Have You Not Read S3:E23 - Interview with John Michener (Part 2)

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham. John Mishner. Chris Giesler. And we are here for our second segment with John Mishner.

Michael, why don't you open us up? Well, we've already gone over the backstory for John Mishner as he kind of explained how it was he got involved with, not simply pro -life as we understand it, but truly the abolition movement before it was ever called that, to bring attention to abortion is in fact murder.

And the widespread encouragement of abortion and the kind of even discipleship and expectation of abortion is indeed the genocide of the unborn.

And how he got involved with all of this leading to many gospel opportunities to be able to speak about abortion with college students and folks who are close to that issue and then be able to move from abortion to talking about the gospel or talking about the gospel and moving to the topic of abortion.

And so obviously what we're talking about here is a biblical issue. There are all manner of passages in the scripture that are going to affirm the full personhood of everybody made in the image of God, including the unborn.

And we don't go out and declare that abortion is murder and should be utterly abolished simply because this is our feeling, simply because we have a group of negative stories.

This is not an anecdotal type of argument, but we are coming on the basis of an authority greater than us, higher than us, more sure than us.

We're bringing the word of God to bear on the issue. We are fond of saying that Jesus Christ is

Lord. Well, the scriptures are the scepter of his lordship in this world. So what does the word of God have to say about this particular issue about abortion?

John, how would you take up the word of God and make an argument from the Bible to church members and then also to those who perhaps have turned their back on the church?

But what role does the Bible have in this approach, apologetic approach? Well, I think the first thing I would say is that scripture is incredibly wonderful and rich.

You're talking about dozens of pieces of literature that have been gathered for thousands of years and the way they cohere together to transmit to us knowledge and truth about the one true

God is amazing. And we're living in a time when our political and religious opponents want to shut us up about scripture.

And one of the ways that they do that is by lying to people about it. You will very much hear this refrain that, oh, well, the

Bible never talks about abortion. So we can't have a very clear opinion about that and everything.

So if you're not careful, you'll find yourself getting shut down and saying, well, show me where the Bible says anything about abortion.

Show me where the Bible says anything about XYZ and that kind of a thing. But when you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, what you find is so much richness because it's not just, okay, well, what is abortion?

Abortion is going in with pills or with chemicals or surgical instruments and it's killing a living human being.

So does the Bible say anything about going in with poisons or potions or instruments to kill a living human being in the womb?

Well, no, not directly, but holy smokes, how many other issues touch on abortion?

It's connected to so many issues. And I think what we're gonna see over the next 25, 30 minutes is how much we can be informed and directed by scripture there.

Because as soon as you decide that I love my pre -born neighbor, I want to try and rescue them from death,

I want to treat them as if they have the same kind of inherent value as every other human being.

Well, as soon as you decide you've gotta do something, you then have to look to scripture to find out what it is you're going to do.

And in that case, the scripture is loaded with stuff. But I think it would be fun just to start with the creation narrative.

I mean, before we dive into that, let's say one other thing, I guess, to preface before we dive into scripture.

The fact, the data, the scientific proof that a living human being comes into existence after the fertilization and conception process is complete, this is not debatable.

Every atheist and agnostic agrees that two plus two equals four and an egg and a sperm create a living human being.

Like this is a biological fact. This is not in dispute. Anyone who wants to dispute about that is just ignorant of basic biology and science.

So you can grab any biology textbook from any campus across the country and it's going to say that once the fertilization process is complete, you have a whole unique living human, homo sapien.

Same kind of thing as you and me. And it's a unique one. You know, if we consider our own existence, you know,

Chris is sitting over here. We recognize him because of his bright shiny eyes and his well -formed beard, et cetera, et cetera.

Would we recognize Chris as Chris yesterday? And would we recognize him the day before? And if we could just keep going back in time, we would recognize that this is

Chris all the way back and into the womb and back to when he was a clump of cells, back to when he was 32 cells and 16 cells and eight cells and four and two and one.

That's still Chris. And even if he was just only two cells old and got killed, that's not just a template that can somehow magically later have

Chris -ness added to it. No, that was Chris. His hair color, his eye color, his personality type and his gifts and skills that they're all there given by God from the beginning.

All there. So it's not a question of when human beings come into existence. It's a question of what kind of value do they have?

