The Here I Stand Theology Podcast - The interview with FREE THE STATES (Roe Overturned?)

All right, welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. So today, we've got a guest in the studio. You may have noticed him sitting here, Pastor Aaron Case from Eden Chapel. And we're going to be talking with the guys from Free the States.

So stay with us. You don't want to miss this.

Will you recant or will you not?

Since Your Majesty and Your Lordships desire a simple reply, I will answer. Unless, by scripture and by plain reason, and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, is captive right or safe.

The Here I Stand Theology Podcast in studio with us, special guest host, Pastor Aaron Case. Wave hi to the camera, Aaron.

Great to be here.

And we've got the guys from Free the States with us as well. We are going to be talking to them here in just a moment. We are excited about what's going on. We are going to let them, have them give us the rundown on everything.

And we are going to talk more about the importance of being abolitionists.

Thank you, Jesus!

Let's bring the guys in here. Let's add them to the stream. Here we are. Hello, guys. How are you? So, Russell is holding up his patented, nailed it, mug.

I thought it was appropriate.

Yes, that was very good. Very good. And while we're here, just starting out, let's go ahead. Since Russell showed his mug, let's have Pastor Aaron show his mug.

You sure you want to do that?

Go ahead and bring it in. Bring it in because the folks at your church are going to want to see this. Hold it up. Go ahead and take a drink out of it.

Smile.

Now I feel dirty doing this.

And say, Roll Tide. And I will say,.

Thank you, Jesus!

Oh, man. All my thoughts going through my mind right there.

Aaron's got the church member where he pastors, where the man graduated from Alabama.

Oh, goodness. Yeah, maybe in the 60s.

Yeah, but Aaron and him have a hard time being in sweet fellowship with one another. Luckily, the gospel bond is a stronger bond than football.

Yeah, thank you, Lord.

Yeah, so you all probably remember we're in Knoxville, Tennessee, right? Home of the Tennessee Volunteers.

Come on, man.

All right. So we are not here to talk about the Vols. We're not here to talk about football, even though Alabama is better. All right. So, guys, it has been probably a little over a year since we had y 'all on the first time.

All three of y 'all were on. I don't know if you all remember. I rewatched the episode. You all were making fun of Sam because he always sat in the back. Yeah, yeah. And he's really probably taller than both of you, ain't he?

Yeah, he figured out that it was the way the cameras were arranged, making it look like that. So it's not that way anymore.

But he is like our little Oompa Loompa.

He's not here now. Y 'all can talk about it.

He's not here because he's over there working.

Oh, so he is in studio. He's just not there. Well, guys, we are truly thankful that you all are with us today. Truly thankful for the work that you all do. Honestly, we thank God for y 'all every single day.

And we had the fun questions. Of course, you all remember the arm wrestling question, right? If y 'all had to arm wrestle each other, who would win? We still haven't seen pictures of that. So we need pictures.

To put on the wall of manliness. But I do have a question. So if y 'all had to arm wrestle Rachel, who would win?

Rachel's smart. She'd probably find some way to use the over the top.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you drive the advantage or?

Or just kick you in the shin underneath the table, I would do. So again, it's been about a year since y 'all were on the podcast the first time. And I know a lot has gone on. Really, probably the better question as we put to you all would be what hasn't happened with you all in the last year.

So go ahead and give us a rundown. Give us a recap on what y 'all have been up to. The breaking news of today and so on.

Yeah, so we can get to the news in a minute here. I think as far as what's going on over the last year, our kind of big annual events are the Abolition Now Conference, the Abolition Day Rally. And so we did those earlier this year.

I think the conference, I think it was for sure the best one we've had yet.

Definitely.

Yeah, we got to have it at the church that Russell attends.

Yeah.

So Edmonds First Baptist, which is actually like a larger church in Edmond that's just got really good facilities. And the pastor there, Blake Gideon, who had become an abolitionist maybe about a year prior, was being a really good shepherd to the folks there and got a lot of people from the congregation to come.

