October 19, 2018 Show with Alfonzo Rachel on “How a Pro-Choice Advocate Came to Believe in the Sanctity of Life of Unborn Children (& Behind the Scenes of the ‘Gosnell’ Film)” AND Scott Klusendorf on “Lessons to Be Learned from the ‘Gosnell’ Film”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 19th day of October 2018.

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I'm so delighted to have for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Alfonso Rachel.

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He prefers to be called Zo, and he is an actor portraying Detective Stark in the film

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Gosnell. Today we are going to be addressing how a pro choice advocate came to believe in the sanctity of life of unborn children, and we're going to be some behind -the -scenes stuff from the

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Gosnell film. In our second portion of the program today, we're going to be joined later on by Scott Klusendorf.

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He's an author and founder and president of Life Training Institute, and he is going to be discussing lessons to be learned from the

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Gosnell film, which he saw recently and believed had a profound impact on him, and we are going to be hearing about that later on today.

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But first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Zo Rachel.

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All right, my pleasure to be here. Thank you. Oh, I am delighted to have you here. First of all, before we get into the

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Gosnell movie, I want you to give a summary of your own background. We usually have first -time guests who are

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Christian give a summary of their testimonies, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and how they came to know the

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Lord Jesus Christ as their God and Savior. And so tell us about that.

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What kind of upbringing did you have, and how did you eventually come to embrace Christ and his sacrifice in Calvary as your only hope for salvation?

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Well, the moment, and thank you for the opportunity to share that with your audience, you know, that moment that came was when

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I realized that my pursuits were very selfish. I didn't care how

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I would get to, you know, my dreams or my passion. I didn't care if it cost anybody else.

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And when it just came down to me realizing the Lord had shown me that, you know, my behavior and my pursuit was more of a liability than an asset.

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When I saw that I was an expense to people, and what it was costing people, not just financially, but the emotional toll of just doing what

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I wanted, not caring what it cost, that just broke, it broke my heart in ways.

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I mean, because this was a long time coming. I've been doing this for years. And at that point, you know,

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I was like, you know what, I can't do it my way. And I don't, and you know what, my way just really makes me sick. And I've let

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Lord take over and show me how to do it. And me being a musician,

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I would see the behavior in other musicians, and I'm like, am I really like that?

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Is that how I really want to be? Not to speak bad about my fellow musicians, but you know, it can be a very selfish and self -glorifying lifestyle.

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And that's just not something I wanted to be a part of. Not that behavior. I still want to make music.

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I still want to make art. I still want to produce things. But doing it for my own glory, my personal gratification and whatnot, it's just unfulfilling.

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But doing it for the Lord, that's where it's at. Amen. Amen. Now, did you have any kind of religious upbringing?

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I know that just as in the white community, you have a

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Bible Belt Christianity that very often is a Christianity in name only. You have people being raised in cultural

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Christianity that really has no impact on their lives. And I know that that happens to be sadly the case also in the black community.

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There are a lot of folks who have a high regard, perhaps even more so in the black community than in the white.

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They have a high regard for church, for showing reverence to the name of God and the

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Bible, but there might not be anything in reality behind those words and sentiments in regard to a changed life.

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So I was just curious where you're coming from in your own personal upbringing. Indeed.

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I was brought up definitely to believe in God, but the instructions on how to do that and the examination of the

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Word of God wasn't really there. It was just something that you were obligated to do. You felt an obligation to go to church.

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It was more so like maybe out of tradition or some sort of a cultural mandate that, you know, could be followed at any time.

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Like at one point you have to go to church and then all of a sudden there's a lapse in going to church. So, you know, really being steeped in the

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Word of God, I can't really say that I was. However, it was, like I said, it was trying to do things my own way is really kind of what just led me in there.

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Let me look at this book. Let me see what's going on. And, you know, I had to discover, you know, for myself, and thank

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God, you know, because I know that, you know, my knucklehead itself wasn't going to come to him on my own. I know it really took him to get me to open that book and to counsel me on the

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Word. Amen. And for those of our listeners who are not familiar with Zoe, he happens to be a black

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Christian. He is also a drummer in a band called 20lb

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Sledgehammer, or is it just 20lb Sledge, actually, correct? Correct, 20lb

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Sledge. And why don't you describe that band for us? 20lb Sledge is my medium to rock the gospel with.

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And 20lb Sledge, if anybody wants to examine Isaiah 4115, you know, 20lb

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Sledge is, you know, it's heavy. You know, David himself was a rocker.

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You know, if you read about him, he was a dancer, he liked to rock hard. And, you know, that's what we do.

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In a culture where, you know, that wants it gritty, that wants it real, you know, that's what we do.

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We give them that gritty, real sound. But instead of using that, you know, that sound to something that, you know, appealing to the flesh, we're trying to appeal to the spirit.

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Amen. And your group, what makes it unique? And, you know, you have to forgive me,

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I hate using terms like white and black, but these are things that are unique, not only in your conservative ideology in the 21st century, to have somebody in the media, who is a very conservative

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Christian, outspoken in conservative ideology, who happens to be also a black brother.

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And even in the music genre that you have chosen to participate in as a drummer, your entire band, in fact, are black folks who love to rock out to the harder rock and roll that is usually seen being performed by black folks.

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And, you know, that's a good observation. You know, and the thing about it, my band is an all -black rock band, and there's a few reasons for that.

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One, you know, when you have in the black community, who often, usually in the black community, you know, rock and roll music is white folks' music.

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However, they'll also turn around and say that white folks stole rock and roll from black folks. I think we did.

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Right? So it's like, well, what is it? How can it be white folks' music if it was black folks' music to begin with that white people stole the music from?

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You know, that doesn't make any sense. So, you know, it shouldn't be, you know, your persuasion that determines what kind of music you're going to execute or listen to.

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That stuff is ridiculous. Also, the reason why, you know, the band is also black is because, you know, a lot of, in the black community, unfortunately, there is a growing press.

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It's happened before. It's kind of happening again, where, you know, the idea that Christianity is for the white man and Islam is for the black man.

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Neither statements make any sense. How can Christianity be for the white man when Jesus was a

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Middle Eastern Jew? Right? How can Islam be for the black man when Muhammad was an

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Arab? You know, so these things are not racially exclusive, and these boxes that they put them in is ridiculous.

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So at 20 Pound Fledge, we're trying to set the example rather than getting out there and trying to make some sort of racial statement and work.

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Because, like, if you listen to our lyrics, none of our lyrics even, I don't think even mention the word black. We don't try to call attention to people, you know, at a black band.

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Like, ooh, look at us, we're black and we play rock and roll. We don't do that.

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We're guys that happen to be black who oppose this idea that your persuasion dictates what you're supposed to listen to and what you're supposed to believe.

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We just, we get out there and we set the example, and it's like people can't, we're trusting that people are smart enough to see it for themselves rather than us having to try to point to it and tell them what we're doing.

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Now, are you, are all the band members from the same congregation, are you from different churches, or how did that work out?

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We are, we are from different churches. Everybody in 20 Pound Fledge is a believer.

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I'm probably more of the more politically oriented, but, you know, and the personnel of 20

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Pound Fledge has changed, you know, the lineups have changed. But part, and like I said, part of the reason to do 20

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Pound Fledge is to reach people culturally, you know, without so much doing it from a soapbox, but doing it from a medium that they can, you know, digest a little bit easier.

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And like, when the first lead singer came into the band, he wasn't conservative, or at least he didn't think he was.

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But after coming into the band, he saw what it was, he saw the difference between conservatism and liberalism, and from there he was like, you know what,

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I think I would rather embrace conservatism and examine the Word of God from a conservative filter rather than from a liberal filter, because that leads to perversion of Amen.