That's good. Do you value a human being or not? Now, if there is no God and we're just like randomly evolved meat computers, then kill all the human beings you want because we don't have any more value that you can prove beyond a cockroach and a possum or some pond sludge.

Nature read in tooth and claw. Exactly, exactly. So this is really a question of worldviews as you brought out nicely in our last session.

Where does value come from? And why are human beings worthy of protection beyond a cockroach that we step on in our kitchen?

And where do we look for that understanding of that value? Right, and you have to look to ancient scripture, to the prophets and to the wise men to whom

God spoke directly and revealed himself and so forth. And so now that that stage is set,

I mean, the question is here is a human being. How is a human being not a person? You can't say that here's a human being but this human being is not a person because to what would you attach personhood?

Anything that you would attach it to would just be some arbitrary attribute that you're choosing but we're not valuable because of things that we're able to do or things that we possess but because of what we inherently are, which is human beings.

And that's why I think you have to start with the creation story because that's where we find that God made us in his image.

He is a person. He has volition. He is creative. We have the attributes of God himself and the rest of the creation, the cockroaches and the possums, they're beautiful and they're awesome and everything but he gave them to us to take care of.

We are his stewards on the earth. We are his representatives, his ambassadors, his sons and daughters, his princes, his princesses.

We're not the same. We're the same kind of thing. We live in the same universe. We're made up of the same atoms and everything but we are far above the rest of creation.

You're getting the idea that we are of value to God. Exactly right. And if he makes us in his image according to his own likeness, there's two things going on here.

One, he is, by doing that, he is instantiating value in us because he's making us in his image but also he is declaring ownership of us, right?

His copyright. That's a great point. It's all over us which is, of course, why it was so bad for Adam and Eve to sin.

I mean, they have a uniform code being made in his image and they just went AWOL on the whole thing.

They just betrayed the uniform code and why is sin so bad if, well, it's because of who

God is and how he made us in his image and we are different than the plants and the animals. Herman Bavinck, and somebody was complaining

I talk about Bavinck too much so I'm gonna talk about him a whole lot more now. Just ramp it up to 11. Yes, exactly.

But Bavinck talks about, yes, indeed, we are the Imago Dei, made in the image of God. Everything else is the

Vestigia Dei, the vestiges of God. By the way, don't use these words on campuses when you're talking to random unchurched people.

But point to this. Say, when we see the beauty of the stars, when we encounter the delicacy and yet the evanescence of the lily.

Look at this beautiful lily. Look at the sparrows. Do you hear the songs? I mean, the birds started singing a couple of weeks ago.

It finally got warm enough for them to come out and sing. Man, I miss that. How beautiful that is. How is it that I recognize beauty and complexity and glory out there?

But none of that compares to a human being. None of that compares to the value of those who are made in God's image and so it is important that we begin there and think about why is it that humans are different.

It's not explained by any kind of evolutionary accidental process. It's only explained by God himself when he describes who we are and how he's made us different than everything else.

You know, I'm sitting here thinking while you're talking about how in our conversations with non -believers, we need to have in our own minds a bigger picture of what are the issues of importance as we are doing evangelism and so I know you had me here, for example, because we're talking about abortion generally, right?

But if you start a conversation with someone about abortion but they're not even convinced there is a

God, are you going to keep talking about abortion or are you going to explore reasons that it's more reasonable to believe in a creator than not?

You know, you got to get first things first and so this is so foundational. We need to be willing to go out and start conversations with the hot topics of the day that are culturally relevant and get people talking and then we need to walk people back, back to the basics.

Do you believe there was a son of God? Do you believe he rose from the dead? Okay, check the box and move on backwards some more or whatever but eventually you get to the point where, okay, we've got to talk about how, hey, let's talk about whether or not it's reasonable to believe in a creator or not.

I mean, you could really get at that. I think you've already kind of brought that up about how some people don't want us to use the Bible anymore but I mean, if you share with somebody, say, you know,

I believe that human beings are valuable because the Bible says we're made in God's image. Why do you think human beings are valuable?

Right, that's so winsome. Anybody will enter into that conversation. And ultimately, you have to get down to that moral argument.

You think human beings are valuable because you can see them? Is it just based on appearance? You know, I think human beings are valuable no matter what they look like.

So assuming that you can get someone to concur that, okay, maybe there is a creator.

