Emergency & Controversy In Texas

The Texas Abortion Bill and the Call for Christian Consistency

Non-rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional.

Delusional? Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me.

What? What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone for the judgment is God's. And the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me and I will hear it.

Apologia Radio, End Abortion Now, and the Texas Emergency

What's up, guys? Welcome back to a very important episode of Apologia Radio. We are live in the studio right now coming at you guys from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. This is the gospel heard around the world.

You guys can get more at ApologiaStudios .com, A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com. That over there is Luke the Bear.

What up?

Luke the Bear, what's up?

This is your first time back actually in a while, right? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, it's at least a month.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, because I was in Kauai for three weeks.

It's been a while.

Yeah.

So it's good to have you back.

Back in the saddle.

That's right.

Yeah. All right. We've got over here Zach. Attack.

Hey, what's up, guys?

Director of Communications for End Abortion Now. You guys can get more at EndAbortionNow .com. Please, please go there. We have over 350 local churches across the country right now that have been trained for free, equipped for free by Apologia Church, all thanks to all of you, our supporters, those of you guys who have prayed for us and you've given towards End Abortion Now.

You're responsible for that with us, so I want to praise God for you and praise God for his faithfulness. But we have over 350 churches now who are saving lives this very day outside of their local abortion mills and not doing it in the typical pro-life way from neutrality, but doing it with the basis of the biblical worldview and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They are saving lives. They are helping women, mothers and fathers. Zach, you were going to say something.

Just got word the day before yesterday, actually, that one of the churches that just received their materials had their very first save.

Praise God.

Praise God. That's right.

Hey, what is a life worth? You don't put a number on that. You can't put a number on that. But if you think about this, God has, through the ministry of End Abortion Now, through Apologia Church and all of our members, all of our people, all of our efforts and all of your giving, for far less than a million dollars over these last couple of years, He has saved thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children from death.

The pro-life movement will take in millions and millions and millions of dollars a year and affect, at times, nothing. Nothing. It will actually participate in some of the most ridiculous, asinine legislation that affects nothing.

It's inconsistent. It's devastating to the cause, for justice, for the pre-born. And if you consider what God can do through a small, and I mean that, local church in the desert, affecting with the gospel of Jesus Christ, the community of Christ globally, if you consider what God can do, I think it'll really inspire you and dramatically change you for good.

And so that's what we've seen God do these last couple of years through End Abortion Now. I don't want to cut you off. Do you have something else you want to add to that?

That's it, man. I wouldn't add anything to that.

This is Joy Hunter over here, Joy the girl.

Joy the mama.

That's right. That's right. Who is holding a human being inside her as we speak. Sounds funny when you say it like that.

How appropriate.

The fifth person.

That's right.

The fifth co-host of the show.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I like that.

Hey, praise God. How appropriate that we're having this discussion with a mother and her child living within her at this very, very moment. It's a big deal. Joy does Sheologians with Summer Yeager, and you can get that at Sheologians .com or you can get it at ApologiaStudios .com.

It's part of our studio's production.

It's all there for you guys as well. So make sure you guys go check that out. What's happening, Joy?

Not a whole lot. There's a lot happening in Texas.

Yes.

But for me, it's pretty uneventful.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's just do it.

We'll talk about the Mormonism stuff afterwards. Is that okay?

Yeah.

Yeah?

So we just got back from Salt Lake City, over 20 hours of driving back and forth to Salt Lake City to bring our team from Apologia Church to go evangelize at Mormon Conference. It was really an amazing experience.

It was a blessing to be a part of that. You will, God willing, be seeing some of that very, very soon. We did get content from out there. I know we also got lots of audio recordings. So what we're probably going to end up doing is because we had so much content, we have some video content, but we're also just going to be putting up the audio on this channel, Apologia Studios channel.

So there won't be frames or anything like that. You won't be able to see anything, but you'll at least be able to hear the conversations.

Like our OG videos.

OG, baby.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's true.

Logo.

That's right. The little bouncing banner of Apologia Studios. If you look way back far deep into our videos, you'll see that. That's how Apologia Christian Ministries started. We just put up We had a cheap recorder at Radio Shack.

We just recorded the conversations. We put them up, and that's what happened.

Back when Radio Shack was a thing.

Back when Radio Shack was a thing. And that tells you how long we've been in this.

Like Blockbuster.

That was like pre-HD days.

Yeah.

So you look at some of those videos we did on those camcorders, and it looks like it was on a VHS tape.

Uh-huh.

He ain't lying.

That's for sure.

