Interview with John Michener (Part 3)

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, John Mishner, Chris Kiesler. We are going to enjoy a third segment of our time with John Mishner, and Michael, if you wouldn't mind opening us up on everyone's favorite subject, opposition.

All right, well we are with John Mishner again for our third session, and we know that your job, your ministry, in this field, opposing abortion, calling for an absolute end to abortion, to abolish abortion, is something that is met with all manner of opposition from different types of groups.

We understand that opposition would be coming from the state, from legislatures, but also we understand that opposition could come from those that should be on your side, on our side of this issue.

What kind of opposition do you face, and how do you navigate through those moments and those personalities and those challenges?

Well, let me say right here at the beginning that in this session, you're going to hear a lot of doom and gloom and very negative stuff.

I just want to invite you to hang in there. We are going to get to the wins. We're going to get to the positive and encouraging side and the working of the spirit in the world through God's holy people, the church, but that'll be in the next episode.

So stay tuned, but wait, there's more, but now back to the doom and gloom.

So when I first got started in full -time ministry, I was thinking that the opposition was going to be coming from all of the crazy young skulls full of mush who have been indoctrinated in our pagan, heathen cultural centers of education, and they were going to be marching and calling me names and waving signs at me and all this kinds of stuff, and sure enough, all that did happen, but all of those types of people were reachable.

I was able to enter into conversations with them. We were able to convert some. We were able to make them think, and we were able to teach them and interact with them, and those kinds of interactions were fun, and they were evangelistic, and we felt like we were showing them the love of Christ, treating them like fellow human beings that deserve to have a rational, reasonable conversation about what's true in the world and that kind of thing, and that was great, but what

I was not prepared for was the opposition that came from people who were supposed to be on my own team.

It was from other pro -lifers, leaders in the pro -life movement, leaders in churches and this kind of thing, and every time

I turned around, it seemed like someone was praying not for me but against me and actively opposing me.

It was like the pastor, the priest, the rabbi, and the pro -life politician walk into a bar to conspire against me, but guys, this is no joke.

This is actually happening. They are conspiring against us, and they will be your greatest opposition emotionally and spiritually if you get involved in the fight to speak up and try and rescue our pre -born neighbors.

In fact, this is such a problem that I decided I had to write a book about it.

There are so many pro -life books out there. There are so many books about abortion and abortion ministry out there.

Do we really need another one? That's the question that I kept asking because every time I would preach and teach and nag and do a workshop or seminar, everyone comes up afterwards and says, where's the book?

I got to have the book about this. You have a book about this, don't you? Aren't you going to write a book? Where's the book? I'm like, I'm too busy doing this thing with you.

We've got to go out and minister to people. Well, the years rolled by, and finally the time seemed right.

And so I set aside three months last year to put this book together. Started working in October, had it done by the end of December.

We're now in just the very final editing stages. And I hope by the time you listeners hear this, you'll be able to go on Amazon and look for Overcoming the

Dark Side of the Pro -Life Movement. That's the name of the book, Overcoming the Dark Side of the

Pro -Life Movement. And it's going to walk you through my journey of activism and evangelism and all of the crazy hurdles and obstacles and opposition

I got from other people in the pro -life movement and leaders in churches and pro -life politicians especially.

And that's some of the stuff we want to touch on on tonight as we go through. Excellent. I appreciate you walking us through this because when people hear pro -life, they think the good guys.

And there's a lot of people who still use the language of pro -life and what they mean by that is abolish abortion.

But there's other people who use the language pro -life and they use that label. But they don't actually mean abolish abortion entirely, do they?

Right, and so the point of the intended audience for my book is the casual believer who would self -identify as pro -life.

And this person believes that abortion is wrong. It's an immoral choice equivalent to murder and that therefore we ought to treat it like that under the law.

So if abortion is murder, then it should be a high crime, not just a misdemeanor, right? That should not be legal to do.

So that's who I'm writing to. And it doesn't matter what you call yourself, whether you would call yourself pro -life or abolitionist.

I'm trying to wake someone up who right now is sitting in the pew and not doing anything and I want to get them engaged.

By hearing this story and I want to warn them that when they get engaged, they're going to face friendly fire and I want to prepare them for how to handle that, how to navigate that and not burn out.

I've seen a lot of people come and go in both the pro -life movement and the abolitionist movement and because of the infighting, they just throw their arms up like Tom Cruise and walk away, right?

Grand exit right there, I'm done. Well, I don't want you to be done. I want you to keep fighting. And so here's what's gonna happen to you.

Be ready for it. Here's what you can do about it and keep fighting because as long as you're engaged as an activist, you are literally saving lives and saving souls.

Don't walk away because if you were once called into this ministry, I'm calling you to stay in it regardless of what's gonna be coming at you.

So it was a really rude awakening for me. I mean, when I first got started, I thought, oh my gosh, I mean, babies are dying.

And when I show people my passion and my enthusiasm and invite them to come along with me and get involved, man, they're just gonna jump right on board.

Say, let's go do it. Let's raise an 18 foot tall exhibit of dead babies and wake people up.

And then all of a sudden what I got was, no. Well, what do you mean no? No, don't want you talking about it here.

