EP 39 | Is the Abortion fight over or has it just begun? #life #jesuschrist #makeamericagreatagain

Cornerstone Church

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We hear all these stories ever since the Dobbs decision, ever since the Roe versus Wade overturn. We keep hearing all these stories of, oh, such and such person died because there wasn't abortion access in their state, because there wasn't abortion access in their state.

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But if you look in depth at a lot of those instances, so there were two pretty popular ones that happened in Georgia.

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And in both of those instances, and look, I'm not, I don't want people to lose their lives.

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I'm sad for these women that died. In both of those instances, those women that died died from botched abortions.

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It wasn't that they didn't have access to abortions, it's that they were taking the abortion pill at home.

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That needs to be highlighted. Without, and the laws have changed to say, oh, you no longer need to have an abortion in the presence of a doctor.

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Here, this pill's as safe as Tylenol, is what people will say. Just go home and take this pill, and you'll have a heavier than normal, it'll be like a heavier than normal period.

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And then that's it, and it's all taken care of. And then you're seeing these women are taking this at home, and then they're having complications, and they're dying.

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And welcome to Tearin' Down High Places. My name's Average Joe, glad to be with you again in the pastor's office.

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So, today we've got Pastor Chuck Thornley coming to us, all the way from Mays Landing, and the church there is

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Wellspring Church, and he is the associate pastor. And he's also the director of, let me get this right,

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Crisis Pregnancy Center. in Egg Harbor City. Well, welcome Pastor Chuck. Thank you.

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Nice to have you. Nice to be here. And we hear you're a little bassist too. You play, you do a little worship music?

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I do, I do. Should we talk about the fun stuff before we talk about abortion? Whatever you'd like.

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No, we really wanna, this is election season, right? So we wanna really get into the importance of the life issue in the election.

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And we got Pastor Jeff over there, he's got his shirt on. What do I love? I love America. Amen. Look at that.

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Let's go. And Pastor Tim's here. Say hi. So, what do you want to tell us about your mission there, down in Cape May?

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Well, we're not in Cape May, we're in - Mays Landing. Yeah, Mays Landing. That's the first thing, is where it is. It's my job to get the guest location wrong.

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I love that we have a director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center, because a lot of Christians don't know, does this actually make a difference?

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Can you tell us, maybe give us a story of somebody who decided to not kill their baby and decided to choose life?

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Sure, so I'll give you a recent story, actually, but one that's really touched my heart and my wife's heart and our volunteers.

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So, we had a woman who called and she said,

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I just don't know what I'm gonna do. Like, I'm pregnant and I don't have support.

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The father doesn't want to be involved. My family's not really supporting me in this. I just, I don't know how

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I can choose to keep this baby. And I have, you know,

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I have an abortion scheduled. And so, she spoke to my wife on the phone.

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And my wife said, please, come in, let us talk to you first. And so, she said, okay,

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I'll come in and talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Or, like, what can you possibly do to help me in this?

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And so, she came in and she sat down with my wife and another woman that works with us and some of our volunteers, and they explained to her, look, here's the things that we can do to help you, to support you.

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We can be there through your pregnancy for you. We will make sure that you're connected with the material supplies that you need, both for yourself and for your baby.

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So, we offer maternity supplies, including maternity clothes, hygiene supplies for mom, you know, devotional materials for mom, as well as parenting lessons, parenting classes, those kinds of things.

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And then, we help people apply for social services, like food stamps, health insurance, housing, those kinds of things.

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We try to connect, we always share the gospel with everybody who comes in.

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We're a gospel -focused ministry. So, we share the gospel with people, try to get them connected to a good local church.

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So, in our area, so we mostly, we see most of our clients are from Atlanta County, but we also actually see a lot of clients from Cumberland County.

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So, we know churches in each of the areas that our clients come from, so that we can try to send them to a church in their area and get them connected that way, so that they have that family support as they're moving forward.

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Then, we offer all kinds of supplies for babies. So, we offer free pregnancy testing, and then diapers, wipes, formula, baby food, clothes, cribs, car seats, swings, you name it.

