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On a holiday special edition, Pastor Gabe reflects upon the end of Roe v. Wade, what this means for our nation, and the responsibility of the church heading forward. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Welcome to a special edition of When We Understand the Text, looking at current events and responding to them with a solid understanding of scripture. Visit our website at www .wutt .com. Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
The 4th of July, free from row. Pastor Gabe's blog for July 4th, 2022. In Deuteronomy 30, 19, the Lord said, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed. It is on this day, the 4th of July, we commemorate the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776.
This action established a new nation, the United States of America. At that time, the United States were only 13 colonies, but the founding fathers, as delegated by Congress, declared that those 13 colonies were no longer subject to the monarch of Britain.
They would be independent and free, yet united states. At the start of the Declaration of Independence, we read, quote, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them.
A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation, unquote. With these words, Congress had justified the most powerful nation on earth, and they did so in the name of God.
The next paragraph contains the line most of us know best, quote, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, unquote.
Endowed by their creator means these rights are given to men by the God who made us. Unalienable means that these rights cannot be taken away. No government of man can authorize or eradicate these rights.
A government must recognize those rights, and if it be just, it will uphold those rights, but it does not define those rights. These rights are of God, and man cannot remove them. That first right, as acknowledged in America's declaration, is the right to life.
This 4th of July is the first 4th of July in 49 years that we as Americans celebrate our independence without Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court decision handed down in 1973, which granted the right to abortion on demand.
It was a horrible and unconstitutional measure struck down on June 24th of this year with a ruling on the case, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health. When I heard the news that Friday morning, I cried tears of joy.
I had already said on my podcast that a ruling on the Dobbs decision was coming that day, and based on an earlier leak, we could expect Roe would be overturned, but I was still delighted to hear it. That evening, I picked up my 14-year-old adopted daughter from camp, and we shared a celebratory embrace, happy that this dreadful opinion had finally come to an end.
For years, my family and the churches that I have been a part of have given much support to local pregnancy centers. We have helped many mothers in difficult pregnancy situations. As a pastor, I have given several adoption referrals.
One family that I referred adopted a baby whose mother was on drugs when she was pregnant. The baby was born with numerous health problems. Some would still affect him to this day, but in his pictures, he is always smiling with the family who loves him.
Tens of millions of children never had an opportunity to experience life thanks in large part to Roe versus Wade. Roe was contrary to every value we hold dear as Americans, as it deliberately opposed the first unalienable right as stated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life.
As a result of Roe, over 63 million unborn babies have been murdered in these United States, denied the right to life, and therefore denied liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To put in further perspective the number of unborn children murdered, from 1974 to 2018, there were approximately 173 million babies born in the United States, and approximately 60 million babies aborted.
That means one in four children in the womb were killed by abortion. These are human lives, babies, sacrificed to atone for mom and dad's sexual immorality. Demographically, the numbers get worse. In some major cities, more black babies were killed by abortion than born.
While African-Americans make up 12 .4 of the US population, black women had 38 .4 of all abortions. Most abortion clinics were set up in minority neighborhoods, and business has always been booming.
Millions of dollars are paid for the thousands of unborn babies murdered in America every day. The abortion industry has capitalized on a holocaust of outrageous proportions. When the Dobbs decision was announced, the effects were immediate.
The leftists went into panic mode. Abortion clinics began shutting down all over the country. Despite the lie that Planned Parenthood has said abortion was only 3 of the services they provide, now they're struggling to stay in business.
Abortion doctors, fearing the ramifications, have shut down their practices. In some major cities, there is not a single abortion facility to be found. Now, there is much work still to be done. All the Dobbs decision did was hand back to the states the right to make their own laws concerning abortion.
Some states, like the state of New York, have made abortion a protected right, while other states, like Alabama, have made it illegal to have an abortion at any stage of pregnancy. But federally, there is no law that prohibits unborn children from the same rights and protections that full-grown adults enjoy as Americans.
While Roe versus Wade has been overturned, that does not mean the hearts of so many Americans have been turned. Instead of mourning over the holocaust that abortion has been, there are Americans mourning that they have lost the right to kill children.
Pop star Katy Perry, whose music and brand have been filled with sexual imagery, said that this 4th of July, women in the US have fewer rights than an actual sparkler, unquote. Kim Kardashian, who rocketed to superstardom after she did a sex tape, said, 4th of July has been canceled due to a shortage of independents, unquote.
