Mike Harding: What did the early church believe about abortion & response to Al Mohler DMW#215

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast, thanks for being here, thanks for sharing with a friend, thanks for commenting, checking us out at www .dmwpodcast

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01:57

I ramble a little bit, these last couple weeks though, we've been getting right into the guests because I do get excited about talking to the guests, so I won't keep you too much, but everything going good here in Michigan, spring's on the way, it's warm,

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I'm ready for it, man, and we're going to be bringing you a couple lakeside episodes like we did last year too, those were very popular, when

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I'm in northern Michigan on Lake Michigan or Lake Huron, sometimes even Lake Superior in the UP, we'll set up the tripod, the camera, we'll get the audio going with the remote mics and do something,

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Bible study or bring you an episode, but it's just cool to have that lake in the background, the waves rolling in while we do that, so look forward to that, so let's get right into it, our guest, he's been on before, and you guys love him, he's a husband, father, author of the new book,

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The Christian Response to Abortion, An Unapologetically Biblical Approach to Abolishing Preborn Homicide, it is

02:49

Mike Hardy, Mike, how are you doing, brother? I'm doing great, how are you, Greg? Oh, I'm doing okay, you know, just made it into our meeting time by the skin of my teeth,

03:00

I have two teenage daughters, I took them to Goodwill, and boy, when they're clothes shopping on that 50 % off Goodwill day, it is hard to get them out of there, so they came back with some sweatshirts and some jeans, but got here just in the nick of time, so appreciate you being patient, how you been, what's going on?

03:17

I've been good, long days at work, but I mean, thankful to have work, and it is staying busy, but when you said you had two teenage daughters, man, you didn't have to explain anymore, you said teenage daughters and shopping, you're good.

03:34

Well, I should say one 14, one 12, the 12 -year -old will be a teenager this fall, but getting there, you know, so preteen, but yeah, and you went from Ohio to Florida, you're still down in Florida, correct?

03:48

Yes, yeah, so we're still in Cape Coral. Cape Coral, and correct me if I'm wrong, are you at Bill's church?

03:56

No, actually, I'm at Tom Askle's church, Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, we're members there, yeah.

04:03

Oh, that's right, that's right, yeah, Tom's in Cape Coral, I gotta keep all my Florida preachers straight where they're at, you know, they're just a pin on the map sometimes when they come in for interviews, but yeah, so Mike and I go back a little bit, and you've been on before, talking about, you know, end abortion now, and the things that you've been doing with that group.

04:24

At the time, almost a year ago now, you were writing a book, you got this new book out, can you tell us a little bit about what the book's about,

04:32

I probably gave away a little bit with the title, obviously, but also why it's needed right now? Yeah, so the

04:39

Christian response to abortion is really making an argument explicitly from scripture as well as going into the first 400 years of church history, and looking to see what has been the response to abortion, and arguably, even though I don't document it all the way up until within the last 100 years, but in my research,

05:01

I've seen that it's only been until the last 100 years that we've even gotten messed up on this, and obviously it got worse with the

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Roe v. Wade decision in the 1970s, but it's, I mean, the church by and large, up until that point, had this straight, there wasn't a, like, hey, we need to look at the woman as a victim, over and over again,

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I read quotes, all the way, quotes even from the Didache, right, 70

05:31

AD, that were very clear about the response, and so it was encouraging, but it was also, you know, just eye -opening,

05:40

I mean, this has been around for so long, and for much of my Christian life,

05:46

I guess I was just blissfully ignorant of how devastatingly prevalent it was, you know,

05:53

I grew up in New Mexico, which at that time I didn't know, you know, growing up, but New Mexico has had basically abortion up until birth for as long as I've been alive, and so if I'm wrong on that statistically, you know, it's been a long time, right, and everybody gives news to California and New York, but we've been doing that for so long, and I just realized that I would talk to guys, and there would be guys that would make the biblical arguments, and some that would write, you know, constitutional arguments, and those are good, but I didn't see, other than the constitutional arguments,

06:33

I didn't see it in book form, right, like I hadn't seen anybody just tackle the issue from the doctrine of equal standards of justice, and so that was my desire, is to present that doctrine, which really undergirds, and you'll see it in the book, it undergirds even our understanding of the substitutionary atonement.