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Now, just as you were not always a Christian, you were not always conservative, and you were not always pro -life.

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You were at one time a pro -choice advocate, and it's actually a very sweet and sugar -coated way of saying that you were pro -murder or pro -infanticide at one time.

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But tell us about that. How did this transformation take place in your life? You know, I think it's a very patronizing position to come from.

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It's selfish, but it's patronizing because you don't want the woman to feel like you're going to try to intrude on her reproductive empowerment, right?

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So just pander to these women, because if I can go ahead and just be blunt with your audience, you don't want anything to get in the way of your sexual exploits.

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You don't want to have these kinds of debates or arguments or obstructions that's going to get in the way of you getting into the sex with these women who are not as likely to wait until they get married or tied down or something like that.

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So with that in mind, in that kind of culture with females, you don't want to say anything that's going to be out of school.

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So, you know, I didn't really consider that, hey, I was pro -murder. I was pro get some action.

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That's what I was. And the consequences of a pregnancy could be conveniently handled with an abortion.

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Hey, as long as I got, as long as I got sick, right?

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Now that's pathetic, that's just that's that's detestable.

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So, you know, when I got my wife, you know, she really shined a light as far as this goes.

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You know, when I was dating her, you know, she let me know what time it was. And when she dropped this truth on me, anything that I ever thought or didn't think about abortion,

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I did not argue with for one second. And I can be a pretty I can be pretty knuckleheaded. I can be pretty sorry.

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But when she dropped this on me, I was like, I am not going to argue with this. When she basically pointed out personhood,

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I had never considered that before. I had never considered personhood before. That's all she had to say.

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And because and from there, it came out to, well, wait a minute. Why was it legal to justify slavery?

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Disqualification of personhood, right? You basically say you make the case that these people, well, these beings are not human.

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Ergo, you can make them your property and do whatever you want with them. Well, I would be a total hypocrite if I didn't apply that to the unborn.

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Yeah. And of course, one of Satan's best kept secrets is that one of the primary reasons abortion or the murder of the unborn became very popular and prevalent in the

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United States and other places around the world, but especially the United States was because white racists wanted to eliminate blacks from the face of the earth.

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And that was one of the goals of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who was a racist, who was a

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Nazi sympathizer. Those are not exaggerations. And she wanted to impose involuntary sterilization on black men and women because she viewed them as nothing more than a drain on the resources of superior white people.

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And it's amazing to me why conservatives don't bring that up constantly when the discussion over abortion comes up with liberals.

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I mean, even conservatives either seem to be ignorant of this fact or too embarrassed or shy or frightened or cowardly to bring it up.

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But it's just the facts of history that you could easily verify doing a cursory search on the internet about Margaret Sanger.

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Indeed. And this goes way back. We're talking about white supremacy, white privilege, and they're lording over the black race.

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We can go ahead and take this back to the Democrat Party. And Democrat Party, it's weird because those who are conservative and I don't want to come down on my brothers and sisters in the

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South. And please don't take this as an attack against the South. This is not an attack against the

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South. This is an attack against the Democrat Party. Please know the difference. Just know what they're saying about those being embarrassed or ashamed or anything like that or being defensive about being a conservative.

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The language needs to be set straight. When you take it back to the

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Confederacy, which was represented by the Democrat Party, the

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Confederacy, when they made that flag, one of the flags that they made was the stainless banner, which had the

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Confederate battle flag in it. And the inspiration for the stainless banner was the heaven -ordained supremacy of the white man over the

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Negro. So when we talk about heritage in history, and we talk about white privilege, well, that was instituted by the

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Democrat Party. And the Democrat Party, their objective has always been to either control the mindset of the

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Negro or the population of the Negro. And they're doing it to this very day. So just like you said with Margaret Sanger, it's the same thing.

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Margaret Sanger was a Democrat. And it's always been, when you look at these things with eugenics, anti -miscegenation, all these things that had these apartheid policies to them, it's all rooted in the

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Democrat Party. And as far as being conservative, because people will try to say that, oh, the party's a switch side and the ideology's a switch side, and try to say that, well, the

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Democrats were the conservatives back then. That's a bunch of lies, man.

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It's like, the Democrats have never been conservative. Lincoln himself said so.

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Lincoln said, you guys try to call yourself conservative. And I say, surely you're not, while you guys try to call us

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Republicans, these revolutionaries and these destroyers. And Lincoln's like, you're not conservative.

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We are. We're the ones, we're the people who are trying to adhere to the policies of old that the founding fathers put in, who recognize the

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God -given rights of all men. That's why we're the grand old party. So if Lincoln was saying himself,

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I'm no liberal, I'm a conservative, you Democrats who take liberties with the Constitution, who even took enough liberties to create your own constitution of the

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Confederate state to put in language that would give you the law to lord over black people and make them your slaves.

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You did that. We didn't. Now, tell our listeners about how you got involved to participate in the filming of the movie,

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Gosnell, the trial of America's biggest serial killer. You play

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Detective Stark in the movie. And in fact, folks, I am going to be seeing it tonight.

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I was intending to see it last night. And for some reason, the theater, the only theater, within a half hour drive of my home, that had it listed on the

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Internet for a 7 p .m. showing last night. They did not have a 7 p .m. showing, but I've been assured they have a 745 showing tonight in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

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So I am intending to go there. I have not seen it yet, but I know you play Detective Stark. Tell us how you were invited to become a part of this project, which is probably one of the most important films of the 21st century that I have heard.

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That's the way I've heard it described by some of my friends whose opinions I highly respect. Wow. Well, I was working with PJTV and I had a series on there called

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Donation. Nick Searcy had seen some of my earlier work and he had reached out to me.

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This is back in like 2012 and earlier. And he had seen my work and we had become friends.

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And in 2013, the story of God knows, it had broke and I had done my commentary on it.

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So keeping those things in mind, as Nick kept those things in mind, jumped to 2015 when they had gotten the funding to do the movie.

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Nick, you know, figured, you know, hey, let me give Zoe a call and see if he'd be interested in this role.

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Now, mind you, he doesn't know me as being a professional actor. I'm not an actor. I'm a drummer, but I've done commentary.

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And when I do my commentary, I guess, you know, I use some humor and I use some antics and stuff like that. And I guess, you know, he took that as to be confident that I could do for himself.

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He took that for his own confidence that I could probably pull off the role. So he called me. I was on tour with my band at the time, 20

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Pounds Legend. Nick calls me up and says, hey, what are you up to? I'm on tour with my band. He said, yeah, cancel your date.

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I want you to do this movie. I'm like, who are you? Who do you think you are? I'm Nick Cersei, and you're going to do this movie.

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So there you go. So tell us about Detective Stark, the character that you portray.

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Tell us about how you had to prepare to become this character, at least to behave like this character, the way that it was intended to be portrayed in the movie.

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Well, Detective Stark is loosely based on one of the undercover agents that was involved in the apprehension of Del, and I believe he worked closely with Detective Wood, portrayed by Dean Cain in the movie.

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The movie itself is pretty straightforward. It didn't take a lot of creative liberty, only in consolidation of characters, to be able to tell the story, and so it's not so many characters to keep up with.

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I reckon that's part of good movie making, that you don't want to have too many characters to spread people's imaginations where they can't really digest what's going on.

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So we consolidated some of these characters into one. But my character is probably the most creative liberties that they took with my character.

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But other than that, the movie is pretty straightforward to the account. Now, as far as a person, this fictitious character that is actually based on the true characters in the actual events combined, how different of a person is

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Detective Stark from you in reality? Well, you know, I think when

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Nick contacted me to do the role, I think he just saw somebody like me playing it.

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It wasn't so much that he wanted to create a way out character that somebody had to get into, he just saw being a cop.

