Lights in the World - PH48-01

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 2:14-15

Of course, what they were dealing with is indeed a theological issue, which no judge; no jury; and, no court could possibly decide. Had they been men governed by divine viewpoint wisdom, they would have immediately recognized this fact, and refused to hear the case. They would have passed the case back down to where it belongs on state level control, and they would have refused to enter in to the moral judgments that are involved in whether an unborn fetus, an unborn child, is a genuine human being, and thus a person.

What the Supreme Court did, in effect, was authorize abortion of the developing child for the whole nine-month period. Be sure you have that straight. The Supreme Court said that you can kill an unborn baby any time prior to the time it takes its first breath. It gave varying right of regulations to the states after the first three months, but the decision of the court was that at any time during the prenatal state, the baby could be killed.

In practice, of course, when you actually are performing an abortion by one of the three basic means, you are frequently dealing with something that is much more human-like and much more developed than what is often described as a formless glob of tissue. What you are often dealing with are well-developed infants who are literally torn limb from limb in the process of destroying their life. Those who, in the medical world, are faced with having to perform (to execute) the decision of the Supreme Court, often cannot simply get themselves to have the stomach to stand there and to watch well-developed infants being destroyed, and being destroyed in such a way, remember, that their feelings are functioning; that they are experiencing pain; and, sometimes even crying in the process of the abortion.

The ruling, in effect, has set a very very dangerous precedent in this country. What it has done is given the state the right to decide who lives and who dies of those who are innocent of any crime. As we shall see in this session, there is now no end to this. There are movements in this country which further reflect the degeneracy of the United States that are now seeking to go beyond abortion in determining who is fit to live and who is not fit to live in this country.

Abortion is simply reflecting, as we shall see in greater detail in the book of Romans, the fact that the United States is coming apart at the seams. The prophetic picture is being fulfilled before our eyes. What we are seeing is our nation moving toward the day when we ourselves are going to be confronted with survival. You had better start thinking in terms of the day of your personal survival. This nation is following the same course that ancient empires have followed in the past. What is happening on the attitude toward life in this nation is reflecting more than anything else, I think, the deterioration of the country morally, and worst of all, its will to resist. That's the thing I'm talking about.

Once you start dealing with life in an indifferent way, it reflects the fact that a nation has so deteriorated in its moral fiber that it has come to the point where, along with moral deterioration, always comes the lack of will to resist. The United States no longer has even leaders in its government who reflect the will to resist. It is pathetic to watch our national leaders perform, from the president on down. There is only one image that comes through everywhere, and that is weakness. Each day that goes by, things are getting worse, and they're going to continue to get worse.

So here we have a ruling that may eventually touch even your life when eventually the state decides for some reason that you're the wrong color to live; that you have physical characteristics that make you an undesirable to live; that you're too old to live; that keeping you alive has not become too costly; or, that unless you are productive in some sense, in some way, you're not worthy of living, and the machinery is being set up.

We have found certain biblical facts that we think are relative to abortion. First of all, we pointed out that conception is not under human control, but it is a gift of God. People cannot decide to conceive, and do so. God controls, furthermore, the development of the fetus. This is certainly very amply demonstrated in Jeremiah 1:5, when God says to Jeremiah. "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you came forth out of the womb, I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations." God controls and executes the development of the fetus in the womb, just as he does the conception to begin with. Furthermore, as was indicated to Jeremiah, God has a divine life plan for every conception.

We have many examples in the Bible where God declared that before someone was born, God had a very specific role and plan for him, not the least of which was, of course, the God man Jesus Christ. There was no time anywhere along the line when the fetus of the Lord Jesus could have been aborted without interrupting and interfering with a divine plan. So you never abort any fetus without interjecting yourself into something that God is doing.