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God didn't withhold His wrath because it was His Son. He didn't say, oh, well,

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I'll only pour out just a little bit because I really love Jesus. No, He poured out all of His wrath that was meant for those sinners like you and me that have repented and trusted in Christ, and had

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He withheld wrath, it wouldn't have been a legit, you know, sacrifice in that sense, and so we don't use unequal weights and measures in the way that we do business.

07:23

We try to operate with integrity. Well, it's the same thing when it comes to human life, right? The way that we punish people in the courts, it should be using equal standards of justice.

07:33

If baby in the womb is a person from fertilization, then it's simple.

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Baby deserves equal protection and equal justice under the law, period. That's it.

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Like, it should be end of discussion for Christians, but for so long, we've adopted this pragmatic approach to this.

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Oh, well, what's politically possible? And really, that says, you know, to me that that individual is faithless.

07:58

I don't care about politically possible. I care about biblically principled, right?

08:03

Like, that is where Christians belong. We don't need to stick our fingers in the air and say, well, I think

08:09

I can estimate that we'll get this many votes for this or that. No, we just need principled men. And Dusty Devers is one of those guys that is showing that it can be done.

08:19

Yeah, no, that's good. You know, and I would point out two things about this.

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One, I think it is, well, three things, maybe. One, it is a much -needed book because no one has really tackled it from that angle.

08:31

Because the pro -life movement, in general, within evangelical Christianity has become one of compromise and kind of not understanding the equal measures of justice.

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I think, too, this is an area or a subject within the church where we've been shaded by secularism and feminism, where we've let that kind of take over our view on, well, we do believe abortion is wrong, but we can't really blame the one who, you know, it is murder, but we don't want to blame the murderer, right?

09:01

And feminism says men and, you know, there's no difference between men and women. And if a man, so if a man, you know, murders a child and he goes to prison, under feminism, so should a woman.

09:13

So there's a double standard even within that. I would also say to anyone listening who thinks, well, this abortion thing is new.

09:20

It's within the last 50 or 100 years. No, we've been finding ways to murder children and sacrifice them both on and off the altar and both post and pre -birth for thousands of years.

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There have been ways to eat certain type of substances, to abort children.

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So this spirit of murder and aborting and murdering innocent blood has been around for thousands of years, and the church would have been dealing with it, and so would have the apostles.

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And you see it even in the Old Testament thousands of years ago dealing with these sorts of things. So this is something that has been around a long time.

09:57

This isn't something that, and I don't think it's a book you're writing just because of Roe v. Wade or something like that.

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This is really, in my estimation, and correct me if I'm wrong, kind of like you said, the historical look of how biblically and how the early church fathers and how the church throughout church history viewed this issue.

10:16

And I'm assuming you give some examples and things like that in the book? Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm, you know, laying out quotes from all over the place, from, like I said, the

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Didache, from, I can't ever pronounce his name right, but Christos to them. And just walking through all the way up to,

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I wanted to do some more recent, but then I was thinking a lot of people quote, you know, Wilberforce, and I have some quotes from him in my book, but I wanted to hit on areas that people hadn't, you know, as much.

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And so without giving too much away there, I think that people will walk away, at least from that section of the book, realizing, man, the church has been clear on this.

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Why are we struggling to get this right? And that was my goal is just to say,

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Hey, look, we have a great cloud of witnesses before us that we've taken stances on this.

11:17

And so this isn't new that we're arguing for equal protection, equal justice. It's been around for a long time.

11:23

Okay. And for those listening who might not know what, what is the doctrine or the thought of equal justice and equal protection?

