25 - The Creation of Man, Part 2 - Origins of Men and Abortion

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Systematic Theology. We are glad to have you with us this week.

We are glad to be able to get together and continue in our discussions and lessons as we look into the creation of man again this week.

We want to encourage you, if you have your syllabus, to take it out. It is book number two of the syllabus.

Yeah, that means that we already finished book number one. Yeah. You always have to have a student that has the wise answer.

Okay. Yes. We finished book number one. We're on book number two. One usually is followed by two.

And that means that book number three will be next. Okay? All right, so we're in book number two of our systematic theology.

So grab your syllabus and we're going to look. Book number two is going to deal with the issue of God's gift to man.

Now if we're going to start by looking at God's gift to man, then what we need to do is start with looking at the doctrine of man.

And when we look at the doctrine of man, we want to get a good understanding first, and this is the first lesson that we have.

Lesson number one is the creation of man. The creation of man.

Now last week, we were looking specifically at the origin, at the original creation of man is where we started, and the origins of man.

And as we did so, we decided we'd first define what the origins, the false views.

And so we started with one false view of, there you have it, evolution.

Evolution was the first false view that we had looked at. And you know, it's amazing that all you have to do is put something up on YouTube that refutes evolution and atheists come out of the woodworks trying to convince themselves that they really, that's right, have nothing.

They really don't, because they rely on God to deny that evolution is true, because that denies

God, and therefore, you know, yeah. But they will come out because they have to convince themselves, they have to try to thoroughly teach themselves and suppress the truth that they know is true, and that's what they do.

And so it's interesting how many people watched last class that were not

Christian. All of a sudden, they all wanted to know. But this week, we're going to continue. If you have your syllabus,

I encourage you to open it up. And we are now going to start with this week with another false view of the creation of man that many, many people in many churches hold to.

Now, when we look at evolution, which we looked at last class, we can look at that and see that we really don't have anything to fear from the evolution -believing world because they think they're so smart and they think they have so much, but when we really look at it, we end up seeing they have nothing.

And there's nothing for us to be worried about. However, what has happened, and this really happened,

I'd say, back in, really after what made it popular was the

Scopes Monkey Trial. If you're familiar with that, you can go look that up, the

Scopes Trial. And what happened there was that the attorney was actually put on the stand and made popular something that he tried, along with others that were believing it at the time, they were trying to say that we want to believe that the

Bible is true, but we want to believe that science is telling us, because these scientists say it in an arrogance and an absolute way, they say they know they have the truth.

Now, remember something, when they say they know they have the truth from science and they haven't observed it, it's not of science.

It's of philosophy. And there's nothing that makes their philosophy better than our truth.

Okay? So, we're going to stick on the truth. There is one person who actually observed what happened at the creation of man, and that's

God. And therefore, He's the only one, since He's the only scientific person to have observed it,

He's the only one we can trust. Anyone else puts forth theories, only God is the one that observed it.

Come think of it, God could recreate it if He wanted to. And He's actually going to, because in the book of Revelation, He says that He's going to create a new heaven and a new earth.

God can not only create the universe, He could destroy it and create it again if He wants to. So, He can recreate it.

That's the scientific method, the things that they trust on. But they want to ignore the only person who actually witnessed it.

So, here's the problem though, because so many people buy in to the belief that science must have it right because they use really big words.

And they not only have really big words, they sound really, really authoritative when they do it.

So, a bunch of people have tried to say, how can we take the science that is being used specifically to undermine the

Bible and to try to make a way to excuse the human mind into thinking that there really is no

God and marry that with the Bible? You'd sit there and say, well, that'd be crazy.

Well, yeah, I would think so too, but many people do it. One of the biggest theories of the creation of man within the churches is called theistic evolution.

Theistic evolution, if you look in your syllabus, we're going to explain it this way. Theistic evolution is defined or explained there as God as the ultimate creator used natural processes in the work of creation.

So, your first blank there is God as the ultimate creator used, your second blank there, natural processes in the work of creation.

Now, what does this mean? It basically is that what they will argue is that God used evolution, used natural processes over a period of millions of years to create everything that we see today.

