How Shall We Than Vote? --Session 1--Matt Brock

First Baptist Church Travelers Rest

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All right, how we doing? Appreciate you guys coming out, spending a Friday night with us.

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Again, thank you for joining us in this very crucial, very important discussion this evening.

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As Brother Rhett said, my name is Matt Brock, and I am the executive director of Equal Protection South Carolina.

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And it is an absolute honor to have been invited here by Pastor Rhett. He called me a few weeks ago, and I said, man, just name the time and the place, and I'm there.

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To share a little bit about what we do at EPSC, why we do what we do at EPSC, why does

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South Carolina need another pro -life organization? Aren't there enough? And so I want to talk about that in our prayer, and I believe

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I can speak for Brother William and Rhett. Our prayer for you guys this evening is that you will come out of this a little better equipped, preparing your hearts and your minds for this very important election that we have coming up just in a few short weeks.

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A little background about how I got into this fight. I began going out, as Brother Rhett said, to the abortion clinic in Greenville, South Carolina, which is the busiest abortion clinic in the state of South Carolina, about four or five years ago.

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And in that time, we were able to preach and call out to thousands of parents, dozens of health care workers, the abortionists themselves,

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Drs. Campbell and Bufkin, pharmaceutical reps. And by God's grace, to date, we have saved and seen the

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Lord save nearly, if not more than this now. Kevin, do you know, is it more than 100 babies so far?

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More than 100 babies, so all glory to God. I've held many of these babies in my arms, so it's just been a very humbling, very beautiful ministry to be a part of.

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And one day, as our team was out there preaching, this was about two years ago, there's a young lady that pulls up and she parks perpendicular to the ladder that I'm standing on preaching.

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We have to stand on a 12 -foot ladder to preach over that fence because they've got that place fortified like a castle. And as I'm up there preaching, she parks her car perpendicular to me, gets out, takes two dozen eggs, places them on the roof.

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And I believe she played softball in high school because most of those eggs hit center masses.

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I was preaching to her, trying to love her with the gospel. Say, young lady,

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I know you're angry, but this is just your conscience bearing witness against you. You know what you're doing is murder, let us help you.

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These things just infuriated her. And so here come the eggs. Once we come down, it was a little comical and sad at the same time, but I remember coming off of that ladder, dripping with raw eggs, and I remember looking at some of the team there.

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There was about five of us there. And I remember telling them, we'll stay here as long as it takes to see this place shut down.

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Whether it's one year, five years, 50 years from now, I'm committed to standing on this ladder every day until we see this place shut down in the name of Jesus.

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But at the same time, I don't want to be here next year. I certainly don't want to be here in five years, 10 years, 50 years.

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What do we need to do? Is there another angle that we need to be engaging this enemy with that will actually see this place shut down once and for all?

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And the general consensus very quickly became, somebody's going to have to start going to Columbia. And so, we had no idea where to even start, what that looked like, but we had a faithful brother out there named

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Kiley Waldrop. Many of you know Brother Kiley. And to this day, he leads the charge out there.

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I passed the baton off to him. And I said, okay, well, I don't know what I'm doing, have no idea where to start, but if politics is where we need to be engaging, then you guys stay here and hold this down, and I'll go try to rally the troops to the state house.

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And so that's how EPSC was born. And I'm already going off script, pray. I didn't have any connections, didn't have any friends in Columbia, really hadn't anything past my high school civics class, which is becoming farther and farther in the distance, sadly,

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I was starting from scratch. But what I did have was a

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Bible. So I figured if I'm going to start hitting the road and going to Columbia and reaching out to legislators and trying to influence legislators to issue righteous decrees pertaining to abortion,

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I might need to know what God says a godly bill pertaining to abortion looks like. So I began to study the scriptures and I began to ask the

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Lord to help me find answers in his word, answers to questions like, what does God say about civil government?

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What does God say about politics? What does God say about abortion? And when life begins and about justice and penalties, what does

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God say about showing partiality? Most importantly, what does

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God have to say about judgment for getting this wrong? I didn't know the answers to a lot of those things at the time, but I did know this.