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And all the way up through toddler years. So, one of the things that we hear in Pro -Life

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Ministry, of course, is you only care about babies until they're born. Right, you don't care about them after they're born, you don't care about moms, you don't care about dads, families.

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And one of the things that we're showing is that that's not true. You know, we're offering support all the way through toddler years.

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We carry baby clothes up through, like, toddler size sevens. Wow. You know, so, and then, of course, stuff for moms.

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We also, I'll meet with dads, we do parenting classes for dads, how to be a father. So, this woman comes in, we explain all this to her, we help her apply for social services, and then we give her something that's called a love box.

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And this is something that, there's an outside ministry called Embrace Grace, puts these together, and it's basically a shoe box, and inside of it is a piece of jewelry for mom, a onesie for the baby, a devotional book, some other gifts for mom, and then a letter handwritten by someone for mom.

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You know, ahead of time. And so, they gave her this, and she opened it up, and she just burst into tears.

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And she said, how can people who don't even know me, who don't even know my baby, care about me and love me this much, and love my baby this much?

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And so she looked at, and once she had kind of calmed down, she said, okay,

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I know now. I wanna keep my baby. But also, can

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I have another one of those boxes? Because I have another friend who's pregnant in the same situation that I'm in, and she's planning to get an abortion, and I want to give her one of these boxes too, so that she knows the same thing that I know.

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And so we gave her another box to take with her. Our volunteers followed up with her the next day, and she said,

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I met up with my friend, and I gave her that box, and she's keeping her baby too. Wow. So, out of that God -ordained meeting, and those gifts that we had to be able to give out to her, two lives were saved, two mom's hearts were touched, two opportunities for the future, and for souls to be saved.

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How do we find, how do we differentiate between pro -life ministries? Are all of them the same?

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What are some of the things to look for in a good, godly, Christian pro -life ministry?

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One of the things that made me think of that question is because you said you share the gospel with everybody who comes in.

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Yeah. Yeah, so, there are all kinds of different pro -life ministries.

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So, for instance, in our area, we're there in Atlanta County, but there's also a

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Catholic -run pro -life ministry there in Atlanta County. And so, one of the things, right, so one of the things first off is, however we may disagree on theology,

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Bible interpretation, whatever, if you're trying to save babies, and I'm trying to save babies, and we can agree on that, then how do we work together on that one aspect, you know?

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You're not gonna preach at my church, I'm not gonna preach at yours, right? But, one of the things I would say is, yeah, there are pro -life ministries out there that are not really

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Christian -focused. Or even if the people that are working at them are Christians, they're being run by Christians, they're kind of like trying to maintain a clinical approach, oftentimes.

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And so, they don't have Bibles sitting out in the front, they're not preaching the gospel, they're not necessarily connecting people to a church.

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And there's kind of two schools of thought on that. And some people really think, okay,

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I need to keep religion out of this so that I don't turn anybody away. Right, I wanna reach unchurched women, or women even who've had bad experiences with the church, and so I'm keeping

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Christianity out of this. But for us, that's just not fruitful.

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Right, right. Right, like, and again, I'm a pastor, you know, my wife works at the church also, like, the other woman that's on staff with us, her husband is a pastor.

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But we, for us, like, we wanna save lives, but we also wanna save souls.

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Yes. And the thing that we have identified that's kind of the root cause of abortion is a lack of hope.

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Right, so many women come into us and they say, I just have no hope. How can

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I possibly keep this baby? I don't have a job, or I don't have a good job. Dad's not in the picture, my family's not supporting me.

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I don't know how I'm gonna do this. And so what better way is there to give someone hope than in the message of Jesus Christ?

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Amen. How horrible to go through all that suffering and not get pointed to your need for a savior.

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Yeah. Yeah. Here in the end times, the love of many will grow cold. And often that's family.

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You have moms, grandmoms, dads, granddads that don't care about this young girl.

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And if she doesn't have a church, like, very often in church, the church becomes like a family to those whose families have not been what a family should be.