In other words, yes, God started it off, He created the Big Bang, and then let the natural processes go.

And He worked in those natural processes so that they would make sure that the natural processes came to fruition, and this way

God was directing it. And some would say He wasn't directing it, so there are some differing views within that.

But those that would say He's directing it so that the things that we see that we would realize are impossible to have happen within evolution, they'd say, well,

God made those things happen so that that's how it ended up working. There's some major issues with that.

Let's take a look with this. First is the primary problem with this view is that its subscribers claim to believe in God while rejecting the biblical account of creation in six literal days.

They make human reasoning superior to the authority of Scripture. What they're doing when they do this is they're saying that there are things in science that no one observed, no one can recreate, and that they're going to trust that over the one who actually did see it and created it.

So, this is an issue that really is very popular. Now, I do want to make a point.

Not every Christian that holds to an old earth believes in theistic evolution.

Okay, there is this distinction. There are those who refute evolution, yet they still believe in an old earth.

So, they are believing some of the things that they get in the geology and things like that.

I still think that that is arguing in a way that undermines, for the most part, at least a literal reading of Genesis chapter one specifically.

And we're going to look at this in a moment. But this is the issue that we have. They don't take that as their ultimate authority typically.

Now, there are some old earthers that they believe in an old earth, but they still hold to the authority of Scripture.

And they will put that as their ultimate authority. They just take a different reading. Some argue that Genesis one and two are more poetic, and they try to do different things like that.

We're going to put that issue aside and deal with the theistic evolution to say this. Those that end up holding to the theistic evolution, that God used evolution,

He used natural processes to create the very things that we end up seeing in nature, okay, that He tried to use those things.

If you're going to argue for that, well, then we're going to argue against the Scriptures, period.

Because when you look at the six days of creation, they're out of order with the ways that evolution says that things have happened, okay?

So right off the bat, we would see that there's something that just doesn't seem to work well, all right?

And that's something being that when we look at what they're saying in science, it doesn't line up with what

God says. And now really what it comes down to is what is your ultimate authority?

If you're going to say your ultimate authority is God, well, then you better believe in what

God's Word says. If you say your ultimate authority is not God, you're just not a

Christian, period. Yeah, I liked what, you know, our friend here,

Saitam Brudenkait, had done in his latest film, if you haven't seen it, on how to answer the fool.

And one of the things he did was with a professing Christian, he just asked the gentleman, do you believe, or actually

I think he said, what is your ultimate authority? And the guy wasn't sure and he said, is God your ultimate authority?

Is the Scripture your ultimate authority? And he said, no. And so what did Sai do? Started treating him like the unbeliever that he just admitted he was and started to share the gospel with him.

That's what we do with people that don't believe in the authority of the Word of God. If you don't believe

God's Word is your ultimate authority, how could you possibly be a genuine

Christian? Because you're basically setting your own reasoning up as deciding what's going to be the authority. If it's not

God, you've set yourself up as the authority. I wouldn't want to be you on judgment day when you stand before God and you try to argue why you think you're a better authority than Him.

Yeah. All right, so theistic evolution. Let's take a look at the significance of this. In Genesis 1, there is the word day.

Now the word day, yom, is the Hebrew word. Yom could mean a period of time, like an age, a longer age.

In other words, if we say the day of the

Lord, okay, that is speaking of a time period, not necessarily a single day, okay?

So when it says, yom is the word for day of the

Lord, okay, when we see that it could mean an age, a period of time. However, there are some indicators that we see as we look through the

Hebrew and that we see that give us an indication in the context of when yom, a day, means a literal 24 -hour day and when it could mean a period of time.

The day of the Lord, one of the things you'll see with that is that there is no indicators with it that indicate it's a 24 -hour day.

What are those indicators? Well, the creation, when we look at the creation order, day has these indicators.

The creation of man occurred on the sixth day of creation and the word day has a couple of indicators, those being one, that it will have a number associated with it, like sixth day.

Another indicator of whenever you see this, it means a 24 -hour day, is when day is preceded or followed by something like morning or evening or morning and evening.

