Special Event: Arizona Pastor's Meeting | LIVE

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Good morning. If you would, I know this seems odd, but I hate when people do things like this in church, raise your hand and, you know, say hi to your neighbor.

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Could you come down closer to the front so I can, yeah. I can see you, it just feels a little odd having you all scattered.

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And thank you. I'm going to start by telling you how truly grateful we are as pastors at Apology of Church.

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We know what it means to take time away from your schedule and your families and your church bodies to be at something like this and the commitment that it takes.

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So we genuinely are grateful for you and the sacrifice that you've made to be here. So we're honestly so thankful.

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I mean, in Kentucky we had around 400 people at the Creation Museum for what we're doing here in Georgia with G3 and Josh Bice.

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We had somewhere around 125 pastors and that just honestly blew our minds because we would be thankful for one other church in the fight with us here in this state.

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So God has been pouring out his blessings and even to see your faces and you in this room is just, it's a great answer to prayer for us to have more faithful pastors and believers involved in this fight to bring the gospel into conflict with abortion.

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And so we're just pastors. We're just your brothers.

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We're not coming here to talk down to you in any way but to really meet you eye to eye and ask for your participation in this effort to bring the

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Word of God into conflict with abortion in our state. So I know this isn't a conference.

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I don't want to wear you out with a ton of talks all day. We just really want to speak from our heart to you brothers and sort of let you know what's going on in our nation right now and in the state and what

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God has been doing through us and the churches that we are working together with across the country. So if you would, join me in prayer.

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Let's ask the Lord to bless this. Father, we're grateful for you. We're grateful for our salvation that we have in Christ.

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Lord, we're so thankful that you love us and that we call you Father. We're thankful,

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Lord Jesus, for the righteousness that we have that comes from you as a gift through faith. We're thankful for your perfect life and your death on our behalf and your resurrection.

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We're thankful that you're seated on your throne, that you have all authority, that you're the King of kings and Lord of lords, and God, we come to you as your shepherds, under shepherds, asking,

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Lord, would you allow us to be faithful? God, please give to us the strength and the wisdom and understanding to know how to bring you glory and increase your fame in this issue,

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Lord. You know that we're not many in number. We're not overly mighty.

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We don't have the abilities that some of these organizations have to fund what they do, but Lord, we have you and we have your truth, the truth that transforms and renews and brings to life, and so we're asking,

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God, as your men that you've called to this ministry to lead your people, we're asking that you would give to us conviction, that you'd speak,

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God, to our own hearts and minds and transform us, challenge us, and then,

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Lord, raise men up, raise these men up, Lord, to speak your truth in the gospel in conflict with this.

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Lord, you speak so many times about your care, your concern for the fatherless, and Lord, as you know,

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I've said so many times, I can't think of a more fatherless child than these children who are being executed in the safety of their mother's wombs, and so,

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God, we're asking, Lord, please move not just emotionally in us, but,

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Lord, by your word, by your truth. Let your truth come from us as the light, and we just pray,

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God, please put this enemy under your feet, and we just pray that you establish justice for our preborn neighbors, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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So, the text, brothers, the text, Matthew 18, sorry,

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Matthew 28, 18 -20, those famous last words in the gospel according to Matthew, for me, this really has everything to do with where we've gone wrong and where we need to go now, and so, in Matthew 28, 18 -20, it says,

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And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the

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Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

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So, this is that moment where the Lord Jesus is ascending, as was promised, as was prophesied.

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Of course, the entire life and ministry of Jesus, his death and resurrection, all of that, of course,

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Jesus was telling them, it was foretold by the prophets. He chastises his followers in the road to Emmaus, calling them foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken.

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This was what was prophesied. This is what God was gonna do in the world with his Messiah. He was gonna bring salvation to the nations, all tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations.

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He was gonna rule and have all authority. He was gonna be the one who was seated at the right hand of God, putting

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God's enemies under his feet. And so, Jesus now is at the tail end of that in Matthew's narrative, and we have this epic final, or the finale, the last words of the

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Lord Jesus as he ascends, as was promised. And he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, past tense.

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That's under the rule and reign of Rome, with Caesar, practically with an earshot, with some very confused disciples, a limited number of people who are following Jesus, very confused.

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You know, they're on the road thinking the whole thing is over, and of course, Jesus confronts them. This was all prophesied.

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You should have known this. And now, here's that moment, and it probably didn't look like to them in just their circumstances and the environment that they were in, like this was what it was gonna be.

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I mean, the Old Testament prophecies of the kingdoms, the nations, the knowledge of God covering the earth like the waters cover the sea, all those prophecies that even confused

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John the Baptist a bit when he's like, well, are we to expect another? I mean, those promises are epic of the

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Messiah's rule and authority, his kingship, his salvation, his kingdom, his justice, and his righteousness that's gonna fill the earth, the law going from the people of God into the world as a blessing to the world.

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Even John the Baptist is a bit confused. You know, are we to expect another? Because, man, you are one lowly servant, and this doesn't seem like it fits the narrative that God gave to us, and so what's going on?

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And in this moment, here is the ascension, Christ, you know, ascending, raising, and going to that throne to be seated, and a limited number of people, and the claim is made, all authority in heaven, and this is where I believe most evangelical pastors fail in our generation, it's something that you can see throughout church history, and on earth.

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The and on earth part is the thing that I think we're missing, and it goes everywhere, it has everything to do with everything.

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It has to do with my life before God, my responsibility to submit to and yield to His authority, has everything to do with my wife, my children, my family, the church, and, of course, the rest of the world.

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We've created this distinction between sort of like we've ecclesiasticized the

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Bible, as my friend says, like it's that church book, and it belongs between your ears and behind your eyes in that building over there.

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It's fine to worship Jesus. It's fine to call Him Lord, but don't say He's Lord over us. Don't say that He's Lord over all the earth.

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Don't say that King Jesus has something to say to the kings of the earth, or that the

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Lord Jesus has something to say to the lords of the earth, and I just want to remind us brothers humbly that we know from the first century, particularly in the book of Acts and the godly troublemaking they were causing through the proclamation of the truth, that those early

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Christians in the first century were in fact persecuted and martyred and killed not because they worshiped

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Jesus. We know that. Pagans don't care that you have another god, you add to the pantheon. They don't care about that.

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It wasn't that they were worshiping this one called Jesus. You can worship whatever you want in Rome.

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Rock, stubble, stone, hay, gold, doesn't make a difference. The problem was is that the apostles and the leadership of the early church was proclaiming the gospel in such a way that it highlighted the exclusive nature of salvation only through Jesus, but they were also making another claim.

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They were claiming that Jesus is kurios, that Jesus is

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Lord, and that was something that came into direct conflict with the ultimacy of the state, the ultimacy of Caesar, and so the early

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Christians could have easily, easily, and many of them I'm sure did, professing Christians, gotten out of martyrdom and being destroyed by simply saying kaiser kurios.

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Caesar is Lord. I will profess you're the ultimate. You are the one with the final word. Caesar is

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Lord. You have to just offer a little pinch of incense. That's all. That's all. You get to go home.

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You get to love your kids. You get to continue to do your job, you know, have a retirement or whatever it looks like in Rome in the first century, whatever the case may be.

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You get to live a normal life, but you just have to say kaiser kurios. That's all you have to say. But the early Christians recognized that yes, though we are called to be good citizens and obedient citizens in whatever culture that we're in, under whatever government we're in, so long as that government is of course obeying

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God, they knew that they were required to live peaceably and to submit even to silly stuff that was really inconsequential.

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They recognized that, but they also recognized this fundamental aspect of the Christian faith.

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Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord and he is, and this was the profession, happening during the days of Caesar.

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And this is what strikes me as just powerful. The profession that we put on coffee mugs today and on oil paintings and on t -shirts, that Jesus is

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King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that claim was made in the first century within earshot of Caesar.

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That he has all authority on earth. That Jesus has something to say. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth, the book of Revelation says.

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That's in the first century. That's under the reign of Nero. And they preached the gospel in such a way that they highlighted the authority of Jesus Christ over all things, including

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Caesar. Yes, Jesus, King Jesus, has something to say to every realm that there is.

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He has all authority. And so I want to just encourage you brothers with this. When we got into this as Apologia Church, we were a church that came out of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility.

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I was the chaplain at the hospital downtown. It was called Calvary Recovery Center. And I was the head chaplain over their entire program.

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They had a Christian program, 24 -hour care, doctors, medical detox, nurses, all that stuff, and a

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Christian program. And they also had a secular program. And so I was the Christian program.

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I was the only guy. And they were making millions of dollars because they advertised as a

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Christian drug rehab. And God brought so many people to Christ out of that place that it became clear to us and to the elders

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I was serving with at the other church I was pastoring that the Lord was calling us to plant

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Apologia Church to care for these people. So we came out of a church at a drug rehab with a really rough -looking crowd.

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A very rough -looking crowd. I mean, it wasn't just our Pastor Luke who was all tatted up and had gauges in his ears.

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It was pretty much the entire church. So Luke fit in very well. But when we first started, very passionate, new believers in Jesus Christ.

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And this issue of abortion came to us. God brought it to us. And it really hit us heavy as a church where we really felt convicted and challenged that we need to love our neighbors more than with just our mouths.

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More just on Sanctity of Life Sunday. We recognized that all around us in the valley were abortion mills where they were dismembering, disemboweling, decapitating little boys and girls in the wombs of their mothers.

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And some of these were only a mile or so from us. And we knew that we had the only message that could help.

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We had made relationships with other believers who were saving a baby a day. Lisa Metzger was one of the women that really challenged our church body because when

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I talked to her on our radio program, she had told me that she had been doing this for 20 years. Going out to the abortion mill, preaching the gospel, offering help and hope to the moms.

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And she said, yeah, we saved like 365 babies. And my jaw hit the table. 365 lives saved because a woman goes to the abortion mill to preach the gospel.

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And she said, yeah, last year. Last year. And so I mentioned that to tell you that there wasn't much to us as a church.

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We were a very small church, all baby believers, some of them in real deep struggles.

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It was like 24 -hour care as a shepherd. It was going to scoop people off the street at 1 a .m. And bring people to detox and all these different things.

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It was a rough space. But God really put this on our hearts to really actually care for our neighbors who were being killed.

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And it challenged us that this woman is saving lives just going to preach the gospel to these women. And so we didn't know what we were doing except we knew, okay,

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I know what this is. This is murder in the eyes of God. I know that we have the message that can save.

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And I know that we love these women, these fathers, and these babies. And so let's just go. And so there wasn't much to it.

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We just went. And my very first day going to Planned Parenthood in Phoenix, we saved two babies that day.

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First day. And then we started saving babies throughout that week. We would have another save and another save and another save.

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And then, you know, twins were saved. And then we're holding these babies in our arms after they're born.

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These mothers are bringing them to our church, and we're holding them, which changes everything, by the way. You hold these babies in your arms, and it will change you for good.

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Because it's not just theory anymore. There's flesh on it. Oh, this is reality. I've kept it in the realm of, like, you know, it's up here in the intellect, in the thought life.

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This is what is happening, but now I'm tasting it, and I'm seeing, and I'm feeling. And so there wasn't much to us.

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We weren't mighty. We didn't have a lot of money. We were just going to preach the gospel. So what happened was we would just announce it on the radio program.

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We would say, hey, welcome to the show. Hey, by the way, we had two saves this Saturday. Praise God for that.

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So Christians started hearing the podcast, and they started saying, hey, what are you doing? How are you doing that?

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And we would just say, I don't know. We go and preach the gospel. That's all

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I can tell you, is that we're literally going to stand and tell the moms. We have 15 seconds from door to door. We would say, as she gets out of her car with her boyfriend or her husband, we would say, mom.

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We call her what God calls her. Mom, please don't murder your baby today. We'll help you.

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Please talk to us. Please just come and have a word with us. Please don't murder your child today. So we would bring the word of God into conflict with what was actually happening.

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We weren't standing out there with tape over our mouths in silence or walking down streets praying rosaries. We were standing on the sidewalk, and we were pleading with mothers saying, mom, would you please come talk to us?

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We're here because we love you. We want to help you. Please don't murder your child. You're not going to no longer be a mother.

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You're going to be the mother of a dead child. Please come talk to us. Christ can forgive you. You can come to Christ for life.

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Please, we'll give you anything you need. We'll adopt your baby. We'll pay for your needs. We'll give you a place to live. Door shuts.

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That's it. That's about all we had. And God used that to save so many babies.

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At this point, our church, we've sort of stopped counting because it's hard to calculate at this point because it's happening so often.

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We have teams going out to different churches. We don't have, like, a record or something we're keeping. I'd say it's somewhere over 1 ,000 or over 1 ,000 babies locally that Apologia Church has saved.

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So all glory to God for that. But there's not much to us. We're not professionals. We just go out there as believers with the gospel.

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So people started hearing and saying, well, how do I do that? And so we would just simply say, call it what it is.

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Preach the gospel. Offer to help them. Tell them you're there for them. You'll help them. And other churches started going out and doing it.

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Other churches just like us. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to go out there and do it. Saving hundreds of babies. Hundreds.

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And so what happened was the Lord allowed us to get to a point where we said, you know, we have to actually, if we're going to have an impact on this,

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I feel like we're at the end of a stream, and we're just taking buckets out at the end of a stream where it's being fed from somewhere else.

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We have to do something more substantial and gospel -centered to help raise churches up to do what we're doing and to bring the word of Christ to the legislature.

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I know. I know, brothers, that we're often very careful about being involved as pastors in this pulpit in petty partisan politics, right?