Church just really opened up its doors, platforming the ideas, and they've spread without a hitch there. So that was really good. And then also this year's Abolition Day Rally and just surrounding things.

We've seen a lot less apprehension towards us and a lot more acceptance or willingness to hear our arguments. So it's been a very good year for that.

Yeah.

We had a house bill for the first time, an abolition bill in the house. We've only been on any other chamber thus far. And so, yeah, just getting to interact with a bunch of house reps who we haven't gotten to interact with much.

And then we also brought on a new member. We brought on Tim Gillespie, who was the director of Oklahoma Second Amendment Association, which is a very, here in Oklahoma, that's a very influential group.

So we brought him on to kind of be our representative of the Capitol. And I said, the only other real, real big thing, well, I guess there's probably two, but the main one was the SPC stuff. So we were working with some of the pastors here in Oklahoma and from around the country to draft the SPC resolution on abolishing abortion.

And then that got brought to the annual meeting in June. Are you SPC officially, or did you guys leave it?

We're not actually, neither of us.

Okay, yeah. But anyway, that was a really, that was a huge event in the history of the movement, for sure, to see that much information material get out, to see that many messengers affirm abolitionism.

It was really, really encouraging.

Yeah, I noticed on the Liberator podcast the other day, that I think it was the most recent one, you were talking quite a bit about Tom Askle. That is awesome to hear, that he is doing what he's doing.

And that will probably bring some needed reform.

Yeah, it's already creating conversations, I think, that weren't happening, because Tom Askle is out, out of the, I don't know what we'd say. Yeah, I don't know about abolitionists.

I don't like the term out of the closet, when we talk about being abolitionists or being Calvinists, whatever the case may be.

He's an unashamed to align himself with abolitionism, abolitionists. And I think he's also good on a number of other areas, and he's important that he's being put forward as a potential leader for the denomination.

So yeah, that he came on our show and has agreed with us. And of course, his brother, and it's just like, there's a lot more pastoral support over the past year. There's also the documentary that came out, Storm Comes Rolling Down the Plain.

Oh yeah, that was last year.

And it's a phenomenal resource to get to people who may be the unreached peoples that are not on Facebook or whatever, that still want to put a DVD in there and watch it. That was a good resource that came out.

It's also available on the Ben and Donner page.

Yeah.

Well, all right, all right. So we'll move right along there. So let's talk about the most recent news, the political leak of Justice Alito's draft decision. So how did that come about?

It's over.

No one is murdering children in the United States of America now. That's what you would think from some of the headlines. If you're reading some of the... I got a fundraising email from somebody who was like, the battle's almost over.

Send us more money and we will finish out the year. And abortion will no longer be thinkable in America. Oh my goodness. The past 50 years of pro-life incrementalism and regulationism have made abortion very thinkable, even among Christians.

We have a long way to go. So yes, but yes, recent things in the news have made it hard to sleep.

Yeah, I was up last night. It's a 98 page draft. They got released. And so I read, I didn't read the last 30 pages, like basically the index, but I read all the rest of it last night. Yeah, some interesting stuff in there for sure.

He mostly went after the historical arguments that were made in Roe. So they're trying to, the authors of Roe were basically saying that abortion is deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the United States of America.

And therefore when the 14th amendment says, that will protect the due process rights to life and liberty, that includes the right to abortion. And so Alito is basically saying, no, there was never ever a history or tradition of abortion in America.

That's absurd. Roe was wrong on that. And then he argues basically against the other argument for Roe, which has been, even though it's wrong because of sorry decisis, the court should uphold what it said previously, even if it was wrong.

And so then Alito kind of goes after that. And so, yeah, it's a pretty well-written document. Roe appears to be, it's not, it's not, of course, it's not a final decision until it's actually announced.

This is a draft that was released that he has drafted, but it's not official. Justices can change their vote all the way up until basically the moment that it's announced. And we've seen that before with Obamacare, John Roberts, when they met privately for private conference, John Roberts voted to strike down Obamacare.

And then it came time for the decision and he supported Obamacare. And so we have seen changes in the past that still could happen, but it appears that Roe is headed to be overturned. Now, the issue that we have with it is that while some good can obviously come, of course, can come from Roe being overturned.