The soul and spirit, we have seen, are best viewed as being generated from the parents in conception, along with the body. Thus children resemble their parents physically, and they resemble their parents in their personality. Apart from when the soul enters the body, however, the fetus is destined to be a human being made in the image and likeness of God. So Adam, we are told, was made in the image and likeness of God. Then he reproduced children who were in his own image and likeness, thus conveying that divine image and likeness on to his posterity. The image of God is the reason that a person cannot be murdered. Because animals do not carry the image of God, you can kill an animal. You can't murder an animal. A murder can be committed only upon human beings. But because animals do not have the image of God, they can be killed.

David, we found in Psalm 51, said that God wrote His moral law on him while he was yet a fetus in the womb, indicating that there is a soul on which the image of God can be implanted. So because of this divine involvement in conception and the development of the fetus, killing is interrupting a divine process. Since the likeness and image of God are there from the very beginning, it is an act of murder.

Justifications for Abortion

What you may do with that human being once it has been born is another question. There may be situations where indeed a child should not be retained by the mother, and should be put up for adoption. But that's a totally different realm of discussion that we're not getting into here. I don't care what the problems are, or what the human agonies are, once a life has been started, it is a genuine human life.

The primary argument is that it is a woman's right to decide what to do with her body and what to do with the conception in her body. The fallacy of this thinking, so prominently promoted by the feminist movement, is that it divides conception and childbearing into two separate functions. It views conception as one thing, and it views childbearing as something else. Someplace along the line, human viewpoint has injected the idea that you can separate the two. But that is totally false, and is totally unbiblical, because conception and bearing of the child are one total continued event, and it's all one situation. In other words, once a woman has accepted the conditions which make pregnancy possible, her options for deciding are over. That's the biblical position. Once a woman has accepted the condition of sexual relations that make conception impossible, her deciding time is over. Then a divine act is in the process, and her decision-making mechanism is no longer involved.

The condition of pregnancy, as a matter of fact, is the time when a woman is least able to clearly decide on the abortion issue. There are many testimonies from doctors who have dealt with women who were sure they wanted an abortion, but the doctors dissuaded them from it on the basis that they were not able to enter in and think through clearly what they were deciding to do, who later came to those doctors, and they have thanked the doctor for giving them guidance and wisdom. Those women said, "As I look back on it, I wasn't thinking clearly. I really didn't know what I was doing. I'm glad that you dissuaded me from following the line of abortion, which I would now have regretted."

The consequences, as a matter of fact, to a woman who has accepted an abortion, are never certain. The doctors are very clear that they are never sure what the physical consequences may be for her in the future. They certainly have no idea of what the effect on conscience may be for her later.

Here's another really big issue, in case you haven't thought of it. A woman never knows what the effect may be upon other children that she gives birth to when they get old enough to realize that their mother has aborted a potential brother or sister. They may someday realize that it might have been themselves that she aborted and destroyed. Those children will be old enough and look at this mother and realize that there's a brother or there's a sister that she took the life of, and perhaps it could have been themselves. They could have been the brother or sister. How is that going to affect a child's view toward that mother?

Who has, after all, the right to decide that another person has a right to live or to die? It is only a short step, never forget, from disposable babies to disposable older people. You can easily extend this concept to your political enemies; to people whose color you don't approve; to people whose religion you are not in favor of; and, to a race that offends you. Nothing could have demonstrated this more than the thinking in Nazi Germany.

So what we are saying is that once conception takes place for any reason, under any condition, there is no option whatsoever as to whether a divine gift is received. The divine gift is already there once the conception takes place. You already have a human being on the way. The question is whether the gift is to be spurned in favor of something else.

There are some occasions, it is true, that there are legitimate reasons for abortion. A mother's life may be at stake. In that case, there should be no question but that the mother should not be murdered, but that the child's life has to be taken. But this is to be viewed as an act of God. This is just as, many times, conceptions are aborted spontaneously. When they are, it is an act of God. It is within the wisdom and the sovereignty of God that a conception has been aborted. For this reason, God will use doctors, in effect, through abortion to perform His acts, and to execute His plans.