No, you can't preach about it. You can't present about it. No, no, you can't ask for funding. No, don't invite our people to come help you.

No, we're not gonna do that. We don't wanna offend people. We don't wanna scare people. I just got a lot of nos.

And I did not understand it for the longest time. So like you said, the casual believer who identifies as pro -life thinks it's wrong and we should stop it, and they wanna do something about it.

Where you really run into trouble is when you start talking about leadership, leaders, people who are wielding power and authority by virtue of having resources.

Like, hey, I'm the head of this organization. I've got a million dollars to spend, so I'm going to guard it and I'm only gonna do what

I want with it and I'm only gonna use it in a way that won't undermine my authority or risk my losing more dollars.

And that's what was happening in the big time pro -life movement organizations, especially the

Inside the Beltway when it's focused in Washington, D .C. and on national stuff. They were amassing massive amounts of money and spending it and wanting to protect that money.

They don't wanna do anything that's going to be too controversial or rock the boat and things like that. But really, my first taste of it was in churches because I was trying to invite local churches to come out and do evangelism with me and get involved and I just kept getting no's.

So it's the pastors, it's the elders, it is anyone who has stewardship power within this local congregation.

It's an earthly kingdom. Let's just be straight about it. There's a chapter in my book called

Earthly Kingdoms and I think it'll be very enlightening to many of you but the thing is, as soon as you build a building and pave a parking lot and start having programs and paid staff and all this stuff, these are earthly kingdoms.

And I'm not saying that they're inherently bad but when you have these things, it's going to influence those in those earthly kingdoms to protect that kingdom and to protect their paycheck.

So what keeps an earthly kingdom going? Cash flow. So you have to have numbers, you have to have nickels and you have to have noses and you don't want to lose any of those.

So if you're considering doing something that's going to be controversial, like wait, you want my people to go down to the local university and hold signs of dead babies and start conversation about abortion?

Yeah, we're not real comfortable with that. I'm afraid that too many people in my congregation are going to be uncomfortable with that and if they see me trumpeting this and saying this is something we're going to embrace as a congregation, they might decide to go somewhere else.

Now I've lost numbers, nickels and noses or I've got a few Democrats in my congregation, I don't want to lose them.

Maybe I don't want to lose that one that's putting in 60 % of the contribution. These kinds of things come into play and so I just want to say watch out for that.

Don't let it depress you, don't let it surprise you. That's going to happen. You're going to get opposition within the church.

So sometimes because of the controversial nature of this and not necessarily, we can agree with you in basics, we can agree with you in theory or we can agree with you in principle, yet in the practice of it, we're drawing a lot of heat and a lot of attention and this could seem like we're being too controversial.

We are controversial whereas we wouldn't necessarily have to. It's like we're going out and picking a fight rather than being purely defensive.

If somebody were to come into our church and try to shout their abortion, in that case we might say, no, no, no, we disagree with you but we're not going to go out there and shout abortion is murder because that looks like we're being aggressive and picking a fight and what business do we have doing that?

So it seems like a bit of a, part of it's discipleship, part of it's expectation but ultimately you've noticed, what you've observed is if getting involved is going to threaten the financial security of leadership, the financial security of a church, this is very often what shuts it down.

Money very often is what is speaking louder than the morality. Yeah, it's not the only thing but it's definitely one of the key components.

I mean, if you ask me what are the primary reasons that a particular church congregation does not talk about abortion from the pulpit systematically or why they don't do anything beyond maybe donating to the local crisis pregnancy center,

I would say there are six, seven, eight reasons and again, I got a whole chapter in my book,

Earthly Kingdoms, this is why pastors and preachers and leaders of local churches don't want to get involved on this topic.

Let's just mention a few of them before we move on. Let's imagine together a congregation where we know statistically it's a fact, let's just say 10 % of the people in this local church have a problem abusing alcohol.

Like they're just constantly drunk, they can't say no, they don't know how to imbibe for the joy in the moment and then set it aside and go be a father and a husband and a good employee and leave it alone till next weekend.

They got problems, right? Well, we all know it, the leadership of the church knows it but what if they never ever preached or taught about being a slave to addiction, if they never talked about alcohol, what if this church did not have any kind of recovery program in that church knowing that 10 % of the people have a problem with it?

That's exactly the kind of thing that is happening with abortion. Probably one in four people, 25 % of the congregation have some sort of personal connection to abortion.

They've had one, they've paid for one, they're missing a brother or a niece or a nephew that was aborted, like it's touching everyone in the church congregation but no one's talking about it.

There might be a pro -life sermon once a year around the anniversary of Roe v. Wade or something and they say we're donating to the

Crisis Pregnancy Center but is anyone in the congregation reaching out and saying it's wrong, it's a sin that leads to death and if you've been there and done that, we have got to repent and then we've got to recover from this, together we can do this.

Here's our ministry, here's our program, here's our class, here's the way we're gonna recover, here's the way we're gonna minister to each other but that's exactly what's going on.

We live in a culture right now where we don't talk about controversial things. That has been beat into us, has it not?

I mean, we're programmed, don't talk about controversial stuff. Let's talk about OU football, let's talk about the tornadoes and the hailstorm but don't talk to me about the sinful decisions that I've made or might make in the future, that's taboo and I think the leaders in our churches are right there.