That takes away one of the biggest excuses that we hear at the capitals of people not wanting to abolish abortion. They say, well, we have to wait for Roe. And so now that excuse is gone. And so it does take away a huge excuse that politicians use to not abolish abortion.

And that is a very helpful thing, but it wasn't actually correctly decided. Like if you read the constitution, it says that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the law. So a state can't pick and choose.

Here's a group of people who are not going to receive this right or this protection or this whatever. They're going to be treated differently under law than everybody else. States can't do that. And so what we have with abortion is a state that chooses to allow abortion is saying, here's a group of people who are not going to provide protection of the law against murder.

We're going to allow them to be murdered. And so abortion is not constitutional. The constitution is not correctly understood and applied. It outlaws abortion. And that's not what the court did. That's what they should have done.

It's not what they did. And so there is still work to do because of that. There's work to do in persuading the court of what they should have done. And because the court didn't do what they should have done, there's work to do in persuading all the states to make pre-born children equal under law.

And that's still going to be a long, a lot of work ahead of us.

Yeah. And with that being said, too, I was going to, we was going to, I got sidetracked. Let's go ahead and show Shame on the States real quick. And then we'll come back to this topic and we'll go from there because that this has everything to do with what you just said there.

And help slaves escape to freedom while they call for total and immediate abolition. For decades, abolitionists have argued that slavery is sin, that it is inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence, that it is not only wrong, but that the way it has been opposed has been profoundly inadequate.

Abolitionists put slavery on trial in the court of public opinion. More and more people begin defying the Federal Fugitive Slave Act. And though the nation refuses to repent, the necessity of abolition becomes a reality.

January 1973. The Supreme Court rules that pre-born babies are not persons and have no rights as humans. That no state has the right to protect children in the womb from murder. That no child has the rights of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

All of the states submit to this unjust decree. And over 63 million humans created in the image of God are murdered in its wake. Shame on the states. Courts do not make laws. And when the Supreme Court is wrong, it ought to be defied.

They are not God. Abolitionists are once again rising up to love their neighbors as themselves, defying the court's unjust rule and working to establish justice within their jurisdictions. It's time for the states to take a stand, protect the innocent among them, and abolish abortion within their borders.

Learn more at freethestates .com.

Don't delay. Just do it.

Yeah, that's a great clip of Sam that you found there.

Most folks don't realize that's Sam Riley. Hey, by the way, on a side note, if you want to see somebody, if you don't know him, look up Nathan Kerrott. He's an awesome guy, RFP, Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast.

You talk about a doppelganger for Shia LaBeouf. I guess it's Shia LaBeouf. Is it Shia LaBeouf or Shia LaBeouf?

Shia LaBeouf.

Yeah, do it, guys.

Roll with it.

So back to what you all were saying there. And another thing that you mentioned in the article and has been brought up, I think, by others already is that this could be somewhat of a kind of a ploy by the left.

Yeah, there's definitely something going on here with this being leaked. It's very important for people to understand that the Supreme Court is a political institution. And oftentimes, certainly for the past, well, really actually from the very beginning, they've been kind of a, what is the, you know, what is Trump wanting?

They are not strictly interpreting the Constitution. They do tend to think about politics a whole lot. That's why they can have a decision flip in a matter of years, just from what the culture kind of demands.

And really, one of our things is that we put such a demand on states, nullifying them and ignoring their decisions, because we want to basically pressure them to sort of like, for the sake of staying relevant, make a good ruling.

So we think of them as a political institution. And so does the left. So does the right. Everyone does. And so the idea that this might have been leaked to create a bunch of chaos so that all these pro-abortion organizations would start doing all sorts of things and that pressure could be put so it may change it, I think is part of this story.

But I don't think it's the most important thing going on here. Like, I don't think we should be running around like, who leaked this and why? I think we should stick to and focus on, okay, so what was he arguing?

What does that mean going forward? Because I think the main concern is that a lot of people are going to think, all right, we've done it. We don't realize that abortion isn't being abolished in any state.

