LIVE At The South Carolina State Capitol

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04:04

Okay. Well, we want to welcome you to the rally for equal protection. I want to ask you to gather in today.

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We're going to go ahead and get started. My name is Mark Corral. I reside up in the Rock Hill area.

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I minister at a local church up there. I'm a husband, father of nine, and I'm one of the co -founders of Equal Protection South Carolina, one of our main sponsors for this event.

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Our mission here at Equal Protection South Carolina is to educate and mobilize

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Christians to influence lawmakers to establish justice for the pre -born by advancing bills of equal protection and opposing those that do not.

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We gather here today with one uncompromising message, with the authority of the written word of God, to call on our lawmakers to submit to Christ and establish justice for the pre -born.

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Amen? Amen. All right, we can be loud, you

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Presbyterians. Come on, we can clap. At this time, I'm going to ask Pastor Charles Swan of Covenant Baptist Church here in West Columbia to lead us in prayer.

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Let's pray together. Our Father, we ask that you would bless our time together today.

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Our desire here is to honor you and your name. As the word of God so clearly teaches us that you are long -suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

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Lord God, as you withhold your wrath that is justly due and you allow your church to grow,

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I pray, Father, that you would enable us by your grace to see the end of the murder of children in our state.

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Or would you bring the necessary means and methods, speak through our speakers today, use the word of God to convict our hearts and to change our minds.

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And I pray, Father, for the many leaders of churches in our state, the many representatives of our state, that you would help them to see how important this fight is to save the lives of the pre -born.

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Lord God, we pray your blessings today. We thank you for holding off the rain. And God, we ask you to continue to use this for your glory.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.

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At this time, we're going to have the Harris family come in. This is Representative Rob Harris. His family also is very gifted musically.

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So we have some song sheets going around. We want to join you as we worship our King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Amen.

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Oh, hail the flower of Jesus' name.

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Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the green corn.

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Oh, hail the flower of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the green corn.

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Oh, hail the flower of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. We'll join the everlasting song and crown him

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Lord. Christ alone, my hope is found.

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He is my life, my strength, my song.

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This solid ground, our shield, which striving seeks.

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By hearing the love's faith.

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This gift of love's he came to save.

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Till on that cross Jesus died.

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Hearing the death in the ground, his body laid to rest.

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As he stands in victory, sin's curse has lost its grip on me.

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For I am his and he is mine.

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Bought with the precious blood of Jesus.

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The power of Christ in me. From life

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Jesus commands my destiny. No power, no skill of man, could ever run me from his hand.

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Till he returns me home.

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Here in the power I stand.

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Oh, sinking sand.

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His sinking sand. Amen.

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Praise the Lord. Give him another hand, would you? Wow, I think we could probably just go home after that.

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Amen. Wow, that was great. Praise the Lord. We want to welcome you again to our rally for equal protection.

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You know, scripture declares thou shall not murder. And the civil magistrate's job is to bear the sword of justice, punishing evil and rewarding good.

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The taking of innocent life inside or outside the womb is evil.

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And the government has a duty to obey Christ and deter this crime by establishing equal protection of the laws to all born and unborn people.

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Amen. South Carolina Representative Rob Harris of Spartanburg County filed

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House Bill 3549, the Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023.

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And it does just that. And you will hear more from him here in a moment.

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But we stand together today, brothers and sisters, under the authority and banner of Christ.

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And we are motivated by the gospel of salvation, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, all for the glory of God alone.

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Amen. We are fueled with the sufficiency of scripture, by the sufficiency of all scripture in these matters.

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Not pragmatism. Not what we have the votes to pass. Not what the other chamber may or may not do.

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Not what the courts may or may not do. No. But we are beholden to justice, biblical justice, as God has declared in his word.

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Amen. Well, we have a great lineup of speakers today. And our mission here at Equal Protection South Carolina, as I mentioned, is to educate and equip you as Christians to influence lawmakers to stand for justice, to quit the pragmatic approach to baby murder and end it without compromise and without exceptions.

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Amen. You're going to hear from some great speakers today.

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And at the end of our last speaker, we're going to turn it over to our ministry partner, Love Life, and they're going to lead us in a prayer walk around the statehouse.

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And we're going to end right here on the South Steps with a word of prayer. I believe it was

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Charles Spurgeon that said, Pray like it all depends on God, but then take action like it all depends on you.

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We need both prayer and we need action. Amen. Amen. Well, I want to take a brief moment before we introduce our first speaker to thank those who helped put this together.

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This took a lot of work. And I want to I want to thank everyone who helps. First, I want to thank our ministry partners,

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Love Life. As I mentioned, they have a table back here with more information on how you can get involved. And you're going to hear more about what

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Love Life has been doing, has been doing great work around the Carolinas. We also want to thank, again, our main sponsor,

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Equal Protection, South Carolina. You can find out more information at EqualProtectionSC .org.

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We also want I want to give a special thanks to all those volunteers today.

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So you're going to see some people walking around with volunteer tags and shirts. If you're a volunteer, will you slip up your hand real high so people can see you?

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Would you all give the volunteers a round of applause? We also want to thank all those who helped with the with the design of our posters, our

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T -shirts and all the people. There are so many people who made phone calls and e -mails to hundreds, if not thousands of churches around the states.

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And let me tell you, friends, that's actually a very discouraging thing to do because the apathy out there is really, really discouraging.

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But I'm very encouraged to see how many people showed up here today. So thank you so much for coming.

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I want to give you I also want to thank the speakers for taking time out of their schedule for speaking. Many came from some came from out of state.

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Some came from just up the road. I also want to give a special thanks to a man who really started this movement just a couple of years ago.

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And it all started two years ago when this gentleman made a public display of the egregiousness inside the statehouse by throwing papers in the air and walking out.

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Well, the man that you're looking at today saw that and said, I got to know who that guy is. And one of the speakers said this very same thing.

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And so because of former House Rep Jonathan Hill and what he started two years ago, we wouldn't be here today.

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I think many of you. Yeah, go ahead. Will you raise your hand, Jonathan? Please give your former

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House Rep in Anderson County a round of applause, please. Jonathan Hill. There's a reason why the left and the right both dislike

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Jonathan Hill in the statehouse. Amen. All right. I also want to recognize any other legislators.

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Are there any other legislators here, either a former legislator or anybody who has run for office in South Carolina?

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Would you slip up your hand, please? I think I saw some. We got

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Lee Bright. We got right here, Vic. Raise your hand. Anybody else? Town.

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Yes. Town Council, County Council. If you're in public office, we want to recognize you. Please raise your hand and give him a round of applause.

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I also want to recognize pastors, elders and those who operate as a church leader in your church.

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If you're a pastor, an elder, would you slip? Would you raise your hand, please? Real high. So can

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I just ask you guys, if you're a pastor, elder, would you just come up front so everybody can see you? It takes a lot.

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Well, it shouldn't take a lot, but it does in our day. It takes a lot for pastors to take a stand on this issue. And not many pastors are doing it.

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Not many pastors are preaching about the Holocaust of abortion. Not many pastors are encouraging their congregation to get outside of the four walls and speak for the preborn.

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So I want to ask pastors, elders, come up here. And would you guys just show your appreciation and give him a round of applause, please?

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And pastors, I want to thank you personally for taking a stand for life. And I want to encourage you.

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You are the mechanism that we're going to use with our organization to get the word out, to get

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Christians to not be so apathetic about baby murder. Amen. Amen. So please don't leave without us getting your information.

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If we don't have that, we want to be in contact with you. We want to equip you and encourage you to equip and encourage the people in your congregation.

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Amen. Thank you. All right. Before we bring up our first speaker,

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I want to encourage you. You came out here, you took action, and many of you are thinking, well, what do I do? What can I do next?

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I want to encourage you with the three things that you can do today to help end baby murder in South Carolina.

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The first thing, we need you to sign our petition. Sign our petition. And that is at EagleProtectionSC .org.

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We also have volunteers that are walking around with devices, with a tablet, that you can sign that petition today.

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This petition says, yes, we agree that life begins at the moment of fertilization.

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Yes, we agree that God says thou shall not murder. Yes, we agree that you, lawmaker, need to establish justice by supporting bills that provide the same laws of protection for the pre -born as the born.

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We need you to sign this petition so we can show our lawmakers that the South Carolina pro -life, the real pro -life community wants a bill of equal protection passed.

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So we need you to sign that petition, and please give us good contact information. We're going to use that to be able to tell you when we need you to step up and have a call to action, when we need you to email a state rep or make a phone call, and we need engagement.

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So please give us good contact information. You'll see volunteers walking around with volunteer shirt and tag.

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Please see them to sign our petition. Next, we want to ask you to go to the End Abortion Now YouTube page and share this live feed.

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You can do this right now. Whenever you have a chance, there's a live feed going. We want this to circulate all throughout

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South Carolina so that people can see what's going on, lawmakers can see what's happening, and that we can put the pressure on them to do what's right.

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And then third, we want to prayerfully ask you to consider partnering with us financially at EqualProtectionSC .org,

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or you can make a checkout to Equal Protection South Carolina, and you can give it to one of the volunteers there in the booth.

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Listen, friends, the left and the evil forces of darkness are well organized, and they're well funded.

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They're oftentimes better funded and better organized than we are. We need to use the resources that God has given you to advance the cause to end abortion in South Carolina.

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Amen. Amen. Well, I'm going to introduce our first speaker.

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This is South Carolina House Representative Rob Harris. He's in District 36 in Spartanburg.

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Rob is a husband of almost 37 years. Amen. So maybe he can give us some encouragement.

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Those that have are married because we need it. We need that. We need advice from those who have gone before us.

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So that's a man. Thirty seven years. You don't look that old. He's a father to 10 children.

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Amen. And he and his wife have experienced six miscarriages. So 16 children.

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Amen. Praise God. Jesus is his Lord and Savior. He's been an operating room nurse for almost 30 years.

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He got his political start by being an executive committee man for his precinct less than two years ago. He unseated a 23 year

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Republican incumbent in his district by vowing to fight for family and America's first values.

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Amen. And he's part of the third largest freshman class of legislators in South Carolina history.

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He's also a member of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus. And his very first bill in office just a little over one month ago, starting in January, was a bill that would provide equal protection and end legalized abortion in South Carolina.

