Episode 63: The Incarnation and Abolition of Abortion

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. It's December. It's the last

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Wednesday, last episode, Eddie, before Christmas. How you doing? I'm doing great, man.

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In real time, we're just about to embark on December. It's actually the end of November.

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But when folks are going to hear this, we'll be just a couple of weeks away from getting into the new year, and we're about to celebrate the

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Incarnation. So it is the most wonderful time of the year. I see what you're celebrating with the hoodie.

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I guess you enjoyed the announcement. That's right. That's right. Petrito coming back to Arkansas, huh?

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Yeah, well, this is certainly not a sports podcast. Welcome to the

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Rural Church Podcast. I'm your co -host, Allen Nelson. With me, as always, is my brother in the faith, and my co -labor in the ministry,

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Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of Marshall First Baptist Church. And then we have with us today a special guest.

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It's a doctor, right? Dr. Russell Three. Barely.

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Yeah. Hey, that's good, brother. Say hello, Russell, and tell us, introduce yourself to our audience.

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Who is Dr. Three? My name is Russell Three. I'm the pastor at West Park Baptist Church in Ozark, Arkansas.

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I've been pastoral ministry for a little over a decade. Married my wife, Sarah. We've got three little boys.

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We live here in the Ozark area. So outside of pastoring my church, I have a couple of things that I'm involved in.

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I'm a biblical counselor, so I do a lot of biblical counseling. Also teach biblical counseling at the seminary level at Forge Theological Seminary.

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And then also I'm really involved in the work of abolishing abortion, working with an organization here in Arkansas called

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Arkansas Life and Liberty. I currently serve as the president of the board of that organization.

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And we're kind of just getting off the ground. But anyway, so those are kind of the different hats that I wear overall right now, as far as ministry and life.

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What all do you do in your free time? Oh, I've been doing a lot of deer hunting.

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But Eddie, I was telling Alan here a minute ago that my son killed his first little deer yesterday.

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So we were excited about that. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Take that, PETA. So I thought it'd be a good episode.

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First of all, Russell, do you have any heresies named after you that you know of? Nothing I'm aware of.

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OK, yeah, that's one of my life goals, I think Eddie shares in that, that we would like to die without any heresies ever being named after us.

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We want to talk about one of the I did some studies a few years ago at our church, how not to be a heretic at Christmas.

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And so I thought, since this is the Wednesday before Christmas, that we would talk about the incarnation.

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And then we would transition from that to talk about pre -born life and why it's important that we defend pre -born life.

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And we'll discuss the differences between the pro -life movement and abolitionism.

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The reality is our Savior came to us in utero.

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He came to us in the womb of his mother. I'll mention a few of these heresies.

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You know, the church wrestled with these. Of course, you have Arianism, which denies Jesus his divinity.

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You have Apollinarianism that said Jesus had a divine mind, but not a human mind.

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You have Nestorianism that said Jesus was two persons, God and man working together.

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And you have Eutychianism said that the God nature and the human nature fused into a third type of nature that was neither fully

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God or fully man. Well, we reject all of those because the biblical teaching is this.

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Our Savior came to us taking on the human nature and becoming.

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He remained truly God and became truly man.

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Truly God, truly man conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the

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Virgin Mary. And that is when his human life began in the womb of his mother.

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Not at his birth, but at his conception when all life begins.

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Let's start out talking for a moment about why our theology of the incarnation is so important.

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Why it matters that we get this right. So, Eddie, let's start with you, brother. What do you want to add to that and flesh out?

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Pardon the pun. Well, I just want to read the text, you know. I think it's so important that we let the

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Word of God speak to these things. You know, even Mary questions, how can it be?

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How can this be that the Son of God is going to be born to the

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Virgin? And so it says in Luke chapter 1, verse 28, And the angel Gabriel came to her and said,

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Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

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And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name

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Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the

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Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever.

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And of his kingdom there will be no end. And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin?

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And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

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Therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative

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Elizabeth in her old age has conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who is called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.

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And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.

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And the angel departed from her. And you know, I think we just see there in the text that the angel tells her that the

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Holy Spirit is going to come upon her. The power of the Most High is going to overshadow her. So the child to be born will be called

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Holy, the Son of God. And if we would just take God at His word, if we just take the

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Scripture as it is the word of God, we can believe what He has said. Instead of often

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I think our problem is we're trying to tease out in some way that our finite minds can grasp the infinite work of God.

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And I think a lot of the heresies that you just mentioned are because of people trying to define things using metrics that are not what

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God has said. And they're actually trusting their own logic and reason over the word of God and what

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He has said in the Scripture. The Baptist Catechism, 17th century Baptist Catechism, says this.

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How did Christ become, sorry, how did Christ being the Son of God become man?

