Proving The Sad Truth

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Good morning. Is my microphone on? Good. Hello. I'm with some Baptists today.

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This is great. All right. Well, praise God. Thank you all so very much.

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I'm Baptist too, by the way, just so you know. So we're going to relax. Okay. Oh, yeah.

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We're all family here. We've been preaching to reform Presbyterians, Presbyterians, Baptists.

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It's really just a delight to see the unity in the body of Christ around the essentials and in particular around this important issue.

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I want to just tell you all how humbled we are and how sobered we are as your brothers, being invited here to speak from the

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Word of God on this issue and in particular being invited here among you in the midst of the coming

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Holocaust in your country, in your land. And I want to begin with prayer and sort of introduce everything by way of giving our story of how we actually got into this and then, of course, get into the

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Word of God. So if you would join me in prayer. Father, I pray that you'd bless our time together today.

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Bless us as we, Lord, get into your Word. I do pray that you'd get me out of the way,

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God. Please allow this to not be the words of a mere man, a man who does not have any earthly right being up here.

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Lord, I recognize that I'm here. All of your grace and your power and your plan.

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And I just pray that you would speak, God, through your Word to your people that it would not be the words of a mere man.

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I do pray, God, that this would not be in any way any kind of motivational speech. I pray that this would be from your

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Word and it would, Lord, encourage us, empower us, convict us, challenge us.

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And I do pray that, Lord, through what we speak today, you would raise your church up, empowered and emboldened by your

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Spirit with your Word on our lips. And I pray with all of my heart that you would stop the

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Holocaust ahead. In Jesus' name. Amen. So I think it's important for me to introduce how we got into this.

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We were, of course, as pastors in the United States of America, we were, of course, pro -life.

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I mean, we are Baptists. We are Orthodox, confessional Christians. And so we would have identified very early on as pro -life.

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And so in the United States of America, it's a common thing in the U .S. Of course, many of you guys are probably aware of our circumstances.

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We've had about 50 years of 62 million plus babies being murdered in my country.

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It's impossible to truly comprehend that, let's be honest. You do have to really think about it as one human being at a time.

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When you think about the fact that today we have about 3 ,000 babies approximately murdered a day in our nation, between 2 ,000 and 3 ,000, it becomes really hard to comprehend that level of carnage.

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And when we think about the United States of America, we had, of course, a terrorist attack on our nation on 9 -11 early on at the turn of the millennium.

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And we think about the thousands that died there. And we have to consider the fact that that is a daily occurrence in my country.

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And it's a daily occurrence because it was something that was accepted by my nation. Not by law.

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Abortion is not lawful in my country. As a matter of fact, in the state of Arizona where we live, there is a current law on the books unchanged.

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It is current law in my state that abortion is against the law. It actually carries a penalty of prison time.

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And that law is current and it stands. But we've been duped to believe in my nation that a court opinion from 1973 actually was law.

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It goes against the system of law in our country. It should not be the case. But as a result of us being duped as a culture, we have 62 million plus babies dead.

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And in the context of the United States pro -life movement, we have our moments.

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Every year, pastors will, on the Sanctity of Life Sunday, they will preach a pro -life sermon talking about the value of human life, image bearers of God in the womb.

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We'll be talking about this is an evil that we have to stop in our country. And so that's sort of our moment every year.

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Pastors will preach that sermon and then we're on to our other things. We would, of course, talk about pro -life issues in our homes and at coffee shops amongst other

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Christians. And as Christians, we would give, you know, give money to the popular pro -life organizations and the industry and the lobby.

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And that's sort of what we've done for the past 50 years. We assume that the pro -life industry is

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Christian. We assume that the pro -life industry is working towards the criminalization, the abolition, and the end of abortion.

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This is what we assume as Christians in my nation in terms of the pro -life industry and the pro -life lobby.

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They're trying to end abortion, to criminalize it. They think it's murder. They're essentially

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Christian. And so those are our people. They're fighting the good fight and we're working to end abortion.

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That's, generally speaking, what the consensus is amongst Christians in the United States of America. That's what we're trying to do.

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And for the last 50 years, we have 62 million plus image bearers of God slaughtered in our country.

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These are image bearers of God who are dismembered. They have their heads ripped from their bodies, crushed.

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They're disemboweled. Their arms and their legs are torn from their bodies. They are poisoned.

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They are burned by chemicals. That is taking place every day in our streets.

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Oftentimes, you will have a murder mill, an abortion mill next to a taco shop and a massage parlor.

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You'll have this sort of set up in our streets just as a regular thing. You pass by the murder mills and it's just next to maybe even a preschool.

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You'll have them raising children over here and killing them over here. It's a common occurrence.

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It's something that we accept and that's what's going on in my nation. And as Christians, as pastors, our church, which began out of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, a hospital, was a small church.

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But of course, we would talk about the pro -life issue. We were opposed to the issue of the slaughter of the preborn and that's where it stood.

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So how did God get us to this place we're in now? Well, what happened was on my

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Facebook feed, I began to see pictures from a lady named Lisa Metzger.

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And I don't know how she got on my page. I don't know how we were friended. But her name was exactly the same name as a girl that I went to high school with.

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So I assumed that this is a girl I went to high school with. We're on the same page because she's a friend from high school.

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Somehow, we got friended. I don't remember how. I'm not in the habit personally of friending strange women on Facebook.

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And so, she's just my friend from high school. But I started seeing pictures of her in different locations with different women and different babies.

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And after some period of time, I saw so many of these pictures. I started looking into her and I realized, oh, she goes out to the abortion mill and she preaches the gospel and she tries to help the mothers and fathers.