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Like, you know, putting up vote for Trump or vote for Murphy or John signs at our church. We know that that's forbidden.

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We don't want to be involved in any of that. But, brothers, make no mistake about it, this issue is not a political issue.

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It's a moral issue. And if it's a moral issue, that means that King Jesus has something to say about it.

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He has authority over that. That has been our conviction. That is the essence of our conviction, is that Christ is the ruler of all, and his word is the truth, and he has authority over this issue.

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There's no neutrality with him. We need to speak the truth, and we need to speak it everywhere. In the public square, at the abortion mills, of course in our churches.

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But we need to also speak it to the people who are in power to say that God demands of you to establish justice for these preborn children.

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God commands you not to pervert justice over fatherless children. That's an explicit command from God.

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And so what we said was, okay, Lord, we don't have any money, because we didn't. We didn't. We don't have any money.

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But clearly we can do this. We can help train churches to do what we're doing at the abortion mill. Save the lives where they're being taken, and then bring the truth into the public square as to what really is going on with abortion, and how do you actually end it according to scripture with the gospel.

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And we need to bring the gospel and the truth to our legislators, and we need to get bills of abolition and equal protection put into the states.

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So the Lord put that conviction in our hearts. We prayed, Lord, if it's what you want, please help us to fund this.

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And he did immediately. The Lord blessed to get it funded immediately with a stranger. And so since that time, brothers,

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I just want you to hear how God has used this gospel -focused approach over the issue of abortion.

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We've raised up, I think at this point, over 900 local churches across the U .S., Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland.

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We have Scotland. There's Canada, Australia, New Zealand, all over the world, and it's happening in other places.

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Tens of thousands of babies have been saved at this point. We try to calculate, in some sense, numbers because churches don't always, like us, they don't necessarily get the numbers and report them.

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But there's about 8 to 10 babies being saved per day at the abortion mills across the U .S. through that effort.

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And it's a local church -based effort. That's all it is. End abortion now is just a banner over how do you approach this.

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And we've given away training and free resources and everything to the churches. We've never asked for a penny from those churches.

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We just want to give everything away and help to raise those churches up, and they're active now. Now, the issue we need to equip you on and notify you of comes in the next stage where we really started focusing on the legislation.

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What we started to learn early on was this, brothers, is that the pro -life establishments, the pro -life establishments, the pro -life industry, these organizations,

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National Right to Life, Louisiana Right to Life, those sorts of organizations, those organizations boldly and with confidence tell you that they are not

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Christian organizations. They are not operating on the basis of Scripture. They'll tell you they're not doing this because the

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Bible says. They'll tell you that. We have them on record saying that. They are not doing this calling people to repentance and faith in Jesus.

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It's not gospel -centered, and they're very proud of that. They like to say that they are neutral organizations just approaching this because of biology.

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That's what they say. Biology says, they say, and this is what they raise funds on, biology teaches us that from the moment of fertilization, you are human at fertilization.

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And by the way, absolutely yes, that's what Scripture would teach us. And of course, biology screams that. But brothers, have we noticed something?

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That our culture is so dead in trespasses and sins, it is so lost and in darkness, that biology is meaningless?

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You can tell somebody, you're dressed like a woman, but you got a beard. Your biology is shouting something other than what you are showing or what you're professing.

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Your biology speaks to something different. What's the claim made in our culture to that? I don't care, right?

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I feel like a woman. I feel deep down in my spirit that I'm actually a woman trapped in a man's body.

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I feel like a woman. I feel feminine. I don't know. I don't care what biology says. I want this because my heart wants it.

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The issue is a problem of the heart and sin and rebellion. It's not a problem of biology. So you can say all you want to Planned Parenthood supporters and to pro -aborts, you can say the biology screams human from conception.

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You know what the response is? I still have the right to kill it. It's my baby.

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I have the right to kill it. They don't care that it's human. They don't care that it's fully human because it's not a problem of biology or light.

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The problem is a problem of sin and rebellion. And the only answer to that, brothers, is the gospel.

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And that's the call to repentance. And so what we began to discover and learn is that the pro -life establishment not only refuses to approach this standing on the authority of Scripture with the gospel itself.

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The pro -life establishment has long -standing doctrine. Now, I want to just say this, brothers, and confess this.

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I think many times today you've got a lot of discernment ministries and others who will call everything heresy. Like heresy is the

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Bible. That's a heresy. That's a heresy. That's a heresy. We love to call things heresies to freak Christians out about, stay away from that.

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That's heretical. Oftentimes, maybe things that actually aren't really technically heretical. It's not in our domain.

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Like, I don't like that. That makes me uncomfortable. But we love to use the word heresy, and I think we abuse it.

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But in this case, brothers, we discovered that in over 50 years since Roe vs. Wade, the pro -life establishment actually believes what is technically, biblically speaking,

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Christian history speaking, technically heretical. I call it the heresy of the pro -life establishment.

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And this is what I wanted to notify you brothers of because it's what we're up against, not just the issue of the authority of Christ and the gospel itself, making it about the gospel, dealing with it the way that God tells us to, but the issue of the establishment and their doctrine is that the establishment believes that we should have a principal actor in abortion protected with immunity.

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And what I mean by that is this. The pro -life establishment raises funds and teaches that we are human from the very moment of fertilization that is incontrovertible.

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When they go to churches and raise funds, they use Christian language. They say, we're fearful and wonderfully made.

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Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. They use all of the verses that are threadbare. They use them all.

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And they say that biology screams and testifies to the fact that it is fully human at the moment of conception.

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They will say that. However, they are not working to abolish abortion with equal protection.

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They work in regulation and bills of partiality. And what I mean by that is they will actually promote and celebrate bills.

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I'll tell you one they did last year before Roe v. Wade. And we argued in that case as well with an amicus brief that overturned

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Roe v. Wade. They will say things like, hey, praise the Lord.

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Thank you for your giving. We just had a bill pass that says that you can no longer kill the child in the womb with sharp tools.

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You have to use suction or chemicals. In Arizona, we put a bill in that was a bill of equal protection and abolition.

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It called it the image of God. It said that it's human from the moment of fertilization.

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And it said all human beings in the state of Arizona, from fertilization to natural death, should be protected with equal protection.

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That's consistent. That's Christian. It's unassailable. Human from the moment of fertilization, equal protection for every human.

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Black, white, doesn't matter your color, doesn't matter your origin, doesn't matter your social status, doesn't matter your size, doesn't matter your location, equal protection for every human from fertilization to natural death.

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Consistency, it would have abolished abortion. It would have ended abortion two years ago. The person who killed the bill was the leader of the pro -life establishment in the state of Arizona.

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Her name is Kathy Harrod. She killed the bill. She went to every legislator and told them, do not pass that legislation.

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A bill to end abortion in the state of Arizona. The head of the pro -life establishment fought hard, went to secret meetings, called, worked effectively to kill our bill because she said, we don't want that bill.

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Why? And she publicly announced it. She said, I will never support any legislation that punishes the mother in abortion.

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We believe in the pro -life movement. She said this, and she's right. In the pro -life movement, we believe that both mother and baby are equally victims.

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Mother and baby are equally victims. That's the heresy of the pro -life establishment.

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What does Scripture call the issue of abortion? What is it defined as if we use the biblical worldview? Murder. It's the unjustified taking of human life.

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Now, I'm not going to go over because some of you guys could probably do it better than me. Some of you guys are a lot older than me.

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No, I'm just joking. Just teasing guys. I'm not going to go over all the verses that prove from Scripture this position.

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Image of God from the moment of fertilization. It's the unjustified taking of human life. That is within the semantic domain of the word, you shall not murder.

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The unjustified taking of human life. That's what it means. And so, that's what

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Scripture calls it. Murder. Kathy Herod has told me that she cannot call abortion murder because she has too many sisters in Christ to have done it.

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To which I say, my church is filled with women who have had abortions, but they call it what it is, and they fled to Christ for forgiveness.

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You're telling these women that they don't need to turn to Christ because they're victims like their child. You're robbing these women of the gospel.

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And she said that we believe that both mother and baby are equally victims. And again, from the perspective of historical orthodoxy, the

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Christian church. Look, in this room right now, I know we're together on the essentials, but we have differences of opinion on a lot of side issues, right?

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And that's okay because we're together on the core. But you know what's amazing is that on this issue of abortion, brothers, if you look it up,

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I can give you some resources on this, it is absolutely astonishing the consistency of the

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Christian church throughout history on this issue of abortion. From the Didache, the earliest writing we have in the history of the

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Christian church, outside of the New Testament, that earliest piece, those earliest pieces that come up to us, the Didache calls it murder.

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Accuses the woman who participates in it, and anyone who does, of murder. And then as you move through the first five centuries of the church, you will see an absolute unanimity of opinion amongst the

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Christians who are talking about this issue of abortion and abortifacients. They call it murder, and they call women and men to repent of it and to flee to Christ for it.

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They had a very consistent message on the issue of abortion. It is amazing the history of the

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Christian church on this issue of abortion. And when I call it the heresy of the pro -life movement, that's what I mean.

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The heresy of the pro -life movement is the pro -life establishment has a doctrine that they teach to their donors and, here's the thing, brothers, to Christian pastors and churches that rob women of the gospel.

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They tell women, you are not guilty, sweetie. You did nothing wrong.

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You're a victim just like your baby. Now, brothers, I can only imagine if you took collectively all of our experience of all the women we've sat in an office with or across from who have had abortions, the number of women that that would be.

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I know that it's a lot. In my experience alone, it's a lot. Just in my church alone. What's the message we've had for these women our entire ministries, brothers?

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There's forgiveness in Christ. You have to turn from your sin. You have to trust in Jesus. He'll wash you.

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He'll cleanse you. You'll be declared righteous. You'll have peace with God. You can come to Christ. He forgives liars and adulterers and murderers.

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He'll remember your sins no more. That's the message of pastors to women in church who have had abortions.

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And the establishment tells us, no, they're not guilty. They're victims just like their children.

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And what the establishment has done is they fought against every single bill that we've put in, in every single state, because they do not want a principal actor to be punished for the issue of abortion because they do not believe that she's guilty of any crime or any sin.

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That violates scripture. That violates the whole history of the Christian faith and message.

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And that is the core issue. Kathy Harrod fought our bill. And her fighting against our bill was no different than in every other state we've got the bill in, which has been many.

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South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, a number all across the country.

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We've had them in Oklahoma. Her bill, she said, don't pass apology of church's bill.

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Don't pass that bill. We don't want women to ever be seen as guilty. Well, Kathy, do you believe that it's human from fertilization?

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Yes. Do you believe all life is sacred? All life needs to be protected? Yes. So the baby in the womb, though, well, we don't want equal protection for them if it means that a mother and a father would be accused of anything if they killed their children in the womb.

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So she told the legislature in Arizona, don't pass that bill. She said, pass mine. Now, this will shock you, appropriately so.

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She said, don't pass that bill of equal protection for all humans from conception. Don't do that. Pass mine. And her bill said this, and you can check me on this, brothers, please do.

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Her bill said, you can kill your baby in Arizona, but you have to give it a proper burial.

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She said, her bill said, bill of permission, you can kill your baby in Arizona, but not for the express purpose that it has a genetic abnormality or express reason it has a genetic abnormality, to which

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I told her personally, Kathy, do you understand that your bill is irrelevant and meaningless because all someone has to do in Arizona with your bill as you got it approved is simply say,

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I'm not killing my baby because it has Down syndrome. I'm killing it because I hate it. And your bill is irrelevant.

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Do you understand? And then she did something else that most people didn't notice. Arizona law, since essentially our inception, has forbidden and criminalized abortion for doctor and mother.

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Did you know that? 13 -3603 and 13 -3604 have been on the books since the very beginning, essentially.

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Kathy Herod knew this. Do you know how I know she knew it? Because she taught it to me. Kathy Herod and I used to be friends.

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She used to love our ministry until we started entering the area of abortion. Then she would have nothing to do with us. She told me

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Arizona law has never changed. It's always been a crime for the mother and the doctor to kill their baby in the womb.

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Always. She taught that to me. So when she told the legislators not to pass our bill, she then got her bill in and they passed it.

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And then her bill had one line, one little line in there, in the middle of it. And it said, repeal of 13 -3604.

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Do you know what that was? She decriminalized abortion for the mother in the state of Arizona.

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Kathy Herod, the head of the pro -life movement in this state, decriminalized abortion for the mother in the state of Arizona.

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Why? Because their doctrine is that the mother is not guilty for murdering her child in the womb.

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And she must be protected. So we fought this fight across the country, making it about the gospel, raising up pastors and churches to speak on this issue, to save lives at the mill and to go to the legislature.

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And we've gotten these bills in. And brothers, I want to give you some good news. This is the good news. We asked

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God to give us one righteous controversy in one state. Because the establishment kept killing every bill we put in.

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They would let it die in committee. They would make sure that it wasn't passed. We said, Lord, can you give us one state to expose this and,

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Lord, to establish justice? And Louisiana was the state. Our bill in Louisiana met a legislature that was predominantly professing pro -life.

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Now, when Brian Gunter, our pastor on the ground in Louisiana, one man, one church, tiny church, when he was working with the legislators, he would go to them as a minister of the gospel.

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He would call them to fidelity to scripture and fidelity towards these babies, faithfulness.

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And he would say, look, here's the bill. What's in the womb is in the image of God. All humans begin at fertilization.

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All human life will be protected from fertilization and natural death. Simple bill. So easy.

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It fits right into the code of Louisiana. And it just says this. If you kill the child in the womb, it's like killing me.