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Answer. Christ the Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body, Hebrews 2 .14,

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and a reasonable soul, Matthew 26 .38, being conceived by the power of the

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Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her, Luke 1 .27,

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yet without sin, Hebrews 4 .15. There have been several births in the

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Scriptures we could talk about that were miracle births but brought about through natural means.

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So Abraham and Sarah or Elizabeth and Zechariah and on and on,

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Samuel's birth. These were miraculous births, but they were carried out through natural means.

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Yet there's only one birth in the Scripture that is the conception is by supernatural means, and that is the conception of Jesus.

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And the Scriptures are clear that He is conceived in the womb of Mary, and that is when

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His life, human life, begins. Russell, what is so important about getting this doctrine right of the hypostatic union of we have a

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Christ who is truly God and truly man? Why does that matter?

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I think surrounding this discussion of the Incarnation, I think for me, the hypostatic union being of extreme importance as well as the thing

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I think we lose sight of. We just say it at this time of year is the reality of the virgin birth because if we lose the virgin birth and there are people who want to deny the virgin birth and maintain their orthodoxy, we lose the gospel because all of a sudden we have a

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Savior in the line of sin and original sin is in play. And then we've completely lost the pure Lamb of God because He's no longer supernatural.

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He's in that same line of original sin as we are, and I think that's something that's kind of ignored.

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It's not thought about because that's what God chose to use to bring about the functional aspect of the hypostatic union.

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It's clear in the Scriptures that we have to have a mediator. As Job talks about, who can mediate between God and man?

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The God -man can. We have Jesus who took on human flesh so that He could be, as you insinuate, you didn't say it this way, but as you insinuate, so He could be the last

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Adam, so He could be outside that line of Adam in the sense of taking on a sin, and now

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He's the new Adam, the last Adam, and He has fulfilled all righteousness. We didn't just need

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Jesus to die for us. That's the point. We needed Him to live for us, and He entered into humanity the way that all of us do in the womb of His mother, and He obeyed

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God perfectly, fulfilled all righteousness, and then He is our sin -bearer. You can't think of Christmas without thinking about the cross, the manger where He lay at one time in a wooden manger only to be nailed one day to a wooden cross and then raised again the third day.

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As you say, the gospel is the virgin. We don't play around with the virgin birth. We don't play around with the hypostatic union.

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We don't play around with His fulfilling all righteousness. This is the content of the gospel, and if anybody's happened to listen to this that's not a

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Christian, the exhortation to you is you need to repent of your sins and remember that what

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Christmas is about is Jesus came not to give us a prosperous life in this world, though sometimes

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God blesses us certainly with material blessings. Jesus came to rescue us from God's righteous wrath against our sins, and you need to repent of your sins and put your faith in this finished work of Christ.

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Anything else you'd like to add about that? Well, I think one thing we want to remember, even as you brothers have already pointed out, the only way for Christ to be our

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Savior is if He is born of woman as we are born of woman under the law, you know, Galatians chapter 4.

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He humbled Himself by coming in the form of a servant, even as it says in Philippians chapter 2.

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And so we see the Lord Jesus entering into the world to identify with us that He might die in our place on the cross, that we might be made the sons of God in Christ.

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And so that is absolutely necessary. If we take away from the way that Jesus came into the world like us, then we take away the way that we are imputed with His righteousness and come into His kingdom to be

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His people. Yeah, if you know anything. It's absolutely necessary that we understand that He's come to us in that way.

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The promise is He'll be the seed of the woman to crush the serpent. That's an interesting language.

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If you think through that just for a moment, the seed of a woman, that's not how you talk, right?

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You talk about the seed of a man. The seed of a woman will crush the serpent's head.

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Oh, here we have, even in Genesis 3 .15, the couching there of the idea of the virgin birth.

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And it's interesting, isn't it, that Jesus comes into the world in such a humble way, in such a vulnerable, that's hard for me to say, way, in the womb of a young virgin.

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It's interesting that God would do it this way. It seems like, wouldn't it be better for Jesus to just come down or God could make a body from the dust like He did

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Adam. But as we've already said time and again, that this is important for Jesus to enter into humanity the way that we all enter in humanity.

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And the way that we all enter into humanity is through conception, through the womb of our mother.

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You can say a lot about some of the most wicked people in the world today or people in the past,

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Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, but I can tell you this, they all at one time were in the womb of their mother.

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They all had a mama. The point here is every single person comes into the world this same way.

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Now, Jesus obviously is supernatural and being conceived by the Holy Spirit. But my question for you, brothers, is what is the significance here, the connection, we might say, between Jesus's incarnation in the womb and our current fight today against abortion?

