Pastor Gives Powerful Speech At State Capitol

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There is a confusion about authority over this issue, a confusion actually that's agitated by the

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Christian community. The confusion is, who's in charge here? The confusion is, by what standard will we live?

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And I'm not talking about just in our homes and our churches and between our ears and behind our eyeballs. The question is, who's in charge here?

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Jesus in Matthew 28, 18 through 20 said, All authority in heaven, and here's what modern day western evangelicals have a problem with, and on earth, has been given to me.

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Now that is not simply a slogan that Christians are supposed to memorize and put on bumper stickers and on coffee mugs.

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That is the statement of our Lord before He ascended and was seated on His throne to rule over the nations.

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And here's the problem, those disciples there in first century Palestine couldn't believe it either.

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Here's the point, it didn't look like He was the ruler of the world then either.

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There were a handful of very confused disciples. I would say, actually, standing there before Jesus, probably less people than this.

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When He ascended and was seated, He said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And He says, on that basis, because this is true, all authority here is mine,

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He says, Go therefore, because I'm the King of kings, because I'm the

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Lord of lords, because I'm the one everybody has to answer to, go therefore and do what?

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Make disciples of the nations. And He says to baptize them and teach them to obey who?

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Jesus. The goal of the gospel is not the truncated gospel of the 21st century

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West. We're not simply trying to make Bible studies in basements and get a couple of people to make personal decisions for Jesus so they can be in a personal romance with Jesus.

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The goal of the gospel is to win this world to Jesus Christ. And I must say, we are so confused about that, and the confusion, let's admit it, is coming from us.

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It's coming from the church. Of course that starts with the pulpit, so repent pastors, start faithfully preaching the

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Word of God, start offending the culture, start being godly troublemakers like Jesus and Peter and Paul.

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The problem, of course, is in the pulpits, but we have to recognize that Christians, we carry the message of the gospel, and we have a truncated gospel.

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We act like the gospel is not the gospel of the kingdom. Did you notice that that's what

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Jesus is preaching? After the trial and temptation in the wilderness, He comes out saying, which is the kingdom of God, is at hand.

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What's that mean? The rule of God is at hand, and it says that He was preaching the good news of the kingdom.

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Do you know what that means? It isn't the truncated gospel of the evangelical West that simply says the gospel is about justification by faith.

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Is that the heart of the gospel? Yes, it is. But that is not all the gospel is. The gospel is about winning the nations to Jesus Christ.

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We have a disjuncted position here. We act like there isn't an Old Testament.

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The Old Testament promise of the Messiah's kingdom is that this Messiah was going to rule the nations and,

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Isaiah 9, Isaiah 42, establish justice. He saves people from the heart out.

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He regenerates them. He takes them from death to life. He removes a heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh,

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Ezekiel 36. And He says, I will put My law within them and cause them to observe

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My statutes. You see, when Jesus saves a people,

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He saves them from the bottom up. We preach the gospel, people repent, and they believe the gospel.

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They're saved, and now they love God's law. And the problem here is a confusion about the mission.

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It's a confusion about authority. And what we don't need is a pro -life industry that refuses to be explicitly

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Christian in their commitments. What we do not need is a compromised pro -life industry that refuses to believe and follow

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Jesus. Jesus says, you're either with Me or you're against Me.

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There is no neutrality with Jesus Christ. And the pro -life industry has bought into the myth of neutrality and they pretend to hold on to biblical values except where it's tough for them.

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And do you know where it's tough for them? When allegiance to Christ and His justice is demanded.

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Our greatest foe in this fight is the pro -life industry.

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You have to accept that I'm not talking about pro -life Christians. Christians are pro -life.

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We're the ones that are truly pro -life. We believe all humans deserve equal protection from conception.

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That's our belief. I'm talking about the industry that refuses to establish equal justice.

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We have had bills of abolition, bills of criminalization, bills that define what's in the womb as human and deserving equal protection.

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We've had those in numerous states. And the greatest opposition has been from the pro -life industry leaders who refuse to be consistent with their profession.

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They say that it's human from conception. And as soon as the church gets involved and says, let's do that then.

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Let's establish justice. Let's have equal protection for all human beings. The pro -life industry leaders war against it.

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Why? Because of the dirty little secret of the pro -life industry. Do you want to know what it is?

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Here's the dirty little secret of the pro -life industry. They believe that mothers and fathers who hire an assassin to murder their little boy and girl, to take their legs and heads off, to disembowel them, they believe they are themselves victims.

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And they refuse to make this about the gospel. You see, that's the dirty little secret.

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That's the fatal flaw of the pro -life industry. The fatal flaw we need to lovingly, humbly, and boldly tell our legislators we will no longer accept.