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The Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023. Make welcome. I like to talk with both hands, so I need the mic on a stand.

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We're good. Yeah. Anyways, I just want to thank while he's filling with that, let's

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I just want to thank you all for coming. You know, didn't know how the weather was going to turn out. And I just am so grateful that so many people are concerned about the same thing that I'm concerned with.

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I want to also thank God for putting me in this position. As he said, it was just less than two years ago, even started dabbling in politics.

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And it was literally about one year ago. I even thought maybe I could do this legislator thing.

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So I just thank him for all the ways that he brought that about.

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And I want to thank my family over here. Some of them, you know, they sing and they but they're they don't just sing and look pretty.

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They they're my door knockers. They're they're at my side all the time. Thanks. All the time.

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And helping me. And so I just want to give them a shout out. My wife and my kids, though. Thank you very much. And again, as brother

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Mark said, just so grateful that the first bill I ever got to file would be the

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Equal Protection Act of 2023. And I'm just so grateful to God for that. So what I'm going to do here just for a few minutes, just briefly walk through the bill highlights, highlight what it is.

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Got a lot of other speakers coming that are going to unpack more of it, but just going to say a few things about the bill.

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The first distinctive is that it defines personhood. It's it's puts into law.

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It would put into law life at conception or fertilization. And the problem with the Human Life Act that just got passed is it declares life at conception, but it doesn't define life at conception.

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It does not codified in laws. It's in the little preamble part where it says whereas. But that's not law.

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And they failed to even define personhood in that law. More about that in a minute.

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It also it defines personhood. It defends mothers. There is a clause in there, a duress defense for these poor young ladies who have been forced trying to get forced to have abortions by bad boyfriends.

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And sometimes I hate to say it, pastors, but a lot of folks, some people have been trafficked.

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There's a lot of abortion that gets that happens because of human trafficking. And these ladies and these young ladies need a duress defense when they're threatened with immediate bodily harm or death, that they could use that as a duress defense.

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No other murder charge allows that. But we realize that these mothers are forced to do this many, many times.

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And we want to give them a way to to express that. Secondly, we grant immunity to the mothers when they testify.

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There's a lot of, again, people pressuring them to have these abortions. And it also grants them immunity when they testify about who their oppressors are.

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It defines personhood. It defends mothers. It defeats abortion. Doctors in the industry is a big industry, as we all know, behind abortion.

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And these doctors are just making money off baby murder. So there there would be considered accessories to murder, just like the laws we already have on the books for any other murder.

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It also derails activist judges. And I mentioned a little bit ago, because the other bill doesn't define personhood.

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If you read if you looked at the opinion by Justice Few, he he hinted around that the fact that they could claim this privacy exception or way out of this of protecting the babies.

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They claim the privacy, but it's because they did not define personhood. And he says that expressly.

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So like hint, hint. And yet we failed to do this. This bill does it. And so it gets around.

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It doesn't end around around the Supreme Court decision. A lot. Two years ago, they put

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Justice Hearn in this legislature here, put her in, even though she couldn't fill out the rest of her 10 year term.

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But a lot of folks like Jonathan Hill and a lot of other people that would be and now are

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Freedom Caucus people voted against her and they knew she was bad news. And so they just I just want to point that out, that some of the people saw this coming, like Jonathan Hill and some of these

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Freedom Caucus people. They saw that and they voted against her. I got beat up for voting against Judge Hill.

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But I just want to point out to you and I hope I'm wrong. Promise you I hope I'm wrong. But he met with legislators two different times and he would not commit verbally that life begins at conception.

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So that worries me when I got when he finally got to be in front of us to vote on.

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It's a long process, but basically the his his the competitors got pressured to drop out.

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And so when we came time to vote, there was no choice. It was just him or whatever.

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So I said, no, I don't like the process. I don't trust his values. So I voted no against him, got beat up in on social media and my phone's blowing up text.

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And so I just want to say that, you know, just trying to do the right thing is a battle and it's it's a lot of work and it never stops.

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So, again, my bill defines personhood. It defends mothers. It defeats abortion doctors.

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It derails activist judges and it decrees equal justice. The main thing, as my brother just said, and you're going to find out more about this as we walk through our speakers, but it really does create justice.

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If life begins at conception and it does, then it should be protected like any other life.

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It's going to come down to. We all have we're going to have to have three choices in front of us.

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Either you believe that life begins at conception, those are babies in there, or you believe it's not life at all, or you believe that it's

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OK to choose some lives over other lives at the early stage.

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So you have to you have to wrestle with that. The Human Life Protection Act they just passed does that third choice.

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They think it's OK to pick some lives to live over others. And it's not just. And I told

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I when I was in the house when that bill was up there, the first amendment that I put up. Sorry.

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OK. The first amendment that I put up was to strike and replace the entire bill with this bill.

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And I lost my train of thought. So at the end, I told everybody we are going to be right back here on the floor until we wrestle with those three questions.

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I just asked you all, you know, there's three choices. And if they if we're going to keep until we make just laws, we're going to keep being back here going around and around with a little of this, a little of that.

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But they're never going to fix the problem until they make a just law. So right now, I just want to shout out to some of my colleagues who have gotten their co -sponsors of this bill have jumped on it.

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So I just want to give them a shout out. Mike Burns, Bill Chumley, Jordan Pace, Roger Nutt, Thomas Beach, Stuart Jones, Joe White, Matt Lieber, Stephen Long, David O 'Neill,

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Kathy Landing, Josiah Magnuson, which I'm sure you're familiar with. He's been an advocate for pro -life for a long time.

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Patrick Haddon, Mark Willis, Ryan McCabe, Brian Lawson, Ashley Trantham and Randy Ligon.

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So what I need you all to do is find out who your legislators are who have not signed on to this yet.

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And please give them a friendly call. I always say color boldly, color inside the lines, but color boldly.

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OK, be nice. There's a lot of bills. I'm learning this as a new newbie. I can't.

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It's hard to keep up with every single bill that's been filed. But some of these folks, some of the other folks haven't signed on.

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They know it's out there. They just maybe need a little nudge from you to sign on. So please take that step and call your legislator if they're not already ones that I mentioned.

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And there's a lot of good folks. Again, we'll give them a chance to sign on. So you can find your legislator at SCStatehouse .gov

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or there's an SC Legislature app. Please use that. It's super easy. It's a fantastic app. You can stay on top of different bills and things like that.

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I just want to say lastly, there's my bill really is unlike any other bills that have gone before.

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And it's kind of the reason we're doing this is because it kind of needs unpacked for a lot of people, including the people in there.

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They're really it's a different paradigm. Equal justice. Right. So so please listen closely and share this information has been said because people need educated and pressured.

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If you would, please, again, I don't want to whine too much, but we are the people like me and other people in the

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Freedom Caucus are under a lot of pressure in there. You just have no idea. It's a it's a slog.

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Every day we're in there offering amendments, trying to take bad stuff out and try to put good stuff in.

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And we have the numbers now. We can get roll call votes. We can get people to to put their name to a vote and and stand by their decision.

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But there's a cost to that. I'm serious. My phone's been blowing up. And I need you all to like adopt a

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Freedom Caucus member. You know, we need to get behind these people and help them and pray for them.

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Yes, but we need financial help. They're spending thousands of dollars in a non campaign season.

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And it's coming from the establishment, not coming from the Democrats. So they're spending thousands of dollars of this isn't even a campaign season against,

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I would argue, fellow Republicans. So so we need help even financially. I'm not ashamed to say that.

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So you my Web site is Harris for S .C. Dotcom. You can go on there and help and you can follow me on Facebook at Harris for S .C.

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22. So please help us. And thank you so much again for coming out. And I'll hand it over to Mark.

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Thank you. We're going to raise these speakers up a little bit so you can hear in the back.

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Thank you,

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Rob. You know, as they're doing that, Rob had mentioned the

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South Carolina Supreme Court had struck down the heartbeat bill. And one of the prevailing opinions was a gentleman,

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Justice Few. I'm going to quote what he said. And he basically called the bill out for its inconsistency.

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And he said this is what he said. Quote, if the General Assembly were to make a policy determination, that human life begins at conception that a newly conceived fetish is, in fact, a person entitled to all the rights due to persons already born, then the hypothetical balancing of that compelling interest.

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He's talking about the right to privacy that they're using in the Constitution, that compelling interest against the privacy interest implicated by a total ban would come out in these states, may come out in the favor of the state's action.

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This is the justice on the prevailing side. He alleged or he calls out the basically the hypocrisy of the

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Republican pro -life establishment. You say it's a baby from conception. Whoa, you're not treating that baby in the same way.

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Therefore, this right to privacy that a woman has trumps your iniquitous heartbeat bill.

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So you're going to hear more about that from the expert here in a bit. But I'm going to I'm going to introduce our next speaker.

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This is former state Senator Lee Bright. Lee Bright served four years on his local school board, eight years in the

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Senate. He was a U .S. Senate candidate from twenty twenty four. He was a

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U .S. Senate candidate in twenty fourteen and he was a U .S. congressional candidate in twenty eighteen.

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And he actually led the first ballot, but it had to go to a runoff. And then the current speaker of the

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U .S. House, Kevin McCarthy, spent almost four hundred thousand dollars against him to put the other person in office.

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Lee Bright, he advocated and authored for many years in the Senate personhood bills, which established that life began at fertilization.

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And he spent many years in the Senate to fight to remove and to make pro -life bills better, to be undercut by the very pro -life establishment that claimed they wanted to end abortion.

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So would you please make welcome former Senator Lee Bright? So Mark's going to have to pay close attention because my record six hours in the

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Senate behind the microphone. So give me the hook. But we mentioned things we need to do.

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Pray for Rob Harris, because I'm going to tell you they're going to come after him. Jonathan Hill and I probably when it came to pro -life issues fought as hard as anybody in that chamber.

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And Citizens for Life didn't endorse either one of us in twenty sixteen. They said it was an oversight.

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So in twenty sixteen, I didn't find this out until months later, that Planned Parenthood had southeastern phone banks out of Raleigh, North Carolina, with all their members turning out

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Planned Parenthood people in my district. So I had Planned Parenthood and Citizens for Life working against me just because I stood true to my convictions.