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So in that, it wasn't a lot of gymnastics for me to get into the role.

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Even though this is my freshman role, it's not so much that I had to do a lot of change to become

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Detective Stark. Well, you know, why don't we also, because the media obviously has been very, very quiet, not only about the movie, but they've been very quiet about the actual villain that the movie is about.

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Dr. Gosnell, the infant murderer. Tell us in summary about exactly what

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Gosnell is about. Well, what he is,

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I can tell you what he isn't. I don't think he's a doctor. He may be licensed as one, but we call him an abortion doctor.

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He's an abortion facilitator at best. And what he was doing, oh man,

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I mean, it cracks me up when I hear people, especially in the PC culture, when they talk about bullies and stuff like that.

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You want to talk about a bully. If you're for abortion, you're a bully. And if you're a doctor that basically removes a kid from a woman's body, you know, remove that kid by force, you know, that's a bully.

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And what Gosnell was doing for upwards of like 30 years, upwards of 30 years, you know, he was birthing kids.

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I mean, it's the law per se that if you're going to kill a kid, the kid has to be in the womb, right?

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Well, what Gosnell was doing was that he wasn't killing them in the womb. He was birthing them.

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So by the pro -abortion culture's own stance, by their own standards, he was in violation of the standard, because they get all self -righteous, you know, when the kid is out of the womb, oh, you got to look out for the children and speak up for the boys and all that sort of stuff.

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They have all this love for kids that are outside of the womb, but on the other side of that birth canal, where they could be just as viable, they got no love from them at all.

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Well, they are in violation of their own standards, because Gosnell was bringing them outside of the birth canal, all the way out, and murdering them.

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And how did he get caught for this? He got caught, not because of what, not because of the murders that he was committing, he got caught for dealing drugs.

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So, you know, he was, he had prescriptions drugs that were going out, his staff were delving out of prescription drugs, not only were they handing out prescription drugs, they were also administering drugs to the patients and performing the out -of -the -womb abortions themselves.

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So that caught up with Gosnell. He got busted on the drug trafficking, and that's when, you know, the

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Philadelphia police started putting two and two together about the murders that he was committing.

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And he is spending a life sentence now because of this? Yeah, three counts of murder and manslaughter.

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And the irony, of course, is that Hillary Clinton, with a smile on her face during the presidential race, when she was debating

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Donald Trump, she said with a smile on her face that she believed in late -term abortions.

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And some of the babies that Gosnell delivered were born at an earlier stage of development than some of the babies still in the womb that Hillary Clinton believes should be murdered anyway.

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And of course, and of course, millions of other people. Right, right.

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Now, and right there, it's like people are okay with this woman saying that a human being doesn't have constitutional rights.

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Just like, you know, for a culture that never seems to want to let us forget about slavery.

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How does this go over their head? How does this escape them? It's like, listen, let's always make people feel guilty about slavery and then be okay with this.

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It's totally illogical. Now, has anybody involved in the making of this film, whether they are actors or behind the scenes folks, has anybody come to a pro -life position that you're aware of as a result of this film being made?

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In terms of our cast and crew, I couldn't give any names that folks might know, but yes, that did happen.

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There were people who definitely who had reconsidered their position, if they had a position at all.

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Yes, and I know I interviewed Ann McElhenney, who is the author of the book, and I believe she was a pro -choice advocate before really delving deeply into this horrific story.

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And one of the producers as well, I believe, gave that same testimony of 180 degree turnaround.

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Well, I know that the website for this movie, to find out more about it, to find out where it's playing is gosnellmovie .com,

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and that's G -O -S -N -E -L -L -M -O -V -I -E -D -O -T -C -O -M. If you could wrap up in a few minutes by summarizing what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in regard to the

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Gosnell movie. Oh, thank you. And just exactly right with Ann McElhenney and Bela McLear, you know, their attraction to the movie was the media cover -up.

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That's what really got to them. It's like, why is this being covered up? You would think that a person who was doing this to women and doing this to children, you would think that the state would have something to say about it, the medical industry would have something about it, the media should have something to say about it, and they never said anything.

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So they thought that was very curious. So when they got the ball rolling on the media cover -up aspect of it, because that's what they do, you know, they're journalists, then they started to see the horrors that were inflicted on the children, and that really hit their heart, and it really inspired them and motivated them to get this movie done.

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And I'm hoping that that will be something that the people who see this movie understand, is that a lot of the things that they believe is coming out of the sin of omission from the media, or the dictation of what the media wants people to see, and what they want them to believe.

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So it's one of those things where it's like, you know, if you're going to put that kind of faith in somebody telling you what to believe,

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I hope they, you know, seek the counsel of the Holy Spirit first. If you really want somebody to counsel you on what to believe, seek him, and then from there, let him be your filter about what anybody else tells you.

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In fact, could you tell us about anything that you're aware of, of how this movie has been intentionally hidden from the view of the public, how people are not giving it the coverage that they would normally give any film?

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You know, unfortunately, I saw this coming, you know, and because they've been doing it to me for years,

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I've been, it's what they call, the term that they have for it now is shadowbanned. I've been shadowbanned before there was even a term for it, and a big part of it is because, you know, my commentaries are rooted in Scripture, and that comes out in my political beliefs.

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And a lot of people say that, wow, man, this really makes sense, and I love the way you convey the information. Well, that's a threat to Democrats.

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That's a threat, you know, to liberalism. So they've been silencing me for years, and I was like, man, this is going to happen to the movie.

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And sure enough, it is. They're meeting obstacles at every turn, and, you know, being impeded unfairly, despite the culture of fairness.

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You know, something I wanted to ask you before we go, I hope I'm not keeping you too long, but to some degree, it puzzled me that the movie is rated

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PG. Obviously, Christians don't necessarily want to attend or bring their children to R -rated movies, but at the same time, the horrific, nightmarishly disgusting and satanic subject matter of this true -to -life movie, you would think, would lend itself to an

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R rating. How did this movie become packaged as a PG film? It just goes to show that something like this can be tastefully done, you know, if you just, you know, it takes real creativity.

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It takes real creativity to be able to move that message without crossing the line, you know, and that's what, you know,

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God blessed Nick Durfee to be able to do in the direction of this film. You know, when

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Andrew Klavan wrote up this script, you know, based on what was conveyed to him by Ann Phelan, you know,

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Andrew Klavan just wrote up, he wrote up a great script. Nick took it and was able to direct it in a way that was not, you know, overly graphic.

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It didn't go over the line. It's just within the dialogue itself, the imagery is conveyed and there's nothing gross or gruesome shown or anything like that.

32:56

It's pretty, like I said, it's very tastefully done. Well, I really hope,

33:03

Zoe, that you come back as a guest on Iron Trump and Zion Radio in the future. I think that you and I would get along great.

33:10

In fact, I think we already have and I think that we have a future ahead of us of frequent conversations on radio if you are willing and if God obviously opens up the door for those interviews to occur.

33:23

I hope so. And once again, the movie, you can find out more about the

33:28

Gosnell movie at gosnellmovie .com. That's G -O -S -N as in Nancy E -L -L, movie .com.

33:36

Do you have any other contact information or website information? I love the name of your media company,

33:44

Bronze Serpent Media. Tell us about that briefly and how people could get in touch with you about 20lb

33:52

Sledge and anything else that they want to find out more about Zoe Rachel.

33:59

Wow, thank you so much. Like you said, my website is called bronzeserpentmedia .com, just think

34:04

John 3, 14 through 16. Right there is where you can find all my contact information,

34:11

Facebook, Twitter, and be able to contact me through my email. It does have information about my band, 20lb

34:19

Sledge. Hopefully, God willing, that our next album will be dropping this year. I also have my books there.