11:31

Yeah. So simply put when it's applied to the preborn baby, we're just saying, because baby is an image bearer of God, a full image bearer of God, right from fertilization, which is natural conception.

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And if, if, if baby is an image bearer of God, then baby deserves the same rights and protections as any other image bearer of God in or outside the womb, right?

11:55

Like they, it should all be the same. And so what we're doing is we're taking the same homicide code and applying it just simply to include the preborn baby and saying, let due process play out, right?

12:08

Like if somebody is under coercion and they commit the crime, yes, they'll be punished, but it'll be different.

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You know, all those things play out when it comes to a homicide, we understand these things. Well, why don't we consider it prenatal homicide, which is exactly what it is.

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Because if baby is, is murdered and mom wanted baby, and this is how ridiculous the distinctions are.

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If mom wanted baby and say two guys get in a fight in a, in a store or something, and a gun goes off and it shoots a pregnant woman and kills baby and mom.

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Well, now you have two homicides, right? Like they're going to, the prosecutor, if he's any good, is going to prosecute for, for both deaths, but that, that for some reason, there's a disconnect in our society that says, except if mom says,

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I don't want baby. Except if mom says, well, it was, baby was conceived in rape.

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And so now I have an excuse to then punish the baby for the father's sins and, and hide all the evidence by the way, like of, of the rape having taken place, instead of punishing the father with the death penalty, we, we put the baby to death.

13:13

It's, it's totally backwards. Yeah. It's kind of crazy how we've been walking this tight rope.

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I say we, I'm just saying the secular society and not really even a tight rope, just blaring double standards, right?

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You see it in, in, in the, in abortion, you see it in the trans community, you see it in, you know, the, the gender argument to where black is white and white is black.

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And you're going, what are you, what are you talking about? You can't have, you can't hold to both things. I was wondering when you were researching for the book and writing it, what did you find when you went back through church history and through the early church fathers and things like that?

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What did you find when it came to abortion? Just a 100 % track record of the church and the believer should be against it.

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I would guess so. But did you find anything saying what should be done with maybe the mother, the father, those who wanted to murder the pre -born?

14:12

Well, I'll just read a couple of quotes. And so we have, I mentioned the dedicate earlier, but I think this will make it clear.

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Obviously it's translated. And so we give, give some lenience to the translation, but it says the second commandment of the teaching, you shall not murder.

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You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal.

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You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure an abortion nor destroy a newborn child.

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Like, I don't know how that could be any more clear. That's from the dedicate AD 70. So, and then let me, let me find one from let's see.

14:59

I'll go Hippolytus. Yeah. So while you're looking at that, that's 70 AD. So that's, that's, I mean, what 40 years removed from Christ's death and resurrection.

15:08

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we could, we could keep going further back, but it, I really think that, you know, for me, when

15:15

I looked, I was looking these things up. It's like, okay, well, let's look at the early church shortly after Christ has passed away 70

15:22

AD, the destruction of the temple, like a lot was happening, right? And this is what they're thinking, you know when they date back the dedicate, this is how the church is thinking.

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They're not equivocating on this. They clearly understood that abortion was murder.

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They made the connections. And so if we look a little bit further forward into the future in really the third century theologian

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Hippolytus, who was alive from 170 AD to 235 AD. So still pretty early.

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And he made this declaration about abortion during his day. Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile and to bind themselves tightly.

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So as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by slave or by any insignificant person.

16:18

See then into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded by teaching adultery and murder at the same time.

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They viewed it as murder. Yeah. Okay. So also within the book, is there anything talking about holding, like I said, holding men and women to the standard of murder that commit the act of abortion?

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And I'm including men in there because I would be a believer in saying if a man coerces a woman, he should be held accountable as well for murder.

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Did you see anything throughout early church history talking about that? Or is that, in your estimation, something that's a newer thought in the abolitionist movement?

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Or has there always been throughout history saying, no, those that commit murder need to face a jury of their peers or face some type of penalty depending on what system they live in?