All right. So here we go. Emergency in Texas. Hey, guys. You want to help? You want to be a part of this? You want to be a part of this ministry? This isn't about us. I say that a lot, and that's not just an attempt to be humble.

I am deadly serious about that. It cannot be Apologia Church and our mission for justice for these children and bring the gospel into the culture, into conflict with abortion. It can't. We're asking you to be a part of this with us at the Church of the Living God.

Globally. And that's why we've committed as a church to equipping local churches globally and sending them resources. Tens of thousands of dollars given by you, our loyal brothers and sisters and supporters, have allowed us to actually send off kits and materials and signs and give free training to hundreds of churches across the country that are now saving lives.

But listen, it can't be us. That's why we're actually developing training right now for local churches to develop their own media ministries because this is not about Jeff Durbin. It's not about Joy. Luke's not about Zach.

It's not about us. We are trying to be faithful as believers alongside of you. Please hear me on that. We need you to be a part of this with us. Put your arms in our arms and do this with us. Listen, this isn't a pithy request for you to share our content because it's going to help us out a bunch.

If you don't share this content, the word doesn't get out. Like, for example, did you know that there's a bill in Texas right now that would criminalize and end abortion in Texas?

Period.

It's done.

It's over.

Abortion is done. No more slaughtered children by law in Texas. Do you know that? Do you even know that was happening right now? Probably not. I'd say probably the vast majority of you didn't even know it.

And why didn't you know it? Because, ready? Who's talking about it? Where do you see it on national media that right now there's a bill to criminalize abortion and to abolish it in the state of Texas that had a hearing this last week that went till 3 a .m.?

Yeah, late into the night.

3 a .m.? I didn't hear that.

But we're talking Christian after Christian after Christian standing before their legislature not saying with neutrality, hey, we'd really like you to protect life and our state. They're saying this is sin against God.

This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We demand justice for these pre-born human beings, these image bearers of God, and we demand it now. Not when they're 18 weeks and 20 weeks and 22 weeks, but right now because God knits us together in our mother's womb and we are human from conception.

This is sin against the living God. Turn to Christ and live. Where have you seen that?

Where?

I was saying to Joy when I first came in, Joy and I were chatting, and I was like, listen, I can't even imagine in the past 150 years this happening where Christians went and stood before the legislature and preached the gospel and demanded justice for the pre-born children.

Where did that happen? Where did that happen in the last 150 years? I can imagine it happening early on when we were a Christian culture and nation where they were actually referring to the Bible in the law and the Supreme Court and those sorts of things.

But where has it happened in the last 150 years? And did you hear about it? We know about it in our circle, right? But where is it being talked about? Where in the national media? This is the premier thing happening right now in America, like the end of abortion in a state that was stopped to slaughter the pre-born, and it's like, who's talking about it?

So when I say share this, share this content, it's because you have got to be a part of this with us. This is grassroots. We were talking beforehand. We recognize, and you're going to hear about it, the sadness of the moment with an inconsistent pro-life legislator stopping a bill to criminalize abortion.

How crazy is that?

To his shame.

To his absolute shame. We recognize that we are at the beginning of this, and so we're going to have these moments where we hit walls and it hurts us and our heart breaks and everything else. But we recognize that as the gospel changed the first century and eventually spread around the world, it started with like 11 very confused disciples.

One just hung himself and died. But 11 very confused disciples going, what, we have to get the entire world? And there were moments of martyrdom and being burned at the stake and having Nero come and nibble at your bits and all that stuff.

That really happened. I'm trying to say that in a very classy way. So I recognize that we're going to hit these walls, but it takes the church and the living God, and that's where I'll leave it.

Before we get into that, there's a comment on the live feed we need to respond to.

Okay.

It showed Zach.

Yeah, I think I just screen shot everyone you were talking about.

And it made me want to punch a hole in the wall.

What's that?

So I'm not going to say who it was because they might be sincere. But the question is, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't. Dying kids get a guaranteed one-way pass to heaven and stopping an abortion means that kid can make life choices that can end up in him going to hell.

Well, let's see if you really believe that. Would you want to stop the criminalization of murder of Christians because they get to go to heaven one day? So let's say, for example, would you support legislation that said it's perfectly okay to murder, say, a mother in her kitchen as long as she professes faith in Jesus, or it's perfectly okay to walk into a Christian school and shoot holes into a bunch of people who are professing Christians because, hey, they get to go to heaven, and isn't that the greater thing?

No, God's law forbids murder, period. Murder is murder, and it's against God's law. We have to uphold God's just statutes. God says you shall not murder, and that's God's command. And he demands justice in his world.

