December 26, 2023 Show with Jason Storms on “A Christian Guide for Cultural & Political Engagement”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports

legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man

sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of

humanity living on the planet Earth.

We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on

this 26th day of December, 2023, a

date on the calendar that many Christians worldwide for centuries

have commemorated the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the very first

Christian martyr who was stoned to death, and we commemorate his faith

in the Lord Jesus Christ, which did not waver even in the midst of being

murdered by the enemies of Christ.

And today, I also, after hoping,

after stating to you all, I should say, that I hope you had a wonderful,

restful, refreshing, joyful, and Christ -honoring Christmas,

I have my own praise report for Christmas that I just

learned of moments ago before going on the air, and I ask

your prayer for this specific praise report, that it has

lasting value.

A dear friend of mine called me just moments ago to let me know that her

daughter, who I love so much, I consider her

as if she were my own daughter myself, she,

sadly, perhaps two years ago, could have been longer, but I think it was about two years ago,

she came out of the closet as a lesbian and moved in with a woman, much to

the shock of everybody who knows her, and

yesterday, you know those proverbial

disagreements that Christians have over the dinner table with

folks during holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, well, even though

Jade is not convinced she is saved yet, she, at

the home of her girlfriend's parents,

she was standing up for Christ, Christianity, and the scriptural condemnation of homosexuality,

and because of that, her quote -unquote girlfriend broke up with her.

So I am receiving that as a Christmas gift, a glorious Christmas gift from

our Savior, and of course her mom is as well, and I ask that you

pray that this is a permanent breakup, but much more important than that, infinitely more

important than that, that Jade truly comes to a genuine, repentant faith in

Christ and gives nothing but crystal clear evidence that she is a true child

of God, a true Christian, and heaven -bound, and pray the same for this

woman with whom the relationship has ended.

So I just wanted to share that praise report because it's something that has been on my lips

when I offer petitions up to the Lord's throne of grace very often,

and it came as a wonderful surprise today, and as I said, please pray that this is a permanent

thing that has occurred, and that any kind of sorrow or grief

or sadness or depression that my friend's daughter may be experiencing during

this breakup does not lure her back into that relationship, but I

will, God willing, keep you posted.

But today we have on my program a first -time guest.

I'm absolutely thrilled to have him on the program.

He's actually the son -in -law of a friend of mine who you've heard on this program, Matt

Trujillo, the pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church of Brookfield,

Wisconsin, who is also a political activist and

evangelist for the gospel and publisher of much -needed works

that have been brought back into print through Matt Trujillo.

My guest today is Jason Storms, the national director of Operation Save America,

an evangelist at Mercy Seat Christian Church of Brookfield, Wisconsin.

Today we're going to be addressing a Christian guide for cultural and political engagement, and we're also going to be

announcing the upcoming debate on the theme, Abolition vs. Incrementalism,

How to End Infanticide in America, this February on Iron Trump and Zion Radio between

Jason Storms, the abolitionist in the debate, and my friend Scott

Klusendorf, who is representing incrementalism.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Jason Storms.

Chris, it's a pleasure to be with you.

It's great to have you on the program.

First of all, tell our listeners about the church where your father -in -law is pastor and where you

serve as an evangelist, Mercy Seat Christian Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

The church has been in existence for 35 years, I want to say.

It's been a faithful voice in the Milwaukee metro area, standing up

for biblical truth for multiple decades.

I've been very active in discipling and working with a lot of the young people in the church, raising up the next generation

of evangelists, of gospel preachers, of leaders.

And I run a construction business in addition to the ministry that I do by vocational.

So I've been able to train a lot of young men in the trades, in entrepreneurialism,

in business and finance and economics, and in expanding the kingdom of God in those realms

and applying good biblical principle to our work, our work ethic, and our finances, and

our productive labors.

And so that's been a joy to watch a generation of young people come up.

We just had our 11th child, so that's exciting, and are blessed to homeschool all those kids.

We've got a very dynamic church with a lot of young people, a lot of fruitful families, a lot of homeschool families,

big families, and doing our best to shine as a beacon of light in this

dark world, and increasingly so amongst the young people.

So only 11 children, huh?

When are you really going to get started?

That's it, that's it, just was hoping to fill a football team, you know, and then that's it.

I thought 10 and done, but then, you know, we ended up having one more.

I don't know, maybe we'll have 12, we'll see.

But yeah, it's an adventure and a joy.

Well, you make my former pastor, Mark Romaldi, look like a rookie.

He's pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Greenbrier, Tennessee, also known

as White House, Tennessee, and he only has nine children, so.

Oh, boy.

But can you tell us something more about the theological makeup of Mercy Seat Christian.

Church?

It's a bit of an eclectic mix, theologically.

You know, my roots and Pastor Matt's roots

both were in sort of the Pentecostal charismatic movement, but as you probably

know, that movement, it tends to be about a mile wide and an inch.

Deep.

And so Matt and I followed similar courses before we even met each other, theologically began to

be, you know, we both had pretty dramatic conversions to Christ in our teen years

from broken families, drugs, and all the while living.

And Matt actually got saved in Teen Challenge at 17, and I got saved at 19, moved to

New Orleans with my dad.

And my dad was actually an Assemblies of God pastor in New Orleans, and so he came to the Lord at 19.

So, you know, we both followed similar journeys, though, in different decades and

independently of each other, but both of us began to become dissatisfied with, you know, sort of the standard fare of

evangelicalism in the 80s and 90s was, you know, Jesus is coming back soon, get ready, buckle up.

And that was it.

And so I remember reading Gary DeMar's book, Last Day's Madness.

And I think I was 20 years old, Dr. D. James Kennedy, who I supported his radio program, I listened to him on the radio, sent me that book.

And I was like, mind blown kind of thing.

And so, you know, began to dive deeper into sort of

historical Christian theology in reading the Reformers and reading guys,

great revival preachers like Wesley and Edwards, and just beginning to step back and look through

the history and reading a lot of the writings of the early church.

And so our church is sort of non -denominational, I guess you'd say.

We're not connected to a denomination, left the charismatic Pentecostal world, but never settled into a particular

denomination.

So broadly Protestant, I would say we're probably best

seen as a post -mill covenantal theonomic church, which tends to turn

some folks away.

We had a lot of people joined our church during the COVID era because we, of course, stood against the

lockdowns and the mandates and all that stuff.

And so we had a lot of people join our church, but then to discover that we were not pre

-millennial and that we didn't think that this was the last days that we were living in, they

left our congregation.

But so it's a little bit of our church's theological bent.