I'm willing for the sake of argument to accept that and let's continue talking. If you're willing to get them to accept that human beings do intrinsically have a different kind, a higher kind of value than the cockroach, then

I think the next question is, well, how now shall we live if human beings are valuable?

Well, if they have this inherent value having been made in the image of God, then what's the logical conclusion?

Then we need to protect that value. And I think that takes us to the next sort of set of scriptures that you would look at is, given that human beings are valuable, how should we treat them?

That's good. And so then you start to look at the laws and the things that are revealed to us about how we ought to treat other human beings.

Yeah, well, and I've seen there was a big push. We have to convince them that these little people are human.

We need to convince them they're human. But I've been hearing a lot, they'll concede, yeah, that's a human being.

But then they'll say, but human beings don't have value because of all the environmentalism and we're killing all the animals, we're killing

Mother Earth, and we're the problem, we don't have value. So this discussion of how are you defining what has value and what doesn't have value?

And if you base that on the word of God as your authority, and then you ask them, what is your authority? What are you basing your opinion or your belief on?

And can you back it up? Well, it's very trendy right now where everyone's going back to pantheism, right?

Everything's holy, everything's valuable, everything's special, love the environment, love the polar bear, love the dolphins, blah, blah, blah.

And a lot of times you can catch them at this because they're ascribing a metaphysical, moral value to something.

And so you're saying, let's care about human beings. And they're going, yeah, but what about all these other things?

You don't care about them, so who cares about your issue? But what they're doing there is they are accepting some standard of value.

And you can say for the sake of argument that, yeah, I do think we ought to protect the environment and the dolphins and the polar bears.

I care about all of this wonderful creation. And right now I especially care about the little human beings that are being butchered in the womb by the millions every day.

And so couldn't we work on this together? Even if our worldviews don't agree, you're telling me that life is precious and that life is valuable.

Don't you think the lives of little human beings are at least as valuable, if not more so, we can talk about it, than a polar bear's?

We can find wisdom in the word of God regarding this, a system of valuation. That although animals are important and we are to be good stewards of God's creation, it's not the same level of evaluation that we have with humans.

An example would be in Exodus chapter 21. And again, we're not under the law so as to keep the law, we're under Christ and following him as our authority.

But there is some wisdom here, I think, in Exodus 21, verse 22. It says, if men fight and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, right?

Obviously it's not safe for a baby to be born early. We're always concerned about that, aren't we?

We're a little concerned if a baby's born early. But if no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman's husband imposes on him and he shall pay as the judge determined.

But what if there is harm to the baby? What then? Well, that was verse 23. But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

So ultimately, life for life. Saying this child, though the child was unborn, let's say this man attacks a man, misses, hits his wife, and ends up killing the child.

She delivers this child who's dead because of the attack. That man, life for life, capital punishment.

Something that's rooted all the way back to Genesis chapter nine is saying, look, the value of human life is such that it's different than if it was an animal.

If it's an animal, there's other passages that say, what happens if you accidentally kill your neighbor's ox? Well, man, are you in debt?

Yeah, you still have to pay for it. Yeah, but you don't get stoned to death because you accidentally hurt your or killed your neighbor's animal.

It's not the same valuation. And so those are just some basic observations we can make in scripture that God himself values humans and animals, but he values humans differently than animals and calls his people to do the same as he was showing them how to live in his world.

And I think that's an important observation to make from the scriptures. I do too, and keep in mind that any time we go into the nuts and bolts of the

Levitical law, there's what, 643 specific laws given for the geopolitical nation state of Israel.

This is their constitution, their law, and those minute laws there for them are built on larger precepts that are more universal.

We all understand that the 10 commandments are kind of a summation of how we are to live in relationship with the one true

God. In fact, commandments one through four are about our relationship with him.

And then as we turn from God to our fellow man, you get commandment number five is about honoring your father and mother.

They changed your diapers when you were a baby. Now you're gonna change their diapers when they're old. It's about social security.

And then you've got commandments six through 10 are really about how do we live with each other in civil society, right?

I'm not gonna take your wife. I'm not gonna murder you. I'm not gonna steal from you. I'm not gonna covet your stuff. This is just basic governance of civil society.

So in the 10 commandments, broadly speaking, what we have here is church and state, God and government, religion and politics.