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It's like killing you. It's just equal protection. No gender is mentioned. No mothers are mentioned.

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No fathers are mentioned. No doctor is mentioned. No class is mentioned. All it says is in Louisiana, human life begins at fertilization.

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All human life will be protected equally in the state of Louisiana. It's that simple. It's a bill that glorifies

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God. There's no partiality. It's consistent. It's consistent with what the pro -life establishment says they believe and what they raise funds for.

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So he went to the legislators as a minister of the gospel, just speaking the truth to them, praying for them, saying, do what's right before God.

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Be consistent. No partiality. No compromise. Do what's right. He would say to legislators, do you believe that is human from fertilization?

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That pro -life legislator would say, yes. He'd say, look, here's your bill. And they go, oh, that's what

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I believe. That's what we all believe. Absolutely. And so somehow the providence of God, our bill slipped into a hearing.

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They weren't able to stop it from getting a hearing like they do most places. It gets into the hearing, and it sails through the hearing.

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What was it, nine to two? Seven to two. Seven to two. One legislator, when they were saying to vote for it to go to the floor, one legislator said, instead of saying yes, said absolutely.

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Absolutely. Because it's obvious. Of course. That's the bill that glorifies God, protects children, abolishes abortion.

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That's the bill. No partiality. It's not an abomination to God. It is pleasing to God. It's consistent.

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He said, absolutely. We polled the legislators that week before it went to the floor vote. We polled them.

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All we needed was like 51 or 52 votes. We had over 70 yeses. They said, I'm voting yes on that bill. We thought, this is where it's going to begin.

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This might be where it begins in Louisiana. This might be where it actually happens. It's gotten out of committee, and now it's going to the floor.

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It was the first floor vote in the history since Roe versus Wade of a bill of equal protection and abolition that actually made it to the floor.

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God did that in Louisiana. And do you know who he did it through? He did it through about eight Christians working here and one faithful pastor working in Louisiana.

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One. One church, brothers. Here's what happened. On the day of the floor vote, the establishment did a national letter that they put out to all the legislators across the

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United States of America. And they had over 76 pro -life organizations in the country, the largest ones in the country, including the

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ERLC of the Southern Baptist Convention, saying to legislators across the country, we do not want you to pass bills of equal protection, any bill that would penalize the mother for killing her child.

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We had, I'll keep some of this private. We have some people that you know, some of the most famous people you can imagine, who were darlings of the conservative party, contacting our legislators personally saying, look,

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I know the bill is right. They said that. I know it's right. I know it needs to be done, but not now. Don't pass that bill.

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Not now. Not now. And so the day of the floor vote, we went from over 70 legislators saying yes, to what do we have?

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Five. Five. Because the pro -life establishment came in and told them all to say no to it.

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Here's why. Because they believe that the principle, one of the principles involved must be protected and have immunity.

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So they've even said in Louisiana, look, our abortion mills are closed now.

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Louisiana is an abortion -free state. Brothers, there is no abortion -free state.

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Roe has changed nothing in that respect. As a matter of fact, you can demonstrate without question that actually abortion is elevated in many of these states because now it's all

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DIY. Do -it -yourself abortions from home. The pill industry is increasing.

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It's making a lot of companies very rich, and it goes to home now. And here's what we need to understand, is that the pro -life establishment has zero, no answer, no answer, no response to mothers who kill their children in their womb from the privacy of their own homes.

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Because they've already told her for 50 years, you're not guilty for doing that, sweetheart. You're a victim as well.

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There's no answer, and to that degree, there'll be no end to abortion with their doctrine, with their

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Christless, gospel -less doctrine. There'll be no end to it.

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We talk about things like we need to make abortion unthinkable. The only way to make abortion unthinkable is to have hearts and minds change.

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That's only through the gospel. You take Christ out of it, it's never unthinkable. Also, I'd like murder and rape to be unthinkable too, but you know what else?

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I want it to be crimes too, right? Like I want no one to ever think to abort, to violate another woman's body.

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I want no one to ever think that, but I also demand that it be seen as a crime, because there's a victim here we need to be concerned with.

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A victim, and that victim is our neighbor. So we must uphold the rights of the victim, the victim's rights, and protect them.

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In the issue of abortion, this for us is the main issue. Brothers, we got a bill into the state,

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Arizona, again. We got another bill in Arizona. It was dropped by Cory McGar, a bill of equal protection, abolition, and criminalization.

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We got it in Arizona. We have it, and it's already been fought against night and day by the establishment.

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Kathy Harrod has already worked hard to kill our bill, a bill coming from Christians, a bill that is consistent.

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It's consistent with what Kathy says she believes. She's fighting to kill the bill. Why? Because the pro -life establishment, brothers, is a

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Christless, gospel -less movement that has no concern for the actual abolition of abortion.

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I'm gonna try not to go too far over time here. I'm gonna read you a scripture in a moment here, but I wanna just put these before you, brothers, if you would just think about this.

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One, what's wrong as a minister when you assess it? What's going off of the plumb line?

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What's broken? Thy word is truth. Okay, so what are they saying? They say that these bills of permission that you can kill this child but not this child are glorifying to God.

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I say, scripture says, unequal weights and measures are an abomination to God, Proverbs 20, 23.

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Proverbs 20, verse 10, unequal weights and measures are an abomination to God. If you wanted to see how

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God feels about partiality, read James. Read James. And what does God call partiality in his word?

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What's he call it? An abomination that is loathsome, that is detestable. Brothers, can I just say this very bluntly to you?

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If we took a bill of equal protection that says image of God, equal protection from fertilization to natural death, and we took a bill that said you can kill this child but not this child, or you can kill this child with these tools but not these tools, which, on the last day, which bill does

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God hate? Which bill does he loathe?

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Which is detestable to him? And we've said for so long, we've been indoctrinated as ministers of the gospel to believe that this is all we can do, we've got to compromise, we've got to do what's practical and pragmatic, we've got to just accept the abuse of these children, 62 million of them, we've got to accept that and just take what we can.

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Brothers, is that how we preach to our people from this stage? That we focus on pragmatism and practical over principle and the truth?

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How do we get to that place where pastors have been duped into thinking in the Christian church in the

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West that we just need to close our mouths and just accept what's coming to us rather than being prophetic, having a prophetic ministry that just tells the truth?

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No, these are the words of the Lord, this is the gospel, this is who has all authority, God commands you to repent and God commands you to do what's right and establish justice.

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How do we get from a place where we have Christian forebears that fought and lived like that to a place where pastors have essentially had their mouths closed by the establishment that says take what you can get?

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Did William Wilberforce take what he could get? 20 years almost,

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William Wilberforce, 20 years of him preaching to Parliament and them saying no, no, no, no, no.

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Every year, almost 20 years, 1789 he starts preaching and proclaiming in Parliament this is an abomination in God's eyes, we are all of one blood, these are image bearers of God, he is just doing it as a

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Christian, he's standing on the word of God. At one point, the next year after they shot him down and said no, we're gonna keep the slave trade alive, the next year he spoke to them for three hours straight.

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I wish I could hear that sermon, that message, I wish I could, three hours. Have you ever gone that long preaching?

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I mean, some of us have come close, but that's a lot, right? Three hours and guess what? They said, you'd like to have like the climax of the movie,

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William Wilberforce comes up, he's preached three hours against the slave trade, the image of God, this is an abomination before God, man stealing and sin and all this stuff.

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You'd like to think climax is the parliament breaks out in sackcloth and ashes and everything. They said no, they said no.

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And then he came back and he kept working, but they did it as Christians on the word of God and England changed and turned from the slave trade, not because of compromised political organizations, but because of Christian truth.

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That's the truth. And we are not gonna end abortion in this land apart from the gospel and the authority of Jesus Christ.

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We cannot approach this with neutrality and we can't approach it with compromise and partiality as the establishment has done.

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They say that you can do it with unequal weights and measures, God says it's an abomination. They acquit the guilty,

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Proverbs 17, 15, it says this in God's word, it says, whoever acquits the guilty and condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to God.

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We get that naturally, that latter part. I think it falls on all of us to feel that because we know about Christ too.

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Whoever condemns the righteous is an abomination. We go, ah, that man in court who was falsely charged and condemned and spent 20 years in jail, how horrible, you feel the weight of that.

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You condemn the righteous, that's an abomination. You feel the weight of that because it's such a perversion of justice, but the first part of that verse says, whoever acquits the guilty is an abomination.

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The pro -life establishment acquits the guilty before God. They say to a principle person in the act, you're not guilty, sweetie.

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You're a victim like the baby. You're innocent, nothing to repent of. No consequences ever.

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Immunity and impunity. God says, whoever acquits the guilty is an abomination. And as a gospelist movement, which is the core issue, brothers,

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I had this whole thing written out, I was like, I just wanna talk to the guys today. You can go watch other things we've done if you want a more expansive explanation of the details here and refuting arguments and all the rest.

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We're asking you to join us. Not to join our club, not to join an organization.

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I'm not asking you to be board members of any organization. I hate when people ask me to do that. I'm sure you do too, right?

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I'm asking you to stand with us as brothers and as pastors in the state that we're in and to speak the truth, to speak the gospel on this issue, to make it about Christ, to make it about repentance and faith, to make it about consistency in God's law and all of that.

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I'm asking you to join us. Louisiana was one guy, brothers. If you were at Apologia Church, we're not a massive church, we're not a mega church.

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There's not much to us. We don't have a ton of money, right? There's nothing special about us. We're just Christians trying to serve the

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Lord. We love these children. And God used Apologia Church, by his grace, to save tens of thousands of babies from death and to put in bills of equal protection across the entire country.

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Brothers, we're one church. We're one local church. That's all we are. And we're not huge. We don't have huge funding either.

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What happened in Louisiana was because of one consistent minister of the gospel. It was just one man, Brian Gunter. That's it.

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It doesn't take massive numbers, and I know I don't have to instruct you on that, and I'm not trying to. God oftentimes dwiddles the numbers down of the army to make sure that the whole world knows that it was him that did it, right?

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So brothers, we are asking you, please, join us. Join us in this fight.

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We need you in Arizona. I'll be honest, just straightforward with you. We felt many times like we're doing this whole thing alone.

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When we got to the abortion mill, and it's Apologia Church baking in the sun, different abortion mills throughout the week, you feel at times like, where's the church?

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The church talks about this as evil. We talk about it. We want it to end. But where's the church? Where's the church? Because the killing places are right here.

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Why are we standing here without like 50 local churches? It would shut down immediately, right?

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If we had 20 local pastors speaking to the congregation consistently on this and raising them up, abortion would be over in Arizona.

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It would be over in Arizona if we had 20 churches that rose up that stood hard against this with the truth and told legislators, you will do what's right before God, and you will do right for these children.

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You will establish justice. We're expecting that of you. We're praying for you. We'll support you, but you must do right before God.

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If we had 20 churches and pastors and congregations in our state that were doing that, I'm confident with all my heart, abortion would end.

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The problem is is the Christian church in this state is virtually silent. We speak on Sanctity of Life Sunday. We do our videos.

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We speak to our churches and congregations, but we're not bringing that message into the public square where it belongs.

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That's where we have to go. Brothers, please join us. I won't, let me ask you to do this. I'll just ask you to do something on your own.

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If you could just do one thing for me as a brother. I won't read it to you now. When you get home or later tonight or whenever you can, read

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Isaiah chapter one. Would you do that? Read Isaiah chapter one and read it in light of this issue where God speaks as the unchanging

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

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I don't want your prayers. I'm weary of bearing all of this. And God tells them why.

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It's because their hands are filled with blood, and they'll do nothing about the injustice all around. So he says, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, and here it is, bring justice to the fatherless.

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That's right before he says, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet to be as white as snow.

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Right before he says that amazing promise of forgiveness, he tells them, bring justice to the fatherless, correct oppression, cease to do evil.

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I believe that's our call, because I believe God is unchanging. That's his heart, that's his character, that's how he feels about these sins.

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And he tells his covenant people, I don't want any of your worship, I don't want any of it, everything, all the religious stuff,

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I don't want any of this stuff, I don't want it, I'm not impressed by it, because of this. So stop all of this,

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I'll forgive all your sins. But you must, you must establish justice. Please read

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Isaiah chapter one. I'm gonna bring Pastor Luke up now. Pastor Luke is one of the elders of the

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Apologia Church, and Pastor Luke and I planted Apologia Church together after being sent, how long ago,

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Luke? How long has it been? The church? Yeah. 13 years and two weeks.

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Yeah, he's always good at remembering. He remembers everything for me. And we started this ministry together with that very small church, and so Pastor Luke has been an integral part of all of this, and so I just appreciate you guys listening to what he has to say.

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Thank you, Pastor Jeff. Greetings, brothers, thank you so much for joining us today and being a part of this.

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I'm really, really honestly very grateful that you all came to this today. So I'm gonna probably repeat a little bit of what

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Jeff said, but intentionally, because I want to really drive some things home, but here's the thing.

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Even though Roe v. Wade has been overturned, abortion is still very much alive and well in Arizona.

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Unlike the babies that are still being butchered in their mother's wombs. I will discuss why this is the case, but know that this is a plea to all of our pastors and our church leaders here in Arizona to help us end this moral atrocity in our state once and for all.

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Before I go any further, though, please bow your head with me and ask God to bless this. Lord, I just thank you so much for this opportunity to speak to my brothers here today.

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Lord, I ask that you'd use this message in this event, Lord, to inspire and encourage our pastors here in Arizona, Lord, to get in this fight and to help us end abortion, to help end the murder of our pre -born neighbors in this state once and for all.