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Wow, these are babies that have been saved for murder outside the abortion mills.

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And so, I was so in awe of this experience, seeing all these saved children and she's holding them in her arms and she's at different locations with all these different women from all these different backgrounds and colors.

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I thought, this is glorious and praise God. And so, I contacted her and I said, hey, we have a radio program and we'd love to have you on to tell the story of your ministry and all these babies that have been saved.

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And she agreed. And so, we're in the studio one day and we're on the radio in Arizona and we're getting ready to go on.

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And it was about 15 seconds before we go on the air that I found out that we didn't know each other.

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And what was interesting is 15 seconds ago, the text like, all right, 15 seconds to get ready to go. And I was like, Lisa, okay, it's great to talk to you.

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So, we went to high school together. Isn't that great? And she's like, no. And I was like, well,

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I thought we went to high school. She's like, no. I was like, how do we know each other? She's like, I don't know you.

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And I was like, how do we get on each other's feet? She's like, I don't know. And so, somehow like, okay, airtime, we're going now.

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And in this radio program, you can get to it in the Apologia Studios channel, apologiastudios .com,

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somewhere in the archives of the radio shows and podcasts, this radio show is there. It's about a decade ago, something like that.

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And on the radio program, she tells us she's been doing this ministry for, I think, about two decades.

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And she talks about going out there to preach the gospel. She calls mothers and fathers not to murder their children.

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She gives them the hope of Christ that's in the gospel. And she offers to help them to take care of their needs. And so, she's talking about this.

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And then she shares with us how many babies that she's saved. And she says like somewhere around 364 babies.

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And our jaws are on the table. We're looking at each other. Pastor Luke is there. Joy is there. We're like, oh my goodness, this is a life well lived.

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364 babies. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, over the last two decades of ministry, that's incredible.

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Those numbers are amazing. And then she says, yeah, last year, last year.

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So, that's about a baby a day. It was absolutely incredible. And it was so challenging to all of us.

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And here's the amazing thing is that Apologia Church, I was a chaplain at a hospital, a drug and alcohol rehab.

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And our church came to life out of the hospital. We were sent from another church. I was a pastor right over there to start a church plant out of this hospital to care for all the people that were coming off of heroin addiction, methamphetamine addiction, pill addiction, and alcohol addiction.

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And so, we had this very young church. It was a very rough looking crowd. Everyone who's tattooed up had big gauges in their ears.

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It was a very rough looking church. Early on, people would come because they would know about our ministry, our teaching ministry, our apologetics ministry.

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They'd be like, oh great, I want to go to Jeff Durbin's church. And then they would come in and they'd be like, never mind.

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And they would, you know, leave. We were known as that drug church. They'd be like, oh, that's that drug church, right?

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It was a rough crowd, but it was a bunch of believers who were new believers in the Lord that were encouraged to be bold, to create righteous controversy for the sake of gospel, to lay their life down for others for the cause of the gospel.

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And they heard this radio program and they said, we have to do this. We have to do this.

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And so, a small huddle of believers at Apologia Church early on started doing some investigations, searching out the abortion clinics that were near us, trying to figure out how do we do this.

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And so, we didn't know what we were doing. We're not professionals. We weren't trained to do this.

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All we knew was the gospel. We knew the truth about what was happening in there. They're murdering children.

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The problem is sin and rebellion. The only answer is the gospel. And we need to love our neighbors, these pre -born children and the mothers and fathers who were going in there.

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We'll take care of their needs. We'll adopt their children. And so, as a church, we went out. Our very first day going out to preach the gospel at the abortion mill and to call mothers and fathers to not murder their children, we saved two children from death.

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Two children from death because Christians who are not superstars, who are not good at this, who are not trained professionals went with the

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Word of God. And two babies were saved. And then more babies started being saved. We got to the point where we're doing radio programs and we would just do our regular show.

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And then we would say, oh, and by the way, we were at the abortion mill on Saturday and God saved a baby. Or God saved two babies this

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Saturday. And so people started listening to the show globally, and in particular across the United States or America, and they started contacting us saying, well, how do we do that?

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You know, what can we do as a church to go do the same thing? And so we would say, well, this is all we're doing. Go. And so this is what we would say.

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We would say, you need to say three things at the abortion mill. And we typically have about 20 seconds from door to door, depending on the abortion mill that you're at.

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You have about 20 seconds from door to door to communicate very quickly a lot of biblical important truth to a mother or to a father.

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And so all we would say is when they get out, we say, mom, we remind them of what they are.

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Mom, mother's inside. We remind them of what they're trying to suppress because God has written his law on their heart.

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Mom, please do not murder your child today. We tell the truth. We can't pull any punches.

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We have 20 seconds before they go in there and murder their own child. It's the end of their child's life.

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And so mom, please do not murder your child today. And then we communicate to them the gospel.

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You can come to Christ. He'll forgive you of your sins. You can come to him through faith in him.

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He'll give you life. He lived perfectly, died for sinners, and he rose again from the dead. So that if you turn to him in faith, you will have eternal life.

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Come to Christ and live, ma 'am. And then we'll say, we'll help you. We'll adopt your child. We'll give you anything that you need.

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Ask us. We'll help you. We'll adopt your child. And then in the door. It is a very difficult ministry.

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It's ugly. It is dark. You will be attacked. People throw things at you.

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People have tried to hit us with their cars. We've been physically assaulted. We've had an abortionist pull a gun on us.

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It is a very, very hard ministry. People drive by you in their cars. They roll down their windows and they curse you out.

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They say all manner of evil things about you as you stand out there standing for the lives of these pre -born children.

