Conference on Answering Abortion Arguments with Scott Klusendorf Friday Q&A Session 2

Kootenai Church

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Okay, so this session is a question -and -answer, and our question -and -answer session on Friday night is intended for you to get to know

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Scott a little bit, so I'm going to ask him some personal questions about life and ministry and how he got involved in this.

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So first, Scott, can you give us your testimony, how it is that the Lord saved you? I was raised

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Seventh -day Adventist. Seventh -day Adventists deny fundamentalism. They are very good people in terms of medical profession.

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They run healthcare systems through their hospitals. They do a lot of good things.

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I certainly learned the Bible there, but Adventists were wrong on the doctrine of justification, and I figured that out in high school when a speaker came to the

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Adventist academy that I attended who had been influenced by a guy by the name of Desmond Ford, an

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Adventist theologian who had it right and was trying to correct the denomination. And this speaker laid out the gospel.

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He talked about sin. He talked about atonement. He talked about how we can do nothing to make ourselves right with God, that God has to make us alive spiritually.

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I mean, he brought it, and I heard that. I had heard nothing like that ever, and so in my sophomore year at that, what we called our week of prayer conference,

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I became a Christian. Now, was I a Christian who knew all the right doctrine at that point?

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No, but Greg Koukl's right. Jesus first catches his fish, then he cleans them, and that sanctification process goes on for a lifetime, but that was the first time

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I really heard the gospel, and the first time I heard it, it resonated.

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You know, one thing great about being raised in a legalistic denomination, when you hear grace,

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I'm telling you, it grabs, and we get it. You know, if you're raised in a legalistic denomination and you were just taught law, law, law, you get that you're fallen.

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You get that you're a sinner. In today's culture, one of the things we have is we first have to get people lost before we can get them saved because they think they're all okay.

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I didn't have that problem. I knew I was definitely under the wrath of God, and so when

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I heard the gospel, it changed me, and within two years, I had left the

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Adventist church, and I wandered across the street to a very small church of 10 ,000 people, where I just happened to meet that lovely lady at the back table in the college career group of 500 students.

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So that's how my testimony, I guess, the rough contours of it.

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Growing up in a Seventh -day Adventist church, are your parents still Seventh -day Adventists? No, they're not. They leave it as well? They left as well.

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Yeah. No one in our family is still Adventist. You went across the street to a small church of 10 ,000 people.

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What was the name of that church? Who was the pastor? The church on the way, pastored by a guy by the name of Jack Hayford. So from a

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Seventh -day Adventist background into a charismatic... To a charismatic background, where I meet my wife, and I was there on staff in their bookstore and as a pastoral staff intern, and then

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I was an associate minister in that denomination for a while. So tell us the next step before some people come up here and grab you and drag you out and stone you.

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Yes. I'll just prophesy over all of you. Over time,

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I began reading people like R .C. Sproul and others of the

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Reformed tradition, and over time, began drifting toward that, or shall we say, was drawn toward that.

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When people say, are you a Calvinist? I say, yes, but I can't help it. It's late.

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I got to keep you awake, right? But began to be convinced that God had to be sovereign in salvation.

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And look, both sides have problems. I get that. Our theology is not infallible. The Bible's infallible.

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But it seems to me it's very hard to deny in Scripture that God is the author and finisher of our faith, and he is the one who saves us.

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We're dead spiritually, and I became convinced of that. So before we left

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California, we actually attended Grace Community Church, John MacArthur's church.

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So follow my progression, Adventist, charismatic, Grace Community. And tomorrow,

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I'm converting to Catholic. No, just kidding. Yeah. All right.

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I first heard of you when you worked at Stand to Reason with Greg Koukl. How did you get tied in with Greg Koukl's ministry? I was working at the time for a pro -life group called the

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Center for Bioethical Reform that produced the video you saw tonight, and CBR is led by Greg Cunningham, former

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Pennsylvania House of Representative member, Reagan Department, Justice Department official.

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And he got me into this work. He was the guy that got me into it.

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But the way I got tied in, and I'm assuming that question's coming up, so I won't... Tell us. Okay.

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I was an associate minister at that four -square church in Southern California that I mentioned, and I'd always been pro -life, but really wasn't all that involved.

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I cared about the issue, even taught a small class on it at one point, very small class, but I taught it.

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I cared about the issue. I had done a fair amount of reading on the issue, but I wasn't actively doing a lot on it.

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Well, I got invited by the local pregnancy center director who bugged me and bugged me, and she would not take no for an answer.

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She said, I want you to come hear this speaker who's going to talk, and I went expecting that given it was a pastor's event, there'd be at least a roomful of us, because when we did pastor's breakfast in Southern California, they were full.

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Guys like to eat. I thought, okay, this will be good. Me and four other guys and their wives were at this event.

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And the speaker, Greg Cunningham, laid out a case for the pro -life view, and I thought, this is impressive. He's intelligent.

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He doesn't hurt the brain to listen to. And I had heard pro -lifers who did hurt the brain to listen to, quite frankly, and this guy was different.