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Lord, we ask that you would be glorified. In Christ's name we pray, amen. So I want to start out with Proverbs 24, 8 through 12, which says,

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Whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to mankind.

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If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death.

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Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, Behold, we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?

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Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay man according to his work?

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Verses 8 through 10 here clearly and accurately describe our wicked culture.

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They plan to do evil and are therefore schemers. In their folly they devise sin.

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They scoff at God's law, making them an abomination to all of mankind. And in verses 10 through 12 it says,

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I'm sorry, these verses are written for the church and Christ's bride whom he atoned for. Brothers, we are living in a time of adversity.

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Are we going to faint, showing our strength is small? Or are we going to rise to the occasion, declaring that our strength is founded and rooted in our creator?

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It is not a suggestion, but a command to rescue those who are being taken away to death and to hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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There is no better opportunity to do so than this. Pastors and church leaders, if you say,

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Behold, I did not know this, does not God who weighs your heart perceive it? Don't you think that he who keeps watch over your soul knows it?

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Will he not repay according to your work? Proverbs 6 teaches us that God hates the hands that shed innocent blood.

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And in Joel chapter 3, God promised to make Egypt desolate and Edom a wilderness because of the innocent blood that was shed in their land.

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In Leviticus 20, not only does God promise to set his face against those who practice child sacrifice, but also against those who close their eyes to this abomination.

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Them and their clans, it says. Brothers, where does this leave us? Where does our nation fall into this?

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Which category would God place you in? Our founding fathers, overall, rightly understood this.

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As my dear friend and my brother, Zack Lautenschlager, has said, these men were literally willing to lie face down in the mud so that generations after them could walk across their backs in freedom.

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We are still reaping the benefits of their faithfulness today. Although if the church does not quickly rise up, we soon may be literally staring down the barrel of tyranny.

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These men lived and breathed, 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13, which says, Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

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Unfortunately, so many men who claim the name of Christ have forgotten this. Untold numbers of men have neglected our duty to be watchful, to stand firm in the faith, to act like men, and to be strong.

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To the degree that men have deliberately and cowardly remained silent or chosen not to fight for the lives of our pre -born neighbors.

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This must start in the pulpit, with faithful and courageous pastors willing to fight for liberty and justice for all, including the pre -born.

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Probably the greatest influence on our founding fathers that government -issued history books have failed to mention was the black -robed regiment.

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These courageous men were the faithful pastors of our founders. They trained up their congregations in the word while also preparing them to fight for their

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God -given rights and liberties. They led the charge from their pulpits. One of my personal favorites, who has had a tremendous influence on me as a pastor, was

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Reverend Jonas Clark. His work in ministry has impacted me so greatly that I have named my son after him.

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Jonas Clark was a farmer, a patriot, and a Presbyterian pastor of Christ Church in Lexington, Massachusetts.

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He was best friends with the father of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, and his wife's cousin,

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John Hancock. On the night of April 18, 1775, Adams and Hancock were staying at Clark's home, which they frequented often in Lexington.

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The British had learned of the whereabouts of these men and were on their way to capture them. The men were greeted by Paul Revere, who had intentionally stopped at Clark's house during his famous ride to let them know that the

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British were coming. Adams and Hancock asked Clark if the men of Lexington were ready.

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He replied, I trained them for this very hour. They would fight, and if need be, die, too, under the shadow of the

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House of God. The next morning, April 19, 1775,

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Pastor Clark led his Lexington Minutemen out onto the battlefield to face the invaders.

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The British ordered this makeshift citizen army to throw down their arms and to name the

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King of England. The response from the Clark -trained and prepared patriots was, we recognize no sovereign but God and no king but Jesus.

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Clark recognized the importance of fighting a defensive battle and not an offensive one, therefore preparing his men not to fire unless fired upon.

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What happened next was the infamous shot heard round the world. Jonas Clark lost 18 members of his congregation that morning who were innocently murdered by the

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British. These men were willing to lay their lives down for their God -given rights.

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They were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice in order to ensure equal protection of life and liberty for all their neighbors.

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On April 19, 1776, Pastor Clark delivered a sermon on the one -year anniversary of the shot heard round the world, three months prior to the signing of the

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Declaration of Independence. His sermon text was a passage I already mentioned.

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It's Joel 3, 19 -21, which says, As demonstrated when facing the

01:00:17

British, Pastor Clark lived and breathed this principle of no king but Christ. He rightly understood

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God's sovereign rule over all nations and firmly believed that all governments should bow their knee in submission to their creator.

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As Psalm 2, verse 12 states, This includes our governing body of elected officials.

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Jonas Clark not only believed this but was also willing to die for it. In his sermon he taught this.

01:00:56

He said, He also understood what impact the shedding of innocent blood has on a nation and ultimately wanted nothing to do with it.

01:01:26

In this sermon he also said this, Pastor Clark was spot on.

01:01:59

Brothers, will you have the courage to lead your congregations like Pastor Clark did? Will you fan the flames of liberty like the

01:02:06

Black Robed Regiment did? To any legislators who may be watching or may hear this later, the shedding of innocent blood will not be avenged until justice has taken place, and justice will not take place until the murderer is punished.

01:02:21

You have the perfect opportunity to do so now, to either be a hero or play the coward. The choice is yours.

01:02:29

Choose this day whom you will serve. And in the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1, 20 -21, he says,

01:02:51

Pastors and legislators, are you being courageous? Are you honoring Christ with your lives by standing in the gap for your pre -born neighbors?

01:03:04

This point I'm about to bring up may be a little shocking except Pastor Jeff already kind of hit on this.

01:03:09

This is where I'm going to tag team with him. But if you're here or you're listening to this, you need to hear this. It's the

01:03:17

Arizona GOP and the conservative lobbyists that are keeping abortion alive in our state.

01:03:23

They have not been fighting to wipe this atrocity off the map, but have only fought to regulate it.

01:03:30

This is not speculation, but fact. And we have the demonstrable evidence to prove it.

01:03:37

You guys don't have to answer this now, but in your hearts, how many of you have given money or even encouraged your congregants to give money to Kathy Harrod, the

01:03:46

Center for Arizona Policy, or the Arizona GOP? We, as Christians, have had it ingrained in us for far too long to vote for Republicans and wait for the right

01:03:59

Supreme Court justices. Then Roe will be overturned and abortion will finally end.

01:04:05

Well, guess what? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Roe has been overturned, which is a good thing, but abortion is still legal.

01:04:13

And it's not because of the liberals, but because of the conservative faux -life lobby. Did you know that there has been a law on the books in Arizona for a long time, since at least the 70s, criminalizing abortion?

01:04:31

13 -3603 made it a crime to abort a preborn baby for the abortionist. And later another law, 13 -3604, was added, strengthening this legislation, but also criminalizing abortion for the mother or any other party involved in the murder of these precious babies.

01:04:50

It has been illegal this entire time, nearly 50 years, but it has not been enforced because of Roe, a court decision, not a law.

01:05:02

In 2021, we introduced a bill that strengthened 13 -3603 and 3604, calling on legislators to ignore

01:05:11

Roe and end abortion once and for all in our state. As Pastor Jeff already mentioned,

01:05:18

Cathy Herod, the president of the Center for Arizona Policy, not only condemned our bill, but also made sure it did not even get a hearing.

01:05:25

She publicly bragged about how she could never condemn a mother for hiring an assassin to murder her own children in her womb, her own child.

01:05:34

She then introduced a bill that was eventually voted into law, striking down 13 -3604, thereby decriminalizing abortion for the mother.

01:05:44

To make things worse, for some unknown reason, last year, in March of 2022, the

01:05:52

Arizona GOP signed into law a 15 -week ban. This was three months prior to the fall of Roe.

01:06:02

So currently, in Arizona, abortionists can murder children up to 15 weeks, and mothers can murder their own children at will with no penalties through abortion pills and DYI home abortions.

01:06:17

If you guys don't know this, half the abortions in our nation right now are done through the abortion pill. Actually, today,

01:06:26

I just asked for an update. We have Corey McGarr, who's put this bill forth again this year, and we're waiting for it to get a hearing.

01:06:33

It looks like it's not going to get a hearing because the head of the Justice Committee will not give the bill a hearing because he's listening to Kathy Harrod and the

01:06:44

Center for Arizona Policy. So please hear me. We cannot thank the liberals for this, but Kathy Harrod, again,

01:06:54

Center for Arizona Policy and the Arizona GOP, the very same people who we all have supported and voted for.

01:07:03

We've actually helped legislators get into office who said they were going to support our bill, and then when pressure was applied to them, they turned their backs and did not vote for our bills.

01:07:14

This is despicable and must stop. This is why we have invited you all here, and this brings me to my last point.

01:07:24

Proverbs 29, 18, where there is no prophetic vision that people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.

01:07:33

This is exactly what we are looking at. There has been little to no prophetic vision from the pastors in Arizona, resulting in the people casting off restraint.

01:07:42

Many of the conservative legislators and lobbyists here in Arizona, including Kathy, claim to be

01:07:48

Christians and go to solid Christian churches. Just imagine how different things might look if all the pastors in their congregations in Arizona held these people accountable.

01:08:00

This is what we're asking of you now. Romans 13 calls our civil authorities

01:08:05

God's deacons, his avengers of wrath. Their job is to protect the innocent and punish the evildoer.

01:08:13

We need to not only remind them of this, but also keep them accountable. After all, they do work for us, but ultimately, they will also be held responsible by their creator.

01:08:27

So in conclusion, I'm going to end with this blessing from Jonas Clark in his sermon. He said, may that God, who is a

01:08:38

God of righteousness and salvation, still appear for us, go forth with our armies, tread down our enemies, and cleanse and avenge our innocent blood.

01:08:47

And may we be prepared by a general repentance and through reformation for his gracious and powerful interposition in our behalf, that we may see the displays of his power and glory for our salvation, which

01:09:01

God of his infinite mercy grant for his mercy's sake in Christ Jesus. I think we're going to do lunch now?

01:09:11

Okay, he's coming up. Thank you, brothers. Alright, brothers, so we're going to give you lunch.

01:09:19

I want to say thank you to Bill. Thank you, brother. Great man, and he opened the church up to us, and ACC is actually providing lunch for you guys, so grateful so much for all you've done.

01:09:30

I want to give you some encouragement, too. There's a lot of hard things to say right now that are obviously very discouraging, but some encouragement about what's happening right now before you go to lunch.

01:09:41

So, you've probably heard me say this, 10 years ago, we were just praying, Lord, if you could just give us one legislator, just one, who would, who loves you and loves these children and will do what's right and be courageous, if we could just have one,

01:09:54

Lord, just one. To my knowledge, the very first one was Senator Joseph Silk in the state of Oklahoma, and that bill was put down and fought against by Tony Louinger, who's the vice president of National Right to Life.

01:10:06

Kathy Harrods, sorry, not Kathy Harrod, Zach, help me here, who's the head of...

01:10:12

Carol Tobias is the president of National Right to Life, Tony Louinger, vice president, he killed the bill in Oklahoma.

01:10:18

By God's grace and in his power, we were able to get that bill, same bill, of equal protection and abolition in states across the country.

01:10:26

Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma it happened, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Louisiana, South Carolina, it's been happening across the country.

01:10:34

But it happens in sort of like spurts and in seasons, right, like one will happen in this session and then, you know, nothing else is really happening.

01:10:42

This legislative session, this session right now, it's happening right now, we have bills of equal protection that we're directly involved with, we've got into place, and friends of ours, other pastors and churches we're working with in their states, we're getting,

01:10:57

I just got word just now, Ohio now, we have Ohio, I'm going into Ohio, just happened. We have it happening in at least 14 states right now across the country, and it may be two more states by the end of this session.

01:11:10

That's unprecedented, brothers. I want you to feel the weight of that. That is unprecedented.

01:11:17

In 50 years of Roe vs. Wade, there weren't bills of equal protection and abolition. It was all regulation.

01:11:22

Kill these kids, but not these kids. That's exactly what they've been. The whole way through, all partiality. The fact that you have bills of equal protection, bills that glorify

01:11:31

God, that are abolition bills happening is in itself a big moment, but the fact that you have it in one legislative session happening across the entire country is an incredible thing.

01:11:42

I feel like God is just shouting to the church. And where did it come from? This is what I'm going to challenge you to think about as you have lunch.

01:11:49

Where did all that come from? Did it come from the establishment? Did it come from neutral organizations?

01:11:54

Did it come from organizations not operating on the basis of Scripture and the Gospel? Every one of those bills, every single one of them, has come from pastors.

01:12:07

Pastors. That is what I'm calling you to, brothers. Stand with us as men of God.

01:12:14

Everything happening right now that's advancing this to actually end it is happening with those who bring glory to Jesus.

01:12:22

With those who preach the Gospel. With those who call this what it is. That is what

01:12:27

God is blessing. That is the only thing I believe that He will bless. That is what

01:12:32

I want to encourage you with. God is moving in a very powerful way, but He's moving through the ministry of His Word and with His people.

01:12:40

Not with neutrality and not devoid of the Gospel. Bill? The youth room.

01:12:51

Yeah, that's where we used to... We rented from Bill for years or from ACC for years, so I know that room well.

01:12:58

Good and bad memories. Let's pray over the food.

01:13:04

Father, please bless, Lord, our fellowship, our time as your children. Thank you for this food. Thank you for Pastor Bill and for ACC and everybody who's worked so hard to make this happen for us.

