The 5 Minute Pro-Life Argument

Kootenai Church

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Television news is not about giving you serious content. It's entertainment

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Have you ever wondered why there's music for the the news? I don't know I remember the first time

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I I noticed this there was a program on back in the 70s called Walter Cronkite's universe

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Gee, I didn't know he had one But there was this music that went with it that identified you couldn't forget it

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Every time you heard that music you thought of Walter Cronkite's universe. Why? Because news is not about serious content.

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So what's the point of all this? Why do we as believers? often struggle

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Communicating not only our pro -life views But our biblical worldview to a culture out there that seems to just be going nuts

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What is one of the things we're up against? I'll tell you what one of the things we're up against I'm gonna throw a big word at you

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Epistemology that big word simply means how we know things how we learn about things

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Your neighbors your friends your fellow students are not getting information

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Propositionally the way Lincoln and Douglas's listeners were they're getting it in bits in sound bites and We wonder why we crank up Twitter and all we see are put downs rude sarcasm

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No attempt to engage Rationally, and we wonder why well in a world where everything is disconnected where there isn't

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Attention to detail over a linear argument. That's what you're going to get a sand a soundbite culture think about presidential debates

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How do presidential debates work are they about whoever lays out the the most clear case for a position

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No Presidential debates are minefields. You try to escape them.

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There's no other way you look at it I mean, how can you forget what happened in one of the last?

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presidential debates Hillary Clinton made the comment that she was very glad that a man like Donald Trump was not making laws for this nation and Trump comes up and says yeah, because you'd be in jail and he drops the mic literally drops the mic

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Why did that have such effect Because the people viewing it weren't paying attention to the actual content

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It was all about one -upmanship as one Christian commentator JP Moorland points out in Politics today the makeup artist is more important than the speechwriter

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So what does that mean for us? Especially on an issue like pro -life It means that the way we converse and the way we persuade our fellow citizens is a little different than simply shouting conclusions to them in Fact a colleague of mine

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Greg Cunningham puts it. Well the primary problem with the pro -life movement we've been shouting conclusions rather than establishing facts and One of the ways you reach people in a visual culture where they think and learn in disconnected sound bites is to bypass their normal way of learning and Go right for their intuitions you go right for the heart and Change how they feel as a predicate to changing how they think and ultimately behave.

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I Have seen movies like Schindler's List Saving Private Ryan the

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Passion of the Christ Hacksaw Ridge By the way,

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I met Desmond Doss when I was 11, but I'll answer that in the Q &A if you ask me about that these movies

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Actually did something For learning that no words ever could have done

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You think of other series that are out there like Band of Brothers other historical films that have been made and all of a sudden the public starts paying attention because these films changed how people felt and Encourage them to read on Encourage them to learn more.

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In fact, you even saw university courses pop up where people having watched

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Series like Band of Brothers all of a sudden decided studying D -Day was worth doing at a university level and that happens

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Then you get guys like me who Were such history buffs.

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We take our kids to World War two battle sites So I take my sons to Bastogne in Normandy why because I want them to connect with that at a visceral level and One of the ways we as Christians reach people on the pro -life issue is to first Touch them at the visceral level and in just a moment

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I'm going to show you a video clip that does just that This video clip for any that are here and I'm just scanning to make sure we don't have children under seventh grade here

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If we do parents this clip will not be appropriate for them This clip does not show an abortion from start to finish

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But it does show the aftermath and I want you to know up front. It's tough viewing the 55 second clip

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Although not showing that complete procedure will show you a first second and third trimester fetus that has undergone abortion and The reason we show this clip is not to beat up on people emotionally

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It's not to use images and emotion in place of good arguments

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Nobody thinks a university professor that uses images of the Vietnam War Pictures of children running naked from a village that's just been napalmed

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Nobody thinks that professor is out of line and I would argue the same is true with abortion

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There are millions of our fellow citizens until they see it They will continue to not think about it in any way that comes close to being linear

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Propositional or serious and as a result we will lose this fight This clip is about changing how a culture feels

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When Frederick Douglass confronted Abraham Lincoln on this after the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln's response was well, mr.

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Douglass. We're doing everything we can to humanize the slave and Frederick Douglass said mr.