Battle lines may be being shifted, but there is a very wrong kernel that still remains. And that's the belief from on high, from the Supreme Court, that states in the United States of America should have the right to determine whether they're going to protect the practice of child sacrifice or not.

That's something that we just categorically disagree with. And one of the things I wanted to say right at the beginning is that we're called Free the States, and we spend a lot of time trying to say states should be free to criminalize abortion in contradiction to the rulings of the Supreme Court, in contrast to even federal laws.

Like, states should be able to uphold the right to life. They should be able to defend the innocent among them and criminalize abortion as murder within their borders. That's a state's right. But conversely, we don't believe that states should have the right to legalize and protect child sacrifice.

So that's an important thing to understand. We don't see states' rights as getting a victory here. Back during the days of slavery, there's the same kind of element. But what was going on there is the states in the South wanted the right to practice the peculiar institution of chattel slavery, and they were willing to secede for that.

They were wrong, but they were right in that states should have the right to protect helping runaways, which helping runaways was what northern states were starting to do. So this is a very complex issue.

And I've already seen lots of pro-life brothers and sisters arguing, this is great. It's going back to the states. Well, now we just have the same exact battle that we've always had.

States' rights can be used for good or evil. And like you explained, the Confederate states were trying to make a states' right argument at a time when it benefited them to try to protect the institution of slavery.

But at the same time, the abolitionists were saying, no, we're going to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. We're going to nullify all these things, saying that we can't protect slaves up here in the northern states.

And so you had both sides were making states' rights arguments. So it can be used for good or evil. So we should use it for good. But it's not the foundation. We're not saying states should be able to do just whatever they want.

Ultimately, the foundation is God's word. And then after that, the foundation is the Constitution.

The states should be free to obey God.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So is this the place where we begin to maybe reap all of the abolitionist movement's warnings in regards to incrementalism, where all the laws that have been put in place, are we going to start seeing those come into play now, do you guys think?

Is that what's in our future now? We're going to have to face all the pro-life movement's failures and how they've done this incremental approach?

Yeah, it's really interesting. It dawned on me that the same year that they repeal Roe is the year that Oklahoma passes a law granting immunity for mothers who murder their children. We're going to have to deal with that.

There's no justice, no equal protection, not because of Roe and not at the federal level, but at the state level, because a conservative pro-life legislature passed their pro-life stuff. I think we're going to see a lot of that.

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised when trigger laws that are supposed to go into effect and end abortion don't.

Yeah.

A lot of states that don't have those trigger laws, like you mentioned, all they're going to have on the books is a bunch of laws telling people when, where, and how to murder children. That's going to be what the law of that state is now.

It's not going to be Roe protecting abortion anymore. In those states, as you mentioned, it's going to be the pro-life laws that now we're going have to go back and repeal all those laws. That is the situation in a lot of states.

Here in Oklahoma, we do have a trigger bill that gets rid of most of the pro-life regulations, but as Russell mentioned, we don't have anything that actually criminalizes abortion itself. We have something that says the abortionist can't help the mother have the abortion, but the mothers are still free in Oklahoma to murder their own children with complete impunity and they will face no prosecution for doing so.

That's what we're going to have to fight here in Oklahoma.

On top of that, I welcome this part, but we're going to start seeing liberal states fighting very hard for abortion rights. The battle is going to be less with pro-lifers in some areas. We're going to actually get to fight the pro-choicers more, but we're also going to see probably lots of moves federally.

We're already hearing this from Biden and various Democrat leaders.

Yeah, you mentioned that. Dude, they're already. It's not just the states. They're already. I got an email today. Of course, it went straight to my junk mail, but it said this. On Monday, Politico published a draft decision from the Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade.

It says, let us be clear, this draft will not be final until the court officially rules, but it is now obvious that the federal protections of abortion rights will very soon pass away. The consequences will be devastating.

This is Democratic, by the way. The consequences, this is the email, will be devastating, especially for people of color and young people in the 26 Republican-controlled states that immediately restrict or outlaw abortion altogether.