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And they will do the same thing to Rob because these folks up here. And I'm only going to say this because it's, you know, the ninety nine percent give the one percent a bad name, if you know what

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I mean. These folks that go into these chambers, they're actors on the stage. They're going to do what the voters, the script writers, tell them to do.

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Now, right now, they believe, and I think right now we may be on the downside of the numbers, but God's in control.

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God can prick hearts. I don't I'm not the politicians. I'm not I know he can't do anything.

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He holds the heart of the king. But we got to get these pastors, these pastors and sit up here. Thank God for him, because a lot of pastors aren't doing that.

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A lot of pastors are comfortable and they're too comfortable and they want their congregations to be comfortable.

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We should be comfortable as long as babies are being murdered across the state. We use the excuse of the

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Supreme Court. That was what was used when I was in the Senate. Oh, the Supreme Court this. Oh, the Supreme Court that we should have trigger laws in place.

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So as soon as the Supreme Court kicked it back to the states, we were ready. But we didn't because we've had these establishment pro -life groups.

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I say groups is really a group. They go out and they basically protect these folks that don't stand and fight for what we believe in.

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What the right thing to do is, I'll tell you, the big rift I had was I'm not a fan of incrementalism, but we had a 20 week bill.

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It came from the House without exceptions on it. It got back over to the Senate. When it got in the Senate, I basically spoke about Baby Doe.

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We're probably going to put a video up about this. We spoke about Baby Doe and Baby Doe having a trial. Because let's face it, that child has done nothing wrong.

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We're going to be murdered just because of an accusation of its father. An accusation. I'm sure many of you folks have been watching this trial around the state that's made national news.

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But there's a trial. There's no trial for this unborn child. So I spoke and we won the vote and we got the exceptions out.

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Well, they threatened to filibuster. Well, believe it or not, your state Senate wanted to get to the gas tax, which is what was next, and they were threatened and they were going to basically carry over the bill.

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One thing we need to understand, this is an election year. 2024 is an election year. The whole House and Senate is going to be up. Now is the time.

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This is what they listen to. They're not going to care. The Senate, they've got another four -year term. Now is the time to press and put the pressure on.

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But it is going to be a tough fight because you've got to be the noises. You've got to get your preachers involved.

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You've got to get your people involved. And quite frankly, we have personhood was a good group that got some traction.

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But equal protection, if you give enough traction, if you open up your wallets, if you get involved in your churches, if you get people engaged, you can make a difference because there hasn't been a group like this since I've been in South Carolina, and I've been here my whole life.

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You can make a difference. Matt Brock's been fighting hard. Mark Correll, all these folks have been doing the

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Lord's work. But we've got to get behind them. It's great to come to a rally on a rainy day. This is a tremendous turnout on a

42:37

Saturday. But we've got to go back and put this to action. And he gave me some action items.

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You need to follow them because if we unite with the Lord's help, we can get this done.

42:48

Because what we're talking about here is, I mean, it's the whole thing. It's hypocrisy what they're saying in these chambers to say they're pro -life, but yet they're okay with some children being murdered.

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It's hypocrisy. And they know it, but you've got to press them on it. So I appreciate you having me here.

43:08

I mean, it's a privilege to be involved with this. And you guys just need to pray hard, work hard, and I'm going to limit it to a short time instead of six hours.

43:18

Thanks. Amen. Thank you,

43:26

Lee. So for the rest of the speakers, I've been hearing that it's easier to hear in the back when it's being held, so just hold the mic for the rest of the speakers.

43:37

So our next speaker is Bradley Pierce. Bradley Pierce is a constitutional attorney, and Bradley Pierce has been practicing for over 15 years.

43:50

He is the president of the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. Bradley filed a brief with the

43:57

U .S. Supreme Court in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.

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That brief was signed. Yes, give him a hand for that. That brief was signed by 21 organizations and 20 legislators from across the country.

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Bradley has drafted legislation, filed in numerous states to provide equal protection to abolish abortion, including

44:24

South Carolina. Most importantly, Bradley is a Christian, husband to his wife, Cindy, and the father of their 10 children.

44:33

Amen. Please welcome Bradley Pierce. Thank you.

44:42

I'm an abolitionist. I want to see abortion abolished in Jesus' name and for his glory in this state and in this country.

44:52

That's what I want. Is that what you want? That's why we're here. Amen. The South Carolina Pro -Life

45:00

Establishment says that they want this state to become the 13th or 14th, depending on how you're counting.

45:07

They want the 13th or 14th state to ban abortion without actually banning abortion, without actually abolishing abortion.

45:18

No state has actually, truly banned abortion, truly abolished abortion.

45:23

But South Carolina can be the first. That's what we want. Because right now, across the country, in these states, they claim that they're abortion -free.

45:35

Nevertheless, it's still 100 % legal for mothers to order the pills, get them delivered to their mailbox, and have an at -home, do -it -yourself abortion.

45:45

And that's still going on. We've just recently completed some research at the Foundation to Abolish Abortion in these states.

45:52

And it looks like that about, although they're claiming, you know, again, 99 % of abortions are gone, really about 40 % of abortions are still going on.

46:02

So in some states that may have, like Texas, where I've come from, that maybe had 55 ,000 abortions before now, there's still 20 ,000 abortions still taking place on Texas soil.

46:12

But all the Pro -Life Establishment is claiming that abortion has been abolished there. And that's what they're going to try to do here by passing the bills that they're talking about inside.

46:21

But abortions are still going on, and they're still going to go on even if they pass these bills that they're talking about here.

46:28

And that's why this bill is so important. Because not only to protect children, to protect babies in the womb, but also, you know what happens whenever it's legal for the mother to kill her own child?

46:44

When that's legal for her to do it, which the bills that they've passed, one in the

46:50

Senate and one in the House, you know what, both of them say it's legal for her to do it as long as she does it herself. You know what's also true when it's legal for her to do it?

46:58

It's legal to pressure her to do it. It's legal for people to say, I'm going to kick you out of the house.

47:06

I'm going to cut you off from finances. I'm going to break up with you. I'm going to make your life miserable. Right? It's legal for them to do that.

47:15

So not only are children not being protected in South Carolina, and they wouldn't be under these bills, but mothers are not being protected either.

47:22

But they would be under Representative Harris's bill. That's what we're here to support.

47:28

It's good for babies, and it's good for the mothers as well. South Carolina Constitution, Article I, Section 3 says,

47:38

The privileges and immunities of citizens of this state and of the United States under this

47:43

Constitution shall not be abridged, nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.

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That's the South Carolina Constitution. That's what it says. There's two bills going on, one been passed by the

48:08

Senate and one by the House. One of them, and I'm not going to make a whole lot of friends in what I'm about to say here, except for with my friends right here.

48:16

But House Bill 3774, the Human Life Protection Act, this is the bill that they say, oh, well, this would ban abortion in South Carolina.

48:26

But it actually wouldn't. And it actually quotes and refers to what I just read to you from Article I, Section 3 of the

48:33

South Carolina Constitution about no person can have their right to life deprived without due process of law.

48:40

But guess what it doesn't mention? It omits the part from the South Carolina Constitution that says, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.

48:50

They don't mention that in the bill. Why don't they mention that? Because they know that their bill denies equal protection of the laws.

49:01

So that's why they don't mention that, because they know that their bill would deny a pre -born person equal protection.

49:08

It has a rape or incest exception, which, again, is already a denial of equal protection, right?

49:16

Because we don't kill people or we don't allow other people to kill people just based on the circumstances of their conception, right?

49:23

Amen? And then also, the physician, all they have to do is report it to law enforcement 24 hours after doing the abortion.

49:33

So the mother just comes in and claims, oh, yeah, it's rape or incest. Oh, OK, well, let's get your abortion done. 24 hours later, hey, law enforcement, this woman claims that she was raped.

49:42

What? That is a loophole, what lawyers call that, a loophole you can drive a

49:49

Mack truck through. Right? You can have every single abortion that's happening now can still continue to happen under that.

49:55

You just have to walk in there and say that. Oh, yeah, rape or incest, OK, that's it. There's a fatal fetal anomaly exception.

50:04

There's an exception to the mother that I was just talking about. It says a pregnant woman upon whom an abortion is performed or induced in violation of this article may not be criminally prosecuted.

50:16

May not be criminally prosecuted. That means it's legal for her to do her own abortion. It explicitly says that in the bill.

50:22

The bill says a $10 ,000 fine and prison up to two years. Is that does that sound like murder charges for the even for the abortionists?

50:32

That's not equal protection because it doesn't protect all babies. It's not equal protection because it doesn't apply to everybody who's perpetrating it.

50:39

And it's not equal protection because the penalties are ridiculously low on the value of human life.

50:45

That bill denies equal protection across the board. It's something none of us should support.

50:52

And no legislator in this building should vote for Senate Bill 47 for 474.

50:59

The heartbeat bill has virtually all these all the same issues with it. And it doesn't recite any of those constitutional provisions, probably because it doesn't meet any of them.

51:10

It doesn't stand up to any of them, much less equal protection. It denies all of them.

51:16

Plus, you also have that heartbeat. You don't get any protection at all unless you have a heartbeat.

51:22

Oh, and guess who decides whether you have a heartbeat or not? The abortionist. And they don't have to record it, audio recorded or video recorded.

51:29

They just have to write it down. What? We're just going to take their word for it?

51:35

I mean, again, these bills, they're bad. The U .S. Constitution says no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

51:45

That's the U .S. Constitution. No person shall be denied equal protection. You know what equal protection means?

51:52

The same laws that protect us should protect them. That's it. It's that simple.

52:00

We don't have to make new laws. It's already illegal to murder people. Just say, hey, they're people too.

52:06

And don't just say it, but you've got to treat them that way. The South Carolina Constitution says the same thing.

52:13

No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws. These bills deny the equal protection of the laws.

52:22

We should say no to these bills. But there is one bill that fulfills both the

52:29

U .S. and the South Carolina Constitution. And that is House Bill 3549 by Representative Rob Harris, the

52:37

Pre -NATO Equal Protection Act. That's what we're here to support. So we need to go to our legislators.