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President. That's not enough because what the culture needs right now is not logic it needs fire it needs the moral conscience of the nation arrested and One of the ways you do that is to give the culture a glimpse into the behavior that they are not only tolerating

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But promoting this clip. I'm about to show you though Disturbing has a way out for you.

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If you'd rather not watch it. There's no Narration and I will not narrate the clip.

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There's also in it a way for you to just simply look away if you'd rather not watch and parents if there are any children here that you wish

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Not to see advise them to look away during this brief clip as I said

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Friday night Christians do not believe the way out of the abortion mess is to make excuses for it

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In other words when we tell the truth about abortion We don't have to do it by hedging and somehow say well, you know

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Maybe there were circumstances that led to this and we don't encourage people to make excuses for sin rather We encourage them to take advantage of an exchange for sin

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Christ righteousness for their sinfulness. In other words, we point them to the gospel and one of the tragedies in today's culture and Thankfully, it's not true at this church.

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Thankfully. It's not true with pastor Jim and the elders here But one of the tragedies we face is the problem that lots of pastors we encounter

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When we go to speak and show a clip like I'm about to show you they veto it on grounds that we don't want to lay a guilt trip on people who've had abortion and You know what?

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My response is when they say to me. We want to spare people a guilt trip My response is if we don't tell the truth about abortion, we're not sparing people guilt

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We're sparing them healing because unconfessed sin has them out of full fellowship with Jesus We're not using these clips to manipulate we're using them to convey powerful truths

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The culture would rather ignore I want to show you this clip and then what I'm going to do is

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Give you the tools you need To make a case for the pro -life view in five minutes or less with someone that you talk to you will leave this session

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Knowing how to do that and then I'll take your questions because there will be some time left But you'll walk out of here knowing how to do it

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But step one is to simplify things by focusing people on what really matters in this debate

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What's really going on? So without further delay, we're going to roll this clip again If you want to look away you feel the freedom to look away and then when the video concludes

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We'll get busy making that case for you toward the end of World War two

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There was a remarkable event that happened Involving Dwight Eisenhower the

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Supreme Allied commander Eisenhower had a Jewish aid and those of you that have been to the

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Holocaust Museum in Washington DC Have seen the bronze plaque that depicts the story.

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I'm about to tell you Eisenhower had a Jewish aid who badgered him to go look at the death camps and Eisenhower wanted no part of it

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He said I don't want to see your bleepity bleep camps and he kept cussing out his Jewish aid saying

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I'm too busy I got to prosecute a war here. I don't have time to go look at your camps and The Jewish aid despite the impatience of his commanding officer badgered and badgered

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Eisenhower until one day Eisenhower came unglued and said I've had enough

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I will go look at your camps just to get you off my back and the aid puts him in a

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Jeep and Drives him out to Ordorf one of the most notoriously brutal camps

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Eisenhower gets out of the Jeep He walks into a couple of bungalows walks across the courtyard to another building where he ducks behind it and spends 20 minutes throwing up and Then he comes back to the

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Jewish aid and says you get Every company commander on the phone within 50 miles of this place

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I want them to see what I just saw I'm told the American soldier doesn't know what he's fighting for when he sees this.

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He'll know what he's fighting against and men and women if the Jewish Assistant the

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Jewish aid to the Supreme Allied commander had the courage to press his

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Officer to go look at something that he didn't want to see We as Christians have the courage must have the courage

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To confront our friends and fellow citizens with the reality of what abortion is

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It's not a preference issue like choosing chocolate over vanilla and millions of our fellow citizens see it that way

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It's a mere preference you like chocolate I like vanilla pictures like this bust through that denial and Reawaken moral intuitions in a way that words alone are powerless to do and by the way

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This is not something new American missionaries in the Congo in the early 1900s

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Smuggled pictures out of the Congo that put King Leopold out of business in the

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Congo. Here's what Leopold was doing Leopold sent his insurgents into the Congo and These insurgents would round up the village children and they would say to the children you're going to go collect

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Certain levels of ivory and rubber and if you don't get the levels we require of you we're gonna chop your hands off and That's exactly what they did to these kids and some of the black -and -white photos

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You can see online are just gut -wrenching You see a father sitting on the porch of his house

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With his little girl next to him with a stump where there used to be a hand and you see her severed hand a few feet away this

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Injustice was exposed by Christian missionaries like Alice and John Harris who took early black -and -white photographs of the injustice smuggled them out of the

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Congo and Within seven years Leopold is out of business in the Congo That's the power of imagery to change where a culture is and we will not win this abortion fight

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Without arresting the moral conscience of the nation and one of the most powerful tools at our Disposal in a distracted culture our visuals like this

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So, how do we make our case once we change how people feel about abortion?