These are the things we should care about and be talking about, not sports and the weather. These are the big ones.

And then that works itself out in different cultures and times and places through their more detailed laws.

And so you've got this detailed law here that as you rightly pointed out, shows that for the nation of Israel, they were to value human beings right there all equally and above the animals and the rest of them.

But that points back to the sixth commandment, you shall not murder, which is the killing of an innocent human being.

There is no more innocent human being than the one in the womb who hasn't had a chance to sin yet. And sometimes we'll get into conversations with non -believers and they're like, don't quote scripture to me.

And so I love to walk them back and like, yeah, so we got the law of Moses came down on Mount Sinai and whatever it was, 600 and something

BC or I forget the exact year or whatever, but the law codes go back and back and back.

Everyone's heard of the law code of Hammurabi, but there's Lippit Ishtar and the Nunu and there's all of these ancient law codes we've dug up hundreds of years older than the 10 commandments.

They all say the same thing. You shall not murder. You shall not covet. You should not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

It's the same. And it walks itself all the way back to the garden and it walks itself all the way back to creation.

And it's all about we're made in the image of God. You are not an animal.

Yeah, that's important to observe. When you read the 10 commandments on their own terms, they are deeply grafted into the life of Israel.

And yet we can recognize that there are some things being talked about here that are greater than the life of Israel.

And where do these things come from? I mean, it was wrong to murder before the law came down. It was wrong to steal before the law came down.

It was wrong to commit adultery before the law came down. Why were those things wrong? It's because of who God is and how he made us in his image.

Oh, that's so well put. I think that's just really important for us to make this point when we're talking with nonbelievers.

So many people now are not only unchurched but are clueless about scripture. And so we're going to be sharing scripture with them.

But let's show how it's based on natural law, the character and the person of God, et cetera.

And that's going to really open their minds and their hearts to listening and pursuing it further.

I mean, how many people are pursuing Buddhism and meditation and Zen this and save the planet and I wanna worship this.

Everyone's looking to fill something in their lives and we can fill them with the truth if we'll approach them in a way that doesn't scare them off.

Well, part of being made in the image of God means that the worship switch is hardwired on. Everybody's worshiping.

Everybody is bowing the knee to some higher standard, some greater thing.

We are hardwired to always be searching, scanning, looking for glory and to be drawn to it.

And outside the grace of God, then it's gonna be idols. As we've mentioned in a previous podcast, when idols get involved, we end up having a lot of immorality and injustice.

More to that point, we can go throughout the scriptures and look at how the people of God react to conception and how the people who are in Adam react to conception as well.

There's much rejoicing amongst the people of God when a child is conceived and then they get to bear and bird that child and raise that child up.

When we look at those who are in Adam or definitely the pagans that were in the land or surrounding the land of Israel in the

Old Testament, when a child's conceived, they have options with it. It could be used in order to continue on the tribe or it can be used in order to procure or secure their crops and their livestock, which is no different than what we talked about earlier where they're preferring the animals over the image of God but just in a more formal fashion.

Oh, I like that. I never thought about it that way before. Offering up your children to Chemosh or to Molech for the blessing of fertility amongst your animals is not at all very far removed from people advocating for abortion today to save Mother Earth.

Or even I think of like at the Oscars, someone was praising the sacrifice their child made so they could be in movies and act and win this award.

Wow. It's like you offered your child for this statue, for this idol. I thought

I was gonna hurl when I heard that one. Yeah, yeah. We recognize the pattern in the scriptures as we see that the message of the prophets coming again and again in the life of Israel.

Again, these are particular contexts. There's covenantal obligations in the life of Israel to God.

But when we hear the prophets preach and they say, thus saith the Lord, you're worshiping on every high hill under every green tree and your idolatry is rampant.

What is the result of that? The result of that is there is injustice throughout the entirety of the land because the whole value system is completely screwed up because they're not worshiping

God. They're not loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. They're not fearing God, thinking of him first, thinking of him most.

They're not allowing God to establish the values of their culture and society. And the result is that injustice is done in the city gates, in the courts, to the young, to the poor, to the vulnerable, so on and so forth.

Injustice runs rampant. And thus, the society is crumbling and getting worse and worse.

And then people are like, well, we need to make more sacrifices to more gods. We need more solutions, more gods to worship.

We didn't have enough gods before, we need more now. And all of these instances of idolatry involve immorality.