Now, it's actually more often evening and morning. I should do it properly. In America, we say morning and evening because we start the day with the morning going to the evening, but in a

Jewish context, actually the day starts in the evening. It's sundown that starts the day and it runs through to the following, you know, so it goes evening to morning, all right?

So, let's take a look at Genesis chapter 1, shall we? And you tell me whether we see any of those indicators, a numeric before or after the word yom or day, or if we see morning or evening preceding or post preceding that, all right?

So, let's just take a look and see what we see. Ready? Here we go. Genesis chapter 1. Now, I made it a little bit easier for you because what

I did was I actually highlighted it for you in red. So, let's see what it says.

Genesis 1 .5, then God called the light day and the darkness was called night and there was evening, notice that, evening and there was morning, the first day.

Look at that. Then we see verse 8, and it was evening and there was morning the second day.

Verse 13, evening and there was morning the third day. I think I see a pattern here.

Verse 19, evening and there was morning the fourth day, evening and there was morning the fifth day.

And God saw everything that he made and behold, it was very good and it was evening and morning the sixth day.

Look at that. Evening, morning, first day. Evening, morning, second day.

Evening, morning, third day. Evening, morning, fourth day. Evening, morning, fifth day.

Evening, morning, sixth day. Think, I could be wrong, but I think

God is trying to make something pretty clear, don't you think? He's trying to say it's a 24 hour day.

That's the point. The point is that he's emphasizing, it's not like day of the

Lord where it's a period of time. He's trying to say that it is a 24 hour day.

Man was created on the sixth day of creation. Finally, another argument would be the

Sabbath observance wouldn't make much sense because it's based in Exodus 20 verse 11.

It's based on a literal six days. It's not take millions of years, work for six million years and take a million years off.

The argument people try to argue for the long earth is they'll argue that this day could be a thousand years and they do something that if you're a good student of our school of systematic, of biblical hermeneutics, you know this is wrong.

But they take a passage out of Peter, first Peter, where it says that the Lord is long suffering, not wishing that any should perish, but that to him a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day.

That's referring to his long suffering. That isn't a literal thing that gets applied to these days in Genesis 1.

Okay, that's a mistake. When you take something that is being used to explain an attribute of God and take it in a literal sense to try to explain away what we see in Genesis chapter 1.

All right? And so, and those that try to argue for the old earth view ignore all of what we just looked at in Genesis 1 with evening, morning and the numeric and will say that that doesn't have to apply, although they will take it to mean a literal 24 hour day everywhere else but Genesis chapter 1.

Just saying, I think God's making it clear. Let's move on because enough with these false views.

Let's take a look at the biblical view. I always like to go there. So, let us look at the biblical view of the creation of man.

Now, what we want to do here is take a look at first a statement concerning man and that is that the first man was created supernaturally and directly.

That is your two blanks there in your syllabus. The first man, Adam, was created supernaturally and directly.

In other words, God created the first man out of nothing.

Okay? The word barah, which is the word used there is the word for creating from nothing and that's what we have.

He created him supernaturally, not using natural processes, but supernaturally and he did it directly.

It was God who did it, not natural processes. Okay? So, we want to be clear with that.

So, we see that in a couple of passages. Let us begin in Genesis chapter 1.

Good place to start. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and everything that creeps, creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

What do you have? You have there both you see that he created and he did it directly and he did it supernaturally.

Okay? So, we could also look in Genesis 2. Now, an argument that often comes up.

Genesis 1, people argue that Genesis 2 contradicts it. There is no contradiction.

Genesis 1 is covering all 6, actually 7 days of creation. Okay? Well, it covers the 6 days of creation.

Okay? And then Genesis 2 goes in and focuses in on just one of those days, day number 6.

So, the fact is that everything that we have in Genesis 1 is an overview. Genesis 2 focuses in just on a single day and zones in on that and decides it's going to deal just with that.

All right? And so, that's what we end up seeing. So, when we look at that we have

Genesis 2 verse 7 and this is what it says there. Then the

Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils of the breath of life and the man became a living creature.

Now, the fact that it says that God created man from the dust of the earth does not, did

I say that clear enough? Does not mean that he used natural processes. It means that he created from the dust of the, how do you get that?