So we must fight back with all our might, and here is our plan. They're actually sending this out. And it's like you had talked about the rights that we have as states, right? And I would just boil it down to the simple statement is what God has given us in the states is the right to do right, according to his word.

I could not believe that when I saw that today.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at what's going on in California, I mean, Gavin Newsom there is going to be pushing very, very hard to not only make sure that abortion is completely legal and covered and protected in California, but also that people from out of state can come to the state to get free abortion.

And so a lot of the battle lines are going to move in those directions. But we're going to see, interestingly, we're going to see the left, like liberals, kind of nullifying, and we're going to see them challenging and standing up and doing a lot of the things for abortion that we've been calling conservative Christians to do against abortion, like the whole straw man of we can't do this because the courts have said.

Da, da, da, da, da.

We're going to see them saying things like, well, the courts can pound sand.

And they're going to have to find another crutch, right?

And so, I mean, I think that it's just we can't reiterate it enough that not a lot has changed about the fundamental thing that abolitionists need to keep on doing, and that is seeking to establish justice, equal protection within their borders, with their magistrates, putting the pressure, calling for no compromise.

Because I think we're going to have just 100 little battles next year, or I guess 50 little battles in every state if this does repeal, where we're going to possibly see pro-lifers in purple states arguing for abortion to be banned after 12 weeks.

We now have the right to do this. This is pro-life. And so the sort of incrementalism, immediatism debate is going to remain. Pro-lifers are going to continue to try to delay total abolition in various states by, I mean, I was arguing with a, I don't think he's a brother, but I was arguing with a guy late last night that he was basically saying, well, now that they've repealed Roe, we need to actually disciple the state and curtail abortion slowly until people get the message.

And I'm like, man, that's what they said back in the days of slavery. Now that we have the right to regulate abortion here in our pro-life state, for the sake of these women, these mothers who don't know any better, we need to have a sort of like a one to five year period is what this kind of.

Let's be sure that the slaves all have a room. Let's be sure that they get three meals a day instead of two. You know, like you just don't argue that way.

This guy was actually saying that because it's going to take a while for women to now learn that abortion's bad, we need to have a grace period to where they won't get in trouble if they seek abortions for the next five years.

I've seen other pro-lifers argue that.

And this was like a Catholic pro-lifer guy. So, I mean, that's why I say it wasn't like a brother.

It's incredible the non-logic that people have. I mean, absolute non-logic. It's like they're thinking backwards in every way possible.

A lot of indoctrination.

Yeah, I mean, it is amazing. So Aaron, Aaron had mentioned, which you had just discussed incrementalism. Ask him about what your question was.

Yeah, in regards to... Okay, so I'm really interested in what you guys would say in this regard. Obviously, one of the main arguments that you would hear is the child or the pre-born fetus, whatever.

It does not have personhood, right? But now we're seeing even more extreme bills. I mean, some stuff that I read that I just think is satire in regards to a baby already being born, past full term. I'm wondering, are you guys seeing a change in their argument?

Because I know it's all hypocritical and there's no foundation, basically, for them to stand upon. But it was always that it's not a person because it's in the womb, all these other things. Are you guys seeing a shift in their argument in regard to that?

And if so, what would your answer be to them?

Yeah, I think that the left isn't afraid of the logical conclusions of their arguments. And so what we're seeing, like I've seen in Virginia a few years ago, in Virginia and New York with abortion up to birth.

And then more recently, I think California, Colorado, Maryland, with those bills saying that even after birth, mothers who neglect their children to the point that their children actually pass away, that that's not a penalty.

That's not a crime, right? They're not afraid of the logical conclusions that they're taking. Right, they're consistent and they're taking all the way to the conclusion.

Swallow the reductio, right?

Yeah, and they're not afraid of that at all. And I think, hopefully, sometimes it takes seeing how evil it is for the church to really be jarred awake and seeing how evil something is. Okay, we have to stand up against this now.