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But then he did something that totally changed my life. That video I showed you that was 55 seconds, he showed an eight -minute version of footage like that.

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And I sat there and thought, I am no different than the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side of the road.

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I say I care about this, but I'm not acting like I care about it. So bottom line, with the blessing of my dear wife, over time, six months later,

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I left that job. And wouldn't it just be God and His sovereignty who also made it difficult for me to stay at the church because of financial situations?

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So on one hand, I was already thinking I'd love to go out and do this, and then I got forced out. And so for the last 30 years,

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I've been basically working to train pro -lifers how to make a case for the pro -life view. So you went and worked for that guy who showed you that video.

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Video. And then for five years, and then Greg Kokolai, you started hearing him on the radio in the early 90s.

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And I thought, I really like this guy. He's got theology, he's got apologetics, he's... And I found out that he too was of the same denomination

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I was. We were both foursquare at the time. We're not now, but we were then. And I thought, man, he's doing apologetics, he's doing worldview.

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And I heard him give a talk on pro -life over the radio, and I thought,

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I need to meet up with this guy. So I called his office and said, let's meet for lunch. He had heard of me. So we met for lunch, and we talked, and had a great conversation.

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And then about six months later, I was determined I wanted to break out on my own and start a pro -life organization where I could target students more effectively.

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And Greg Kokol got wind of it. He called me up and said, don't start your own organization. Come work with us at Stand to Reason, and we'll start a pro -life aspect of our organization.

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So that's what I did. And I worked at STR for, I think it was almost seven years, and then started

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LTI in 2004. And leaving STR was not because of any beef between Greg and I.

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It's just that STR is a Protestant, Reformed, Christian apologetics organization that sometimes made it tough for me to get into Catholic high schools to do pro -life presentations.

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And so to cast that wider net, to get into these Catholic organizations as well as the

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Protestant ones, we started LTI to be an exclusively pro -life apologetics organization.

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So as a speaker with LTI or the director of LTI, you were invited into Catholic and Protestant high schools and colleges as well?

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Yes. And how do you handle going in? You're obviously Reformed. You're obviously

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Protestant. Do you wear that on your sleeve when you go into a Catholic environment? What is your approach? I got a

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Calvin hat that I wear and a mask and, no. Here's what we do.

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We have five speakers who work with LTI. Last year we reached 72 ,000 students primarily in Catholic high schools.

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We go into these Catholic high schools and we tell the students we're not

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Catholic. Guess what happens when they hear we're not Catholic? They automatically listen more attentively.

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And we say, we're not Catholic. We differ from you theologically. But we're going to argue why the church teaching on abortion is reasonable to believe.

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And we're going to give you a case for the pro -life view you can use outside of your church relationships.

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The faculty love it. The students love it. Oh, and by the way, that gospel presentation you heard before I showed that video, they hear that exact same thing in every

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Catholic high school. Now we do not stand up and say, you know, we think your religion is wrong.

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We just get the gospel out there. But we make it clear that we are not Catholic. And the schools actually like it that we do that.

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And one thing great about the Catholic tradition, their students have had some instruction in moral theology, as they call it.

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And they actually understand the art of moral reasoning at a pretty good level, a lot of these students.

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And we can work with them and train them and equip them to reach other students with the truth of the pro -life position.

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And that's what we do. So 72 ,000 students last year, and we're not going to hit that number this year, but next year we might hit it again.

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So this presentation that you gave to us just previously, is that the one that you give when you have one shot in a

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Catholic high school or an auditorium? You're not able to do the entire bioethics thing that you're doing with us over today and tomorrow.

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Is that the shot that you give them? What you heard tonight is a variation of what they would hear.

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But of course, we mix in a lot more energy and a little more humor, and we tweak it a little bit for those students.

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But they're getting essentially the scientific case that you got, the philosophic case that you got, and we give them instructions on handling some of the objections, which you'll hear tomorrow.

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That's what we do. And what we typically would do is do a 45 -minute chapel or assembly.

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Sometimes we've got 1 ,700 students in the bleachers, sometimes we've got 700. It varies.

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But then our speakers almost always will stay and go in the classrooms, and we will answer questions from the students.

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They can ask us anything we want, and we answer their questions. And their number one response is, we have never heard anything like this before.

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And I liken it this way. The pro -life movement has been shouting conclusions to these students rather than establishing facts.

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And that's why we're losing. So we go in and give them the arguments. We give them the case.

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And in the process, we're able to share gospel as well. And I'll take that deal. To me, that's a deal

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I'm willing to take. You live in Atlanta, Georgia. What church do you attend?

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First Baptist Noonan. It's an SBC church, so I'm a Calvinist hiding out in an

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SBC church. Given your ministry schedule, how often do you get to be at your home church?

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Depends on the time of year. In the fall, this is my compact season.

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In seven weeks' time, I do about 60 % of the work I'm going to do for the year.

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That's just how it works out with pregnancy center banquets and the like. So normally, it would not be this busy, but I've missed the last two

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Sundays at church, but I was there the last three, even in the middle of the busy season. So times

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I will miss. I used to teach Sunday school at my church with a federal judge that is a friend of mine, and I just had to give that up.