I don't know but he did it in a single day. And he created man. So, it is supernatural, it is direct.

We can also take a look at Matthew 19 and verse 4 where Matthew writes this, he answered,

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

Who did the creating there? Well, it was God who did the creating. All right?

And that's what we have. So, what we see there is that man was created, okay, supernaturally and directly.

So, what do we have concerning the woman, Eve? Well, the woman was created potentially in Adam and then brought into being through special creative act.

All right? Let's look at how Eve was created. Well, we saw Genesis 2, 7.

Let's take a look at Genesis 2, 22. We see the rib that the

Lord God had taken from man, he made into woman and brought her to the man.

So, we see there that the man was created, or sorry, the woman was created from the rib of the man.

So, the first man and woman were created directly and uniquely by God.

Now, the question now comes when we deal with this is about the ongoing creation of man.

Now, here's where we get into some interesting theological issues when we look at the ongoing creation of man.

In other words, we saw the original man, Adam and Eve, and we have saw how they were created, that Adam was created first, then

Eve, that Eve was created potentially in Adam. In other words, God used part of Adam to create her.

And this actually is quite important when we look later when we get into the doctrine of sin, because when we look at the doctrine of sin, and we're going to see some things because notice this.

And a friend of mine said he had read through the Bible, and he's read it dozens of times, read through Genesis, but it never dawned on him, and he contacted me about a month ago to ask me about this, was the fact that he suddenly hit him that Eve had eaten of the fruit first, but sin was not realized until Adam had eaten.

That's because there was this headship. This is what we're talking about when we say the woman was created potentially in man.

It is because of the fact that Adam had a headship. Whether you and I like that or not, it's not for you and I to decide.

This is the way that God created us. This is the way that God orchestrated things.

He created man first, and then woman through man because there was a headship issue, and that is why man is the one held accountable for the sin issue, okay, because of what had happened, okay?

So, okay, we have a question that came up in the chat room that is, what about creatures that are neither male nor female or both male and female?

Well, the issue there is that neither of them are dealing with human beings, okay?

Neither of them are dealing with human beings. When we look at day six and we look at the created things, what is created in the image of God is man and man alone, okay?

So when we look at that, man is a unique, man's not an animal, okay? There are animals that are created in such a way that there's no male, there's no female, or some that actually can change from male to female, which is really wild, and you sit there and think about that and go, well, how would evolution ever explain these things?

Where would that come from, okay? I mean, male and female is a huge problem for evolutionists, but I digress.

So, dealing with the ongoing creation of man, we first see, if we look in your syllabus, well, actually, let me, before we get to that, sorry, okay, before we get to that, let me deal with something, and that is this important, why is it important to look at the ongoing creation of man?

Because I want to explain, why is that an important issue? It's a very important topic because this is really what's at the heart of abortion.

I really did not mean to make a pun there because it would be a really bad pun, you know, but this is really what's at the current, the issue of abortion, okay?

There is a beating heart there, that's the issue why it's not a funny pun. It wasn't meant to be, but I didn't think about that until just now.

But the real issue there is when does life begin?

You see, if life begins at conception, then it's a human being and it is murder.

It's murder, that's what it is. When you kill a human being, it's murder. It doesn't matter the age of the human being, that's the whole point.

If life begins at conception, it's murder. If life begins at some point later, like birth, then it's not a human being.

That would be the way of viewing it, okay? By the way, Roe versus Wade judged it at a heartbeat.

We can tell heartbeats, I think it's within like 10 days of conception, just saying. But concerning the ongoing creation or procreation, that's your second blank there.

First blank was abortion, second blank is the creation or procreation of mankind.

There are predominantly three theories, okay?

So concerning the procreation of man, there's three theories. Let's take a look at these. First theory is called the pre -existence theory.

That's your blank there. The pre -existence theory.

Now this theory basically says, it's defined that man's soul exists prior to conception and is united with the baby at birth.

This you'd see very common in Mormonism, some branches of Judaism.

That would hold to this. Some branches even of Islam hold to this.

Definitely things like Buddhism, Hinduism and stuff like that, okay? What they teach is that God created all of the souls of people at a single time.