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It is an ugly and a very hard ministry. But as a result of going, just faithfully going out there and preaching the gospel,

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Apologia Church alone has saved countless babies. We don't even know how many exactly have been saved.

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We stopped counting somewhere, I think around 130 or 150 children that just Apologia Church had saved years ago.

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And of course, as a result of God starting End Abortion Now, which is essentially just a ministry of Apologia Church that gives free training and free resources, asks for nothing from local churches, nothing.

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We just want to equip them and provide for them free training, free resources to go to the abortion mills to preach the gospel, to save lives, and to our local legislature to preach to them to demand immediate justice.

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God has raised up nearly 500 local churches who are out saving lives on a daily basis, and we have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of children who are alive today because a church, honestly, not very much bigger than this.

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Probably, actually, when we started, probably the same size as this church right here.

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Do you hear that? Same size. We went out and preached the gospel at the abortion mill, and as a result of it,

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God is now saving thousands of lives, and now we have even legislation happening to criminalize, to end, and to abolish abortion.

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But here's what I need to share with you and this is so vitally important. We came here years ago.

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I was asked as a Reformed Baptist to preach at the family conference for the

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RP denomination, Reformed Presbyterian denomination, which is actually a really strange thing.

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I was like, you know I'm Reformed Baptist, right? Yeah, we know. Okay, this is okay. Absolutely, I'll do that.

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That's an amazing gift. Absolutely. So, I was coming not for abortion, but just to preach this family conference on some other issues, and while I was here,

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I learned that in the Republic of Ireland, it was still criminal to kill your child, and in Northern Ireland, it was still criminal, and I was praising

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God that the light of the gospel had so impacted Ireland that the

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Irish people are still able to hang on to the last vestiges of the

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Christian worldview and the blessings of justice and righteousness that are protecting the pre -born, but I was very concerned because we were obviously on the very edge of it being decriminalized and legalized in really both places, and so we tried to spring into action to say, hey, let us encourage you as a church as to what you need to be saying in this context to hold back the slaughter of these innocent children, and we worked and we tried.

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We were trying very hard to equip the church at the time, and of course, we know what's happened in the Republic itself, and now in Northern Ireland.

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I was hoping to God. I was hoping to God that God would preserve your nation, that He would preserve you, that He would protect you from the evil of abortion.

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I was hoping to God that we would not come back to teach you how to do abortion mill ministry, and that is where we are now at, and you need to hear something from me, from my heart as your brother.

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You have to tell the truth about this. You have to be willing to lay your lives down for these pre -born children.

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You have to be honest about what it really is because, and this is a main point

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I hope you will get today, the American pro -life industry, the

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American pro -life lobby is a machine, and it is a multi, multi, multi -million dollar industry and business that is now setting up in Northern Ireland and the

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Republic of Ireland, and the message of the American pro -life industry and lobby, please hear me on this, it pains me to say this, is not fundamentally

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Christian. It will not stand on the words of Jesus Christ.

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It pretends neutrality and at times denies, fundamentally denies, explicitly denies any connection to Christianity or to the biblical worldview, and this is from the very top.

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The pro -life industry and the pro -life lobby will not call abortion what God calls it, and that is murder.

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The unjustified killing of an image bearer of God according to God's word and God's standard is murder, and the pro -life industry in my country, who's now coming over and influencing in yours, will not call it murder, will not be explicitly

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Christian, tries to take, quote, a backdoor approach, and they are not working in my country for the ultimate abolition and criminalization and end of abortion now in immediate justice today.

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They are working to regulate abortion. I'll give you some examples in my country as to what the pro -life movement sees as a victory in my country.

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They will start campaigns, and they will raise millions and millions of dollars for a pro -life bill, and these pro -life bills are touted as victories when they're passed.

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You want to hear about some of them? A pro -life victory bill is they force the abortion mill to have wider hallways, and they'll say we have a victory because we had a pro -life legislative effort passed, or they'll say something to the effect of you are not allowed to kill a child using forceps.

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You can only use suction, and they'll call it a victory.

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They will raise from Christians, the Christian community or Roman Catholic community, they'll say we have a bill.

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It's going to save some lives, and so they'll say no forceps, only suction, and then they will come out, and they will praise themselves and pat their backs and put on medals saying look what we did, and in the end consider the contrast.

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Imagine if in Auschwitz we had Christians fighting for justice, and they said look we had legislation passed that said you can no longer beat

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Jews to death. Now you can only use gas. Would we truly be circling

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Auschwitz raising our hands saying victory, victory? No. Why? We all understand because they're murdering image bearers of God inside.

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Christians are called by God to hold back those who are going to death, who are going to the slaughter.

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It's the command of God in the book of Proverbs chapter 24. God commands us to hold them back, to protect them.

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It's from God's word. That's what God calls us to, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and these pre -born image bearers of God are our neighbors, and the pro -life industry, the pro -life lobby will not stand on the word of God to fight against this evil, and that is why they have failed.

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Brothers and sisters, please hear me. 50 years almost in my country, 62 million plus babies dead.

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By the way, that number is completely wrong. I say 62 million plus because we're not even counting the abortifacient birth control pills that kill children in the womb, and we're not counting the plan b pills that women can go to Target or any other store to get and to kill their baby, and nobody ever knows those numbers.

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There's really no way to ultimately calculate how many image bearers of God have been killed.

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Listen, we have Stalin. We have Hitler beat by the metric ton in my nation, and it is something that we accept.

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We're standing on all of these dead children of my nation, and my plea to you as believers is do not have 50 years behind you of an anti -Christian worldview and movement fighting in your place so that you're standing on top of all of these dead bodies.