01:13:13

We praise you. Continue to bless what we're talking about today for your glory and kingdom. In Jesus' name, amen.

01:59:53

Next up, Zachary Conover. Zachary Conover has been with us for many years.

02:00:00

He is the director of communications for End Abortion Now. If you've seen some of our content, I'm sure that you've seen some of Zach, and he spends a lot of time with us in this ministry helping to get churches equipped, get them trained to go out to the abortion mills in their area, making sure they have all the resources that they can have.

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Zach is just an amazing teacher when it comes to seeing the central problems here and how to respond to them.

02:00:27

I'm happy for you guys to get to know Zach. If we all begin to work together as co -laborers in ministry in the state of Arizona, I'm sure you're going to be hearing a lot from Zach yourself.

02:00:36

Come on up, brother. As everyone said, thank you all for being here today.

02:00:58

It's an honor to be a part of this work. It has been since the very beginning. I never thought that I'd be doing this. I'm just a kid from a small town,

02:01:05

Apache Junction, out east. You know what they say, no good thing ever comes out of Apache Junction. But the

02:01:11

Lord has a sense of humor, and so here I am. He's redeemed me and saved me and called me for his glory to do this work, and so here

02:01:18

I am, and here I stand. I'm just going to read to you from Revelation 12.

02:01:24

Whatever your view of the book of Revelation, I'm sure that you can appreciate this. This is the word of the living

02:01:31

God, Revelation 12, verse 3. And another sign appeared in heaven.

02:01:37

Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his head seven diadems.

02:01:43

His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it.

02:01:58

She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

02:02:06

But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank you for this moment in time.

02:02:16

Thank you that this is the day and hour that you have called us to live. Lord, let us not be unwise in saying to ourselves, we wish the days were like the past when we didn't have this before us.

02:02:29

You have raised every man up in this room for such a time as this, and I pray that we would respond to your call and faithfulness for the sake of justice for these children and the glory of your

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Son, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray. Amen. In the brief time

02:02:46

I have, and I have a lot of sins in the area of going over on time, I really want to try to be brief. I want to talk to you about equal protection.

02:02:53

That's the nature of our legislation. We believe it is the biblical standard, and the reason we believe that is because we, as Pastor Jeff has said, want to ground our conviction in the

02:03:05

Word of God in Scripture and how we approach this and even in the kind of legislation and the nature of it, what we're seeking to accomplish here.

02:03:13

God says to the rulers in the civil sphere, magistrates in the psalter, he asks, how long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?

02:03:26

I've heard a lot about partiality thus far today. This favoritism, right? This showing, this tipping of the scales in favor of one party or another based on arbitrary subjective factors not relevant to the merits of one's case or the works that God plainly sees because he's the impartial judge, right?

02:03:44

He doesn't slip the scales in favor of the mighty or the weak in terms of the favor that he grants.

02:03:52

And so this is how he calls us to do justice. He says to the magistrates, give justice to the weak and the fatherless.

02:04:00

Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Now the question is, we hear a lot about justice today.

02:04:06

It's a buzzword and usually it's in the realm of social justice, right?

02:04:12

So how do we do this and accomplish racial reconciliation and all of these things coming together?

02:04:18

But if you look at what the word actually means in the Scriptures and we define it biblically, justice is simply this.

02:04:25

Giving our neighbor what God says is their due. And did you know that God actually says what we're due?

02:04:36

In his word, in his law. And so the question before us when we're talking about equal protection is, what are the pre -born image bearers in the wombs of their mothers do?

02:04:46

What are we commanded by God to provide them? And the answer to that question is, they are due the same protections that you and I are.

02:04:55

Why? Because we're all made in the image of God. This is elementary stuff on deck here as you've already heard, but this is why equal protection is the biblical standard and simply, very simply put, here's what it is.

02:05:11

Equal protection states that the same laws that protect born people ought to protect people before they're born.

02:05:20

If someone asks, what is this legislation all about that I'm trying to get involved in supporting? Give me just a little blip.

02:05:27

There's your summary right there. What are the laws that protect your life and my life?

02:05:33

Those same laws ought to protect people before they're born. We talk about this being a gospel issue, right?

02:05:41

An issue of sin. An issue of justice. An issue of calling people to repentance. But also, in addition to that, it's an issue of loving our neighbor supremely.

02:05:53

Jesus says, these are the two greatest commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

02:05:59

And the second is like it. They are equal. Love your neighbor as yourself.

02:06:05

Make sure that the same provision you make for yourself is extended wholly and completely to your neighbor.

02:06:13

That's why equal protection. Because God demands that we treat all people the same under his law.

02:06:20

And what is partiality? Partiality is treating people differently under his law.

02:06:26

Not giving them what God says is their due. So how do you want your life to be guarded?

02:06:33

How do you want your life to be protected? Protect the unborn that way.

02:06:39

That's really what we're talking about in a nutshell. It's interesting. This commandment to love your neighbor, we know that Jesus is quoting from somewhere when he says that.

02:06:48

He's quoting from the Old Testament in a book where most of our Bible reading plans go to die. The book of Leviticus.

02:06:54

So Leviticus chapter 19, that's where Jesus is quoting from. Love your neighbor as yourself.

02:07:01

But it's interesting, a few verses prior to that, in verse 15, this is what he says about how to love your neighbor in terms of justice, in terms of a courtroom setting.

02:07:09

He says, you shall do no injustice in court, you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

02:07:20

That's the standard. Righteousness. According to what God says is their due.

02:07:26

That's justice. What is love? A Biblical definition of love, aside from what the world says, which is just a summoning and channeling of our deepest emotions and feelings and just splattering that out everywhere and seeing where it lands.

02:07:39

Biblical love is treating our neighbors lawfully from the heart. Right? These two concepts are intimately related.

02:07:46

Justice and love. They are harmonized together in the scripture.

02:07:53

And so, as I said, God weighs a person's actions truthfully and judges based on the merits of one's case, not on subjective factors.

02:08:05

You've already heard Pastor Jeff talk about unequal weights and measures being an abomination to the Lord, right?

02:08:11

How much more, even though we're talking about monetary features and economic scales, how much more when weighing lives in the balance?

02:08:21

How much more when putting lives on the scale? God says you can't treat them differently.

02:08:27

We don't treat people as more valuable based on gender, skin color, status, age, or on whether they're born or unborn.

02:08:35

And that is grounded in the character of God himself. That's the point. In Deuteronomy 10, 17, it says for the

02:08:43

Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome

02:08:49

God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. God demands that we be treated the same under his law because we're all made in his image.

02:09:00

And this is what the pro -life movement and the pro -life industry have said for a long time now.

02:09:06

This is what we believe as those involved in the cause for life, those giving our time, those sacrificing, those making every effort to provide justice for these children, and that's grounded in the text of scripture itself.

02:09:19

If you want to look with me briefly at Exodus chapter 21, I just want to show you.

02:09:26

This is God's case law in which he takes the principles of the Ten Commandments, so thou shalt not murder, and applies them to real world situations and examples.

02:09:36

And this is what it says in Exodus chapter 21, verse 22.

02:09:46

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined.

02:09:56

So God's law envisions here a situation in which two men are being negligent and striving together, and they accidentally cause an early delivery for a pregnant mother.

02:10:07

The baby comes out as a result of their striving. Just that act of simple negligence carries with it an immediate fine.

02:10:15

Because of the conditions of early labor and delivery and everything that would be associated with that, medical reasons, the provision that needs to be met in order to care for that child and care for that mother.

02:10:27

But listen to what it says next. The one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

02:10:38

Verse 23. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

02:10:51

Well, wait a minute. The question here by necessity is harm to who?

02:10:58

The mother or the child? The answer is yes.

02:11:04

The text is intentionally ambiguous on that.

02:11:10

For what reason? Because every single person is made in the image of God.

02:11:16

And God does not treat people in the womb differently than he does people outside the womb.

02:11:22

You see this in the text of scripture itself, even in the New Testament. God even uses the same terminology to describe people outside of the womb as he does inside the womb.

02:11:31

When he's talking about the baby in the womb, when he's talking about John the Baptist and how John the Baptist leapt in his mother's womb when he came into contact with Mary who was pregnant with the

02:11:41

Savior, the brephos, the baby in her womb leapt. That same brephos in the womb is the same term used to describe the baby that's born in the manger in Bethlehem.

02:11:51

The brephos, before he's born. And so God doesn't make these distinctions.

02:11:58

So you have children in the womb, like John the Baptist, being identified in one way, and then you have the exact same mode of identification for the child in the manger.

02:12:09

There's none of these arbitrary distinctions and why is that? Because babies are persons, including pre -born babies.

02:12:17

They're persons, just like the rest of us. No distinctions. And we all know, of course,

02:12:22

Psalm 139, the beginning of life from the moment of fertilization. God knits us together in our mother's womb.

02:12:29

We're fearfully and wonderfully made. His eyes saw. He was there and he saw our unformed substance, the text says.

02:12:38

And that word there is the same word that we use to talk about an embryo.

02:12:45

A human being in its earliest possible stages of development. So what is the text telling us?

02:12:51

From the first day of your life, from the moment you were conceived, God was there. And he was fashioning and forming and pulling together all the threads of your life and your existence.

02:13:01

And the text says, when as yet none of the days of your life were written yet. God knew them all.

02:13:09

He was there giving meaning to every breath, every heartbeat. Even prior to those things taking place.

02:13:16

He was there. And so, the problem is, when it comes to this issue, we have said that we believe these things but we have written partiality into our laws.

02:13:28

It's written into every single pro -life law that you can think of. It's even written into our own 15 week ban here in the state of Arizona.

02:13:34

Our laws say, the fetus is a person from fertilization and it must be protected.

02:13:41

And they even have equal value. Right? Tease this out a little bit, we're talking about a case in which a pregnant mother gets killed or someone takes her life.

02:13:50

What do we call that? How many counts of homicide? Two. Two counts of homicide.

02:13:56

Good so far. We recognize the consistency there. And then, there'll be this little subsection in the law and it will say something like this.

02:14:06

The provisions of this code do not apply to the mother of the child.

02:14:15

And there's the inconsistency that you've heard about so far. We write it into our laws themselves.

02:14:21

And that is, by the way, how we got Roe versus Wade. The Supreme Court knew which direction this was going.

02:14:30

On our side, there were people arguing that preborn children are humans. They're worthy of full dignity, value, and protection.

02:14:37

We need to protect them. And no state shall deny to its persons under its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

02:14:44

That's constitutional. And the Supreme Court said, okay, if what you say is true and what you really believe is that the preborn child is a human being and that they should be equally protected just like everyone else, then how can the mother not be a principal or an accomplice to the crime?

02:15:01

That was a question that they asked. They knew. They saw the inconsistency. Or they asked this question.

02:15:08

They said, if the fetus is really a person, may the penalties be different for taking their life as opposed to taking the life of someone outside the womb?

02:15:18

As is so common in the pro -life statutes, the laws that we write.

02:15:25

Brothers, they gave us the winning shot. Even back then, before all of this started, before Roe and 60 million dead children were foisted upon us, that was the beginning.

02:15:36

They told us how to win. And the answer to winning is to be consistent, to be biblical, to do what the

02:15:43

Word of God says. Perhaps you thought that being pro -life meant that no one had the legal right to kill a pre -born child.

02:15:50

Maybe you were under that impression. And that is correct. The problem is, the majority of the pro -life industry doesn't believe that.

02:15:57

They believe that someone does have the legal right to do this. I was interacting with a representative online for a well -known pro -life advocacy group in Georgia, where we have a bill going in.

02:16:10

And one of the common hashtags or catchphrases of the pro -life movement is love them both.

02:16:17

I don't know if you've heard that. We need to love both mother and baby. We need to be compassionate towards moms.

02:16:22

And so the question I asked, because this lady was opposing our bill, opposing our legislation, was, okay, love them both equally.

02:16:35

Because God says that there's no distinction between them. The only difference is an issue of degree.

02:16:41

Size, location, you know, how old they are, their age, right, those arbitrary factors.

02:16:48

And so the question is, how can we love them both equally if we treat them differently under the law?

02:16:58

How can we love them both equally and give them what God says is their due if we are treating them differently?

02:17:05

How do we do that? That's partiality. Ask these questions.

02:17:13

Do you believe that a mother who knowingly and voluntarily kills the child in her womb should never face any legal consequence?

02:17:22

I've yet to get an answer to that question. They will not say it.

02:17:28

They will avoid these questions. The fact of the matter is that abortion is the only instance of homicide in our nation where one party to the crime has complete legal impunity.

02:17:39

And that's the heresy that you've already heard about. Abortion is murder.

02:17:45

Amen? Abortion is murder. No matter who does it.

02:17:53

If it's going to be illegal, it needs to be illegal for everybody. Otherwise, it's not really illegal as long as someone can do it.

02:18:00

I know this seems simple, but sometimes the best way is to state it as clearly and as simply as possible so it can impact us and we can actually change our behavior to make sure that we act in accordance with the truth.

02:18:16

God's word forbids us from perverting justice, and in this case justice against the fatherless. Legally speaking, these children, these babies, in our land today and in our state, they are for all intents and purposes fatherless, orphan children.

02:18:32

And the scriptures are very clear about the essence of true religion. Care of the orphan and the widow. Defend those who cannot defend themselves.

02:18:40

Protect those who cannot speak for themselves. Who are being led away to the slaughter.

02:18:47

The word of God gives us the way to fight and end abortion.

02:18:53

And as you've been told already, I wanted to share something with you hopefully that will bless you. This is a resource on our website.