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So you can offer that too. You can say, hey, this is more than us wanting to rescue your baby, although that's life and death.

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But we wanna be part of your family and we wanna welcome you into this family. And you're welcome here.

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Absolutely. It's so sad to think that a girl like that has no hope and so much missing hope that they know it's wrong.

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They reached out. This girl in particular reached out to your wife knowing that this is probably the wrong thing to do, but felt like it was her only option.

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And for you to be able to spread out, like, look, there's plenty more options and there's actually a lot of help.

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I mean, that must mean a ton to that woman thinking that there was no hope, there was no help.

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And it is really sad because with no family, you really do, I mean, you need a church family even if you have a good family.

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If you don't have a good family, you really need a church family because that's a good point. Chuck, being on the front lines, how many women come in with an open heart in that way?

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And how many are that you see, maybe they don't come into your ministry, but they have a hard heart and their heart has grown cold.

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This is why they're willing to do what they are. For example, I saw down in Charlotte, there was a woman who was wearing a

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T -shirt. It said, I'd rather be a murderer than a mother. And she was, this whole movement of shout your abortion, make, be proud of it.

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Is that becoming very common or is it mostly girls in distress that they really wish there was another option?

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They're just so afraid and so fearful. It seems like there's kind of two different kinds of women.

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Like maybe the one who's serially committing abortions on purpose again and again as a means of birth control and is loud and proud kind of thing.

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How common is that? Is that really something that's happening widespread? I mean,

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I do believe that that's happening. We are not seeing a lot of those.

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It probably wouldn't come to you, right? Yeah, and just to be clear, we do often get phone calls or connections on our website that are people thinking that we are an abortion facility.

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So we'll get those calls fairly regularly of someone they'll call and we'll answer and they'll say, yeah,

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I want the abortion pill or I want an abortion. And so, one of the accusations that kind of gets leveled at pregnancy centers is that we lie, right?

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You hear that a lot, right? Oh, those, they're fake clinics that pretend to be abortion clinics and then you go in and then they kind of trap you and they trick you and they -

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Change it to family planning and you'll get even more of those calls. Right. But, one of the things for us that's been important is look, we want

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God to bless the ministry and God's not gonna bless a ministry built on lies.

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Right, amen. So we are always honest when someone calls. And so they'll call and they'll say, you know,

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I wanna get an abortion, I wanna schedule an abortion or I want the abortion pill. And what we always say is, why are you thinking about getting an abortion?

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What's led you to this place, right? Can we talk to you about your options or can we talk to you about what that looks like to get an abortion?

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Yeah. What that involves or what might happen after that. And then we say, you know, if they say, well, what's gonna look like if I come in, what's gonna happen?

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If I come in and talk to you, you're gonna give me the abortion pill if I want it. And what we say is, look, we don't perform or refer for abortions.

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But we would like to talk, because we don't want someone coming in under the mistaken premise that we're going to do that.

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You know, we're clear that we're a pro. Yeah. And so we get those calls.

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Sometimes the person will let us talk to them and agree to come in. Sometimes they just hang up, right?

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And one of the things, sometimes they'll say, no, I'm just gonna call somewhere else and get an abortion. And then we'll say,

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I hope that's not the choice you make. But if it is, and you're feeling loss, regret, or pain afterwards, call us back.

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Because we do offer post -abortion care as well. You know, counseling for people that are struggling with that decision that they've made.

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And we've done tons of that also, post -abortion counseling. You know, again, that's a

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Christian -based program dealing with regret and shame that people feel.

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And then, you know, the hope that Jesus offers for second chances, right? But sometimes people will say, okay, sure, let me come in and hear what you have to say.

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And then oftentimes, regardless of what they say they're gonna do, well, every time, regardless of what they say they're gonna do, whoever's on the phone will offer to pray with them.

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Even if they say, no, I'm gonna go get an abortion, they'll say, can we pray for you? Sometimes they say no, sometimes they say yes.