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This is, brothers and sisters, I know that you haven't had to face this yet, but it's a truth that you have to embrace, and you've got to face it down.

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These are human beings who are being murdered. You see, we've been here before, haven't we?

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We have. We truly have. In my country, we used to do what was considered in God's law a capital crime.

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We used to kidnap black human beings, pack them onto ships, and then put them into slavery and abuse them, and this was just consensus.

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Well, I guess this is all right. I guess we just assume this is the way things are. We have to just accept this sort of a thing, even though, in God's word, man -stealing and enslaving is worthy of death.

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That was what God said about that. The just penalty for that is that. So how does God feel about kidnapping and enslaving?

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It's worthy of death, and we were doing it in my nation. It's accepted. People are just saying, well, that's just the way things are.

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I guess this is part of our culture now. It's accepted, and they would look at black people in my country, and they'd say, you know,

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I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. She's black. Same thing happened in Germany.

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They'd say, I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. It's a Jew. You see, what we've done is we've dehumanized other image bearers of God at times in history, and you know what's amazing about this is it's only, please hear this, it is only the gospel and the biblical worldview that has ever done away with these evils in our world.

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Justice is established when God's people confront these evils in our cultures and societies, and I will tell you this as we get into this.

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Please hear me on this. For now, for the Irish people, I understand this. In Northern Ireland, for now, this is, we've never experienced, we haven't experienced this.

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This was criminal, and now it's being forced upon us, and so now it's kind of theory, isn't it, right?

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Like, well, in theory, they're going to be killing children, and we should be doing this, and so there's not real flesh on this yet for you because you haven't had to taste it.

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You haven't had to experience it as we have, but I want to encourage you with this.

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When you hold that first baby in your arms that was saved from death because you and your church, your local church, went to the abortion mill to preach the gospel and to love those people, when you hold that baby in your arms, it will change you.

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It will change you forever, and my contention has always been from the very beginning.

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If you lay your life down on a daily basis, and you go to that abortion mill, and you go into the public square preaching the truth about abortion and God's truth about the gospel, you lay your life down, and you're persecuted.

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Maybe you're thrown into jail. Maybe you're hated. Maybe you're vilified by your culture, and you save one image bearer of God from death.

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It is a life well lived. It is a life well lived. It's worth everything.

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You see, we've gotten to do that. You haven't. I've had two twins. I've had twin girls,

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Olivia Grace and Kara, girls who were saved from death at an abortion facility not far from us.

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I've had them running around the front of my pulpit during service. Distracting, yes, but totally allowed, right?

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Right? You guys can run all you want. Olivia Grace and Kara, we've gotten to hold these little girls to kiss their heads, to hold their little fingers in our hands.

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We've gotten to hold Carmelo in our arms, a little boy saved from death from Planned Parenthood in Glendale.

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You see, for us there's flesh on this. You see, for us as American Christians, we've had to watch them have the dead bodies coming out of the abortion facility to go to Stericycle where they're going to be burned up and destroyed.

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You see, as American Christians, we've had to experience looking in the dumpster in the back of some of these facilities and seeing these dead bodies thrown away into the dumpster.

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You haven't experienced that yet, and I was hoping to God and His mercy He would spare your nation from this judgment.

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But I think we have to all admit, if our nations are facing this evil, our nations are under the judgment of God.

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When human beings can accept the murder of the most innocent among us, our nations are under judgment.

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And I want to encourage you as my brother and sister to know that the only way that this darkness will dissipate is if the church rises up and obeys

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Jesus when He says that you are the salt and you are the light. Salt, you see,

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I don't know how it is here. You guys don't use a lot of salt, so maybe you don't understand that. So all

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Americans are eating food over here. We're going, this is, it needs more butter and salt. More fat, please, more fat and sugar.

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You see, we tend to think about salt when we see that today as, well, salt's the flavoring, right?

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It makes it taste better. So like maybe Christians, and I've heard people preach like this, and it is false.

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When they narrow it into this, they say, you know, Christians are the salt of the earth. You make life have flavor, right?

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You can live your best life now, right? Big fake teeth, right?

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You know, you have the whole idea of like, you know, Christians, we make, we give it the spice of life. Like we make all things better.

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When you add Christians to something, it all is better. You're the tasty part of life. You're the salt of the earth. Let everyone see your light shine and see how great your life is and cars and house and clothes and whatever the case may be.

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You're the salt of the earth, baby. Let them look and let them enjoy it. And that's what's going to draw people to Jesus.

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That's not what it meant in that culture. Salt was a preservative. There's no refrigeration. So if you want something to last, you use salt for preservation.

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And so when Jesus says to his people, you're the salt of the earth, you stop things from spoil and decay.

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God's people. You're the light of the world is the light of God's people is shooting out into the world and it's pushing back the darkness.

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You see, I think we tend to think as Christians in the West, oddly, it wasn't the historic position of the church that like, you know, we need to basically go into places and just get individual souls saved for heaven, which of course we do.

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But like the idea is like, it's just about your private individual relationship with Jesus. It's just a single person there.

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And let's have a Bible study in a basement. Like that's the goal. Wasn't what Jesus said.

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It wasn't what he left us with. No, no. And Jesus said this in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, he actually, as he ascends with some very confused disciples in front of him, right?

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A very small huddle of confused disciples, like this room.

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He said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been, past tense, given to me.

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Now stop and just think about it for a second, because we have to confess something as Christians oftentimes we'll hear a verse so much, see a verse so much that we know it by heart.