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I knew that in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, the great commission passage, our King Jesus said that all power and all authority both in heaven and on earth had been given to him.

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And I also knew in that same passage that my job as professing follower of Jesus was to teach the nations to obey what he has commanded.

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I also knew that these legislators and lawmakers in Columbia were not free agents, nor were they bound to the wishes and demands of their constituents, but rather, according to the apostle

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Paul in Romans 13, they are bound to the law of God as they are his ministers of justice.

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I had a lot to learn, but I settled in my heart very early on that no matter what my opinions were, no matter what my traditions were, and no matter what the pro -life leaders that I had always held as heroes were saying about this, the only thing that mattered to me from that point moving on was what does the

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Bible say? And when it comes to child sacrifice, brothers and sisters, rest assured, it says a lot.

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So what does the Bible say about abortion? Well, nothing really, because that term, as you and I know it, has only been in use for about 100 years.

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But what the Bible does say a lot about is child sacrifice. And this is a key factor in this discussion, brothers and sisters.

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You need to get this, because this isn't merely a political or policy disagreement, and it most certainly is not an issue of healthcare.

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This is an ancient evil that has been practiced for thousands of years, and rest assured, brothers and sisters, this sin, this evil, this barbaric and demonic spilling of innocent blood gets the attention of our holy

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God over every other sin under heaven. There's essentially three things that we see

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Yahweh wiping out entire nations from the map over, blasphemy, sodomy, and child sacrifice.

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That's not to say that he's tolerant of other sins, of course, but when we look in the Old Testament particularly, these are the three sins that he judged nations for.

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So what does God say about child sacrifice? There's a lot of passages I could take you to on this, but for the sake of time,

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I'm gonna hit one, and then we're gonna move on. Leviticus chapter 20, I would encourage you to write that down and go study it out.

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Leviticus chapter 20, starting in verse one, hear now the words of God. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, say to the people of Israel, any one of the people of Israel, or the strangers who are sojourning in Israel, that give any of their children to Molech shall surely be put to death.

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The people of the land shall stone them with stones. I myself, this is again God, this is

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Yahweh, saying that I myself will set my face against that man, and I will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.

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Verse four, same passage. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man, when he gives one of his children to Molech, and they do not put him to death, then

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I will set my face against that man, and against his people, and I will cut them off, them and all who follow them in whoring after Molech.

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Here we see clearly that the Lord is not only pronouncing judgment on those who would sacrifice their children to bloodthirsty demons, but he goes on to pronounce the same measure of judgment on those who turn a blind eye to those who are.

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In this passage, we also see the punishment that God decrees as the just penalty for child sacrifice.

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What does he say in verse two, the penalty is? Death. This level of justice is also seen in Genesis 9, 6.

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Long before the law was ever given to Moses, and here we see the Lord saying, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

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This is a universal, natural law that has been decreed by our God and King.

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God's perfect measure of justice demands death for murder.

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Now, some of you may be sitting there thinking, Matt, wait a minute, I get what you're saying, I hear what you're saying, I agree with what you're saying, but isn't that pertaining to living, breathing children and people?

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Isn't that the context of Leviticus 20? Which brings us to my next point, when does the

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Bible tell us that God recognizes our humanity? And again, there's several places we can go where we see

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God clearly recognizing the humanity of his image bearers in the womb, but to reference two very quickly,

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Jeremiah 1, 5 says that before he even began to take form in his mother's womb, God knew

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Jeremiah, not when he was 15 weeks old in the womb, not when he could feel pain, not when he had a detectable heartbeat.

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At the earliest possible stage, God saw and recognized

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Jeremiah by name and established his steps as a prophet. Likewise, very similar passage in Psalm 139, the psalmist says, your eyes saw my unformed substance.

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In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me when yet there were none.

