December 8, 2022 Show with Josiah Nichols on “Biblical Arguments for Life”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this eighth day of December 2022.

My good friend Al Yerkes, who is on the team with Wretched Radio and Wretched TV with Todd Friel, he contacted me very recently and enthusiastically urged me to interview the man who is my guest today.

And since Al has an excellent track record for guest recommendations, he has always proven his recommendations to be excellent. So, I took him up on this issue, especially since my guest today has written on one of the most vital areas of life that are actually matters of life and death in this world that we live in.

Today, we are going to be interviewing Josiah Nichols, who is an author. He's a blogger for Striving for Eternity. That is the ministry of my dear friend Andrew Rappaport, who has been on this program and who has also interviewed me on this program.

We switched roles during one of our interviews, and Andrew interviewed me. He, Josiah Nichols, is also the founder of usinghermeneutics .org. Today, we're going to be addressing biblical arguments for life.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Josiah Nichols.

Thank you, brother.

Josiah, why don't you, before we get into your personal testimony of salvation, which is something that we do whenever we have a first-time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony.

But before they do that, why don't you tell our listeners about usinghermeneutics .org.

Yeah, it's my blog where I teach people how to interpret the Bible for themselves. I teach them hermeneutics through demonstrating how to apply those principles to biblical text. So my slogan is, teaching biblical interpretation through demonstration.

Great.

Well, I've already said the website, so I urge you, especially after this program is over, to look up usinghermeneutics .org. Hermeneutics is spelled H-E-R-M-E-N-E-U-T-I-C-S .org. And I hope that that blesses you and becomes a great value to you.

Today, we're going to be addressing, as I said, biblical arguments for life. So why don't you quickly e-mail, text, or call anyone that you know, especially if they are considering an abortion or know someone who is, and tell them to go to irontreppanzionradio .com and click on live stream it.

They can listen to this interview anywhere in the world by doing so. But before we enter into that very important discussion, I would like to, as I already mentioned, hear your personal testimony of salvation, which would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and the providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Salvation Testimony and Early Conversion

Yeah. I did grow up in a Christian household, but I think I was probably the poster boy for total depravity.

I was a pretty wretched kid. I told a joke once in the beginning of one of Dr. James R. White's Roman Catholic debates that I orchestrated and emceed, and I said that my wife, my precious late wife, but she was still with us at the time that I made the joke, I said she told me that I was a poster boy for both historic Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

She said, because you are not only totally depraved, but you're invincibly ignorant.

Yeah, that was it. That was what I was. I still am growing in holiness and grace, but I really loved myself. That was all about me. I thought I was God's gift to earth. I was violent towards my sister.

I was violent towards my parents. I liked to lie for fun. That was something I used to do. I would make up stories and try to get other people in trouble. And the Lord really showed me who I was when I was seven years old.

He showed me how wicked and depraved I really was. As Ray Comfort says, I was a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterous murderer at heart. And I knew that I was destined for hell. I deserved to go to hell.

And that more than concerned me. I was just utterly hurt and realized I'm guilty. And I knew hell. I knew about hell. I knew that it was a place of eternal fire. It was a place where the wrath of God was pouring out on sinners.

And I knew I deserved to go there. And by the grace of God, I also knew the gospel because my parents told me every day. I just hadn't listened until I was seven. And I learned that God sent his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who's fully God and fully man.

He lived a sinless life. And he died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. And I knew that if I turned from my sin in repentance and cried out to him for salvation and faith, that he would save me.

And that's what I did. And so that's when God drew my heart to him. And I've been growing in repentance and faith and trust in Jesus since then.

Well, your parents must have rejoiced in ways beyond description and are perhaps even still rejoicing seeing the prodigal son come back home.

They were very happy. But because I was seven at the time, they wanted to make sure that I was in the faith. So for months they kept asking me about the gospel. And they saw a change in my life from what I was before to someone who wants to know and love Jesus more.

And they said, OK, well, then, since he's repentant and he trusts in Jesus, let's baptize him. So that's when I was baptized when I was eight years old. The thing about early conversions is you want to make sure that, yeah, you want to affirm their faith, but you also want to make sure that it's not just something flippant, that it's something they're trying to do to please you.

Now, if you could backtrack for me, are you saying that all those ways you described yourself about the arrogance, the violence and all that, the violence toward your sister and parents, this is what, before you were eight years old?

Yes.

Wow.

Well, that is pretty remarkable. And so, therefore, you got saved at an early age. Praise be to God. I think that was about the same age when I'm almost positive that Dr. James R. White, my aforementioned friend, of Alpha Omega Ministries, I believe he was baptized when he was eight as well.

And you were right about the caution that parents have to have when it comes to discerning the profession of faith of a child. In fact, there is a book by Dennis Gunderson, I don't know if you've ever heard about it or read it, but it's called Your Child's Profession of Faith, and I strongly urge our listeners to purchase this.