They're not willing to talk about those controversial things because that's a part of our culture and again, because ultimately it makes people uncomfortable and it might make them leave and it might hurt cash flow.

There's another dynamic going on too where I think it is very popular in modern culture to view emotional pain and distress as something that's bad, that's wrong, it's maybe even inherently wicked or evil and so if I were to cause

Dylan anxiety, mental and spiritual anxiety, then well,

I've hurt him and I think what we're doing is we're mixing up, punching him in the face with causing emotional distress and acting like they're the same sort of thing.

You know, just because you're uncomfortable by something I say or bring up about yourself or in your life, that's not me punching you in the face and trying to harm you for the sake of harming you.

And neither of those would hurt by the way, I'm fine. I wouldn't, it's very difficult to hurt me emotionally or anything like that, so.

Silence is violence. No, yeah, but you're right, like that is something that we're discipled into.

Like you were saying, we can't talk about controversial things but it's also because there's church discipline being exacted on us.

If we do talk about controversial things, I remember going through college, like I got it in high school a little bit. I went to a rural high school but when

I got to college at OU, like you said, silence is violence. Or on the other end, if you talk about these controversial things or if you have even a controversial take and you don't even voice it, but you're just there and they know you have it.

In classes, they would try to like point you out and then get you to bring it out and then try and dogpile you.

Yeah, they dogpile you on it. So there's church discipline actually being acted out on you if you do bring up these controversial things.

And do you see that in churches as well? Like you mentioned that you get the no's from people but do you see them pressuring people not to bring it up even within their own congregations?

You're coming in from the outside but do we have congregations that as well, they won't allow some sort of discussion even about these topics?

Oh, absolutely. And the bigger the church and the more corporate it is, then the more they will shut down more and more topics.

Like abortion is an obvious one. You know, if you wanna go to say some like Victory Church or Church .tv,

Church .org, Church on the High Holy Rock with 15 campuses and 15 ,000 people, the bigger they get, the fewer things they're willing to talk about.

And abortion's number one. And then they just add more and more things as they want to get more and more people in the doors, drinking their coffee and putting their tithes in the plate.

It's kind of a marketing thing. It is, it totally is. So if you take like the Life Churches or whatever,

I've had people go into their leadership meetings and saying, why aren't we providing some sort of recovery ministry for abortion and why aren't we talking about it in any of our classes or from the pulpit?

Why? And the answer comes down from leadership. That's not part of our strategic plan.

We're an entry -level church. We're just gonna give them the basic gospel and if they want some deep learning, they can go somewhere else.

But then when push comes to shove, they don't really want them to go somewhere else. They want them to keep staying there, repaving the parking lot every few years.

To that, you're talking about cashflow. You're talking about money and mammon seem to be the root of all this.

If you have pastors or elders who feel like they could save those tithes to a greater extent, as if, because what we're dealing with is cashflow in and cashflow out, right?

We're dealing with basic economics or basic business ownership. You've gotta be able to save something.

If those pastors, if those elders felt as though their money went further or they saved something, do you think that they would be more willing to give a message against these things and not worry about that cashflow in because, hey, we've got a savings account behind us?

I very rarely see larger congregations willing. They're not willing to think outside the box.

They're thinking with fear and they're thinking about not losing the power and the money. If I were to come in and argue that, hey, look, if you will follow the scriptural pattern of preaching the truth, come what may, and then trusting

God to bless you for upholding his law and his justice and mercy, they're not even willing to imagine that.

They always wanna say, no, no, but I'm gonna lose these people. They won't even give you the opportunity to say, yes, but you'll gain so much more if you do it this other way.

They can't even think outside the box to see that potential. You trace back the modern church growth philosophies that were popularized by Rick Warren and so on.

You go back farther and you come to Donald McGavern, third generation missionary from the subcontinent of India, and in the mission work being done in India, they began to do numbers, nickels and noses, on which mission stations were doing better than others.

And they discovered that the mission stations that did not require Hindus coming out of the caste system, coming out of Hinduism, they realized that any church that did not require them to mingle with other people of other castes, those mission stations did great.

And they had a lot of people there. And boy, numbers, nickels and noses did really good if you didn't ask them to go against the caste system.

But in the places where they said, neither Greek nor Jew nor Scythians or slave man, everybody is coming together and we're all equal in Christ, those mission stations had a much harder time of going at it and tended to be the lower castes because the higher castes would not mingle with the lower castes.

The lower castes were fine hanging out with each other. And so upon observing this, they decided that the spirit works best wherein you don't ask too much of people when they come to Jesus.

And so the philosophy that Donald McGavern brought with him to the West Coast in promoting church growth strategies was this, don't ask people too much.

Don't ask too much of them to come to Jesus. You remove all barriers that are between them and coming to Jesus, whatever those barriers are.

So that was the general principle that he brought. But that's because Jesus loves you just the way you are.

You're making me throw up in my mouth. In spite of who you are. It's supposed to be in spite of who you are.

He says, take up your cross and follow after me. And so with that mindset, that's been so deeply ingrained into the

American church experience that when we're talking about larger corporate church growth models, their whole goal is to remove all barriers, whatever those are, that are in between them and coming to Jesus.