17:14

Yeah. Historically, what I saw was a lot of understanding in regards to what scripture said about murder, how to deal with murder.

17:24

And so whenever they categorized it as murder, then the punishment for murder played out, right?

17:31

If they had the civil authority to take that punishment all the way out to its final conclusion, then undeniably there would have been at certain times, the death sentence, things like that for people who committed that.

17:47

But I'm looking, I'm trying to see if this is more specific,

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Basil of Caesarea, 330 to 379 AD.

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And he actually took several deliberative steps to defend the preborn and those unwanted by their parents, but he wasn't alone, a lone wolf in this.

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But Basil was not alone in his affirmation of the biblical message of life or in his commendation of child killing, or condemnation, not commendation.

18:24

In fact, the wholehearted consensus of the apostolic era, and this is from George Grant, who wrote a book in the early 1990s on this issue.

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His book was called Third Time Around, a history of the pro -life movement from first century to the present.

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And so if you want to dive deeper into some of those questions, I mean, he traces it all the way out, even up to today.

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I just do the first 400 years. But what he said, so I'll just kind of go back a little bit.

18:55

In fact, the wholehearted consensus of the apostolic era was that all life was a sacred gift from God, and that any breach of that gift was nothing less than murder.

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There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. On that, all the patristics absolutely agree.

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And so even though there wasn't, from what I could see, and now Grant talks a little bit more in depth on this, there wasn't using the exact same language, but they were undeniably operating off of what scripture described as murder and what scripture prescribed as the judgment for murder.

19:41

So it doesn't even seem to me, and this is what I found, and I think your book flushes out as well too, there wasn't a distinction.

19:48

It's not like we're putting it in two separate murder categories. It was murder. The reason why they're saying, well, there's some murder, but over here, if the woman, if the man, they go, no, all life, all image bearers of God have value.

20:02

And if you murder them, pre -born or post -born, you face the penalties of murder. And so even,

20:09

I just noticed too, when I asked you that question just a few moments ago, I fell into the category of going, well, is there something specifically about, well, no, it's all murder.

20:18

So even I can make the mistake of thinking of it as a different type, right?

20:23

And go, well, but it's the murder of the pre -born. Well, time and location doesn't matter for the sin of murder, right?

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Jeff Durbin does a really nice job of kind of, when he works with people in front of abortion mills and things, about flushing that out and going, location, size, and time does not make a human, right?

20:45

So for me, I like this book because you're focusing on those first 400 years, the foundational years of the early church and saying, well, what did they believe?

20:56

What were they thinking about? And for you, it looks like you came to the conclusion that, yeah, it was overwhelmingly, this is murder.

21:04

Yeah. And one of the reasons that I didn't intentionally dive deeper into like, oh, the distinctions between it is because I just didn't see it.

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They weren't making those distinctions and separating baby into its own class of lesser human, right?

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Or lesser image bearers. They were saying, if you murder a baby, it's murder.

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Like there was no confusion on that. So I think this is a really timely book as well.

21:34

And I'm assuming, and we'll link this up in the episode, but I'm assuming we can get it where?

21:40

Online, on Amazon, stuff like that, or at your website? Yeah. So at our website right now is the christianresponse .org.

21:50

So the christianresponse .org and they can pre -order right now, but yeah. Okay.

21:55

We'll link that up. This is going to go live probably a week from where we're recording it. So we'll link it up and make sure they can get to it, but it's timely because, and you want to you might have to fill in the name for me.

22:07

There was a gentleman who just came out and said, oh, the abolitionist movement, it's only been around for, you know, 10 or 20 years.

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Gosh, I can't remember his name. It's slipping me and all the listeners. Ligon Duncan. Thank you. Ligon Duncan. I knew you would know it.

22:20

It was slipping my mind. And I, I, you know, we, everyone laughed at that. Anyone who's been even in the pro -life movement or the abolition movement goes, are you kidding me?

22:29

This is literally in church history, as you're proving in your book, thousands of years old, right?