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But we don't, so anyway, that took me the long way around to answering your question. But I think the people that are calling us most often are either people who haven't really gotten abortions before so they're not really sure what they're looking for, where they're looking, or what that entails.

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Or it is people who are kind of teetering. We would love to have more of an opportunity to reach people who are, okay,

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I'm focused on getting an abortion, this is what I'm doing, this is what's happening. But those people aren't really, in general, reaching out to us.

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And one of the things that we're working on for the new year is working with a company called

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Choose Life Marketing that will help us do better web marketing, have a better online presence, reach out to people more in order to be able to kind of get more eyes on what's happening in the ministry and hopefully get more women to at least come in and let us share with them the message of hope.

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I'm so encouraged by what you guys are doing and I love that it's connected with your church, too. The way that Chuck and I know each other is we're part of an underground pastor network.

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The secret society of conservative evangelical pastors that actually care about life, right?

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And I noticed that about the group. How many times do we talk? Probably every time we get together, something will come up relating to protecting babies, right?

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But we're so outnumbered. There are a lot of churches now, even in New Jersey, that you would think are conservative.

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They say they're Bible churches, but they're trying to downplay the abortion issue. They'll never talk about it from the pulpit.

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How can we motivate other pastors to join us in our secret underground club or fight club?

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So for me, there is a very succinct

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Bible passage that informs, motivates my ministry and to me makes it clear that as Christians, we have no option but to be pro -life.

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In fact, not just to be pro -life, but to be actively pro -life. That's the key word.

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And this is, that's Proverbs 24, verses 11 and 12. And it says, rescue those being led away to death, hold back those staggering towards slaughter.

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If you say, but we knew nothing about this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

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Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to their deeds?

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Wow, good. Man, that's, I always stop at verse 11, but that verse 12 is the, that's the hammer right there.

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Yeah, so you read that verse and you say, I mean, are there other situations in which that could apply?

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Sure, right? But who in our country, in our society, who is being killed and slaughtered more than the unborn?

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Yeah. And so then if that's happening, the word of God is calling me to step in and stop that from happening.

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And if I say, I don't really know anything about it, like I'm not informed enough in the issue or hey, it's not my choice or it's not up to me, then again, the

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Bible is clear to say, if you say, well, I didn't know anything about this or I'm just not gonna get involved, this is not my ministry or whatever, right?

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Like, it's like, yes, it is. And if you try to say it's not, God knows that you know.

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He knows your heart. He knows your mind. He knows your motivations. And he's going to repay everyone according to their deeds.

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And so for me, I know that someday when I stand in front of the

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Lord in eternity, I want to be able in those moments to say, yes,

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Lord, I took your word seriously. I did what you're calling me to do. And I stood up for those who are being killed, who are being led away towards slaughter.

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And many might have an answer like, oh, I knew it was wrong, but I didn't think that was my ministry or I didn't think that my church needed to get involved in that and I didn't wanna suffer the pushback.

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That's probably not gonna be a better answer than Chuck's. Chuck is on the front line, but sometimes there are people standing behind you.

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So for example, do you guys do the baby bottles, the empty baby bottles? We do. Next time we're together,

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I almost said the day, I can't disclose that publicly. But when we're next together on our pastor's meeting in a secret undisclosed location, can you bring a box of those and I'll bring them back here to Cornerstone and people from our church can donate to that.

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They can just fill it up, not only coins, but also put bills in there from time to time, fill it up and bring it down to you.

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Coins, bills, checks, credit cards. Yeah, credit cards, they're called credit cards. Or some Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin isn't a physical thing, is it? Put Bitcoin in there. No, hey, donating, it's huge.

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I mean, I think we often, we hate to talk about money, right? But the gospel is free, the electric bill isn't.

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Right. Right, we have costs, we have expenses and donations are huge.

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Volunteering, your time is huge. Going out there and talking to people about why

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God loves life, that's huge. Supporting pro -life ministry and women and babies in prayer, huge.

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I mean, that connection to the Lord, that's amazing. To be able to do those things, those are all active ways that you're participating in pro -life ministry.