02:19:00

I just wanted to share with you some examples. We come from a long and illustrious history of faithful Christians throughout the ages that have fought against this, and they were incredibly consistent on this issue, as you've already heard.

02:19:13

They were faithful saints, they gave this evil no quarter in their day, and they were willing to say the hard thing and act on the conviction of the clear testimony of scripture.

02:19:22

And here's just a few examples of this. This is as early as the third century of the church.

02:19:30

This is Basil of Caesarea. There are two ways. The way of life and the way of death.

02:19:37

And the difference between these two ways is great. Therefore, do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant.

02:19:46

Sorry, that's the didache, what you heard referred to earlier. This is Basil. She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus must bear the penalty for murder.

02:19:57

Moreover, those who aid her, who give abortifacients for the destruction of a child conceived in the womb are murderers themselves, along with those receiving the poisons.

02:20:15

Athenagoras. We say that women who induce abortions are murderers and have to give account of it to God.

02:20:21

The fetus in the womb is a living being and therefore the object of God's care. Tertullian.

02:20:30

Our faith declares life out of death. Therefore, murder is forbidden once and for all.

02:20:35

We may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man -killing.

02:20:43

Thus, it does not matter whether you take away a life that is born or destroy one that is coming to the birth.

02:20:51

In both instances, destruction is murder. See the consistency?

02:20:59

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. They deny in their very womb their own progeny. Is anybody doing that today that we see?

02:21:07

It's not a baby. It's a clump of cells. By use of parasital mixtures, they snuff out the fruit of their wombs.

02:21:16

In this way, life is taken before it is given. Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating our own children?

02:21:26

Jerome. They who drink potions to ensure sterility are guilty of rebutting

02:21:31

God's own blessings. Some, when they learn that the potions have failed and thus are with the child through sin, practice abortion by use of still other potions.

02:21:42

They are then guilty of three crimes, self -mutilation, adultery, and the murder of an unborn child.

02:21:49

One more. Augustine. They provoke women to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness, or else, if unsuccessful in this, to murder the unborn child.

02:22:04

Consistency through the ages on this issue from the Christian church, as you've already heard.

02:22:12

Now, I do want to just draw your attention to something in closing here. This is the resource that we put together on equal protection.

02:22:19

Please don't leave without getting one of these or a couple of these. This will educate you and others that you choose to pass it along to as to what this is that we're talking about, but also, on the back are the objections that we encountered to the bill, when it was proposed, and how to respond to them.

02:22:37

And so, I'll just briefly go through some of them here in closing. As you've already heard, the objection will come, well, wouldn't this criminalize mothers who get abortions?

02:22:49

And you can sense the emotional argumentation, right, the energy being sucked out of the room here, but as we've said, equal protection criminalizes conduct, not a class of person.

02:23:01

We are criminalizing the act, because that's what laws do. Laws don't criminalize classes of people, they criminalize actions, conduct, and the conduct that we are desiring to criminalize is the murder of preborn children in the womb.

02:23:20

So, wouldn't this criminalize mothers who get abortions? No. How about, what about women that have already had abortions?

02:23:30

Are you saying we want to drag them out of the shadows years later and string them up before a court and make them answer for their crimes?

02:23:38

Well, the bill itself doesn't deal with retroactive enforcement of that. We're talking about a situation in which righteousness is established from that moment going forward, anyone who does this and takes part in this is legally culpable.

02:23:52

We're not talking about retroactive enforcement or punishment where we time travel into the past.

02:24:00

What about instances where a woman is forced and coerced? And this is really interesting because this one is used so often, but if you look at the statistics on this, this is really compelling and interesting.

02:24:11

This was put out by Guttmacher, even, which is a pro -abortion statistical arm. They said that 96 -97 % of all abortions are elective.

02:24:22

That's a pro -abortion statistical study. And so, in this case, there are instances of genuine coercion, though, aren't there?

02:24:32

There are instances of genuine coercion when it comes to the homicide of born people. If someone comes up to someone and puts a gun to their head and says, rob that bank over there, who's responsible?

02:24:43

The person that forced them to do the act because they were held hostage. Or if it was a case of deception.

02:24:52

Conceivably, a woman is passed abortion pills and she's told that they're headache medicine and she didn't know.

02:24:59

Would she be brought up on charges for that? She didn't know. How could she?

02:25:05

Would that be justice? No, we're talking about intentionally, voluntarily offering up her own child as an act of false worship, because that's what

02:25:15

God says that this is, by the way. It's false worship. It's the shedding of innocent blood meant to take away the sins of a person and cleanse their conscience, but the scriptures tell us that only the blood of a perfect sacrifice can do that.

02:25:30

It's only the blood of Christ that can wash away and cleanse a guilty conscience. And so this act of false worship, in which we are offering up our own sons and daughters on the altar of our fornication and our own careers and our own aspirations and our education and on our autonomy, all of that is an act of transgression against a holy

02:25:53

God, and that's why this is a gospel issue, and that's why people must be restored to true worship and the one true

02:25:59

God. And the only way that happens is through the gospel, as we've said. But what about coercion?

02:26:05

We already have laws on the books that protect people from being coerced to commit crimes. What we're advocating for with this legislation is to say those same laws need to protect people before they're born.

02:26:16

And that is the way to stop coercion. To make it a crime for anyone who would even intimate to the woman, hey, you should have an abortion.

02:26:26

Did you know that? If children in the womb were actually protected like everybody else, it would be illegal to do that.

02:26:32

But it's not now, because babies in the womb aren't protected like everybody else. It's perfectly legal. Next, what about miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies?

02:26:44

You hear this all the time. People conflate miscarriage and abortion as if they're the same thing.

02:26:51

As if an act by natural causes or what Christians would call hard providence from God in which a baby's life is taken and the mother miscarries.

02:27:02

Are you seriously suggesting that that's the same thing as the intentional taking of a life in the womb?

02:27:10

Completely different. In the situation of an ectopic pregnancy where the baby does not go where it is supposed to in the womb, because this is a fallen world and these things happen, what we're talking about in that case is a rescue mission.

02:27:27

We're talking about a physician treating two patients and he is to preserve as much life as he can.

02:27:34

And if he can only save one life, then he can only save one life and he's not liable for that. Because he did everything that he could.

02:27:44

It's a triage situation. It's a medical emergency and the law would not penalize anyone in a medical emergency.

02:27:54

Next, what about in vitro fertilization? The bill would not criminalize the process of in vitro fertilization, but it would demand the practice of ethical

02:28:05

IVF in its nature. So you can't create a bunch of embryos, a bunch of human beings and store them cryogenically for years on end as prisoners or incinerate them because there's too many and you don't know what to do with them.

02:28:20

That is what would not be allowed. Lastly, would this criminalize birth control?

02:28:26

Would this make birth control illegal? It would not ban contraceptives, but it would ban the abortifacient use of drugs that are used for the express purpose of killing a conceived child post -fertilization.

02:28:42

Which is when life begins. Now, what the other side has attempted to do is to try to move the ball down the court a little bit and redefine conception to be the moment of implantation of the human being rather than fertilization when the male gamete and the female gamete come together and there's that spark of life.

02:28:59

And the purpose of that is to make abortifacient use acceptable by playing with definitions, playing with words.

02:29:07

So it's important. Biblically speaking, life begins at conception. So and so was conceived and born.

02:29:14

God's word says it over and over. Biologically speaking, we use the term fertilization. I hope that that's clear.

02:29:21

I hope that that helps. And that is just a little bit of a crash course on these. But you'll need to be prepared because you'll hear them.

02:29:28

And in closing, and I promise, I am closing. This issue is close to my heart.

02:29:34

When I first came to Apologia Church and started going to the abortion mills, God broke my heart to go and rescue these children from death.

02:29:41

And I'm privileged to still be a part of this and still doing this. And I think, I was reflecting on this, what

02:29:48

I wanted to share with you. This is Arizona. This is my home state. This is where I'm from. So there's a little bit of difference here. I don't like to bring myself into things too much, whether they be sermons or ministry.

02:29:58

But I want to share with you, I think the reason this issue is so close to my heart is I was born differently than most other kids.

02:30:10

I was born differently. I looked different. I was looked at differently.

02:30:19

And don't get me wrong here. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I am not the product of a failed abortion or something to that effect.

02:30:26

I am a child that was placed in a loving family. I'm the fifth and the youngest of my brothers and sisters.

02:30:33

And my parents love me and they raised me with the knowledge of Jesus in our home, in the

02:30:38

Christian faith. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying. But I am exactly the kind of person that the pro -abortion movement would feel completely fine with getting rid of.

02:30:50

And I'm glad that I had loving parents who loved me that knew Jesus that it never would have crossed their mind to do such a thing.

02:30:59

But not all children have that. And so that is why I feel compelled to speak for them.

02:31:10

I feel compelled to speak for them. And I think the reason that I always felt compelled to speak but making this connection now is that as a kid,

02:31:19

I never wanted to be treated any differently. I never wanted to be treated differently than my peers.

02:31:25

I never wanted to be looked at differently and say, he can't do these things. So therefore we're going to side with this person who looks stronger, more mighty, more capable, more of an ability.

02:31:37

I always wanted a chance to prove myself and say, no, judge me by the merits of my case.

02:31:44

Don't take a look at me and judge me on the outward appearance because the Bible says the Lord looks at the heart. God's not looking at man's outward appearance.

02:31:54

And I realize now looking back on that this was before I think I knew Christ and understood the gospel is that what

02:32:02

I was crying out for, the cry of my heart was I want justice. I don't want to be treated differently.

02:32:11

And I got my wish when I heard the gospel. Because under the gospel as the apostle

02:32:17

Paul says all stand condemned. There is no one not

02:32:22

Jew nor Greek, Jew or Gentile, all are accountable to God's law. We've all fallen short of the glory of God and we stand equally accountable before the bar of God's judgment throne and we will all give an account of our lives to him.

02:32:35

And it is only on that basis that the righteousness of God revealed through faith in Jesus Christ holds true.

02:32:43

Because if we're condemned under the same bar of God's law then guess what?

02:32:49

We have the same standard of righteousness available to us that can actually cleanse us and forgive us before the throne of a holy

02:32:56

God. But if we discount that, if we get rid of the law and we say you're not guilty, we will treat you differently then we don't have the basis of God's justification and we don't have forgiveness anymore.

02:33:10

That's why this is a gospel issue. And that's why if we deny justice to these children then we deny their mothers the gospel.

02:33:19

It matters. I never wanted to be treated any differently and in the gospel

02:33:27

I'm not. I'm not. I'm seen as a son of God full and complete privileges of an adopted child.

02:33:39

Secure status in Christ for all eternity and that's what we want for every woman that has an abortion.

02:33:46

Every woman with this sin in her past and anyone involved. We want you to know Christ. We want you to know the forgiveness that he offers.

02:33:57

The shedding of innocent blood brings a curse on the land. God will judge any nation that practices it and brothers he is.

02:34:05

But he's looking for brave and courageous men that will stand in the gap and hold back the judgment.

02:34:12

Will you be that man today? Will you stand with us and be that man?

02:34:20

I just want to read to you one thing in closing. Just to create some urgency. I think it was

02:34:26

Dr. George Grant who said that people in the cause for life need to temper their fight to have urgency and patience.

02:34:35

Urgency because so many are dying we can't even fathom it but patience to know that this is going to take time.

02:34:40

It's going to take time to educate a culture. It's going to take time to lobby our magistrates.

02:34:45

It's going to take time to care for families with this sin going on in their lives. It's going to take time. It's going to take patience.

02:34:51

But this is what God says and this is his demands. Proverbs chapter 3 verse 27.

02:34:58

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due. When it is in your power to do it.

02:35:05

Do not say to your neighbor, go and come again tomorrow I will give it.

02:35:10

When you have it with you. Do not plan evil against your neighbor who dwells trustingly beside you.

02:35:19

Did you hear it? The urgency when you have it with you. Don't hold it back.

02:35:25

Give it. Don't withhold good from those to whom it is due. Do not delay justice.

02:35:33

When it is in your power to do it and God has given us the power to do it. He's given us his Holy Spirit. He's given us his word and so we have no excuse to stand on the truth.

02:35:44

Amen? All right. That's all. Thank you. Thank you,

02:35:54

Zach. Next up is going to be Pastor Zach Morgan. One of the elders at Apologia Church.

02:36:00

He oversees our people and discipleship but also local evangelism.

02:36:06

And so if you want to get involved, you're going to have also a lot of communication with Pastor Zach as well for the local things we're doing.

02:36:14

He's taking charge of the state of Arizona. We have, again, bills happening across the country, different states.

02:36:20

He's our point pastor for the state of Arizona. So this is Pastor Zach Morgan. Hey, guys.

02:36:32

Man, that was powerful. Just that point Zach had made that, you know, considering the way that he was born, he should have just been discarded.

02:36:42

You know? So 70 million since 1973. 70 million. Think about that.

02:36:49

Poets and scientists and doctors and moms and dads and family trees gone.

02:36:55

We're not dealing with just a trivial issue here. This is a bad, bad situation we're having to deal with.

02:37:03

That was just powerful. Shaken by that. So thankful that you guys are here and you answered the call.

02:37:11

I know many of you sent the emails out to your buddies and it means a lot to us.

02:37:16

So we tried to get pastors involved and connected with us in this fight a couple years ago.

02:37:22

I think we invited 700 pastors in 2020 and 0 % came to our meeting.

02:37:29

So this is really encouraging. I appreciate you guys being here. So I'm going to stand up, speak up, shut up, and sit down.