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I could not maintain the rigors of preparing lessons and being out on the road.

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It just was too taxing on me to continue. So now and then, I will teach. We're part of the class.

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Stephanie and I are part of a Sunday school class as well as part of a church that we've now been members at for...

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This will be our 14th year coming up. So... And how do you serve in your local church other than teaching anyways?

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Our local church has a ministry to Chinese students, and this is going to sound very simple.

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I drive Chinese students from time to time to go play basketball. We have a flight academy near us that Chinese students come over, and these students are put in apartment complexes, and they have no one that they know.

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They're here to go to flight school. And our church has decided we're going to evangelize these guys.

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So we pick them up on Sunday afternoon, and we'll drive them to go play basketball, and then drive them back home.

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And we even have events where we will invite them to come to our class events.

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We have now had two of those young men profess Christ and be water baptized. So that's an exciting thing to see.

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Another thing I did is I started a small group for students struggling with their faith in the church.

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And there was one young man in particular that was the son of a couple in our

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Sunday school class, and he was a declared atheist as a sophomore in high school. And I thought, you know what?

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I would love to just try to engage some of these students if I could. And so I set up in the local coffee shop, which is just across the street from our church.

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Alex and I and one of his friends would meet, and primarily it would be

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Alex, and we would talk about what are the obstacles to believing in Jesus. And we talked about the problem of evil.

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We talked about, you know, why would God create people that are destined for wrath?

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We talked about the problem of cultures disagreeing. I mean, we went through all kinds of stuff.

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And quite frankly, I thought it was going nowhere. It felt like it was going nowhere.

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So we did it for, I don't know, maybe four to five months. And Alex said, yeah,

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I think maybe we should take a break. Well, lo and behold, four months ago,

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Alex's parents come up to me at church and said, Alex is now a Christian. Whoa, what happened there?

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Well, he had started attending a church with a friend, not our church. He found some other one.

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He really resented his parents making him go to church. And so he started going to this other church. And he became a believer.

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God found him. And it turned out all that stuff I had talked to him about that I thought was just falling on deaf ears, it actually got in.

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So when you talk to people, when you think about that pebble in the shoe, that's what I'm talking about.

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You don't know how God's gonna use that. You don't know. So don't grow discouraged that you're not seeing results right on the spot.

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So that's one of the ways we're involved. So I thought that being a Calvinist, you don't believe in evangelism.

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What are you doing out evangelizing? Well - That's what I hear anyway. Yeah, but I don't know who the elect are, so.

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How did you meet your wife? Tell us a story about that. Well, I better get this one right.

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Timothy's in the back there. At that church that I wandered across the street to of 10 ,000 people, our college pastor,

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Daniel Brown, was in the middle of a lesson to about 400 collegians.

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And in the middle of whatever he was preaching on that day, I don't even, couldn't tell you what it was, he looked up from his text and he looks around the room and he said,

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I don't know half of you. And I'm gonna guess that you don't know each other. This class has grown.

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I don't know you. I'd like you to take a few minutes and go find somebody you've never met and go say hello.

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So I looked to my right and I saw this creation of God to my immediate right.

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And I decided I needed to go talk to that creation of God. And I looked and I saw her and I said,

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I'm gonna go chat. So I went over and I introduced myself and to make sure

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I didn't forget her name, I wrote her name down. And four days later was the annual retreat to Saulbang, California, where all the collegians go to have their

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Memorial Day break. And 400 of us from the church would descend on that town, and I asked her, are you going?

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Yes, so I spent the weekend hanging out with her, playing tennis, and I spent almost a year pursuing her before she had a change of heart and decided that maybe

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I wasn't so bad after all. And anyway, we've been married now 34 years, and she's had to put up with a lot more from me,

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I'm sure, than I ever have from her. So this was the greatest gift of God to me. What are your non -ministry interests?

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And I guess that would include some of your theological interests as well as, I mean, you obviously are familiar with not only pro -life apologetics, but also presuppositional apologetics and theology.

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What are your non -ministry interests, non -pro -life ministry interests? Yeah, certainly philosophy at the intellectual side.

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I do take an interest in apologetics. And as Christians, I find that, or as a

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Christian, I find that each of the major models contributes something. The presupp contributes something.

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You can see that if you've ever watched a debate from the late Greg Bonson, for example. Evidentialists contribute something.

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Classical apologetists contribute something. I say that because there's a tendency for some people to think it's one way or no way.

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The truth is we can learn from all of those traditions and use them in the appropriate setting depending on who we're talking to.

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So there are settings where a presuppositional approach would be good. Go ahead and work with the assumption the

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Bible is true, present that to the person you're talking to, and go for it. There are other times where I'm going to establish some common ground with some evidential approach, moving them toward the truth of scripture.

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You can do both, you don't have to pick one or the other. The other hobby I have, I'm a bit of a car guy.

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I have a 66 Ford Mustang, and I do enjoy that car.