34:26

My second book is A Solid Right Cross. Think of it as my Christian conservative manifesto. And anything else that you might want to find out,

34:35

I hope to see you guys there. And keep in mind that our guest Zoe spells his name differently.

34:42

So on Facebook, there's no F in Alfonzo, it's Alonzo on Facebook. And you may find it spelled differently in different places.

34:51

But I am very thrilled about this interview and hope to have many more waiting us.

34:58

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Joe. Thank you.

35:05

Well, God bless you, brother. And we'll talk to you soon. All righty. Have a good day. You too.

35:11

And don't go away, folks, because we have Scott Klusendorf coming up right after this message break.

35:20

He is the author and founder of the

35:26

Life Training Institute, LTI. And after this station break, we are going to be discussing lessons to be learned from the

35:35

Gosnell movie. And we're also going to be learning more about Life Training Institute and hearing more about the horrific sin of infanticide that is plaguing the world when we come back.

35:48

And our guest will be for the remainder of the program, Scott Klusendorf. If you have any questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

35:59

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence. If you live outside the

36:05

USA, don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with Scott Klusendorf. Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Hi, Phil Johnson here. I'm Executive Director of John MacArthur's Media Ministry, Grace to You, and I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, so I'm delighted that my friend

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Chris Arnzen and I will be heading down to Atlanta for the G3 Conference, where I'll be joining

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James White, Steve Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Bice, and a host of other speakers to address the topic of biblical understanding of missions.

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Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference from January 17th through the 19th.

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Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth to say hi to Chris. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

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That's g3conference .com. See you there. And I can't wait to see

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Phil Johnson and all my friends at the G3 Conference coming up sooner than you think.

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It's going to be in January, but I'm sure these next three months are going to be shooting by like a rocket.

42:33

By the way, if my first guest Zoe is still listening or is listening later on to the recording, the background music to that ad features the drumming of Alphonse Mouzon.

42:44

I know that you're a drummer. I strongly urge you to look up on the internet the music of Alphonse Mouzon, who is a master jazz drummer.

42:54

That happened to be from the album that he recorded with Larry Coryell called

43:01

Back Together Again. I just thought I'd let Zoe Rachel know about that. But now I'm delighted to have, for the remainder of the program,

43:09

Scott Klusendorf, author and founder and president of Life Training Institute. We're going to be discussing lessons to be learned from the

43:16

Gosnell film, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Scott Klusendorf.

43:22

Good to be with you, Chris. I'm impressed with your jazz chops. I owe that actually to my second oldest brother,

43:33

Andy Arnzen. Some of you know that Andy, sadly, is in a nursing home after a stroke.

43:39

He's paralyzed on the left side of his body, but Andy was not only a phenomenal musician, actually by trade for at least a third of his life,

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I think, but he also had a very wide spectrum of albums, thousands of albums, and one of his great loves was modern jazz in addition to traditional jazz.

44:05

And Larry Coryell and Alphonse Mouzon were amongst his favorites, and he introduced me to that music, and I will always be grateful to him for that.

44:17

Good choice. But tell our listeners who are unfamiliar with Life Training Institute, also known as LTI, tell our listeners about that.

44:27

What we do is we equip Christians to make a persuasive case for the lives of the unborn in the public square, and we do that by focusing on the humanity of the unborn and the inhumanity of abortion.

44:39

And we argue our case using science to establish that the unborn are distinct living and whole human beings, and philosophy to argue that there's no essential difference between you, the unborn, and you, the born, that would justify killing you at that earlier stage.

44:55

Differences of size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you in the womb, but not now.

45:05

Yeah, exactly. People always talk about a viable fetus. Well, if you left a newly born baby in a room just for a matter of days, it would surely perish.

45:18

So, I mean, even young children need to be fed and need to be cared for after they're born, so the whole concept of justifying murdering pre -born human beings is not only nonsensical, it's satanic.

45:36

Oh, absolutely right, and I think it's safe to say that Satan revels in child sacrifice, and you look at what

45:43

God gave the prophet Jeremiah as a job description. He told him, I want you to go out and testify against this people, and one of the sins they were doing was sacrificing their own sons and daughters, and then

45:56

God gives them this, and then God gives Jeremiah this stunning preview of what's coming.

46:02

He says, no one's going to listen to you. Talk about a disheartening thing, and as I read that today while I was reading

46:09

Scripture this morning, I thought about the movie that we're talking about today, this Gosnell movie, where the media has tried to just ignore it, and they've tried to just pretend it doesn't exist, and Chris, this is the world that we as Christians live in, where we are called to be faithful testimonies to the truth, even if the culture doesn't want to hear it.

46:30

Well, if you could, tell us about your own reaction to the movie, as I said earlier during our first interview with Zoe Rachel, one of the actors in the film.

46:40

I have not seen it. I will, God willing, be there at the 7 .45 p .m.

46:45

showing this evening in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania to see it for the first time. Tell us about how the movie impacted you and some of the lessons we can learn from this movie.

46:56

This is a good film. It's well -acted, it's well -written, and I thought the storyline was very gripping.

47:03

I think there's three big takeaways for pro -life Christians from this movie, and it is a movie that does not show the graphic imagery of abortion, though you watch the jury viewing the graphic imagery.

47:19

But the movie nonetheless has three takeaways, and the first is that visuals matter, that if you're going to reach a culture that wants an issue to just go away, you're going to have to reawaken its moral conscience.

47:33

And this is something that we've seen historically for the last 150 years and even longer,

47:39

Chris. Think back to Frederick Douglass confronting Abraham Lincoln on the issue of slavery. Frederick Douglass, the great black abolitionist, said to the president,

47:48

Mr. President, your arguments are wonderful. You're doing a great job establishing a historical and intellectual foundation for the value of the slave.

47:59

However, your arguments are essentially falling on deaf ears because people, until they have their consciences awakened, are going to laugh this stuff off, and what's needed right now is more thunder, more heat than simply logical analysis.

48:16

Now, I think Douglass was onto something. He wasn't saying that intellectual arguments don't work.

48:21

He wasn't saying we need to throw them out. He was saying that the most persuasive way to arrest the conscience of the nation is to combine disturbing imagery with the arguments you're making.

48:34

And shortly thereafter, we started getting the first black -and -white photographs of slaves that had been beaten and dehumanized, and it changed how a lot of people felt, and the same is true with abortion.

48:46

And we see that in the movie when the jury and even parts of the prosecution team that are not pro -life going into this film, when they see the graphic evidence, it's a game changer.

48:58

The whole narrative changes. Yeah, and in fact, I was, as you may have heard if you were listening before you came on,

49:06

I asked Zoe about the PG rating, and he said that the movie was tastefully done. Well, while I agree that there is a time and a place to be tasteful,

49:17

I also have been saying for years that conservative and pro -life people have to be more consistent and more loud in our voices to demand or to make happen in some way the televising of abortions, because people, especially near election cycles, we need to see, the public needs to see what is going on so they can vote with intelligence.

49:47

People still have this concept that these are blobs of tissue that are being removed, just like an appendix might be removed from someone's body.

49:57

I mean, I'm not saying that all people are that ignorant. My friend Jeff Durbin, who is involved in abortion mill evangelism, he actually says that most of the women going in for abortions know they are killing a baby.

50:08

But still, you have a large number of people in the public who I believe are still very ignorant about this, and just like we saw the films of the liberated death camps that the

50:21

Nazis orchestrated after the Russian and American GIs liberated those camps, and we saw those films, those films were necessary to convince the world that those things happened.

50:36

People even in Germany didn't believe that those things happened. You're right, Chris. In fact, even today, parents will take their kids, even at middle school age, to go see films like Hacksaw Ridge, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan.

50:52

And by the way, I think these films have a great deal of value to them, but I know why the parents are doing it.