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We read it. We could even quote it together, but we haven't thought about all the implications of the passage itself.

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We haven't actually bought it. We acquiesce to the fact of it. We say it's true.

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I can check the box. I can do the online theological exam and win. I get all the points.

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I pass the test, but we haven't embraced the implications of it because we don't live like it's true.

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Jesus says all authority. Do you believe it? Do you believe that he's the

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King of Kings, the Lord of Lords? Do you believe that he's seated on his throne today, as the scripture says, putting all of his enemies under his feet?

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Because he says all authority and that we look towards our culture, towards our rulers, our legislatures, and we assume, well, they don't necessarily have to obey his authority.

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He says all authority in heaven, and every Christian goes, yes, amen.

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Jesus is King over heaven. He's the boss there. Everything has to bow and yield to him in heaven.

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All authority in heaven, amen. But Jesus continues and says, and on earth, not will be given to me, has been given to me.

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He says, go therefore, because this is true, because all the authority is mine in all the earth and in all of heaven.

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He says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, win the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And he says, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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You see, the goal of the great commission, the gospel, that call to go into the world is to win the nations to Jesus, to disciple them, and to teach them to obey

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Jesus. What's that have to do with abortion? Absolutely everything.

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You have to hear this, the pro -life movement will not, will not stand in the word of God.

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And their aim, their goal is not the gospel. It is not the glory of Jesus Christ. It is not yielding to his authority.

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The aim of the pro -life industry and lobby in my country is neutrality. It is not standing on the word of God, believing what he says about the issue of abortion and having a prophetic witness in our culture with the word of God as our foundation.

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Now, don't get me wrong. Let me start with this. As I described that, you are pro -life.

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We are truly pro -life. We are for life, no compromise.

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But I want to encourage you not to allow us Christians, an industry formed in my nation that is not

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Christian to come in and represent you as your voice. This needs to come from the church of Jesus Christ.

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That's where this needs to come from. Believers just like you and just like me, with a prophetic witness in the culture with the word of God and the gospel on our lips.

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You see, when Jesus said this, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, it wasn't a novelty.

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It wasn't as though the disciples like heard Jesus say it and they were like, what? All authority?

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Go get all the nations? I've never heard such a thing. You see, this was actually the narrative that God had given to them all throughout the

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Old Testament. The Torah and the Tanakh had told this exact story that the Messiah was going to come into the world and he was going to get the nations to obey him, to believe in him.

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He was going to win Jew and Gentile together into one people, people from every tribe, tongue, language, all coming to the

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Messiah. That was the story. Daniel 7, 13 and 14. You know the story, right? Daniel looks in the night visions and what's he see?

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One like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven and it says he comes up to the ancient of days and is presented before him and it says to him is given, what?

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A kingdom, dominion, which will never pass away. All the tribes, tongues, peoples, languages coming to worship him, to come to him.

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Of course, our Bibles open up with this promise in Genesis 49, 10. It starts in the beginning, brothers and sisters, that first book of the

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Bible, Genesis 49, 10. There's a promise of one coming and the name is Shiloh and it says he's coming and it says, and to him shall be the obedience of the nations, the obedience of the nations.

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That's the aim. That's the goal, the obedience of the nations. Sound like Jesus? Sound like the great commission?

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Go get the nations, baptize them, father, son, holy spirit, teach them to obey.

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Genesis 49, 10. That's the aim of history. All the world are coming to believe in Jesus.

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Salvation to the ends of the earth, the obedience of the nations and brothers and sisters, Paul says it in Romans 1 and 16.

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He bookends his systematic explanation of the gospel with that statement.

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Romans 1, Romans 16, bookended. That the purpose of all of this was to bring about the obedience of faith or the obedience that comes from faith among all the nations for the sake of his name.

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You see, this is the aim of the gospel, to win the world to Jesus Christ, that they would come and bow to Jesus.

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Jesus is Lord. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth.

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We just sang it. It was in our songs in the beginning. Again, here are the words, king, king, king.

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He's the ultimate. We sing about it all the time in church. We put it on Christian t -shirts, king of kings, lord of lords.

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We put it on coffee mugs. We put it on posters and pictures and paintings. And here's the question, do we really believe it?

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Because you see, Christians in history did believe it. When they would come into a nation, they'd come into sometimes an island with very hostile inhabitants, and the end goal was to win the entire island to Jesus Christ, not create a few converts.

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You see, we had the mindset in history that it's about winning them and ultimately a submission to Christ's lordship in the

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Hawaiian islands. I don't know if you know this story. I told it last night. The Hawaiian islands, 1820, some

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Puritan missionaries go over to the Hawaiian islands. They're not

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Christian. They're the first missionaries there. And did you know that in 20 years of evangelization of the

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Hawaiian islands, in 20 years, over 90 percent of the Hawaiian natives were professing faith in Jesus Christ.

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And at the end of that mission work, in 20 years, they had a constitution of the

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Hawaiian kingdom. You know what it said? You can go look it up on Google. Go look it up. The constitution of the

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Hawaiian kingdom, 20 years of evangelism. And in that constitution, it says that no law of the

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Hawaiian kingdom shall be at variance with the laws of Jehovah God.

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The Hawaiian kingdom had a Christian constitution. You see the idea?

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The nation to Jesus, have them yield to his authority, believe in him, trust in him, experience life in him, and total transformation.

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You see, there's another verse. I love this too. You started off, pastor, where we were singing the psalms.

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Praise God. At our church, we make sure that in every service we have a psalm.

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And in psalm chapter two, it should be familiar to all of us. If you've ever tried to read the psalms, you at least made it to chapter two,

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I hope. And in psalm chapter two, it's another one of those things. It's another one of those verses.