02:37:37

That's what my homiletics teacher told me. He was probably about 4 '11",

02:37:42

Scott. And he said when you get up there, you just say what you got to say and sit down.

02:37:47

I want to bring my brother up, Daryl Groves. He and his wife are such a blessing to our church and he heads up our volunteer group of about 47 people.

02:37:56

They're kind of the unsung, unseen heroes behind all of this. They're the ones calling our representatives, doing the hard work of calling churches and sending emails.

02:38:07

So in our case, we have Representative Daniel Nguyen and he's the guy that put the quibosh on our bill.

02:38:15

HB 2760, our equal protection bill. He's not giving it a hearing and that actually happened today.

02:38:22

The last committee happened a couple hours ago and so our bill is dead. He's the one that killed the bill.

02:38:29

Daryl, along with a lot of our volunteers, our church members, called the guy and he's like, hey, what's up?

02:38:35

You're supposed to be pro -live. What are you doing here? I think that you guys can understand political change comes through political pressure.

02:38:42

I'm not speaking for all politicians. Of course not. But a lot of politicians, they only care and they're only going to be moved in so far as it's affecting their position of power.

02:38:53

They're more concerned about their re -election than the merits of stuff,

02:38:59

I should say. Again, I'm not going to paint with too broad of a brush. We know a lot of good guys.

02:39:05

But I think that's the principle as we put pressure on these men to do the right thing and actually to fulfill their promises.

02:39:13

I mean, if you're saying you're pro -life, you better act like you're pro -life. If we put pressure on them, then it gets them to move.

02:39:19

And so what we would ask of you is to join us, as you've heard. Mobilize your people to put pressure on the politicians so that they would do their duty and protect the pre -born.

02:39:33

Okay, so I'm going to move quickly here. I don't want to take too much time. But I want to talk about why should

02:39:38

I, as a pastor or leader, and speaking more directly to the shepherds here, involve myself with this effort.

02:39:45

Because I think any good pastor is going to think, hey, if somebody's asking me to join something, what exactly is this?

02:39:52

And I think all of you are pretty much on board. But I think one of the most sobering truths that we have to live by as shepherds is, one, the sheep are going to follow the shepherd.

02:40:02

And that's just an absolute fact and reality. We're going to lead our people into spiritual health down the right path.

02:40:09

Or, as we've seen, we could be shepherds who lead our people down the wrong path, which is horribly injurious to them.

02:40:16

So I think it's good for you to just kind of sit in the pew and say, okay, I need to evaluate this as if this is something that I'm not only going to be involved with, but I'm going to actually intentionally mobilize my people to start loving the pre -born and rescuing their pre -born.

02:40:31

So, I would say, it's worth our efforts, it's worth our time. Number one, because abortion is an affront to the glory of God and man.

02:40:40

We should fight against abortion. We should fight to rescue babies primarily, and that's an operative word here, it's an important word, primarily because it dishonors and it disgraces the

02:40:52

God who created us. It's an attack against Him primarily. It besmirches

02:40:58

His name. It's a great, again, disgrace against the one who sent His only Son to die upon the cross.

02:41:06

That's what makes it primarily so bad, and I know we don't hear that so much. It's a focus on the kids, and it's got to be, but I think in order to get this in proper order,

02:41:17

I think it's got to be a God -first type of perspective. I think one of my kids asked me one day, they said, hey, why, what's up with Satan?

02:41:25

You know, I think 70 % of the professing evangelical church doesn't even believe Satan is an actual being.

02:41:32

He's just a mythical figure, and parts of the scripture that are just like lore,

02:41:38

I guess you can say. But I sat there and thought about that for a second. Why does

02:41:43

He exist to steal, kill, and destroy? And I think we can all understand it's because we're created in the image of God, and it's in the image of God that He disdains that, and He works just tirelessly in this situation to kill as many babies as He can because that's

02:42:00

His mission objective. Every single day, it's like God's mission objective every day, all day, is to glorify

02:42:07

Himself through His creation, right? We are created for His glory, and it's our task to glorify

02:42:12

Him, and the enemy's mission every day, of course, is to dishonor and disgrace and to destroy the best that He can.

02:42:21

The image of God and these precious little baby girls and little baby boys in fantasy, this has been going on forever, and it's an attack against God Himself.

02:42:31

So I think our primary motive when we're thinking about all this is to rescue babies and get involved in this fight is not our primary motive.

02:42:40

It's not love for babies. I would say our primary motive is to love God and to seek to honor

02:42:45

Him. And our secondary motive would be because we love these babies. I'm not just going to tell you this flat out.

02:42:51

This is not an easy fight to get in. Going to the abortion clinics, dealing with this legislatively, this is tough, and this is going to take just men who have longevity and long -lastingness and true tenacity to fight this fight.

02:43:05

We don't know when it's going to happen. We all wish it would end tomorrow, but in reality, it's going to be a battle. It's a war, and so it means we as God's men have to have a staying power within us, and that's built upon, hey, this is for you.

02:43:19

I'm doing this for you, for your honor, for your glory. This is a great attack against my great

02:43:24

God, and regardless of the results, we can never wane in our efforts because He's always worthy of our efforts, right?

02:43:32

There's never going to be a time when we're like, oh, I've honored you enough. I've loved you enough.

02:43:38

I've brought glory to you enough. It is.

02:43:45

It's just, again, it's a blight against His name, and we shouldn't stand to see our great

02:43:50

God and our Father, His name, besmirched and ran through the mud in a sense as these babies are dying.

02:43:57

I just know if any one of us, right, if somebody starts talking bad about your wife, I mean, just a little bit, just a little bit,

02:44:06

I mean, what would you do? You'd immediately, I mean, you're standing, I mean, your full focus is on this person who is disgracing and besmirching and dishonoring your wife.

02:44:14

You're going to be moved to action. I truly hope you would, and I'm not talking about throwing haymakers at the guy, hopefully not.

02:44:21

Sometimes, man, if the shoe fits, you know what I mean? What I'm saying is that we all as men would rise up and defend our wives rightly, and how much more should we rise up and defend our

02:44:33

God and His name being disgraced through the act of abortion? I think Jesus in the temple, you know, we think about,

02:44:41

I think people use that to say, hey, Jesus got mad. I can be mad. It's an example of righteous indignation, but why was

02:44:48

Jesus so angry? John 2 .17 says his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me, but what was

02:44:55

Jesus quoting? He was quoting Psalm 69 .9. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

02:45:06

Right? It was God's name being disgraced in what was going on in the temple. Of course, God's people were being extorted.

02:45:12

It was horrible. It was just a false representation of who He was, but that is why

02:45:17

Jesus was so zealous and acted in such a way for the honor of His Father.

02:45:24

And so, that's my first point. It's got to be for His glory. And point number two is abortion should matter to the church because we're commanded to actively love

02:45:33

God and our neighbor. It's just as simple as that. Matthew 22, all these verses

02:45:38

I know you guys are very familiar with. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, and your mind. This is the first, and the second is like, you shall love your neighbor yourself.

02:45:46

Some people would come out to us on the street and say, why are you doing this? It's really easy. We love our neighbor. The baby in the womb is our neighbor.

02:45:53

That's why we're driven to do this. It's out of love for God and love for these babies. It's pure and simple.

02:45:59

And then John 14, Jesus says, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

02:46:05

And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him. And so, Jesus is saying, if you really love God, you are going to demonstrate that in obedience to his commands.

02:46:14

And then as you've heard from Pastor Luke, Psalm 24, rescue those who are being taken away to death.

02:46:20

Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. So, this is an act of love towards God and towards our neighbor in obedience to his command.

02:46:27

And if you look at that verse, or sorry, that word rescue in the original language, it's a deliberate rescuing effort.

02:46:34

I mean, you can track that word all throughout the Old Testament, and it has to do with intentionally rescuing your loved ones from death.

02:46:43

And so, in obedience to the commands of God, we can't do this just through prayer alone. Of course, we need the money to make things happen, but sometimes we abandon a command of God that we should be actively involved with by just thinking it's going to, you know, prayer is enough, or money is enough, when no, it's a brotherhood being built to deal with this situation.

02:47:06

I think that that is an order. And love, again, love is action.

02:47:13

I think Zach had spoke to this. It's not just some emotional feelings. Love is, if it's truly love that God wants us to love him and our neighbors, it's got to be built upon action.

02:47:24

And I think anything that we want to do or strive to do has got levels of urgency and degrees of importance.

02:47:33

I think if Bobby and I were going to go preach the gospel down at ASU, and we heard, hey guys, we just heard, it's right next to you, there's a guy, he hijacked a bus of toddlers, he took them over to his house, and he is just systematically killing these babies.

02:47:49

You're right there. I think we would, in a moment, maybe we wouldn't even have anything on us to protect ourselves or to necessarily be ready to deal with the situation.

02:47:58

I think we would turn the car around and do whatever we could to rescue those babies, because the situation demands that.

02:48:06

We're in a situation, because of this, how bad this truly is, it's going to require an all -hands -on -deck involvement with the church.

02:48:16

Okay, really quick. Third, abortion should matter to the church, and we should mobilize our people and be involved ourselves.

02:48:24

It's because we want to display true manhood and not cowardice, and this is no attack on you guys whatsoever, but I think it's right to say it would be cowardly to sit idly by when babies are being butchered.

02:48:39

It would be a cowardly act, if we know that that's happening, to sit idly by and not be involved.

02:48:46

Again, please, no personal attacks on you. But God did not give us cowardice. Of course, 2

02:48:52

Timothy 1 -7, He gave us a spirit, not of fear, but of power. And we want to be men who confront the culture of death and say,

02:48:59

I'm going to play my part in this because this is what men, true men, do. This is what men do.

02:49:06

So when we're out at the abortion mill, people tell us all the time, you know, you don't have a uterus, you don't have female body parts, therefore you have no say.

02:49:14

And we don't, we just simply say, hey, look, true men are called to love women and protect babies.

02:49:20

That's what true men do. True men, in the face of something this wicked and this evil, we act.

02:49:26

That's why we're there. Leviticus, or sorry, Judges chapter 19, I think you guys remember, remember the

02:49:32

Levite and the concubine? I'm not going to go into that, but he takes the concubine as well as his daughter, they go through Gibeah.

02:49:40

And Gibeah is just overrun. I mean, it's like Sodom and Gomorrah. Remember, a man in the town said, hey, you better come in and stay with me because it was unsafe to sleep in the center of the town.

02:49:52

And this guy's like, you know, coming to the house and what happens? Homosexuals are pounding on the door wanting to rape this man.

02:49:59

And so the Levite makes some horrible decisions. He says, you know what, take my daughter, do what you want with her, but here's my concubine.

02:50:06

So they take the concubine and they rape her to death. And then she's dead on the threshold in the morning.

02:50:13

What does the Levite do? Well, he cuts her up into 12 pieces, of course, after she's dead.

02:50:19

And he sends her to the 12 tribes of Israel. And what do the men do when they receive pieces of this woman's body, this woman that was butchered, right?

02:50:32

She was raped to death and cut up in pieces. It says, then all the sons of Israel from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead, came out, and the congregation assembled as one man to the

02:50:41

Lord at Mizpah. The chiefs of the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, took their stand, and they assembled the people of God, 400 ,000 foot soldiers who drew the sword.

02:50:51

And the sons of Israel said, tell us, how did this wickedness take place? And they rose up as men, and they said, who did this abominable thing?

02:51:00

This is one woman who was torn up. They saw one woman's piece of her body, and it drove 400 ,000 men to go to battle over this.

02:51:10

This is how true men act. God's men act in the face of such wickedness.

02:51:16

And this is how we should act. And of course, we're not bearing the sword. I'm not saying that as far as...we

02:51:23

don't do that. That's in the civil realm. But the principle is when God's...if we're going to be men and display true manhood to our sons and to our church, which is the need of the moment, we have to rise up and say, who is doing this?

02:51:36

How can I be involved? How can I expend myself and my efforts to truly war against this great evil?

02:51:45

I'm out of time. But my other points was, who else is supposed to do this work, guys?

02:51:52

Is the government going to solve this problem? No. They're not. Is an unbeliever?

02:51:58

No. He doesn't have the love of God shed abroad in his heart to end this. It's us. It's God's men.

02:52:03

It's God's women. In the power of the Spirit, armed with the true gospel to put this thing to death.

02:52:12

Much more to say out of time, but I truly love you guys. I appreciate you so much. I don't want to just be a motivational speaker.

02:52:19

I would ask that the Word of God comes to bear upon your heart and join us as we do our duty to protect these kids.

02:52:25

Thank you. We're going to have Darrell come up. Thanks, Zach.

02:52:45

Brothers, thank you so much for coming today. We just really appreciate you guys, and I just want to express that appreciation to you.

02:52:53

When I heard that we were going to have this meeting and have a bunch of brothers in Christ come, especially pastors,

02:52:58

I got very excited because I've only been at Apologia for a little less than two years.

02:53:06

I was brought here from another state by the providence of God, and I was convinced in my heart that I need to obey the

02:53:17

Word of God from the Old Testament to the New. The Word of God is true, and the

02:53:23

Word of God is consistent because it comes from the one true God, and He has spoken.

02:53:31

And I was convinced that I need to get outside the four walls of the church, and I need to be a part of going out and fulfilling the

02:53:40

Great Commission. And we all do that in our different ways. We can do that in our workplace, with our neighbors, whatever the case, but I saw the issue of abortion as the prime issue facing our generation.

02:53:57

Most of my life has been in the generation of Roe v. Wade, and I would like to see it end sometime in my lifetime.