50:57

Although the films are incredibly graphic, they convey truths that words alone simply cannot convey.

51:04

And as our speaking team at LTI goes into Catholic and Protestant high schools and secular universities and makes the case for the lives of the unborn, we've noticed a progression that never fails to come true.

51:18

And that progression goes like this. You change how people feel about abortion as a predicate to changing how they think and ultimately behave.

51:27

And visuals change how they feel. It levels the playing field. So now when we talk about abortion, we're not shouting conclusions to people about what it is, we're establishing facts about what it is.

51:42

And that's the key. I think my colleague, Greg Cunningham, puts it brilliantly. He says, when you show pictures of abortion, abortion protests itself.

51:52

Well, we're going to go to our midway break right now. This is the longer than normal break that we have every day, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break so that they can localize

52:05

Iron Sherp and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida with their own commercials and public service announcements. So please be patient as we take this longer than normal break.

52:13

Take this time to write down questions for Scott Klusendorf. Also, take this time to write down information provided by our advertisers so you can more frequently and more successfully patronize them because we rely upon their advertising dollars to exist.

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And therefore, if you patronize them more frequently, they are more likely to remain our sponsors. So please keep that in mind.

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But send in your email if you have a question for Scott Klusendorf on abortion in general, about the

52:41

Life Training Institute in general, or even specifically on the Gosnell film. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

52:49

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

52:58

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And obviously, whenever we're talking about abortion on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, that would lend itself to people perhaps having a question that they want to ask anonymously because they may have had an abortion.

53:16

They may be contemplating an abortion. They may have loved ones who are having or contemplating having abortions.

53:24

Well, you can certainly send in your question anonymously. But if it's not a personal and private matter, please try to give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Scott Klusendorf after these messages from our sponsor.

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I'm so delighted that my friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

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I hope you all join Chris and me for this phenomenal event. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

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I just thought I'd remind you of that. Before I return to Scott Klusendorf, I just have a couple of more announcements to make about special events coming up.

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Next month, God willing, I will be at the Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology again.

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I believe this is my third or fourth attendance to this wonderful conference, Manning and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio Exhibitor's Booth.

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The theme this year is The Glory of the Cross. It's November 9th and the 10th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

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alliancenet .org, click on events, and then scroll down to the

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Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology. Another event where I am going to be for the

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Atlanta, Georgia from Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th.

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The theme this January is The Mission of God, A Biblical Understanding of Missions. It's being held once again at the

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Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

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They are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people there this January, so if you have a church, parachurch, ministry, or business that you would like to promote amongst that crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people, just like I will be doing with my

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Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth, then I strongly urge you to not only register for attendance, but register for an exhibitor's booth for your church, parachurch, ministry, or business.

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Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. Keep in mind that if you have

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Spanish -speaking or bilingual friends, they are having an exclusively Spanish -speaking edition of the G3 Conference on Wednesday, January 16th.

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And for the English -speaking folks attending from the 17th through the 19th, they once again have an enormous roster of very impressive speakers, including

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Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Brody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

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Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio.

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We have Stephen J. Nichols speaking there, the president of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

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R .C. Sproul and Ligetier Ministries, and many, many more are on that roster. Go to g3conference .com,

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g3conference .com. Last but not least, if you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and you don't want us to go away, you love sharing the free

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I'm giving the wrong website, go to ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:08:01

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01:09:06

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01:09:39

Send me that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. Also, use that email address to send in a question for Scott Klusendorf, our guest today.

01:09:49

We are discussing the Gosnell movie and lessons that can be learned about infanticide in America and globally from this movie.

01:10:00

The email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And Scott, before we go to another reason, or should

01:10:09

I say another lesson that we can learn from the Gosnell movie, we do have a question from one of our listeners.

01:10:15

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, how do we bring up these issues with our pro -choice family and friends without these becoming horrific arguments and perhaps even destroying relationships?

01:10:34

Because of the fact that this is such an evil thing plaguing our globe, it is a difficult thing to bring up with politeness and sensitivity and smiles and warmth.

01:10:47

This is as ugly as the Holocaust of the early 20th century in Nazi Germany.

01:10:53

And how can we possibly have discussion with those who disagree on this without getting angry with them?

01:11:00

Great question, Susan. Thank you for raising it. One of the things I like to do is engage with questions.

01:11:07

Instead of just shouting a conclusion, I ask a question to provoke, hopefully, deep thought.

01:11:15

And for anyone who's seen our television series Life is Best, which our good friend Todd Friel produced, you will notice that my speaking team and I interact with secular students at a secular university on the issue of abortion.

01:11:29

And we have dozens of conversations, and not one of them ever got heated. In fact, the students, all of whom disagreed with us for the most part, did not get angry at us.

01:11:41

They thanked us. So questions that I have found helpful go something like this.

01:11:47

Do you believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life? Now, the reason why that question is helpful is our culture is obsessed with equality.

01:11:57

They want income equality, social equality. They want marriage equality, where if you want to marry your canary, you can do it, as my friend

01:12:04

Greg Koukl points out. And we can tap into that by beginning to show that if you really care about equality, do you care about it for each and every human being?

01:12:15

And of course, most people don't care about it. They just want to care about it. And by asking that question, we get to the main thing, which is what makes us valuable in the first place?

01:12:26

Then another question I've found very helpful is to say, after I've engaged that question of equality, is to say something like this.

01:12:34

If it's wrong to hurt people because of their skin color or gender, why is it okay to hurt them because of their size, level of development, or degree of dependency?

01:12:46

And it's funny, you'll watch jaws drop when people begin to consider these questions, because they're intrinsic, or they're human beings with intrinsic value.

01:12:56

They bear the image of God. And so inside, they recognize immediately that human beings shouldn't be mistreated simply because they look different than us, because they happen to act different than us.

01:13:07

And it brings the abortion issue right into their own universe, where we can start with some common ground and begin a dialogue.

01:13:14

Now, I'm not going to pretend that there's a magic formula you can lay out there that will cause every critic to fall on their knees and say, thank you for coming into my life to straighten out my twisted thinking.

01:13:27

Persuasion doesn't work that way. In fact, the great debater William Rusher, in his book,

01:13:33

How to Win Arguments More Often Than Not, made the point that arguments are seldom won on the spot.

01:13:39

They're won weeks later when the person is alone with his or her thoughts, and it dawns on them, you had the better case.

01:13:46

And if we look at our own lives, we're like this, Chris. I mean, any of us that are married, when our spouse makes a good argument against a position we hold dearly, we generally don't slap ourselves on the knee and say, honey,

01:13:58

I'm so glad that the Lord put you here to straighten me out. No, we sort of passive -aggressively resent the blow.

01:14:06

It takes us a while to deal with it and process it. And we shouldn't think that the people we're talking to are any different, but we can still give them something to think about.

01:14:17

Great. Thank you, Susan, for the excellent question. Now, if you could, Scott, give us another lesson that we can learn from the

01:14:22

Gosnell movie. Well, if the first lesson was that visuals matter and change the narrative, the second lesson is keep the main thing the main thing.

01:14:32

Listen, the prosecution team in this movie had the kitchen sink thrown at them. Critics said, oh, by opening up this abortion case, you just hate poor women.

01:14:43

You want poor women to suffer. And oh, you're a racist because you're going after a clinic in a minority neighborhood.

01:14:49

And oh, you just want women to suffer who won't be able to get their needed health care services.

01:14:54

And of course, the murderer himself was black or is black, I should say. Right, right.

01:15:00

And so the prosecution team is being subjected to an avalanche of criticisms that are completely beside the point.

01:15:09

The issue here was two questions. Were children killed after birth and were women killed in this clinic?

01:15:19

That was the issue. Were innocent human beings in the womb and later after birth being killed?