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So thus far in my short study, I knew what God said about baby murder,

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I knew what God said the just penalty was for baby murder, I knew what God said would happen if we don't deal with baby murder the way that God tells us to deal with baby murder, and I knew that God said the life of that little baby truly begins at fertilization, the earliest possible stages.

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And I also knew that none of our current pro -life bills, either being considered in the South Carolina House or in the

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South Carolina Senate affirmed these truths. The last thing that I searched the scriptures for was what does

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God say about partiality? What does God say about decreeing laws that show favoritism towards one group of people over another?

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And again, the answer came rather quickly in Proverbs 20, verse 23, where the scriptures tell us that unequal weights and measures are an abomination to our

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Lord. In other words, He hates it. So you see, brothers and sisters, when we say it's murder if you kill this person, but it's healthcare if you kill this person, what you're seeing played out there is unequal weights and measures.

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When a judge sentences a murder to death for killing a human outside the womb, and yet we've got laws that say you're immune to criminal penalties under the law if you kill a baby inside the womb, you're dealing with unequal weights and measures.

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You say, well, Matt, our pro -life laws don't do that, do they? Yes, sir, yes, ma 'am, they do.

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As a matter of fact, up until about a year or two ago, there was actually a longstanding criminal penalty for abortion in South Carolina, and it's actually even been enforced a handful of times throughout the years.

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It was only a couple of years in prison, but it was something. But even that tiny, tiny measure of retribution was struck from our criminal code, and the reason why is because our pro -life conservative

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Republican legislators were desperate to get their heartbeat bill across the finish line, which, by the way, has done nothing to save South Carolina babies.

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The Democrats came up and they said, hey, you want your heartbeat bill? We'll let it go through. That little two - or three -year charge over there for the mom that's been on the records for all these years, take that off and we'll join, and you can get your bill.

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And the Republicans said, let's do it. That's how you got your heartbeat bill. So I had all these things, and here

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I go, off to Columbia, Bible in hand, equipped with the law of God, and we began to try and find a legislator that actually had the guts to file such a bill, and just as God always does in His sovereignty, and in His providence, as He was preparing me to engage the political sphere on this issue,

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He was simultaneously preparing a man in the State House to file this legislation, and that man has since become a dear friend and brother and mentor, and his name is

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Jonathan Hill. Now, Jonathan is no longer a state rep. He left on his own terms a couple of years back, but he filed

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South Carolina's very first bill of equal protection that explicitly lays out what

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I just described to you. For a while there, we only had about two or three co -sponsors on that bill, but as we began to pray, and as we began to call and expose and rally and meet and preach and get loud about this, trickled by trickled, one after another, more and more legislators put their name on the bill.

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And by the end of that session, we had about five or six, praise God. Session ends,

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Representative Hill leaves, the State House, and we get another guy, not in Representative Hill's place, but in another place across the state in District 37.

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We pick up another brother and a faithful champion of equal protection, Brother Rob Harris. He gets into the

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State House and becomes our new bill sponsor. He pre -files our bill, and because of the church mobilizing and taking

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God's demands and decrees regarding child sacrifice to the ears of their legislators, we went from just five co -sponsors to over 20 in just a matter of months.

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And as that momentum began to build, and the Lord began to help us get more and more folks on board with these biblical principles that I'm laying out to you this evening, it also began to attract negative attention on a national level.

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And before long, it was being discussed on major mainstream media outlets and was even targeted in Rolling Stone magazine.

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Because of this backlash, nearly half of those who had signed onto our bill removed their names out of fear, pressure, call a spade a spade, cowardice.

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So I quickly began to realize, and again, I'm figuring all this out on the fly, how this works, but I quickly began to realize that these legislators, even though they name the name of Christ, even though they run on conservative platforms and call themselves pro -life, when the pressure comes, they cave overnight.

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So we thought, well, if negative pressure can influence them to cave, perhaps positive pressure can encourage them.

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Maybe if enough people get behind them, it'll embolden them. So I began to reach out to some of the biggest

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Christian pro -life organizations around the state, asking them to encourage these legislators, to support these legislators, to agree to endorse their campaigns if they put their name back on this bill, to have these legislators' backs as they stick their necks out on behalf of the pre -born, calling for equal protection and equal justice under the law.