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I think, for me, one of the obvious connections is that it's one of the places in Scripture that we recognize where life itself actually begins, speaking of the conception.

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I think, for me, the place that I like to look, and it actually involves Jesus in the womb, but He's not the one kind of focused on in the account, is when

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Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and she's a few months farther along with John the

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Baptist in the womb. And when Christ, being present inside of His mother's womb, comes into the presence of John the

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Baptist being there in His mother's womb, John the Baptist reacts through the power of the

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Holy Spirit, the text says. And so this really moves upon Him.

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I mean, I always joke and say, you know, He has a baby gospel fit inside of His mother. And so I think we get a picture even there of the personhood, the humanity of these infants in the womb, that there's, in fact, an interaction of sorts that happens there, a worship that happens there.

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And so I think it really, when we think about the incarnation, we think about the commonality we have with Christ and that we come through conception, we see that that's life.

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It's not pre -life. It's not almost life. It's humanity.

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It's not potential life. It's life. Amen. Our Savior teaches us many things.

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This is one of the beautiful things He teaches us. And I think any

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Christian listening to this at this point, obviously, is going to agree. We ought to defend pre -born life.

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Now, there is a strategy here, discussion that we should have, and that is the pro -life movement.

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And I, for a long time in my own life, was consider myself part of the pro -life movement.

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And I remain even grateful for some people, even many people in the so -called pro -life movement.

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However, I have also come to see over the last few years that the movement as a whole is not as pure as what we thought.

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It's corrupt in many cases. And so what I want to ask you,

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Russell, is for those who might be new to this discussion, their jaw might hit the ground to hear any

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Christian say that they have problems with the pro -life movement. So what is abolitionism compared to the pro -life movement?

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Like, what's the similarities and differences, and why has the pro -life movement ultimately failed us?

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Let's just start there. Just take a couple minutes on that. Yeah, and I want to make sure that on the front end, when we're discussing this, that when you hear me or probably

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Quatro saying the pro -life movement, what I'm not talking about for the most part is the average pro -life

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Christian who has, you know, thought through this and trying to trying to do what they think they can do.

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Yeah. The corruption in the pro -life movement at large really is at the top.

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We can compare it to, you know, my past being involved in the Southern Baptist Convention years, right, where we knew that the local church has the most part that there are strong, conservative, love the

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Lord, love the Bible. And but the problems were at the top. And I think we see that. And so there are some people out there that hold the same views that I have that may still call themselves pro -life, but they believe in the principles of what

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I would call abolitionism. And so but the pro -life movement is is is not what the average

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Christian thinks that it is. OK, so the differences would be this. The pro -life movement for 50 years has with good intention,

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I really, truly believe, sought to chip away at the ability for people to have abortions in different places, different states, localities.

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They've passed different types of laws. We hear about them almost every election season.

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You know, they've they've limited this. You can't do this. You can only kill a baby, you know, up to 12, you know, up to 12 weeks or up to six weeks or up to 18 weeks or whatever it might be.

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The pro -life movement has taken the the strategy of we're going to do whatever we can do.

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Try to to chip away at this. Well, as I have assessed that not much like you.

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I was involved in I was involved in the pro -life movement for a long time. And as I began to hear about this concept of actually abolishing abortion,

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I began to look at it biblically. What I figured out is the approach of the of the abolition movement is we call for complete and equal justice under the wall.

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And there is no state in the union right now where equal protection for unborn children exists.

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And what we mean by equal protection is this, that the same laws that protect you and I from being murdered in the streets need to be applied to the unborn child in the womb, meaning that it is the crime of murder to end the life of an unborn child.

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And just like any other murder, anybody involved in that process is accountable to the law for that.

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And so that would be if it's a doctor that performs an abortion, they're accountable under the law.

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If it's the mother who takes the abortion pill or go takes their child to the doctor in their womb to be killed, they're accountable under the law.

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Anybody that facilitate help facilitate that process, they're accountable under the law, just like any other murder.

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If I'm the getaway driver for a drive by shooter, I'm accountable under the law for murder. So the pro -life movement has has said we're going to we're going to take what we can get.

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We're going to put limitations on this abolitionism as a whole. Basically, the principle is equal protection.

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We want to end abortion completely, make it completely illegal with the same punishments for murder, because the pro -life movement will say abortion is murder.

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What we would say is if abortion is murder, you have to treat it as murder under the law or you're being inconsistent.

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You're not you're not applying the standard equally to these people that you're saying are persons.

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You're saying they're human, but you're not applying the same rule of law to them as you would to the born child or one you are walking around.

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So let me get this one out of the way. I because this is used all the time, the 14 year old girl who is raped by her godless, wicked, drunken father and the family in order to cover up the shame takes her to have an abortion.