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It's like, I've read that. I know that. I believe it. If you ask me to check the box, I'm going to say yes to you.

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I know. But do we actually believe with all its implications? Consider this.

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The father in the book of psalms, in psalm two, says to the son.

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So you have God the father speaking to God the son in psalm chapter two. He says this.

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Listen closely. 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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Ask of me, I'll give you the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your possession.

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My mentor and teacher, one of my heroes of the faith, used to ask this question. And come back.

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Listen to it now. Here's the question. He says this. Do we think Jesus forgot to ask?

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No. The great commission, he sends us out to accomplish that.

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And then the father, here it is. Do we believe it? Do we believe it? Will we live it?

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Will we submit to it? Then the father says to this, he says to the kings of the earth, he says, be wise,

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O kings. Obey the son, or you will perish.

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So here is God telling the son, all the earth is yours. And he says to the kings of the earth, obey the

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Messiah, obey the son, or you'll perish when his wrath is kindled. That's the context of the

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Christian worldview. And you understand, brothers and sisters, and Pastor Luke is going to explain some of this later to you. You understand that we understood this in the first century and throughout history.

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We understood the implications of this, so much so that early Christians, they weren't killed because they believed in Jesus.

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They were killed because they would not submit to the ultimate authority of the emperor as ultimate. They wouldn't say

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Kaiser Kurios. That's why they were murdered. That's why they were martyred. That's why they're dead.

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Why? Because they say, no, listen, we'll be good servants. We'll respect your authority.

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Government's ordained by God. You're God's servant to punish evildoers and protect the righteous. But we can't say you're ultimate.

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We can't say that you're ultimate Lord. Only Jesus is that. And you have to obey

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Jesus. The answer from many hostile governments in history is no way. And you actually had today, we came up here today and talked about the pastor in China.

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You remember that story there? You know what's amazing about that story? I find this so fascinating and I'm so grateful to God for that brother and what he endured for his message.

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Do you know what they actually charged him with? They said that this pastor was subverting the authority of the state and that's how you know he was preaching

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Christ clearly. You see, man -centered deified governments recognize the threat that this book is to their authority.

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When we deify governments on earth, pagan societies, they recognize that Christ as king, as ultimate authority is a threat to their authority.

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And you know what's amazing? Here's I fear. I fear this. I fear that the

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Irish government, the government in England, the government in the south, the government

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United States doesn't fear us much at all. Why? Because the

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Jesus we proclaim and the gospel we proclaim is no threat to their authority. You see, because here's what it's true about us.

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We're happy to keep our faith in Jesus behind our eyes and between our ears.

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We're happy to keep it in our church buildings and our homes and so are our governments.

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They're also happy with that. They're happy that we contain the message of the ultimate king in our little holy huddles behind these walls.

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There's where Jesus is safe for them. But the message of the gospel is that Jesus has ultimate authority and he's coming to bring his gospel, his salvation, eternal life as a gift to the ends of the earth to win the nations so that they ultimately obey

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Jesus. A truly biblical pro -life movement stands on God's word.

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No neutrality. Jesus says, whoever's not with me is against me.

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Matthew 12 30. There's another one. Have you heard that before? Have you heard it brothers and sisters?

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Have you heard that one? I don't know. I didn't do that in Irish, so I don't know if you understood that. Come on guys, come with me now.

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You can talk to me today. You've heard that, right? Whoever's not with me is against me. Yes? Do you think about its implications for this fight?

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Stop and think about it. When you face down the government here to call them to justice, when you plead for the lives of these pre -born, when you speak in the public square on this issue, whoever's not with me is against me.

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Whoever's not with me is against me. If we abandon a commitment to Jesus Christ to fight this evil, we also abandon the gospel itself because we're not proclaiming it.

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We're not pointing people to life and we're not addressing the ultimate issue that leads people to murder their children.

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It's sin. They are not victims. Please hear me on this because this is a big one. The pro -life industry, the pro -life lobby in my country says that women who have abortions are victims.

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You can watch our film, Babies Are Still Murdered here, and you will see the leaders of the pro -life movements very happily, very calmly, very easily saying that abortion is not murder and women who have abortions are victims.

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Brothers and sisters, if abortion isn't murder and if the women who have them are victims, then there's no reason to legislate against it.

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Abortion is just a matter of preference at that point. If it's not a sin and a crime, then there's no reason to stop it.

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You see what happens when you rob the Christian voice from this movement? You gut any ability to establish justice.

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There is no justice when you stand off of, apart from, the word of God on this issue.

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And here's the incredible thing, and please don't lose this, please don't lose this. You are in a better place than I am, than we are in our nation.

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We have 50 years of death behind us, 62 plus million babies.

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It's just part of our zeitgeist, spirit of the age. It's what we do. We kill our babies. It's easy.

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People have four, five, six abortions, right? People celebrate their abortions in social media.

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They laugh about it because we have so much time behind us where people have accepted the murder of the innocent unborn children, not innocent in terms of original sin, but in terms of they are not, they're a victim.

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In your nation, please hear me on this, don't lose this, please, please, please. In your nation, this was criminal.

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It was a crime. It just was. So you have a context in your culture where your culture has already assumed the criminal nature of a mother and father killing their own offspring.

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You're right on the edge of it. Don't lose that cultural understanding that this is a crime.

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This is murder. You can't do this to your child. We're so far away from it. We have to instruct our nation that you're in the image of God.

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This is murder. You ought not kill your own child. It was just a crime for you.