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And when I need to unwind, I go out and, I don't know, yank a water pump, yank a radiator, try to figure out why the tranny's leaking,

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I don't know. But it's a 66, it's a vintage burgundy, and it's a lot of fun. You speak at Protestant and Catholic high schools and universities.

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You, upwards of 72 ,000 students a year, you speak at Crisis Pregnancy Center fundraising banquets.

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I follow you on Facebook, so I see that you are constantly traveling everywhere. You have met with politicians, you have worked with politicians.

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Something that I didn't know until this afternoon when we were having lunch, is that you worked on a recent presidential campaign.

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Could you talk about that for just briefly, for a moment? Yeah, I advised Hillary Clinton, no, just kidding. If only, yeah, really.

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I did work on the Marco Rubio campaign for president. And they approached me, and so did

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Ted Cruz. But once Ted Cruz's people found out I was working for Marco, that was the end of that scenario. But I didn't talk to Marco face to face.

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I did submit some written guidelines on how to approach the issue. He did tweet out a thanks to me for an article

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I had written on the issue, which was nice. But I didn't work with him face to face.

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I wasn't sitting down with him saying, you need to say this, this, and this. But more in a general sense.

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And then I got invited to join his bioethics advisory team, which

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I did, in fact, do. But by that time, we only had another six weeks before Trump had run away with the nomination, basically.

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You also had an opportunity to get the year of President Trump through an advisor, right? Yes, but again, very indirectly.

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I'm not calling up, hey Don, how you doing? Okay, so we're clear here. I got asked if you had a sentence you could give the president -elect or the presidential candidate at the time on what to say on abortion, what should it be?

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And through this campaign worker, I said, here's what you need to tell Mr. Trump. When it comes to abortion, he needs to say one thing and one thing only.

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Say it, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum. Here's what you say. I oppose abortion because it's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.

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Stop, don't defend it, don't explain it, just state it. When you're not skilled at defending a position, you need to state your view rather than explain it.

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And that view conveys the moral truth of the pro -life position. I wish all politicians who are pro -life would say that, and then we'd have consistent messaging on the issue.

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It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. That's why I'm pro -life. That's what you say.

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And anything else, you're gonna get thrown back at you. Remember, you have a soundbite. You got six seconds to say something.

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It's gonna make the evening news. That's your soundbite in that environment. So that's what I said.

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So with all of that experience and everything that you've done with politicians and people all across the country, you have been involved in the work of making the pro -life case for almost half as long as Roe versus Wade has been the law of the land, roughly?

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What is the state of the pro -life movement in our country? Is it strong? Is it weak?

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What are the chances that we will see in our lifetime an end to abortion? The good news is the issue is coming back to the states in some measure.

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The federal courts are signaling that they're going to release their grip on the issue.

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Again, what Roe v. Wade did is the federal courts told the executive and legislative branches of government, you have no say on this issue.

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That's why when people say to me, I'm pro -choice because I don't want the government involved in my personal business.

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When you say you don't want the government involved, do you mean the federal courts too? Because they totally co -opted the issue. They took it away from you and I.

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We have no voice on the issue. What's happening now is with signaling through what we're seeing at the lower federal court levels, thanks to Trump appointees, and what

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I think is going to happen next summer, I think next summer you're likely to see a pretty substantial case that I'm going to go out on a limb here.

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I'm not so sure it's going to overturn Roe v. Wade, but I think it's essentially going to gut it to the point where the states are going to be able to legislate with a great deal of freedom.

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Are you free to talk about what that case is, where it's going, who's bringing it up, and why? There's actually several that will do this.

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You've got the Georgia heartbeat legislation. You've got the Missouri legislation that was passed.

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You've got Alabama's legislation, Louisiana. You've got Ohio's heartbeat bill.

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All these are going up to SCOTUS. And I think what the Supreme Court is going to try to do is come up with one of those cases that will speak to all of them and craft a decision.

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I could be mistaken, but that's what I'm seeing. So that's good news. Bad news, abortion is almost completely off the table when it comes to Christian conferences.

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Look at the major Christian conferences that go on right now. Look at Passion in Atlanta.

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They will raise millions of dollars for sex trafficking. That's a good cause, by the way.

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And yet, the word abortion is hardly mentioned, and no sessions are generated to equip the students attending to make a case for the pro -life view.

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If you knew what we had to fight to get into these schools, what we had to go through to get in front of 72 ,000 students a year on the pro -life issue, you would be amazed.

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And we're talking about Catholic and Protestant schools that are allegedly with us. Then you've got groups like Urbana that was at one time a great evangelistic conference.

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And they publicly shied pro -lifers for being narrow -minded and not caring about real compassion and real people.

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In other words, they're basically saying the unborn don't count as real people. And they allow a Black Lives Matter speaker to throw pro -lifers under the bus.

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And they not only don't apologize for it, they justify it. And they won't let a pro -life speaker have a prime speaking slot.

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So we've got some real obstacles in front of us. Pro -life teaching is dead on arrival in many

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Christian institutions, which is why I'm thankful for you, that you are willing to put it front and center here in this church.

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So that's the good news, bad news scenario. Politically, what do I think is gonna happen?