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Not everyone has the time or the resources to be volunteering at a pregnancy center five days a week, whatever, but we all have the opportunity in some way to actively support pro -life ministry.

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Amen, right, amen. So the culture seems to be sliding, all these dirty, nasty, sinful things happening in our culture, they result in abortion a lot.

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You know, like fatherlessness and problems with marriage and feminism and the lack of, now we've got we've got young men who are struggling to find wives, getting sexploited is the new term, sexploitation, you know.

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Which we can probably talk about another time, and it's just really horrible. But how do, but then at the same time,

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I'm hearing from non -Christian or less mature Christian people, wait, we gotta let that abortion issue go or we can't win in the polls.

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How do we explain to these people that there's no such thing as a fiscal conservative who is socially liberal?

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Yeah, I mean, I get it, right? I get the kind of the game theory aspect of like, well, we gotta give up on this thing or we gotta pull back on this messaging if we wanna make these wins or these losses.

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But like, let's be honest, there are things that are worth standing up for until the bitter end, right?

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I mean. Well said. Yeah, sure, are we seeing some pushback? You know, are we seeing, there's been many instances of since Roe v.

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Wade was overturned, where a state has bought an abortion law into the election and we've seen many instances where those elections have not gone the way that I would hope they'd go.

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But giving up on the message is not the answer, right? Because then that's just giving the victory to the other side, right?

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And so what we need to do is to continue to stand on the truth. You know, and God's word is clear that the truth's not always gonna be popular.

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It's not always gonna make us a lot of friends in the world. You know, in fact, what does Paul say?

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That when we face persecution. Yeah. Right, not if, but when. Sure. And so, okay, you know, is this, are there times that it's like this message isn't getting us the votes that we want?

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Yeah, but I'm willing to stand up and say, okay,

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I'm still not gonna compromise on the truth. I'm still not gonna compromise on the truth. But also,

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I think there are so many instances where people aren't hearing the truth. They're hearing a twisted version of the truth.

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And so then it's important for us to go out there and speak the real truth.

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So for instance, we hear all these stories ever since the Dobbs decision, ever since the

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Roe versus Wade overturn. We keep hearing all these stories of, oh, such and such person died because there wasn't abortion access in their state.

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Because there wasn't abortion access in their state. But if you look in depth at a lot of those instances, you know, so there were two pretty popular ones that happened in Georgia.

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And in both of those instances, and look, I'm not, I don't want people to lose their lives.

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I'm sad for these women. Sure. That died. But in both of those instances, those women that died, died from botched abortions.

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It wasn't that they didn't have access to abortions. It's that they were taking the abortion pill at home.

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That needs to be highlighted. Without, and the laws have changed to say, oh, you no longer need to have an abortion in the presence of a doctor.

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Here, this pill's as safe as Tylenol, is what people will say. Just go home and take this pill, and you'll have a heavier than normal, it'll be like a heavier than normal period.

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And then that's it, it's all taken care of. And then you're seeing these women are taking this at home, and then they're having complications, and they're dying.

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And so why are we spreading the message that it's so safe? Right. That it's so normal, that it's so easy, when we should be, and then blaming the deaths on, well look, it's the fault of abortion bans.

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When the real message is, hey, you know what, this abortion isn't as safe as we're telling everybody it is.

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Right. That's the message that people need to know. And we could do a documentary on that stuff.

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That needs to really be highlighted. I mean, botched abortions, talking to people whose families, do the families even know that their loved ones died because of the abortion, or do they believe the lie as well?

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I don't know, that would be a good question. In that one Georgia case, their own family is saying, wait a minute, no, she took the abortion pill.

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They're trying to speak the truth, and the media just runs with it. The Kamala even talked about it in the debate, so.

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I wonder what the statistics are on how many women out there regret having an abortion, compared to all the women out there that regret going through with the pregnancy.

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I bet you it's way higher on the end of, I really wish, deep down, I really wish

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I never had this abortion. Statistically, we've gotta be very careful, because statistics always have somebody that's paying for the study to create the statistics.