Well, I do also want our listeners to look up when they visit the website

of Mercy Seat Christian Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, to look up these books that have been brought back into

print by my guest's father -in -law, Matt Trujillo.

One of them is the Magdeburg Confession, and I hope I'm not mispronouncing that, a really

valuable book that basically was used of God after the

Reformation to squelch the attempts of the Church of Rome

to dominate the theological landscape of Germany, if I'm not mistaken,

and also other excellent literature that is

available there at mercyseat .net, mercyseat .net, and God

willing, I will remember to repeat that information at the end of the program.

And we have a tradition here, Jason, whenever we have a first -time guest on

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we ask that guest to give a summary

of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised

and the kinds of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew

you to himself and saved you.

Amen.

Well, yeah, my parents were teenagers when they had me and my brother.

My brother's a year and a half older than me, and they both had, you could say, some religious experiences as

teenagers.

They came out of the drug culture of the 70s, and upstate New York.

We're all from upstate New York.

My grandmother was a Sicilian immigrant and moved upstate and

married, and so my dad's side was very Italian, very Catholic.

My mom's side, they were German -Irish immigrants and so

forth in the ancestry, and so my grandmother was a Methodist on my mom's

side, so my mom had a little bit of that upbringing, but for the most part, my mom was not

religious and raised me.

My mom and dad were together and divorced when I was a baby, and so my

earliest memories were of them separated.

My mom raised me in, I'd say, a very irreligious home.

We didn't go to church.

My dad was referred to, he became a Christian when I was three.

He came, like I said, they had experiences with the Lord, and then

it didn't stick.

They both kind of fell back, kind of went to church a little bit, and started going to

church, got married, and divorced quickly, and walked away from their,

you know, whatever experiences they had.

My dad came back to that when I was three years old, so my earliest memories of my dad was he was a Christian, and he was a part of a

little church in Elmira, New York, and so I'd visit him, and he would take me to church and pray with me, read the Bible with me,

but with my mom, it was not that way.

We ended up moving to California.

I went to middle school out in San Jose, California.

My dad moved to New Orleans when I was little, and I'd spend summers in New Orleans with him.

He passed it in the inner city of New Orleans, and so I saw this big contrast between mom

and dad, and I considered myself a Christian up until age 14.

At 14 years old, I had a lot of questions about the faith, had a lot of doubts, of course, influenced

by my culture, raised by the entertainment industry, a major void in my life, of course, not having

a Christian home, and so at 14 years old, I renounced Christianity and did

not have a good relationship with my mom or my dad, and I just said, you know, I don't believe this stuff,

and oddly enough, I still believed in God, and I knew there's got to be a purpose to life.

I don't know what it is or why I'm here, and so I can see, it's interesting, I remember praying my freshman

year of high school when I was still considering myself a Christian.

I remember praying to God because I went through this cycle in high school, you know, starting high school where, you know, I'd go to church on Sunday,

live with my dad for the start of ninth grade in New Orleans, and I remember we went through, I go through

this cycle where Sunday, I'd go to church with him, pray these, you know, and pray and say, God, help me

to be a good Christian throughout the week, and then Monday, I'd go to school, and I'd be like, you know, I'm

going to do really well.

I'm not going to lust after girls.

I'm not going to cuss.

I'm not going to be smoking anything.

I'm going to stay on the straight and narrow, and then by Tuesday, start to wear that down a little bit.

By Wednesday, I was pretty much fitting in with the crowd, and by the end of the week, you know, living sort of like

a heathen, and then weekend rolls back around.

I come to church with my dad and repent, you know, kind of live that cycle that, you know, that was the six months of, that I

lived with my dad in my freshman year, and so I ended up moving away from him, renouncing Christianity,

and, but I remember praying a prayer at that time.

I said, Lord, when I get out of high school, I'll serve you.

It's just too hard to serve you being in high school right now, and so I don't know that

God held me to that, but I do know that it was a spiral downhill through high school.

It was sort of, you know, I've been through a wild childhood, moved around a lot, a lot of broken family

situations, lived with different family members, and God's, I think, no doubt preserved me through that.

My dad, many prayers for me, and, but my teenage years began to just be a

spiral downhill, drugs and partying and wild living, and ended up graduating high school

in San Jose, California.

I ended up homeless, did a lot of crystal meth, smoked weed every day, a lot of bad stuff,

and a lot of criminal stuff, a lot of getting arrested, getting in trouble with the law, and was at a bad place, basically

homeless, and, you know, a lot of nights sleeping alone, sleeping out on the streets,

finding places to sleep, and not eating, you know, going hungry.

I lost a lot of weight.

It went from being a good athlete and high school football player to being a little tweaker, you know, and, and

I kind of came to the end of myself, prodigal son.

My dad called me.

I hadn't talked to him in quite a few years after I moved away from high school, moved away from him in ninth grade.

It had been about five years since I'd talked to him, four years, and he ended up getting ahold of me.

This is before the internet.

This is 1997.

So he tracked me down, found me a friend's house I was staying at, sleeping on his couch, and he said, hey,

Jason, I know I've not been there for you, not been a good father for you in many ways, but

I know you're, I talked to your mom, know you're in a bad place.

If, if you want to get a fresh start, get a roof over your head, I'll buy you a bus ticket.

You can leave California, come back down here to New Orleans and stay with me and, and get a

fresh start.

And so that was, that was a, a wild moment for me.

And I was sort of at a place where God, I believe, had been really convicting me, drawing me to himself.

I had this sort of growing spiritual hunger to figure out why I existed, what the purpose of life was.

Everything around me I saw was fake.

You know, all the institutions around me were failing me.

I knew that the public school system was a joke.

I knew that everything I saw in the media and the television was corrupt.

I knew my government was corrupt.

I looked at the religious institutions around me.

I thought that they were all corrupt.

So, you know, I just was at that place as a young man of word, as a young man go to find truth.

And so my dad ended up buying me the bus ticket.

I said, I called him the next day.

Let me think about it, called him back, said, okay, buy me the bus ticket.

I'm coming down and spent four days on a Greyhound bus, sober and reflecting,

and just under tremendous conviction of the Holy Spirit, God drawing me to himself.

And I got off the bus that first night.

My dad was having a Bible study in his little apartment in New Orleans.

And I remember just the words of scripture jumping off the pages at me, the genuineness of the people, the Christians that were there, just

such genuine people.

And, and I was just blown away.

I was like this starving soul that just was broken before God.

And he just was, you know, revealing Christ to me in a profound and powerful way.

And so it really was, was incredible.

And I ended up probably spent about two to three weeks sort of

wrestling with God and him breaking me down and drawing me and revealing himself to me.