Abortion Doctors

That's what happens to a doctor once he starts killing people. Remember that sometimes an abortion goes bad. Sometimes a baby who's far enough along and is viable (he can live outside of the mother's womb) will receive the abortion treatment, and then he will come out alive. Then the doctors have been faced with following through on killing that living baby. We have just had a doctor who has been brought to a court of law and has been found guilty of literally killing a baby after his abortion went awry, and the baby was born alive.

This may perhaps put a caution in what has been done many times when babies have been born alive, and nurses have refused to obey the orders of doctors to take the oxygen away, and to let the infant die. So a doctor has to really change everything in his normal training; background; and, thinking. Up until 1973, he was trained to save a life and leave no stone unturned. Every time he deals with abortion, he's moving into something that is totally different. It's not like cutting out a tumor. When you cut out a tumor, it has all the person's chromosome characteristics--every cell in it. But when you take a baby, a baby is totally different in its chromosomes. When you take a fetus, it has totally different genetic structure than its mother. It's a totally different individual on its own. A doctor is faced with killing a totally different separate person.

Reasons for Abortion

I'm not making things up. I'm talking to you about the things that women say who go to doctors. They say, "I want an abortion." The doctor says, "Why?" They say, "We're planning a trip to Europe, and this will kill our money." Or they might say, "We want to get some new furniture. The baby will cost us too much, and we wouldn't be able to get the furniture." This is what people actually say. This is what actually motivates them. This degrades the parents who are involved, and it degrades the family.

Furthermore, murder contaminates and brings divine judgment upon a nation. Abortions murder about a million children in the United States each year. God always brings a nation who permits murder to justice for what it is doing. That's what is so frightening, among other things, about what's happening to this country today. If you are one of the smug ones who like to smile, just think through the implications of widespread murder of abortion. If this is murder, and it is, by every indication that the Word of God gives us, then here we have our government legalizing the murder of vast numbers of people. You will remember that the Word of God said to the people of Israel that the reason you cannot murder people is because that innocent blood that you spill contaminates your country. The only way that that contamination is removed, do you remember what they were told? This is the reason for a life for a life. God said the way the contamination and the judgment of God upon your nation is removed for this murder is to take the life of the guilty person.

The implications of that are that if you refuse to take the life of those who are guilty, and if you refuse to prevent murder, then the land is drenched with the blood of innocent people, and the judgment of God mounts upon that country. I'll tell you what God is going to do. As He has always done, He is going to bring about population decimation. God is going to bring justice for those lives through taking the lives of members of the population of that society. He will do it through natural disasters. He will do it through disease. He will do it through famine. He will do it through military conquest. He will do it in one way or another. But there will come the destruction of vast numbers of the population for the guilt of the murders that have been performed under legal authority, but which were not proper.

One of the neo-orthodox theologians, the father of it, as a matter of fact, was named Karl Barth. As all liberals can at times say something very significant, he did on one occasion on the subject of abortion that I'd like to read to you. He pointed out that the woman; the operator; and, the relatives who allow abortion, who promote or who assist in the act are all guilty of what is taking place. He says, "And in a wider sense, but no less strict sense, the society whose conditions and mentality directly or indirectly call for such acts, and whole laws even permit them."

What Karl Barth maintains is that no pretext can alter the fact that the whole circle of those concerned are, in a strict sense, engage in the killing of the human life. So that means the woman; that means the husband; that means the family who agrees; that means the doctor; that means the medical institution; that means the laws of the land; and, that means the men who pass the laws: everybody, and including the citizens who have not risen up to oppose what has been legalized. Karl Barth says they're all involved. It is a person and not a thing--not a mere part of the mother's body. So society as a whole in this country is bringing down upon it the destruction of God. You may be sure that the land which is being drenched with the murder of unborn infants is going to be paid for with the deaths of millions of Americans.

Conclusions about Abortions

1. A fetus is a gift of God which develops under divine supervision.
   
   
2. The soul and the spirit are present in the fetus from the moment of conception, and inscribed with God's laws.
   
   
3. Humanness does not change from the time of conception, but develops by successive stages into old age. There is no interruption from conception as to what that person is. His genetic structure is complete then, and he goes right on through old age with that with which he began at the point of conception, including his human spirit and his human soul.
   