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I guess I would wanna know, what's the real number? We're not gonna be able to know that. We're really not, we're really not.

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We just gotta talk to guys like Pastor Chuck here, who are in the field, who are seeing this, even though we gotta see all the angles on the forest, right?

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Yeah, well, you know, and that's a great question, and again, we've had so many people come to us and say,

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I had an abortion, and no one told me I was gonna feel this way afterwards.

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Everyone told me, you'll be fine. You won't care, you'll be, this is what you want. You'll be happy afterwards, and we even had, so I'll share two stories, and again, when

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I'm sharing these stories, I'm maintaining confidentiality for our clients, but we had one instance where a woman, you know, most of our clients are young.

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She took the abortion pill, and so the abortion pill,

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I don't know what you guys know about that, but it's two pills, so you take the first pill, and again, you take it at home.

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You can get it through the mail. You take it at home. Now, you have to be, you're supposed to be less than eight weeks in order to be eligible to take the abortion pill, but again, you can just order it and take it at home, so, but you take the first pill, and the first pill deprives your body of progesterone, which is basically causing the unborn baby to lose their life.

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Then, later on, you take the second pill, which basically forces you into labor, forces you to have the miscarriage, so we had a woman who called us, and she said,

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I went, I just didn't know what else to do, and, you know, my boyfriend wanted me to get an abortion, and I went, and I got the abortion pill, and I took the first pill, and after I took the first pill,

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I immediately regretted it, and so now this is something that the world won't tell you, that Planned Parenthood won't tell you, but there actually is something called abortion pill reversal, and so, and you can go online, you can find it, abortion pill reversal, or you can call our center, and essentially, after you take that first pill, which deprives your body of progesterone, you can actually take progesterone.

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Now, it's not 100 % that it will always save the baby in that instance, but there is a very good chance that it will, and, you know, we find that even in those instances, you take that first pill, you regret it, you take the abortion pill reversal, even if it's not successful, you can know,

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I tried. Yeah. I tried to save my baby, right, but she took the first pill, she immediately regretted it, she called the abortion facility, and said,

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I don't wanna go through with this. I took the first pill, but I don't wanna go through with this, and they said, you have to. You have to take the second pill, or you're gonna get sick, you're gonna have complications, you could even die if you don't take that second pill.

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So she took the second pill, at home, alone, and when she had the miscarriage, they were telling her, it's just gonna be blood, you're not gonna see anything, it's just gonna be blood, and she called us weeping, and said,

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I took that second pill, and I had a baby. Like, I held my baby in my hands, and I just don't know how to handle the fact that that happened to me.

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And so, she came in, and she met with our volunteers, and one of our volunteers, so the way that we do post -abortion counseling is, it's a one -on -one study.

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So if you come in, and you're seeking that, then one of our volunteers will pair up with you, one -on -one, and they walk you through.

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We have a study that we use called Forgiven and Set Free. And so, one of our volunteers walked through this with her, and at the end of it, the woman was already a

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Christian, and was kind of hiding all of this from her church, and from her family, and at the end of it, she rededicated her life to the

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Lord, and said, I wanna go into pro -life ministry. Wow. But the second one, also terribly heartbreaking to me, was, you know, this was kind of right in the midst of COVID.

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We get this, and look, say whatever you will, but we didn't close for COVID.

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We decided, you know what, if the abortion facilities are still open, we're still open. Amen, that's awesome.

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And so, we got a call, and the woman said, I had an abortion, and I'm regretting it.

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I wanna know if there's something you can do to help me. And we said, of course, can you give us some information? And again, most of our clients are teenagers, or in their 20s, maybe 30s.

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This woman was over 60, and she said,

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I had an abortion 40 years ago, and I've never gotten over it.

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Wow. And I've never been able to deal with it, and I've never known how to handle that. And now,

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I'm, you know, I'm working from home. I'm home by myself, and I have all this time to think, and all

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I can think about is that baby that I aborted 40 years ago. And what do

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I do with that? And we did the same thing. I met with her, put her on a one -on -one with a volunteer to walk through the forgiven and set free.