And Jesus, by the way, part of what God is doing with his kingdom is he's bringing justice around the world. So Christians aren't supposed to just be about proclaiming, like, you get to go to heaven one day.

We're supposed to be proclaiming what Jesus did and the call to reconcile, be reconciled to God and have faith in Jesus to be saved, but also with the message of Christians coming into the world and the kingdom of God is that now God is actually restoring all of creation.

It's a new creation, which means now the Messiah himself, the Son of the living God, is bringing justice to the ends of the earth. Isaiah 42. Go check it out. That's what he's doing, and he's not going to grow faint or weary until he does it.

I'm not sure what you guys want to say to that, but the first thing I would say is that it's inconsistent at bottom.

And the assumption at the bottom of it is a false, truncated view of the gospel. That's what it is. Like, well, the ultimate thing is getting to heaven, so why would you want to stand in the way of that when actually the ultimate thing is what God's word and what Jesus and the mantle that the apostles took up doing is bringing the kingdom of God onto the earth, into conflict with every area of life.

That's the good news, is that God owns all of these things and he commands his will to be done in every area, which by extension includes the establishment of justice in his law.

Yeah, I was just going to say we've been given the ministry of reconciliation, which means reconciliation of all things, that we're not just to have a ministry of getting souls to heaven. Same thing you guys just said.

That's right, that's right. All right, guys, so let's talk about it. What happened in Texas this last week? I'm going to read you just a bit from an article from The Resurgent. So this is about Jeff Leach.

We're going to make sure you guys, by the end of this episode, know how to get into contact and be a part of this with us. We don't want to leave you guys hanging with what's going on there. So here we go.

I'll read this little article from The Resurgent.

Wow.

That is a quote from Leach. And so let's talk about that. That's what's happening right now. It had that hearing, everyone's talking about this, and Jeff Leach comes out and says, yeah, we're not going to put this into force because this is a bill that would criminalize the woman who has an abortion.

Yeah, which it's interesting. I mean, the law code in Texas already includes unborn children as protected under the law. It defines life, that moment that you start protecting life from the moment of conception.

Now, Zach, let's talk about that. Why is that significant in this whole issue? Just help people who maybe are just getting into this. Why is that significant in terms of Leach's explanation? Like, well, hey, this would make it criminal for a person to do it.

They would suffer some sort of prosecution, and we don't want that. I mean, but he's also fighting for a bill that says that you protect children who survive botched abortions. He thinks that's his victory.

He's going to have a bill that has children who survive botched abortions. They're going to be saved, and so we're doing a good job there. But Texas already says what?

Yeah, Texas law already says that it recognizes human beings from the moment of conception. And so when you have contradictory law that legislates in opposition to what Texas law says already, that you protect human beings from the moment of conception, that's a definite conflict, and you have a big, big problem with that.

So the bill essentially is just demanding. It's saying, okay, if what you say is true, if what's in Texas law is that these unborn children have equal value as the mother, as other human beings post-born, then they must have equal protection.

Yeah.

Equal value equals equal protection under the law. That's what we're demanding to be consistent.

Why is this hard to understand from a legislative aspect and principle, right?

Right, because if you, I mean, if you look at, I would imagine, I would venture to guess, just like Arizona, if, say, just to give the example, if a pregnant mother gets hit on the freeway and she dies as a result of that accident, what is the perpetrator of that crime who is driving drunk?

How many counts of homicide is he charged with?

Right.

Not one.

Right.

He's charged with two.

That's exactly right.

So we already recognize it in this case, and we have the consistency of saying, unborn children from the moment of conception, that's when we're recognizing this as protecting these people. And so we even have a law in this case.

So what's, where's the disconnect in this? Why are we not seeing that this has to be the case also?

Yeah, that's right.

That's the problem.

And so what, you all need to hear this, and we want to say this as humbly as possible, but with also as much courage and discipline as possible. Jeff Leach is a Republican professed pro-life legislator in the state of Texas who has stopped the bill that would actually end abortion in the state of Texas.

So I'll say that again. He's a Republican pro-life legislator who is the one right now who is responsible for attempting to stop.

Whoa.

Sorry about that, everybody. Let me just go ahead and kill that. I don't know who's calling in the middle of the broadcast, but please stop it.

Shame on you.

Yeah, please stop it. And yeah. Oh, that's my daughter who's getting married.

Sorry.

She should know better. Imogen?

Yes.

Imogen Durbin. So again, it's a pro-life legislator in the state of Texas who is actually stopping the bill that would actually end abortion in Texas. Now, the big boast here for the pro-life movement is they you need to know this.