And I would just stay up my dad and I until two, three in the morning, some nights just talking.

And I'm just drilling with questions.

Well, why would God make the world if this and this, and how do you know the Bible is true?

And how do you know that the Bibles can be, you know, and all these questions, he just patiently walked me through answers to these questions, patiently

walked me through the scriptures, through the gospel.

And I knew I was a sinner and that was it.

Probably the third week I was down there, repented and came to church with him and experienced a radical transformation.

And I just turned 19 years old.

So that was a profound.

And so I didn't have any useful functional skills.

You know, I knew how to play sports.

I knew how to break into cars and houses, but I had no useful functional skills at a high school diploma,

but didn't know anything about life.

And so I had to figure out how to be a man.

God led me through a journey of getting mentored and discipled by men and just learning how to be a responsible, hardworking

man.

And brought me on a journey to where by God's grace, 26 years later, 11 children have run a business for 20

years and been able to serve in ministry, been on staff in our church for 18 years, and just been blessed to be

used of the Lord for his kingdom and his purposes.

And so it's been a blessing now to be the father for my kids that I didn't have through a lot of my childhood.

And to see my kids now, my teenage kids and grown kids, walking with the Lord and doing

ministry and serving together, worshiping together.

Is just a tremendous blessing.

Amen.

Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away.

It is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

If you have a question that you'd like to ask of your own to my guest Jason Storms, C -H -R -I -S

-A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, such as you are in

stark disagreement with your own pastor or your elders or your denomination

over what we are discussing today.

Perhaps you're even a pastor yourself and you disagree with your fellow elders or your denomination over

something we're discussing today.

Well, whatever it is that would compel you to remain anonymous, we will grant that request.

But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence, and

your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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We're now back with our guest Jason Storms, and by the way, Jason, I think that you should

make use of your name by starting a private detective agency.

You have the name of a private detective as far as I'm concerned,

but I think it would be good to set the stage

for any further conversations we have regarding your engagement with culture

and politics.

Please explain the book by your father -in -law, which is available from Mercy

Seat Christian Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates, a Proper

Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government.

Please let listeners know about that.

Yeah, groundbreaking, fantastic book that I think is a self -published book.

I think it's over, I want to say 140 ,000 copies sold now, which is pretty incredible, and

that's been read by governors, senators, congressmen on down all over the

nation, and so I think it's the definitive book for our day on

that topic of resistance.

How do we resist corrupt government, and how do we think rightly and biblically about

politics, government, law, policy, and sadly the evangelical world has a

major void here in terms of a well -rounded political theology, and

so a lot of that was a lot of factors, converging factors over the last century contributing to that,

but the classical reformed thinking with regards to politics and law and culture has

largely been lost in the last hundred plus years, and so as we see across the spectrum,

massive corruption in our public institutions and the gross secularization of our

culture and all the things that follow from that, the dehumanization of

life, the rampant sexual immorality, the breakdown of the family,

on to just the gross corruption and system of bribery that exists within our state and federal

government, so what the book really addresses is it lays out a biblical foundation for

how do we push back, and the idea of the lesser magistrate doctrine follows from the recognition that all

authority is derived from God.

He is the source of all authority, Jesus of course in the great commission, he says all authority in heaven and earth has

been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all the things I've commanded,

and so the gospel is more than just personal salvation and the personal securing of

one's soul into eternity, but there are real effects that redemption has on the

individual's life in the here and now, and that affects men socially, in our

social institutions, in our family, our business, our economics, our politics, etc., and all that is under the

authority of Christ, who is king of kings and lord of lords, and so what we

see biblically is the three spheres of government that God has instituted, all of which derive their power

and their authority from him, are the realm of family government, right, children are to obey their

mother and father, wives submit to your husbands, husbands lead your homes well as Christ,

love your homes as Christ loved the church, love your wives, love your children, train them up in the nurture and instruction of the Lord, there is an

order to the home, a government in the home, and there is limitations to that,

an abusive father should be resisted, not submitted to, right, the same is true of

the next realm of government, is ecclesiastical or church government, we see within the church, Paul says

obey those who rule over you in the Lord, Peter reiterates the same thing, that there is elders to be appointed who

care for your soul, shepherd your soul, in order to be submitted to or to execute church discipline and hold to

sound doctrine within the church, and of course that is not without limit,

that no pastor or elder is infallible, though their authority is derived by God,

they can abdicate the authority through disobedience and through the abdication of their duties, and so a

pastor who's embezzling money, teaching heresy, so forth, is to be

resisted, not submitted to, and the same is true in the realm of civil government, we have

the third realm of civil government, where God has instituted Romans 13,

the civil magistrate, who is a minister of God, for the purpose of punishing evil and promoting

good, the civil magistrate just doesn't exist as a law unto themselves, they don't get to just make up

their own system of morality to impose on the people, and Christians shouldn't just accept a

morally relativistic landscape, as though, well, we're just sojourners and pilgrims, therefore, whatever the civil

magistrate decides, whatever he wants to impose, so be it, we just suffer and endure,

sometimes that may be the case, but we should seek justice in the political realm, God's word speaks to

the civil arena, and his law speaks to the civil arena, and certainly here in western

civilization, our laws were grounded in scripture, and in a biblical worldview, and that is well worth

preserving, and so the civil magistrate has a duty before God to punish evil and

promote good, and when they fail to do so, they abdicate their authority, they become an enemy of God, and they ought to be

resisted, and it's the duty, first and foremost, of lesser magistrates, lower ranking civil

authorities, say, for example, in our system of government, where we have governors,

we have city and council leaders, state representatives, sheriffs,

they have a duty to push back against federally corrupt laws that are coming down from the federal government,

any branch of the federal government, be it court opinion, or legislative act, or executive

decree, and they also have a duty to push back against bad state law that's coming down from the state house, or

governor, or an attorney general, and so, you know, this is an important check

and balance that's rooted in Protestant political history, that these

magistrates are accountable to the law of God, and that we

have a system of checks and balances put in place here, a true federalism, where we have different layers and levels of government, and

no governor, no president, no sheriff is a law unto themselves, they are

under the law, and so, for example, a police officer who's ordered to arrest Christians,

and to take them, you know, in the back alley and rough them up by his captain, must look at that captain and say no.

Or even just to arrest them, even just to arrest them,.

And not rough them up.

If they're arresting them because these Christians are living out their faith,

obviously Christians need to be arrested when they are committing crimes that are real crimes.

And unfortunately, we see that in the news more frequently than we care to admit, when pastors

fall into all kinds of gross sin, but we're talking about those

things that the government has no business enforcing upon

its citizens, especially in a country like the United States of America that is

supposed to be a constitutional republic, and yet the

government is constantly, with greater intensity, trying to impose its

unconstitutional mandates upon its citizens.