I wish it didn't have to come to that for the church to kind of wake up and take action. I wish the abortion in the first eight weeks was enough that we could just know it's legal then or the first 20 weeks or whatever it be and say, that's enough.

We need to do something. But sometimes you have to see the evil all the way at the end of the evil. And that's what we're seeing now. And I think it is helping people kind of be stirred to action in a way that they haven't been before.

And so that's good. I just wish it didn't take it getting to this point for people to be stirred to action.

Yeah, and I want to say something because you brought up the personhood thing. This actually started shifting back in 2016. Hillary Clinton actually went on record basically saying, yeah, a human fetus may be a person, but they're not a person who has this kind of right.

And you've seen progressively kind of the pro-abortion side basically say, yes, this is a human being, but they're not more important than the mother. They can terminate him. Sort of like just embracing their logic fully.

And for me, and this is like a theological point. So this is a good podcast for that. It's never been for us, for abolitionists and I think for biblical Christians, the argument's never really been abortion's wrong because it violates personhood.

The argument has always needed to be and always truly been abortion is wrong because it murders an image bearer. It gives one kind of a human being special murder rights to get rid of another human.

Being.

And you don't really have to argue about personhood or when personhood begins or what makes a person a person or gives a person rights. You can just argue, do you have a human being there? The word of God says that a human being is made in the image of God and you can't murder image bearers.

And so that's the actual prohibition of murder, biblically speaking. That's why the Supreme Court actually shifted from sort of just like humans have rights to these humans are not persons. Because you can arbitrarily come up with a line at which a human becomes a person because they are being sentient or something like that.

But you can't scientifically, theologically, philosophically, logically argue that a human at some point becomes a human. You just really are a human from the moment of conception and you go through embryological, fetal development, all that kind of stuff.

So I think that the quicker the church begins to just stand up and say, no human has the right to murder another human. That is our argument. I don't want to mess around with this first step. We'll cut to the quick of it.

That's the and that's the beautiful thing. I mean, I know you'll have it on the site, but the five tenets of abolitionism, it's gospel centered, first and foremost, gospel centered, bond providentially through the.

Church.

This is the mode or the method engaged biblically, because if we try to argue with the world from the world's with the world's standards, we're just going to end up pulling our hair out. But we have a theological, we have a biblical framework on which to stand that will never.

Fall.

Yeah, that's the dark shifting sand. And like your argument personhood, that can shift.

That's right.

Yeah.

By what standard, right? By what standard?

Yeah.

And then, of course, the fifth tenet that we seek it immediately without compromise. So I'll I'll Aaron. Aaron had this question. I'm going to I'm going to on it. And do you want to ask it or do you want to go ahead?

Doug and Toby and the cross politics guys, smash mouth incrementalism. I know there was a lot of back and forth that went on there. And again, we're not literally not trying to trap anybody, really any back and forth.

They expressed their position. We want to go back and forth. We expressed ours. But yeah, they don't seem to respond to our.

So so how how do we just as as spectators of this? Because really, you know, a lot of a lot of folks just see this. They glance over it. They don't really dive in deep on what is being called smash match match.

It's easy for me to say smash mouth incrementalism.

Yeah, yeah.

Roman Catholic pro-life ism.

Yeah, well, I think it I always thought it was just a tough name. On they put on not being consistent because if there's someone on any of their shows and I do love them, I listen to them all the time.

I respect the guys. I just disagree with them in this area and infant baptism. But that's a whole nother whole nother story.

But Doug was on last week, by the way.

Yeah.

See?

Yeah, that's fine. But no, but I see they would call someone to repentance right away, you know, and they would even use the illustration of slavery, you know, in regards to politics or all these other areas.

But in this one area, you know, it just it always has blown my mind that there I don't see a consistency there because they're like, OK, we'll take whatever we get. Of course, we want the end, you know, but we'll take whatever we can get.

And I'm like, that's just not consistent with how we share the gospel or call anyone to repent.

Yeah, yeah.

And really, even outside of the big argument, the question is, is like, does the word of God allow Christians who hold to the law of God or the Bible and what God says about how we do things? Are we allowed to support bills that show partiality?