These disordered affections become more and more perverted and abominable before God.

And then you just watch the collapse of the society. But the image of God was never designed to live without the word of God.

There is something more necessary than bread. That's a really great point. And, you know, we're blessed in modern times to have the collection of the wisdom of God in the

Psalms, the Proverbs, the history, the prophetic words, the New Testament letters. What an amazing time in which we live that we have access to so much knowledge.

And the common man is walking around with a Bible in his own language that he can understand. But remember, in ancient times, they're not walking around with parchment or vellum or tablets.

Only the upper crust had the written word. And so how did God communicate in ancient times to his people about his expectations of justice?

Because justice is the drum, right? And it was the prophets, it was the seers, the hearers of the word of God.

He came to them and spoke to them and said, go and share this. So I think the ministry of the prophets is hugely important for us.

And I want to take it a step beyond what you just said there. And I want to point out, for those of you listening, that the prophets of God did not go only to the kings and the people of Israel.

Sure. This is connected back to what we said a few minutes ago about God's universal natural law that applies to all people, everywhere, at all times, anywhere on the planet, anytime on the planet.

It's always wrong to murder. If that is true, is God only going to tell one group of people that you shouldn't murder?

No. And if you'll look carefully in the Old Testament, you see his prophets, yes, their first job is to go to the kings and the high priests and the leaders of the people of Israel and say, thus says

Yehovah, you shall not, you shall. You uphold justice, you uphold mercy. You listen to the pleas at the gates and you exercise justice.

You have equal protection of the law. You don't show favoritism for this is the nature and the character of our one true

God. But then that same prophet turns around and fires off a letter down to Pharaoh and over to Nebuchadnezzar and over to the king of Moab and Midian.

Or he gets sent to Nineveh. Yeah, you get sent down to Nineveh. But these prophets were speaking to everyone who would listen, but particularly to the leaders, to the shepherds and the kings and the priests of people all over the region saying, thus says the one true

God, thus says Yehovah, you must administer justice in your land or else.

And I think that's a really relevant argument for us to have in our hip pockets and in the front of our brains because so many believers these days don't think that we're supposed to be involved in politics.

And yet these prophets were speaking to the magistrates boldly in their day. And it's not something that we can say is restricted to the

Old Testament. For Israel's role to be a light to the nations is fulfilled in Christ who all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth.

And the nations are given to him as an inheritance. And he takes up the entirety of the word of God and declares the will of God for all people everywhere because he is the image of the invisible

God. He's king of kings and lord of lords. He's the son of man, he rules over all. The slopes of Zion are coming down upon all our horizons.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The authority of Christ is near. Thus, in the book of Acts, when we see the spread of the church, they say something very political all the time.

They say, Jesus is Lord. The phrase was Caesar is Lord. That's what people were required to say.

Throw the pinch of incense and what was the phrase of the day? The phrase of the day is Caesar is Lord. But the disciples, the apostles went out and preached, well, you know,

Jesus is Lord. The term that they used to preach was the euangelion, the gospel, which is what was used when a new

Roman emperor came to the throne. When he ascended to the throne, it was established throughout the entirety of the

Roman Empire, a gospel, a euangelion. Hey, here's some good news. We have a new political leader and here's all the wonderful things that are gonna happen.

But no, there's actually somebody else who's on a higher throne, who's ascended to a higher throne. And here's the good news that's not going to change and not going to fail.

And so it matters to everybody everywhere, every level of society about who Jesus Christ is as the image of the invisible

God, bringing those universal truths and principles and values to everybody everywhere.

So I think that the Bible has to remain central in our conversations, in our attempts to refute and reject and see an end to abortion.

It's not something that we should set aside as if this is not to be brought up in our engaging, in our argumentation, in our evangelism.

And these apostles, they're only walking in the shoes of their Lord. I mean, what was he doing, if not stirring up political and religious arguments continually?

It's so easy for the modern believers to focus on the softer side of Jesus and how he loved people and cured their illnesses and fed them and took care of all these individuals.

Yes, he did those things. But in every one of these scenes of pastoral care and compassion, he also has a word for the political leaders who were there in the crowd watching.

I think there is a tendency in modern times to think of the Pharisees who were always there as just some sort of concurrent religious nuts or something.