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I reached out to Palmetto Family. I reached out to the South Carolina Baptist Convention.

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I reached out to South Carolina Citizens for Life. I reached out to Alexa Newman, who was over one of the biggest pregnancy centers in the upstate,

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Carolina Pregnancy Center, very active in politics. And one after another, they refused to help us gain support for this bill and encourage these legislators.

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And their reason was, and I quote, well, I'm paraphrasing, parents who murder their children in the womb are victims alongside of their dead baby.

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I wanna ask you a question tonight. Let's say that a mom and a dad have a baby.

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They don't have an abortion, go to term, baby's born, spend a day or two in the hospital, they come home, they've been home for a day or two, and it's time to give that little baby its first bath.

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And as that mom and dad are bathing that little baby, they come to the realization, man, maybe we messed up.

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I wanna finish my college courses, I'm so close. We should have had an abortion,

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I shouldn't have done this, we shouldn't have had this baby. But I don't have the heart to get rid of this baby.

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So let's do this, let's hire a babysitter, let's slip her a couple thousand dollars and say, make the baby disappear, make it look like an accident.

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Let's say that's uncovered, that's exposed, it's discovered, everyone pleads guilty.

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Let me ask you a question, should that babysitter that took the life of that little baby, should she be the only one that takes the fall?

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Or are those parents just as guilty of murder? Or at least conspiracy to murder? The pro -life industry in South Carolina would say that those parents are victims.

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And if you're having a hard time believing that, recently there was a bill of equal protection being filed in the state of Louisiana, just like our bill.

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It wasn't doing anything more than stating that abortion is murder and needs to be placed under the homicide code and that these babies, made in the image of the triune

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God, deserve equal protection and equal justice under the law. That's all the bill did, that's all our bill does.

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This abolition bill in Louisiana was going to be the very first bill in the nation to actually be voted out of the house.

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It was gonna pass, we had the votes. We had the commitments of more than 70 Louisiana house reps.

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They said, we'll pass it, don't worry. No amendments. We've got the numbers to do it. It's already done.

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We've just got to go through the formalities. Me and my guys at a national level, we're already celebrating.

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Praise God, it's done. Within 48 hours of that bill going to the floor of the house for a vote, for final passage, we went from over 70 legislators to two.

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The bill was dead. They killed it. Now, your first thought may be, those darn

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Democrats, that gosh darn Biden, those darn liberals, but those are not the responsible parties for killing this bill.

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You know who it was that got into the ears of those men and women in Louisiana? It was the pro -life leaders from around the nation to include

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South Carolina Citizens for Life. National Right to Life, which is the national branch of South Carolina Citizens for Life, led an effort to get more than 70 pro -life leaders and organizations around the nation to put their name on a document condemning this bill, listen, as I'm quoting directly from their page, this bill is antithetical to fairness and justice for unborn children.

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I'm sorry, what? Demanding that we treat murder in the womb as equal to murder outside the womb is antithetical to fairness, unequal weights and measures.

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And it wasn't only the South Carolina Citizens for Life folks that put their name on that document, right alongside them was the

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ERLC of the Southern Baptist Convention. I believe Brother Rhett was at Brent Leatherwood's name explicitly on there.

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They used their influence to kill a bill of equal protection. Here's what you need to know, brothers and sisters, do you know how the

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SBC, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, South Carolina Citizens for Life, do you know why they're so powerful?

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Why their name matters so much? How they're able to have such a massive platform? It's because they have a lot of money.

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You need to know where their money is coming in from. I would encourage you, go look on South Carolina Citizens for Life's public donor page,

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South Carolina Baptist Convention, South Carolina Association of Pregnancy Centers, North Greenville University.

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A lot of pastors, when I go visit them and I say, pastor, I'd love to talk to you about abortion in our nation and in our state,

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I'd love to ask you a question, what is your church doing to end abortion in South Carolina? 99 .9

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% of the time, do you know what the answer is? We write a check to our local pregnancy center.