The pro-life movement is not explicitly Christian, and that's a problem.

That's not obvious by now.

And not being explicitly Christian means that they're also not explicitly consistent. Right. And so there's a problem here that everyone needs to embrace, and this is not to create factions and camps, and let's just create a war and another faction here.

It's to really address it in terms of consistency. Here's a chance to criminalize abortion and end it in the state of Texas, to actually do what pro-lifers say, I thought, that they want to do, and that's stop abortion.

And here it is, and who's stopping it? Who's stopping the bill that's going to stop abortion?

Who?

Oh, it's the pro-choicers, of course, right?

No.

It's as though the pro-choice movement doesn't even need any help in this case, because the pro-life movement is actually blocking these things. And you might think, well, this is an isolated incident, correct?

No.

I can give you numerous other examples of the pro-life movement, the vice president of National Right to Life, Tony Lowinger, stopping the bill to criminalize abortion in Oklahoma. We talked to him. He said they don't want to do it.

They want to take a backdoor approach. They don't want it to be explicitly Christian. And he says, hey, if we end abortion in Oklahoma, it would do away with all of our pro-life legislation. And the answer is, yeah, that's kind of the point, my friend, because your pro-life legislation isn't consistent, and it's not ultimately helping.

So we do want your pro-life legislation to ultimately be over, because abortion is seen as a criminal act. You can't kill other human beings. How about that? Well, we're already not allowed to do that.

Well, not in the case of the small human beings that are in the wombs of their mothers, you know, those innocent human beings who have done literally nothing to violate another human being. They haven't done anything in terms of malice.

They haven't done anything to actually judicially require that they're executed. We're killing those human beings, the most vulnerable among us and defenseless among us. Those ones, those are free game.

But you need to know that the pro-life movement actually is responsible, is responsible for actually helping to maintain the order of abortion across our nation. And if you think, Jeff, you're a zealot or, Jeff, you're just a conspiracy theorist, please listen to me.

It has to do here not with conspiracy and zeal. It has to do with position. The position of the pro-life movement is we'll protect babies if they survive a botched abortion, and they're human from conception.

But we're not really going to work to end this at this point because we have to ultimately wait till Roe v. Wade is overturned. And the problem with that is an area of consistency. Our country wasn't established saying that the Supreme Court can actually give law, that they can actually create and demand that we obey this law.

The Supreme Court is not Congress. Congress, according to our Constitution, creates law. The states have the right to resist the tyranny of a higher voice or higher government. And we do it all the time.

You ever heard of sanctuary cities? States resist all the time federal law. Or how about marijuana in California, Washington, or Las Vegas, or Colorado, or Arizona? How about the fact that our states already have this bold chest-pumping to the federal government in the area of marijuana?

Yeah, y 'all can smoke up. We'll resist the federal law for that. But not for these babies. Not for these babies. So this is a massive problem, and I want to say this, that we need to confront with love, respect, and humility, but with all boldness and consistency inconsistent legislators like this.

Call them out for what they are.

Inconsistent.

Call out what they're doing as shameful and unjust. Don't tell me you're pro-life because you put in a bill that, you know what, here's the thing. I'll let you guys, please jump in after this. I'll just say this, and I want to say this with as much gentleness as I possibly can.

But don't try to pretend like you're a man and that you're courageous because you put a bill in that says yeah, if the baby's on the table and it comes out and it's been mutilated but it's still breathing and surviving and it survived that abortion we should protect that baby, right?

And everyone looks at the pictures of the baby struggling on the table and goes oh yeah, at least, oh that's horrible. Yeah, protect the baby that survives the abortion. Man, that's bloody. Oh man, protect that.

Oh, it's breathing? Yeah, protect that. Don't tell me that you're a man and you're courageous because you convince a population to follow you along in that.

Yeah.

It's ultimately not consistent, nor is it impressive to me. Like, be a man and be courageous and actually hold firm to your principles and actually say, no our state law says it's from conception that Bible says it's from conception and it's a human being there protected in the womb.

That's where I'll have respect for you as a man. And I don't know about this man's profession of faith but I'll respect your profession of faith when you're consistent and actually.

You talking about Jeff Leach?

Yeah.

He says he's a Christian.

Okay, well, Mr. Leach when you actually are consistent and you love these children and you grow a pair.

I'll respect you.

Didn't Bradley say his past pastor used to be the president of the SBC, right? Is that what he said?

That's right.