But they weren't just religious leaders. They were the civil body politic. They were their representatives.

They were their governors. They had the power to bring people into court and try them and convict them.

These were political leaders. So when the Lord turns to the Pharisees and challenges them on the issues of the day and say, you're actually misusing and abusing the law, you're stealing from the widow and from the needy with the way you're interpreting the law and the scriptures, it's like we were to go to the city council or to our governor and say, you're not exercising justice.

This is what God says. So Jesus is only continuing in that same mode as the final, greatest, bestest prophet that there could ever be is the

Son of God. And his apostles just pick up where he left off. He's marching around Judea calling for justice while he's ministering to people and proclaiming the good news.

They just continue it. And he often asks us, have you not read? Yeah. My favorite question.

He wasn't crucified for being a nice guy? No. No, you brood of vipers.

I think it was said. At some point, yes. There was something about rotten flesh. And I think there was something about a dung hill.

And I'm not sure what that word for dung is there, but it probably wasn't real nice. Well, I think that it's important to see that when it comes to any particular issue, but especially this one, we need to bring the word of God to bear to showcase the authority of God, the authority of Jesus Christ.

This is what matters. We don't have a neutral area in this world in which everybody comes together with open minds, blank slated minds.

We're ready to hear equal and opposite arguments, and we can have a free exchange of ideas.

We're made in God's image. And so that means that we're either for Christ or we are outside of Christ.

And him being the king of kings, we live in his world, and we're either submitted to him, finding refuge in him, or we're plotting against him.

So we need to keep the scriptures front and center in these discussions. Amen. Well, why don't we go to what we're gonna recommend for this week?

Michael, we'll start with you, and then Chris and then me and we'll end with John. I would like to recommend the Magdeburg Confession.

It is, this particular document was put together by Matthew Truhella, is that how you say that?

Mattruella. Mattruella. And what was interesting to me was to hear the aftershock of the

Reformation. We think of 1517 and the Wittenberg Chapel and Martin Luther putting his 95

Theses there and just the fallout of the Reformation that happened. But then what continued to occur after that?

What about the pastors and the Christians who broke with Rome and tried to worship

God according to the scriptures and tried to flee the Pope and the Magisterium and so on and so forth?

And how often they found themselves under literal cannon fire because they would not bow the knee to the

Pope. And then by what right do they have to try and govern themselves?

And should they be able to defend themselves? So on and so forth. And so they worked through what has become known as the

Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates. And that happened in the Magdeburg Confession, something that was put together 13th of April, 1550

AD, in a fortress under fire by pastors. Chris? So I see it there.

I didn't want to steal one of yours. Recently, there was an abolitionist that was talking to a legislator in their office and they got video of it.

And the legislator was just saying, I have to do what my constituents want. And this was a pro -life legislator.

And he's saying, well, I just have to do what they want of me. I think it's horrible.

I think it's bad, but I've got to do what they want. And then that question of by what authority?

And so you had mentioned the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, which is a book that's available.

I'm going to recommend the folks at End Abortion Now. When I first started getting into any depth in theology at all,

Jeff Durbin and James White were indispensable for me. But as I have watched them faithfully fund and preach out at abortion mills and campuses, like you're talking about,

I have really enjoyed both their sincerity and their willingness to adopt children.

That were on their way to be aborted at abortion mills. So that type of action is something I like to see and I like to support.

So I'm going to recommend the folks at End Abortion Now. And if you want to check them out, that's at endabortionnow .com and all their content and stuff like that's there.

John. Yeah, I want to wrap this session up by just mentioning a few scriptures that we didn't touch on during the conversation.

I just want to remind us that as believers, we have been given certain, oh, mandates.

We've been given certain duties. You know, it's not enough to just claim to be a son. If you're actually a son, then you show respect and obedience for your father to be a true son.

And it's pretty clear in scripture we read that we are to speak up for those who have no voice.

Our preborn neighbors cannot speak up for themselves. And at the very minimum, we should be speaking up in our families, in our churches, and with our friends.

Second, I think we have a duty to rescue those being led to the slaughter. When you see someone being taken away to be murdered, you're supposed to try and do something.

You may not know exactly what that is, and it is possible that you could muck it up. These things happen.

But friends, it's better to do something than nothing when someone is about to die. We are told to rescue those being led to the slaughter.

