED, and his laws are
never broken with impunity. It is still a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of the living God. There must be a special place in Hell for those doctors who
for the love of filthy lucre make a career of murdering infants, and for those
judges who legalize the slaughter. And pray tell what is the difference between
those pagan parents of old who sacrificed their children in the fire to idols
and devils and the modern liberated woman who murders her baby in the womb at
the altar of convenience? ONE DIFFERENCE!!! We ought to know better. We have had
the Bible, the word of God. Therefore, the scripture saith, "If
we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. But a certain fearful looking for of
judgment" (Hebrews 10:26, 27).
MAY GOD FORGIVE US.
AMERICA REPENT!