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Well, I'll just go out on a limb here. If President Trump is re -elected, and if the

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Republicans keep the Senate, the federal courts in this nation could be fundamentally changed for the good for decades to come.

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If he is not re -elected, we have still managed to put a stop to a lot of stuff given the number of judges he has put in place.

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But I do not believe we will see Roe v. Wade overturned without another appointment at the

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Supreme Court level. And another 100 or so federal judges appointed, as you see more and more leftist judges retire.

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So this election matters. I'm not here to endorse a candidate. I'm just speaking, you ask me what

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I see. And how frank am I allowed to be in these conversations?

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I'm pretty frank, so you're free. I do not speak for the church right now.

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I do not speak for my organization. I'm giving you my opinion as an individual, okay? The Democrat Party is a huge obstacle to the lives of the unborn.

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It's a party dedicated to the proposition that an entire class of human beings can be set aside to be killed.

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I don't know how to say it other than say it. If that party is not defeated at the polls, unborn children die.

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I'm just saying it. So students, if you're 18 and you're gonna be coming up on a chance to vote, get registered.

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God cares about politics. Now politics does not save people eternally. Let's be clear about that.

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And by the way, I'm not suggesting the Republicans always do things good. They leave me disappointed a lot.

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However, just because politics isn't everything doesn't mean it isn't anything.

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And it also means that God cares about how we engage politically, because God cares about all of his creation.

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And the Christian worldview applies to all of life, not just segmented parts of it.

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And so our political involvement matters. And the story of the pro -life movement is going to ride on to the extent the

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Democrat party suffers defeat at the polls. And we are not going to have the ability to marshal large numbers of people to vote pro -life if our churches and Christian conferences are covering up the issue, which is what we're facing.

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The other option that we have as Christians is the Republican Party, of which I happen to be a voting member.

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And the Republican Party has oftentimes worn our jersey but scored points for the other team.

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For the first two years of President Trump's presidency, they controlled the House and the Senate and the White House. And yet we continue to fund

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Planned Parenthood to the tune of half a billion dollars every year, 50 million or 500 million, 500 million,

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I think. 500 million. 500 million dollars every year. They did nothing to move the needle on that issue.

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And yet, would any of us ever have thought that we would have heard a president in our lifetime say in a

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State of the Union address that abortion was the execution of innocent babies? Those are the words he used, quote, unquote, in the

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State of the Union address. Ronald Reagan, everyone salute, Ronald Reagan, he never used language like that.

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He even came up with exceptions in the case of rape and incest in his classic defense, which he wrote while he was

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President of the United States. So it's an odd mixture that we have where we have somebody in the

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White House, of that political party, who is willing to use language like that. And yet the party that was in control for two years didn't seem to move the needle on it at all.

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Yeah, there's no doubt the first two years of Trump's presidency were a disappointment that way.

31:19

Oftentimes, we are faced with a decision that kind of goes like this. We're either gonna choose a first class arsonist or a second class fireman.

31:29

One political party is a first class arsonist when it comes to the lives of the unborn. The other doesn't do a very good job protecting them, but the alternative is so bad, we do our best to help them do better.

31:42

So that's where I land on this. Again, I'm not telling you how to vote.

31:48

Well, yeah, I am, but anyway. How many debates have you done with pro -life activists and proponents?

31:56

I've never debated a pro -life activist, but I have debated a lot of abortion choice activists.

32:01

The pro -choice. Yes. How many debates have you done with pro -choicers? I'm gonna say 20, 25 to 28.

32:09

28 different people? No, no. I started off debating Eddie Tabash, who's the president of the

32:16

Council for Secular Humanism in California, ACLU attorney, and he and I would go to local junior colleges and debate in front of psychology classes and other forms that we could find.

32:30

And Eddie would always agree to debate. He'd always draw a crowd and I would get a chance to get the pro -life view out. We were friends.

32:37

He's just wrong, but we were friends. A Jewish guy whose parents survived the Holocaust, but bragged that his greatest single feat on earth was talking his father out of God's existence on his father's deathbed.

32:50

He's an atheist. We're friends, but he's a mixed up guy. Then I debated

32:55

Catherine Colbert, who argued the Thornburg decision in front of the Supreme Court in 1986, and more recently, my debate opponent is

33:04

Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU. Again, I consider her a friend. And that may strike some of you as odd, but can

33:11

I say a couple of words about that? Nadine Strossen is no more lost in her sins than I was in mine before God found me.

33:20

So let's not shut people off just because they're in sin. Yeah, that was all of us.

33:27

Secondly, she draws a crowd, and I get to talk to them. Why wouldn't

33:32

I want that deal? So we're friends, she's mistaken, but we have debated at Arizona State, Malone University, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, College of William and Mary, Westmont College, Wayne State University in Detroit.

33:50

And I mean, I'm losing track of all the schools, but those are a handful. In fact, if you're buying the

33:56

Life is Best DVD series tonight, along with the book Stand for Life that we got back there, we're throwing in for free a copy of the debate

34:04

I did with Nadine at Wayne State University. You can actually watch the debate. So those are some of the people that I have debated.