So even without the roughing up, the police, if they are going to put

truth above their jobs, shouldn't they be resisting

putting under arrest people that they know are.

Being arrested for false reasons?

Absolutely, and so that's what the lesser magistrate doctrine would affirm, and Christians have affirmed this for hundreds of

years, as St. Augustine said, an unjust law is no law at all.

And so we, of course, we fleshed this out in Nuremberg trials, we said to

German military officers on down to lower ranking

soldiers, the idea that you're just following orders was no excuse and no

justification for committing horrific injustices against other human beings.

And so the same is certainly true today as we look at, for example, abortion, we see children being murdered

1 million a year in this nation.

And for 50 years, their blood has cried out for 50 years.

We watched every single governor, every single sheriff, every single police chief in the country,

bowing down to the Supreme Court and saying, okay, the seven

robed men in Washington, D .C. said, pre -war children are no longer

legally protected human beings, and open up the floodgates of brutality to slaughter them.

And there was no resistance.

Had this thinking been in place 50 years ago, perhaps we would have seen governors and sheriffs and police chiefs

and state legislators stand up and say no, when Roe was issued.

I'm sad that we sat under that bloodshed for 50 years.

And by the way, it reminds me, I've got to get on my calendar another

interview with your father in law, Matt Trujillo, because the last time we spoke, he

enthusiastically agreed to an idea I have for an interview.

I want to get Matt on the show with several law

enforcement officers who are on the same page with their biblical

worldview as Matt's, and have them discuss the very issue that

you brought up.

Because Christian police officers really have got to be prepared

when things get worse and worse, even post -millennialists, by the way, for our listeners

who aren't aware of this.

Post -millennialists do not believe, and I am not one yet anyway, I'm open to it, I'm

an optimistic amillennialist, but post -millennialists do not believe that the future just keeps

getting better and better and better in an unbroken progression of

improvement as they are caricatured to believe.

Post -millennialists believe that we could be plunged into the world that is, could be plunged into a state

of darkness like the world has ever seen for centuries before things get better

because of the fact that they have a longer life expectancy for

the planet Earth than most, or in fact, more than all pre -mill and most

amill folks have.

This, just because they believe ultimately that the globe will be converted and of

course there are various interpretations even amongst post -millennialists.

Some believe it's just the majority of those alive when Christ returns who will be saved.

Some believe that every single person alive will be saved.

Some believe that the majority of the Earth's governments, if not all of the Earth's governments,

will be under godly rule.

So there are differences of opinion.

But the longevity of the existence of this planet in the

post -millennial world view allows for even a period of

darkness that lasts centuries in our future.

Wouldn't you agree with that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, you know that's something we're not extraordinarily dogmatic and as a post -mill guy I welcome working with all my other brothers in

different millennial camps.

Unfortunately, some of my pre -mill brothers are pretty dogmatic.

They get a little ruffled by my position, but I mean we're not dogmatic and we don't push that

aggressively on people.

I think that, you know, doing the work, I'm a much more practical kind of guy and sitting around debating theology with

people endlessly.

I think doing the actual work is what matters, rolling up our sleeves and regardless where we may disagree on that, we

can argue over that and have those discussions and they are important.

But you know, let's do the work and let's get our hands dirty and

regardless of what the next 10 years or 20 years or 50 years may hold, we got lots of work to do

in front of us right now.

So we got about five minutes before our midway break for you to outline the

upcoming debate that we are arranging in the month of

February between you and my friend Scott Klusendorf who has

been on the program.

I think Scott Klusendorf in many respect is doing a lot of

great things and has done for many years a lot of great things for the cause of life and the mother's womb,

although I am saying that having a disagreement with him over the issue of the debate

we are hoping to have in February, I would side much

more strongly with the abolitionists such as yourself than the incrementalists and

that actually was something in my heart and mind when I first became a

believer before I had ever heard of a movement called the abolitionist movement.

I don't even know if it existed in any significant or prominent way when I

became a Christian in the 80s.

You mostly heard about things like Operation Rescue and pro -life movements and

activities, but it always bothered me.

I always felt unsettled that even the most zealously

active pro -life person or organization was never completely

treating unborn humans in the same degree

of humanity as post

-natal children and humans of all ages.

It always seemed to me that there was a category of less

importance when it came to unborn life.

So in one way I've always been an abolitionist because I always felt we

should be treating the murder of an unborn child just as if we were

treating a situation with an eight -year -old child and we should be

treating those guilty of these murders in the same way.

But if you could set out a summary of what you

expect to occur when you defend the abolitionist position against the incrementalist

position that is being represented by Scott Klusendorf.

On Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio in February.

Good.

I look forward to that very much.

I like Scott.

He's also a friend of mine and we spent quite a few hours discussing and debating these

things.

And so I think that one, the first step is going to be to define our terms

because that's obviously very important.

What do we even mean by incrementalist?

What do we mean by abolitionist?

What are we talking about here?

And then the second thing that I think is important is to show how brothers who are sincere

followers of Christ who are committed to the end of abortion but who disagree on some of these

important aspects of how to go about fighting this battle can with grace

and with charity can have passionate disagreement and discussion that hopefully Lord willing

will be edifying and encouraging and yet still have a love for each other and still be committed

to lifting up the name of Christ in his lordship on the earth and to

doing what we can committing ourselves to putting an end to abortion.

So that being said, you know, I think I'm not a big fan of either term incrementalist or

abolitionist just to be quite frank.

We've been very involved since the abolitionist movement kind of came on the scene 10 years ago.

I was sort of an early adopter, saw good things with that and came alongside a lot of the guys

at that time.

It was kind of an AHA kind of online crowd and they were doing some good stuff.

But there was a lot of problems in that movement.

And so a lot of people become very unsettled by that term abolitionist and have disassociated themselves from it.

And so, you know, I'm not married to the term abolitionist.

There are principles that I think are important.

The abolitionist movement has helped bring to the fore and we've been certainly a part of trumpeting that, that are very

important and stand in contradiction to the mainstream current of most

pro -life organizations and particularly the big pro -life lobbying groups that really set the political strategy.

And I think that's where really we'll hash out and flesh out some of the

disagreements here.

And, you know, my contention is going to be that the pro -life movement by and large is weak and

compromised and ineffective politically and largely due to a lack

of good theological grounding to a lack of moral courage and three, because they get co -opted by the

Republican leadership.

And I think the real bad guys here in conservative states, particularly is the Republican leadership.

That's where the real money is.

