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. You know, 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, you know, 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? You know, it's connected to so many issues, and I think what we're going to 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 got to 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 2 plus 2 equals 4, 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, etc., etc.

Would we recognize Chris as Chris yesterday? Yes. And then 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 8 cells and 4 and 2 and 1.

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. Yes. 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 be 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? 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. Hermann Bavink, and somebody was complaining I talk about Bavink too much, so I'm gonna talk about him a whole lot more now. Just ramp it up to 11.

Yes, exactly. But Bavink 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, you know, when we see the beauty of the stars, when we encounter the delicacy and yet the evanescence of a 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. They 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? 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, because that's so when some anybody will enter into that conversation is, is it? And ultimately you have to get down to that, that moral argument is, is 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, 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 your opinion or your belief on? And can you back it up? It's very trendy right.

Now where everyone's going back to pantheism, right? Everything's holy, everything's valuable, everything's special, you know, 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?

We can.

Find wisdom in the Word of God regarding this, a system of valuation, that although animals are important and we're 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, you know, 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. Right. 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, you know, something that's rooted all the way back to Genesis chapter 9, is saying, look, the value of human life is such that it's different than if it was an animal.

If it was 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. Okay. 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 anytime 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. Yes. 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 Ten Commandments are kind of a summation of how we are to live in relationship with the one true God.

In fact, Commandments 1 through 4 are about our relationship with him. And then, as we turn from God to our fellow man, you get Commandment number 5 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 6 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 Ten 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 with non-believers and they're like, you know, don't quote Scripture to me. And so I love to walk them back and like, yeah, so you know, 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 Lippet Ishtar and the new new and there's all of these ancient law codes we've dug up hundreds of years older than the Ten Commandments.

They all say the same thing. You shall not murder. You shall not covet. You should not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You know, it's it's the same. And it walks itself all the way back to the garden and 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. That's.

Important to observe because when you read the Ten Commandments on their own terms, they are deeply grafted into the life of Israel. Right. 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 with non-believers. 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 a natural law, the character and the person of God, etc. 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, you know, Buddhism and meditation and Zen this and save the planet and I want to worship this. Everyone's looking to fill something in their lives. And we can fill them with the truth.

Yes. 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 going to 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.

Yes. 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.

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 know, you're worshiping on every high hill under every green tree and your idolatry is rampant.

But 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.

You know, they're not loving God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. They're not fearing God, thinking of him first, thinking of him most, and allowing God to establish the values of their culture in 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 like, well, we need to make more sacrifices, 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 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 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, you know, Moab and Midian.

Or he gets sent to Nineveh. Yeah, yeah, you get sent down to Nineveh. But, you know, 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, 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. Right. The phrase was Caesar is Lord. That's what the 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 going to happen.

But no, there's actually somebody else who's up 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 are 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 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, you know, 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, 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's 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 going to 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 Trujela. Matt Trujela. Matt Trujela. And what was interesting to me was to hear the aftershock of the Reformation.

We think of, you know, 1517 and the Wittenberg Chapel and Martin Luther putting his 95 Theses there and just the 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 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 I was talking to, a legislator in their office, and they got video of it and the legislator was just saying, I have to do it what my constituents want.