And so that's why they do surveys, they do marketing surveys, and they try to figure out what can we do to make sure that you're absolutely most comfortable.

We're just trying to introduce you to Jesus and remove all discomfort out of the way. The problem with that is that we lose sight of the need for repentance.

And when Jesus came preaching, he said that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel.

He cared, he loved, he sees people in need of salvation, and he calls them to change.

He calls for us to have a turnaround, turnaround about sin. And we really can't serve

God and mammon, right? We can't affirm the idolatry and the immorality and the injustice, we can't affirm the abortion or affirm these types of things, and at the same time, embrace and follow

Christ. You know, these things are not compatible. If we love people, if we do care about people, we would like to see them saved, redeemed, taken out of these lies and these deceptions.

So that is going to bring opposition. That's going to cause people discomfort. They may walk away and say, well, how dare you?

But you know, as Christians, how many stories have we heard about people who were offended, they were made angry by the claims of Christ upon their life?

They can't even remember the person who got them angry in telling them these things, but it stuck with them and it stayed with them and they couldn't go to sleep at night and it haunted them until finally they came to Christ and they're grateful for the fact that somebody, somebody told them something they didn't want to hear.

Well, and don't forget that the Lord warned the disciples that he came to bring a sword and he would be dividing friends and brothers and sisters and family members and to expect that.

And also remember that it's a straight and narrow way and few there are that find it.

So in the context of what we're talking about here with the power and the politics that come along with the corporate church, understand that when you want to become an abolitionist or an anti -abortion activist or pro -lifer,

I don't care what you call yourself, but when you get involved in this, in this fight, just don't look for your pastor and your elder to go, yep, yep, yep, yahoo, let me give you resources in a classroom and help you promote it.

That's just not going to happen. But not to end on doom and gloom with every section tonight, just go ahead and do good anyway.

There's no law against doing righteousness and look to your small groups, look to your

Bible class, look to the people that come to your home, look to your homeschool co -op, look to your immediate friends and family.

You decide what you're going to do to start ministering and serving, take your best friend and a couple of other randos with you and just get after it.

And if you start doing good and saving lives, other true believers who are part of that remnant are going to see it and they're going to go, ooh,

I want to be a part of that too. And you're going to have positive effect. But don't go looking for permission and don't expect help from an organized corporate church.

I think that's important to point out. I think that this is a kind of encouragement as a pastor. You know, what blesses me is when people go out and they just want to serve

Jesus and they want to bring his truth into various areas of society, of life, and they're just out there doing their thing.

Praise God. You know, they're not looking for titles, they're not looking for official recommendation, they're not looking to be patted on the back and touted.

If the Lord is leading you in that direction, go for it. And if you want to share it with me,

I will pray with you and I will encourage you in that. And there may be somebody that I have in mind that I'll say, hey, talk to so -and -so.

I bet they'll be your best friend in this endeavor. But what's very discouraging as a pastor is when people come and they have a conviction or a desire, something's been laid upon their heart and they want to go after it, but they want official church recognition and everybody needs to think exactly my way and have the same intensity of feeling that I have.

And then if they don't get that, then they interpret that as opposition. And it's not, it's simply a matter of, hey, the

Lord put this on your heart, you go do that. There's a lot of different parts of the body and we want to support you and bless you in that.

And there'll be other people who will be coming along with you, but you've got to step out in obedience. I mean, get out there, right?

Yeah, and I would also remind us as another encouragement that we as believers are a royal priesthood.

There is no priesthood anymore where you go to the priest and he makes the sacrifice for you.

You don't take your lamb to the priest to have its throat cut. You sacrifice this thing, you offer up the good parts to God, and then you eat the others with your family for your holy picnic.

We don't do that anymore. Now you are your own priest. You boldly approach the throne of God directly because you have been reconciled to your father in heaven and you can approach him boldly, the scripture says, to make your needs known to him and he's there to listen.

So there's no intermediary. The only intermediary is our big brother Jesus who's sitting right there at the right hand of the throne and if you muck things up in your prayers, the

Holy Spirit and the Lord can say, look, I've been where he's been, this is what he's trying to say, God. So don't look for permission from the earthly kingdom, people who are the gatekeepers of the local classrooms and keep the crayons locked up because you can only use them for approved coloring programs.

Get your own coloring page, go directly to God, he will bless your ministry, get out there and do it.

I also wanna, just sort of transitioning now to another point, you're gonna also meet opposition in the pro -life movement.

Now you may not recognize it at first as opposition depending on where you're coming from because maybe your point of view, your worldview, your ideology is the same as the mainstream pro -life movement leaders but there's a couple of ways in which that as you learn more and grow in knowledge and wisdom of what true justice is and what

God requires when it comes to abortion and its abolition, you might find yourself running up against people in the pro -life movement, maybe they're politicians at the state capital in the

Republican Party, maybe they are leaders and gatekeepers of huge institutions, maybe like the

Susan B. Anthony list or Students for Life of America or Americans for Life. These organizations wield millions of dollars but what are they doing with those millions of dollars?

What are they not doing with those millions of dollars? What are they for and what are they against? You might think they're on your side but when you get in there, you might find out that they're going to be working against you.