Now what is this? Why is this? They argue this because what we see on the seventh day of creation is that God rested from all of his bara, all of his work of creation out of nothing.

So the issue that they argue is that since God rested, that means there was no more creation going on, okay?

And so he rested from all of that. And now if he rested from all of that creation activity, how do you have new spirits, new beings, new souls?

And so the argument is that God created them all at once and then he just kind of shoots them down as bodies, as conception occurs, shoots them into the body, all right?

Let me give a refutation for that. First off, this view has no support.

It's founded completely in philosophy. You see zero, zero, zero, absolutely none, nada, no support for it in Scripture whatsoever.

You don't see it ever mentioned in Scripture that there is an existence prior to conception.

It's kind of like infant baptism. Oops, sorry, slipped that one in there. It's just not in the Scriptures. But you don't see anywhere where the pre -existence theory exists in Scripture.

It only exists in philosophy, okay? God created Adam, soul, and body in Genesis 2 -7.

We saw that already, that verse. And children seem to exhibit characteristics of their parents as an argument that some would make to say that they wouldn't have completely separate spirits.

Somehow some argue that that's an argument. I don't think that's a really good argument. But I think the best argument is the fact that Scripture doesn't support it, that we see it only taught in philosophy and Genesis 2 that Adam was created both body and soul, or body and spirit, however you want to go.

I only believe if you get into those arguments of dichotomy, trichotomy, I would be a dichotomist.

I believe in a material, immaterial part of man. That's that. You want to argue those things, have at it, not with me, okay?

I just don't, like that's really, it doesn't make a big deal. And so some people that argue those things,

I think they're just really wasting time. So if you look at, so the refutation there is that this view has no support.

It's founded in philosophy, all right? That's your blank there for that one. So a question, can a person hold to this view and still support abortion?

Think about this. Can a person hold to the pre -existence view and still believe in abortion being right?

Basically is the way I'm wording that question. Well, sure, because that soul had an existence beforehand and would have been in heaven beforehand, and that's the way they argue.

So then that soul could return to heaven. Therefore, if that's the case, and that's what many hold to with this, then abortion is actually doing people a favor because it's taking care of a child before they have a chance to sin, okay?

I'm going to kind of tell you why I don't believe that God tells us real specifically some of these issues.

Because being a person who lost a child still in the womb, it would be very hard to think that my child may be eternity in a lake of fire.

Yet part of me says that's what the Scripture seems to say, and God will be just in doing so.

So, a question in the chat room is, the Latter -day Saints Church claims that Jeremiah 1 .5

supports the pre -existence. And so, since I don't have that verse memorized, let us open our

Bibles, which I know all of you brought to class. You better have,

I'll tell you. I got mine right here. Jeremiah 1 .5 says this,

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born,

I consecrated you and appointed you a prophet to the nations. Well, that's true.

Why? Well, the way I would explain that is if you were to look at the attributes of God, remember that's why we started our systematic theology and understanding the attributes of God, because that's why these things, that's what explains the rest of our theology.

God can know Jeremiah before he was in his mother's womb, while he was in his mother's womb, after he was in his mother's womb.

Why? Because God is eternal. He's outside of time. He's omniscient. He knows everything.

Okay? So when we look at that, that's rooted in a question of God's attributes, which is what he's trying to explain there.

He's trying to explain to Jeremiah, a man, to say, I appointed you to be a prophet while you were still in your mother's womb.

In other words, before you had anything to do with it, Jeremiah, it wasn't because of the choices you made in life or choices someone else made for you.

He's basically saying that God is saying to Jeremiah, he chose that Jeremiah would be a prophet, okay, because it was his choice to do so.

All right? That's how I would explain that. Let's move on so we get time to finish all of these.

Second one that we have is called the creationist view. That's your set, your blank there, the creationist view.

So what we have in the creationist view, if you look at the definition that we have for you there, each soul is individually, that's your blank there, individually, each soul or spirit, however you want to go with it, is individually created by God and joined to the body either at conception or at birth, okay?

The argument is that God creates from nothing a new spirit, okay, either at conception or birth and joins that spirit that he creates out of nothing into that body, okay?