   
4. Personhood for biblical writers began with conception, and subsequent human acts illustrate this personhood. These subsequent acts do not create personhood. They simply indicate that this is indeed a person.
   
   
5. Abortion this is in fact homicide, terminating a genuine human life, and so is an immoral act.
   
   
6. Abortions necessary for the preservation of the mother's life are to be viewed as an act of God, as are spontaneous abortions.
   
   
7. No individual or government agency has the right to determine whether innocent people will live or die.
   
   
8. Finally, the moral method of dealing with unwanted pregnancies is through contraceptive devices to prevent conception.

He says, "After all, infanticide (that is the killing of infants) has already begun, not surprisingly, in that same Yale New Haven Medical Center where medical students are cutting out the livers of live babies even as the mothers lie on the abortion table. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine for October 29, 1973, reveals that from January, 1970 to July, 1972, at least 43 babies, ranging in age from a few hours after birth to several months, were deliberately allowed to die in a New England hospital by withholding routine care from them because their parents and doctors decided that they were not capable of meaningful humanhood. (They were) all suffering from birth defects; some of which might eventually have proved fatal; and, others of which would not have been.

"In another article in this same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Anthony Shaw defends this kind of infanticide, saying, 'My ethic considers quality of life as a value that must be balanced against the belief in the sanctity of life.'"

Now, get that. This is what you're going to hear a lot about. Why should an infant, up to a certain point be subject to execution for one reason or another? They say that it's because the quality of life is as important as the belief in the sanctity of life. It is this keyword that you are going to hear, and are hearing: "quality" of life. You have to have life of a certain quality, as if that determined who should live and who should die. Where does determining of quality end? What characteristics must we demand of a human being before we believe that he has the quality that justifies his continued living?

Continuing: "And such infanticide is being heavily promoted within the medical profession. Writing in Prism, a publication of the American Medical Association, Nobel laureate James Watson has proposed that no one should be thought of as alive until about three days after birth so that those with defects might be quietly liquidated."

There it is, folks, in the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are having even the medical profession, who has become used to killing people in abortion, ready to take one step more and say, "Let's observe a baby for three days before we hand him over to his parents. If we conclude that he is defective for quality of life, then let's execute him, and not permit him to go on from there."

Euthanasia

I want to read you an article by Franklin V. York from the March 19, 1975 issue of The Review of the News magazine. The article is entitled "Beware Convenience Killing." This will let you know what's going on in the field of euthanasia. This now affects you:

"With the Supreme Court decision of January, 1973, the abortionists found themselves cloaked in legal approval. Now they have turned their attention to dispensing murder for hire to the inhabitants of nursing homes; intensive care units; and, shelters for the mentally retarded. Their hands bloody from abortion, they are pushing for the legalization of euthanasia. We are now daily bombarded with propaganda about death with dignity; the quality of life; and, the right to die. We are told that each individual has a constitutional right to die in whatever way, and whenever he sees fit. We are assured that the quality of life should be the determining factor in whether an individual lives or dies.

"Last summer, 40 recognized authorities in theology, biology, and medicine signed a widely publicized statement advocating beneficent euthanasia. The campaign is escalating. The September 1970 issue of California Medicine Journal of the California Medical Association told us what was coming. In an editorial entitled "A New Ethic for Medicine and Society," the magazine declared: The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life, regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage, and has been the basis for most of our laws, and much of our social policy. This traditional ethic is still clearly dominant, but there is much to suggest that it is being eroded at its core, and may eventually be abandoned. It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives.

"Collectivist theologians and philosophers have since been active in a campaign to assure for the state the right to determine who is to live and who is to die. These collectivists seek the right not only to kill the terminally ill, but any individual who does not suit their idea of what is socially tolerable. The parallel between what they seek for America and what Nazi sought for Germany is as obvious as it is shocking. In 1949, the New England Medical Journal of Science carried an article entitled "Medical Science under Dictatorship," in which it discussed as follows the attitudes of physicians subjected to the laws of German National Socialism:

"The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude, in its early stages, concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive; the ideologically unwanted; the radically unwanted; and, finally, all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind receives its impetus was the attitude toward the non-rehabilitable sick. Once the physicians accepted the premise that the quality of life was more important than life itself, it was apparently not difficult to accept the state's decrees as to who was worthy of life and who deserving of death. American doctors will find themselves increasingly under such pressures from the government as the euthanasia movement grows.