Maybe you're at the state capitol saying, we need to criminalize all abortion, period.

It can't be chemical, it can't be surgical, doctors can't do it, moms can't do it, nobody can murder an innocent pre -born human being and that's what you're advocating for but then you get up there and come to find out that your pro -life

Republican Christian legislator doesn't agree with that and he's being told by a pro -life lobbyist who sends him five to $10 ,000 a year for his re -election campaign that he shouldn't be for that either.

That's what you're up against because he tells you he's pro -life and that he wants to pass pro -life legislation but none of that legislation does what you think ought to be done.

It might have exceptions for rape and incest, it might protect all women who want to kill their own children by abortion, they might call it pro -life but then when you look at the details, it's not pro -life at all and it certainly won't abolish abortion.

You're going what the heck is going on here? Opposition to the bill Dusty Devers has put together, they don't even listen to it, they don't even want to have it read on the floor because and I think this is where by contrast it just makes it really clear that that's actually what we should be after rather than just making little maneuvers that many times are meaningless but they're kind of like a token nod towards being pro -life but when we're putting it out there into the light

I see opposition very often expressed in terms of let's not victimize women and this is how the, for instance there was a news media coverage of Dusty Devers' bill and they brought it as a question to Governor Stitt at a media gaggle and they said what about this bill about abortion, anti -abortion bill that criminalizes or attacks mothers which you're saying that they're a mother, right?

But they said that to the governor and he hears there's a bill that's against abortion but it's attacking mothers and he comes off and says

I don't know what you're talking about particularly what bill you're talking about and he says but Oklahoma we're a very pro -life, pro -family state so we certainly wouldn't be punishing mothers.

Yes, he's been explicit on this point for the last four plus years. For the first four years of his governorship he just really ignored abortion and he never said anything about it other than well if you put a pro -life bill on my desk

I'll sign it. But the last two years it's the pressure that abolitionists have brought have forced him to answer a little more clearly.

The really great quote that I love was actually from last session a year ago and Senator Warren Hamilton from Southeast Oklahoma had a bill that was going to remove the explicit license to kill that women have in Oklahoma statute.

Yes, I've read that. So we have in statute multiple times in multiple acts it says no woman shall be prosecuted in the death of her own pre -born child, right?

Multiple times in statute. So Warren Hamilton comes along and says we need to remove this license to kill.

We gotta close the loophole. There has to be the threat of the law so that people don't kill their own children.

They have to fear that they might get prosecuted. This is equal justice. This is equal protection of the law which is required by God's moral law and oh by the way by our constitution.

We have unconstitutional statutes on the books when it comes to abortion because we're saying these kids can be murdered and these can't or this type of person can murder a child but this kind of person can't.

So it's completely unconstitutional. But anyway so a reporter from KOCO our local

ABC News affiliate said Governor Stitt will you support Senator Hamilton's bill? And he said straight up no.

We're not going to punish women in Oklahoma. That is preposterous. That's a direct quote from the governor.

So where's this coming from? Well it's coming from what you mentioned just a minute ago. The concept that women who seek abortions are victims.

Well we could do a program on that statement right there for the next hour and a half alone.

That is one of the 10 corrupt commandments followed in the pro -life movement. Leaders of pro -life organizations and pro -life politicians have a certain set of commandments that are completely wicked and corrupt that they follow.

There's a couple of big ones at the top. I'm not going to go through all 10 tonight but number one and number two are the big dogs.

Number one is thou shalt have no other gods before the judiciary. Pro -life organizations and their leaders and pro -life politicians will do anything that some judge in a black dress tells them they have to do no matter how immoral or unconstitutional.

They bow down to SCOTUS and the entire judiciary. So that's a huge one that we could do two hours on also.

But the second biggest one right there at the top of the 10 corrupt commandments is thou shalt not ever punish the woman, period.

We're going to treat them all like they are victims. Now, let's ask a question. Are some women who seek abortion victims?

Yes. Sure, absolutely. Are they all victims? No. Hell no. No. The thing is you can't just assume and paint everybody broadly the same way.

That's exactly why every time there is the death of a human being, that's a homicide, we investigate, we gather evidence and we decide who is to blame or who we think is to blame and then we have a trial to determine all of this.

Was the woman a victim or not? Who in the world is going to drag a 13 -year -old girl who was raped and abused and then coerced down to an abortion facility?

Who's going to prosecute her? Nobody. We all recognize that's a victim. But when a 21 -year -old co -ed who just wants to keep her soccer scholarship murders her own preborn child, don't you think we ought to prosecute her?

It's not like we would have to prosecute thousands of them, which is what the opposition tell us.

They're like, you're going to fill the prison with thousands and thousands of little girls who killed their babies. No, we're not. No.

We're going to have one or two high -profile cases and now everyone's going to be scared to do it because we proved that we're going to protect innocent human beings.

The 21 -year -old soccer young lady. Soccer mom.

It's not going to be a soccer mom. Right. Because she's going to avoid particular situations because she knows she doesn't have an easy out.

And if she ends up pregnant, she's not going to kill her child because she knows if she does, then she's a murderer.