So what we end up seeing, we end up seeing is that the refutation that I have for this is the primary problem with this view is that it makes

God the author of sin, that's your blank there, the author of sin in creation of sinful nature in each person, okay?

When we look at this view, if God is creating a spirit, he's creating that spirit with a sin nature to put into the body, all right?

And so that would become an issue. So what we have when we look at that is, and this one

I think is held by many Christians that would have, you know, that would say that God created the spirit, put it,

I would think that many of them would hold to at conception, some would argue at birth though. And if they argue at birth, again,

I'll ask the question, can a person hold to this view and still support abortion? Yes, if they believe that life is given at birth.

If they believe that it's at conception, then no, they would see that as murder. Now the issue

I would have with this view, as I said, is this view leaves it where God creates out of nothing a soul that has a sin nature, therefore it makes

God the author of sin, and I have an issue with that. And if you say that the sin nature comes from the body, now we have a different problem because Christ had a body, therefore did

Christ have sin? Remember those lessons we looked at when we looked at the lessons on Christology, the study of Christ.

Jesus Christ could not sin because he did not have a sin nature. You see how these things now apply, you see how they interlock.

You need to study all of systematic theology to have a right understanding of these things. You can't just take onesie -twosie type of things.

So when we look at all this, we see Jesus Christ could not have had a sin nature because he didn't, or could not have sinned because he doesn't have a sin nature, but he did have a body, therefore our body cannot be the source of our sin nature, okay?

And if it comes from our spirit, then this view I believe makes God the author of sin.

So what do we have left? If he didn't, if our souls didn't pre -exist and God doesn't create them at conception or at birth, what's left?

The third view is the view called the tradition, and this is your blank there, the tradition tradition view or tradition theory.

They're all theories or views. Let me define this for you. This is defined as you see in your syllabus there.

The entire human race was potentially, potentially, that's your blank there, was potentially created an atom.

All individuals are, let me try that again, all individuals are procreated, that's a blank there, entirely procreated body and spirit or soul, however you look at this.

Let me try to explain this then. So the way this works, and the reason this is potentially is because this keeps the headship issue of man, that Adam, this is why

I said the woman was potentially made in the, under Adam, was because Adam is the one, if you look at, we're not going to have time to look at this, we'll skip this one, but when we look at Romans 5, we see the headship of Adam, the headship of Christ being the second

Adam, all of that, all of these things play into this when we look at this. This is why this whole headship thing is with man and not animals.

So when they try to argue for women or female animals that seem to have headship, yeah okay, that's not the issue.

It has to do with the creation order, a sin order, and headship because of the things of who sinned and how the

Savior comes into the world and how we have forgiveness. That's how this works. So when we look at this, we are all created potentially in Adam, that is why all of us have a sin nature because of the fact we inherited it through Adam.

Okay, so the entire human race was potentially created in Adam.

Okay, and individuals are entirely procreated body and spirit.

In other words, and this is a view I would hold to, and I believe that when we are created, when we are at conception that God created man and woman in such a way that when they procreate and a new body is being formed within the mother that a spirit is also formed.

Okay, so you have both the body and the spirit being formed together.

Okay, now let me give some explanation to this a little bit more before we get into asking our question again and trying to refute this.

Explanation, this makes a fetus, what they call a fetus, a human when?

At conception. At conception, let's take a look, Exodus 21, Exodus 21 verses 22 to 24.

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her child comes out but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall be fined as the woman's husband shall impose on him and shall pay as the judge determines.

But look at this, but if there is harm then he shall pay life for life.

Notice that, do you see that? So what is it that God is saying? God is saying there that a child in the womb is a life and the person could pay with that life, with his own life.

Okay, I do find it amazing how they can, in our culture, sit there as recently happened, want to charge a man for causing multiple abortions on the women that he had these women, they kidnapped and held and had gotten them impregnated and then basically beat them until they aborted the child and they want to charge him with multiple murders, but if a doctor does it, it's not a murder.