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In my neck of the woods, it's one of the main pregnancy centers that gives money to Citizens for Life.

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So these pastors are giving money to organizations under the idea that that money is going to end abortion and give justice to pre -born children.

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And in reality, it's going to oppose it. One thing

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I found to be true in politics is if you follow the money, you'll find the truth. Aside from the unequal weights and measures principle, let's talk about the real damage that is done to the mom and dad when we call them victims of abortion.

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Do you believe God sees them as victims? Do you believe that God doesn't recognize the blood that's dripping from their hands?

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Brothers and sisters, when we refuse to call sin what God calls it, we are robbing these people of an opportunity to know the love and compassion of Jesus.

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God forgives murderers, amen? God forgives child sacrifice.

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God forgives malice. He forgives conspiracy. He forgives hatred. We serve a gracious God who forgives, amen?

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But that forgiveness, brothers and sisters, is conditional. And it depends on a confession of the sin that needs forgiveness.

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When a man or a woman is told that what they did wasn't murder, but rather they themselves were victims alongside the child they conspired to execute, we rob them of an opportunity to experience true reconciliation with their heavenly

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Father. Which is why so many men and women, some of you may be here under my voice tonight, come in and out of the pews week in and week out, still haunted, still ashamed, still burdened by something that happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago.

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It's because the voice of God, through their conscience, is speaking to them, saying, you've not really dealt with this biblically.

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Confess it and I'll forgive you. Confess it. I will take that load off of you. That's why my son came to the earth and died and was raised from the dead.

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And while that conviction is so heavy on them, and the pew beside them is a bleeding heart brother or sister who probably is well -intentioned, telling them, that's not true.

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Listen, you're a victim. Don't listen to that. You didn't do anything wrong.

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Do you see the blasphemy in this? Brothers and sisters, here's the tragic truth about the fight to end abortion in South Carolina.

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And I say this as a man that has been intimately involved in this now for half a decade. Our biggest hindrance in South Carolina to abolishing baby murder is not the blue -haired, tranny -supporting feminists.

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At least in South Carolina. It's not Biden. It's not Kamala Harris. It's not the

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ACLU. It's the people who are pandering for your votes every couple of years, running on pro -life

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Christian platforms that are gonna throw all of that away under the slightest discomfort of pressure.

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We're here tonight to discuss voting, Christians and politics, what it is and what it isn't.

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And I'm all for talking about and discussing national politics. Brother William's gonna come and speak on that in a moment.

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I'm excited to hear him. But if I can leave you with one practical point, Red, I'm almost done. If I can leave you with one practical point, brothers and sisters, do not place your hope and trust in men, especially men that are openly sinful.

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Don't be fooled by titles and colors and animals. If one is wearing red and calling himself a

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Republican and the other is wearing blue, while calling himself a Democrat, hear me out.

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No matter how opposed they may seem on Fox News or CNN or whoever's doing the debates, unless they are walking in humility and obedience with King Jesus, they are on the same team.

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Because Jesus said, you're either for me or what? Brothers and sisters, there is no neutrality.

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It's not really possible to say everything that needs to be said in the time that I have, the time that I've been given. You've had to listen fast as I was speaking fast, but I would encourage you, come talk to me after this.

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I'll hang out over here. I'd love to hear your pushback, your critiques, any of that kind of good stuff. I'm an open book.

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I love dialogue. I respect your questions. I would love to talk to you. But please, do not lay your head on your pillow tonight without asking the

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Lord to search your heart on this issue. Don't close your eyes tonight without asking God to reveal any apathy or deception in your heart.

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I know there's a lot on our minds regarding the outcome of this election, but I can tell you confidently, standing on the word of God, that this issue is the issue of our day.

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And rest assured, friends, our Lord is watching. I wanna thank you again for coming, Pastor Rhett.

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Thank you again for having me come and share. May the Lord grant this nation repentance in his mighty name, amen.