22:34

We've held to this complete abolition of murder of the pre -born, but I'm seeing this shift among kind of the middle of the road pro -life conservative.

22:46

I'm saying that with air quotes, because who knows what conservative means anymore Christians. And they see how the radical left has responded to the removal of Roe v.

22:54

Wade, a horrible decision that should have just been ignored anyway. Which we, you know,

23:00

I know a lot in the abolition movement was saying that I was saying it before I even knew what the word abolition meant. I just understood.

23:07

It's just a interpretation. We don't have to go by what the Supreme court says. That's constitution 101 in seventh grade homeschool you know, back in the nineties for me, but we're seeing the shift to where people are going,

23:20

Oh, maybe we do have to take that type of stance, even to the fact of, and I'm going to play this clip for you.

23:26

And I want to want you to comment on it a few days ago on his daily brief, Al Mohler, who there's some things

23:32

I agree on. He's he's in the Calvinistic group. There's some other stuff that we agree on doctrinally, but there's some stuff

23:39

I disagree with him on. I thought he was way too soft on the vaccines and kind of using the love your neighbor versus,

23:44

Oh, that's why you should get a vaccine. And so he was squishy on that for me, but he's always kind of played it down the middle on the pro -life.

23:51

He's always been, he says he's pro -life, but he seemed to be on the side for many years on incrementalism and really kind of shun the abolition kind of a title and character.

24:03

So on his show, someone wrote in and basically asked about abolition and pro -life.

24:09

And I want you to listen to this. It's about a minute 55 long. So we're going to sit through it and then let's talk about it for a little bit. When you think about the main stream pro -life movement, that includes a lot and it has emerged over time.

24:21

So first of all, I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for the pro -life movement. Hear me clearly, but the pro -life movement also has made some arguments that I think aren't going to stand the test of time, not because they're say too anti -abortion, but because they're not anti -abortion enough.

24:39

And a part of this is the question between legal theory and political pragmatism, because there are people who are saying, look, it's one thing to make an argument about the sanctity of human life and then say that would lead us to A and B and C and D.

24:52

It's another thing to understand that some of that is not politically plausible at any given moment. So I want to say, first of all, the term abolitionism is actually, well, that's a pretty morally important word in this case.

25:06

We do want to abolish abortion. We do want the banishment of abortion. We want the elimination of abortion.

25:11

And if that's not what people want, then I'm going to say they're not pro -life. If they do not want to bring about an end to abortion.

25:18

And by the way, here's a little slippery thing. There are people who say, yeah, I want to end abortion, but I want to end it at the demand side rather than the supply side.

25:26

I want to end it by, say, taking care of people so that they don't need to or want to obtain an abortion.

25:32

Well, I'll tell you that just flies in the face of the moral fact that there are women who have sought abortions under almost every circumstance.

25:40

And many of them are not in a situation of financial distress. And many of them are not in a situation of any kind of, say, physical threat.

25:49

The feminist movement, the pro -abortion movement, claims abortion as simply a choice made by autonomous women for any reason or for no public reason at all, without any rationale at all.

26:02

And I want to acknowledge there are women who are in very difficult circumstances. I'm going to speak more about that in just a moment. But, you know, if you're not for the abolition of abortion,

26:10

I'm just going to say you're really not pro -life. And so, you know, just stop riding on the coattails of this movement. So that's very interesting because now, and I still think that he took a soft position on a few things where he could have some outs, right?

26:24

He's talking about, well, many women get abortions for any reason. I don't even think that shouldn't even be an argument.

26:30

We shouldn't be talking about, well, why did the woman decide to get an abortion? If she chose to murder, she chose to murder, right?

26:37

Maybe that comes into play if she's facing a jury and then there's either harsher or lesser crimes for them or punishment for the murder.

26:46

But he said there twice, if you are not for the full abolition of abortion, you're not in the pro -life movement or you're not pro -life, okay?