52:44

We need to go to them, go to their offices, call them, and let them know. And our churches, we need to tell our churches to let them know, say no to bills that violate the

52:55

U .S. Constitution. Say no to bills that violate the South Carolina Constitution. Say no to bills that deny equal protection.

53:04

Say no to bills that compromise our principles and codify partiality into our laws.

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Say no to those bills. And say yes to House Bill 3549, the

53:17

Pre -NATO Equal Protection Act. Say yes to establishing personhood, not just in word, but in action in South Carolina.

53:25

Say yes to following the Constitution. Say yes to obeying God and establishing justice to the fatherless and rejecting partiality and judgment in this state.

53:34

Say yes to loving our neighbors as ourselves. Say yes to abolishing abortion in South Carolina.

53:44

Amen. Lord, let it be. Amen. Amen. Praise the

53:56

Lord. Well, we want to, again, remind you when our volunteers come around to sign our petition, our petition calls out

54:02

House Bill 3549 by name. So you're telling your legislator that you are demanding equal protection, that they would support this bill.

54:11

And before we bring on our next speaker, I want to just give you an encouraging story about making demands on your legislator to support these bills.

54:21

My House Rep is a Republican. He compromised consistently on the pro -life issue.

54:27

So two years ago, I ran against him. I said, well, you're not doing the job. I'm going to do it. I have no clue what I'm doing. But I had a lot of people to help, and I lost by 139 votes.

54:37

But what that did do, it got his ear. And I would show up everywhere he went, and I would call him to consistency.

54:45

And the other day, it was last week, actually, last week, it was at a local Republican meeting again, called him to consistency around all his friends in his area.

54:55

I asked him if he believed life begins at conception. Yes. Then why won't you support the bill that does it? Well, we're on the same page.

55:00

You know, he gave me the political mojo. But I kept calling him to consistency, and all the people around him heard it.

55:07

The very next day, when he was back in session, he co -sponsored 3549. Now, friends, did he do it for the right reasons?

55:18

Time will tell. But the point is, is that your House Rep needs to know you by name.

55:24

And if he or she does not, you need to make it a point that they will within the next few weeks and months.

55:30

Amen? Amen. All right, our next speaker is Matt Brock. Matt Brock is a co -founder of Equal Protection South Carolina and the assistant national director of Operation Save America.

55:43

He is a husband, a father, and for the last three years, a minister of the gospel at the abortion mill in Greenville, where more babies are murdered than any other mill in the state.

55:54

Through the efforts that God has done through Matt and those on his team, they have seen nearly 100 babies saved from death in Greenville.

56:04

Amen. Through the organization he helped start,

56:11

Equal Protection South Carolina, and the faithfulness of the Church of Jesus Christ, Matt plans to be used of God to send child sacrifice back from hell to where it came.

56:22

Please welcome Brother Matt Brock. All right, good morning,

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Saints. Almost afternoon. I want to say thank you for coming and spending your

56:38

Saturday morning with us here. In the heart of South Carolina, wherein lies the

56:44

God -ordained authority and power to establish and uphold justice throughout our state.

56:50

I'm going to be really quick here because I'm excited, just like you guys are to hear Pastor Jeff. But just briefly with the time

56:56

I have, I want to share something with you guys that I feel is such a key element to this issue that I fear that perhaps maybe we've been overlooking for a while.

57:07

Something that I've been so convicted over, the Lord just won't let me put this down. And it's this.

57:16

Brothers and sisters, we need to completely abandon all hope in seeing the demonic spilling of innocent blood in our midst if we are not going to be willing to be the prophetic voice in the ears of those in our community, in our church, law enforcement, and in the ears of our magistrates.

57:37

We just need to hang it up and forget about it. And the reason why, church, is because the

57:43

God we worship is a God of order. We worship a

57:50

God that has laid out very specific commands that are to be obeyed in very specific ways.

57:59

How many know this? And when we as His representatives in the earth, in our pride, in our ego, in our apathy, and in our laziness, get things out of order, we create for ourselves a situation where it gets very difficult to honor

58:19

Christ faithfully. And in turn, this makes it very difficult to usher in the blessings of God and the favor of God that is promised when we are worshiping

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Him and living for Him in the order that He has prescribed. Are we tracking?

58:42

I'm truly convinced, brothers and sisters, more than ever, that one of the reasons why child sacrifice is now, listen to me, doubling in the state of South Carolina post -Roe is because for the last 50 years and even continuing on today, the vast majority of the professing church is operating out of step with what

59:05

God has commanded regarding just about everything. How we educate our children, how we treat our spouses, how we steward our finances, how we view evangelism, and how we deal with tyrannical magistrates when they refuse to be faithful to their

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God -ordained positions of authority that requires them, not encourages them, requires them to establish justice, reward good, and punish evil as laid out in Romans 13.

59:46

How much more blood, brothers and sisters, how much more blood is going to have to soak the ground of the place that we call home in South Carolina?

59:56

How many more arms and legs, brains and kidneys of our pre -born neighbors are going to have to be ripped off and cut out and sold to medical universities in the name of research?

01:00:10

How many more of our faithful brothers and sisters, like Sister Eva Edel and Brother Coleman Boyd, who are here today with us, how many more of them are going to have to have their homes raided by the

01:00:22

FBI and then sent to stand before the federal magistrates all because the only thing they did was be faithful to what

01:00:31

Christ said when he said, love your neighbor as yourself? How many more before we realize that the finger pointing doesn't need to be going in the direction of the statehouse until it's first been pointed at the church house?

01:00:53

It's always nice when there's someone else to point the finger at to ease the pressure off of ourselves, is it not?

01:01:07

1 Peter 4 .17 does not tell us, does not tell us that judgment begins in the house of representatives.

01:01:18

Judgment starts in the house of God. The order, brothers and sisters, that God has prescribed and the matters that we're dealing with here today starts with repentance and then ends with reformation.

01:01:37

That's not only biblical, but it's also historical. And I'm afraid that we've gotten that backwards somewhere along the way.

01:01:45

It is repentance that leads to revival and it is revival that leads to reformation.

01:01:53

And for far too long, we've been trying to change this thing from the top down. But I'm becoming more and more convinced, brothers and sisters, that God's model, according to what at least

01:02:04

I see in scripture, appears to say that actually starts from the bottom and goes up.

01:02:11

And interestingly enough, that's also what mustard seeds do.

01:02:17

Should we be in the ears of our legislators urging them, with the authority of our thrice holy

01:02:25

God, to honor him in their decrees? Absolutely. But friends, if we think that we are going to bring reformation to the place where they gather to make laws before we bring reformation to the place where we gather to bring worship, we are not thinking rightly.

01:02:43

Most of you probably know this, but some of you may not. Do you know what the only thing that the vast majority of the pro -life

01:02:52

Christian legislators are concerned about? Do you think that they're concerned with doing what's right?

01:03:02

Do you think that they're concerned with what has God said about this issue? I would submit to you, no.

01:03:12

99 % of the people that gather in this building are concerned about one thing.

01:03:19

Y 'all know what it is? Self -preservation. Catch this, brothers and sisters.

01:03:27

Who do you think that they're concerned about preserving themselves from?

01:03:36

It's the ones that reelect them cycle after cycle after cycle again.

01:03:42

In South Carolina, that's the church. Track with me here, and I'm almost done.

01:03:51

Think about this. If their concern is primarily to keep their seat, and they continue to pass legislation that coddles and regulates baby murder so that they can keep their seat, what does that tell you about the church in those house districts?

01:04:14

It means this. It means that these legislators are passing laws that they presume meet the wishes of the church of Jesus Christ in their districts.

01:04:29

Brothers and sisters, if you profess the name of Christ, it is your duty.

01:04:37

It is your duty. It is not optional to teach the nations to obey the law of God.

01:04:51

This is not just on them, primarily, brothers and sisters. This is on us. When we refuse to be obedient to the

01:04:59

Great Commission by acting as though when Jesus said that all authority in heaven and on earth are his, and we act as though that doesn't apply to this building and those who work in it, we have abandoned our post in the advancement of the kingdom.

01:05:18

Some of you may know, as a Marine, I spent a little time overseas, and I can tell you this personal experience.

01:05:25

You know what the enemy loves to see more than anything else when they're out scouting the camps that are in opposition?

01:05:32

You know what they look for? Abandoned posts where the watchmen on the wall are either missing or asleep.

01:05:46

That's what they look for. And when they see that, brothers and sisters, they will come in full force to steal, kill, and destroy in the name of their false god inside of the camp of the

01:06:00

Almighty. God forgive us. Brothers and sisters, it is past time.

01:06:09

It is past time for us to get back on the wall. And we cannot do that sitting in our padded pews complaining about the music and the carpet clutter and drinking our caramel lattes.

01:06:25

We are in a war. Gather, yes.

01:06:31

Worship together, yes. But when you leave, don't leave your Christianity in the four walls of your gathering place.

01:06:40

Take it to the culture with you and tell the nations to repent and obey King Jesus.

01:06:52

I am so convinced of this, brothers and sisters. We have got to get back to the biblical model of dominion and the biblical model of discipleship.

01:07:02

That's all we're talking about here. And it's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. There are folks in this crowd right now that are looking at more than 30 years of prison time and millions of dollars in fines for doing what we're doing here today.

01:07:16

It is not easy. But our Lord has promised to be with us everywhere we go.

01:07:26

So let's go. In the name of Jesus. And I say all that to end with this.

01:07:33

You've already heard a little bit. We just launched Equal Protection South Carolina just last week. We're going into this full time.

01:07:41

I'm walking away from my business. We're closing up shop. We're hitting the road in South Carolina. We're doing it.

01:07:47

And we do need your help. We don't just need your financial resources, though.

01:07:53

We need those too. Jeff, you can hit that again in a minute. But here's the deal, brothers and sisters.

01:07:59

We need you. And I want to say this for those of you that are traveling all over the place, from all over the place.

01:08:07

Even if you're not in South Carolina, this applies to you as well. We have a plan that I truly believe the

01:08:13

Lord has graced us with, and we're going to very soon be rolling it out all over the country, starting right here in South Carolina.

01:08:19

And we need you to step up and help us advance the kingdom in your states. So come talk to us.

01:08:25

Come talk to Brother Mark. And let's join together to end this demonic bloodshed back to hell from where it came.