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And for those of you that were at the conference, you'll you'll indulge me a little review for the sake of your fellow

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Church goers who were not how do we make our case? Well, the first thing we do is simplify the debate by showing it's not about choice

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It's not about privacy. It's not about trusting women to make their own decisions. It's not about any of those things

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It's not about government interference. It's not about men imposing their views on women It's not about you forcing your morality on people.

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The abortion debate is about one question What is the unborn?

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You've got to answer the question. What is the unborn before you answer the question?

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Can I kill the unborn when I debate Nadine Strauss and the former president of the of the

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ACLU? She always speaks first. She is asked to do that. I'm fine with that.

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She gets up and she says the following I am pro -choice Because I do not believe the government should be imposing its view on others

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I believe the family life is a sacred private sphere. The government should not be involved in I don't think that we should be telling people what they do with their private choices

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I'm summarizing her here and she goes on and on along those lines You know what? The first words out of my mouth are in the opening statements of my response

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Men and women I agree with everything Nadine just said She's right

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There should be no laws restricting abortion She's right that pro -lifers like me ought to stay out of this debate

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She's right that the state should not be speaking to the private sphere of the family life

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She is right about all of that. In fact, I agree with her completely

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If by the way all the pro -lifers in the crowd pass out at that point if what

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If the unborn are not human and if Nadine can demonstrate using the science of embryology to show us the unborn or not one of us and Philosophy to show us that even if they are one of us we have no duty to value them

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I will concede this debate because I am vigorously pro -choice on women choosing their own husbands

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Choosing their own world views choosing the careers They wish to pursue the cars. They want to drive the friends.

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They wish to have I'm pro -choice on all those issues But some choices are wrong Like intentionally killing an innocent human being simply because they're in the way of something we want

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That's a choice a civil society should not allow However, if Nadine can demonstrate this

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I'm with her. How often does she take the bait on that? None never never takes my challenge

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Because once you frame the debate around the question, what is the unborn? Objections based on choice privacy trusting women fall to the wayside

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Because you've already made it clear you to agree that abortion should be legal if it doesn't

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Intentionally kill an innocent human being you've taken away their card, but you've got to simplify this issue

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Well, how do we defend our case that the unborn are distinct living and whole human beings?

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We're going to begin with the science of embryology and it's very straightforward It's not at all difficult and you will find this in Embryology textbooks worldwide and for those of you that were at the conference the conference notes will be there

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Pastor Jim, are we going to censor those who felt that coming to the con?

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Conference wasn't worth their time and are we gonna block them so they cannot get the notes?

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No, I'm just kidding. You will be able to get the notes as well you're less of a person for not being at the conference, but We will have in those notes the footnotes that back up what

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I'm about to tell you the sources That back up the science of embryology. I'm about to go through.

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Here's what that science says from the earliest stages of development from the one -cell stage you

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Were a distinct living and whole human being

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You weren't part of another human being like skin cells on the back of your hand You were already a whole living member, even though you had yet to grow and mature

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Now I get it that sometimes people's intuitions don't get that they think well an early embryo is just a ball of cells

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It's being constructed part by part Just like you wouldn't think you had a car when you put the first two metal plates together

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So you don't have an embryo when you put the first couple of cells together. Here's the mistake they're making

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Cars are constructed things embryos develop So let me illustrate that difference for you suppose after church today

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We all jumped on a charter flight and we flew to Bowling Green, Kentucky Now there's a particular car that is made in Bowling Green, Kentucky That I trust many of you would enjoy owning.

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Does anybody know what car is manufactured in Bowling Green, Kentucky? Yes, sir Do you own one?

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But you you know that so you covet one. In other words, I Love pronouncing sin on people.

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I tell you Bowling Green, Kentucky is the home of the

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Corvette factory and you can visit that place. In fact, you can take a tour and you can watch the construction of a

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Corvette from when the first parts are put together And I guess if you hang with it go all the way down the assembly line, which is very long

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You can see the Corvette roll off the assembly line Now do any of us in this room think we have a

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Corvette when the first two plates are put together? Yes or no? No, we don't have a

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Corvette. I mean those two plates we could you know, I don't know make a barbecue out of them I don't know. How about when the frame and suspension are present?