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You're really going to throw this girl in jail. Now, I'm using an extreme example, but that is what's thrown out here on these things.

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So I want to let you have the opportunity to answer a question like that. Right. So a couple of things there.

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Number one, as Christians and just as people in general, we don't believe that the child should suffer for the sins of the father.

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OK, if I commit a crime, my son shouldn't be held accountable for that crime. Yeah, my son shouldn't be punished because of that.

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Right. And so in the same way, this unborn child that's a result of this criminal behavior doesn't deserve to be murdered because of the wickedness of its father, of the child's father.

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The other part is this. If this 14 year old girl is forced by her family to go do this, being coerced, we already have laws on the books that protect protect us from coercion.

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Right. If I hold a gun on you and say you got to kill this person or I'm going to kill you, that's coercion.

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And there's already laws against coercion and there's prosecutorial discretion that allows for to to see the circumstances of the situation and make the best make the best decision on how the law should be applied.

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OK, so that's that's not what we're after. Right. I think we ought to punish the rapist.

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And I'm the extreme case. I think when rape is clear, I think rape should be a capital crime.

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Yeah, I think we should punish the rapist, not the baby. Yeah. And and we should support that young woman and in whatever way that we can.

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I think that's an excellent answer, brother. I'm so grateful, man, for you answering that.

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I knew you would answer it well. We answered it so well. I would only add I'd add one analogy, if I can, to that.

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And that is, imagine the same scenario I just gave, except now the child's five.

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Right. Right. OK, what are you going to do? The mother kills a child. He's five.

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Christian, don't go back. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't do that. Right. Like you can't like I'm sorry that she was she had stress and pressure and it was hard, but you can't kill the child.

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OK, that's the argument. That's the abolitionist argument.

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The child, the only difference between a five year old child and a three three week old child in utero is age.

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Life is the same and age and location. And if you can grasp this concept, if you could say, what would you do to a group of people or a single person who murdered a 10 year old child, a 12 year old child, an eight year old child?

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How would you want the law to handle that? Then all we're saying is we want the same thing applied to life across the board.

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By the way, at the end of life, too, you know, it's like a it's it's it is a whole life concept.

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You know, although abolitionists is obviously focusing here on on preborn life, but it's it's the same no matter the age, because we believe that that life is life.

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Right. That's right. Yeah. You know, kind of kind of to bring up another question, a way that this this issue gets argued.

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So I'll kind of throw you this softball, Russell, but the pragmatist might would argue, well.

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We all would like to see no abortions, but the pragmatist might say, but the only way we're ever going to get there is through incrementalism, is through whatever steps it takes.

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So we just want there to be less abortions. We want there to be none. But but if we can get to less abortions because we pass this law or that law that that brings it down to here or there, that would be their argument.

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So how would you respond to that argument? Those that would say, well, but but don't we want to save the 12 week or the 12 or those at 20 weeks or however many weeks?

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Don't we want to save those babies if we can? Yeah. Let me just say, obviously, we praise

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God for any any life that's that's saved, preserved. You know, that's that's that's in the providence of God and we praise

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God for that. But let me let me give you a picture that maybe illustrates this in almost a silly way.

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But I think it's I think it's pointed and I think it applies here. I'm a biblical counselor. You guys pastors and counsel people through issues of life.

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If a man and a wife come to my office and the man says,

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I've been committing adultery and I do it eight times a month.

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I commit adultery on my wife and I was to look at that man and say, that's terrible, that's sinful.

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You need to stop that. But I tell you what, I know you know that you're in this relationship.

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It's kind of hard to step away right away. Let's just cut it down to twice a month.

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Right. Just only commit adultery twice a month. And that's way better than you committing adultery eight times a month.

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Well, if my church people or other pastors or Christians heard that I was giving that kind of counsel, they would say that I was insane.

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They would say that I was sinful, that I was part of the problem. I was advocating for adultery.

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You say, no, no, I'm advocating for less adultery. No, but you're telling him it's OK to commit adultery twice a month.

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That's what the pro -life movement's doing. We're saying advocate to outlaw this, make it illegal.

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Like other things are illegal and stop it. And they're saying, well, we can't really do that.

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And so they advocate for these lesser things. And we're saying you are giving permission.

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You are saying it's good and OK and right to murder children up to whatever moving line you've chosen.

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Right. Whatever lines they draw on there, sometimes it's time, sometimes it's method, sometimes it's whatever.

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And so that's what I'm saying. We as Christians, we don't we don't advocate for halfway obedience because halfway obedience is disobedience and sin.

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And so for us to say this is a good thing, this is a righteous thing. We're saying there's peace and there's peace in Zion and there is no peace.

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And I think that's that's the problem. We have settled for halfway obedience or partial obedience in this.