That's the guys that really are responsible for keeping abortion legal in

conservative pro -life states.

And a lot of pro -life rank and file people are shocked to find out that that's the case.

But, you know, increasingly we've begun to see in our eyes have become open that there is such a thing as the political

establishment.

Could you could you pick up right where you left off when we return from our midway break?

Absolutely.

We urge you to use this time wisely.

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Questions to our guest, Jason Storms, to chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

Don't go away.

We're.

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show.

He really loves hearing interviewed Dr. Joe.

Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in a tie in County Kildare, Ireland,

going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards.

And Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

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If you visit, tell them Joe O 'Reilly, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Listener, and that's how I encountered

Aaron

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Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin here in.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent autonomous body of believers which strives

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

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always.

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Before I return to my discussion with Jason Storms, our guest today, I have some important

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Last but not least, if you're not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally

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That's also the email address where you can send in your questions to Jason Storms as we continue

our discussion today.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and before I go to any of our listener questions that have come in, I want you to continue where you left off.

You were talking about rhinos, which are really known as Republicans in name

only, and therefore almost indistinguishable.

From Democrats, but if you could, are you there?

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, so we are well aware that there is, you know, a

political establishment, and the Republican Party, of course, used to be pro -abortion political party,

you know, I think what was it, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices, or six of the nine at the time of Roe.

Yeah, in fact Richard Nixon was caught on tape.

Wondering to do with all these little black babies who he wanted aborted because they were.

Just, they were just a burden upon society.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ronald Reagan was Republican governor of California, signed an abortion law into effect

there pre -Roe, as did the Republican, Mitt Romney's dad, Republican

governor of Michigan pre -Roe, so you know, so the Republican Party was a pro -abortion party.

Barbara Bush.

Yeah, yeah, the whole Bush family, right, so, you know, when

you had in the late 70s, of course, the rise of the moral majority, Jerry Falwell, and you had

this whole awakening, guys like Francis Schaeffer, of course, a big part in awakening the church in that regard,

and, you know, they swept Ronald Reagan into power, and, you know, I don't know if Ronald Reagan was genuinely anti -abortion,

he wrote a book against abortion, but, you know, a lot of the Republican leaders who control the power, and the money, and the big

donor base, and Wall Street, they realized, okay, we need to ride this evangelical

wave, but we certainly don't share their values, and so how do we trick them into continuing to

vote for us without actually doing the things they want us to do, because we don't, we don't like that, and so

that's sort of been the game that's been being played within the Republican Party for 40

plus years now, right, and so what we find, guys like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, I mean, you know, these

are wicked, evil, evil men.

If we knew the depths of the depravity of these men, we'd be horrified, and so they're leading the Republican Party,

and so what you realize, though, is because the way that the federal government, the two -party system works

in the federal government, as well as the way that it works within most state houses, is the leadership of the party

really have the reins of power, and a handful of guys really control the power, and so you take

conservative pro -life states where you've got super majorities of

Republicans, and everybody says they're pro -life, right, but really it's a tiny majority that control the

power, and the purse strings, and the campaign finances, and all these things, you know, in these states, you're talking

billions of dollars run through that state house, right, and so the pro -life groups are

relatively, relatively tiny compared to that, right, and so these pro -life organizations have a decision

to make, right, their leadership has to decide, are we

going to stand on principle, and speak truth, and stand and defend the lives of these babies,

or are we going to succumb to political pragmatism, play the games, hold to the political pressure,

allow the money to silence us, and that's the pressure.

Republican leadership comes along to pro -life organizations and says, hey, look, we can't get this done right now,

but, you know, we need you to tell your people to stand behind us, this is the best we can do right now,

and, you know, that was the garbage that went on for 40 years, and of course, going back, you know, 20 plus

years, we were saying, to stand up and end abortion, to fire rope, conservative states had the

authority to end abortion in their jurisdiction, right, we saw this, you know,

in Texas and in Florida during the mandates in 2020, Governor Abbott, Governor

DeSantis said, nope, not here, you're not going to, you know, they basically told the

government where to go with regards to locking down businesses, and mandating

vaccines, and mandating other aspects of the COVID, you know, nonsense,

and so, it's like, okay, so you can tell the federal government to go pound

sand with regards to vaccine mandates, but you're not willing to do that over the murder of little babies

in your jurisdiction, something's wrong with that picture, so for decades, we knew, and saw, and

realized that obviously, not everybody that says they're pro -life is actually pro -life, right, so to us being pro

-life, you believe these are babies that are being murdered, and we stand uncompromisingly in their defense to be a voice for the

voiceless, to call their murder what it is, the murder of an innocent human being made in the image of God, and we need

to stand up and speak against it, it needs to be fully criminalized, and all those involved held accountable by law,

and so that's what we were beating that drum for years, now that was, you know, put us in a sort of a minority stance within

the pro -life movement, we were always sort of the oddballs, you know, our organization, Operation Save America, which used to be

Operation Rescue, and a leader of that rescue movement, you know, those were guys that were taking direct action,

and were employing interposition, the classic doctrine of interposition, they were saying, hey, these are babies being murdered,

what is the appropriate response for a go and stand in between the victim

and the victimizer, and so, you know, rescue was a big thing in the late

80s and early 90s, and actually pushed the abortion industry against the ropes, and the Christian leaders around the country, pro -life leaders around the

country were getting behind that, joining in that, getting arrested, and laying their lives down, and calling on their elected

officials to do the same, but, you know, so there was this sort of, I think, crossroads in our nation in the

late 90s, or the early 90s, rather, where the church

was sifted, and found wanting, and many church leaders

retreated when the cost got too high of arrest, and persecution, and the FBI

knocking on your door, and, you know, crazy pro -aborts picketing your church, and threatening your family, and

a lot of pastors got silent, a you know, we think abortion is wrong, but we don't quite think it's

that wrong, and there was a lot of cowardice, and so things really shifted with

the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.