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Do we have a Corvette then? Some of you're going now no Corvette. How about when the powertrain is added that engine with?

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490 horses stock In the tranny. Do we have a Corvette then?

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Somebody going well now we're getting kind of how about when the fiberglass body is added to the frame

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Do we have a Corvette then? Some of you're real skeptics you're holding out until the tires touch the ground

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Regardless of where you land on that nobody in this room thinks we've got a Corvette when the first two plates are put together

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But you know what men and women when you are an embryo you weren't like a constructed thing as a

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Corvette is When you are an embryo you weren't constructed you developed

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You developed you did something actually that no Corvette has ever done you developed yourselves from within You weren't being put together piece by piece the way an assembly line puts together a car part by part

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Human beings are not part things you could lose an arm and still be you Rather From the very beginning from the one cell stage

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You as an embryonic human being me as an embryonic human being we were developing ourselves from within No constructed thing like a car ever did that That's the science of embryology

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But science cannot tell us how to treat somebody Can science tell you you should not go home from church today and kick your cat across the living room?

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Let me go and wait a minute. Is that wrong? I Almost got a riot on my hands for a moment

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Science cannot tell you how to treat anybody But science can tell you what something is

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To value it we have to do philosophy and theology Now as Christians, we know that all humans have equal value because they bear the image of God That's the biblical teaching and we'll explore that in more detail in the sermon

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But our secular friends out there may not quite get that so let's help them out a little bit

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They're most likely to agree that They have value that you have value true

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They have trouble grounding that outside of theism, but they accept it as a given well

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Then what I do is point out that there's four differences between the embryos They once were and the adults they are today none of which justify killing him at that earlier stage

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There are differences of size level of development Environment meaning where we're located in degree of dependency and none of those are good reasons for saying we could kill you then

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But not now now this is a key point and I hope you grasp this too often we let our critics just make assertions and We don't challenge them we take the premise and we own it rather than challenging it somebody says well that embryos different from us

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Of course he is But is he different from us in ways that justify intentionally killing him and the answer is no there's a difference of size a difference of level of development a

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Difference of environment meaning where we're located in a difference of degree of dependency But those are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now

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Men are generally larger than women. There's your size that that s acronym You were certainly smaller as an embryo men are generally larger than women

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But we don't think men deserve more rights than women simply because they are larger

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Level of development. We don't think you Somehow can be killed simply because you might be too and not have a reproductive system that's developed yet We're a 21 year old who does have that system developed gets a right to life

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We don't think that bodily development somehow gives you value once you've been born, but people love to do that with the unborn

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What about environment where you're located where you were? Doesn't have any bearing on who you are when you drove to church today you change location

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You didn't stop being you if that's true a journey of a couple of inches down the birth canal

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Or I should say several inches down the birth canal does not change you from one kind of thing to another Your identity is not based on where you reside and finally degree of dependency

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Yes, you depended on your mother for survival. Your answer should be so why does that matter?

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Why does it matter that dependency on another human being somehow gives you value and the answer is it doesn't

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There are children born that can only tolerate their mother's milk. They cannot tolerate formula

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What would we think of a child's mother who said my body my choice the kid depends totally on me for survival too bad

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And she neglects the kid and lets him die size Level of development environment and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now

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So what I'm gonna do now is summarize this for you in a way you can communicate it in five minutes or less in fact, some of you would be so good that you'll do it in a minute or less and I know what some of you are thinking you're thinking boy.

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I really wish that This guy had brought something that just summarized all this in writing So I don't have to take notes like crazy to keep up with him and I want you to know that we did bring something this is a sled card with the summary of the scientific truth and The philosophic truth that sled acronym we have one here and we're gonna auction it off for ten thousand dollars

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Payable to the church building fund. So if you would like that, we'll have it up here at no

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Actually, you can get one at the the table when you you go to leave All you got to do is tear off this section leave us a mailing address

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So we can send you our five -minute pro -life or quarterly updates and we'll let you take the sled card home

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So here's what you would say suppose somebody comes to you and says why are you pro -life students?

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The school newspaper reporter comes up to you and says why are you pro -life? Why are you?