01:08:32

A final exhortation here to the legislators of South Carolina who profess the name of Christ.

01:08:42

We are done waiting. We're done asking.

01:08:50

This is our ultimatum. Pass laws that honor Christ or lose your seat.

01:09:02

We are watching. We are listening. And we are taking notes.

01:09:09

Honor Christ, or we will make sure your dereliction of duty is seen by the world and that your political career is completely stomped out in the state of South Carolina.

01:09:22

And we are breaking the church. No kingdom but Christ. God bless you.

01:09:34

Thanks, Brother Matt. And Matt is absolutely right. We have people all across the state, including you.

01:09:40

We have the structure in place with Equal Protection South Carolina. We have the people in place. We have knowledge.

01:09:46

We have resources. And again, we need you. We need both your contact information so we can connect.

01:09:52

You are in key positions in your area, in your state, to influence your lawmakers. And we want to connect with you.

01:09:59

And we also need your financial support, as it's been said. And you can do that at equalprotectionsc .org.

01:10:05

Whether it's $25, $25 ,000, every little bit helps. Those resources are going to be used to do exactly what

01:10:13

Brother Matt said, is to send a message to the legislators from the Church of Jesus Christ that if you don't enact good laws that are just and provide equal protection, we're going to find someone to run against you and beat you who will.

01:10:27

Amen? All right. Well, we're going to bring up our last speaker, and we're pleased to welcome

01:10:34

Pastor Jeff Durbin. He's a pastor of Apologia Church, and he is the head of Apologia Studios and End Abortion Now.

01:10:42

His ministry has reached millions of people globally. He has engaged in outreach to various cults and religious organizations and defended the

01:10:53

Christian faith in numerous public moderated debates. End Abortion Now has raised up and trained over 900 local churches, praise

01:11:03

God, who have saved many thousands of children at abortion mills around the world.

01:11:10

End Abortion Now has also got bills of abolition and equal protection into many states across the

01:11:18

U .S. Pastor Jeff has been married to Candy for 24 years, has five living children and five living grandchildren.

01:11:26

Amen. Would you please make welcome Pastor Jeff Durbin. Thank you for the blessing, and I want to just say a personal thank you to all of you guys who traveled so far and so long to be here with us.

01:11:44

Praise God for you. One of the things that was mentioned here is that it's encouraging because God doesn't need a massive army to destroy the enemy, and he often whittles down his army to small numbers to display to the world his glory and his victory and power.

01:12:01

But it is at times discouraging when you have teams of believers just like you who call hundreds and hundreds of churches around the state to let pastors know we have a bill of abolition, a bill of equal protection, the kind of bill you preach about on Sanctity of Life Sunday that you're saying you're begging

01:12:20

God for. We're saying to these pastors in states across the country, we have your bill. It's in your state.

01:12:27

It says what's in the womb is in the image of God. It says it deserves the equal protection under the law that protects you the same way.

01:12:36

And oftentimes in these states, the numbers of pastors that show up is heartbreaking.

01:12:45

It's at times discouraging. But what has been happening over the last decade because of the move of the

01:12:53

Christian church, things are changing completely. When we first started this ourselves as just a local church in the desert in Arizona, we're a small band of a bunch of rebels coming out of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, had a heart for these children, started going to the abortion mills.

01:13:13

We just said if we can do this ministry our entire lives as a local church and save just one child from death, that is a ministry and a life well lived.

01:13:24

It's fully worth it. And we began saving babies the first day we went out. We saved two children from death.

01:13:31

And then we started going out again and saving more children. We would announce it. Other churches started saying, hey, how are you doing that?

01:13:37

We'd say we just go with the gospel. We love these mothers and fathers. We offer to adopt their children to help them, and we're saving their children.

01:13:44

They would start going out to do the same. All we wanted was to stop the murder at the abortion mills.

01:13:51

And God showed us that actually we're kind of at the end of the stream with buckets trying to empty the river, but it's being fed from somewhere else.

01:13:59

So we knew we needed to speak prophetically as the church to the culture at large and to our legislators.

01:14:06

So End Abortion Now is just a banner of a ministry of apology of church. We're just one local church.

01:14:13

We're not a megachurch. We're not. We don't have the massive funding that the pro -life organizations have.

01:14:19

Pastors in here now, we are just a local church. I'm just your brother. I'm just a pastor of a local church.

01:14:27

Not even a very big one. But because of faithfulness, fidelity to Christ and the gospel,

01:14:33

God began to change things not just through us, but through many organizations and churches across the country through a faithful witness of the gospel under the authority of Jesus Christ.

01:14:44

We were begging God for just one legislator who'd be courageous enough to stand for Christ and to stand for justice for these pre -born children.

01:14:51

Lord, if you could just give us one. And of course the Lord did. I believe the first one was in Oklahoma, Senator Joseph Silk.

01:14:59

God blessed that in amazing ways. And next thing you know, because of the faithfulness of the Christian church, not the pro -life establishment and industry, but because of pastors and Christians just like you going to their legislators, we started getting, along with other

01:15:15

Christians across the country, bills of equal protection and abolition for the image of God in the womb.

01:15:21

From conception, we got those bills in across the country. It's been in Arizona, Oklahoma.

01:15:27

It's been in Texas, Colorado, South Carolina. It's been in Pennsylvania. It's been in Louisiana.

01:15:33

It's going on across the country. As we speak, we have bills of abolition happening across the country.

01:15:39

Alabama's next. Arkansas. We have Indiana. We have... Darren, help me. Missouri.

01:15:45

Missouri. It's happening across the country. We just got one now in Ohio. It's happening across the country.

01:15:54

And I want to encourage you with this. I'm not a motivational speaker. I'm speaking to you as your brother. I want to encourage you with this.

01:16:00

This has happened because of fidelity to Christ and the gospel, standing on the word of God.

01:16:06

The pro -life industry did not accomplish what the Christian church has.

01:16:12

In 50 years of Roe versus Wade, when the Christian church stood up and started standing on the word of God, without speaking to legislators, these bills start coming.

01:16:22

Justice is coming. You start to see it. Not because of high dollars. Not because of massive funding.

01:16:29

Not because of big names. But because the church standing on the word of God, under the authority of Christ, with the gospel on their lips, has started to bring that transformation.

01:16:39

Because, listen, please, you cannot defeat evil. Ever. By compromising with it.

01:16:47

You can't. And you cannot dispel the darkness by hiding your light.

01:16:53

You have to preach Christ, God's word, and his gospel, if you want transformation to happen.

01:16:59

How many of us hate the Christless conservatism that we see across the country now?

01:17:08

It's a conservatism that wants to borrow the benefits and blessings of the

01:17:14

Christian worldview without standing on the one who gives those blessings. And that's why it is a failure.

01:17:21

It'll never work. And that's why we are so discouraged across the country when you have professing

01:17:26

Christians who say, well, yeah, I'm conservative, but these guys, these are weak, not courageous.

01:17:31

These people are slippery. They're not consistent. They're not principled. That's why it bothers us so much.

01:17:37

But what's the way to heal that? Not just to give them a nudge and encourage them, but to tell them to submit to King Jesus.

01:17:45

To stand on God's law. We don't want, we don't want a nation, let's admit it and let's put it in front of us now.

01:17:53

We do not want a nation. We don't want a nation that holds on to the blessings of the

01:18:03

Christian worldview, has the veneer of the Christian faith that is devoid of actual faith in Jesus.

01:18:12

Please understand this. Think about it. Brothers and sisters, think about how we speak within the

01:18:18

Christian worldview. External conformity to the word of God without internal love for God and a desire for obedience to God is not real.

01:18:30

It's called hypocrisy. And so the pro -life establishment that wants to slap on the veneer of the

01:18:38

Christian worldview in terms of we want a culture of life. You can't have a culture for life or of life without a love for the giver of life.

01:18:49

It won't happen. And this is why the pro -life establishment has failed for 50 years because they refuse and they are confident in their profession of it.

01:19:01

They refuse to acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of God's law and they refuse, they refuse to stand on actual equal protection for all humans from conception.

01:19:13

They deal in partiality. You need to understand that, brothers and sisters, because I think with all my heart this is one of the most important things that we must do.

01:19:25

Other than going to these legislators with grace and mercy and courage and humility and love and telling them to obey

01:19:34

God and establish justice, we have to alert Christian pastors and Christians to the fact that the pro -life establishment and industry and the movement itself refuses to stand on God's law in this respect.

01:19:48

God says in his word over and over and over again, brothers and sisters, this is incontrovertible.

01:19:54

We can't get away from it. He says that unequal weights and measures are an abomination.

01:20:01

Hear that? Abomination. Detestable. Loathsome.

01:20:07

He hates it. And so when the pro -life establishment says let's just get a little bit. Let's get the victory of saying that you can kill them in this way but not sharp instruments.

01:20:21

Or let's say, let's pass a bill like in my state, Kathy Harrod, the leader of the pro -life establishment in my state.

01:20:27

She killed our bill of abolition. She told the pro -life legislators not to pass it because she said the mother is an equal victim with the baby and so she said to them, pass mine.

01:20:37

And they did. They killed the bill of equal protection and abolition. They passed hers. And hers said this.

01:20:44

You can kill the child in the womb in Arizona but you must give it a proper burial. Isn't that nice?

01:20:52

You see, we're preserving the dignity of the child. We're saying you've got to bury that child if you're going to murder it.

01:20:59

That's a bill of partiality. Let's call it what it is. It's evil. It's wicked. She said you cannot kill, you can kill the baby in Arizona but not for the express reason that it has a genetic abnormality.

01:21:14

So kill the healthy kids but you can't kill the ones that have special needs or they have handicaps.

01:21:23

To which I said to Kathy, I said it's easy to get around that bill in the state of Arizona, don't you see?

01:21:29

All you have to say is I'm not killing it because it has Down syndrome, I'm killing it because I hate that child.

01:21:35

Do you see? These are weak bills that deal impartiality and God says he hates them.

01:21:42

Brothers and sisters, I was just in Colorado last week. We had a bill of equal protection in the state of Colorado.

01:21:50

Believe that. And I'm standing there in the legislature, facing a legislature that is rabidly opposed to Christ, the

01:22:00

Christian message and the gospel. A man was in front of me and wearing a dress and there was a pro -life legislator in the state of Colorado that put a bill into the hearing the same day as ours.