26:56

You haven't heard that type of language from him ever. He's been, he's shunned kind of the abolition tag.

27:03

He's said, well, incrementalism can work. It's politically expedient. You can hear at the beginning of that, he's talking about, well, it might not be politically expedient.

27:13

So there's still some of that to where he thinks, I think he thinks, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, that there's still room for some type of incrementalism, which

27:21

I would disagree with. But he's using the words now.

27:27

So we see someone who's kind of been, he's been strong in the pro -life movement, but soft in the abolition movement.

27:34

And there is a difference as you well know, and we can get into that if we want, but I'm now starting to see guys like him use this kind of terminology and go, no, we need the complete abolition of it.

27:46

What are your thoughts on that as someone who's worked in this, the abolition movement and writing a book on this and things like that?

27:54

What were your thoughts when you heard that? Yeah. So before I answer that, I would say I respect

27:59

Mueller on many things, right? Inerrancy, the conservative resurgence, he's earned a level of deference in most conservative circles.

28:08

That being said, like all of us at one time, we were wrong about equal protection, equal justice.

28:15

I think the needle's moving for him in the way that he was talking. And I think for abolitionists, and we're getting better at this, but we need to allow people to transition to our position or we'll never grow.

28:28

And so I'm hoping and I'm praying that that's the case for Mueller. But we also need to be wary of those that see the growing popularity of abolitionism and want to jump on board without truly repenting of having held the pro -life position, having argued for incrementalism.

28:50

I do think that repentance is an important component of truly engaging on this issue biblically.

28:58

And I've not heard Mueller, I could be wrong, say that he was wrong on the issue of abortion by arguing for incremental legislation.

29:05

So I don't want to give him too much leeway there. I'm weary, but I think at least the needle's moving in a good direction, it seems.

29:14

Now, that all said, first, the person asking Mueller the question, the lady,

29:21

I caught this when I was listening back to this, when you sent me this.

29:27

She misunderstands and promotes a misinterpretation of the legislation for equal justice.

29:34

And Mueller doesn't reframe it, which means he probably misunderstands aspects of it as well. And so I think we're not contending and have never been contending to criminalize women.

29:50

And that should be a full stop. In the question, that was something, it wasn't directly in the clip here, but that was something that was assumed, is that that's what abolitionists are working for.

30:01

No, my wife, your wife, will not be driving down the road, you know, and suddenly pulled over when an abolitionist bill of equal protection goes into law and put in jail.

30:12

That's absurd. Why are we regurgitating pro -abort arguments against the abolitionist position?

30:21

It's not even analyzing our position fairly, right? Like it's just lazy. So when we hear this kind of misunderstanding, in my opinion, and really when often these people are often unknowingly re -articulating the pro -abortion position and contention against equal protection, equal justice bills, we must correct it.

30:46

We need to do that in a respectful way, but it's easily corrected and it reframes and puts things back where they need to be.

30:56

No, we're not criminalizing women. You want to know what we're criminalizing? We're criminalizing the act of prenatal homicide.

31:04

And when you use that language, at what point is somebody going to come up to you and say, yeah,

31:12

I think we should keep it legal. Like there's no out when you say we are criminalizing the act of prenatal homicide from fertilization, which is what

31:21

Christians have believed for thousands of years. Like your book says, even in the first 400 years, that's what

31:28

I'm saying. The needle's moving. And I'm excited that there's a book like this because it's really, you're going to get these crazy arguments.

31:37

Oh, well, this thought's only been around for 50 years. Oh, this is just a reaction to Roe v.

31:42

Wade or Roe v. Wade falling or states making legislation. It's like, no, this has been the view of the church for 2000 years.

31:52

So I just found it very interesting that we're seeing a leader like that kind of slowly and we have to give him some,

32:00

I think some time, but also correct him on those things. Like you said, he's not correcting the terminology.

32:08

Just to say this very quickly, what got me to abolition, and I think I always was one,

32:13

I just didn't know the terminology or even knew that there was a group out there thinking this way. That's how ignorant I was on this.