Because that's been brought front and center to her attention. When was the last time you were on a highway around the metro and you got passed by someone driving say 115 miles per hour?

Pretty rare. I'm not saying people don't drive that fast, but it's pretty rare in a metropolitan area with more than a million people, you don't daily get passed by somebody doing 115 miles.

Not normally, no. And the reason is because there's a sign by the road that tells people what the law is.

Now, if we didn't enforce the law, no one would care about that sign, but they know they are risking getting pulled over and suffering punishment for driving like that.

So we make clear what the law is and we enforce the law. If we did that with abortion, if we said no one kills an innocent pre -born human being in our state or else you will be prosecuted for homicide, it would only take one or two and we would all get the message, oh,

I can't do that in my state. That's equal protection of the law. That's justice. That's treating every human being with the dignity that he or she deserves and that's going to change behavior like you just said.

All of a sudden that goes into everyone's psyche and we just saved thousands of lives. We did not fill the prisons with young ladies and I trust a jury of my peers to be able to exercise justice in these cases.

Let's look at the facts. Well, and the idea of the loopholes that they want to introduce would seemingly bring back surgical abortion because right now that's illegal, but if you start allowing for exceptions, but then also who are we giving that judgment to to determine if it was rape or if it wasn't rape when the exceptions occur?

A lot of times, the same thing with the heartbeat bills, who's supposed to find the heartbeat? The abortionist.

Oh, I couldn't find it. Well, I've been in an ultrasound where they're actively looking for the heartbeat and can't find it, so it's not like it's, you know, accidents happen, but they're actively trying not to and they're supposed to be the ones that we're allowing to determine that.

You mean show me an incentive and you'll show me an outcome? Yeah. Okay. Fine. So a heartbeat bill is both morally and constitutionally wicked, okay?

You're telling me that a human being in whom it would be hard for us to find a heartbeat can now be thrown out with a medical waste.

So you're discriminating against these very young human beings and saying they're trash. That's morally problematic.

And then, of course, even if you could somehow enforce a heartbeat bill, what would that entail?

That would entail taking a medically trained police officer and putting him in every abortion facility and monitoring every procedure to make sure you only murdered those people that the pro -life statute said could be murdered.

It's also limiting our definition of humanity by our scientific instruments. It's just crazy.

But leapfrogging off this example that you bring up, I dare you to find any pro -life bill from the last 20 years that saved any lives, that we could prove saved any lives.

Because all of them have these built -in problematic loopholes, all of them. There's so many examples.

Another one that came up that really opened my eyes years ago was an act that was to ban the dismemberment, to ban dismemberment abortion.

So what they were saying was, this is going to be a pro -life bill that needs to be supported and championed by Christian believers all over the state, the

Republican Party, the Republican leadership, and all of the main line inside the beltway, pro -life organizations are championing this bill.

They're gonna spend millions of dollars to promote it, to gin up support for it, to get it through the legislative process and get the governor to sign it.

And they're telling us that it's gonna save all these lives. Well, when you read the actual language of the bill, what it says is that you can't kill the child with the pliers.

All the doctor has to do to comply with the bill is kill the baby first by some other means, stab him in the heart with a knife, poison or burn him to death, and then rip him apart with pliers, and now you've complied with the law.

But of course, you couldn't enforce it anyway, because again, now you'd have to have a medically trained professional policeman watching on a fiber optic video camera to confirm.

It's all political theater, all of it. What we've got is this cozy arrangement between the pro -life lobby establishment and the pro -life

Republican establishment. And every single year, they run a bill that sounds great and fools the pro -life masses, but doesn't actually do anything.

They spend millions of dollars and they promote it, they pass it so that the legislator can say, look what

I did. I'm a pro -lifer and I'm fighting. And this is what I passed and I'm saving these laws.

And then the lobbyist comes out and has their social media website and their mailers and their emails, and they blast all this information out about, look at the pro -life legislators.

Look at the pro -life Republicans and what they did. Aren't they great? They get a 100 % pro -life rating from us.

Then the legislator also sends you a postcard when it's time for re -election and says, pro -life organization

XYZ gave me 100 % rating and I passed this pro -life law. And they're feeding off of each other.

So the pro -life lobby group can then claim victory because their bill was passed. So you send them donations.

And then the pro -life legislator says, look what I did. And so you send him donations. They get money, he gets re -elected and it just perpetuates itself, but it doesn't ever actually save any lives.

It's like the Simpsons meme with a little kid. I'm helping. Look what

I've done. Yeah. I'm winning. They're lip service bills. You're praising me with your lips, but your heart is far from me.

They're not actually getting anything done. It's a lip service thing and they're able to, like you said, they're able to promote some sort of a false victory.

These are medals that they created themselves and hung around their own necks in order to gallivant around and gain donations from.

You know, and now that Roe has been overturned by Dobbs, we have this generally sort of accepted idea in Christendom at large that we won.

And if you live in a red conservative state like Oklahoma or Texas or something like that, the average person in the pew thinks there's no more abortion in his state.

That's what they think. But nothing has actually changed. That's the really scary part.

So there's still a pro -life movement and they're doing the same thing today that they were doing before Roe was overturned.

But they don't have that excuse anymore, right? No, no, but they're still going to create stuff.