Do you see the inconsistency there? What makes, there's a great illustration,

I might have gotten this from Tony Miano, I forget where I got it, but there's a great illustration. A doctor is on the way to the abortion clinic, a woman is on the way to abortion clinic, just outside the clinic.

They're both pulling into the parking lot and they smash head on to one another and the doctor survives, the woman survives, but the child in the woman's womb dies.

The doctor would be charged with murder. However, if the woman makes it inside that clinic and the doctor then kills the child, that's perfectly legal.

Do you see an inconsistency there? The issue, and the only issue, is what is it that's in the womb?

This is why I love, well Greg Koukl has a thing, I don't think it started with him,

I think he got it from someone that used to work at the Stand to Reason ministry, but they have a whole series on abortion called

What Is It? That's the only question. What is it that's in the womb? If it's a human being, you can't kill it.

It's murder, period. Call it what it is, murder. Only once was there breath of life breathed into man which made him a living soul.

We looked at that, this is the, again, explanation for this view that I hold to. We looked at Genesis 2 -7, but let's take a look at, we'll just take a look at Genesis 5 -3.

We don't have time to look at all of that, but when Adam lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness and after his own image and named him

Seth. That was, oh sorry, that was for the next argument. Sorry! But actually if you keep reading in there, you'll see the breath of life.

But that's actually an argument for the fact that the scriptures teach that the entire human race or humanity is produced by procreation.

That is the way that we see the production of human beings is through procreation.

Let's also look then at 1 Corinthians 11, 8 -12. It says there,

For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels.

Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman.

For as a woman is made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.

So what you have there is this sense that the procreation. And here's actually the next argument is one where we could look at that Jeremiah 1 passage.

God knew men directly, knew men as distinct persons before their physical birth.

Before their physical birth. And we looked at Jeremiah 1 .5. But that's one example.

But let's look at one and that's Psalm 139 verses 13 -15.

For you formed my inward parts, you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

So you see there, and we don't have time to look at some of the others, but you could look at Luke 1 .41,

Galatians 1 .15. Those are in your syllabus there. Now this view, I believe, accommodates for the all men who sinned in Adam that we see in Scripture, specifically

Romans chapter 5 verse 12. This explains how all men are in Adam.

In other words, that we have a headship in Adam. He is our federal head and that through him we all sinned.

And this explains how we have the sin nature. Now one of the things that ends up happening with this is when you look at this view, with this view, alright, you have an explanation now for Christ.

Why did Jesus Christ have to be born of a virgin? If the sin nature is passed on from father to child, in other words, the father is the one that when it's the father that fertilizes the egg of the woman, that that is the creation that has the soul, where the soul, that body and spirit are being formed.

And in that is the sin nature being passed on from man, from Adam to his children, to his male children, passed on to their male children all the way down.

So guys, when your wife says that your kids are acting up and it's your fault, she's right. Why it was important for Jesus to be born of a virgin?

Because there was no man involved. Jesus Christ is the only one that pre -existed before His conception.

And that pre -existence did not have a sin nature. That pre -existence was a spirit that did not have sin, that came into the woman, started the physical process, but had a spirit that had no sin.

That is why our second federal head, for those of us that are in Christ, can have that headship.

Because that headship is someone that became a man but did not sin. Okay, now let us ask our question again.

Can a person hold to this view and still support abortion? The answer is categorically no.

This view means that all life at conception is murder.

And it cannot, cannot be supported. It would see abortion as wrong every time in this view.

Alright, so that is, we got some thought questions for you in the syllabus and you should check those out.

We will start posting those again in the Facebook group. Go to Facebook, join our

Facebook group, Striving for Eternity, and you can contact us from there.

Now next week, and if you have any questions, actually you can contact us, academy at strivingforeturning .org.

You can contact us through the Facebook group. Facebook, just search for Striving for Eternity.

Join that group. There will be no class next week. No class next week.

Why will there be no class next week? Because I will be busy at the

Ohio Fire. Actually, I won't be busy at the Ohio Fire. At that point, I will be traveling back.

And so we will not have class next week. We might, actually.

There is a chance, but we'll see. But what we will be doing is we won't have class next week.

And we're going to take our summer school break, okay, starting next week.