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And we're not advocating for what is actually biblically true and right. Yeah, I think

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I think that's good, brother. Sadly, there are actually I can't think of people off the top of my head, but I know

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I've seen there's actually Republican politicians that have said, we've got to stop being so hard on the abortion movement because we're losing, you know.

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And President Trump's said it multiple times in the last few couple of last year or so. Yeah. Well, that's yeah.

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Well, that's obviously a great example and a terrible but it's terrible strategy, terrible strategy in terms of righteousness.

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Right. Because when it comes to righteousness, it's not about strategy. It's about what's right, what's wrong.

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What does the Bible say here? Here I stand. Right. And so another question that I want to throw out there to you, we're talking a little bit before the show.

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We're always waiting on Eddie to come on. So we have time. But the question is, talk about this is a command.

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Talk about what happened in Ohio. And then the question is, could that ever happen in some conservative state like Arkansas?

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Yeah. So if you've been keeping up, Ohio basically passed a measure in this in the in November that pretty well enshrines a so -called right to abortion in their state constitution.

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At this point in Ohio, abortion up to birth really is going to be not just legal like it is everywhere else.

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It's going to be a protected right under their constitutional document, which what that does is the only remedy for that is to repeal their constitutional amendment and pass one that reflects righteousness in its place.

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There's no legislation that can touch it now because they've enshrined it in their constitution. And so in Arkansas, people say, well, we've got some of those strictest so -called pro -life laws in America.

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Well, it's released this week. We've known about it. But it's been really kind of come to the public this week that there is a large effort underway to pass almost identical, almost identical constitutional amendment in Arkansas.

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And what this means is that if this passes and here's the thing about Arkansas, it's really easy to get questions about constitutional amendments on the ballot if you've got money and almost everything that has gone on these constitutional ballots.

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I mean, there's been some exceptions, but they have been passed through the years. And so there is a group calling themselves something in the nature of something for limited government.

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They're painting this as a limited government issue, and they want to enshrine in the

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Arkansas Constitution the right to murder children. That's what it amounts to.

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They're going to call it all kinds of things. They're going to give it creative language that sounds good and try to get this, you know, get this through.

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But that's what it amounts to, which means that every so -called pro -life law that's on the books will be null and void under the

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Arkansas Constitution at that point if it passes. And the only remedy we will have is to pass to repeal it and pass a constitutional amendment in its place.

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And so that's that's where it's at. This is this isn't hypothetical. This is happening. And and we're in a position where because of the influence of the pro -life movement and their unwillingness to call for accountability for everyone at every level, they've painted this picture of women being the victims of abortion and abortion being this cultural issue that's kind of less under the control of people, almost just pushing aside accountability and responsibility.

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And now they're going to be we're going to be put in a position where they're going to have to stand up and say, this is wicked. This is evil.

33:10

You can't do this. And everybody that's involved in this needs to be held accountable before God. And if they're not willing to advocate for it that way, which is what they did in Ohio, they tried to just kind of do use their same old language, same old strategy.

33:25

It's the failed Ohio strategy. This is what we've been calling it. We will lose. And their abortion will be more wide open than it's ever been in the state of Arkansas.

33:37

Yeah, we by the way, as Christians, we absolutely do believe in limited government.

33:42

The problem is we believe government should be limited to the things that Scripture calls government to do.

33:49

And one of the things government actually call or Scripture actually calls government to do is to punish the evildoer.

33:56

That's right. It's it is actually the government's job. Now, there's a lot of things we could grab about this, not the government's job, the government's doing today.

34:04

And we would say, let's limit government. Amen. But it is actually the government's job to protect the innocent and to punish the evildoer.

34:15

So you would actually you would actually use this. It's so twisted and satanic to use something that we believe in limiting the government to actually have the government not do something it's supposed to do.

34:30

So I think I think that's important for us to consider. The other thing I want to ask you, and we won't say any names, but I have friends and you have friends who are in where you could say names if you want to.

34:43

But we in in Arkansas politics, you know, the people that we've reached out to before I've reached out to before.

34:51

If anybody was happen to listen to this, like what would you what would you say to them politically?

34:57

Or maybe you don't even want to use that term politically, but like what what would you say to those who profess to be

35:04

Christians who are involved in Arkansas politics? What would you say to them about this issue?

35:12

What is it that they should be doing, thinking about, etc.? Well, I think

35:17

I think one of the first things is you you need to know, first of all, just as a as a citizen, if you don't know who represents you at every level of government, you better figure that out.

35:28

Whether you're talking about your if you're in a city, your city council person, whether you talking about like a quorum court situation, your state reps, your state senators, you need to know who those people are.

35:41

And you need to be in some level of communication with them. I think we have put this mystique on politicians.