Up to that point, we had 12 years of pro -life presidents, and pro -life

majorities, with the rise of the moral majority, and this strong pro -life voice, strong evangelical

voice, thrusted into politics, but as we look back, we see that the net result really was we got played, right, the

religious right, Falwell, and those guys really just kind of got played by the Republican Party,

and Bill Clinton gets elected in 92, and Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court

picks, two of them, Kennedy and O 'Connor flip, and rather than the, you

know, the big Casey decision in 92, rather than what many thought was going to be the overturning of Roe,

instead they ended up strengthening and expanding Roe, as Reagan's

Supreme Court picks flopped, and turned out they weren't actually against abortion at all, and so then

Clinton gets in office, he signs the FACE Act, Freedom of Access to Clinic and Church Entrances, and makes it a federal felony

to engage in any peaceful civil disobedience in front of an abortion clinic,

which we have a trial in just a couple weeks with some friends of ours in Nashville, Tennessee, Kells Astro,

and Chet Gallagher, and Coleman Boyd, and some other friends of ours, Paul Vaughn, and Eva Edel will be facing

up to as many as 11 years in federal prison for peacefully sitting down in front of the doors of an abortion clinic

in Tennessee, and so arrested under the Biden administration, under the FACE Act, so that

FACE Act was enacted in 1992, and that kind of crushed the rescue movement,

and I would say from that time the pro -life movement was sort of wandering in the wilderness

for 40 years, and afraid to stand up to the Goliaths in the land, and afraid to challenge

and defy Roe, and afraid to call abortion murder, and so the pro -life movement has just largely been co -opted

by the Republican political establishment, and it's political pragmatism, and even,

of course, we see it now with the calls to abandon the issue of abortion altogether, even Trump saying,

you know, we're going to lose on abortion, we need to distance ourselves from a strong stance on abortion, you have Nikki Haley standing up, and

others applauding her, saying, you know, 15 -week ban is reasonable, no, that's not reasonable,

you know, you can't get an abortion in France after 12 weeks, you know, so here we have our pro -life

leaders standing up and saying a 15 -week ban, something that would be considered extreme in France, is reasonable

for pro -life people here in the United States, absolutely absurd, and so the pro -life movement,

you know, is really, you know, there's two categories you fall into in the pro -life movement, there are those who

stand on principle, and who stand up to the corrupt Republican leadership, and those who won't, or who

don't, and that makes all the difference, of course, right, and so the abolitionist

movement came on the scene, you know, 10 years ago or so, and really

honed in on that message, and we saw a lot of good, and we jumped on board, and I was

involved in helping build the abolitionist movement, as was Rusty Thomas, who was leading Operations of America at that time, and

he wrote an excellent book, Biblical Strategies to Abolish Abortion, and has brought in a lot of people into that

fight, and a lot of people are realizing, yeah, we've been fighting this battle wrongly for a long time

here, and that's why we continue to lose, we need to be wise here, we need to

be principled, and we need to understand that the games that are being played by the big

Republican leadership, and the big pro -life lobbying groups, and that they're playing pro -life voters,

and that they are selling us out, and they're selling out these babies, and that they're corrupt,

and they need to be exposed, so that's a lot of what we've been doing on the pro -life front

for the last 10 years here.

So I am getting the concept here that

a primary difference between a pro -life incrementalist and an abortion

abolitionist is that those advocating

incrementalism, especially when you're talking about major political figures,

lawmakers, and movements, and organizations, people in the pro -life industry,

are either naively, or unconsciously, or at its worst,

intentionally compromising with

laws such as a heartbeat bill, a 15 -week bill, that

in reality, according to an abolitionist, is making

the establishment of new laws completely abolishing abortion,

and making the guilty parties of infanticide, whether they be physicians

or mothers, paying to have their babies murdered,

or getting them murdered in free clinics, or what have you, that

they should be treated under the law equally with those who murder eight -year -old children,

that the pro -life industry, even when well -intended, is

actually thwarting the cause to permanently and completely banish abortion.

Is that basically,.

In summary, what you're saying?

Yeah, that's fair to say.

There's obviously a lot of nuance to all that.

There's a lot of very good pro -life people there, and I don't ever want to make some blanket, broad

-brush denunciation of the entirety of the pro -life movement, because I was a

part of the pro -life movement, would have considered myself a part of the pro -life movement, though on its edges as a

strong gospel preacher for many years.

But I know lots of very, very good people who have done great work and are very committed

to ending abortion, who are godly Christian people who've been fighting this fight for decades, and

have borne the scars on their body and much blood, sweat, and tears.

So there's a lot of very good people.

And, of course, conversely, just becoming an abolitionist doesn't suddenly make you

100 righteous

in what you're doing either.

It's easy to armchair quarterback what's going on in the political arena and just

shoot from the hip on that stuff.

There is a lot of nuance to these discussions.

But in a nutshell, yes, what we are finding is that,

particularly after the Dobbs case, before Roe fell, the real

giant was the Supreme Court.

And what we were trying to do was get state governments, state government leaders to

recognize they did not have to bow to Roe.

And that was a real dividing line.

An overwhelming majority of the pro -life movement was absolutely against us on that, fought us on that.

And, of course, we saw then, well, where is your courage?

Where is your commitment?

And now that Dobbs has fallen, this is a conversation I had with Scott Klusendorf two years ago.

And I remember we had this conversation.

And he said, Jason, I think that Dobbs is going to fall.

And I actually was doubtful.

I didn't think Dobbs was going to fall.

He's like, and I'm afraid that some of the things you're saying are right and have been saying and that the pro -life

movement we're going to find is a whole lot weaker than any of us thought.

And they're not really going to do much to end abortion in all these states once Dobbs comes.

And so we should talk about strategies, what we can do to try to actually move the ball forward

if Roe falls.

And so I said, well, yeah, I can absolutely assure you, Scott, having worked in probably 20 state legislatures

around the country in the last two decades, that the overwhelming majority of people who call themselves pro -life

are either either cowardly, well -intentioned, decent

folks, but just lack courage, or they're outright deceivers

and charlatans and frauds.

And so the way you expose that is you test them.

You have to test a man's character.

And so we've been working on bills of equal protection, bills of abolition, whatever term you want to use.

We like the term equal protection.

We've worked on bills of equal protection.

I think this coming legislative session with the coalition of folks that we work with around the country, we'll have somewhere around

18 states will have bills of equal protection.

And what that does is separates the men from the boys.

It draws the hard line in the sand.

This is the principle that we stand on full equal protection.

This is a law that protects a pre -born child and treats demands of the law,

treats a pre -born child in the same way that you treat a born child.

That's it.

The law is not saying anything about anything other than that.

There's a lot of caricatures and misrepresentations, and we get a lot of attacks and distortions

about we want to force women who've had miscarriages to go to prison.

And we just want to see women get the death penalty and all these sorts of things that are thrown at us.

And the reality is all these bills of equal protection do is say, treat a pre -born child

the same way you treat a born child.

And we establish the equal protection.

And as I was discussing with Brian Gunter not long ago, who is an

abolitionist working arm and arm with my friend Jeff Durbin at Apologia Church in

Mesa, Arizona.

Yep, we work with those guys, and yep, good brothers, good friends.

And as Brian was saying that another key aspect of this

whole divide between incrementalists and abolitionists is that most

of the major figures in the pro -life industry who are

incrementalists are vehemently, vociferously, adamantly

opposed to any prosecution of a woman for murdering her child in the womb.