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We want justice for all human beings. I mean, we're the original

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Lives Matter movement. We're the OGs. We are.

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We're the only ones that have a coherent worldview that say anything matters at all.

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I want to tell you, I want to tell you what we're up against. Because I know this can be a shock to many believers, many from the church, many who are pro -life, when

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I say the pro -life industry is our greatest foe. In Arizona, this is just my state, this year we've had

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Texas, this year we've had Arizona, Oklahoma, and now South Carolina. We held a rally around the bill that was supposed to establish equal protection for all human beings in Arizona.

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And the greatest opposition was from the pro -life industry leaders in Arizona. They were tweeting, or she,

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Kathy Harrod, the leading pro -life industry leader, was tweeting in our state that she couldn't get behind a bill that would have any penalties for mothers because mother and baby are both victims.

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And so what she did is she fought against our bill, she went to the legislators, that's the leading pro -life industry leader in my state, and she told them, do not vote on this bill.

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So what did she do? She gave another one, SB 1457. She said, don't vote on that one for equal protection for all humans.

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She said, vote on this one. And what was her bill? Typical bill, moot point, irrelevant.

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You want to know what it was? Here's a part of the bill. You can kill babies in Arizona, just don't kill the ones with Down syndrome.

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That is what the bill said, only it's irrelevant because all a mother has to do in Arizona with that bill is simply say,

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I'm not killing it because of Down syndrome, I'm killing it because I hate it. And she can still kill her baby.

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It's irrelevant. She put another one in she was very proud of. She says in Arizona, you can kill your baby through abortion, but you have to give it a proper burial.

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Can you imagine being on a different issue? We've been worked on, brothers and sisters.

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We've been indoctrinated by our culture because imagine it the other direction. Imagine a bill in Auschwitz that said you can kill those

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Jews, you can gas them, you can do medical experiments, you can murder them and slaughter them and starve them, but you at least have to give them a proper burial.

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Who would vote on such a bill? Nobody because all of the culture recognizes the evil of Auschwitz.

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So it's easy to say never, but we've been worked on by our culture to believe that these are bills of justice they are iniquitous decrees.

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And God says in Isaiah 10, woe to you when you make the fatherless pray, which is what these pro -life leaders are doing.

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And then she slipped in the other one, the dirty little secret of the pro -life industry. In this past, by the way, both chambers and then the governor's desk just, what, a week ago, two weeks ago, here was the dirty little secret.

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Kathy Harrod, the leading pro -life industry leader in my state, she added in something to that bill.

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Repeal of 13 -3604. You want to know what that was? In Arizona, it has been against the law to murder your children via abortion, pre -Roe.

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It has remained against the law in Arizona to kill your child through abortion for the doctor and the mother.

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And it says that if the mother has an abortion, she will be penalized. That has never been changed.

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It was the current law, and Kathy Harrod, the pro -life leader in my state, she put into her bill, in opposition to mine, take away the punishment for women who kill their children.

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The pro -life industry decriminalized abortion in the state of Arizona.

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That is not a conspiracy theory. You can check me on this. The pro -life industry decriminalized abortion in the state of Arizona for women.

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Why? Because they have a worldview that is in conflict with Christ. That's why.

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And brothers and sisters, I don't know where you're from. I see people in front of me today and around me today from every tribe, people, tongue, and nation.

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We are different colors, different backgrounds, different genders, different ages. I don't know where you're from.

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I don't know if you're Presbyterian. I don't know if you're Baptist. I don't know if you're from the non -denominational denomination. I don't know.

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But you know what I know is true. We have a commitment to Christ as Lord. We have a commitment to the gospel, and that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

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There is no God seeker. There is none good. There is none righteous. We need to call our world to repentance and faith, and we are all guilty before the throne of God.

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And we all fight against ideologies, false gospels, and false Christs.

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We're willing to go after the cults to say, that's not the biblical Jesus. That's not the biblical gospel.

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This is the gospel. But have we recognized that the pro -life industry preaches a message that is in conflict with the gospel and therefore cannot be accepted by us?

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They say mothers who murder their children via abortion are victims and therefore not guilty, and so the pro -life industry has robbed these women of the hope of the gospel.

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Consider it. They're telling them, you don't need to repent of anything for this, sweetie.

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You're not guilty. You're a victim. So where do they leave this woman in her guilt and shame?

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They lie to her, and they say, you're not guilty. You don't need Christ for that.

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You're just a victim like your child. It is the Christian church that has a message of hope for post -abortive women.

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We say you can take that guilt and that shame to Christ, flee to Him, and be forgiven, be washed.

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And the pro -life industry tells them you're not guilty. The church says you are. Come to Christ and live.

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The pro -life industry has that fatal flaw. They commit what is an abomination in the eyes of God.