"One of the most active proponents of euthanasia is Dr. Russell Sackett, a Florida legislator. In Newsweek of July 9, 1974, columnist Nick Semesh reported of Sackett: Dr. Russell Sackett, author of The Death with Dignity bill in Florida said: Florida has 1,500 mentally ill patients, 90 percent of whom should be allowed to die. The German utilitarians had concluded the same when they led the first group of mental patients to the gas chamber at the ... Psychiatric Hospital in 1939. It bothers me that eugenicists in Germany organized the mass destruction of mental patients, and in the United States, pro-abortionists now also serve in pro-euthanasia organizations. Sorry, but I see a pattern. Sackett not only wants to terminate 90% of the mentally ill, he boasts that it will save money. Humanely liquidating mongoloids, he said, would save $5 billion over the next 50 years. Terminating the unproductive elderly would undoubtedly save many billions more.

"In November of 1974, Dr. Sackett was pushing his views on convenience killing at a Death and Dignity Symposium in Waco sponsored by the Baylor Law Review and the State Bar of Texas. According to the National Right to Life News: One pro-lifer who attended the November 8 symposium reported that a Death with Dignity bill would be introduced during the next session of the Texas legislature. Such legislation has already been introduced in Oregon, Montana, Washington, and Florida. The anti-life forces are on the move, but so, fortunately, are the pro-life forces.

"Early in 1974, several senators and congressmen submitted human life amendments to the Constitution in an effort to overturn the Supreme Court's abortion decision. Many of these amendments were not limited strictly to abortion, but are also designed to prohibit the legalization of euthanasia. Although the proposals differ in technical aspects, they were all designed with one goal in mind: the preservation of human life. It is sad that there is any need for a right to life movement in America, or that our senators and congressmen must concern themselves with a constitutional amendment designed to restrain government from entering the business of murdering the unborn, or of liquidating the elderly or unwanted in our society. At the same time, we can be proud that the pro-life forces are on the move. They are well-organized, professional, and serious, and they are doing an excellent job of educating the public to the immorality of abortion on demand, and of the growing threat of legalized euthanasia.

"But let us hope that the pro-lifers do not underestimate the ruthlessness and subtlety of the enemy they face. The battle is likely to be a long one, with our vast bureaucracy siding with the convenience killers. What will the future bring if the pro-lifers are unsuccessful? It is not too difficult to predict what is likely to happen.

"Early last year, Dr. Amitai Etzioni, a leading sociologist at Columbia University, suggested that patients who die in hospitals should no longer be buried or cremated. He urges that once doctors have determined that an individual has suffered brain death, the body should belong to the state and be transferred to a special ward of the hospital where it can be kept alive artificially in a cadaver farm for use of spare parts. The New York Post reported last February that a bill that would create a commission to discuss and publicly air suggestions such as Etzioni's has been passed by the senate, and it is in a house subcommittee.

"Dr. Warren Briggs, a United Methodist minister in San Diego, goes so far as to urge that the government should set up suicide clinics for individuals determined to kill themselves. According to Briggs, the suicide clinic's task would be to help the individual prepare his family and friends, and help him select the painless and dignified way to die. But the Reverend Dr. Briggs would be discriminating. Not just anyone would be allowed to use the state's suicide facilities. A suicide would be approved only after a thorough investigation leaves the individual certain that to take his own life would be the most loving and constructive thing to do."