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And I just, sometimes I stop and think about that. For over 40 years, she carried that shame and that hurt, and had there been somebody in her life to say to her, hey, this is who

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Jesus is. You know, here's hope for the forgiveness for sins.

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You know, if, you know, Moses killed an overseer, right? But Paul, how many

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Christians did Paul kill? This is not beyond Jesus' ability to forgive. Amen.

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People need to hear that. Yes, they sure do. They sure do. And what impact do you think the election's gonna have on you if it doesn't go the way we're all hoping?

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You know, I just, we recently, my wife and I got back from like a pro -life conference, a pregnancy center director's conference down in Myrtle Beach.

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And that was one of the big questions, right, that everybody was talking about. And it was people from all over the U .S. there.

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And one of the things for us, being from New Jersey, is

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I really, New Jersey's already has like abortion basically enshrined in the state, if you will.

36:40

Sure. Right, to the extent that, you know, as soon as the Dobbs decision came down, as soon as Roe versus Wade was overturned, you know, the government said, well, we're, you know, we're an abortion sanctuary state.

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Right? And in fact, people from other states where abortion is restricted can come here and get abortions. And we'll even have fun.

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And, you know, you can get abortions in the state of New Jersey unrestricted through the whole pregnancy.

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Like, so in my mind, for us here in New Jersey, I don't know that what the federal government is doing is gonna make things any worse for us.

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Exactly. It's already at the full extent. Yeah. So what we have to do is convince the hearts and minds of people.

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Yeah. We gotta change public opinion. And that's gotta start with individual Christians. What if you have a Christian who's listening to this podcast, goes to a different church, and they've never heard their pastor talk about abortion.

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Could they go talk to their pastor and say, look, we gotta make a stand and encourage them because of every genuine evangelical pastor in New Jersey started speaking.

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Wouldn't that actually wake some people up? Oh, amen. And you know what? If you are at a church like that, where your pastor's not talking about abortion, not talking about life, you should ask them about it.

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Because if I were in that church, I would wanna know, hey, what's your stance on this?

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I've never heard you talk about this. What do you think? Why, you know, our church has a missionary board out front.

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Why isn't one of those missions pro -life? Why aren't we doing that?

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Because if I were in a church and the pastor wasn't talking about it, and then

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I realized that the pastor wasn't really pro -life, I'd be looking for another church. Yeah, 100%.

38:37

So what about the Equality Act? We've talked about that a couple of times on our podcast, where the

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House of Representatives, back in 2021, they passed what was a law blocked by the

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Senate. It wasn't a law at that point, but a resolution, I guess. And in that, they would prevent pastors from counseling people by using scripture in certain ways.

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I'm afraid that if this Democratic machine gets back into office again with more power, and if they get a

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Senate and a House and the presidency and they pass the Equality Act, I think it would impact ministries like yours.

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I think the New Jersey Democrats would be even more emboldened to go after and stop people from sharing the gospel.

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We have that, how many non -profit entities can't share the gospel out there because they take a bunch of state funds and federal funds?

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Well, that's one thing, and that's a great point. We take no government funding. Good, good.

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So we've never taken a grant from the government. We never will. There was a program for a while in the state of New Jersey that I know some pregnancy centers were using that allowed them to offer free

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STD testing that the government was paying for. We've never applied for that. We have no intention of taking government funding because that makes you beholden to the strings that come along with it.

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We just don't want those. So our center is 100 % donor -funded by churches, again, churches that support us as missionaries, by private donors.

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We do fundraising, obviously. We talked about the baby bottles. But for instance, our church, and obviously

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I'm on staff there, but our church supports Crisis Pregnancy Services as one of their missionaries.

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When the monthly missionary checks go out, one goes to Crisis Pregnancy Services. And we have a handful of churches that do that.

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And there have been lean times with the funding, you know, but taking government money is not the answer.

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Because the government's, it's just, it's made up of lost people.