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And you have the pro -choice movements instructing your nation, my body, my choice.

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What if she was raped and all the pithy, silly arguments the pro -choice movement puts forward and you have, please hear me, my country establishing an industry, a pro -life industry in your country, trying to gut the

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Christian voice, not calling it murder, not telling the truth about it.

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And here's what I have to answer. I know it's there. Is God concerned with justice?

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Is God concerned with justice in this life? Is he concerned with justice here, today, now, under the new covenant?

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Because I think Christians will oftentimes say, you know, in that Old Testament, God's really concerned with justice. He has laws about theft.

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He has laws for righteous statutes about theft. He has laws against kidnapping and enslaving.

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He has laws against rape. He has laws against murder. He's real serious about justice in the Old Testament. They'll say,

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I acknowledge that. But you know, under the new covenant, man, it's a little different. Like, it's really just about getting people to heaven one day, like off of this place.

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I'm going to say that sounds very gnostic. We're not supposed to believe that, right? God's concerned with the world and that's why

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Jesus took on flesh. Like, he didn't come in just a spiritual body. He actually incarnated, took on human flesh, was raised in human flesh.

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He's come to make all things new, right? So the Christian worldview, God's concerned with heaven, earth, the spiritual, the physical, right?

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He doesn't throw the physical away. So it's interesting we think that way, but in the new covenant, people say, you know, he's more concerned with like individual salvation and like, you know,

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Bible studies and basements. You know, that's kind of, we're good with that. Like, that's the thing. I don't know if he's concerned with justice in the world today.

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Well, pastor actually preached or read. I didn't even ask him to do it.

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He read Jeremiah 23. What's the story about the righteous branch?

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You read it. You remember? We just did it together. Jeremiah 23. What's the story of the righteous branch? What's he going to establish?

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Justice and righteousness. That's the story of the Messiah. Our king saves people and he puts his law within them and then they love his law.

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They love his justice. They love his statutes, right? Like, that's what God does. He makes all things new.

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He makes us new creations and he's coming to win the world and all the nations, the obedience of the nations.

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Yes, God is concerned with justice, but is he concerned with justice? I want to point you to a passage that I hope gets you, challenges you.

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It's from Isaiah chapter 1 verse 10. Here's what it says. Hear the word of the

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Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. You know what's powerful about this?

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I know you guys, we have lunch coming. Just give me all you've got for the next 10 minutes or so, okay?

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And in Jeff Durbin time, that's 40 minutes, okay? Just kidding. Give me all you got. Now guys, come back here.

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Give me all you got before lunch and please hear this. Who's he talking to here? Oh, Sodom and Gomorrah. Unbelievers, right?

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Nope. Isaiah chapter 1 verse 10, God's speaking to his people.

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What? Right? Their response to, we're getting a word from Isaiah now, right? We're getting a word from the prophet of God.

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Yay. Listen to me, Sodom and Gomorrah. Like the worst of the worst.

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Wickedness, evil. I mean, listen, Sodom and Gomorrah, today it codifies for us.

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These words codify wickedness, sin, darkness, evil.

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And God says to his people, listen to me, Sodom and Gomorrah. And every person's got to be, wait, what?

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What? Sodom and, no, we're the covenant people. We're the church. We're the church.

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We're the people of God. What do you mean Sodom and Gomorrah? And God says this, what to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?

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Says the Lord. I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well -fed beasts.

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I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who is required of you this trampling of my courts?

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Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations.

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I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. You're doing all these rituals, you're showing up, you're doing the things, you're performing the stuff, you look very godly, all this piety, all these spiritual disciplines, and he says

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I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. He says your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates.

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They've become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands,

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I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

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Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes.

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It's powerful. God's speaking directly to his people. All the religiosity.

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I want none of it. He says your hands are full of blood, and here's what you need to hear, brothers and sisters.

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Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice.

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Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless.

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Bring justice to the fatherless. These pre -born little boys and little girls are fatherless children.

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They've been abandoned by their fathers. We see it all the time.

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When our church does ministry at the abortion mills, oftentimes these mothers will get dropped off in a taxi.

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You know that they're there for the abortion because they're told to wear comfortable clothes. So you'll see a cab pull up, taxi pull up.

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You see a young woman come out. She's wearing sweatpants and a t -shirt, you know, loose clothing. You start calling out to her, but she's alone.

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She'll yell at us. She'll acknowledge that she's murdering her baby. This whole victim thing, when people say the women who kill children in abortion are victims, brothers and sisters, the people who claim that don't stand outside doing ministry at abortion mills, they know.

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They tell us, I know I'm killing my baby. I don't want it. They'll call it their baby and we'll say, you're going to murder your child today.

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They'll say, I know. I have a right to. They know. We'll have sometimes a mother and a father show up together.

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It's a boyfriend or it's a husband. Sometimes they'll have their other children in the car with them and they'll go in to kill their youngest in the womb.

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But you'll see sometimes the mother and father come in. We'll plead with the father, sir, don't let her kill your child today.

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Be a man. Be courageous. Love your son. Love your daughter. Love your child. Stand up.

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Don't murder your child today. And then they'll just let the woman go in there and kill the child. They'll yell back at us at times or they'll argue with us.

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And other times you'll see a boyfriend come. He'll drop the girl off. He'll roll his windows down.

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He'll turn his music up real loud and he'll just leave the parking lot to go get a taco while he's just moving to the beats.

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These are fatherless children. They've been abandoned by their fathers. And in Isaiah chapter one,

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God says to his people, he says, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.

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You know, I know that a lot of times in Christian culture in the West, we're not concerned with biblical theology, systematic theology.