01:15:25

That was a focus. And were the mothers who were orchestrating these killings also being harmed?

01:15:31

And the jury was forced to look at that because the prosecution team would not let the critics change the narrative.

01:15:40

And here's the lesson, Chris, for pro -lifers. Right now in the pro -life movement, you've got this strand of pro -life thinkers out there that say, if we're going to be legitimate, if we're going to be credible, we can't just be pro -life.

01:15:56

We have to be pro -abundant life or we have to be whole life. And we have to take on a whole bunch of other issues besides abortion.

01:16:05

We have to take on the problem with fatherless children and fatherless families.

01:16:12

We have to take on the task of taking care of the poor. We've got to be for immigration reform.

01:16:18

We've got to be pro -refugee. We have to be against gun violence. We have to be against the opiate addiction.

01:16:26

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And basically what's happening is pro -lifers are buying the premise of our critics that basically says you have no right to call yourself pro -life unless you take on all these other issues.

01:16:40

What we need to do is take a lesson from what the prosecution team did here.

01:16:45

They kept the main thing the main thing. And here's the question pro -lifers need to put to their critics.

01:16:51

Instead of caving and saying we're going to take on all these other issues and spread our already thin issues or thin resources, even thinner, fighting all these other injustices, what we need to do is look our critics in the eye and simply say how does it follow that because I oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being that I am therefore responsible to fix everything wrong with society?

01:17:15

Make them answer that question. I mean, do we go to the American Cancer Society and say you have no right to call yourself a health care organization if you don't take on other diseases like strokes, heart attack, lupus,

01:17:27

Crohn's disease? I mean, nobody would say that to the American Cancer Society and yet pro -lifers buy the premise of our critics that because we don't want innocent children killed we've got to take responsibility for everything.

01:17:42

Nobody on the issue of spousal abuse says listen, the underlying cause of spousal abuse is societal problems that run very deep and before we can outlaw spousal abuse we need to be promoting counseling for men and federal programs aimed at helping men not be so violent and until we do all that we can't outlaw spousal abuse.

01:18:05

No, we outlaw spousal abuse and rightfully so, the same is true with abortion. Excellent.

01:18:11

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania and Arnie says, do you have optimism over the future of America in regards to abortion finally becoming extinct from our behavior and laws that permit it?

01:18:31

Do you think that the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is going to really help this issue or do you think so -called conservatives and Republicans will continue to give lip service to this issue while really doing nothing?

01:18:48

Well, I do think that having a more conservative federal court system is essential to eventually ending abortion but it's not sufficient.

01:18:59

The reason why it's not sufficient is let's say Roe versus Wade were overturned tomorrow, abortion would remain legal in all 50 states the next day.

01:19:09

All that would do was would allow the individual states to begin passing their own legislation without fear of the federal courts in joining it and that's a necessary step.

01:19:21

That needs to happen but it's not going to be sufficient to end abortion. Then the real battle begins.

01:19:27

State by state it's going to come down to do we have enough equipped pro -life

01:19:33

Christians to make the case and build political alliances that will allow us to flex our muscles politically, not for our own benefit because we're wanting attention but for the benefit of those who can't speak for themselves.

01:19:48

So it's a necessary step to reverse Roe v. Wade but it's not a sufficient step if we're talking about the ultimate goal of ending abortion.

01:19:58

Before we go to any more listener questions I'd like you to give us another lesson that we can learn from the

01:20:03

Gosnell movie. Well the third lesson and this one is a biggie for us.

01:20:09

World views matter. If you answer the question what makes humans valuable in the first place with a functional or performance definition, meaning you define human value not based on whose image we bear but the the attributes we have like self -awareness or viability that you mentioned earlier or the ability to feel pain or the ability to intellectually interact with our environments.

01:20:37

If you define human value on those terms you get savage inequality because those with more of those traits have greater rights than those with less.

01:20:49

Christians have a better answer. We are all equally valuable because we all equally bear the image of our maker.

01:20:56

We are all intrinsically valuable meaning our value does not come from what we do functionally.

01:21:02

It comes from whose image we bear. That argument is one that can stand up because we can make a case for what constitutes real equality.

01:21:11

The secular culture talks about equality but how do they ground it? Look if my value is based on some trait that may come and go and that none of us share equally you have no basis for talking about equality.

01:21:25

You've got to find something we all share equally that doesn't come in degrees like self -awareness.

01:21:32

What is that thing? Well the only thing is that we all have the same human nature.

01:21:38

What's a human nature? Well a human nature is what makes you human and not a dog or a cat.

01:21:44

A dog has a dog nature. A cat I will argue has a satanic nature. You have a human nature.

01:21:52

The reality is I've learned that since we now have a cat at our house. There's nothing more creepy than staring across a dark room and seeing a cat staring at you.

01:22:01

Oh they are quite the critters let me tell you. But she's endeared herself to us so there'll be no cat hangings in our house.

01:22:08

But the reality is what makes us human is we all have the same fundamental nature and if you ground human equality in our common human nature rather than functions that come and go that none of us share equally you have a basis for equality.

01:22:23

The minute you throw that out you get Gosnell who arbitrarily decides who counts and who doesn't and you get a host of other evils that we've seen historically where those in power decide what traits matter and everybody who doesn't make the grade gets treated in a subhuman fashion.

01:22:41

That's not the kind of culture that we want to live in and Christian pro -lifers have a better alternative to that.

01:22:48

Well we're going to our final break right now. If you do want to send in a question to our guest

01:22:53

Scott Klusendorf please do so now because we're rapidly running out of time. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:23:00

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com and once again please give us your first name your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:23:08

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01:23:17

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It's great to see him there. You and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place, which is a highlight.

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01:36:49

We are discussing valuable lessons that could be learned from the Gosnell movie. Our email address is

01:36:56

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:37:01

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who wants to know what specifically does the

01:37:06

Life Training Institute do to help equip churches and Christian individuals be more equipped to battle this grotesque sin plaguing our nation?

01:37:18

Forgive me if you went into detail before. I may have missed it because I have tuned in late.

01:37:24

No worries, Bobby. Well, what we do at LTI is we try to give you, the lay Christian, the tools of thought that you need to engage people who don't share your biblical worldview.

01:37:35

As Christians, we've got common ground with other Christians. We can appeal to the Imago Dei, we can appeal to the authority of Scripture, and we should.

01:37:45

With non -believers, we absolutely want to bring the truth of Scripture to bear on the issue of abortion, but we may have to establish some common ground before they'll give us a hearing.

01:37:57

So in that realm, what we try to do is give you arguments that will resonate with people who don't think religious knowledge counts as truth, with a capital

01:38:06

T, and we give them something to think about. We put, as my friend Greg Kokel says, a pebble in their shoe.

01:38:12

So we do this as an organization a number of different ways. Number one, we go into Catholic and Protestant high schools and we do assemblies.

01:38:20

And by the way, Chris, any of your listeners that would like to have one of our speakers come and do an assembly at a local

01:38:26

Catholic or Protestant high school, we would love to hear from them. The other thing that we do is we speak at Christian worldview conferences like Summit Ministries, like the

01:38:35

G3 conference that has been mentioned, did that a few years ago, and other venues where we equip believers with the best pro -life arguments out there.

01:38:43

You know, one of the problems, Chris, is that we have a lot of smart guys on our side, the Robbie Georges, the

01:38:49

Frank Beckwiths, the Pat Lees, the J .P. Morelands, and others who are doing phenomenal work at the academic level making a case for the lives of the unborn.

01:39:01

The problem is very few lay people read those guys. So what we try to do on our team is take the best pro -life arguments out there and make them understandable to lay people.

01:39:12

So we'll do half -day training seminars. That training comes through in my book, The Case for Life.