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And I want you to hear it. This is vitally important for us to get, brothers and sisters, the abomination, Proverbs 17, 15.

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Listen closely. Please hear me on this. He who acquits the guilty and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the

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Lord. When you acquit the guilty, when you justify the wicked,

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God says that's an abomination. And we need to repent as the church for how we have not spoken the truth in the area of abortion, how we have compromised.

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Listen, embrace this. As a church, we cannot follow organizations or ideologies that try to establish justice apart from Jesus Christ.

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And by the way, you can't. You can't consistently, you can't philosophically.

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It will not work. All the compromise and the myth of neutrality is not going to establish justice.

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People will love justice in God's law when their hearts are changed and renewed.

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No heart is ever changed or made new apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ. So you fight your political battles devoid of the gospel and there is no transformation, nothing.

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What is a nation that doesn't kill their babies that's still dead in their sins and transgressions?

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They're lost. We have to open our voice, our mouth for the helpless, for the innocent, for the fatherless.

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And we need to preach the gospel to our culture. We have a confusion about the role of church and state.

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I'll finish with these thoughts. The confusion about the church and the state. We've been told the church obeys

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Jesus Christ. He's their Lord, but not Lord over the state. Oh, brothers and sisters, we are so wrong.

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The promise of the kingdom throughout the Old and New Testament, Psalm chapter 2, the father says to the son, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.

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Did Jesus forget to ask? No. Jesus ascended and said, it's all mine.

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Go get them. Teach them to obey. And the father warns the kings of the earth in Psalm 2.

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He says, obey the son. Kiss the son, lest you perish.

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The kings of the earth are commanded to obey Jesus Christ. The state is under the authority of Jesus.

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You know what's amazing? Hey, can we just admit this? You know what's amazing? Isn't it amazing that when the

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Christian church goes into a culture or a nation with the pure gospel, with the authority of Jesus Christ, calling everyone to yield to him, to submit to him and trust in him, that state always recognizes the church as an enemy of the state.

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In China right now we have a pastor, a faithful man of God, a Presbyterian pastor who preached the gospel faithfully under communist

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China and he is in a jail cell today. Pray for him. Because the

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Chinese state, the communist party, said that his crime was that he was attempting to subvert the authority of the state.

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Why? Because he said that Jesus is Lord over the state. They knew he was the enemy.

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And isn't it amazing that the first century church were killed for being enemies of the state because they refused to say

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Kaiser Curios, Caesar is Lord. They said Jesus is Lord. And never forget this.

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When the gospel broke out at Pentecost, when the gospel broke out, what did

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Peter say? Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved,

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Jesus Christ. You know that verse, right? Did you know that he was taking the saying on the

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Roman coins about Caesar and he took it and he flipped it about Jesus? Did you know that?

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He took their saying about Caesar. Neither is there salvation in any other for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved,

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Caesar. And Peter comes at Pentecost and says, No, Jesus. That's the truth.

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What do we want? Equal protection. Look, this can't be disputed.

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Where are the pro -choicers? Where are the pro -aborts today? Where? They can't fight against this.

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We stand on the truth of God's revelation and the facts as they are. It is an indisputable fact.

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It is human from conception. You can't war against that. You'll look like a fool. It's a fact, so much a fact, so clearly understood that pro -aborts today recognize it and say,

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You're right, it's fully human and I still want to be able to kill it. What are we saying? It's human from conception.

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Every human, red and yellow, black and white, all deserve equal protection.

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Protect them all. Protect them from start to finish. Every legislator here is responsible before God for putting this bill into the force of law.

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Because every legislator here must establish justice for all human beings.

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And you are human from conception. That's a fact. We're not arguing about heartbeats.

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We're not arguing about how this child was conceived. We're saying, are you human?

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Are you human? You will be protected. That's what this bill says.

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And when these legislators are courageous and do what's right before God and the people of South Carolina, they'll establish this bill.

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And if they are inconsistent, and if they are ultimately going to yield to cowardice, they will not pass this bill and it will violate every fundamental aspect of their profession.

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Because what's there to disagree with? It's human. It deserves equal protection. And if you are part of the pro -life industry, you need to repent and get consistent with your profession.

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If it's human, equal protection. This is the bill that all of us must get behind as an act of repentance.

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And so we can bring the gospel into this issue. Now, here's the thing. You look at a room like this, and yeah, there's a lot of people here, people from all over.

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You look at what God is doing right now. Praise God for it all. But you might be thinking as you look at all this, is it really possible?

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Is it going to happen? And the answer is absolutely. You see, here's the deal.

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Maybe we're the seed. Maybe today is the miracle where God moves in a powerful way and establishes justice.

