The Hero of South Carolina Speaks

Well, thank you pastors and thank you all for being here. I can't tell you how much it warms my soul to see you here

It really does. I'm State representative Jonathan Hill. I have I serve

House District 8, which is Western Anderson County serve upstairs in the house chamber and We're going to be getting started the house legislative session convenes at noon

We'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a minute But thank you first of all for being here my wife

Amanda is here somewhere raise your hand. She's over here somewhere. There she is she's very much part of everything that I do and and You know,

I I just want to explain why we're here why I asked you to be here I don't often ask people to come to the

Capitol. In fact, this is the only time since taking office It's the only time in the last seven years.

I've actually done something like this and there's a reason for that Okay, but it

You know, I've been on I've been on a personal journey I have over the years become more and more vocal more and more active on the issue of life on the issue of Ending abortion on the issue of ending abortion funding and you know what?

I can't do it by myself You know this this event began to take shape

Almost immediately after I stormed out of the House chamber at the end of the heartbeat debate throwing papers in the air and You know it of course it it outraged the media it outraged the speaker of the house

And I can't for the life of me figure out why they can't muster the same moral outrage for the slaughter of the unborn

And so I said it's time for us to organize It's time for us unless the people of South Carolina, especially

God's people, especially God's Church If we don't demand an end to abortion into abortion funding who's going to do it who's going to do it?

Now I want to just hit on four things that are that are driving this For me, and I hope will drive you as well

First of all, it's become more and more apparent to me that destroying human life is really so much more

Dreadful and so much more serious than even we have acknowledged It's so much more serious than we have acknowledged

So first of all, it's because God created the entire universe nothing God created makes sense until you understand

That man is the focal point of all of God's creation everything God made the universe the atmosphere continents oceans plants

Sun moon stars day and night the tides birds and the fish the land animals humans and you ladies exactly

You know God created all of this for humankind for mankind and he created human beings for a purpose as part of a grand plan that he came up with Mankind is the crown jewel of God's creation

Psalm 8 3 through 8 says when I consider your heavens the work of your fingers the moon and the stars which you have ordained

What is man that you take thought of him and the son of man that you care for him? And yet you've made him a little lower than God and crowned him with glory and majesty

Those who hurt mankind Received the most severe rebuke and the most severe judgment from God Jesus said in Luke 17 1 and 2 it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come but woe to him through whom they come

It would be better for him if a heavy millstone be hung around his neck and he'd be cast into the sea

Then for him to cause one of these little ones to stumble How much more would that be true of those who slaughter the unborn and who

Advocate for the slaughter of the unborn and who justify and who excuse it. How much more is that true?

How dare we destroy what God himself for ordained Romans 8 28 through 30 says and we know that God causes all things to work together for good

To those who love God and most people stop right there Have you read the rest of it

The rest of it says to those who are called according to his purpose to those whom he foreknew

He predestined to become conformed to the image of his son so that he would be the firstborn Among many brethren and these whom he predestined he called and those he called he justified and those he justified he glorified

How dare we destroy those that God for ordained? Folks it's not just murder

It's not just wrong to kill babies because they feel pain It's not just it's not wrong to kill babies because they're sweet and they're precious and they're nice And it's not even wrong to kill babies because they're like us and we all started as babies

All of those things are true folks. It is wrong to destroy Human beings that are unborn because God made them

It's not just murder it's sacrilege against God Almighty God and we will be judged for what we do

Second the purpose of just law is to make human beings repent not to make human beings reform

We need to understand that the laws that we make in this chamber upstairs Will not be followed

Will not be followed Our purpose here is not to end or eradicate abortion by force of government law by the hand of man

Only God can do that The purpose of just law and yes law must be just but the purpose of just law is to lead us to Christ But not one of us can keep the law

Even a law that we make up for ourselves The Apostle Paul said in Romans 2 1 through 6 therefore you have no excuse every one of you who passes judgment

For in that which you judge another you condemn yourself For you who judge practices the same things and we know that the judgment of God falls rightly upon those who?