01:39:18

It comes through in our television series, Life is Best. And we equip you to make that case for life.

01:39:24

Then there's another thing that we do. We also equip you to bring the Christian gospel to men and women who've been wounded by abortion.

01:39:33

You know, it's one thing to lay out your case for the pro -life view, which is an absolutely essential part of any effective pro -life apologetic.

01:39:42

But that apologetic is not sufficient if we also, or if we fail to point people to the only remedy that will fix their brokenness, and that's the gospel.

01:39:53

I've had Christians say to me, you know, the only way people will understand the pro -life view is if we preach the gospel.

01:40:02

Well, that's true and not true. It's certainly not true that you have to become a

01:40:08

Christian before you can be converted to the pro -life view. We've got plenty of non -Christian pro -life activists and advocates out there who do very good work on behalf of the unborn who may not be

01:40:20

Christian. However, here's the thing, and this is what pro -lifers need to understand. You will not have a real remedy for people if they're broken because of the sin of abortion if you're not also giving them the gospel.

01:40:35

And we tell you how to do that in the context of abortion. And then the final thing we do is we can equip you with the tools you need to become a pro -life communicator in your local communities, teach you how to go into Catholic and Protestant high schools and classrooms and make a case for life and handle objections.

01:40:56

So we're an equipping ministry. That's our main focus. Well, you said something that actually resonates with one of our listeners' questions.

01:41:04

Ronald in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York says, I am as strongly pro -life as you can get.

01:41:12

I believe that no Christian could logically and consistently believe in the inerrant scriptures and come away being pro -choice or pro - abortion.

01:41:22

However, don't we who are conservatives and pro -lifers need to be very leery of using this as just another social gospel element just as the liberals had at one time and still do use as a part of their social gospel things that are beautiful and good and commanded of the scriptures such as feeding and clothing and housing for those who are poor and who are in unfortunate circumstances in life, but that became their gospel.

01:41:58

Don't we have to be careful not to think and convince others that being pro -life is equal to becoming a

01:42:06

Christian and also that the being pro -life is just as important as the gospel itself?

01:42:13

Thank you for that question. I would argue this, that the abortion responsibilities of the local church relate to the

01:42:24

Great Commission. Let's go to Matthew 28. Christ gave the church the responsibility to go make disciples.

01:42:31

He then told us what that means. Making disciples means teaching people to obey all that he has commanded.

01:42:39

One of those commands is we're not to shed innocent blood, Exodus 23 7, Proverbs 6, 16 to 19,

01:42:46

Matthew 5 21 to name a few. Abortion is the shedding of innocent blood.

01:42:52

Therefore, abortion fits within the Great Commission responsibilities of the local church.

01:42:58

It's not a distraction from it. So I would argue we don't have to choose between preaching the gospel and being faithful witnesses on the pro -life issue.

01:43:08

We can do both, because scripture indicates that the shedding of innocent blood is an egregious sin that God cares in particular about a great deal.

01:43:20

And therefore, as believers, when we address that, we're not doing something extra biblical.

01:43:25

We're doing something that fits within the command to go make disciples. Yes, I agree with you 100%.

01:43:33

And just to clarify though, being passionately an advocate for the sanctity of human life for unborn children does not make you one who is worthy of heaven in and of itself.

01:43:53

No, not at all. Listen, we as Christians need to be very careful that we do not engage in co -confession with people who do not hold the truth we hold from scripture.

01:44:07

However, we can be co -belligerent with them, meaning we can work with them to promote justice for the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human family, the unborn.

01:44:18

Co -belligerence does not need to mean co -confession, and I resist any effort for co -confession, but I will work with non -believers,

01:44:29

I will work with people of other faiths who don't share my biblical view, if they are willing to help us save children.

01:44:36

If the town is on fire and we need a bucket brigade, we don't quiz people theologically before putting out the fire.

01:44:45

However, it doesn't mean I'm going to show up next Sunday at church and say, let's let the atheist who helped me pass water preach.

01:44:54

That isn't going to happen. So we need to be very distinct in our worldview, very distinct in our theology, and we need to be careful that we are not confusing co -belligerence with co -confession.

01:45:07

Yes, it's interesting that you mentioned atheists running to help put out the fire with the water buckets.

01:45:14

It might surprise a lot of people that the late Christopher Hitchens, very notorious atheist, prolific writer, defending that position, he was pro -life.

01:45:24

He just saw the vividly clear and undeniable evidence that unborn children are indeed children, and even according to his worldview, they shouldn't be murdered.

01:45:34

Whether they are being covered by a woman's stomach or whether they are outside breathing the air around them, they should not be murdered.

01:45:44

And in fact, gruesomely murdered, ripped to pieces while they are still alive. Exactly right,

01:45:49

Chris. You make an excellent point, and that is, unbelievers are capable of recognizing moral truths at the epistemic level.

01:45:58

What they cannot do is ground them in a logical way, because outside the character of God, outside the character of a holy

01:46:06

God, objective morals don't make sense. However, because they are image bearers, even though they do not yet believe on the

01:46:14

Lord Jesus, they can still recognize moral truths and respond to them.

01:46:20

They are just not spiritually alive in the way that merits them heaven. We have

01:46:27

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, One thing that I rarely hear about from my fellow pro -life advocates is that if a woman's life is in danger and the unborn child and the mother are certainly going to die if a delivery of a pregnancy comes to full term, there is the option on occasion where premature delivery can be induced by a physician, where even if that premature delivery will result in the very likelihood that the child will die, that is not the intention of the premature delivery, and the child is not brutally murdered and ripped to pieces.

01:47:18

Do you believe that this is an acceptable practice when you have a situation where both mother and child are certainly going to die if the delivery comes full term?

01:47:32

Well, let me give you an exact case from medicine where this is true most of the time, and that being ectopic pregnancy.

01:47:39

This is where the embryo, the developing human implants on the inner wall the fallopian tube, not the uterine wall where it should develop.

01:47:48

As that embryo grows in that narrow tube, the risk to the mother is obvious. Internal hemorrhaging, and according to the

01:47:55

CDC, the Mayo Clinic, and other reputable medical sources, the threat of death is real to both.

01:48:03

So let's assume you're a pro -life physician and you have a situation where a parent or a patient presents herself with ectopic pregnancy.

01:48:12

Do you do nothing and let two humans die, or do you act in such a way that you save one life even though the unintended but foreseen result is the death of the developing human?

01:48:26

And my answer is you act to save the mother. Now, right away, people say, well, isn't that abortion?

01:48:32

No. Let's define abortion. It's very important that we do this, defining terms. Abortion is the intentional killing of a human fetus.

01:48:42

In this case, the doctor foresees the death of the embryo, but he does not intend it, in much the same way that a general in a just war can foresee the death of innocent human beings, though he does not intend them.

01:48:56

In the act of abortion, the abortionist not only foresees the death of the unborn, he intends the death of the unborn.

01:49:05

So the two cases are not parallel. And in this situation, the greatest moral good you can do, given the situation you've presented with, is to save the one life that you can save and not let two humans die.

01:49:20

Now, I've had people say to me, well, no, the medical evidence says you don't have to end the pregnancy.

01:49:27

I've looked at the evidence, and I haven't seen any credible sources that convince me that we have a way to save both mother and child.

01:49:36

It may happen now and then, but that's not the norm. The other thing I would say is, I've had Christians say, well, why don't we just trust

01:49:42

God in this situation? And my answer is, if you have a morally acceptable option open to you, and you do not take it, and that woman dies that you could have saved, was that faith or was that presumption?

01:49:57

I think we need to be very careful that in the broken world we live in, that we act morally, and one of the ways we act morally is to do the greatest good we can, given the situation that we've been handed.