01:22:14

Ours was a bill of equal protection from fertilization, equal protection inside the womb, outside the womb to natural death.

01:22:21

Very simple, not complicated. And she put in a bill that said you can kill the child in Colorado but you must give them pain medication before you do it.

01:22:33

She heard I was there for our bill and I was on the record to oppose her bill.

01:22:41

So, this woman who professes faith in Jesus said, I want to talk to you.

01:22:46

You're going to oppose my bill. Can you talk to me first? I said, absolutely. And so we went to a private space and started talking to each other and I explained to her,

01:22:55

I said, I know where your heart is. You profess faith in Jesus. You're just trying to have them show some mercy to the child in the womb.

01:23:06

But what you're forgetting is this. They've already decided from the beginning that child deserves no mercy.

01:23:14

And you're pleading for mercy with people who have decided the child deserves none.

01:23:20

Period. You are able to kill them. And I said, isn't it interesting? I said, you wouldn't argue this way in any of the other evils the

01:23:29

Christian church has put under the feet of Jesus. For example, because of the Christian gospel, the word of God, and the proclamation of those

01:23:36

Christian abolitionists, we've put down the slave trade and slavery in this nation because of the

01:23:42

Christian church. It wasn't the atheism or secularism of our nation today that put slavery down.

01:23:49

It was the consistent witness of the Christian church. And because that wicked evil is behind us, everybody acknowledges you can't treat our black brothers and sisters that way.

01:24:01

We only believe that today. Not because of atheism, because of Christianity. But because that evil is behind us, we're all courageous about slavery, aren't we?

01:24:11

We're super courageous to the degree that I ask the question, if we could go back in time to the days of slavery, would you actually argue that we can enslave and beat our black brothers and sisters, but we have to give them a little whiskey before we do it?

01:24:33

She said, no, never. I said, that's what your bill does for these children. How come you're not courageous for these children?

01:24:40

You're courageous for our black brothers and sisters now, but not for these children. Be courageous now.

01:24:46

I said, or would you argue this way in sex trafficking? She said, what do you mean? I said, well, would you put forth a bill that says yes, you can sex traffic, but you have to use lube.

01:24:59

Do you feel that? That's the serrated edge. It's disgusting to say that you can engage in this injustice, but you've got to make the victim comfortable.

01:25:11

That's what the bill does. And these kinds of bills are being propped up against our bills of equal protection and abolition by an industry that is taking money from God's church.

01:25:25

They're saying when they come to your church to do their fundraising as pro -life legislators or the pro -life organizations, they're coming into God's churches and they're saying we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

01:25:40

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. They use God's word as a pretense to get into Christian churches to get funding, and then they run off to the

01:25:51

Capitol and they kill bills of equal protection. Did you know that our greatest enemy in this fight today is not the people over there that we pray for?

01:26:02

Those pro -choicers, those pro -aborts in the back, we want them to know Jesus, we love them, but they are not our greatest enemy.

01:26:09

Their arguments are bankrupt and bootleg. They could not stand with their arguments on a platform in a moderated debate.

01:26:17

They would lose. They don't dare try to debate this against us face -to -face in this legislature because their arguments are bootleg and bankrupt.

01:26:26

They cannot sustain their arguments in actual rational combat. Our greatest enemy is not the pro -choicers.

01:26:35

Our greatest enemy for justice is the pro -life establishments and industry that refuses to stand on consistency.

01:26:43

I'll give you an example. Thursday, it's been a busy season, but Thursday I was at the

01:26:50

Arizona State Capitol for the March for Life, the Arizona March for Life. And they called up to the state capitol a speaker that they said was the pro -life champion in the state of Arizona.

01:27:03

She's done more for the pro -life movement than anybody else. Let's all give a round of applause for Cathy Herod.

01:27:09

And Cathy Herod goes up with a midst of applause and Cathy Herod begins to speak.

01:27:15

And she begins to speak interestingly saying there is a law on the books in Arizona that says that it is a crime for the abortionist to kill the child.

01:27:25

It has been on the books through the duration of Roe. It has never changed. And the audience is cheering.

01:27:32

She says we just need our state to uphold that law that has been there the entire time to protect these babies.

01:27:39

And everyone applauses. Wow! We've had a law the entire time of Roe vs. Wade which of course begs the question why didn't you uphold it the whole time and resist

01:27:49

Roe and be courageous like with Dred Scott. But she said that law is there.

01:27:55

We just need to protect these babies by pointing to that Arizona law that says it's a crime to kill the baby in the womb.

01:28:01

What she failed to tell the audience was this. That it was actually Cathy Herod, the leader, the pro -life champion in Arizona that repealed and decriminalized abortion in Arizona for the mother.

01:28:19

She took the law off the book in Arizona that said that the mother could not kill her child in the womb.

01:28:26

And the reason why is this. Please hear me on this. This is what we need to tell the church. The pro -life establishment believes in a doctrine that the mother or father who kills their child in the womb is not guilty.

01:28:41

They are not to be seen as guilty. They are a victim. They do not need forgiveness. They do not need

01:28:47

Jesus. They do not need the cross. So the pro -life establishment, brothers and sisters, believes a heresy.

01:28:54

A real heresy. Christians love to kick around the word heresy all the time now. We need to be careful with that.

01:28:59

We love to call people heretics that, you know, this guy drinks at Starbucks. Heretic. That kind of thing. It's like, be careful with that word.

01:29:06

It's a meaningful word. But listen, the pro -life establishment actually believes something from a Christian perspective that is a real heresy.

01:29:12

And that is that the mother who kills her child in the womb doesn't need forgiveness. Do you understand that?

01:29:19

They are opposed to the Christian message. We want mothers who kill their children in the womb to know the forgiveness that's available in Jesus.

01:29:27

To know Jesus. To be washed. My church is filled with women who have killed their children via abortion.

01:29:33

They are sisters in Christ. They are loved by God. And the pro -life establishment says they're not guilty.

01:29:40

They need no forgiveness. And they want mothers who kill their children in the womb to be given immunity under the law.

01:29:49

Did you know that? What I'm saying right now sounds like tinfoil hat conspiracy theory.

01:29:55

Doesn't it? That the pro -life establishment wants mothers to be given immunity under the law to kill their children in the womb.

01:30:05

That is a fact. You want proof? In Louisiana, last year we got our bill in Louisiana.

01:30:12

Historic moment. Our bill went into Louisiana. It was the first bill since Roe vs.

01:30:18

Wade of abolition and equal protection that went to a hearing and made it through the hearing to the floor.

01:30:26

It was historic in that sense. It went to the floor and it was fought against by the pro -life establishment.

01:30:34

They were so terrified of our bill in Louisiana that here's what they did. They pulled together over 70 of the largest pro -life organizations in the nation.

01:30:43

National Right to Life, the ERLC, Louisiana Right to Life, and they all signed their name on the dotted line.

01:30:51

And I was thankful to God that they did because we've been waiting for them to do it for so long. We needed to get this out in the open.

01:30:57

So I said, that's terrible, but praise God. They signed on the dotted line and they said, we want legislators across the

01:31:04

United States to know that we are opposed to these bills of equal protection and a bill that would say that it's a crime for the mother and she should be punished.

01:31:14

What's that mean? They are not fighting to end abortion. They will never end abortion.

01:31:19

Do you understand? It's never going to be ended by them. They believe that a mother can dismember her child in her womb with impunity and immunity.

01:31:30

That is not the message of the Christian church. That is not the message of the historic

01:31:35

Christian church. Did you know, like right now, in this audience right now,

01:31:41

I see a sea of my brothers and sisters. I know that we're united on the gospel.

01:31:48

I know that we're united on the person of Christ and who he is and his work and salvation only through him.

01:31:54

Right? But we have disagreements. Do we not? Yes? I mean, some of you believe some weird stuff.

01:32:03

But I love you in Jesus' name and for Jesus' sake. You love me, right? We have differences and we solve those differences.

01:32:10

We're supposed to solve them with graciousness and love and unity. But there are differences.

01:32:16

But we know we have a thread that runs through us of a commitment to the core and essentials that we hold to together.

01:32:23

The authority of God's word, the deity of Jesus Christ, his physical resurrection, his death for sinners, salvation through faith in him.

01:32:30

We are together and united. Amen? Yes? In church history, Christians have had disagreements. It's a glorious mess,

01:32:39

I call it. Glorious because there's unity, but a mess sometimes. It's messy. But one of the things that we've had in the

01:32:48

Christian church from the very beginning is a unanimous position as Christians as to what is taking place in abortion.

01:32:55

Did you know that since the very beginning of the church, the Christian church has fought against abortion and infanticide?

01:33:02

And do you know the consistent message of the Christian church against abortion is that abortion is murder.

01:33:09

And you need the gospel and forgiveness in Jesus. Let me give you some examples because you need to hear them in terms of the united testimony of the

01:33:19

Christian church in history about abortion. Basil of Caesarea said this,

01:33:25

She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus must bear the penalty for murder. Moreover, those who aid her who give abortifacients for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb are murderers themselves along with those receiving the poisons.

01:33:39

That's Basil of Caesarea. Can I point something out to us? This was said by a

01:33:46

Christian in history before, are you ready? Ultrasounds. Before DNA.

01:33:54

Before fetal heart monitors where you can listen to the baby through the womb. So the

01:34:00

Christian church was saying based on the law word of God that if you are involved, anybody in the murder of the child in the womb, you are guilty of murder.

01:34:09

You need Jesus. The pro -life establishment says no. We disagree. The Didache, one of the earliest writings in the

01:34:18

Christian church, says this, there are two ways, the way of life and the way of death, and the difference between these two ways is great.

01:34:29

Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant.

01:34:35

That is, if you didn't know, go check it out later, the Didache, one of the earliest writings we have of the

01:34:44

Christian church in history, and in that it calls abortion what? Murder.

01:34:50

That's what it is. We're never going to end this without the gospel. We're never going to end this without telling the truth. Did you know that William Wilberforce, we love to think about history, like with the giants and the greats, as like William Wilberforce walks into parliament, right?

01:35:07

He walks in and he's like, it's the image of God. It's my brother. We're of one blood.