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Not in favor of abortion now for political candidates My advice to them is you need to be able to state your pro -life view in seven seconds or less

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Because on television that's about how much time you get to make your case So if I'm not but if I were advising

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President Trump on abortion and again, I'm not but if I were Here would be on my advice to him

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You repeat the sentence. I'm about to give you over and over again and don't say anything more

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Here's what it is. I Oppose abortion because it's wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings.

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Stop rinse repeat a thousand times That frames the issue right but thankfully when you're in conversation with people one -on -one you have more time you have more time

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So here's what you would say you would say something like this And again, this is written down for you for some of you

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It will take you five minutes to say it others of you might get it done in a minute or so When you're asked why are you pro -life?

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Simply say I am pro -life because it's wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings and the science of embryology indicates from the earliest stages

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You were a distinct living and whole human being You weren't part of another human being like skin cells on the back of my hand on the back of your hand

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You were already a whole living member of the human family, even though you had yet to grow and mature and you know, what else?

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there are differences between you the embryo and you the adult but they don't matter a Difference of size a difference of level of development a difference of environment a difference of degree of dependency

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Those differences don't matter such that we could say we could kill you then but not now

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Now some of you will communicate that in a minute Others of you who might be a little more process

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II and you like to use more words You might take a little more time. That's alright, but that's the outline of what you communicate to people and when you combine that powerful pro -life

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Apologetic with images that reawaken people's moral intuitions

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You get results like what we see at Catholic and Protestant high schools nationwide Students who come up to us and say we have never heard anything like this before We had no idea

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They've been in churches. They've been in Christian community and they've heard nothing and That means men and women it's on us to step up and be ambassadors for Christ on this issue

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To communicate our views and hopefully what I've given you today will give you a start on that for those of you that were at the conference

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Great. You got a little review for those of you that weren't you got a sense of what we covered over the weekend and why?

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It was a tragic mistake on your part that you weren't here But because we believe all humans have equal value.

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We'll welcome you to fellowship Anyway today now what questions can I answer about anything? I threw out there that you'd like me to comment on or anything related.

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Yes, so you backslid the burning research lab

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Okay Pro abortionists love to throw a thought experiment at us to disprove the science that I just gave you

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They say oh you really believe the unborn are human. No, you don't and I'm gonna prove you don't you don't believe your own rhetoric

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Pretend you're in a burning research lab in this corner over here Are a thousand frozen embryos on ice in that corner over?

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There is a six -year -old girl The building is an inferno. You cannot save both.

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You got to pick one. Are you going to save the thousand embryos or the six -year -old girl

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Where's everybody in this room going? six -year -old and the critic says see

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Even you don't believe your own rhetoric because if you did you would at least consider saving those thousand embryos

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Are you stymied? The reality is that this is a very flawed

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Attempt to refute the pro -life view the pro -life argument goes like this premise one

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It's wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings Premise to abortion does that therefore it's wrong

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Does that analogy refute that syllogism? No at best it would show we're

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Inconsistent in the way we apply our pro -life view it does nothing to refute our syllogism

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But actually I don't think it is inconsistent I don't think it disproves anything about our motives or our consistency and here's why what is the purpose of that?

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Analogy what question is it truly addressing? Is it truly addressing who we get to kill or who we ought to save?

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Which is it who we ought to save is? Abortion about who we get who we save or who we get to kill

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Who we get to intentionally kill meaning the analogy is wrongheaded from the very start

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But beyond that how does it follow that because I save one human over others?

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The ones left behind are not fully human as I said to the conference yesterday if this buildings on fire

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And I can save all of you or my wife Stephanie who's here. Who am I gonna save who gets left behind?

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Yeah, all of you Yeah, your church will be on fire for God and we're out.

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All right now We'll see if I still get to preach after this session

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Does the fact that I save her over you mean you're less human than she is

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No, it just means I have responsibilities for my own spouse as you do to your own spouse that you don't have to others

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It doesn't mean that I somehow in diminishing your human being

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I will take your question just a minute Will the president take a bullet for the Secret Service?

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Will the Secret Service take a bullet for the president? Will the Secret Service take a bullet for you?