And third, I would remind us that what is true religion?

We're told in the New Testament to take care of widows and orphans. Who are the modern day widows and orphans?

Is not a widow someone who doesn't have a man in her life to take care of her, to offer guidance and support, wise counsel, physical needs, et cetera?

Are not these young women who are being left by their sperm donors, haven't they been widowed by the men in their lives?

And then they are left with unwanted children. What is an orphan if not an unwanted child, has no father to speak up for him, no mother who wants him or wants to take care of him?

So I think practicing true religion, if you look at widows and orphans, this means we need to be speaking up for our pre -born neighbors, trying to rescue them.

And that's how we work that out as believers. As far as resources, I wanna trumpet my own website once, unitedforlife .us,

unitedforlife .us. Please go check us out and just read about the training that we offer.

You talked about Jeff Durbin and End Abortion Now. We offer seminars and workshops that can come along beside you, mentor you, disciple you into using those same kinds of apologetic methods that they do.

We're based in Oklahoma, so if you're anywhere within a few hours, we'll be happy to come out and help you out.

There's another resource that I want to bring to your attention if you particularly like to do your own deep studies at home, and it is biblehub .com,

biblehub .com, biblehub .com. I discovered this a few years ago, and what you find there is every conceivable translation in the world, going all the way back to original languages.

If you wanna see what the Hebrew looks like, it's there. If you wanna see what the Greek looks like, it's there. If you wanna get all the translations and transliterations and targums, they're there, and you can dive in by phrase and by word, and you can find out what those phrases and words actually meant originally in context, or what the scholars believe they meant according to the best hermeneutical methods, and you can look and compare debates that people are having about what these words and phrases mean, but it's just a great, great resource, and that leads me to my thanksgiving, and now we'll go around the table again and do thanksgiving, but my thanksgiving is that we live in the time in which we live when we can access great scholarship, and to some extent, without going to school for years and years and years to learn all these foreign languages, we can do a lot of our own scholarship.

What an incredible blessing to not just sit and listen to some potentate tell us what the scriptures mean.

We can explore it for ourselves. Wow, what an incredible blessing. Amen, Michael, what are you thankful for?

I am thankful for difficult, snarled, tangled up situations that God takes me through as a pastor and my fellow elders as well, and that we can take up the word of God, get clear instructions from Jesus, and just walk step by step through those instructions, praying, asking for aid, for help, for wisdom, for the work of the

Holy Spirit, and that we can watch God do his work and save and deliver, forgive, untangle, heal, and to see that happen over the course of time, that all we have to do is read like children, pray like children, obey like children, and we see him do his work.

I'm very thankful for those difficult times and to see God's faithfulness in all those different situations.

Amen, Chris. I am thankful for my wife, who has brought four wonderful children into the world, and I'm thankful for the love of life that I see in her in raising the children.

With our third, there were complications, and she was emergency C -section at 28 weeks, and so we thought we were gonna lose her and lose my wife, and the

Lord worked and saved both of them, which in the instances of the mothers at risk, no, doctors can work to save both, and they did, they saved both of them, and then we were told not to have any more, and we weren't trying, but God had other plans, but I remember the choice that was presented to us is, you can save your wife, or you can continue with this fourth pregnancy, and this was at a hospital, and they were offering abortion, and it was like, well, we can terminate, and it's like, no, that's not what we're gonna do.

We choose life. Even if it means risk to the mother, we choose life, and so now we have a son, a two -year -old son, running around, acting crazy, and roaring at everything, but God is the

God of life. It's in his hands, and so I'm grateful to God, and I'm thankful for my wife and for my four children.

Praise the Lord. Amen. Well, I'm gonna act like I'm, I guess I'm copying you on this one. Our fourth is on the way, and we figured out this past Saturday that she is definitely a she, so we are expectant for Meadow to come in August, and it's going to be a radical change in our household, considering the current dynamic, but it's gonna be lovely.

It's going to be beautiful, and it's going to be something that I know the Lord is going to refine both

Heather and I in, but just celebrating life here around the table, I think, is something that this discussion always brings up.

We can bemoan all the wickedness surrounding this topic, but it always brings us back to, it's because we value life because our

Savior does, and he has saved us in order to celebrate those lives, in order to celebrate them correctly, so I'm still very thankful for a fourth child and a first girl.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners, and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?