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I don't know, but here's what I know. Jesus is the king and he is establishing justice. It's happening.

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All of Christ's enemies are going under his feet as a footstool for his feet. Now, do you believe it?

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Because Psalm 110 .1 is the most quoted Bible verse in the New Testament from the Old Testament.

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Did you know that? It's God's favorite Bible verse. It's the one quoted the most in a New Testament revelation.

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Psalm 110 .1, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.

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1 Corinthians 15, Paul quotes that and says, Jesus is reigning now and he must reign. That was first century, by the way.

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And he must reign until all of his enemies are made a footstool for his feet and then the last enemy is death.

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First, every enemy, then death. Abortion is an enemy of God. It'll be under his feet.

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Jesus is said to be the mighty God, the Father of eternity.

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And it says in Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, listen closely to this, because here's your hope, by the way. Here's your encouragement about what

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God's gonna do. Not just a motivational speech from a man who does not belong behind this pulpit, trust me, in myself.

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I have Christ and he is my everything. You don't need a motivational speech.

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You need the words from the living God. It says this in Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, of the increase of his government,

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Christ, that's his kingdom, and of peace. That's what he establishes.

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There will be no end. He will come to the throne of David to establish it with justice and righteousness forevermore.

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And what's it say? How's it gonna happen? You, me, the zeal of the

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Lord of hosts will accomplish this. It's not you. It's not me.

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It's him, by his spirit, through his gospel that accomplishes this. Justice will be established.

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The question is, will you be the one standing alongside Christ and His Kingdom, or will you be the one falling down, not obeying?

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Because He will establish justice. Psalm 2 promises that the earth is

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Christ, that the kings must obey Him. Isaiah 9 says that He will establish justice, and Isaiah 42 gives the promise of the

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Messiah and His Kingdom, and it says He will establish justice, and the coastlands wait for His law.

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He will not grow faint or weary until He has done so. He will establish justice.

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So how do you do this? You speak His truth. You don't compromise. You don't pretend neutrality.

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You represent Christ and His Kingdom, His truth. That's how God changes the world, by the way.

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Think about it. You're a believer today? Are you in Christ? Are you a believer today? If you're a believer today, how'd you come to Jesus?

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By grace, through trusting in Christ. And what'd you see before you came to Christ? What did

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God reveal to you before you fled to Christ? What? Your sin. You were broken before God because you saw yourself as God sees you.

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You repented and turned to Christ in faith. Amen, yes? So how are they coming to Christ? The same way.

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Not through compromise. Not through lying. They're going to come to Christ in the same way you and I did.

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But what will it take? Courage. What will it take? The willingness to die. And I want to say this because this is on my heart, deeply on my heart recently.

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I'm knocking the microphone around and my people are probably going to kill me. You know, it's easy as Christians.

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It's easy as Christians to say, come to Christ and die.

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And what we tend to think, even going on missions and going out into the world and to hard places, is

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I'm willing to die for Christ. I've seen missionaries say that. Missionaries, church planners, people going out,

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I'll die for Christ. And what do we tend to think? We think of the guy who's going to grab me, drag me into the street, put the sword over my neck and chop my head off.

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And most of us contemplate as believers and we say, I'm willing to do that, Christ. I'll be willing to die for you.

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We think about that moment where somebody takes us and severs our head from our body and we think, can

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I endure that? Can I endure that five seconds of pain, that 20 seconds of pain? Can I do it for Christ?

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Yes. You know what's harder to do? To die every single day. Don't let that be a slogan.

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If you're going to be in this fight, if you want to see fruit and righteousness and justice, you've got to die daily.

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You've got to be willing to be hated. You've got to be willing to be slandered and gossiped about. You've got to be willing to have people shooting arrows at you.

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You've got to be willing to have people that you thought were on your team telling you that you're wrong, that you're a troublemaker.

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Here's what we need. Godly troublemakers. And lots of them. For your encouragement.

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This man, Rusty, preached a sermon he didn't even know, I don't think was, he knew was being recorded.

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I saw the sermon. It broke me. And that led to my church being broke.

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And that led to so many churches rising up because of our example following his example.

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700 churches now with end abortion now are out saving lives. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of babies have been saved.

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Why? Because of the message of the gospel. Because of consistent message. And this, no credit, no glory to us.

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This is about the church. This, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, everywhere it's happened.

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You know where it's come from? Not the pro -life industry, from the church. The church.

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There's men standing behind me right now fighting these battles politically, going to legislators, writing up this stuff.

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You know where it came from? Came from the church. So you know what? Here's amazing. The pro -life industry, as large as it is, as grand as it is, as global as it is, with the millions and millions and millions of dollars, they could not accomplish what

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God accomplished when he let the saints in. We don't need large numbers or large dollars.