01:35:13

And you just see like parliament tearing their garments and sackcloth and ashes and Wilberforce, and they, you know, he's like crowd -surfing in parliament afterwards.

01:35:21

We love to think of history like that. The truth is, is when William Wilberforce went preaching, standing on the word of God into parliament, 1789, did you know that he was rejected completely, overwhelmingly when he preached the law of God and the testimony of scripture on behalf of our brothers and sisters who have black skin?

01:35:45

Did you know that parliament said no? And did you know the next year he went back? 1790, he went back.

01:35:53

Did you know that he preached for three straight hours in parliament? And you love to think that after those three hours parliament was like, all right, we confess this wickedness and this sin and we're going to end the slave trade.

01:36:08

Do you know they rejected him again? Do you know that it took almost 20 years of William Wilberforce and those abolitionist

01:36:17

Christians, it took them almost 20 years to finally convince the culture and parliament to do away with that wickedness.

01:36:26

And do you know that they did it not standing on neutrality, but they did it standing on the law, word of God.

01:36:35

The Christian church defeats evil and injustice everywhere we go in history, but it never happens apart from God's gospel and the authority of Jesus Christ.

01:36:47

When did we believe or when were we convinced that we can actually defeat evil apart from Jesus Christ?

01:36:54

It doesn't work. The problem is this cowardice. Let's admit it.

01:37:02

Cowardice. We're afraid. We're afraid to stand for Christ. We're afraid to stand under the banner of his authority.

01:37:11

We're afraid. We're too comfortable. We want people to like us. We're the social media generation.

01:37:17

We're worried about being canceled. We're worried about losing our jobs. We're worried about someone saying something nasty about us.

01:37:25

I challenge you to go to the book of Acts and see how the early church and the leadership actually fought against that culture with the truth.

01:37:33

They fought in such a way as they turned the world upside down with the truth.

01:37:39

They weren't being mean -spirited. They weren't being sinful. They were being godly, righteous troublemakers.

01:37:47

They preached the truth in the public square to the degree that what did it lead to?

01:37:53

It led to beatings, stonings, being shipwrecked, going to jail, and see the thing is though the early church, they spoke the truth about Jesus like they actually believed it was true.

01:38:05

And when they spoke the truth in the public square and they took a beating for Jesus for doing it, the testimony in Scripture in the book of Acts is when they took a beating for Jesus, they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.

01:38:25

We're not willing. I confess completely that standing before a legislature that hates you, standing before a man dressed like a woman and preaching

01:38:39

Christ is difficult. When you're in a room of people who despise what you believe, it's hard.

01:38:47

It's hard for Matt, it's hard for Bradley, it's hard for me. But you have to make a decision as a follower of Jesus.

01:38:54

Are you going to fear God or man? And in those moments, I promise you, every one of us feels the weight of those moments.

01:39:02

And I know every single one of us in those moments, when we go to talk to a legislator or preach the truth in a public square, you have to make a conscious decision.

01:39:12

Am I going to love God and them right now or am I going to love my comforts? Am I going to submit to God and fear

01:39:19

Him or am I going to fear men? Jesus said when

01:39:24

He called people to come to Him, you must come to die. You've got to come take up your cross and die.

01:39:32

I thought when I turned to Christ that that was understood.

01:39:40

And so many of us love our lives so much we want to flee from pain, flee from discomfort.

01:39:48

We don't want difficulty. We certainly don't want to die. And that's why these babies continue to die.

01:39:56

Because we won't do what it takes to actually stand and be uncomfortable, to be persecuted.

01:40:02

We won't do what it actually takes to save them. We say by profession, that's in the image of God.

01:40:09

It deserves equal protection. But we don't live like it's true. We don't actually live like it's true.

01:40:15

We don't come to the legislature like it's true. I'll give you one example. Brothers and sisters, I'm just talking to you as a friend right now.

01:40:22

I have notes I'm not even on them right now, okay? This crowd right here, this crowd.

01:40:29

Some of you guys aren't from South Carolina. Some of you guys drove from Myrtle Beach. Some of you guys, that's in South Carolina, isn't it?

01:40:35

Okay, sorry. Some of you guys came from North Carolina. Some of you guys from Florida. I know some people drove here from Texas.

01:40:41

I know we're from different places. But look at the size of this crowd right now. You might say, it doesn't look huge, right?

01:40:48

Like a March for Life might have 20 ,000 people walking in the streets that stand for partiality, that stand opposed to equal protection.

01:40:56

They do nothing to establish justice. They will not. But you look at a crowd like this and you're like, how is this going to be effective?

01:41:04

The truth is, if you had a crowd this size of faithful Christians in South Carolina, and each and every one of you was dedicated to when you get that phone call and you're going to call that legislator and say,

01:41:17

I'm praying for you, be courageous, do what's right. If we had a crowd this size dedicated to calling every legislator, sending a message saying, do what's right before God, you would end abortion in South Carolina.

01:41:29

You would end it. You would end it. When legislators get like five, six messages, they start freaking out.

01:41:39

When we were in Louisiana, I had legislators coming to me in tears saying, please call your people off.

01:41:47

My phone will not stop ringing. You've got to tell them to stop calling. I get the point. And I said, we must obey

01:41:55

God rather than them. No. I said, I can't stop them because they're calling you as Christians to let you know they're praying for you to be courageous, to do what's right.

01:42:03

These legislators were literally in tears saying, please call them off.

01:42:08

And honestly, the crowd that was calling was smaller than this. It was just people who were dedicated to love

01:42:15

God and love these children. They were on the phone. They were sending messages. Brothers and sisters, if you stand, we will end this.

01:42:21

I'm convinced that the only reason abortion is still happening in our nation is because of the

01:42:26

Christian church. When we actually want to end this, with the truth and the gospel, courageously, abortion is going to end.

01:42:35

Abortion will end when the church stands up to end it. It has been that way in history with every evil.

01:42:42

So brothers and sisters, there are three failures that we must overcome as a church.

01:42:47

I'm going to say them quickly. Three failures that we must overcome as the church together. Number one, neutrality.

01:42:54

It's a myth. Stop doing it. The neutrality, largely, generally, culturally, we think that we can be neutral.

01:43:04

Jesus said, whoever's not with me is against me. So you are either with Christ or you're against him.

01:43:10

In your home, in your personal life, in your church, and legislators here, you are either with Christ or against him.

01:43:20

And the pro -life establishment needs to understand, you are either with Christ or you are against him.

01:43:26

There is no neutrality with Jesus. The problem of neutrality needs to be defeated. Number two, the partiality that we have been so accustomed to to accept as Christians.

01:43:38

Partiality. God says, unequal weights and measures are an abomination. If you show partiality, you will be judged by God.

01:43:48

Can we put it in simple terms? Are you ready? Put a bill of partiality before God on the last day.

01:43:57

A bill that says, you can kill these children, but not these ones. You can kill using these tools, but not these tools.

01:44:06

And then you put a bill that says it's in the image of God, deserves equal protection from fertilization to natural death.

01:44:12

Question on the last day. Question, which bill does God hate? Which one does he hate?

01:44:20

God hates the injustice being perpetrated upon fatherless children.

01:44:26

And he hates the partial bills that they put in saying Christians have to accept.

01:44:32

We have to defeat the partiality that's been promoted by this movement. And we have to defeat it in Jesus name.

01:44:38

Next, we have to defeat the evil of acquitting the guilty. The evil of acquitting the guilty.

01:44:44

It robs women of the gospel, and it keeps abortion legal forever. If we say a mother can kill her child in the womb with impunity and immunity, we are acquitting the guilty, which

01:44:58

God says is an abomination. In Proverbs 17, God says this, whoever acquits the guilty and condemns the righteous are equally alike an abomination in God's eyes.

01:45:16

So listen, here's a standard for legislators. This is a standard for the king, for leaders, for legislators, and for fathers and mothers in our lives.

01:45:25

We all know what it means when you have a righteous man or woman condemned by the courts, falsely accused.

01:45:33

We hate that. When you see a person going to jail, going to death row, whatever the case may be, and there's no real evidence, and they are condemned as a righteous man or woman, we know that God hates that.

01:45:48

Amen? But he also says this, it's also an abomination to acquit the guilty and to say to somebody who is guilty, you are not guilty.

01:45:57

And the establishment has said, it's their doctrine, that a mother can kill her child with immunity and impunity.

01:46:06

If we love these women, we'll tell them the truth. You need Christ. You need forgiveness.

01:46:12

This is the murder of your child and the only way to be free is Jesus Christ. We must, as Christians, defeat neutrality, partiality, and acquitting the guilty.

01:46:22

These are the major failures right now that we must, absolutely must, overcome as the

01:46:27

Christian church. And brothers and sisters, I just want to remind you of one of the most important elements of our lives.

01:46:34

And that is what our king said as he ascended. He said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

01:46:43

So that removes the excuse, that removes the excuse that people have made when they say,

01:46:49

I cannot bring the word of God and the authority of Christ into this place. This is a neutral zone.

01:46:55

Jesus said, when he ascended, there are no neutral zones on my earth.

01:47:01

Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been, past tense, given to me.

01:47:07

Which means that Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords. Meaning that he's the ruler of the kings of the earth and they must obey the son of the parish.

01:47:17

Psalm chapter 2. Which means that you and I are ambassadors of Jesus Christ. We proclaim his excellencies, his supremacy, his lordship, his peace, and his gospel to the world.

01:47:29

And we do it to everybody. We bring that message of peace and forgiveness to our legislators and we say, obey

01:47:36

Jesus or perish. That's the word of the living God. And can I just say something?

01:47:42

Can we just be done with the hypocrisy for a moment? That's what we believe as Christians. Stop pretending we don't.

01:47:52

Did you notice that the enemies of the Christian faith, they don't want to compromise. They want the whole thing.

01:47:59

They want the center to be man. Not God. Have you noticed that they actually want to own and control everything and they want you to be silent about your commitments to Jesus Christ.

01:48:12

Have you noticed that they won't compromise? And have you noticed that the evangelical church in the west does nothing but.

01:48:24

So as Matt said, brothers and sisters, we must repent as the church.

01:48:35

Yes, the issue of abortion is what we're here for today, but you know what? The heart of this is really much deeper.