34:12

What is your relationship with her? Let's single out her for a second. Behind the scenes, cordial? Very cordial.

34:18

We'll often have dinner before the event. She'll ask how my kids are doing. Very friendly.

34:24

And our debates are not attacking of each other personally. They're spirited, but it's spirited on the content, not personal attacks on each other.

34:33

Tell me what you told me about a ride with her one time. I got to share the gospel with Nadine once, very briefly.

34:40

We had debated at Malone University in Ohio, Akron, Ohio, and we both had early morning flights out of Cleveland the next morning.

34:47

And the university said, listen, we got a limo that'll whisk you guys back to your respective hotels near the airport.

34:54

Would you mind sharing the car? Yeah, that's fine, we're friends, no problem. So I had a bag of cookies, hot chocolate chip cookies, that was given me by the host that housed me that night.

35:06

And it was one of the dorms there on campus. And I jumped in the limo, gave Nadine a couple of the cookies, and she's going, man, these are really good, thank you, and we were chatting.

35:14

And then between bites of the cookies, she looked at me and said, now, you really believe this Christian thing, don't you?

35:21

I mean, you don't think it's just good that it makes your life better, you think it actually is true, right?

35:26

By the way, that's a great question. I said, yes, Nadine, I do believe it's true.

35:32

I believe it is a historical truth that God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead after he died and atoned for our sins.

35:42

That God raised him from the dead, and that the evidence for that resurrection is overwhelming.

35:50

She kind of just paused and thought about it and said, that's really interesting. That's interesting.

35:56

And she thanked me, and that kind of just, it ended at that point. But I'm hoping it was a pebble.

36:04

You could pick it apart and say, well, you didn't get the full gospel in there. I didn't have an opportunity to do much more.

36:09

We're responsible to take advantage of what God gives us in terms of opportunities. And that was my moment, so I took what

36:16

I could. Have you met with her or debated her since then? Yeah, at least six or seven times. Okay.

36:22

Yeah. When was the last time you debated her? And do you have any plans to debate her again? 2016, and we're drumming up another debate for possibly 2020, late

36:31

November, down in Texas. That's in the works. When you debate somebody multiple times, how does her arguments develop?

36:41

Does she take what it is that you respond to, the arguments that you make, and refine hers, or try and find weaknesses in your presentation?

36:50

I have not found her to make a lot of changes to her presentation in general, in terms of addressing my case.

36:58

But I will say this to any of you that have aspirations to do debates, and I hope some of you students do, by the way.

37:05

Never rest on your laurels when it comes to a debate. So when I do a debate, it is a huge weight on me.

37:12

The six months leading up to it, I am prepping, I'm preparing, and I don't care if I've debated you ten times before.

37:20

You never assume it's gonna be a walk in the park. Debates are minefields, and you need to prep for them, you need to study.

37:28

The old saying, the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle. So I take debate prep very seriously, and you'll see that if you watch that debate

37:40

DVD, it comes out. But that is, when you see me prepared in that debate, which you will, that's a ton of hours spent making sure

37:51

I've got things tight. And what's interesting, I'll let you in on a little secret. During the debate, it looks like I'm taking notes.

38:00

I'm not taking notes. I had written my opening speech, my rebuttal speech, and my closing speech a month before that debate.

38:09

That's how prepared I was. I knew where she was going to go. And so when she was making statements, I'm just checking off the statements that I know are coming.

38:18

That's what you have to do. That's the level of prep you need to put into this. That's what William Lane Craig does when he debates atheists.

38:25

And I think that's how we bring glory to God, because it shows that Christians are thoughtful, that we are not just showing up and being careless.

38:34

We're actually taking the time to do our homework. And I pray that it brings

38:39

God glory when I do debates. I watched one of your debates. I think it's on YouTube with Nadine Strauss.

38:45

I'm not sure if it's the one that's on DVD back there. But you'll notice when you watch that, that she will get up and she will make certain arguments.

38:52

And you're there ready, and she will cite a case law or an embryology textbook or an article or some authoritative source.

39:02

And she will kind of summarize it or a quote part of it. And then immediately, when it comes time for your rebuttal,

39:08

Scott will pull out a piece of paper and say, well, actually the case law is so and so versus such and such from this court case.

39:14

And he begins to cite it or completely cite the context of what she's describing.

39:19

Does the same thing with an embryology textbook or a philosophy textbook. She will cite something out of context.

39:25

Scott already knows what she's gonna do. And so he takes what she was preparing and then uses her own words and her own sources to refute what it is that she had just presented.

39:35

Yeah, and by the way, I do think Nadine, I don't wanna suggest that she's not intelligent.

39:42

She's a very intelligent woman. And by the way, very gracious to pro -life students.

39:49

She'll go meet with the pro -life students if they wanna meet with her. And she'll give them the time of day and talk to them.

39:54

And she actually appreciates the pro -life students because they'll participate in a debate while the abortion choice students won't.

40:00

So it's nice in that regard. But I do think that preparation is huge. And that's what you have to do when you do these debates.