35:51

And if you get in that position, you're kind of sit on this weird pedestal. We'll talk about you.

35:56

But if we get in the room with you, we're kind of awed by the fact that I'm in the room with you. We've got to get over that and understand that these are just people and they're people that have a whole lot of undue influence put on them.

36:08

And they need to be hearing from godly people about what we really believe and what we really desire out of our representatives at every level.

36:16

They work for us. Yeah, yeah. They work for us and they're there to advocate for their constituency.

36:24

And so you need to be in contact with them. And here's what you don't do. Don't contact your politicians and just berate them over the issue of abortion or anything else to start with.

36:34

Reach out to them, say, this is who I am. This is where I live. This is what I where I'm at.

36:39

And, you know, hey, I want to be praying for you as you try to do this job. I know it's not an easy job. And when you're in the area,

36:47

I really like to meet you, buy you a cup of coffee, hear about what you're working on, you know, at the state house.

36:53

What are the things you're passionate about? What are the bills maybe that you've got you've got coming up and try to build that relationship?

37:02

But it boils down to the fact that we've got to politicians in general. There are exceptions to this rule, but politicians in general, all they care about is which way the wind is blowing.

37:13

They all they care about is what's it going to take for me to get reelected to my current office or to the next office that I want.

37:21

And so they need to know where the wind is blowing. And the only way they know that is by the majority of people that contact them.

37:29

And so if you're contacting them and you're building a relationship, then they're going to they're going to over time, they may try to push you away and that's fine.

37:38

They may try to, you know, pat you on the head and tell you everything's good. And just be consistent, you know, once a month, send in an email, phone call, text message.

37:48

And over time, being able to build that relationship. And as pastors, I try to tell pastors this, you guys have no idea how much the average politician, particularly in a state like Arkansas, how much they don't want to hear about a pastor that is well -informed and informing his people about these political moral issues that relate to what the

38:10

Bible says. Because what they don't, what they understand is whether it's 50 or 500 or 1500, you've got a group of people that care what you think about this issue.

38:22

They understand you're trying to look at this biblically. And if the politicians understand that you're engaged and you're going to be communicating with your people, they really do care what you're saying.

38:33

They want to, they may not like it, but they're going to pay attention a little bit. So you got to get engaged, man.

38:40

And you've got to be telling these people, we've got to stop playing games. And we've got to advocate for unborn children, just like we do everybody else, like we talked about before.

38:49

We've got to make this illegal, make it punishable as murder under the law so that we can truly protect unborn life.

38:55

Because there's no surgical abortion in Arkansas technically now. There's no clinics open in that way.

39:01

But the best is we can gather the statistics that we're getting from the organizations that provide the abortion pills.

39:08

There's probably just as much abortion happening in Arkansas as there ever was.

39:15

It's just all happening at home with pills instead of in clinics with surgeons. You know,

39:20

I want to circle back here because this is the number one argument I hear against abolition and equal protection.

39:27

And so I want to circle back to it and answer the argument again. And then I will leave you some time to give us resources that, you know, pastors, church members, think about some resources that you would point us to.

39:42

But but again, the abolition movement, to my knowledge, is not denying that there are certainly extreme cases out there where you you would put women as a victim of part of part of some sort of issue.

39:58

You know, we could all think of these extreme examples, you know, like the like the example

40:04

I said earlier. But but but my response, a couple of things. One, my first response is, remember, we already have laws on the books to deal with this.

40:16

When it comes to a murder in a situation, you deal with it case by case scenario.

40:23

I mean, look at every case, you know, so case by case. So if there is a situation where a woman is coerced or forced to have an abortion, that's that's handled differently already.

40:35

It's already handled differently in murder cases. So it's really a moot point and it's really just an emotional point.

40:43

And honestly, go ahead, which I was going to say. And here's the thing. If we make abortion abortion, we basically what the law, the bills, which we've had bills that have been presented and have been killed in the legislature, even in Arkansas.

40:59

Basically, what our law does is it removes the exception from the murder code. There is an exception in the murder code for women who kill their child through abortion.

41:07

There's an exception. They're a special class of citizen that is allowed to murder with impunity in that specific circumstance.

41:14

And so our bill basically would just remove that. But if if murder, if abortion is murder under the law in Arkansas, the woman who's coerced is, in fact, more protected because they are then the person who's going to force them to have an abortion.

41:32

They are accountable under the law as murderers. Then they're now currently they wouldn't be liable for the for murder.

41:42

They can be liable for some other things. But but murder wouldn't be what they were accountable for, necessarily, because.

41:49

So if we put it on the books that way, it's in fact more protection for the potentially coerced than we currently have under the law.