You might be thinking right now real fast. You might be saying, man, Jeff's going in today. They're going in hard. Well, here's why. Because there's a context. When Jesus goes into the temple to like deliver the covenant lawsuit and confront these people and flip tables over because they're violating the holiness of God and oppressing people and all these different things he acted a bit differently in Matthew 23 when he was dealing with religious people who were living inconsistently.

He actually had harsher words like whitewashed tombs, you bunch of fakes.

Woe to you.

He's saying this, by the way. May God's curse fall on you. May God condemn you and judge you for what you're doing. So I'm not saying that you necessarily walk up to the person in the Starbucks and you have the same harsh language for them at all times.

That's inconsistent. But when you're talking about image bearers of God who are having their heads cut off and their guts spilled in the wombs of their mommies, we need to actually, in moments like this where you have a professing Christian acting so inconsistently and it's leading to the devastation of an entire population, you have to actually use a serrated edge.

And that's what we're doing.

And those are people that thought that they were okay, too. They thought they had the right relationship with God. They thought that they had the privilege of having God's law given to them. Their heritage was what they had on their side.

That was what was going to make them okay with God. And just like pro-life politicians, Christian conservatives, Republicans who have been given that extraordinary light of having God's revelation and his standards, they look down their noses at other people when in reality, they're the ones that have received such grace and they're hypocrites.

And that with no spines, no backbones, no courage to actually stand on the principles that they say that they're about because they'll say life begins at conception. This is a human being, but then they won't push to legislate that way.

So it demonstrates that they don't actually believe that life begins at conception. They don't actually believe that Bible that they say that they stand on. And when a law like this comes along, the bill that would criminalize abortion and remove the exceptions that are in there that say, yeah, it's murder, except in the case of abortion, chemical abortion, IVF morning after the bill would come in and rip those exceptions out.

So that way people would be held accountable for what they do. They're evidencing that they don't actually believe abortion is murder when they try to fight against it. It's not really murder. If no one's responsible, if no one can be culpable for their actions, you don't really believe that.

If you're gonna legislate this way, you're lying.

Yeah, it's really not complicated because we actually have this thing like that's against the law called murder that you can compare abortion to directly and the laws that surround it. And the number one point is that abortion is not prosecuted at all.

But certainly like people who are suggesting that it's wrong, they're not even suggesting we prosecute it like a murder. So what that means is you don't think it's a murder. So then the response to that is, well, people will continue to get them and then you'll just have a bunch of people being prosecuted for murder.

And I'm sorry, but that sort of pragmatism is not what we see in the Bible. You don't see, there's nowhere in the Bible that says that God is going to pardon all sin and we should just not worry about it.

And we don't legislate that and like that in every other crime.

In any other aspect.

Yeah, there is no, oh, well, like people will keep stealing. So we just shouldn't do anything about it.

Don't prosecute, don't criminalize and penalize.

The thief is the victim. The thief doesn't have any money. They lost their job. They were laid off and they're the victim of this oppressive system. And that is the same exact sort of rhetoric that's happening here.

It's incredibly damaging and you would not believe how many Christians fall for it.

That's the hardest part of all this.

There are so many people that say that the woman is a victim in this. I will grant that there are some situations that are nuanced, but ultimately stupidity is not an excuse for your own sin.

Right.

And what I mean by stupidity is ignorance. Because when it comes to knowing whether or not a child is a child inside of you, there is no ignorance. We have spent the last several decades pretending and coming up with sort of a narrative that protects women so that we can give this excuse like, oh, they don't really know what they're doing.

But can you name for me, like any other time in history when a woman didn't know she was pregnant with another human baby?

Right.

There was no other time. Well, there were other times and during those times, there were plenty of times where people would say, yes, I am sacrificing my baby to Moloch.

Yes.

And that's what they did. That's what that God at least demanded that everyone know what was happening. Like they all were aware of what was going on.

That's right.

And I'm just, I'm tired of, and you know, Zach and I talk about just the patience that it takes to interact with people because there's so many people that believe this lie. And it's so hard because you interact with the people saying the same things over and over and over again.

And what you really just want to say is like, like you were just talking about, like get a backbone.

Yeah.

Like man up, you know?

Yes.

And that's obviously not the appropriate thing to say all the time. But every once in a while it comes down to it. I'm like, I'm really, I want to see Christians start being more discerning than oh well just because we can't end this sin forever we should do nothing about it.

And sinners with the law of God written on their heart don't know they're sinning. That's not what the Bible says. That lacks all critical thought. And that's not how we're supposed to be. But that's totally, you're living your life as though you haven't opened your Bible.

Yes.