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Does it follow you're less human than the president? No, it just means the consequences of losing the president are greater

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So when I look at the six -year -old or the thousand embryos of the six -year -old girl I realize a couple of things in order to break the tie

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They both have equal value. This is not a question about who has value by the way It wouldn't even be a dilemma except for the fact they both have value, right?

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That's why it's a dilemma so I guess I could say the the analogy almost makes our point, but the reason

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I go for the six -year -old girl has to do with Considerations that break the tie when both have equal value the six -year -old will feel

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Unbelievable pain and suffering dying in an inferno the embryos will not The six -year -old has a greater chance at survival than the embryos by the way

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We do this all the time in medical triage, don't we? It doesn't mean we're making a value judgment about who has more humanity than the other

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We're saving the one with the best chance at survival. Let's flip the narrative though. Suppose.

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It's a thousand embryos and a hundred cancer patients in the final hour of life

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They are unconscious. They are already deep in their comas. They will all be dead Even if there was no fire within an hour from their disease

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Now who might you be more likely to save? Now the embryos have the better chance at survival.

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I saved them It doesn't mean those cancer patients are somehow less in the image of God or less valuable

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It just means I'm going to save the one with the best chance So none of this is a value judgment about who counts.

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All right, who had the question? Yes It's not part of our organization, but we work with them.

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They're very good people Yeah, why is six -year -old is in there ask comedian

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Patrick Tomlinson Who and who is popularized this analogy to try to refute pro -lifers?

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Why it's a six -year -old girl. The truth is he stole it. He's actually a plagiarist For other pro -abortion thinkers thought of it long before he ever did but he's owned it as his own.

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It's really quite sad to see So anyway, that is the answer to that that question.

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Yes That's called abort 73.

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They go out and they do Campus displays on abortion and and other things

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Jim. Do I have time for one more? Are we out of time? Okay, I can take one more. I'm told so what other questions.

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Can I answer? Are you raising your hand or just patting him on the back of the head? Okay Such a nice wife.

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I saw a handy. Yes, right

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Mm -hmm. Oh, no doubt now.

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I'm gonna make something very clear. I work very hard to use abortion conversations to lead to evangelism conversations

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And I find that that happens more than you can imagine But it's also the reverse is true there are people who come to Christian theism on the basis of hearing a pro -life argument and They say to themselves and I'm thinking of a guy like Hadley Arcus who did this

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He was an atheist a secular Jew but he was pro -life and he started noticing that it was

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Christians who were doing the best job of articulating the defense for the unborn and he was drawn by their witness on behalf of the unborn and he reject

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Atheism and turned to theism because of it so that can work both ways Um But you're right.

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I like to make that case and I like to defy the Expectations of unbelievers my friend

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Michael Sherrard is a pastor in Peachtree City, Georgia not far from me He wrote the book relational apologetics he preached a sermon on abortion about a year ago, and he showed the video clip we just showed in his sermon and his church that day unbeknownst to Michael one of the families brought a

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Spanish relative who was a full -blown atheist an Academic atheist and that guy came to church that day.

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He only did it to to be polite to his family He did not do it because he was a believer and Mike preached on abortion

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Use scripture use logic use philosophy showed that clip and that Spanish atheist made a beeline for him after service and came up to him and said

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I Have no words for what I just saw today and what I just heard I had no idea

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Christians had anything intelligent to say on anything and you sir just defied every expectation

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I've ever had I don't know what to do with you Now here's what's interesting The family members have had ongoing

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Gospel conversations with this guy. He's thawing out. He's warming up He's beginning to look at things and the door in for him

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The Holy Spirit used somebody being a truthful witness on abortion to say to him Maybe just maybe these

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Christian theists aren't as nuts as we think they are so it can work both ways in that regard Yeah.

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All right. I've run out of time. Thank you everybody and for those that were at the conference Thank you for letting me be part of your church fellowship this weekend

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Stephanie and I have had a very joyous time and we have enjoyed being part of this and I'm thankful To pastor

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Jim for inviting me. We even got some good West Coast Mexican food last night We live in Georgia and Mexican food.

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There is clearly from Satan and we were able to get Some good stuff last night and it was great.

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So thank you. And What do I do at this point? We'll close in prayer dear

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Lord, thank you for The honor Of being with believers who are committed to a defense of truth and thank you for letting us be your ambassadors even on difficult issues to convey your truths to a culture that rejects them and We pray you would use each of us to impact that culture for your glory.