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And it's a ticking time bomb. Yeah, there will be strings attached eventually. Yeah, and you know, as far as rules and laws and regulations being passed, you know, trying to muzzle pastors or whatever it is, look,

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I mean, you know, I understand the biblical teaching of following the law and being law -abiding citizens, but I also understand that the laws of God come first.

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And so if something comes along, an unbiblical law like that, I'm not gonna follow it.

41:32

You know, and I'll deal with the consequences. If the consequence of that, if the consequence of me preaching the gospel is that I have to go to jail, then

41:39

I'll go to jail. Yeah. You know, like, Start a prison ministry. Yeah, you know, I'm reminded in the book of Acts, right?

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When they grab the apostles and they whip them, and then they say, stop preaching the name of Jesus.

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Yeah. And what do they do? They walk right out covered in, you know, their backs turned to ground beef.

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And they say, praise God that I was considered worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. And they go right back out and start preaching the name of Jesus.

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May we all have that same attitude. Amen. Because what does the future hold?

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And we've talked about this before, specifically in regards to the pregnancy center, because there was a kind of a period of time in California where they were passing all these laws against pregnancy centers.

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And like laws that said like, oh, a pregnancy center has to have a posting telling people where they can go and get an abortion.

42:36

Right? And you can do this and you can't do that. And those laws ended up getting overturned, thankfully, by the

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Supreme Court. But we said, well, what if that comes to New Jersey? I went, well, we just won't do it.

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If they tell us we have to put a sign in the window saying where you can get an abortion, we're just not gonna do it. And if they say, okay, you know, your nonprofit status is revoked and you're no longer a pro -life, you know, you can't be a pregnancy center.

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I said, well, okay, then I guess we're a thrift store that gives away a lot of diapers and wipes and talks to people when they come in.

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Like, we're just gonna continue. If God is telling us to do the ministry, then we're gonna continue doing it.

43:15

Amen. Why don't we pray for you before we sign off today? I feel like - I would love that. Tim, would you pray?

43:21

Then I'll also pray. Father God, thank you so much for our friend here,

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Chuck, who spoke the word and gave us probably a bunch of shorts today so people can see what we think and see what you think and see how you want to govern us over the government.

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We pray for all the babies out there that are being slaughtered every day, that you would stop that and that you would use the scriptures that Chuck shared to many people watching to maybe change their mind and say, you know what?

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This is a bigger issue than we thought. So we thank you for giving us the wisdom, knowing that this is important.

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We pray that for our viewers and for Chuck's ministry to be blessed by what we talked about today.

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In Jesus' name. Amen, Lord. And your word says, rescue those who are being carried away to the slaughter.

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Lord, but it goes on to say that if we claim that we did not know that we will be held to account for that,

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Lord. And I pray that you would send a holy conviction over every person watching this video who has not stepped up in some way to defend the life of the innocent,

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Lord God. Help us all to step up now and rescue those who are being taken away to the slaughter.

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And we pray for Chuck on the front line. We know that there are demons that will oppose him, that will send demonized people and all of the force of government against him in any way that they can.

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But we pray for protection for this man and for his wife as they're the directors there at the

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Crisis Pregnancy Center, Lord God. We pray that you would guard them, stand guard over them, go before them, be their rear guard and keep your hand upon them.

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Protect them, Lord God, in Jesus' name. And now multiply their ministry, multiply their influence.

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We pray, Lord, that this message of, first of all, the kingdom, Jesus Christ and him crucified, and then also the importance of the lives of babies.

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We think about John the Baptist who rejoiced even in the womb in the presence of the

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Messiah. So we know that John was already John. He was already a living person, even in the womb.

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And we rejoice in that and we thank you for every baby that you've made in your image, even in the womb, Lord, just as much in the image of God.

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We pray that we could protect the lives of these innocent ones. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.

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Amen. And now. Thank you, guys. You're so welcome, but we gotta do it. Oh, right. Oh, yeah. Gotta sign off.

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If you see a brother down. Lift him up. If you see a high place. Tear him down.