You're saying, hey, we just got book two. We just got into book two, and we're going to take summer break. Well, hey,

I don't get to control when summer starts. But we do this in the summer. What we're going to do this summer, though, is we may do some interviews, like we did last summer, with different people.

But we are going to be doing one thing different. We are going to be re -recording the school of biblical hermeneutics in high definition.

So you won't see my mouth moving like this, and then the video going at a different pace, okay?

We're going to be re -recording those. So we may add some new stuff into that, new information that we'll have.

So we may do those also on Tuesday nights, possibly, too. So we might overlap those.

So we may give you double doses and have some interviews. But we won't be announcing that as much because it will be summer school.

And so we're still going to be doing some stuff. We're still going to do some interviews. I'll let you know in the Facebook group when those are.

But again, no class next week because we'll be at the Ohio Fire. You should register for that.

Seriously, if you're planning on going and you haven't registered, the first hundred people are the only ones, those that are registered,

I should say, that are going to get the resource bags, all right? And the resource bags will have some things for you.

So you want to get those. Then after that, we have Jersey Fire. Both Cy, Tim Brunenkate, and myself will be at both of those events.

This weekend, Paul Taylor will join us at Ohio Fire. In Jersey Fire, it'll be

Jason Lyle that will join us. And that's going to be in July. And if you want in, come out in September for the

NorCal Fire. Also, if you're in the Jackson area and want to come out to church, we'd like to invite you to Faith Bible Church.

That's a church that Pastor Will Costello and myself are involved with. We are revitalizing that.

It's a new work. Just got done working through a brand new constitution with the men.

It's very exciting. We're going to be doing a lot of evangelism. If there's any evangelists that want to come down to New Jersey, we'll put you up.

We'll feed you. And you just help us evangelize throughout the week and the weekend.

And that's what we'll do for you. All right. Now, the person to encourage this week.

Why do we do this? Every week, we try to get a person for you to encourage, to encourage you to encourage others.

It's something we try to do. And we're doing that. And here's the thing.

We're doing that because truthfully, we all could use some encouragement. And we often really don't say encouraging things about people until after they're, well, dead.

And so the person that I want to put for encouragement, we were discussing earlier today, there's someone actually asking for a

Michigan fire. Real simple. If you want a spreading the fire event in your area, just contact us.

Let us know. We'll send you a brochure or what's required. You got to get a church and an evangelism team.

That's what it is. And we have information on what's needed for those two. But you just need to get us to get a church that will host it, an evangelism team that will help us train people up.

That's it. All right. But the person to encourage this week that we want you to go out and encourage is someone that we were discussing earlier today.

I was speaking with someone earlier today, and we decided who we would put as a person to encourage.

And the person whose name came up, well, I can't really say that I can't put this person because my wife is the one that told me that we should put this person as a person to encourage.

So I want you to go out onto Facebook, encourage brother Paul Atala, husband of Kerry Atala, the famous musician.

Paul happens to be a board member at Striving for Eternity. And one of the men, he is, if you guys enjoy the

Striving for Eternity Academy, Paul is the one you need to thank because it was

Paul's idea. Paul is one of the guys I go to to bounce ideas off of.

And I was struggling with discipling many people one -on -one, and Paul was the one that came up with this idea of doing this online school and doing the same things

I was doing privately with people online for all of you. So if you enjoy these classes, let

Paul know that you're thankful for his idea. You can see his Facebook page right there.

Let Paul know that you're encouraged. He supports

Kerry and all of her music that she does. I kind of tease him. I call him the brains and the brawn because he always carries this huge piano around that she's got.

And clearly, you don't want to mess with him. He just looks like he works out somewhat. But he's a really smart guy too.

But he really is someone that you go out and encourage this week.

He's a great brother in Christ, and he really is a real encouragement to me and someone who you guys, if you don't know him, you should get to know.

He's not going to be maybe coming out with Kerry to the

Ohio Fire. We're still hoping that'll change. Who knows, you know? But we got to drag both of them to the

Jersey Fire, don't you think? Let him know that they should both go. Okay, I'm going to get myself in trouble,

I'm sure. But encourage him this week. And we want to remind you to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.