Who practice such things? But do you suppose this? Oh man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself that you will escape the judgment of God Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart You are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God who will render to each

Person according to his deeds it is high time that my colleagues in these chambers upstairs

Begin to understand these words and fear God and it is high time that we the church call on them to fear

God Before that can happen we ourselves must fear

God Saul Alinsky a

Abhorrent man wrote a book by the title rules for radicals rule number four was this

Make opponents live up to their own book of rules He goes on to say you can kill them with this

For they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity and I quote

Now the only person who ever did live up to his own rules paid the price for our inability to do so That was none other than Jesus Christ himself

Romans 3 21 through 26 says but now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been

Manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets even the righteousness of God Through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction

For all have sinned and that includes us here today all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God But we have been justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption

Which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith

This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration

I'd say of his righteousness at the present time that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus Doing justly is

Prerequisite folks. It is prerequisite to understanding and preaching the gospel. It starts with our laws being just it starts with us speaking

Accurately, what is the just and righteous law of God? Micah 6 6 3 8 says with what shall

I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to him with burnt offerings with yearly calves?

Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams in ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has told you oh man, what is good What does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your

God and folks, there's no amount of Supposedly pro -life legislation.

There's no amount of Wednesday morning Bible studies that happen in this chamber That can make up for the fact that we dishonor

God with our laws and with our practices It occurred to me the moment

I was getting in my car Feeling the weight in my soul driving to the Capitol knowing that we were about to vote on a bill that Pretends to be the strongest pro -life bill in America the heartbeat bill which marks going to talk about a little bit more in a minute

So many problems with that that I can't even address right now But it occurred to me as I got in my car and was reflecting on how many of my

Republican colleagues Want to look like they're pro -life, but have no interest in ending abortion I got in my car and it dawned on me

Many of them think they're doing nothing wrong They don't think they're doing anything wrong and that's because we the church have failed to do justly

It starts with us folks and this ends right here right now There's a third thing we need to understand if we're going to end abortion and that is that we the people are responsible for every unjust law

We the people are responsible Now a little civics 101 here What is the preamble to the

Constitution say and if you know it if any of you kids know it by heart say it out Loud with me we the people of the

United States in order to form a more perfect Union Establish justice ensure domestic tranquility

Provide for the common defense Promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity

Do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America? It starts off with we the people and it finishes with do ordain and establish the

Constitution of the United States We made this thing. This is without a doubt the highest law of the land

We are without a doubt the highest political authority in the United States of America, did you know that?

We the people are not the president not the governor not the Supreme Court justices not

Congress us and if our laws are unjust whose fault is that If our laws are unjust whose responsibility is that?

Jesus said in Mark 12 17 rendered to Caesars the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are gods

This passage is not primarily saying you need to go pay your taxes No What Jesus was saying is don't render to Caesar the things that are gods

That's what Jesus was saying and who is Caesar by the way, it's not the president it's not Congress it's us it's we the people

We are Caesar in the United States of America It's high time. We start acting like it

Now only God and this is what Jesus was saying only God deserves our undying loyalty

Only God and when Jesus says murdering the unborn slaughtering the unborn is wrong

Then we shouldn't tolerate unjust laws that allow for the slaughtering of the unborn We shouldn't tolerate politicians that say it's okay to slaughter the unborn or to slaughter some unborn

It's not okay We've got it. We've got to stop that is our fault that abortion remains legal today

This ends here this ends now in our hearts and minds Finally it's time for God's people to show by deeds of repentance their loyalty to God We can have prayer meetings we can go to church we can raise funds for crisis pregnancy centers

We can go out and we can even stand in the gap at the abortion mills and try to turn Mothers back for murdering their their babies and some of you do that and I thank

God for you. I'm inspired by you But folks we have many things to repent of we need to repent of funding abortions with our tax dollars

For many years now Our state legislature has passed budget after budget after budget that funds abortion in two specific areas

The first area is in family planning funding services under Medicaid these are federal funds which the state state chips in and matches some with state funds and runs this through Medicaid and provides health services of all sorts of Health services one of those is family planning dollars and that's you know