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We don't care about the confessions at times. Like, what are those? What's that even mean? Who cares?

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Those sorts of things. But it matters. The Bible says one of the attributes of God is that he's unchanging.

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He doesn't change. And just because we're in a new covenant doesn't mean that God in his very nature or what he's concerned with, that God has himself changed.

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God speaks to his people. He calls them Sodom and Gomorrah. And he says this, I don't even want your worship.

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Why? Because your hands are full of blood. You're doing wicked deeds. You're ignoring all these things around you.

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And so he says, here's what I want you to do. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead to widow's cause.

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And he says this, and here's the famous one. We all know this one because we love it. And you've leaned on it. I hope you have.

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I hope you have it buried in your hearts. And you've used this as you make war with your own inner monologue and your own sin or the voice of the enemy or the voice of the world.

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You've used this. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

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Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.

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But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword for the mouth of the

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Lord has spoken. That famous passage about our sins, scarlet, white as snow, it is right sandwiched between cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless.

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And then it's forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness. And then it's like, and then it says very clearly, if you're willing, obedient, you'll eat the fruit of the land.

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But if you refuse to rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword. The mouth of the Lord has spoken it.

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Do you see it? Is God concerned with justice? Yes, he's concerned with justice.

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God is concerned with justice. And of course, you know, the famous section from Matthew 25. I hope it's impacted you in many ways in your life because it has direct application to so many things.

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But Jesus says there will be a day, brothers and sisters, there will be a day. There will be a day for you and I as redeemed, not condemned, declared righteous believers through faith apart from any work of law, where we stand before the

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King for reward. And Jesus says, there'll be a day, there will be a day where he says to people, he says,

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I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.

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I was sick, you visited me. Prison, you visited me. And they'll say, when, when, when?

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He says, when you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it unto me.

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Will we hear that from the voice of our King surrounding the pre -born?

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Think about it. Will there be people who hear from Jesus something like,

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I know that it's hypothetical, but well, the context is doing it for the least of these.

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Will there be something like on the last day, a conversation with some professing Christian, something like,

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I was being murdered down the street from you and you did nothing to stop it.

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Those are the least of these. How can you get more least of these than them, than them?

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They are the least, least, least of these. And Jesus says, when you do it to them, you do it to him.

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That's what he says. Does it matter? Yes, it matters. Is God concerned with justice?

01:00:06

Yes, he is. Is it 1240, really? Wow. All right, we have lots more time together, more messages, my brothers.

01:00:15

Let me just end with this, these final words here. And I want to just humbly ask you to hear this, take it to heart, consider it, meditate on it, think about it.

01:00:27

The pro -life industry in my nation says, please hear this, don't call it murder. They won't.

01:00:33

They say women are victims. They are not working for the ultimate criminalization of abortion, the criminalization of abortion.

01:00:43

And they expressly say they are not Christian organizations, not fundamentally

01:00:50

Christian. National Right to Life, the largest pro -life organization, industry leader they've setting up in your land now, they explicitly say they're not a

01:01:03

Christian organization. We've got some Christians that work with us, but we're not a Christian organization. No neutrality, brothers and sisters.

01:01:10

Whoever's not with me is against me. And of course, I'll leave you with this as you face the culture around you with the gospel, which

01:01:16

God says is the power of God for salvation. You lose the gospel, you lose the ability for life to spring out of your nation.

01:01:25

No proclamation of the gospel, no life. If you end abortion in Ireland, and it's not through the gospel, with a proclamation of the gospel, you still have death all around you, spiritual death.

01:01:40

You need the gospel, it's the power of God for salvation. But Jesus says, and this means everything in the context of the pro -life movement and establishment and the war against this evil.

01:01:54

He says, whoever is ashamed of me, Luke 9, 26, of him, he will be ashamed.

01:02:05

Whoever's ashamed of me and my words, Jesus says, he will be ashamed of.

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If we get out into the public square, and you must go there, you must go there and lay your lives down for the sake of these children and for the glory of God.

01:02:19

If we go out there ashamed of Jesus' words, the promise from his own lips is,

01:02:25

I will be ashamed of you. And those words have to cut us.

01:02:32

It's going to cost you, it's going to cost you everything.

01:02:39

Maybe your reputation, maybe money, it'll cost you. I'll confess to you that since we started doing this ministry, we have received more spiritual attacks and more difficulty than we ever could have imagined.

01:02:58

I often describe this ministry as the most awful, beautiful thing you'll ever do.

01:03:05

It is the most awful, beautiful thing you will ever do. It is moments of beauty and joy mingled together with pain and ugliness and darkness.

01:03:16

It is a baby was saved, praise God, tears on your knees, and next thing you know, the most ugly, difficult situation being thrown at you, spiritual attacks, there's false brethren, there's accusations, there's slander, there's gossip, there's evil, there's things being thrown at you, cars running up on a curb to hit you, people beating you up on the street, there's people vilifying you in the media.

01:03:42

And it's the most beautiful thing imaginable. Why? Because God says the two great commandments is this, love

01:03:49

God and love your neighbor. That's what we are called to, love him, love our neighbor. I want to encourage you to see this, your fight against this evil coming your way is the essence of that.

01:04:02

Your fight against it is the essence. It's all held up, bound up together in it. Will you love

01:04:07

God and will you love your neighbor? Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

01:04:14

Lay down your life for the sake of the unborn, brothers and sisters. It's worth everything. Let's pray.

01:04:19

Father, I pray you bless the messages that went out for your glory. I pray that, again, you would not allow it to be the words of a mere man, but I pray that your words would impact us by your spirit.