Roe was enslavement, not freedom. Babies have been murdered and women oppressed by this satanic ideology. Under the allowances of Roe, countless men have used and abused women, getting their sexual pleasure and then leaving the women to deal with the consequences.
So many men and women in this nation need to get on their faces before God and seek forgiveness. Roe has been trashed, but the Dobbs decision did not expunge the sins of so many people who have the blood of over 60 million babies on their hands.
Think about it. For every one baby aborted, there were probably a dozen or more people involved. There was the woman who got the abortion and the abortionist who performed it. There was the father who, in most cases, was fine with the mother getting an abortion and may have paid for the procedure.
There was the person at the clinic who made the mother fill out paperwork. There were other people working in the building. There were the escorts who walked her to and from her car, all played their respective roles to murder a baby.
Our nation deserves divine judgment for these horrendous horrors. But now for a brief moment, grace has been shown from Yahweh our God, Ezra 9 .8. Rather than destroy us, God has destroyed Roe. However long this moment lasts, we have a real opportunity to turn things around.
The Bible says that the law is a teacher, Galatians 3 .24. As the laws in this country change, more and more Americans may wake up to the reality that abortion is the death of an innocent human child.
They will be convicted in their hearts and gradually the thought of an abortion will become more repulsive to more people and more and more rare. Any true transformation can only happen by the gospel of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sin and rose again from the dead.
Whoever believes in him will not perish in judgment, but will be forgiven their sins and have everlasting life with God. God has chosen the church to be the pillar and buttress of the truth, 1 Timothy 3 .15.
It is the responsibility of the church to proclaim what God hates and what he loves. Make no mistake, God hates abortion. He will punish those who have murdered these innocent lives. As the church proclaims the truth that convicts the world of sin, we must then offer the truth that saves the guilty from judgment.
Only by faith in Jesus can a woman who has had an abortion be forgiven of the murder she did or all of her murders if she had more than one abortion. No amount of psychological counseling or medication will heal.
Only Jesus can forgive a heart so broken. Only Jesus can forgive a father who did not care for his woman or their child, but let the mother murder their baby and perhaps even encouraged her or paid for her to commit this heinous evil.
Only Jesus can forgive the politicians and the lobbyists who have labored so hard to protect the false right to murder a baby. Jesus will forgive even the abortion doctors who have committed thousands upon thousands of abortions.
I have personally ministered with a former abortion doctor. He was actually taught how to do an abortion by his wife. Both of them were convicted of their sin. They turned to Jesus Christ and now they run a thriving pediatrics practice in the state of Texas.
Jesus will give you a new heart and a new mind. God has said, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and you will be careful to do my judgments. Ezekiel 36, 26 to 27. When it comes down to it, true life is the life that only Jesus can give.
We may be alive in our bodies, but our souls are dead until Jesus resurrects our dead spirits and we are made alive together with him. By grace, you have been saved, Ephesians 2, 5. But you must turn from your sin to Jesus who saves.
Those who do not repent will perish in the eternal fires of hell for the atrocities they have committed. Let me come back to the passage I started with and I wanna continue on to the next verse. In Deuteronomy 30, 19 to 20, the Lord said, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
So choose life in order that you may live, you and your seed by loving Yahweh your God, by listening to his voice and by holding fast to him for this is your life and the length of your days. What does it mean to truly choose life, but to love God, to listen to what he has said in the Bible and to do what he has said and to hold fast to him all of our days.
Teach the word of God to one another and to your children. Live according to what the Bible says. This is our life to love the Lord our God with all our heart, our soul, mind and strength. True life is faith in Jesus Christ.
Those who do not choose Christ are under a curse. Worse than death, they are under the wrath of God and will spend an eternity in hell if they do not repent and turn to Jesus. The Lord is setting before us this day, the blessing and the curse.
I implore you choose life, choose Christ that you may live, you and your children listen to his voice and hold fast to him for Jesus is life. My family and I, my wife and five children celebrate this July 4th with renewed zeal with the end of Roe versus Wade.
But most of all, we celebrate the independence that only Jesus Christ can give. We have been set free from the bonds of sin and death so that in Christ we have life more abundantly. As we live our lives in these free United States, may God continue to bless America.