41:57

So that's that's argument one that I wanted to offer to that. The second argument is this the vast majority.

42:06

OK, so I do recognize that we can talk about these extreme cases and we want to make sure it's right.

42:11

We want true justice. But the overwhelming majority,

42:16

I don't have a percentage, brother, but the overwhelming majority of abortions are not.

42:23

Falling under that category at all. So it's it's really not a good argument.

42:30

The vast majority of abortions, in fact, you even see people posting videos and laughing, just cruel, evil people.

42:38

And if we don't this may sound harsh, but if we don't call women having abortions wicked, then we take away the gospel from them.

42:49

So that it's wicked. The same with any other sin that we would talk about. It's it's wicked.

42:55

It's reprehensible. It's deserving of God's judgment. And if you don't call people, if you don't call it like it is and call people to repent, then you take away the hope of reconciliation and forgiveness in Christ.

43:06

Because he he came, we start, you know, start how we start the episode.

43:12

He came for sinners. He came to call this sinners to repentance, not the righteous.

43:18

So anyway, anything else you want to add, Eddie? And then I was going to let Russell talk to us about, you know, just some resources to point people to.

43:28

Well, as he gets into those resources, I might just add kind of the question.

43:33

What is the importance? Obviously, we need to be talking to legislators. We need to be doing those things that you mentioned,

43:40

Russell. But what do you think the importance is upon really educating the people?

43:49

Because it really seems to me, you know, I was at the Arkansas Life and Liberty event that you guys had a few months ago.

43:58

And I just I really think that there are a lot of godly

44:03

Christian people that would call themselves pro -life that they don't understand a lot of these issues.

44:10

Nobody's ever talked to them about these things. And they, you know,

44:16

I look around my county, our local pro -life chapter, and they're good people.

44:25

They're not people who, if you were talking to them, they would want every abortion stopped.

44:33

They don't want there to be. But they've been steeped for decades now in pragmatism, in incrementalism, in all these things.

44:45

And so how do we go about rightly educating our folks to think about this issue rightly?

44:51

You know, let me let me before I answer that, I do want to say one of the things that I should have said this earlier.

44:57

One of the things about those that believe in equal protection and abolitionism is that we recognize that the only answer for this issue is the gospel.

45:11

And the thing that the average church member needs to know, the average pro -life Christian needs to know, is that the pro -life movement is not gospel centered.

45:19

It's just not. And here's the truth of the matter. At the top of these pro -life organizations, they're almost exclusively run by Catholics, the

45:28

Catholic Church. And it's a different theology. And in fact, the pregnancy center and my wife ran a pregnancy center for several years.

45:37

And the pregnancy center that we were involved with, we actually removed our affiliation from some of these larger pregnancy center organizations because they were basically saying, you know, they were wanting us to not be so gospel forward.

45:51

Right. Because it's, you know, we just need to tell them about the baby and we need to tell them about this. We need to tell them about that.

45:58

Give them these facts and those facts. We understand from our perspective that the gospel is the tip of the spear.

46:05

And so if you're dealing with the true equal protection abolitionist type organization, you know, even if they still call themselves pro -life, that they believe in equal protection, then we're understanding that the gospel has to be the first thing.

46:19

When these people in states where they still operate clinics, when they go to the clinics, they're not out there spilling statistics at them.

46:25

They're out there preaching the gospel, saying you need to stop this. Repent. It's wicked.

46:31

You're heading towards destruction. Please trust in Christ. He'll save you. And so that's one of the things.

46:37

There are great pregnancy center ministries. There are things that where they do have the gospel as a part, but the gospel has to be the tip of the spear and everything else after.

46:47

And I think you understand that that's not happening. You know, that's not happening in the average pro -life ministry because it's ran by people that don't really believe in the gospel in the way that we do.

46:58

And and so as far as education goes, yeah, it's huge. There's a lot of resources out there.

47:04

But, you know, as pastors getting educated, our organization, I've been

47:10

I haven't had as much opportunity as I would have hoped to. But, you know, I always tell people, hey,

47:15

I'll come talk to your Bible study. I'll come talk to your church. I'll come talk to whoever or I'll give you the resources you need to talk to them.

47:23

I'll talk to you as long as you want and and help you kind of get your questions answered so you can answer the questions.

47:29

And there's a lot of great organizations out there that have a lot of great material that can help you with that.

47:36

End Abortion Now with Jeff Durbin is fantastic. Jeff came and did an event with us. Jeff just dropped a video talking about the fatal flaw in the pro -life movement.

47:46

It just came out like the day after Thanksgiving and it's about 30 minutes long.

47:53

And it just shows what the pro -life movement has really done and how it's actually opposed bills that would lead to equal protection, particularly in Louisiana last year, where a bill got to the floor that would have outlawed abortion completely in the state of Louisiana.