32:19

Like 15 years ago, working in Lansing, talking to lobbyists, talking to state representatives, state senators, and what led me to abolition was sitting down with hundreds of constituents, lobbyists and elected officials, all pro -life and saying, do you believe abortion is murder?

32:42

Yes, absolutely. So the person who commits murder should be punished. Yes. Like if they go out and murder someone in a convenience store with a gun.

32:49

Okay. So should the person who murders a preborn baby be punished?

32:56

And they would always stop and go, I don't know. It's a sticky situation.

33:01

There's lots of moving parts. They give me all these right reasons privately, elected officials. And it really got me thinking, going, oh, they don't even believe it's so clear cut for me.

33:12

If it's murder, then it needs, there needs to be punishment for it. If that's what you're professing. And after a hundred or so of those people in years at my state

33:21

Capitol, I went, I can't, I can't do this anymore. These, I don't, what is going on? This isn't even pro -life and then stumbling into abolition and seeing how long it's been around and showing that there's groups, people arguing for that.

33:34

And now in the last, I would say 10 years has made leaps and bounds into state houses and the movement.

33:40

And it's just for me, it just biblically, logically, philosophically, scientifically, constitutionally, that makes sense.

33:51

That's what abolition lines up with all of those to where within the pro -life movement, you have a lot of, like I said, well, yes, it's at, it's at conception, but you know, an eight week bill, a 15 week bill, a 12 week bill.

34:03

And it's just very, very frustrating because if all privately, if all of the pro -life elected officials and board members and CEOs and nonprofits, if they all voted and then wrote laws, what they said privately, then we would have an abolition country within 30 days.

34:23

So there there's a weird disconnect there as well, too, to where privately they're saying, yeah, it is murder, but, and they're putting a butt on murder.

34:33

You know, it's like, well, that guy did go out and murder two children, but he had a really bad month.

34:39

He had just lost his, you know, he lost his job and his wife left him. But you would never do that. That's not an excuse for breaking law or for murder.

34:46

So it's this weird double standard. But I say all that to say, I'm really excited that you wrote this book because I think it's needed.

34:53

I think it's one of a kind book. I really do. I'm not saying that lightly. There there's really no one that has wrote a book that focuses on what the early church believe on this topic, especially since it's coming under attack of a lot of these beliefs are going to be, oh, it's 10, 20, 30 years old, like I said.

35:09

So I appreciate you doing that. Throw it out one more time for people to where they can find it, pre -order it, all that good stuff.

35:17

And when, when the date is when they can get it everywhere. Yeah. So it's the christianresponse .org.

35:25

And here in the next week, we're still just waiting on our first shipment to get here.

35:30

It should be here any day now. And then once we send those out, we're pretty close to needing to order our next printing.

35:37

So that's, that's good. But what I would like to happen is that we would get this book into the hands of guys like Ligon Duncan and Al Mohler and, and, and that they would actually have to contend with the arguments that they would actually have to walk through what we present both biblically and historically, as well as scientifically.

35:57

I did an entire section on genetics and, it is, you know, it's, it's mind boggling why it's taken us this long to do what we should have been doing this whole time.

36:12

In all honesty, even as a pastor, I was struggling to see why other pastors, once I understood the arguments, didn't just say, yeah, that's right.

36:24

That's what scripture teaches. Because when you go back and you actually look at it scripturally and you try to have a discussion with somebody who holds, genuinely holds the pro -life position that the woman is only ever a victim, that we need to use incremental legislation.

36:38

They are not arguing from scripture. So either we are people of the book or we, we're, we're not right.

36:46

And, and I would venture to say that a lot of the guys that have been arguing against the abolitionist position and still holding firm against that have actually trended towards a very liberal direction in their theology.

36:58

And so I, I don't think that those things are just coincidences. I think it's, you begin to dismiss scripture in certain areas, inevitably you're going to dismiss it in others.