02:54:07

Obviously, Roe v. Wade is gone, but there's a lot of work to do. And I truly believe that we're just in the first inning of a nine -inning ballgame, that this is the very beginning stages of Christians rising up and not listening to the culture, a culture that tells us that we need to you know, we can't go out to the abortion mills, that we shouldn't be talking to the government.

02:54:35

They decry separation of church and state, and I think Christians get bullied into this place where we're told not to speak.

02:54:43

And that's just not true. That's not how God's word explains our

02:54:48

Great Commission. And I was faced with this other thought that if that were truly the case, then

02:54:57

I would be making myself out to be God and saying, you know, I'm going to deny these people over here in front of the abortion mills the gospel.

02:55:07

I'm going to deny lawmakers the gospel. If I listen to the world and to our culture, that means

02:55:13

I can't go over there. And that's just not true. That's not what Jesus said. Jesus said to go into all the nations and go make disciples, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you.

02:55:27

And so I began to think, who am I? Who am I to decide for God who should be evangelized and who shouldn't be?

02:55:37

And so I find myself now today volunteering for End Abortion Now.

02:55:44

After two years of being, almost two years of being in front of the abortion clinics and going out, and I've got some brothers here who go out with me, and I find that this truly is the issue of our day.

02:56:01

When children are being slaughtered, men and women need to step up. Christian men and women need to step up and do something about it.

02:56:10

And this is a gospel issue. And so I see it as an opportunity for evangelism.

02:56:16

It's an opportunity for you to exercise the evangelism that you're called to.

02:56:22

And most of us work full -time, so this is a part -time endeavor for us.

02:56:29

You pastors, this is your full -time endeavor. And I would encourage you to lead your churches in this and teach them.

02:56:37

And so what I want to bring to you today is this. When we first started with End Abortion Now in our church, when

02:56:46

I got involved, there was like 15 to 20 people who volunteered to help us bring bills of equal protection to the various states across the nation.

02:56:58

And that number in our small church has grown to 47 people volunteering.

02:57:05

And these are people from high school age all the way up to folks in their mid -70s, retired folks.

02:57:13

We have working fathers who work one or two jobs. Some of them go to school part -time.

02:57:19

We have mothers who are homeschooling. And they find time to do things like make phone calls to state legislators, send emails, get on social media, and try and influence and let people know that we have a bill of equal protection going into Georgia.

02:57:39

We've got this bill that's been dropped in Kentucky. We've got a rally in Kentucky, in all these states, and now it's

02:57:46

Arizona. And we have people who are working part -time to do that. And so I'm kind of leading that group, and so the message comes to me, through me to them, and they do whatever they can.

02:58:01

And it's not a full -time endeavor, but if you think about it, if we had, let's say, ten churches with ten people in each church trying to do the same things, committing maybe an hour or two of their week to this, and just keeping abreast of what's going on, that's huge.

02:58:24

That's a hundred people maybe spending an hour or two a week doing this.

02:58:30

That's one or two hundred hours of phone calls and emails and engaging. And that's on the political front.

02:58:38

That's on the government side of things. And if we ever get a bill in a committee where it's being heard, that's an opportunity for Christians to go to that committee and proclaim the law of God and the gospel to our lawmakers.

02:58:55

And therein lies the evangelism part. And so I would just encourage all of you to think about getting involved.

02:59:04

Right now, nobody's trying to create this organization, but I would say it's very helpful to have a focal point.

02:59:13

If you do choose to get involved, have a focal point in your church who can then disseminate a single message with a single direction so that we can accomplish a task.

02:59:27

And so I want to make an offer to you to get in touch with myself or Zach or some of the other pastors, and we can maybe begin to do this in your churches as well.

02:59:41

And I am happy to help in that endeavor. In any way that you think that you need, I would offer myself to come and talk with you some more, even come to your church and talk.

02:59:52

And obviously Zach Morgan would as well, or any of the folks in our group. The other thing, while I have you here, is this.

03:00:02

We have also, out of this 47 member team that's in our church, we also have a portion of those people who are committed to going out to the abortion mills.

03:00:15

Some folks go out every week. And you know who's out there right now?

03:00:22

In the fifth largest city in the nation, in Phoenix, there's a small group of Catholics that go out, and there's

03:00:30

Apologia Church, and one or two other people from other churches. My brother Wayne goes out on a regular basis.

03:00:37

And the multiplication factor I talked about on the legislative front, what if we could do that in front of the abortion mills?

03:00:48

What if we could like have another 50 people who would go out?

03:00:53

It would be a huge impact. It would be an enormous impact, and an enormous help, and it would take some of the load off of us.

03:01:04

And so I would encourage you all to think about that. And again, we would come alongside of you.

03:01:11

Not asking you to get out there and preach, or put on a mic, but we would ask you to come out and stand with us, to pray with us, to hold a sign.

03:01:23

That's how I got started. I didn't expect to be doing what

03:01:28

I'm doing today. I did not expect that at all. But God gives us the strength that we need to do what

03:01:36

He calls us to do. And once you're out there, I can promise you once you're out there, you see things you didn't realize were happening.

03:01:49

And you see people that need to be helped. Just to give you an example, we go out, and you have a moment in time when somebody's driving into the abortion mill.

03:02:00

It's often a man and a woman, or maybe two women. You have a driver and somebody sitting in. And if they will just roll down their window, because you're trying to hand them a gospel or you're trying to hand them something different, which tells them, look, there's a place you could go that doesn't kill babies.

03:02:19

And if they'll roll down their window out of curiosity, you have a moment in time to plead with them, please don't kill your child today.

03:02:28

Your child was created in the image of God. That place you're going to, they don't love you.

03:02:35

They don't love you. We, however, we love you. And we come to you in the name of the

03:02:42

God who made you, and we're begging you, please don't kill your child today. We'll do anything.

03:02:49

What do you need? Medical care? Do you need money for rent? Are you afraid?

03:02:56

We'll do anything. Please don't kill your child today. We'll even adopt your child.

03:03:05

And you get this narrow window of time to do that. And I truly believe that's what we should be doing as Christians.

03:03:16

We need to be reaching out, and I believe that is the fulfillment of the second greatest commandment.

03:03:22

We're loving our neighbor. And we're calling men and women to love their closest neighbor, which is the child in their womb, the child in her womb.

03:03:33

Brothers and sisters, I would love to help you in this endeavor if you feel moved by God at all, to get involved in getting out in front of the abortion mills, building a team in your church to help us bring equal protection to the various states, especially

03:03:52

Arizona. We'd come alongside of you. We'd mentor you in whatever you think you need.

03:03:58

And so that's my offer to you today. And I want to thank you for coming today. The last thing

03:04:03

I'll just quote from one of my great, most favorite theologians, Francis Schaeffer, and you've probably heard this before, but he said this, there should be a sign in front of every church that says open by permission of the church.

03:04:19

Pardon me, let me say that again. There should be a sign in front of every abortion clinic, open by permission of the church.

03:04:28

So when God's people step aside, evil happens. And I think

03:04:34

Francis Schaeffer hit it on the head. Abortion clinics should have a sign on them that say the church has allowed this.

03:04:42

And I think we need to put an end to that. No more. Thank you.

03:04:52

God bless you guys. Alright brothers, quickly

03:04:57

I want to introduce you to one of the most important workers with us in this ministry.

03:05:05

It's Dennis Serfate. He is a member of Apologia Church. I actually baptized him in the building you were having

03:05:12

God's chicken in. Dennis is the head of Red State Reform, Action for Life.

03:05:20

So he is part of the lobbying aspect of this movement. So separate and distinct from Apologia Church and our ministry, prophetic ministry, his is the lobbying aspect and it is specifically as a

03:05:32

Christian with the word of God. It's a consistent Christian lobbyist under the oversight of the local church.

03:05:39

And so Dennis is a part of talking to the legislators across the country applying pressure, challenging people and that's a consistent thing he's doing.

03:05:47

He's doing it full time. He's a famous professional baseball player. I'll let him introduce himself to you all in that way but I wanted to get you guys real briefly introduced to Dennis so you might be having contact with him as well.

03:05:58

Well thank you and we are going to get you guys out of here. Yeah, I played baseball 21 years, 10 years here in the

03:06:05

States, 11 in Japan. My story in the abortion field of things came when

03:06:11

I met my wife. My wife was adopted from a one night stand at a bus stop in Tucson, Arizona.

03:06:17

She was adopted by parents that were not Christians at the time but they needed to have a baby.

03:06:24

They couldn't have one themselves so they went into the adoption phase of it. When they adopted her,

03:06:29

Jada grew and in high school was saved by the Lord. She ended up bringing her parents to the Lord later on.

03:06:35

Her dad became a pastor when I met her. It probably turned his world upside down. I was a baseball player and not a

03:06:42

Christian and you guys can kind of put those two things together but through her father

03:06:49

Joe and Jada in my life, God saved me in 2011 in Japan where actually

03:06:54

I got to share the gospel for 11 years in a country where it's the most atheistic country

03:06:59

I think in the world. Less than 1 % are Christians. I went to some churches as big as 6 people in a house but God used me there.

03:07:09

I got to reach hundreds of thousands of Japanese people over my time there. When I retired in 2021, my pastor

03:07:15

Jeff asked me if I had any plans and I didn't and so what better cause than to do this now so I donate my time and all my effort to this.

03:07:25

I am not your typical lobbyist. I don't get paid. I don't take money. I don't really care about money.

03:07:30

All I want to do is hold these politicians accountable. When Daryl talked about how we can get involved and how your church members can help when our representative in Georgia was getting a little bit of a

03:07:43

I guess cold feet he got over 700 calls from our volunteers so that means 700 people called this representative which if you guys don't know how politics work, if 5 people call a politician your local magistrate, your district leader which where I'm at is one democrat and one republican in south

03:08:03

Chandler they think something bad, catastrophic is going down. 5 people right?

03:08:09

When 700 people call, those your constituents, those people that are voting for you to get into office and they will vote you out of office so that is my job.

03:08:18

My job is to politically whip politicians into shape. If they don't like what we're doing, too bad we'll find someone else to run against you next time.

03:08:27

So this is what we're going to do in Arizona. You heard talk about,

03:08:33

Zach talk about representative Wynn out of district 1 in Prescott. He's in a heavily red district.

03:08:39

I mean you know people in Prescott love their guns and they love they love America and they love freedom they also love babies so to say because they voted for this guy who claims to be pro -life so we're going to go lit drop in his district and what that means is we go around and we had to do this in 2020 when we had

03:08:57

Rusty Bowers hold up our bill and committee and we go and drop flyers all through their district.

03:09:03

I had the privilege of dropping a flyer on Rusty Bowers door myself or not Rusty Bowers I think it was

03:09:08

Frank Pratt. I went to Casa Grande. So Frank Pratt I got to drop a piece of literature on his door, put one on his windshield and so now when

03:09:17

Frank comes out of his house and sees this flyer it says Frank's not pro -life and you voted for him he ran on a platform for pro -life.

03:09:25

This is what he's saying and we just labeled everything and so now he's like oh man well they probably just hit my house but as he's driving out of his neighborhood he sees orange flyer after orange flyer and now he's really shaken because these people are voting him in or voting him out.

03:09:41

So this is what we're going to do there. This is what we're doing across the country. I get to work with guys like Daryl and other states to hold these men and women accountable.

03:09:51

We are in 14 states right now with a few more states coming on as of late in this legislative cycle and the more the better.

03:09:58

I mean the more the better. We are going to end this thing because God's going to end it and it might not be in my lifetime or my children's lifetime but it will end eventually and what a more noble thing to do is fight for these children.

03:10:12

So I thank you guys for coming to this. I'll tell you what two years ago when we had our rally at the capital we had one church from Arizona come.

03:10:18

One church and to see all of you in here it's encouraging even though the room's not filled which it should have been.

03:10:24

We called, well I think how many churches did we call for this today? 700? About?

03:10:30

So this is the product of 700 churches called. This is how many showed up. That's to show you where these people think this fight is.

03:10:36

They're listening to corrupt politicians and people that are in politics like Kathy Harrod tell them that this is not a good bill.

03:10:44

This is a just bill that God says he loves. He does not like injustice or partiality.

03:10:50

You either love God or love the world and I believe that the ones that showed up today love God and love theonomy over man's law.

03:10:57

So I thank you guys and just looking forward to partnering with you guys and helping you guys out as we hit this thing head on.

03:11:04

So thanks for coming out. Alright brothers thank you so much for your sacrifice today again.

03:11:14

So Daryl, if you want to get your churches involved and connected to bring the gospel into this,

03:11:19

Daryl would love to have your support and your help. We can help your churches get involved to get equipped, to get trained.

03:11:25

You've met all the pastors at Apologia Church except for Dr. James White who's probably somewhere in an RV across the country somewhere.

03:11:32

But he is just as committed to this and passionate about this and as we get further down the road

03:11:37

I'm sure you guys will get a chance to meet him as well. If you have any questions at all, reach out talk to us. We're here to support you and to equip you and so we have all your information you'll be hearing from us.

03:11:49

If we could do anything in the meantime, please feel free to contact us. Pastor Zach Morgan is director again of our local outreach and so we'd love to get you connected to join with us at the abortion mill and start saving some more babies.

03:12:02

We're going to pray. Father thank you Lord for the time we had today. Thank you for these men.

03:12:07

Thank you Lord for their courage. Thank you Lord for their commitment and sacrifices and their faithfulness.

03:12:13

We praise you God please use us for your glory and to increase the fame of Jesus and his supremacy and excellencies in our own state.