Yeah, that has certainly been the case with regards to the big lobbying groups.

But that's changing.

Here's the good thing is, you know, and partly due to the work of guys like Jeff in Abortion Now and

Operation Save America and the work that, you know, we've been doing, beating this drum for many years now,

is people are beginning to wake up and see that that's a problem.

And so, you know, I'm sure Jeff and Brian filled you in on the bill in Louisiana,

the bill of equal protection there drafted by my friend Bradley Pierce, an excellent

bill.

And, you know, it was opposed by 72 pro -life organizations signed their name to it.

And our bills of equal protection, of course, you know, Students for Life of America just came out with a

graphic, a meme that says, you know, it's got a map of the United States, and it shows 14 states.

And these are states that passed trigger laws or abortion bans, quote unquote.

They had laws that were passed prior to the fall of Roe that would be a trigger law that would go into

effect, it would trigger, the law would trigger into effect, if Roe were ever overturned.

And so states like Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, right, a bunch of these states

had these laws go into effect.

And so they're claiming that these states have all banned abortion.

Students for Life is saying these are abortion -free states.

Well, that's just a lie.

Based upon Planned Parenthood's old numbers and the numbers of the state of

Texas, 19 ,000 babies were murdered this last year since the fall of Dobbs, since

this trigger law went into effect.

You know, there was, you know, there was, I think, around 55 ,000 babies murdered in Texas average

over the last several years before Roe fell.

And so now that number has gone down, they estimate probably somewhere between 5 ,000 and 10 ,000.

They're saying this trigger law that went into effect has saved between 5 ,000 and 10 ,000 babies.

And that's great.

I'm thankful for that.

And I'm glad that it's illegal in the state of Texas now for a doctor to kill a baby.

That's a good thing.

The problem with those laws, of course, is they, every single one of these 14 states that Students for Life of America is

claiming are now abortion -free states, in every single one of them, the mother can kill her own

child via chemical abortion with impunity.

The mothers are explicitly exempted from punishment.

And in Louisiana, if I'm not mistaken, Brian Gunter, where he

pastors at First Baptist Church in the, I

can't remember the city right now in Louisiana, but Livingston, Livingston,

he said that there are more babies being murdered by the

abortifacient pills than through other means in

that state.

Yeah, this has been a problem.

And so some.

Of this is just the older generation of pro -lifers.

There's an ignorance here.

And then some of it is that they're getting money from pharmaceutical companies and from Republican

leadership to get quiet.

And some of it is the pro -life groups are just weak.

And on Louisiana, Louisiana Right to Life absolutely betrayed the pre -born children on this issue.

Louisiana Right to Life and I forget the other organization was really, really pathetic.

And so these groups signed this statement saying

that mothers should never be prosecuted.

They do not support the prosecution of mothers because mothers are victims.

They've been lied to.

Now mothers, women have been lied to.

Our culture, we've all been lied to.

I had a girlfriend that had an abortion when I was 18 years old.

But even though I was lied to, and I was a total pagan in my thinking, I knew I was

consenting to the killing of my own child.

I knew that, as did my girlfriend at the time.

And she devastated her.

I actually never saw her again.

It was so devastating to her.

We barely messed her up.

So had there been a law in place that said I would have been held accountable, as would her, that we both would have been held

accountable, and that we had a duty before the law to protect our child that we conceived, we never would have got that

abortion.

That would have been a massive deterrent to getting that abortion.

And I think that's what a lot of pro -lifers don't realize who I think are well -intentioned.

One is they don't realize that just because these mothers have been lied to, they're not victims.

When you go up to the abortion clinics, and you minister, and you talk to ladies, when you spend time on a college campus or a high school sharing the gospel,

and you engage with young people, what you find is they know full well what's growing

inside of them is a little precious human life when a woman gets pregnant.

They believe they have a right to kill that life.

They believe that that life doesn't matter relative to their wants, desires, and needs, that their

happiness trumps the life of that baby.

And so they're absolutely not victims.

The other part of that, of course, is the law.

So, you know, the law has three major functions.

It has a punitive function.

People say, oh, you just want to, you just want to kill mothers.

We passed this law.

You're going to put, you just want to put all these mothers in prison.

It's like, no, actually, our hope, you know, and this was our hope in Louisiana, you know, talking, of course, to Brian, and Jeff, and Bradley,

and the others, like our hope is that not a single mother would go to prison.

Because our hope is that not a single mother would actually get an abortion if this law went into effect, right?

Because the law functions as a deterrent.

The law deters bad behavior.

We, you know, we have severe punishment for murder because we don't want people murdering people.

And that deters people from thinking about it and acting on impulse.

And, you know, what would happen if you exempt women from our homicide statutes?

You know, you have a gang problem in Chicago, and people getting, you know, hundreds of shootings

every weekend in Chicago.

And imagine you just say, well, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to address this problem of gang violence.

We're going to make it really bad, really bad for a male gangbanger,

but we're going to, but for female gangbangers, they're exempt from punishment.

If a female engages in a drive -by shooting, we're not going to prosecute her.

We're only going to prosecute the men because women are, they're victims.

We don't want to put women in jail.

They don't know what they're doing.

These young gang members, they're being lied to, manipulated, and they're growing up in very hard circumstances and very rough neighborhoods and

failing schools.

And they don't know what they're doing.

So if they pull the trigger, they don't know what they're doing.

I mean, that would be just another absurd thing, right?

And so, you know, the question is why would pro

-life leaders think this way?

And so there are a lot of good pro -life leaders, I think, good people, well -intentioned, who really are just

misguided on this.

And they overstate the case of how misled women are.

Others, you know, have made arguments like this that, well, you know, we want the woman to testify against the doctor

and against the medical facilities.

And so, you know, we exempt her from punishment that way.

She's more willing to come forward and talk about, you know, who gave her the pills or,

you know, who's pushing her to get an abortion.

But, you know, all that stuff is already a part of existing law, right?

And all that's already a part of legal procedure, you know, that is already the case,

you know, which is like a drive -by shooting if a carload of four gang members drives through a neighborhood and shoot, they're going to investigate the

degree of culpability of each person in that vehicle.

And there may be varying degrees of culpability amongst all the folks in that.

And -.

Semi the Bulgarvano.

Prosecutors -.

Semi the Bulgarvano is a perfect example of it because he was used to

expose the crimes of a higher figure in

the food chain of La Cosa Nostra.

He was, you know, not incarcerated.

And, well, we're going to go to our final break right now.

I already know that we've got to have you back on a second time before the debate in February.