Let me give you an example. I printed this off just this morning. There's a local representative who is so repulsive I'm not even going to mention her name, but she's out with a pro -life

Republican bill, right? So here it is, it's House Bill 3013. So in Oklahoma, if you want to murder your preborn child, you can't go down to a surgery center and stab them with pliers and suck them out with a vacuum.

You have to buy chemicals to do it. Well, that's perfectly legal. You can go down to Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, you buy the chemical to murder your child, you go home, you take the chemical, you kill your child and you expel them into the toilet.

That's the way we do it in Oklahoma. The numbers are really huge. We have, I would say, probably as much or more abortion going on in Oklahoma now as we did before Roe was overturned.

It's just that now nobody's talking about it, which is helping those numbers to escalate, right? So where is the fight in Oklahoma now?

Well, if you're an abolitionist and your eyes are open to what's happening, the fight is the same. You're still crying to the magistrate for justice.

You're still going to the governor and the legislature saying we need equal protection under the law. You have to revoke this license to kill that mothers have.

They are specifically allowed to go buy these chemicals and kill their babies, no big deal. But for the masses, the masses, their eyes aren't open.

They don't see that. They're still looking to the same old pro -life establishment and they're still playing the same game.

It's still the same cozy arrangement. So what bill are they running this year? Well, because you can still go and get drugs to murder your babies, what this bill is going to do is it's going to make it a crime to distribute and sell these drugs to women so that they can kill their babies.

And that's what they're going to tell you. That's what they're going to tell you in the email, on the social media. They're going to say, here is this bill to stop the purveyance of these drugs to kill your baby.

Here, let me just read from the press release on this. It says, this bill would result in a felony upon conviction for any person who knows or has reason to know that another person intends to use these drugs to cause an unlawful abortion.

Okay, here it is. If you knowingly or intentionally deliver an abortion -inducing drug to a person to get an abortion, that's going to be a felony.

So that sounds great, right? It's like, abortion drugs are still legal, so we're going to make it not legal to go and get them.

Okay, but here's the fine print they're not going to tell you about. It says, this act does not apply to a pharmacist or a manufacturer or a distributor of surgical supplies who lawfully manufactures, possesses, offers, sells, or distributes these drugs, right?

So here's what they're really doing. Say I'm a mom and I want to abort my child. I can go to CVS, buy the drugs, kill my child.

But if I'm in too embarrassed to go to CVS, and if I send you down to get the drugs for me, and then you come to my house and sell me those drugs, you just broke this law.

I'm the felon. You're the felon. That's all they've done. But no one's going to get their drugs that way anyway.

They're ordering them online from licensed registered pharmacists and they're following the law. This bill is not going to save a single life.

It's all grandstanding. It's just so that they can have a quote pro -life bill and pat themselves on the back again at the end of the legislative session.

Right, so that just keeps going on and on. I think that's good that you're showing us that because part of the opposition is this deflection towards, hey, look at all of the things that we're doing, but it's not doing anything.

It's a paper tiger. Symbolism. Symbolism. At best. That's part of the opposition, that they would be running this kind of distraction campaign as well as opposing abolitionism straight out.

These are all, I think, very helpful insights as we are considering what kind of opposition we are up against, not only from the state, but also from the pro -life organization and then often from churches themselves.

And yet, if we can understand what kind of opposition it is, we can understand how to respond to it, how to expose it, how to shed light upon the issues so that we're not wasting time.

We don't wanna be boxing shadows and beating the air effortlessly, but actually connecting. Just a short question.

Out of the three, the church, pro -life movement, and state, which would you say is the most vocal and which would you say is the biggest hurdle?

Well, I would say it's kind of like drawing lines on the map in the Middle East after World War II. Okay, you're saying, well, let's pit the church against the state against the pro -life movement, and I'm saying you're drawing arbitrary lines and it's all the same people wearing different hats depending on how you look at them.

Oh, wow. My friend Miles said this to me. Let me see if I can get his quote right. He said, the pro -life politicians are keeping murder by abortion going and the pastors are covering it up.

And the pro -life lobbyists and organizations are the go -between and the glue that holds it all together. Yep, so we need to see parts of that fall apart.

The coalition needs to be blown apart and we know who can do it, so. Amen to that. All right, well, let's move on to some recommendations.

Michael, you wanna go ahead and start for us? I do have a few recommendations, and these are all books that I was reading ever since 2020 and the state -mandated emergencies that were created for us to comply.

One is called Resistance to Tyrants, Romans 13 and the Christian Duty to Oppose Wicked Rulers by Gordon Runyon, which will be a bit more of a lighter read, it's shorter, but it's,

I think, very clear, plenty of scripture for you to meditate on. Romans 13 is often misunderstood in its intent.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have two volumes which you might be able to find this resource online, you may be able to find a used copy of this.

These are called, respectively, The Theology of Christian Resistance and The Tactics of Christian Resistance.

These were symposiums that were put together by Christian Reconstructionists back in the 80s.

It's hard to remember these things, but this was a time when pastors were being drug out of churches and thrown in jail because they had

Christian schools that didn't comply to state -mandated education standards. We don't live in a time that is particularly unique about tyranny, tyranny is there.