48:09

Every major pro -life organization in America signed a letter and told them, you can't do this.

48:14

You've got to stop this. That's the truth. And they'll tell you they did. And so I would encourage you to watch that video.

48:20

Jeff Durbin and his organization End Abortion Now have a bunch of good material out there. I really like from a biblical perspective, my friend

48:28

Brett Baggett and Dusty Devers. They have a group called Rescue Those and Rescue Those has an app and you can get on their

48:37

Web site. And they have really from a biblical perspective, they have some sermon series and things like that that really go after this issue from a biblical perspective.

48:47

And they do a great job with it. And then just practically getting involved in Arkansas. We're pretty well a new organization.

48:54

We've kind of formed up from the remnants of some other groups. But Arkansas Life and Liberty, which I'm working with, we are trying to kind of get this grassroots movement.

49:03

We're focused on churches. That's really my role functionally in the organization. I'm trying to talk to pastors, talk to churches and connect them with myself or someone else in our group that can come in and give them whatever they need to help empower the pastors and the churches to engage this issue biblically.

49:22

And we make sure to try to help them understand politics isn't a dirty word when it comes to church.

49:30

And that's the story that's been told. If what's going on out there is a biblical moral issue, it's our obligation to be involved, to be the voice of conscience for a nation, for a state, for whatever political subgroup we're talking about.

49:46

Wow. Amen, bro. Yeah. Obligation. We shouldn't just want to protect pre -born life.

49:57

But there is an obligation of pastors, church members, Christians to hold our magistrates and our citizens accountable.

50:09

We can't just turn a blind eye and not say anything. It's our job anyway with the gospel.

50:15

We call sinners sinners and call them to repent. And particularly in this issue. Well, that's good, brother.

50:22

Anything that you would have to add to that, Edward? No, I'm just encouraged by the work that's being done.

50:32

And I think that kind of back to one of the things we said earlier, or maybe it was what you guys were talking about when

50:41

I come on here. So before the podcast actually started, but we got to remember not to think that we've already arrived.

50:50

I think that's a lot of what often conservatives do. We have a victory like we see the

51:00

Roe versus Wade decision reversed in the Dobbs decision. And we go, hey, great.

51:07

We won. No, no, we didn't. It's not over. And I think that that's the thing we have to be reminded.

51:15

We need to continue preaching the gospel, continue calling sinners to repentance, continuing calling mothers to recognize that you're going to be a mother no matter what you do.

51:25

A mother of a live baby or a dead baby, but a mother either way. And so calling people to righteousness in Jesus Christ.

51:34

And so we got to be about that. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on today,

51:39

Russell. You got anything else you need to say? Like I said, just let me just say this.

51:46

If you want to get in contact with someone to look this up, because I don't ever remember email addresses and stuff.

51:54

You can go to you can write an email to info at. Abolish abortion,

52:00

AR dot com. I'm actually not sure that that's that that's the right email address, but that that's that's what

52:07

I've got right here. I don't think that's actually the best one, but let me just do this. You can write me an email and I'll get you in touch with whoever you need to get in touch with.

52:14

It's bro as in BRO. So, bro, Russell, that's R -U -S -S -E -L -L. T -H -R -E -E -T.

52:22

BroRussellThreat at gmail .com. Write me an email. I'll get you in contact with either through me or someone else in our group.

52:31

If you want somebody, if you want to have a conversation about this, I'll have it with you. If you want to get somebody to come and talk to you or your group, we'll make that work.

52:41

You know, our our practical goal is to has been to pass legislation that is going to lead to what we're talking about.

52:51

Equal protection. We've had bills. They've been defeated. But right now, the big thing that's staring us in the face is the potential of this constitutional amendment in Arkansas.

53:00

And again, if that happens, we are we are going to be in a really, really difficult situation.

53:07

And so keep your eyes open about that. Listen to the language. Start telling your friends, your church people, hey, this is coming.

53:15

And we need to we need to understand that this this is evil. It's wicked. And we've got to get out against this.

53:21

The Christmas reminds us that there has always been a war on children since the fall.

53:27

We see that in Egypt and Bethlehem. But we also see it in Bethlehem.

53:33

We say that war continues today. The evil one hates image bearers. And so Christmas reminds us so that ultimately we do have a victory in Christ.

53:43

Let us proclaim him. Christ is king. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Thank you for listening to the rural church podcast.

53:51

Encourage us. We hope that we can bring you some edifying and hopeful content, particularly as it's applicable to the local church.

53:59

And I guess with that, Eddie, sign us off. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

54:09

God's doing. This this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the

54:15

Hohe Mosque, the masterpiece of God. How are you going to respond?