01:50:08

Yeah, you might have a circumstance with conjoined twins where the babies will both certainly die in a certain circumstances.

01:50:18

I'm not saying that that always happens, but where you are separating the twins, not with the intention of killing one, even if the doctors know that it is very probable, if not certain, that one will die.

01:50:30

That's not your intention behind doing it. That's correct, and that happened, as a matter of fact, in England about 10 to 12 years ago, and some pro -lifers were very upset about this, but what the doctors were clearly trying to do is save the one life that they could save.

01:50:47

The smaller twin was literally killing the larger one, and they couldn't save the smaller one.

01:50:53

She didn't have the organs needed to sustain her own life, and they could save the larger child, and so that's what they did.

01:51:01

We have, let's see here, we have Robert in Westchester County, New York, and Robert says, what is your opinion on incrementalism when it comes to establishing the death of the abortion industry in the

01:51:19

United States? One example that I am thinking of, I am aware that there is one state at least in the

01:51:26

United States that has outlawed the abortion of unborn children because of their race or gender.

01:51:35

Is that a good way, if you know you cannot establish a completely pro -life state where abortion altogether is outlawed, that at least that is a step in the right direction, and it also gets the leftists to consider what is going on, because even leftists would probably be opposed to an unborn child being murdered just because it was female or black or Hispanic or Asian.

01:52:02

Yeah, that's a great question. By the way, I've written a rather lengthy article on this called

01:52:08

Win Perfection Kills that you can get at townhall .com, Robert. It's called

01:52:13

Win Perfection Kills, but here's my short answer. As pro -lifers, we have an obligation to limit evil and promote the good insofar as possible, given the political realities in front of us.

01:52:27

We are always required to do everything we can to limit evil as much as we can until all children are protected.

01:52:36

You are compromising on incremental legislation if your ultimate goal is not to protect all children.

01:52:43

You only want to protect some. Now, in response to this, I've had pro -lifers say, well, what about legislation that basically says at the end of the day, well, then you can kill the baby?

01:52:53

No pro -lifer anywhere is deciding which children are going to be killed and which children will live.

01:53:01

The federal courts have already decided that no children have a right to life. None. No fetus, according to Roe v.

01:53:08

Wade or Doe v. Bolton, has an intrinsic right to life. Not a one. What we are doing is not deciding who lives and dies.

01:53:16

The court did that. We are the ones forcing the other side to compromise because now with these incremental bills, you can't kill all the children.

01:53:26

And as soon as we're able to protect all of them, we're going to do that. That's our ultimate goal, that every child is protected.

01:53:33

But till then, we're not going to sit back and let some die that could have been saved.

01:53:39

That's not good moral thinking. Well, I would like you and the five remaining minutes to have an uninterrupted time to unburden your heart and have what is most important to you etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:53:54

And if you could also remind us of the importance of this Gosnell movie as well. Well, on the

01:54:00

Gosnell movie, again, I think the three big takeaways are visuals matter. When people see abortion, it changes the narrative.

01:54:08

Secondly, we got to keep the main thing. Right now, you've even got pro -life

01:54:14

Christian leaders who I respect, who I work with in many cases, trying to make the case that the pro -life movement has got to spread its resources even thinner, fighting other evils.

01:54:25

And that will bankrupt us. That will cause a huge problem. Look, as a Christian, I will care about a lot of things.

01:54:32

But it doesn't follow that the operational objectives of the pro -life movement have to be broad and inclusive as well.

01:54:39

We got to keep the main thing the main thing. And then thirdly, it's very important, and I think the movie does an excellent job of pointing this out.

01:54:47

It's very important as pro -lifers that worldviews matter. And we've got to make sure the culture understands what happens once you buy into a worldview that says each and every human being doesn't have an equal right to life.

01:55:02

When you buy into that worldview, you get Gosnell. You get a historical storyline of atrocities done in the last couple of hundred years that is just staggering.

01:55:15

Behold, because people decided somewhere that not all humans count. What I would say in the remaining few minutes,

01:55:23

Chris, a couple of practical points for your listeners. Number one, make sure you understand the foundation of your pro -life view.

01:55:31

The foundation of your pro -life view is that a holy God has made human beings in his image.

01:55:37

They are image bearers, and because of that, they are infinitely precious, and they are intrinsically valuable.

01:55:44

That's why we oppose abortion. And opposing abortion is not a distraction from the gospel.

01:55:50

It fits naturally within the Great Commission responsibilities of the local church, like I mentioned earlier.

01:55:58

The second thing I would say is put some feet to your view that human beings have intrinsic value, and one of the ways you can do that is the midterm elections.

01:56:08

Look, I do not for a moment pretend that elections save people from hell.

01:56:14

Now, godly election does, where he chooses those that are his, but when we're talking about political election, we're not talking here about saving souls.

01:56:24

We're talking about saving babies from the dumpster, and that matters to the Lord, because the Lord cares about justice.

01:56:30

Martin Luther King put it real well. He said, the law cannot make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and that matters.

01:56:37

In the same way, the reason we as Christians need to be involved and vote in elections like the one coming up is we care about unborn children.

01:56:45

We're not doing this for selfish reasons. We're not doing it to empower our own special interest.

01:56:51

We're doing it because we care about the shedding of innocent blood, and this election matters.

01:56:57

It's huge, Chris, and I encourage your listeners to take a part in that and to vote for candidates that are going to uphold the sanctity of human life.

01:57:07

And then finally, I would say, hey, if you are wondering what can I do to get started,

01:57:13

I don't understand the moral logic of the pro -life view, it's new to me, I would encourage you to go to the

01:57:19

Colson Center's website. You can do that by going to breakpoint .org

01:57:24

and getting the prayer guide that John Stone Street and I co -authored that in 21 days will not only give you great ways to pray about this issue, but each day there's a one -minute reflection.

01:57:38

It only takes one minute to read it and equip yourself on pro -life apologetics, and we give you, in that 21 -day format, all the tools of thought you need to begin engaging on this issue in a

01:57:52

Christ -honoring way. And I would say, hey, if you're new to this, that's a great place to start.

01:57:58

Great. Do you have anything coming up in the near future that you care to mention as far as events that the Life Training Institute is orchestrating?

01:58:05

Well, I've got a number of chapels coming up. I've got chapel at Colorado Christian University next week.

01:58:13

I've got a bioethics conference coming up in Billings, Montana, that's going to deal with all the fun stuff, reproductive -assisted technologies, death and dying, euthanasia, physician -assisted suicide, biotechnology, so all that good stuff that will earn you friends at the

01:58:30

Thanksgiving table. That's what my life is, Chris.

01:58:36

Nobody invites me for Thanksgiving, and it has nothing to do with any of those things.

01:58:46

They just don't want me there. Hey, there you go. Well, I would be glad to invite you because you've got good taste in jazz, so that alone would get you there.

01:58:55

The other thing I would tell your listeners is nationally, on December 3rd and 4th, Focus on the

01:59:00

Family will be rebroadcasting my talk on how to present a winning pro -life message.

01:59:08

I guess, I didn't know this, but it ended up being one of their top broadcasts for the year, so they're going to run it again, and if your listeners want to tune in,

01:59:16

I'm sure they might find some nuggets there to draw from. Great. Well, I know that your website is prolifetraining .com,

01:59:23

and also, don't forget the Gosnell Movie website is gosnellmovie .com,

01:59:31

G -O -S -N as in Nancy, E -L -L, movie .com, and you can find out where Gosnell is playing at a theater near you, and perhaps you could even rent a theater and have it aired or played,

01:59:43

I should say, at a theater near you if they allow you to do that kind of thing. I want to thank you so much, Scott, for being on the program.

01:59:49

I want to thank Zoe Rachel for being on the program as well. I want to thank everybody who listened today, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater