Interacting with Toby Sumpter & Smash Mouth Incrementalism

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02:03

In Matthew 16, Jesus chastised the Pharisees who could interpret the appearance of the sky but failed to interpret the signs of the time in which they lived.

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Who are the Pharisees of our day? This strong hold of sort of whiteness and white identity and pristineness is really part of what keeps us from making progress.

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We need to do better. The church, rich in theological scholarship, has lingered in academic sanctuaries and ivory towers, failing to translate its lofty doctrines into a tangible and practical cultural apologetic.

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At the Worldview Youth Academy, we bridge this critical gap. Here, theological depth is not an end in itself but a means to engage with contemporary cultural issues for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom.

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Our mission is to cultivate thinkers who can articulate and apply Christian truths within contemporary societal challenges.

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So embrace this call to worship God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind.

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We will do better as this next generation tears down the idols of our modern culture and works to build a brighter future toward Christendom 2 .0.

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Is he hung up on me? YES! What? What?

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Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

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Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies.

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Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke,

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Pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

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Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.

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But blessed is he who keeps the law. Proverbs 29 .18, one of my favorite verses.

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And we're going to discuss today why I chose that verse. Just not yet.

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But we will. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Apology Radio. Luke DeBear hosting today.

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Pastor Jeff just got back from Indianapolis at the SBC conference where there was more treachery and slithering like snakes going on by certain people in power.

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Tough time for the SBC. Which we'll be talking about at some point, I'm sure. But for now, you got me and you got

05:54

Little Caesars over here. Yes, sir. That's me. Little Caesars. The memories, man.

06:02

Used to be $5 pies. You know, I just ordered a bunch for our youth group this week.

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And yeah, the $5 ones are now like $7 .50 or something.

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So they're still relatively affordable. Which is in keeping with just about everything that you purchase with your money nowadays.

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Especially here. Inflation's the highest in Arizona and the nation. Food's about a third more.

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Really? Are we number one? We were. Yeah, I don't know where we're at now, but we definitely were.

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But yeah, food's about a third higher if you do the math on that. So we've been feeling it. Thank you,

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Sleepy Joe. The weather's inflating. So are the prices of goods and services.

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Yeah, I'm hot right now. We had to turn the AC off and within five minutes, I was like, well, I'm already sweating.

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The bear's burning up again. It's going to be a fun one day. I don't know. It's supposed to be like 110 today,

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I think, or something like that. Just another beautiful Arizona day. Yeah. So what's up, everyone?

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Excited for today's show. I'll talk about that here in a second. But first,

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I want to thank our sponsors, as always. So you got your NAD patch on today?

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I don't have it on today, no. I got mine. Ion Layer. You can go to ionlayer .com, put apology in the coupon code, get a sweet discount.

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We love them. They're amazing. Their product's amazing. They've been fantastic partners with us. So thank you,

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We got our pre -sipped coffee, which you can get at... Man, that smells good. Gotta do that one before the end of the show, because it's pre.

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You can find that at shop .apologiestodos .com. And the shirt. I wore the shirt today on purpose as well, because the

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Coastlands do wait for his law. It's true. Which we may also discuss today.

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And you get one of these amazing tracks right there. We got our Don't Murder Your Baby track.

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We got Hope for Tomorrow, which is a track for suicide. We got Gospel for Mormons, Good News of God, general gospel track.

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And then a sex track for handing out at the strip clubs, outside of the strip clubs.

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Yes, not inside. Not inside. So yeah, check out some of that stuff.

08:26

We've been putting up a lot of cool shirts and merch and stuff. I'm excited about. So I think we put up some more here soon as well.

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Actually, this hat I just got in. We're going to have these up. They're not up yet, but they will be up soon. Probably tomorrow, hopefully. But anyways, let's just get right into this conversation here.

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And I'm running everything today, and I forgot to do my timer. So forgive me. Let's just get right into this.

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So we're going to be interacting. And I was careful how to word it, because I don't want to be like we're coming at Toby.

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Because we love Toby. Toby's my guy. He's one of my favorite dudes in the world. And he's been such a blessing to me personally in my own ministry.

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And I know to our church and stuff. And I love that guy a ton. So I don't want to be coming at him, but I want to interact with it.

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Because there's some good stuff. Some really good stuff that I agree with wholeheartedly. And there's some stuff that we want to address as well.

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So he did a recent podcast. His podcast he does is called

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Heavy Two Legs, which is really good. I really like it. He's had a lot of really good stuff to say. But he did one called

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We're All Incrementalists. So we're going to just kind of play through that, interact with some of that. But before we do that,

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I just want to say this. Because he proclaims to be a smash mouth incrementalist, which he's going to explain.

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And I want to say they are not our enemies. The men, especially up in Moscow, that are holding to this position.

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They are not our enemies. There are plenty of people in the abolitionist camp that treat them like they are our enemies.

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And have even come after us and our friends who are like -minded. Saying we're compromisers for working with them and being friendly with them and stuff.

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That's nonsense. That needs to be shut down and knocked off. They are very much in support of equal protection of abolitionist bills.

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Immediatist, as Toby describes our camp. They're very much in support of what we're doing.

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They're not against what we're doing. They are just where we differ is that they're for basically all of the bills. All the plays.

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They want to run all of them. But they are not our enemies. And we need to not treat them like they are our enemies. We need to treat them like they are our brothers whom we love.

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And not so discord with them. So I just want to say that off the bat. So Toby, if you happen to see his brother, I love you.

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Very much appreciate you. And I'm just hopeful and prayerful that this is a helpful show.

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The only thing I would add in addition to that is I don't question Pastor Toby. Or anyone in Moscow's commitments to uphold and protect the sanctity of human life.

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I do believe that as far as this issue goes, he's incorrect.

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He's wrong on it. But that's where we're seeking to interact with what he's written and posted publicly.

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I know he's had a public discussion even recently on this. Did you watch that?

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I did. It was a little bit of what I expected on both sides.

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I think it's a good opportunity for each position to be interacted with.

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In the process of iron sharpening iron. It's beneficial to see it laid out.

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I think what was interesting about that is you have both sides seeking to have the same foundation.

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In terms of attacking the problem of child sacrifice. And everyone is claiming to base their strategy on the

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Bible. The Word of God is the foundation. And that's most of all what I appreciated.

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Even if I would differ with Toby's interpretive aspect of taking certain passages in the

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New Testament. For example, on the issue of divorce and polygamy.

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And using that as an interpretive mechanism to extrapolate that principle. And say, well, that should form the basis of our public policy as it relates to the murder of the pre -born.

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So Toby's method on this, or his position at least, how he presented it is.

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God regulated certain practices in the Older Testament.

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And because he did that. Because he didn't just do away with it in one fell swoop.

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He actually made provision for it to continue with certain things being put in place to take care of the victims.

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The women and the children in particular in these situations. Therefore, Christians today in the modern day have a basis for someone to say,

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I'm going to support this bill, a lesser measure than equal protection.

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Something like a 20 week ban or a heartbeat bill or what have you. If it allows me to gain a hearing before the court system and present a solid

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Christian defense of the sanctity of human life. Now, I have qualms about that procedure in terms of the strategy behind it.

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So we're going to stand beside this because it's going to give us the opportunity to present the Christian position.

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I think there's a consistency issue there. Which I hope to finalize writing something about this.

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But I just want to kind of give everyone an idea of where he's coming from. He wants to have a biblical case on this.

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I think it's better to rather than just extrapolate a principle and try to use that as an interpretive mechanism and apply to this issue.

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That God never regulates really. You know, the murder of children in the womb.

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I think the abolitionist position is we're trying to take the plain meaning of scripture.

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What does it say? What's the command? And we're trying to apply it directly to the practice of abortion.

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God says you shall not murder. Stop doing it completely right now.

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That's where we're coming from. And therein lies the distinction between our two positions.

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And as we'll hear more from Toby in just a moment, he kind of lays out things that we agree with.

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The same things that our eyes have been open to. We would hope that he would press that harder in certain areas.

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And we hope to interact with some of the things that he wrote in his blog as far as Christians being involved in the political process.

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And what exactly a righteous law looks like on this issue.

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Yeah, perfect. All right, cool. Well, I'm just going to get this going here. Gabe, if you want to pull this up, I'll start playing it.

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If you want me to stop, just say something and we'll probably be wanting to stop at the same places anyway. So here we go.

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Introduction. We here in the Moscow mood have been celebrating and implementing a particular tactic for ending legal abortion in our land that we like to call smash mouth incrementalism.

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This is a full throated recognition of the humanity of preborn babies from the moment of conception and the insistence that God's law provides equal protection for those human lives.

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And so human laws should do the same, along with a deep commitment to embracing all of God's word for the wisdom, tactics and principles necessary to do so in full obedience to Christ.

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Just quickly, yes and amen. And thank you, Toby, for using equal protection.

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Yeah. Shows you're listening. Yeah, thankful to hear it. Appreciate that. Stand on the shoulders of our faithful pro -life fathers and mothers with deep gratitude for the way that they stood in the gap for decades.

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Some of them sacrificing significantly, ultimately leading to the overturning of that bloody monstrosity

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Roe versus Wade. At the same time, we do not mind calling out some of the rot that has developed in the pro -life industry.

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The suits and haircuts that show up at any relatively successful ministry in order to shrink wrap it and sell it, creating various perverse incentives along the way.

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It's one thing for a pro -life ministry to decline to be at the tip of the spear for some particular bill, different parts of the body of Christ with different strengths and tactics.

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It's another thing entirely to actively campaign against lawful attempts to end legal abortion.

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Pro -life organizations that have actively teamed up with abortion supporters to kill bills of abolition should be ashamed of themselves.

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Smash mouth incrementalist. Can we pause right there? Go ahead. Very thankful to hear that.

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It's obvious that Pastor Toby has seen the fatal flaw. It's obvious that he's been following the conversation closely enough to understand what we've said for quite some time, and that's who the true opposition to this work is.

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Of course, you have the pro -abortion lobby fighting tooth and nail to enshrine these things, even at the state level, into our constitutions as a fundamentally protected right.

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You have all of the efforts that they have employed over a generation now to affect this issue over the past 50 years.

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They're active, of course, but in terms of actually putting a practical end to legal abortion, as Toby puts it, outlawing the practice, abolishing it, whatever word you want to use, the enemy, truly, when it comes to what decides whether or not this type of righteous legislation sees the light of day and ultimately passes, the greatest barrier standing in the way of us realizing that has been those that he is alluding to.

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The suits and ties, the pro -life establishment, the pro -life industry, the mainstream pro -life organizations, and their national and state affiliates, and their heretical anti -Christian doctrine that is standing in the way of justice being established for preborn children, namely this idea that women who knowingly and intentionally take the lives of their child in whatever way, and this is something you brought up even recently, you made great points about this, not just through pills, but through potions and various other barbaric methods, we have an entire establishment, an industry of people that believe that that woman who knowingly and intentionally does that is to have complete civil and criminal immunity under the law.

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She has a fundamentally protected right to murder her child. That is their position. We just saw, you know,

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Brent Leatherwood, the lead ethicist for the ERLC at the SBC, maintain that position in so many words.

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This is their stated position because they write and sign off on letters doing the very thing that Toby is outlining and that is opposing our bills of equal protection.

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The one that Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC signed off on was the letter for Louisiana, the bill that would have ended legal abortion there.

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So I'm very, very thankful to hear that Toby is affirming that, something that we've said for a long time, and, you know, there's a recognition of that.

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So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Toby, for that. And I'll save some of my thoughts for later part of this conversation.

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But, yeah, I mean, it's the it's the pro -life industry that's stopping these bills. And every state that we've worked in, it's been the pro -life industry.

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It's not been the left wing, the leftist. It's not been the socialists.

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It's not been the Democrats. It's been the pro -life industry that stopped every single one of these bills. And so, yeah, we'll get into that here further.

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There's so many thoughts I have. I'm trying to keep them organized here. So we'll keep going. Smashmouth incrementalism is therefore happy to cheer on all lawful attempts to end legal abortion as quickly as possible in our land.

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We support heartbeat bills and bills of complete abolition because a left jab to the gut is just as much part of the battle as a right hook to the jaw.

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And wherever possible, we should run one or the other bill and not both at the same time.

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Politicians will tend to take the less courageous route. But if you live in New York or California, I doubt very much that they would conflict.

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Every opportunity to proclaim the full humanity of the unborn is to be celebrated.

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We are incremental in that we believe it is biblically permissible to advance the cause of equal protection by passing laws that stop short of full justice for the unborn.

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Not because we're okay with injustice, but because God's word allows for some regulation of immoral practices as steps towards discouraging and limiting immoral practices.

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Can we stop there? Yeah. There's something, a good positive thing on the front end.

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Yeah. Another thing that he recognizes is the tendency of politicians to always take the lesser measure that you put in front of them.

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Exactly. So even people that have been involved in this fight a lot longer than we have have said that for years.

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When you give a politician an easy way out, when you do not require them to go all the way and demand complete abolition in this area, they will take the lesser measure every single time.

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Yeah. Because their primary interest is maintaining their seat, maintaining their office.

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Exactly. And they're not about to commit political suicide and risk giving up their seat by doing something controversial like making murder illegal for everyone.

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Right. So I just point that out to say, Toby, I'm grateful that you see that because that's the very thing that we've experienced in this fight is, you know, politicians will go so far, will go as far as you allow them to go.

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If we don't rein them in with the rule of law and hold them to the bills that we want them to pass and really threaten to upend their political security if they don't do what we want, you know, that's what they do.

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Yeah. We've seen this time and again with our politicians. They will go so far as we let them. If we don't hold them accountable, if we don't rein them in, you know, with these things, then they'll do exactly that.

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Because at the end of the day, you know, I wish that the majority of them actually cared about this and wanted to see it ended as bad as we did.

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But in our experience, they're going to take that little nibble off the edge instead of this other choice.

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Because then when it goes forward and it fails, which it virtually always does up to this point, then they can turn around to their constituency, the people that put them off in office, and they can say,

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I did everything I could. I checked the pro -life box. I took this appropriate action that you wanted me to take.

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And darn, we just didn't get it this time. But next time we'll come back and we'll get it.

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But the rule of politics, as we are told by people that have been in politics for decades, the fundamental rule is of politics is make it look like you're doing something when you're not actually doing anything at all.

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Yeah. And I mean, we I think we had we were in 18 states this or were in 18 states this year because there's some states that still have stuff going on.

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And the majority of the states, not all of them, but the majority of those states where we've had of strong Christians running our bills, faithful believers, they believe in equal protection.

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The majority of them, when it came down to it, didn't act. And every single time this year has been we can't afford to lose this election this year.

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Yeah. That's the primary excuse. It's every single time. And I've heard it time and time again. And they say, well, we'll do it next year.

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I can't. We can't lose the election this year. We'll do it next year. And it's the same thing over and over and over again.

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Again, not all of them. We have some faithful ones like Zach Deacon. I've been talking to in Iowa, for example, who's who's he?

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You know, he didn't he didn't falter. He he ran his bill. And then there's some other courageous politicians have done the same.

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But yeah, but just I wanted to bolster your point you're making there. Yeah. And there's something else that could be said here, too,

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I think, in terms of framing this, because he says we cheer on and support all lawful attempts.

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Yeah. To end legal abortion. Even if those things fall short of full justice on the way to equal protection on the way to total abolition.

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And I would just maybe and I know that Toby has heard this in some measure, but maybe just back the car up and drive by this again here.

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I think there's a difference in category between a bill that falls short of establishing full justice and a bill that is inherently unjust.

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So, for example, equal protection, we believe we're convicted by the reality that it is a just step in the right direction because it removes the inequity that exists currently in our legal system due to the pro -life laws, creating an inequity, saying that mothers are exempt from any responsibility when they take the lives of their preborn children.

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That's an inequity that needs to be rectified. And that's what equal protection does, is it makes murder a crime that everyone is accountable for, that no one just has blanket immunity to commit.

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But we realize that things like the justice system are woefully lacking in categories that provide full justice.

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Because Toby's a theonomist. We love God's law. He knows that there are entire categories that lead up to capital punishment, which is what you have to have in order to make justice in God's law.

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For murder, right? I mean, capital punishment is God's just prescription for a sanction for that, given the evidence and the witnesses are there, and the evidence and the witnesses on all those requirements, those things are currently lacking in our legal system.

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So, equal protection, while not perfect, is a just step in the right direction, even though it falls short of establishing full biblical justice.

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That's one category, because we know we've got a lot of work to do on the back end of making a just penal system, our penology.

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There's a difference between that and a bill that does something explicitly that God commands us not to do.

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So, Deuteronomy chapter 1, God says to the judges, you shall not show partiality in judgment.

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These bills, the pro -life bills, virtually every single one of them, the ones that Toby's mentioning, the 20 -week ban, the heartbeat ban, partial birth abortion, you know, all of the bills of permission, what we would call them, every single one of those shows partiality.

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And so the principle is, within the law itself, there's an injustice. That's different than what we're saying, in that this bill, while it falls short of biblical justice, it is a just step in the right direction, because it is removing that inequity that exists there.

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I hope that Toby hears that, and we understand the difference.

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Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And we'll probably get into this more later in this conversation, but one thing that we've been trying, the conversation we've been trying to push forward is not abolition versus incrementalism.

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And he's going to get into why there's increments and stuff. And we would say, yeah, there are just increments.

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But the question is, like you said, is this a just law? And that's what we've been trying to say, is this morally a just law?

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Is this a partial law? That, for us, is the argument. And just quickly, before I move on,

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I want to make a quick point. And this will come up several times in Toby's video. He keeps mentioning liberal states like California and New York.

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And how our approach should kind of necessarily change. I get the point he's making.

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I wouldn't agree, but I understand the point he's making. But what I want to say is, we don't even have anybody in those states putting bills at all.

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We want to argue from what's actually happening. And I feel like using those states as an example to argue against what we're saying is pulling something that's not really happening.

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It's kind of ethereal. It's out here, but it's not even at this point. I don't even see that even as a reality or a possibility.

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What we're arguing from is experience and what is actually happening in real life, in real time.

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All the states that we're working in, that we're putting bills in, are conservative states. That it is possible to end abortion outright in those states.

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But it's not happening because of the pro -life movement. Because of the pro -life industry. And that's what we're trying to argue.

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It's just a small point. I wanted to say that now, so as he's bringing this up later, you can kind of hear that coming up.

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It's a good one. I think he would gladly recognize, well yeah, if you have the opportunity and those legislators know better, because they're professing

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Christians, they're professing pro -life, then yeah, grab them by their Christianity. And hold them to their professed values.

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That's what Toby would say. But then he would say, kind of over here, if you have a state like California or New York, where it's

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Lib City, baby, and you're just trying to get your foot in the door to get a hearing, switch up your tactics a little bit, because there's room for this kind of thing.

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There's room to get your voice heard if you propose this kind of bill instead, because otherwise they won't even hear you.

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Whereas we would say, well, still don't compromise. The standard doesn't change just because we don't get an opportunity to proclaim it.

30:52

Right, exactly right. That's a great point. Okay, let's keep going. ...examples of that in just a minute.

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We are smash mouth in the sense that we are committed to not resting until the laws of our states and nation provide equal protection for the unborn.

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Thank you. While we will celebrate minor victories along the way, we are committed to working for the eradication of all laws that protect the murder of any unborn person for any reason.

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In the midst of this conversation... Just quickly, I would say, because we get criticized for this, we absolutely praise God. When there are those small victories and there are lives being saved, we praise

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God for that 100%. But again, the question is, are those just laws? Are they partial laws?

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So I just want to make that quick point there. ...other brothers have responded by calling themselves immediatists.

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I'm not identifying anyone in particular. I've just seen the term bandied about. And so what I want to do here is explain why basically everyone is an incrementalist of some sort, and true or consistent immediatism is either impossible or immoral, and possibly both.

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So the very purest form of immediatism, the immediate end of all abortion, is not humanly possible, because that would seem to require a

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Thanos -like snap of the fingers, ending all human abortion in the world. We're not

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God, and we do not have that power. Speaking of which, clearly God is an incrementalist. Okay, just quickly at that point too.

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Agreed. I agree with it. In a sense. Yeah, in a sense. But I don't know anyone that's arguing for that either.

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It seems as if Pastor Toby might be hung up on this idea of if you are an immediatist, then that means that you are an overnightist, as in abortion must be outlawed overnight.

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And we don't maintain that position. Like we said, there will be steps to get where we want to go necessarily because we are finite creatures, and we exist within time and space.

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And not only that, we exist within a legal system that we are working to put these laws in place that we must follow through, as he will go on to talk about in the article.

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And we can interact with a little bit of his comments there. But yes,

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Toby, in that sense, we all make progress and we are going to make progress in this area.

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The question is, will our progress be pleasing to the Lord? And how do we measure that?

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How do we measure progress? If the goal is just, well, does it save lives?

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That's a measure of progress. And we praise God when he does that of his own accord.

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When he intervenes and when he allows innocent lives to be spared, we praise him for that.

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But the question is the duty of faithfulness and the obligation, the moral obligation that we have to do justice, to write, propose, and put just laws in place, right?

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The law is a didactic mechanism for teaching, of course. We're teaching the nations what's righteous by the kinds of laws that we write.

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And that's why if we gain a hearing before the world and we've written one thing in our laws, and when we gain that hearing, we're saying something different.

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You know, Bonson talks about this a lot. Don't lie to defend the truth. If we're presuppositional in our approach here, we can't present one thing.

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Abortion is murder. Abortion is homicide. It needs to be treated the same as any other case of homicide and the laws against homicide need to be applied equally to all persons.

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That's what our law says. Babies are human beings made in the image of God. That's what we're saying with our laws.

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But if we gain our hearing before the world's courts and we, or I'm sorry, if we put a law in place, if we propose a law that says, you know, heartbeat, heartbeat bill, for example, and then we gain our hearing and we're before the courts and we say, well, actually life begins at fertilization.

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Then we've in a fashion lied with what we've written.

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What we've written is contradicting what we're saying. So what we write and what we say have to be consistent.

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Otherwise we're lying to defend the truth. That's a great point. I hadn't even thought about that. And yeah,

35:20

Toby, you're right. God could do that if he wanted, but he's chosen not to. And we're not arguing saying that, you know, we're not arguing saying that all abortion has ended all over the entire world at once.

35:33

Like that's not possible. You're right. Unless God did it. And, you know, I would agree that there are even righteous increments in that, in our state, our nation, right?

35:45

We're a Republic. You know this. We're Republic. We have to do this state by state. That's how our nation is established.

35:51

And so those are righteous increments. But the thing we're arguing for is in each of these states that we're working in, are the laws in each of these states just are partial.

36:02

And so, yeah, we are trying to do this state by state. And, you know, that's the goal. But I want to say this too, going back to if God, God's the one that's got to do this.

36:14

Agreed. He has to change the hearts of men. And that's what we're seeing. The issue again is with conservatives.

36:20

The hearts of conservatives are the ones that are stopping this. And that goes back to the verse. I'll just a good, good place to insert.

36:26

This is the worst. I read at the beginning, probably starting nine 18. There's no, there's no prophetic vision that people cast off restraint.

36:32

We agree 100 % in every state that we're working in these bills that we're working to put into legislation, come with that prophetic vision with calling the people to repentance, upholding the standard.

36:46

Yeah, exactly. And we, we rightly agree that this is only going to happen if that is the case.

36:53

And with God working through his people, through the gospel, through his law, the change, the hearts of men, that's the only way it's going to happen.

37:01

And they have to, it has to be, these laws have to be based on that principle. Just one thing

37:07

I would add to that just came to me. Maybe, maybe this will help Toby help you understand where we're coming from a little bit.

37:14

Agreed. God will bring these changes about incrementally, but our duty is to hold up the standard and to not back off of that standard.

37:26

Yeah. And God will change that slowly over time. But we don't believe we are not of the conviction that he will change things by us not telling the truth.

37:35

Right. By, by lying about this, essentially, if we're going to tell the truth, he's going to change things in his time, even with us not budging from our standard, like he's going to do it.

37:46

He's going to bring it about. Um, it's going to happen over a period of even years. It could write, take for this to happen.

37:53

At least that's how it was with the issue of slavery and where that was abolished. But, um, I hope that helps with this.

37:59

It's like, yes, God will do this in steps and stages, but, uh, what's our duty.

38:05

Yeah. And the, and the back end of that verse is, but blessed is he who keeps the law. And so we're saying that we cannot have a prophetic vision.

38:16

If we're not willing to uphold God's law in these bills, right?

38:23

So if we're, if we're champion championing, um, impartial laws, right?

38:30

Where we're saying, well, you can, you can murder your baby up until they have a heartbeat or up to 15 weeks, which is now what's going on here in Arizona.

38:38

You can murder those ones. That's not a prophetic vision. That's an impartial, uh, unjust vision.

38:45

That's partial. I'm sorry. Partial. Thank you. Um, sorry, that's my timer. Um, that's a, a partial, uh, vision that's, that's, um, holding up only part of God's law.

38:58

And so we, how do you expect to change the hearts of men if we're not even willing to stand, um, on God's law and, and proclaim that, that vision to the people.

39:11

And I know he'll say this in just a moment, but he says, and nobody, none of us are saying, and then you can kill the baby by these laws that we write.

39:21

Yeah. And unfortunately, I know that might not be what you intend, but that's the practical reality of what they do being bills of permission.

39:31

And we'll interact with that in a moment. Okay. Yeah. Here we go. We are 2000 years out from the resurrection and God is making slow but steady progress on putting all of his enemies beneath his feet.

39:41

Death will be the last enemy and then we'll come the end. First Corinthians 15, but God is the only one who has the power to end all suffering and injustice immediately.

39:50

And is in his infinite wisdom. He's chosen not to, this is no excuse for apathy or laziness on our part, but it does form the context in which we labor night and day for justice to be established.

40:02

We labor at his pleasure. We labor as his servants. Okay. Just quickly.

40:08

Big picture. Yes. Like we said, only God has that power to do that. And he has to change the hearts of men, but here's he, please hear me on this brother.

40:18

Here's the struggle we're having. This is the crux. I think every one of these States, again, these conservative

40:25

States that we've been working in that we have bills of equal protection. And those legislators absolutely have the power to end abortion in those

40:36

States. And the conservatives, the pro -life industry has chosen not to. That's where we struggle because it's possible.

40:44

It's completely possible. And it should have happened in several States, but because the pro -life industry has put a stop to them because of people like Brent Leatherwood and the

40:55

ERLC, that's why this has not happened. They have the power to do it. They could absolutely do it.

41:00

They just refuse to do it. And I think I say this completely respectfully.

41:06

I, I really truly believe that if, if you guys in, in Moscow with the

41:11

Moscow mood were involved in this process, in the legislative process with an equal protection bill in your own state, if you sat through, through the process, met with the legislators and saw what's actually happening behind closed doors, you would feel differently.

41:27

I think you would see it. And I get, we probably sound like crazy people all the time saying this is what's going on.

41:34

These are the, it's the pro -life industry and people are going, nah, I don't believe you. That sounds ridiculous. That sounds crazy.

41:40

It is crazy, but it's happening. And I think if you saw it, if you witnessed it with your own eyes, I think you would come away with a different perspective.

41:48

Let's do it. Okay. Sorry. That was supposed to be a quick point. The next most pure form of immediatism would seem to require some kind of armed and violent uprising.

41:58

If abortion is murder, why don't immediatists take that seriously and go to war? Incidentally, this is why

42:05

I do not care for the name abolitionist though. I do not mind its technical meaning. Of course we want to abolish abortion, but abolitionism has a sordid and violent past, at least in America.

42:17

It connotes the abolitionist movement to end slavery. And despite the laudable desire to see race based chattel slavery ended, that movement was radically infected by deeply anti -biblical sentiments and ultimately violence.

42:32

The Bible addresses the evils of slavery and it outlines a distinctly Christian means for ending it.

42:38

Violence and war not being one of the. Sorry. I just was going to say, I agree with that. Just keep going.

42:44

I'm with you. Sanctioned means Lincoln's invasion of the South and the subsequent 600 ,000 lives lost was not biblical or constitutional despite true evils that needed reforming.

42:58

There are several good answers to the question of why armed confrontation is not a biblical solution to abortion.

43:03

The most basic being widespread commitment to murdering your own babies is not the kind of soul cancer that can be solved that way.

43:11

When faithful Kings in Israel sought to end child sacrifice, they destroyed the pagan altars on which the children were offered.

43:17

We have a radical spiritual problem, an idol problem. The worship being offered in many of the

43:23

Christian churches in our land is corrupt and diseased. The desire, fear, or in some demented cases, delight that drives the killing of your own offspring is a demonic, psychopathic judgment that God has given us over to, and therefore requires something far deeper than a military solution.

43:43

Repentance. As we have already begun to see, if you outlaw abortion in one place, we have the kind of madness, spiritual madness that drives these people to other states where abortion is still legal or at least more easily accessible.

43:57

The Bible. Okay. Just preach pastor on all those things. Yes. 100%.

44:02

And I would just say, how was that accomplished? And it goes back to Proverbs 29, 18 with a prophetic vision.

44:09

And again, we would say you can't have that prophetic vision if you're putting forth partial laws.

44:18

Also generally requires lesser magistrates to lead and conduct defensive wars.

44:24

And it generally prohibits guerrilla style, vigilante justice, not to mention the massive tactical blunders involved.

44:31

Nothing like mafia or militia style assassinations of abortion doctors to set back the pro -life movement for another five decades.

44:40

Magistrates bear the sword of God's justice. It is their God given responsibility to protect all human life within their jurisdictions.

44:47

They must be called upon to use their authority to protect the most vulnerable and to punish those who brazenly take it.

44:54

And that's what we're doing. Agreed. 100%. And again, how does that happen with the prophetic vision?

45:01

But I suspect that most immediatists would agree with me on all of this to which

45:06

I reply and welcome to incrementalism. Obedience to God's law means we are required by God to take incremental steps in ending the atrocity of legal abortion in our land.

45:18

God requires incrementalism. But of course the immediatist comes back and says, sure, I have no problem.

45:24

This is why I just don't think framing the discussion in this way is ultimately helpful or conducive to understanding and really getting to the heart of the matter.

45:33

The issue is the, the, the laws themselves, are they just or unjust? That's, I think that's what it comes down to because we're, we're kind of like two ships passing in the night.

45:42

As far as this increments discussion, as we made clear, God is using increments.

45:48

Increments. Um, and that's not to say that he's limited. That's to say that we're limited. We're the finite ones here.

45:55

God is not. If he wanted to do this in the blink of an eye, he could snap his fingers and it would be over. Okay. But there's a duty.

46:02

There's an obligation. There is a method and a procedure that we are to follow as Christians. And Toby's getting at the heart of that right now.

46:10

It's not just righteous laws. It's gospel proclamation. It's the prophetic vision upheld in law and gospel.

46:16

It's calling men and women to repentance for the sin that's in their heart. It's calling our government, right?

46:22

Our civil magistrates to repentance in terms of how they have protected this for years.

46:29

Every level of society is culpable in this sin and at some level. Um, and that includes starting with ourselves.

46:36

We need to repent for apathy or indifference towards this issue. Christians, the church especially needs, it needs to begin there.

46:42

But what are we doing? He's outlining the strategy. It's just laws and gospel proclamation.

46:49

We do need to change the culture as far as our family cultures, our view of children, the teaching of the church, our attitude and vision of human sexuality, of marriage.

47:01

All of these things are, are, are wrapped up in this. And so, yes, it is both.

47:07

It's a cultural issue that needs to change because people's hearts need to change so that they don't desire murder in their hearts anymore.

47:13

But I just think this discussion about incremental ism is just unhelpful and helping us get to the bottom of this.

47:21

Agreed. I'm not even going to add to that. It's perfect. Problem with lawful incremental steps.

47:27

What I object to is the regulation of evil. It's one thing to stand by waiting for God to give us the clear shot.

47:35

It's another thing to pass a law that says you can kill your baby so long as it's before six weeks or 12 weeks or after an ultrasound or something.

47:42

The immediate test says he will not participate in that kind of compromise. Now, let me be clear that I certainly appreciate the skepticism and scrutiny of pro -life motivations and measures.

47:53

I'm truly grateful for the pressure of the immediate tests. A great deal of pro -life reluctance to ending abortion is a failure of nerve.

48:01

The same time, I don't think the immediate test has solved the purity problem. So you have your equal protection bill, fully biblical as far as you can tell.

48:10

Now what? You get a sponsor for the bill and the sponsor agrees to introduce it in some legislative committee.

48:15

Look here, you are playing by immoral rules. The murder of babies should end immediately.

48:21

And there are a million bureaucratic booby traps designed to bog your bill down in committees.

48:28

Now don't misunderstand me. I do not object at all. I believe this is the way to end abortion, but you're playing by the rules of their immoral game.

48:36

They are saying that you must submit your bill in this way, run the gauntlet of these bureaucratic shenanigans, and maybe just, maybe it will see the light of day on the floor of the full legislature.

48:48

So just, just quickly. And again, I think this would be helpful if you guys were involved in this process and closer in proximity.

48:57

Yeah, I, I would, I would make, I'm, I'm no expert in this, but from my experience,

49:02

I would argue that the process isn't necessarily the issue. It's the hearts of the men that are operating the process.

49:11

Um, that's the issue. And again, that goes back to that prophetic vision. I just keep coming back full circle and we can't expect these legislators to do the right thing if we're not standing strong and calling them to repentance.

49:21

Um, so again, I would argue it's not the system itself. It's now, trust me, there's definitely issues in the system, but a lot of it has to do with because of the hearts of men, because they're evil, because they're sneaky and they're tricky and they just want power.

49:38

That, that is the main issue we're dealing with here. Yeah, I would agree. I think that this is demonstrably true.

49:47

Historically where we are as a nation, the system of government that our forefathers bequeathed to us, that they gave to us is actually wonderful.

49:58

It's a great system and it's never been easier anywhere else in the world than it is in our nation to change the law.

50:05

Yeah. We'll just put it that way. It is a process and that process itself actually has mechanisms of accountability built in for the politicians for us to actually put pressure on them.

50:19

So it's not just their stated beliefs that we can use to put pressure on them.

50:24

It's the process itself that we can use to put pressure on them. And career politicians and those involved in lobbying talk about this all the time.

50:33

Our friends, you know, this idea of putting pressure on those in office to do what you want them to do, to, you know, flyer their neighborhoods.

50:44

They work for us. And yeah, and make your voice heard in order to let them know that you will make life very, very difficult for them.

50:53

Politically speaking, if they don't do what you want now, we can, we can have a hand in that same process in terms of the bills going into committee, needing to get a vote, going to the floor for debate.

51:07

I don't think necessarily that the problem is there. Like you said, it's the problem of the people within it that have political access to grind and infighting really about, because in our experience, it's like, no,

51:21

I'm not going to pass this bill because I don't like, so -and -so like I don't like the person that put it in.

51:28

And those are things that, that we can work internally to counteract either by putting pressure on legislators or by running our own campaigns and our own good, upright men who will take their spot if they don't do what we want them to do.

51:44

So I would say, I think the problem is, is less in the system. That's as he put it is designed to defend bloodshed.

51:51

And the problem with what our founders originally said, and that's that the constitution is built for a moral and religious people.

51:59

Unfortunately, we no longer have that. Right. And that's why we need a restoration and a recovery of good men in public office.

52:07

Yeah. And I hate to keep beating a dead horse here, but the, the, the government works for us.

52:15

Our legislators work for us and we forget that we've come to believe that they are the government's

52:21

Messiah, right? That they were, that they were doing things for our own good. And in reality, they're doing things for their own good.

52:27

And, but we need to remind them that they work for us. And again, this goes back to that prophetic vision.

52:33

I think the, the, the church in our, in our culture and our nation has gotten so far from that, that we've, we've forgotten that.

52:41

So if we're reminding them with that prophetic vision that they answer to God, you know, that's how we instill fear into them.

52:48

And I was going to say, Oh, just real quickly, we've seen this happen time and time again, as far as this process is concerned, going back to the point

52:56

I made earlier, what happens when these bills go into committee nine times out of 10, the only time it didn't happen was

53:02

Louisiana. And then our legislator got ambushed by the pro -life industry.

53:10

But what happens every time when they go to committee is typically,

53:16

I shouldn't say every time, but typically whoever's in charge of that committee is being told by the pro -life industry.

53:22

Don't give this bill a hearing. So again, it's not the process. It's the people, it's the ones running the show.

53:28

It's their hearts are the issue. And so they're literally stopping our bills most of the time in committee because of the pro -life industry.

53:35

And I know I keep saying this and I'm going to keep saying it because that's what's happening. But we're talking about the murder of babies and you're participating in ducking, spinning, weaving, and all manner of twister moves to get your bill to the floor of the legislature.

53:48

Now I think there are very good reasons to do so. And if I were to bring all of this to your attention, double checking to make sure you didn't actually agree with all of that bureaucratic red tape.

53:58

For example, you're not saying that it's okay to protect the murder of babies by these bureaucratic machinations, are you?

54:04

And you would simply say, no, of course not, but you're playing the legislative game. And I assume you would say, yes, that's what you have to do to get a bill passed.

54:13

Great. And I would say the same thing about a heartbeat bill or a 12 week ban in certain

54:18

States. While you may have a tidy category for the purity of your bill, you're working in an entirely impure system built on the blood and bodies of millions of babies.

54:30

I deny that a heartbeat bill is necessarily any kind of compromise any more than working within the corrupt system designed to defend the bloodshed is approving of the corrupt system.

54:40

None of us are saying keep going. Okay. And then you can kill the baby now.

54:47

Okay. That was an important to, to let him squeeze that last part in there.

54:52

So again, in regards to these two things being placed as parallel, it's the same thing.

55:01

According to his argument that I'm wanting these bills that show partiality that do things

55:08

God says we may not do in terms of a court setting, right? Leviticus 1915 you may show no injustice in court, right?

55:17

You cannot defer to the, the grade and so on and so forth. You can't show partiality. These bills do that.

55:23

That is not the same as participating in the political process. I'm sorry.

55:29

It's, it's just not right now. His last remark is really important because he brings up the heartbeat bill or a heartbeat bill.

55:37

And, you know, Moscow has made public that they've supported things like this SBA, the big Texas heartbeat bill that got passed.

55:44

And his contention is, well, these bills are not saying that fulfill this condition and then you can kill the baby.

55:53

That's not what we're saying is according to, you know, his remarks there. But I found this interesting because if you look at the

56:01

Texas legislature website, it talks about the heartbeat bill and here's what it says. Under sections one 71 .203

56:10

and one 71 .204 of this law, physicians must test for a fetal heartbeat before performing or inducing an abortion.

56:21

So what's that saying? In order for the position, the physician to perform or induce the abortion, there is a requirement.

56:30

There's a condition that has to be met first. And what does that condition? They must test for a detectable heartbeat and then they can induce an abortion, right?

56:41

In other words, and then they can kill the baby, right? Carrying on a physician may proceed with performing an abortion.

56:49

Once a fetal heartbeat is detected, only if they believe a medical emergency exists.

56:56

So if they determine, if they measure, if they surmise that a medical emergency exists, then they may fill in the blank.

57:06

Yeah. Kill the baby. Yeah. So again, it might not be what you mean, but it's what they say.

57:15

It's the practical outworking of, of these laws. There are certain conditions that have to be met.

57:22

This is the nature of, of regulation. You are keeping it around, but you are monitoring it to continue happening under certain circumstances.

57:34

So in the legal realm, in terms of abortion, whether we're talking about the kind of instruments that can be used, the abortionist can only use these instruments and then he can perform the abortion.

57:46

The woman must satisfy this prior condition by meeting with a counselor 24 hours prior. She has to have parental consent.

57:54

She has to do all these things, jump through these hoops. That's regulation.

58:00

So it's not, it's not untrue to say that these are regulative aspects because it's keeping abortion around as long as physicians, abortion minded women check certain boxes and then they may do the thing that they're wanting to do.

58:20

Exactly. Great point. I'm going to keep going for sake of time here. I want to get through all this brief review.

58:27

We've used these examples before, but it's worth mentioning them again. In biblical law, we find that some regulation of immorality and injustice is designed to communicate disapproval and works to dismantle and discourage those practices.

58:41

It is simply not biblically accurate to assume that if there are regulations of a sinful or unjust practice, that is somehow an implicit approval or participation in the iniquity.

58:52

For example, slavery was regulated in scripture. God permitted the purchasing of chattel slaves under certain conditions and for those same slaves to be part of the inheritance passed down to descendants.

59:04

Leviticus 25, 44 to 46. Some folks might be tempted to conclude that this is therefore a good thing since it is regulated.

59:12

Others are tempted to explain it away since it is part of the Israelite law code. But I want to argue that this was a regulation among others that was actually designed to slowly eradicate man stealing and chattel slavery.

59:24

The New Testament repeatedly gives instructions to slaves and masters for their mutual respect and care.

59:30

Ephesians six, Colossians three, first Timothy six. The fact that Paul returned Onesimus to Philemon is pretty striking.

59:37

The regulation itself does not mean that if you meet the law's requirements, God necessarily approves of what you're doing.

59:45

Civil permission. All right. Let's stop it right there for a minute. So, and this is what he used in the debate to defend his position.

59:52

Okay. Were these passages like this, but I think there's something to be said for this. Like when God does this with these practices, he is giving provision to protect victims.

01:00:07

Okay. The victims of the injustice. So the women, the children, so on and so forth, not the perpetrators.

01:00:15

He's not regulating the practice in order to protect the perpetrator. What every pro -life bill does inherently is protect the perpetrator.

01:00:27

Right. Of the crime, which is something that divine wisdom says we may not do.

01:00:33

We may not punish the innocent and acquit the guilty.

01:00:38

God hates that. And so all of these policies, the laws that the pro -life establishment puts into place, that advocate for unequal weights and measures, they are all to the fatal taking of life, really.

01:00:59

The innocent life in question. That's the baby. Right. So they don't protect the victims. They make the victim a prey for the perpetrator.

01:01:08

And we got to get this. Because I think that it's kind of a non -starter. If we're pointing to these things, then scripture that God did regulate, extrapolating these principles from here and saying, this should be our public policy on child sacrifice.

01:01:22

Well, they're not parallel in that way. Because those things that God did when he intervened was for the protection of victims.

01:01:30

Every pro -life law doesn't protect the victim. It makes the victim a prey. And it protects the perpetrator to the extent that if you come after the perpetrator, the perpetrator of the crime, and you seek to hold them accountable to the law, and you seek to prosecute them for their crime and hold them legally accountable, the government will come after you.

01:01:48

They will sanction you for trying to hold the mother accountable, for killing her own child. Now, is that just?

01:01:58

Or is it inherently unjust, what these laws do? That's what's got to be wrestled with here. Thank you.

01:02:03

That's an excellent, excellent point. I hadn't even put that together. That's really, really well done. Well done, brother.

01:02:09

Thank you for that. Just along those lines, I feel like Toby's argument here is apples and oranges.

01:02:18

It's not the same thing, like you said. And God's law is quite clear about murder.

01:02:30

Thou shalt not murder. That's it. There's no regulations on murder. I know he's trying to connect them.

01:02:36

I know. But I just think categorically they're different. Yeah, I agree. That's what I'm saying. You don't have a precedence for child sacrifice to be regulated.

01:02:43

Right. You just don't. And I've said this before, and I hope Toby hears this.

01:02:50

What are like the two sins in the Bible that God calls an abomination, specifically for a nation?

01:02:59

Child sacrifice. Shedding of innocent blood. And homosexuality. Right. Right. And I don't believe.

01:03:09

Correct me if I'm wrong, Toby. I don't believe you guys would be arguing for laws against homosexuality the same way.

01:03:18

I don't believe you would say, well, this law here, we're going to support all the plays here.

01:03:26

And this law says that you can have sex with a child up to 10 years old, but not after that.

01:03:36

Or however you want to phrase it. My point is, if you're setting these subjective places, you know, in protection of the perpetrator, like you said,

01:03:47

I don't believe you would argue for homosexual laws like that. And I believe you would say, no, it's all or nothing on this.

01:03:55

And I was talking about pedophilia there specifically. The example that you're giving, the parallel that you're trying to make is the arbitrary cutoffs.

01:04:03

Exactly. Yeah. I don't think you would argue for those laws the same way. So I don't understand why you're arguing for the ending of abortion like this.

01:04:15

That's where I'm struggling, trying to figure out why. Anyways, just a small point there, but let's keep going.

01:04:22

Not the same thing as being morally upright. Another example of regulation of sinful practices in the

01:04:28

Old Testament would be polygamy and divorce, Exodus 21, Deuteronomy 24. Is polygamy or divorce sinful?

01:04:35

The biblical answer in both cases is usually. In the case of divorce, we can say that God hates it and that it covers those who participate in it in violence,

01:04:46

Malachi 2 .16. Not only that, God hates divorce because it destroys our godly seed,

01:04:53

Malachi 2 .15. Jesus also clearly taught that most divorce causes adultery,

01:04:59

Matthew 19, verse 9. And adultery was the kind of civil crime that could require the death penalty in certain circumstances,

01:05:07

Deuteronomy 22, verse 22. So in the case of civil law regulating divorce, we have the authoritative teaching of Jesus that Moses permitted divorce more broadly because of the hardness of Israelite hearts,

01:05:21

Matthew 19, verse 8. But that law was part of the Torah, the holy law of God, the most perfect law for a human society ever devised, a light for the nations and the foundation of our

01:05:33

Christian common law tradition. And that law included in it some regulation of practices that God hated, that crushed little ones.

01:05:44

Yeah, I would just reiterate once again, we're talking about the difference between victims and perpetrators here.

01:05:50

You know, when Jesus addresses the issue of divorce, he's of course not condoning divorce or calling it good.

01:06:00

You know, he says that they were breaking God's design. From the beginning, he made them male and female.

01:06:06

And for this reason, a man shall be joined to his wife and they'll become one flesh.

01:06:12

But because of their hardness of hearts, Moses made a provision so that victims would be guarded.

01:06:20

Like that's what that was about. Once again, incrementalism, regulationism is not doing that.

01:06:29

It's not doing that. Man, I'm glad you caught that. Often led to adultery.

01:06:37

That regulation did not approve of the practice of divorce. It was a God -inspired regulation aimed at limiting and discouraging divorce.

01:06:47

Likewise, God regulated lynching through the introduction of cities of refuge. The blood avenger had some right to seek justice for the wrongful death of a close relative.

01:06:58

God was also in the process of establishing normal courts of law and a primitive justice system,

01:07:04

Exodus 18. But in the meantime, God regulated some measure of vigilante justice in order to slowly end it.

01:07:13

God sometimes regulated sinful practices in order to discourage, reduce, and limit them with the goal of ultimately ending their legal protections.

01:07:22

And God did that. God did that. He regulated the practice in accordance with his perfect wisdom to know what was necessary for the preservation of innocent life at that time, of course.

01:07:36

Fast forward to us, thousands of years later, in terms of having a justice system that's intact.

01:07:42

And you might argue, well, barely. And I would agree in many ways. Like we're hanging on by a thread here, no doubt.

01:07:49

But the mechanisms that we have in place are where we're currently at in this moment that we have to work with.

01:07:57

There are things in place that we can impact.

01:08:02

We can make a difference in them based on what we have. It's interesting, this idea of the avenger of blood, the city.

01:08:13

Now we're in a position where the wicked are making cities of refuge for the one who intentionally murders their child.

01:08:23

Like they've even taken that concept of the sanctuary city and turned it completely on its head. So this is, again, that's not the situation that we're facing here.

01:08:32

We're not facing an accidental, negligent manslaughter nine times out of ten.

01:08:38

We're facing someone that willfully and knowingly chose to terminate the life of their preborn child.

01:08:46

And they are doing what Toby says, which is racing to the place where they are protected to do that, these sanctuary cities.

01:08:54

That just hit me, actually. That's excellent, dude. Yeah, I mean, you're right. God did that, but he's not regulating murder in his law.

01:09:04

Excellent point. Conclusion. So we are all incrementalists.

01:09:11

The faithful abolitionist who preaches at the abortion mill and sees one baby saved and goes home for the day is not saying it's okay for the rest of you to keep killing babies.

01:09:20

He has done what he can do for today, and he will be back soon to save more.

01:09:25

The faithful smash -mouth incrementalist who works to get a heartbeat bill through a hard -hearted, mostly pagan state legislature like New York or California is not saying that it's okay to murder babies if you do it before a heartbeat can be detected.

01:09:39

Obedience means you cannot do all good things at once or immediately. So just quickly, again, that's where he brought up those liberal states again.

01:09:49

I don't like arguing the exceptions, using the exceptions to argue for what's happening in the majority of these states.

01:09:57

So yeah, and again, we agree that, yeah, there are incremental steps that are righteous, and that's why we're framing the argument differently.

01:10:05

This is not a utilitarian argument. This is not pragmatism. This is looking at the law of God and submitting our tactics and strategy to his word.

01:10:14

Good and faithful kings in Israel and Judah were sometimes described as doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord, except that they did not remove the high places.

01:10:22

You can't have laws and magistrates that are good in the sight of the Lord that do not fully establish justice, that do not do everything that might have been done.

01:10:31

In broadly conservative and predominantly Christian states, it's not a sin, not necessarily anyways, to pass laws that leave certain things undone.

01:10:43

Okay? It is a sin to propose, to write, or to vote for a law that shows partiality.

01:10:52

That's all I would say to that. Excellent, excellent. Rules that simply outlaw abortion, full stop, period.

01:11:00

Prior to Roe being struck down, you had some additional challenges with convincing Christians to defy

01:11:05

Roe, which I've previously argued that we should have done. But now that Roe is struck down, conservative states should simply exercise their authority to protect all human life under their jurisdictions.

01:11:17

Idaho is an interesting case because we are actually heavily Mormon. We have a near ban, but we still need to chip away at the exceptions, etc.

01:11:25

So just quickly, and we've talked about this time and time again, and this is what

01:11:31

I think most conservatives just don't understand and aren't seeing. And I don't know, Toby, if you're seeing this as well, but states like Louisiana or Idaho with these exceptions and all that, they go around advertising abortions and it's illegal.

01:11:48

Zach brought this up at the beginning of the show. All these exceptions, though, are exceptions for the mother who can murder her child at will without any consequences.

01:12:02

Now, this is the conversation we were having this week is a lot of the people in the pro -life industry are like, well, they're getting the abortion pills, we need to regulate the abortion pills.

01:12:11

We need to stop the flow of them going into these states. And, okay, we need to expand our thinking, right?

01:12:20

Because we're caught up on this, well, they're using the pills. And trust me, they are.

01:12:26

And the abortion pill market is through the roof. We really have no idea, honestly, how many mothers are aborting their babies through the abortion.

01:12:33

Because they're not reported, also. Because they're not reported. And it's not regulated. They can do it at will.

01:12:39

But we need to expand our thinking. A mother can kill her child, murder her child in her womb up until birth, if she wanted to, without consequences.

01:12:52

Not just using the pill. Not just using the pill. She wants to use a magic potion. She wants to use a hanger.

01:12:57

She can punch her baby to death in her belly. She can run her car into a tree. You name it. The most gruesome way you can think of, she can do that with no penalty.

01:13:06

And guess why? Because of the pro -life industry. Because that's their position, and they're allowing it.

01:13:13

And that's what we're trying to say. This has to stop. This is where this partiality is coming. This is why it's unjust.

01:13:19

And we need to be thinking clearly and objectively, and not ignoring some parts.

01:13:26

And I'm not accusing you, Toby, of ignoring anything. But I'm saying as a whole, within our nation, within the conservative movement, they're ignoring what's happening.

01:13:34

Any thoughts? All I would say to that is trying to stop the flow of abortion pills.

01:13:41

Ultimately, it's a futile endeavor. Because as conservatives are very comfortable in saying, guns don't kill people.

01:13:48

Yes, thank you. People kill people, right? Abortion pills don't kill anyone.

01:13:57

People that take abortion pills kill pre -born children.

01:14:02

Exactly. Exactly. Thank you. But in states like California and New York, you don't have a

01:14:08

Christian majority to appeal to. Obviously, preach the gospel. But if you can get a fetal pain bill onto the floor of the

01:14:16

New York legislature, I think that would likely be a marvelous opportunity to explain the full humanity of all unborn babies to a room full of pagans who might not otherwise ever hear it.

01:14:28

Likewise, a heartbeat bill may be all you're likely to get a hearing on for many years. And I think it tactically wise to try to get that passed as a means to arguing for the full human rights of pre -born babies.

01:14:39

This is really important. Just one thing on this here. And I alluded to this earlier, but what we're saying and what we're writing have to match.

01:14:49

We want equal protection for all humans. That's what we're proclaiming, right? And then we step before a legislature and they say, well, why does your bill show favoritism to mothers then?

01:15:01

And this is how we got Roe versus Wade, by the way. We said a fetus is a person.

01:15:10

And the courts saw right through that. And they said, well, if the baby is human, why does your state law have a different penalty protecting them?

01:15:20

Or if a fetus is a person, why is there one party exempt from prosecution for taking their life?

01:15:27

You see, the problem is they don't believe us because we don't mean what we say and actions speak louder than words.

01:15:34

So if we write something in our laws that is different than our profession, then we are guilty of lying in order to defend the truth.

01:15:42

That's really what it comes down to. If you say life begins at conception with your mouth, and then you come with a bill that says it's a heartbeat act, they're going to say, well, if life begins at conception, as you say, then why does your bill say only protect humans with detectable heartbeats?

01:16:05

Like, what do you really believe? What's the truth? So I think this is a point of consistency.

01:16:11

I think it's a point of understanding that the other side has given us the way to win. And the way to win is to tell the truth.

01:16:19

The way to win is to write and say what is consistent and what accords with the truth.

01:16:26

We can't say one thing with our mouths and write another thing with our laws. It's just, it's not consistent.

01:16:34

Yeah, and going back again to those liberal states, again, we've not even had a bill in any of those states.

01:16:42

And I can tell you even if it was a heartbeat bill or a 15 -week ban, it's not getting on a committee in those states.

01:16:51

So just that whole line of reasoning there, it's not even a reality. And I don't say that mockingly or to take a jab at you.

01:17:02

It's just not reality. It wouldn't even get through committee. So that line of reasoning, well, we should, I'd be okay with one of these lesser bills that's not quite equal protection in one of these states if you could get it to the floor.

01:17:13

It's just not even going to happen. It's not going to get out of committee. I mean, we can't even get righteous laws out of committees in conservative states.

01:17:24

But again, going back to what I said at the beginning with the prophetic vision, because that's what he's saying there, right? He's saying, hey, if we could get one of these bills in these liberal states and have an opportunity for prophetic vision to call them to repentance, then

01:17:36

I'd be all for it. Then teach them. Brother, but you can, there's ways to do that without putting in a partial bill or a bill of partiality.

01:17:46

There's ways to do that. You can get creative. And again, this is something I think if you guys were more involved in this process, you would see it and understand that there's ways to do that.

01:17:57

So anyways, I just wanted to make sure I was making that point. I think he's wrapping up here. While we preach the gospel, testify against all the bloodshed and wait upon the

01:18:08

Lord for the reformation and revival that will change the hearts of our nation. Wow, we made it through that whole thing.

01:18:16

That's awesome. I would just end by saying, yeah, we can't testify to the full value and the sanctity of human life by writing things that say someone is exempt from taking human life.

01:18:31

It's just a matter of consistency. It's just a matter of meaning what we say. So yeah.

01:18:37

Absolutely. Well, we'll go ahead and end there. We're just over an hour there. I can't believe we did it.

01:18:44

Perfect. So just real quickly, I want to mention our other sponsors who very much support equal protection.

01:18:51

Bradley Pierce, we love him, Heritage Defense. Yeah, you might say he's familiar with the position. Uh -oh.

01:19:01

Well, in that case. Oh, it came unplugged. Got it. We fixed it. Sorry.

01:19:06

I don't know how I did that. It just fell out. Anyways, Bradley Pierce writes all of our bills, all of our equal protection bills.

01:19:14

And he is on call a lot for Heritage Defense. So I keep saying this. I mean it.

01:19:19

I'm not just saying this just to get more sales. If you homeschool your kids, please sign up with Heritage Defense.

01:19:28

It's super cheap. HeritageDefense .org. Put apology in the coupon code to get your first month free.

01:19:35

It's an invaluable resource. And then also, again, Amtech Blades. See those beautiful battle axes right there.

01:19:44

Bill Rapier has become a very good friend of mine, very dear brother. He's an elder at his church in Idaho, actually.

01:19:49

Oh, right on. He's just north of, he's about an hour, 45 minutes, an hour north of Moscow. Nobody knows exactly where.

01:19:55

Yeah. Fantastic man. One of the greatest warriors our nation's ever had.

01:20:04

Truly. He's legendary within the Navy SEAL community and loves

01:20:10

Jesus. And he also supports equal protection. So if you go to Amtech Blades and get one of his amazing blades or battle axes, you can put apology in the coupon code and get 5 % off.

01:20:20

And I keep mentioning this. He will match that with 5 % of the promotional. So thank you, Bill. Quickly, we have a super chat there.

01:20:27

Nicholas, thank you. You said, what do you think of abortion as a euphemism for feticide, which is murder, is the name end abortion now, therefore counterproductive.

01:20:35

Director of Communications. I don't believe so. I mean, feticide is technically accurate. That's what we're talking about.

01:20:41

It's the homicide of a fetus. So absolutely. But the name end abortion now just communicates to the broader culture, the practice that we're seeking to end and when we want it completely finished.

01:20:53

Yeah. Which is now. The alternative was end abortion yesterday. I'm just kidding.

01:20:59

It wasn't that. But I would just say no. I mean, from a communicating the issue standpoint,

01:21:05

I think it's a great name. And I'm not just saying that because I'm the communications director, because it communicates what we're all about.

01:21:12

Yeah. End abortion now. Yeah. Of course, there's euphemisms that the culture is employing.

01:21:20

You could call it feticide. The culture calls it abortion. We, of course, need to communicate the fact that it's murder.

01:21:27

That's the unjustified taking of human life. And we do. We don't shy away from that one bit. But there's nothing wrong with getting something that is short, punchy, and gets to the point of what we're all about.

01:21:39

Yeah. And I would say that feticide isn't even the biblical term. Murder is. Child sacrifice.

01:21:45

The shedding of innocent blood. If we want to get really biblical. Maybe we could say end child sacrifice. No, that would be what you're asking for.

01:21:53

That domain name would probably have been available. Probably. And it'd probably get us nowhere real quick.

01:22:02

Anyways, thanks for the question, Nicholas, and for the support. We really appreciate it. But on that note, we're going to get out here.

01:22:09

We will stick around real quick for a quick after show for all you all accessors. Thank you so much for all that you do for your support of us.

01:22:16

You literally keep the lights on for us. We're grateful for you. So stick around. We'll do a quick show and continue this conversation.

01:22:25

What's going on with an abortion now right now? Speaking of anything you want to let people know about? I think for us right now, we're trying to fight the battle hard on our own home front.

01:22:35

Like other states, there are ballot measures coming up that the church needs to band together in all these states to work hard to defeat.

01:22:43

It's a defensive posture right now. So it's a matter of being clear with our communication, being clear with our words, and trying to mobilize the public to stand against this being enshrined in our state constitution.

01:22:55

So, however, I can help with that. However, we all on our team here can work together.

01:23:00

I mean, that's something that we're planning on doing is presenting united front and hopefully give some words to this and some messaging to this, that people can rally around, like even the broader pro -life movement that we are trying to disciple towards a more abolitionist perspective here.

01:23:15

Like we want to bring them along and we have to be strategic with using our words to tell the truth, stand on our principles.

01:23:23

But that gives everybody room to come along board here. Yeah. I mean, along those lines people may not realize this, maybe they do, that the legislative process is not only four months of the year.

01:23:36

I mean, technically in the states for most states it's four months, but for us, it's year round. It keeps going.

01:23:41

We're constantly doing stuff. And so just like I said earlier, we were in 18 states this year.

01:23:49

Next year we're looking like possibly 20, which is incredible. So we do have some stuff coming up this fall as well.

01:23:55

We have some pastors meetings. So be looking for that. We haven't made any official announcements because they're kind of tentative, but I can tell you tentatively right now we're looking at one in Louisiana at pastor

01:24:06

Brian Gunter church and possibly one in North Dakota as well. So it's a new state we'll be in.

01:24:12

So be looking for those. We'll announce those when we have them locked down. So if you're in those states, we'd love to see you have love.

01:24:19

You have to come out and give us support and stuff. So on that note, I will get us out of here.

01:24:26

We'll be back next week. Actually, we're gonna have Nathan Anderson on next week to talk about his new film.

01:24:31

And I've completely just lost the name of it. You'll find out next week. If you show up, it's really good.

01:24:37

I was even in it for like five seconds. Excellent. Excellent. What is the name? I completely lost.

01:24:43

I have no idea. You don't talk about it yet. No, you didn't see it. No. Oh, okay. Sorry. I'm the postman.

01:24:49

I love you, man. Yeah. Anyways, he'll be. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Nathan Anderson. Sorry, dude.

01:24:54

I thought you that Nathan Anderson. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Teach all nations.

01:24:59

Teach all nations. Yes. There it is. That's the one. Yes. We'll have my next. You haven't seen his newest one.

01:25:06

Yeah, we're just killing it here. Go watch it. Give us. Search him out.

01:25:12

It's on YouTube for free and it's fire. Go watch it. All right. On that note, I'm going to get us out because we're just sounding like buffoons.