40:08

And that's why I don't do them all the time, because of the enormous work you have to put in to get ready for this.

40:16

I offered Scott to arrange a debate here as part of our conference. And he turned me down for that very reason. He said he just didn't have time to do it, which is good.

40:23

You can see the debate on the YouTube or the DVD, which is excellent. Beings that you are touching the nerve that seems to be at the center of our cultural debate nowadays, what type of negative feedback do you get from people whose toes you step on, whose sacred cow you are throwing to the grinder when you do what you do?

40:43

Do you get death threats? Do you get hate emails? Do you get a lot of correspondence like that? Do you have people who threaten your life at all?

40:50

I don't. I have had people protest events I've been at.

40:56

I can only think of one time I had what I would consider a somewhat veiled harm threat, and that was at the

41:05

University of Nebraska a dozen years ago. But what normally happens is the other side tries to shut down the event, either with a heckler's veto or by causing disruption at UC Berkeley when

41:19

I'm debating Malcolm Potts, for example. But it's not direct threats. What is a threat, and it's a problem, we are more and more encountering pro -lifers who try to shut down effective pro -life presentations.

41:37

They don't like the visuals that I showed you tonight. And they will say things like this.

41:43

They'll want me to come to their event, and they'll say, unlike you, they say things like, well, we prayed about it, and we didn't feel a piece about talking about abortion directly, or we felt that the

41:59

Lord was telling us this wasn't the thing to do. Well, that's funny, because I was feeling he told me it was, you know?

42:05

I mean, now where are we, right? But people love to invoke God rather than look at evidence, rather than explore what might be effective.

42:14

And I'm almost tempted to write an article entitled, How the Spirit is Killing the Pro -Life

42:19

Movement, because we've got a large group of Christians now that think they're hearing directly from God and trying to reframe our messaging in ways that are harmful to our cause.

42:31

And that is a very frustrating thing to me. And I understand pro -abortionists.

42:37

I know why they're the way they are. But it's interesting. Feminist Naomi Wolf, who supports abortion, is more honest on abortion than some pro -life leaders that we work with, who try to cover up the injustice of abortion.

42:52

No social reform movement has ever succeeded where its activists sought to cover up the injustice that was going on.

43:00

You got to expose it. This is what we're told to do in Ephesians. Don't cover evil deeds, expose them.

43:06

Well, we have Christians that are hearing from God in places of influence, and they're saying, no, we don't want to show that video.

43:15

We don't think our people can handle it. We don't think our people can handle a truthful discussion on abortion.

43:21

Everybody says this, and everybody's wrong. And feminist Naomi Wolf says the following about that video you just saw, the pictures you saw in there.

43:29

She says, if the pictures are true, then we ought to admit them as evidence in the Socratic quest for truth.

43:36

And if we say women are too inherently weak to view a choice they're about to make, well, then we're condescending to the women.

43:43

We're basically saying they're too weak to handle the truth. What kind of apologetic is that? So we have actually pro -abortion feminists willing to be more honest about the pictures than some pro -life

43:55

Christian leaders, which is a very big threat to what we're trying to accomplish and a very frustrating point for me.

44:02

Are you seeing headway in the advance of the pro -life messaging, speaking to upwards of 72 ,000 students a year?

44:09

Do you see the next generation coming up being more pro -life? And do you see that we're beginning to win the messaging issue?

44:16

Pro -life messaging right now is in shambles, and I'm going to tell you why.

44:23

Pro -lifers are buying the premise of our critics that if we're pro -life, we have to take on a whole list of responsibilities beyond abortion.

44:33

And they're listening to voices, even from conservative leaders, who are saying if we're going to be pro -life, we need to take on the opiate crisis, we need to take on the refugee crisis, we need to take on immigration reform, we need to take on poverty, we need to take on equitable work conditions, and the list goes on and on and on.

44:54

And instead of challenging our critics, a lot of our own leaders are buying the premise that we now have to expand what it means to be pro -life.

45:03

The leading crisis pregnancy center organization, their leader has coined a phrase called pro -abundant life.

45:12

And here's what he says we have to do if we're truly pro -life. He says we need to move from pro -life to pro -abundant life.

45:19

Here's what he says that means. We need to, if we're a pro -life organization, programmatically, and I'm using his words here, programmatically use our resources to do evangelism, marriage repair, family repair, family health between parents and kids, immigration, helping mothers choose wisely jobs and lifestyle choices, and the list goes on and on.

45:48

Now, I want you to think about your average pro -life group. Are they rich or poor? They're already flat broke, and now we're giving them a job description that's going to absolutely bankrupt them?

46:01

No, keep the main thing the main thing. Our job is to stop abortion. That's the major crisis in front of us.

46:07

Now, as a Christian, we'll care about a lot of issues. I care about a lot of issues. But the organizational objectives of the pro -life movement need to be singular.

46:16

We're out to save unborn lives. That's what we're about. We can't take on everything. Frederick the

46:22

Great said, he who fights everywhere fights nowhere. Imagine someone saying to the

46:27

American Cancer Society, you have no right to call yourself a medical organization when you're only fighting one disease, not many.