By the way, folks, mark your calendars for February 21st, which

is the date that we have scheduled for my guest's debate on this program

with pro -life incrementalist Scott Klusendorf.

That's Wednesday, February 21st.

But we definitely have to get you back on again because we're already running out of time and we haven't

even stuck our toe in the water of the primary theme that we were going to have you discuss, A Christian

Guide for Cultural and Political Engagement, although this is obviously involved in it.

But we're going to get to our final break.

And when we come back, we've got to have you respond to the

challenges or the criticisms of

me for having you be the representative for

abolitionism in the February debate with Scott Klusendorf.

As soon as I made it public, abolitionists began to

complain that I was involving you as their champion in this

debate because they said you're not an abolitionist.

There were at least 10 of them who have responded to my publicity for this debate.

And we'll have you respond to their criticisms after we return from this final break.

And if anybody else has a final question that you'd like to add to the

conversation, we haven't even gotten any of our listener questions yet, but if you'd like to get in line with the others who are still

waiting, please send us your email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

We'll be right back.

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We're now back with Jason Storms, and if Jason, if you could respond to your critics who

are angry with me for having you represent the

abolitionist cause in this scheduled debate in February on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with

incrementalist Scott Klusendorf, because they say you do not meet the criteria for being

accurately identified as an abolitionist and that you don't believe in what have been called the pillars

of abolitionism.

If you could respond to that.

Oh boy, I'll try to be succinct here, but you know, there's a long history with the abolitionist movement,

right?

There was the AHA crowd, the AHA scene, and you know, going back

five, six, seven, eight years ago, and there was these abolitionist societies popping up

all over the country.

Many times they were led by teenagers, led by young men who were not even a part of a local

church, and they were given a platform and they were propped up and put into a quote -unquote

leadership role.

And so, you know, there was just a wild amount of division and strife and

discord and immature, unruly, ungodly behavior that went on at that time that culminated in,

for example, Rusty Thomas breaking ways with AHA in 2017, said

OSA is no longer associating at all with AHA.

Jeff Durbin in 2018 had a big, big public fallout and dispute.

We did mediation there.

You know, myself and Matt Truella and others in 2018 as well distanced ourselves from AHA and from that

whole movement as it underwent a massive split.

There was a big egalitarian wave that swept through that even split kind of

the hub of it there in Norman, Oklahoma.

And so there's just a lot of drama, a lot of divisiveness, a lot of immaturity.

It really was a youth movement.

It characterized by all the problems of a youth movement.

And also it was a very ideologically driven movement, you know, and the problem with being just wed purely to

ideology without practical application is you live in the world of ideology,

then you're sort of above everybody else, you know, and your feet are not planted in the ground where

actual things get done.

And so it's sort of pie in the sky idealism.

So what we saw was sort of a Corinthian type spirit in the abolitionist movement that we

disassociated ourselves from and distanced ourselves from.

And so as I said in the outset of the broadcast, I'm not married to the term abolitionist.

I don't even really like the terms incrementalism or immediatist.

But the so -called five tenets of abolitionism were articulated in the early days of AHA and are in Rusty

Thomas's book as well.

And we absolutely agree with those principles.

We believe in the total and complete abolition of abortion and have been calling for that, working for that.

We've got bills of abolition, bills of equal protection, that operations of America has personally

found bill sponsors, supported bill sponsors, helped get bills written and done real work on the ground,

campaigning in states to get abolition accomplished on the ground.

They've been doing that for many years in many states.

And so to say that I'm not an abolitionist, I think, you know, is probably something very personal.

I think there's a group of abolitionists down in Oklahoma that have a personal ax to grind against me personally, you know,

and they've lied about me.

They've they just recently, they accused us of doing things in Ohio that we actually didn't do.

And there was actually guys in Ohio who were like, hey, we were told you guys were doing this.

And now we're here looking at what you're doing.

You're doing the exact opposite of what they said you were doing.

They actually lied about you guys.

Why would they lie about you?

And I said, that's a good question.

I don't know why they lie about me, but for whatever reason, there's a group of guys that seem to like to lie about people.

And that's not good character.

And so, you know, the abolitionist movement needs to mature to cultivate some

humility and to continue to grow with good leadership.

And I think guys like Jeff Durbin, guys like Rusty Thomas, guys like, you know, Josh Weiss

recently came out very publicly as an abolitionist.

And, you know, the reason that he had that conversion was not, you know, because AHA people went and picketed his church

and agitated him and attacked him and told him to repent publicly of being pro -life.

None of that.

He had abolitionists in his church, Virgil Walker, Bobby McCreary, good godly men, solid guys who identified as

abolitionists, good dudes.

And they didn't berate Josh Weiss publicly.

They didn't attack him and ridicule him and try to agitate him publicly and call him to

publicly repent.

They honored him and respected him as their pastor, as a good godly pastor leading the way.

And they helped him to come to understand some of the games being played in the pro -life world.

And when he came to understand that some of these incremental bills were not accomplishing what he thought that they were accomplishing, he

recognized that and changed his position.

And so that was the work of a lot of guys like Jeff Durbin was involved in it as well, talking to Josh and

being patient and long -suffering and gracious and respectful.

That's how Josh Weiss came along.

That's how we win.

That's how we convert pro -life people.

So we talked about that list of 72 people that signed onto that statement in opposition to the bill in

Louisiana that Brian and Jeff had worked on.

And we were down there helping on that as well.

What's interesting to note is some of the biggest pro -life organizations in the country did not sign onto that list.

There are a lot of pro -life leaders.

Live Action, for example, Lila Rose, she recently came out and said she now supports punishment for mothers.

The same is true of the lady down in Texas, Abby Johnson, patient work in labor of abolitionists

there and others.

She has come out and said, yeah, I think that.

And she was originally vehemently opposed to it.

Right.

In a group, Students for Life, I think they're, I think we're going to see them tip if they did not sign onto that document.

So I think that our work is effective when we when we when we are Christlike in how we

present our positions and how we state what we're doing and how we engage with people.

We don't just make blanket dismissive, you know, pompous attacks on anybody and anything that calls itself pro -life.

We don't get into bantering and fights over words and semantics and terms, but we keep Christ at the

center of what we're doing.

And we are we are we are out of time, brother, and we're going to have you back on the program, God willing, very soon

before your debate.

And I just want to make sure once again that the website of your church is given MercySeat .net,

MercySeat .net and Brawny in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Thomas in Fort Wayne,

Indiana.

We will ask your questions and the questions of everybody else who's waiting in line to have their questions asked.

We will ask those questions during our next interview.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you

are a sinner.