"Given the current state of such brutality, we should not be too surprised if the abortionists and convenience killers decide to import some of the euthanasia techniques perfected in communist China, where it is common practice in the communes to send those too old to work in the rice paddies off to the happy homes where their stay is seldom long. Some are allowed to die natural deaths. Others are simply poisoned. The communists, however, know the value of the unlimited human resources at their disposal, and have found a practical use for their dead senior citizens. As journalist Valentin Chu reported in his book Ta Ta Tan Tan, the bodies were put in a pool of chemical solution to make instant fertilizer. Bones from ancestral graves were dug up and also used for fertilizer. Perhaps our rest homes can be made as valuable for the Green Revolution as for the red one.

"We should realize that anything is possible when dealing with men and women who do not respect the sanctity of human life. If leading liberals like Professor Etzioni think we should use living corpses for spare parts, and respectable clergymen like the Reverend Dr. Briggs are advocating that the government sponsor suicides, should we really be shocked when other humanists suggest that we use the elderly for fertilizer? Once the American people have accepted the fraudulent reasoning of the convenience killers, that what the state determines to be the quality of life is more important in life itself, our nation will have taken a dangerous step toward the total destruction of human freedom. No citizen will have the right to life. We will find ourselves living in the same terror suffered by the Chinese peasants under Mao's dictatorship.

"Valentin Chu sardonically describes their existence this way: In such a life, no one would need to worry, for by the 15 guarantees, the state guarantees to take a person from his mother's womb; raise him; feed him; cloth him; indoctrinate him; work him throughout his life; and, when he dies, deep-bury him beneath the rice paddies so that his body and chemicals would enrich the fatherland in a final gesture of loyalty."

"What will it be then? Do we have the courage and determination to fight for life, or will we give the convenience killers the powers to put us all lovingly and constructively to sleep? Certainly liberal propaganda has had its effect. Forum for Contemporary History reports that a 1973 Gallup poll indicates that 53% of Americans interviewed are in favor of euthanasia, with approval by young adults now as high as 67%. Dean Thomas Shaffer of the Notre Dame Law School has correctly observed that the Supreme Court rulings on abortion have opened the legal door to euthanasia, to a constitutional right to destroy the retarded and disabled after they are born, or when they become too old or too useless to be tolerated. If we are to preserve it, we are going to have to fight for the right to life for the very young; or the very old; for the helpless; and ultimately, for ourselves."

So from abortion (infanticide) to euthanasia, it's all one united action.

Capital Punishment

As you know, the death penalty was an authority given civil powers after the flood to Noah and to the civil authorities. We have this in Genesis 9:5-6. For this reason, Numbers 35:34-44 tells us that a land is polluted if a life is not taken for murder one. Interestingly enough, a communist sympathizer, a former attorney general of the United States, Ramsey Clark, in 1968 quoted socialist George Bernard Shaw, who was anti-capital punishment. George Bernard Shaw, as quoted by Ramsey Clark, said, "Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind?" That's what Americans are being bombarded with today: that execution is a cruel thing that is another variation of murder.

The United States Supreme Court also entered this realm, as you know, and declared that it was cruel and unusual punishment--not entirely, but in certain categories. There is now a suit before the United States Supreme Court to take one more step and say that capital punishment absolutely is cruel and unusual punishment, never to be used at any time. Now a state can say that in this state, everybody who kills a policeman, for example, is going to receive capital punishment. There won't be any deviations from that. A state can still do that. Now they want to remove it completely, and here, as the United States Supreme Court had no hesitancy of making a moral decision about abortion, it has no hesitancy of making a decision about capital punishment.

So instead of individual responsibility for guilt, society is blamed for what happens. The murderer has been driven to it. The biblical principle is that the punishment is to fit the crime as for divine guidelines (Exodus 21:23-25). We have this repeated many times (Leviticus 24:17-21, Deuteronomy 19:21). God will execute judgment upon a nation that does not execute judgment upon those who take life unlawfully. The modern view is that society is going to be made healthy by replacing punishment with therapeutic treatments. On the basis of two legitimate unimpeachable witnesses, the Bible says (Numbers 35:30), the way to deal with murder one is execution. Capital punishment is a significant deterrent for murder, especially to the murderer.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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