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It's much deeper. We must repent as the church together toward Christ to start proclaiming his truth in a way that is pleasing to him and glorifying to him.

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Brothers and sisters, will you repent with me and will you start serving the king of kings in such a way that it looks like we actually love him and we love these neighbors.

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Brothers and sisters, please, please join us. Pastors, the amount of pastors that were just up here today.

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If each one of you men would just be faithful and preach faithfully and lead your church from the front, you'll end it.

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You will end it. The work that God has done. I'll end with this.

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Listen, apology of church. I've already told you. End abortion now is just a ministry apology of church.

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We're just a local church. I'm just a pastor. I'm just your brother. I'm not special. These guys are my church members.

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They moved here. We're not special. We're not overly amazing, gifted. We don't come into apology of church with a bunch of fanfare.

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It's just a church. Everything that God's done through apology of church and end abortion now is because of a local church in the desert in Phoenix.

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Listen, what happened in Louisiana last year with that historic moment that almost passed the bill of legal protection was the result ready of one pastor, one pastor in the state of Louisiana that went to those legislators, proclaimed

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Christ, called them to obedience, demanded justice. It was one pastor in the state of Louisiana, Pastor Brian Gunter.

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One. Pastors who are here today, be faithful.

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It does not take large numbers or a lot of money. It takes your mouth and your fidelity to the truth.

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So brothers and sisters, please join us. And I just want to say again from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your sacrifices.

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Thank you honestly. Thank you for driving here to be with us today, to stand here. It means so much to us that you took the time and you sacrificed to be here with us today.

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It means the world to us. We're grateful for you. Please join us in this fight.

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Give everything for the sake of these children. Each and every one of these children that's being murdered is as valuable as you.

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Each and every single one is as valuable as you.

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So fight like that's true. Love your neighbor like you love yourself.

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Please stand. If you think that it couldn't possibly be done through you, it absolutely can.

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Because what God does through his people is by his power and not theirs.

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Thank you guys so much for being here. A little known fact about Pastor Jeff Durbin.

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I think five or ten years ago, I don't know the story, but he was about a hair pinned this close from moving to South Carolina.

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He told me that story a little bit ago. That would have been something. But God's sovereign and has him where he's supposed to be. Thank you so much.

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We're going to deviate a little bit. Before we turn over to Love Life to start our prayer walk, we're going to have one more song.

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There's just a reoccurring theme throughout the speakers today, and that is that the church should arise.

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Amen? Let's sing together, O Church Arise. Far too long while the darkness ever strung, cast its shadow o 'er this land.

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For we, the children of the light, we have hope that's burning bright.

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We were made to cower. We were made to stand.

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Let the church arise.

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Let us stand for what is holy. Let us stand for what is right and live our lives as a beacon in the night.

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No, we will not compromise. Let the church arise.

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Let the church arise. All the trials in this life doesn't catch

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God by surprise. He's still sovereign over all.

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So let the ones who bear His name be bold and unashamed, and with expectation answer when

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He calls. Let the church arise.

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Let us stand for what is holy. Let us stand for what is right and live our lives as a beacon in the night.

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No, we will not compromise. Let the church arise.

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Let the church arise. Let the church arise.

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Praise the

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Lord. Let the church arise. Well, I want to shift over now. We're going to have

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Love Life come up and lead us in a prayer walk. Please stick around for that. We need the prayers of the saints to end abortion in South Carolina.

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And I want to just drop one more truth bomb because it was mentioned the Louisiana bill of abolition and the pro -life industry, the letter that had 70 organizations that signed their name that says we do not support this bill of equal protection and the leading pro -life organization in South Carolina, South Carolina Citizens for Life signed its name.

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That organization is getting money from churches and Christians while they're not supporting bills of equal protection.

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Friends, that's one of the reasons why we founded Equal Protection South Carolina. Equal Protection South Carolina is a non -profit organization as I mentioned and we need to stop giving our money to organizations that compromise.

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And I want to encourage you, if God has given you the means to give money to an organization that will not compromise that will help and be the mechanism that God uses to end abortion in South Carolina.

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So I want to encourage you to prayerfully consider partnering with us today with that. So I'm going to introduce

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Brian Oettinger with Love Life. Brian is married to his wife Carolina and they are proud parents of five sons.

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Brian serves as a pastor of Convergence Church in Charlotte. In addition to helping lead and serve his local church,

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Pastor Brian also serves as the National Director of Expansion for Love Life Ministry.

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As a side note, I remember when Love Life started out of a trove in Charlotte. My wife and family, we'd go out there and be on the sidewalk pleading for mothers to not kill their babies and there was this group of Christians came to pray and it was like 2015

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I think and then the next year like 30 turned to 300 and then 3000. It was just amazing the work that the

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Lord has done through Love Life. Love Life exists to equip churches to provide a holistic pathway for pastors to activate their churches from apathy to action.

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Amen. And Love Life's vision is to create a culture of love and life that will result in an end to the abortion and orphan crisis.

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Brother Brian is going to give us some direction. He's going to lead us in an opening prayer and then we're going to walk around this capitol while we are praying.

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So please this is not a time to listen to other people pray and just chit chat. We want you to be active and to pray with us.

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Amen. Please welcome Brian Oettinger. Thank you guys so much. Such a great privilege to be here.

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Brother Mark your family, you guys have done a tremendous job. There's been a lot of talk in our nation about revival and we see it in Isaiah chapter 1 what

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God has to say about the church and revival. He says this in verse 10. Hear the word of the

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Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the

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Lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well -fed beasts. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.

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When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts?

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Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and the calling of convocations.

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I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feast, my soul hates.

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They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you.

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Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Why? Your hands are full of blood.

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Verse 16. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes.

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Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression.

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Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause. If we're ever going to see true revival in America, it's going to start with the church repenting of the blood that's on our hands.

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I'm going to bend down. I know the grass is wet. I got a suit on. I don't care if I get holes in my knees.

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I'm going to come and I want to invite anyone and everyone to just pray with me on behalf of your own self, on behalf of the local church, on behalf of the church in America, just a prayer of repentance before we begin this prayer walk.

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Fathers, we begin. I give thanks, O God, that you are the

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God of heaven, the God who is gracious, the God who is full of love and mercy. God, you've been so patient with your church here in America.

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You've been so patient with me. But God, we just come and ask now,

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God, for a true heart of confession and repentance on behalf of our self, on behalf of our family, on behalf of our churches, and on behalf of the church in America.

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Think about the quote of Francis Schaeffer that says, abortion is legal in America with the permission of the local church.

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God, we, the people of God who are empowered by your spirit and who know the word of God, God, we have no excuse on why we have not been serious about truly fighting to end abortion in our land.

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So God, it starts with us. I thank you, God, for my brothers and sisters who are here today who have come to take time out of their schedule to hear ways in which they can be empowered legislatively to help end abortion in South Carolina.

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But God, each one of us has more to do, more work to be done,

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God. From those of us who've been in this fight for 30 years, for those of us who've been in this fight for 30 days,

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God, we want to correct oppression. We want to plead the fatherless cause in our nation.

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And so God, help us the days that we grow tired and weary. Help us the days,

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God, that we become anxious or angry. Father, let it start with us,

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God. We ask God for forgiveness for any wrongdoing in our own life, God. Apathy, Lord.

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Compromise. Inaction, absence. God, whatever it is,

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I pray you deal with us today, God. We pray for forgiveness today. We pray that you would bring revival to this nation,

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God. As your church repents of the child's sacrifice that's gone on, God, we have blood on our hands and we're saying,

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Father, forgive us. Help us be people of prayer,

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God. Think about Luke chapter 9 when the demonic boy who was a mutant seizing up, and the disciples came and they said,

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Jesus, why couldn't we cast out these demons? Jesus, your answer to the disciples and to us today was, this kind can only come out through prayer.

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So, God, I pray that we be a people of prayer, God, that we truly believe in the power of God through prayer.

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Yes, we'd be activated in action, God, but that we would fight in the spiritual realm by going to our

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Heavenly Father in prayer. So, help us to do that now. We pray. We thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.

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Amen. Alright, before we begin the prayer walk,

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I want us to group up in groups of three to five and I want us to pray as we pray together for church repentance.

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We know that this thing will be solved through the local church. We know, just like slavery that was abolished through the local church, that abortion will be abolished in our land through the local church.

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And so, I want you guys to break up in groups of three or five, and I want you to pray that God would activate churches and pastors all across South Carolina.

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So, pray specifically for church activation in South Carolina. You guys, go ahead and break up now in your groups.

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I'll lead us in this prayer, but I want you to pray in your groups. Father, we lift up the pastors, the watchmen on the wall that you have called to be the leaders of your church,

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God. We pray that you would empower pastors to be bold, courageous men who follow you, who trust you, who help lead their flocks in the ways of repentance, but also in action,

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God. We want to see abortion centers flooded with Christians. We want to see

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Christians at the gates of hell offering the hope of the gospel and the hope of the church, God. We want to see the legislative halls of this building filled with righteous men and women, men of God who are saying, we will not withdraw the gospel from the legislative halls.

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That we will take the gospel to the marketplace, God. That we will take the gospel to our schools. We will take the gospel to the hedges and highways,

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God. And it will be led through pastors. So, God, I pray that you would give an extra ounce of faith,

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God. Give a greater measure of obedience, God. That pastors would seek to honor you and that you would honor them in return.

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And that they wouldn't seek the approval of their congregation, but only the approval of their heavenly Father. And so,

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God, I pray for pastors now. I pray for churches. I pray for the Baptists. I pray for the Pentecostals. I pray for the non -denominations, the

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Presbyterians. I pray for the Korean church, the African -American church, the white church, the multicultural church, the

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Russian church. All the churches, all across South Carolina, God, that even though we may, as Brother Jeff said, disagree on a variety of issues,

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God, that we can, in one accord, say Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and abortion is murder and it's sin.

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And the only way this will be eradicated is by God's people standing together in John 17. Unity, God.

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So, we pray for the pastors, the churches, those who are active and those who are currently on the sidelines.

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We pray for your church, like the song said, for your church to arise. Have your way with the church in South Carolina.

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We love you, we thank you. We praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, now we're going to begin our prayer walk.