46:34

What are you doing about heart attacks? What are you doing about lupus? What are you doing about diabetes, huh? Nobody would go to a

46:40

Christian daycare center in the inner city and say, what are you doing? You're only open two hours a week or two hours a day after school weekdays.

46:48

Why aren't you open 24 seven? What are you doing about gang violence? What are you doing about older kids? No, nobody would do that.

46:54

They only attack pro -lifers for these things. And I'm telling you, men and women, don't fall for it. Here's what you do.

47:00

You look your critics in the eye and you say, how does it follow that because I oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being,

47:08

I'm responsible to fix everything wrong with society? They need to answer that question.

47:14

Nobody else gets saddled with it, only us. So I keep the main thing the main thing. I know

47:19

I'm preaching here. I probably went far beyond what you were asking. But that's a real concern right now.

47:25

And our messaging needs to be what it was a moment ago. Abortion is wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being.

47:32

By the time this conference is over, you will know how to defend that scientifically, defend it philosophically, and answer objections to it.

47:38

That's our message. That's how we keep the main thing the main thing. Our time is up, but I have one more question.

47:44

It wasn't on my list of questions that I sent to you, but we did discuss this over lunch. Locally, we have an AHA chapter,

47:50

Abolish Human Abortion. Anytime you get together a group of people that's a couple hundred people big, they're there with their signs, sometimes in people's faces being very bold and very abrupt.

48:03

They seem to be opposed to any kind of incremental approach to limiting abortion or to stopping abortion.

48:11

They want it abolished right now. What is your assessment of the

48:16

AHA movement in the past and currently, and what interactions have you had with leadership and people in the

48:24

AHA movement? How have they responded to your approach to making the pro -life case? The short answer is they don't like me, and I don't much care for them.

48:33

That's the short answer. I think they're deeply problematic. Not just in their philosophical approach, but the people

48:40

I've talked to within that movement are not grounded in local churches. They are not doing their work within the context of a

48:49

Christian community, and it shows in their behavior. I also think they're very wrong on saying pro -lifers are compromised because they work incrementally.

49:00

No, we're not. There's a difference between a settled compromise and doing the greatest good you can given the political reality in front of you.

49:10

So what Christians are responsible to do is to limit the evil and promote the good insofar as possible given current election realities, and that means right now, we're not going to get everything we want, so we're going to vote to limit the evil as much as we can.

49:30

That is not compromise. So let me give you an example that might help here. Suppose you have a

49:36

Middle Eastern parliamentarian. We'll call him Ahmad. Ahmad is a parliamentarian in a rogue

49:44

Arab Islamic country that sells children into sex slavery.

49:50

Fathers will take their seven -year -old daughters and sell them off to other men for 10 years to be sex slaves to these older men, and then when the child turns 17, the father will pay for corrective surgery to make the child look like she's a virgin and then sell her off to another man in marriage, and this goes on in that country, all right?

50:17

Imagine Ahmad has the votes in the parliament to stop 90 % of that because he has the votes to stop that practice being done with all girls that are citizens of that country, but he doesn't have the votes to do it for non -citizens of that country who reside within its borders.

50:41

He's ready to get this bill passed. There's an auction coming up a month from now on a

50:48

Saturday where 20 ,000 girls are going to be sold into slavery, but if Ahmad can get this bill signed, 90 % of them will walk forever free.

51:01

On the eve of the vote, one of his own parliamentarians says, I've been thinking about this, and I've been talking with a few of my colleagues.

51:11

We're compromising here. It's wrong for us to save only 90%. We need to save all of them, or we're compromising, and therefore, we're withdrawing our support from this bill because you have a compromised position.

51:25

Wait a minute. Who's doing the compromising, Ahmad or the other side that has given up 90 % of what it had before?

51:33

And as a result of that, the bill fails, and that Saturday, a month later, 20 ,000 young girls have new homes and new masters.

51:48

We call that a moral improvement? You and I are powerless to decide which lives live and which die.

51:58

When you vote for incremental legislation, you're not deciding which babies get killed. The Supreme Court has already decided no children have a right to life before they're born.

52:07

That decision was already made. The one doing the compromise is the one giving up ground.

52:12

Who's giving up ground in the current scenario here? The pro -lifer who wins incremental gains or the other side that is giving up territory?

52:20

They're the ones giving up territory. They're the ones having to compromise. We're actually advancing our cause here.

52:27

Now, if your position is that you don't wanna protect certain children and you want it to be the permanent law of the land that babies conceived through rape get killed, for example, then you would have a morally compromised position, but if you don't have the votes to protect all of them, but you do have the votes to protect some, by golly, do the greatest moral good you can given what you have to work with.

52:49

And I think AHA does a very bad disservice not understanding that point and laying guilt trips on Christians who vote to limit the evil insofar as possible.

53:02

Thanks, now we're gonna be protested tomorrow. That's why I said it. All right, our time is up.

53:08

Give Scott a round of applause for his work tonight. Thank you. And our doors will open tomorrow morning at 7 .30