How do Christians respond to tyranny is something that Christians must work through every single generation.

And there are some thoughts in these volumes that I would not agree with, but they make me think, and there are things in there that I do agree with that have been helpful and practical, so those are my recommendations.

Chris, you don't have a recommendation this week, Chris? Not this one, not this one. I already listed them all,

I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I was selfish of me, Chris, I apologize. No, it's okay. Well, I think we'll take the rest of the time of recommendation and we'll give it to you,

John, and you can recommend your book that you have here. Yeah, so the book is Overcoming the

Dark Side of the Pro -Life Movement. Look that up on Amazon. It'll also be available on my website, which

I'll just send you to Amazon. So that website is unitedforlife .us, unitedforlife .us,

and the book is Overcoming the Dark Side of the Pro -Life Movement. It's gonna open your eyes to all of the opposition that you're going to get when you become an anti -abortion activist, whether you think of yourself as an abolitionist or a pro -lifer.

I think of myself now as an abolitionist because so much of the pro -life movement has been co -opted, either by wickedness or by naivete.

There's all kinds of things. There's just this dark side that's pervasive that you're gonna come up against.

I highly encourage you to get my book so that you can learn from my assumptions that were wrong, from my mistakes that I made, from the ways that I was humiliated and beat down and punched down.

That doesn't have to happen to you. Get the book and be encouraged by it. Find out what to look out for, how to make strategic plans to work around that opposition so that you don't burn out and you can save lives and save souls.

It's a roadmap for you so that you can go a better route than the one that I took. You know, I think all of us want to grow up and make different mistakes from our parents.

Let's look at how others have suffered and find new ways to suffer, all right? That's what it's all about.

The other book I want to highly recommend to you is The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates by Pastor Matt Truella.

And that says that whenever an authority comes along and commands that which

God forbids, then other authorities are supposed to step in and interpose and protect the people in their jurisdictions from those, maybe they're higher authorities, equal authorities, it doesn't matter.

But if you carry a gun or a badge or a gavel or a quill pen to write legislation, whatever your job is as a magistrate, you are to wield that magisterial authority to uphold

God's law. And if any other authority or magistrate comes along and is killing and stealing and destroying with their authority, you're supposed to step in.

And this book is hugely important because it says that we do have power.

We do have opportunity to stop wickedness. You might think, oh, the federal government's doing

X, Y, Z and stealing and killing and destroying. Well, we have all kinds of other authority structures at the state level where you have a lot more ability and power to get these men elected to help protect our families and our property and our unborn children here where we live.

This book, I believe, is one of the most important books written in this generation. It's only 69 pages.

You can easily read it over a half a pot of coffee on a Saturday morning. That's the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates by Pastor Matt Chuela.

Also, there's an appendix in the back, again, dealing with Romans 13 and how to interpret that.

So Michael mentioned Resistance to Tyrants just a minute ago by Gordon Runyon. Get that book and also get

Pastor Matt's book and you'll have a double -barreled dose of Romans 13 going on right there.

So those are my resources. All right, well, we'll move on to what are we thankful for, Michael? I'm thankful for encouragement.

I'm thankful for the moments of encouragement and those who offer encouragement.

They are priceless. Can't put a value on how much important that is. Amen, John?

I am very grateful that I recently heard from my daughter who's traveling overseas and she was without a phone and she was surrounded by secular people studying abroad and I was afraid that she was alone and down, but she got ahold of a phone and we got to talk and I got to encourage her and she sounded happy and she sounded like she was adjusting and finding her way, you know, as a homeschooled believer out there in the big world.

So I'm very grateful that she seems to be doing okay and that we're able to talk. Amen, Chris? I am grateful for the way in which

God works and he pulls things together and you see faithful people working behind the scenes, people with different ministries that are following after God, being faithful, and using them when we don't even see it, how

God's kingdom marches forward just by faithful ministers. We're grateful to you for doing that and for coming and I'm grateful to be able to hear from people that are doing that, whether it be

Stephen Black, yourself, other people in ministry, missionaries. You hear stories of a missionary going to a country and just a small seed and then you see it grow and it's just wonderful to hear those stories.

So I'm grateful for God for doing those things. I'm thankful to the Lord for the setup that we just heard in the last episode here where we have giant organizations around us and we have very few people trying to be consistent in this fight, trying to be faithful in this fight, and a lot of people being burned out in this fight.

But I think the setup is something we've seen over and over again in the church, we've seen over and over again in the Bible, and I believe that there are enough stones in the brook to take out every giant.

I think there are tools that are there for us to grab onto. There are speculative attacks that we can take as Christians that undermine all of these wicked practices, wicked institutions, and wicked people.

I think the Lord commands us to find them. I think he wants us to use them properly and when we do use them, we're going to be surprised at how he fulfills his promises and how faithful he is with blessing us to use these tools.

Oh, well, wait, what do you have, John? I just want to say, Dylan, you read my mind. Even before you mentioned the stones,

I was sitting here thinking about how tonight we have set up David and Goliath and we've been talking about Goliath and I just want to invite everyone to tune in for the next session when we're gonna focus on David and his stones and what you can accomplish with those little things.

Amen. Amen. And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?