37:10

100%. I couldn't agree more. It's a, you have to have some absolutes because if not, then, then, then anything is up for grabs.

37:19

And, you know, I've said it before you give me, you show me a woke Christian, a deconstructed

37:24

Christian, a leftist Christian, and, you know, I'm using air quotes there. And I will show you someone who left the authority and inherency of scripture five years prior.

37:35

That's the first thing to go. Well, everything the Bible says isn't exactly true. And then from there, it's just downhill.

37:40

And it's the same way in legislation and elected officials, when, when they start hemming and hawing and well, there's lots of moving parts with someone who murders a preborn child if they should face punishment or not.

37:55

That's a slippery slope for me. They're going to give on so many other things. If you can give leeway on murder, then what else?

38:01

I mean, everything's downhill from there. And you can give leeway on, uh, you know, fornication laws and covetousness and theft.

38:08

And it just, it never, it never ends at that point, because if you can break there, then everything else is up for grabs.

38:15

And it's, it's very sad, but like I said, um, great book, man, I'm glad you wrote it.

38:20

We'll link everything up guys. If you're listening, go buy the book, support this brother. Um, he's doing a lot of good work down there.

38:27

I hate that he moved from the Midwest and Florida, but he's probably enjoying that. What do you got there? 70 degrees right now or something crazy.

38:33

Yeah. It was pretty nice today, right? We got a little bit of a cold front coming in, but it was about 75, you know, and this morning it was like 60 and people were wearing sweaters and stuff.

38:44

And I'm not, I'm obviously not there yet to wear a sweater because we were, I was, I was carrying in cold bathroom tile in 25 degrees this morning.

38:53

So, you know, I know I'm not supposed to be jealous as a believer, but a little jealous. My sister's in St.

38:58

Petersburg. So she sends me pictures of her, you know, underneath the palm tree and stuff right now. Uh, but, but I love it.

39:04

I'm, you know, sad to see you go so close to being Ohio, but glad you're doing a well down there in Florida. You got a last word for us before we get out of here.

39:11

Anything you want to say? Yeah, I think that really what we have to do is just be unashamed to be biblical in our approach to anything in the

39:21

Christian life, especially at this point in the areas where the enemy is contending with us.

39:27

And so regardless of whether that's understanding, uh, the way that God created gender, uh, there are two, by the way, just in case people are wondering on that issue, uh, or it's understanding what we should be doing in regards to, uh, preserving life.

39:44

In fact, I would make the argument that, and I make this in my book, that ultimately when it comes to contending for the life of the preborn, uh, that is not our final goal.

39:57

It sounds ridiculous to say it that way, but our final goal is to glorify

40:03

God. Yeah. Our final goal though, is to glorify God, right? Obviously saving babies glorifies

40:11

God, but in, in the sense of, uh, the way that we, uh, contend for the preborn, even outside of abortion mills, we should rest in the sovereignty of God and proclaim the scriptures and, and the gospel and plead for the lives of the preborn, but we should not resort to pragmatic ends justifies the means approaches, even at the abortion mill and, and, and definitely not in the legislation that we, we decide to put out.

40:42

Yeah, that's so good. And you know, it's so good to hear one of my Baptist, my perform Baptist brothers talking kind of like the

40:48

Westminster, you know, just come on over Mike. It, it's okay. Uh, I'm just messing with you. All right. So, uh, thanks so much for being on, man.

40:56

I appreciate you. Love you, brother. Um, and, uh, we're going to have to have you back on again because anytime you want to come on and chat,

41:02

I know we've talked about this subject a couple of times, but maybe we'd do a six month, uh, checkup and see where you're at.

41:08

And maybe we'll talk about something different. Cause I love having you on awesome brother. We'll love you too. You have a, have a great one.

41:16

All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of dead men walking podcast. As always remember the chief end of man, kind of like what

41:23

Mike said is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to check us out at dmwpodcast .com

41:29

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41:38

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