Contraceptives and counseling and all sorts of things like that It's not supposed to go to abortions, but guess who gets to be a family planning provider planned parenthood and so our governor since 2018 has asked and called on this legislature to pass a

Budget that refuses the federal planning dollars and restricts the state family planning dollars

To not go to Planned Parenthood and my colleagues have refused to do so That's a problem

Now I and several others in the legislature are working on ending that and we're going to ask you to go upstairs

Shortly and talk to your representative and ask them to do something about this The budget just came back over to the house from the

Senate. It's as of today And they're sending it back to the drawing board Thank God it needs to go back to the drawing board with abortion funding in it

That gives us one month to work on this. It's coming back out for a vote in the house on June 8th

So we have a month for all of us here to talk to our reps about that And I hope you'll do that today before you leave, but it also means we have a month to grow our ranks

It's going to take numbers Politicians care about numbers because you know what numbers means votes

In fact, there are a few of our Republicans You can't assume that just because someone says they're pro -life or says that they're

Republican means that they're going to go along with this During the budget debate the first time in March on March 23rd

Two of my Republican colleagues one of them is from my own County representative Brian white and another is from this area

Representative Mike Kukaski both went out of their way to make speeches defending why we should be funding abortions

It's not okay folks. It's not okay We got to repent of making exceptions.

It's wrong to kill babies using any method not just partial birth abortion It's wrong to kill them before 20 weeks.

Not just when they feel pain It's wrong to kill babies before a heartbeat is detected. It's wrong to kill babies that were conceived in rape and incest

It's wrong to kill babies because they're babies. All right, that's why it's wrong

We got to repent of injustice of unequal protection for the unborn we haven't been willing to address the fact that mothers know what they're doing and That it is murder

You may not want to call it that but that's what it is When the Roe v.

Wade decision was being formed one of the justices justice Blackmon Asked the piercing question that we need to ask ourselves today

If the fetus is a person may the penalties for killing it be different The answer is absolutely not

Absolutely not. So I filed house bill 4046 after the heartbeat bill sailed on through and got signed by the governor

Forced me to reckon with well, what should we be doing? How do we fix this? And so I studied our our laws our abortion laws our murder laws

Collaborated with some with some folks and came up with house bill 4046 and that does several things it calls abortion murder

It removes all exceptions and it says we're not waiting on the Supreme Court We're not waiting on the

Supreme Court. You know what? We've been waiting for decades It hasn't happened. It's not going to happen until the state stand up It's not going to happen until the church stands up So we got to repent of any injustice of unequal protection for the unborn

We got to repent of excuses one such excuse That I had personally to reckon with is that someone told me and for a time

I believed that it's better to let the ladies lead on this And I see a lot of ladies here, but I don't see one lady in our legislature

That's here helping me on this issue. It's time. Okay, where are the ladies?

Where are they and another excuse that we've believed is the courts are going to overturn it

No, they're not No, they're not not until they are threatened with irrelevance and let me tell you something folks

You know, they're going to say all kinds of crazy things about my bill Like it's a bill to you know, create a civil war or something.

No if we can Defy the government on real

ID like South Carolina did for a decade if other states can defy the federal government on Marijuana if North Dakota can defy the federal government on Planned Parenthood funding

So can we so can we and the final thing we need to understand is it's time for us to repent of our inaction

You know there there are times when if you fall on your face before God God will rebuke you

Because it's not a time for prayers a time for action Just like he told Joshua after the defeated

AI and Joshua falls on his face before God He says God, how could you let this happen to us? And God says get up off your face.

There's sin in the camp We know what we need to do we have the tools to do it why aren't we doing it?

It's time for us to repent by acting now There's so many things that I need

I need you to go out and tell every one of your friends and neighbors tell your pastor tell your Sunday school folks tell your families come back

Help us get petition signed contact your legislators ask them to Co -sponsor

House bill 4046 ask them to remove all funding for abortions and all exceptions for abortions from the state budget

It's time for us to act. It's time for us to act now I'm so thankful for the the wonderful team that helped us put this together today many of whom are pastors