It's very inexpensive. It's a brief booklet, but a very valuable one. And it echoes the words of the Apostle Paul, who said, When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.

When I became a man, I did away with childish things. That's one of the primary reasons in 1 Corinthians 13 .11 that we have to, that parents especially, have to be very cautious about accepting eagerly, with great enthusiasm, a profession of faith provided by a child.

And that would go for pastors who baptize those who approach them requesting baptism. I'm assuming you would agree with me that it has to be an unusual circumstance, an unusual demonstration of repentance and faith that would make those involved in baptizing a child, parents and ministers and so on, that would make them believe that this is not just a little child parenting their parents.

Of course, if you taught your child, almost any child in the world, to sing, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, they're going to sing it. And it doesn't mean that they're regenerate.

It doesn't mean they have genuine faith. They're just pleasing their parents and they're enjoying singing a song. But we praise God that you were saved. And this issue that we are going to delve into today is a vital one.

We who are conservatives and Christians, many of us were quite dismayed by the letdown, the anticlimactic results of the recent elections when we were being promised by many in the media that there was going to not only be a red wave of elections, meaning conservatives being elected into office, but there would be a red tsunami and there was nothing of the sort.

The best thing that came out of this, from what we can see, is that the Republicans regained the House and we pray that these folks are good stewards of those positions in the House and that actual change comes about for the better.

But it's been grievous to me to hear some men in the media who profess to be conservative, some of whom I formerly had a lot higher level of respect for, saying that the blame should be laid at the feet, the blame for the elections of so many Democrats, especially in swing states, the blame should be laid at the feet of conservatives who were too strong in their opposition to abortion.

In other words, they should have been a little bit lighter and more open-minded about murdering unborn children. And Sean Hannity is one of those talking heads on Fox News who keeps regurgitating that, blaming Doug Mastriano's candidacy for so many failures, not only in Pennsylvania but in other states.

He was running for governor in Pennsylvania and had a no-exception policy on abortion, which I happen to agree with. I think the only reason that you should be opposed to abortion is that it's murder.

And once you say, well, if a woman is a victim of rape or incest, that is an acceptable reason. Well, you're not saying it's murder. You're actually declassifying it no longer as murder. So your argument against abortion becomes pointless, like your response to what I've just said.

Yeah, I think the results of the election, I wouldn't blame it on conservatives being too strong on abortion. I didn't hear them speak about abortion once when I was listening to conservative debates.

Everyone bringing up abortion was the Democrats because they were really upset with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. I think that we're under judgment right now from God because we're largely accepting sexual sin.

We're largely accepting of abortion as a whole. We're largely accepting of all the sins that are being promoted in Romans 1. And so God's giving us over to a depraved mind and depraved leaders. And we're going to, I don't know, unless God intervenes with Christians sharing the gospel and people repenting, this nation's about done for.

Now, the theme today is biblical arguments for life. And one of the things that perplexes me, it may perplex you. In fact, you're even younger than I am, as are most people. And when I got saved by the grace of God in the mid -80s, every evangelical Protestant that I knew personally viewed abortion as murder, was very opposed to abortion and still is opposed or still are opposed to abortion.

But before my conversion experience, I was raised Roman Catholic and became a Christian, a true Bible-believing Christian in the mid -80s, as I just mentioned. When I have heard about the history of the pro-life movement, about the right-to-life movement that's called by different phrases, today very common amongst those who are most passionately opposed to all forms of abortion at all times, are called abolitionists.

But I was shocked to discover that there was a time not long ago, even as recently as the 70s and perhaps even the early 80s, when the fight against the murder of unborn children was nearly exclusively a battle being fought by Roman Catholics.

And even someone as globally known as Jerry Falwell, before he became a zealous anti-abortionist or a zealous defender of life, he said, oh, that's a Catholic issue. He dismissed even discussing the issue when asked about it publicly.

And it's just mind-boggling how those that claim to believe in the Scriptures as our sole and infallible authority, how they could have missed biblical arguments against abortion. I can even remember when I was in my late teens and I would be frequently visiting a congregation where my brother Bob was a member, a Church of Christ congregation.

And those people are known to be people of the book. And I'm not saying that they accurately exegete all of what they believe, but they are known for Scripture alone as their sole infallible and inerrant guide.

And yet I can still remember as a teenager hearing from people in that congregation, well, I don't even have an opinion on abortion because it's not in the Bible. And of course, thou shalt not kill is in the Bible.

But there seems to be a disconnect with many in the past, especially disconnects amongst conservatives, that is, and Bible believers between abortion and murder. Now it is clearly seen as an equivalent act.

But if you could pick up where I left off, as I said, you're younger than me, but you must have heard that this was at one time nearly exclusively a Roman Catholic fight.

The Unborn as Image Bearers and Human Life in the Womb

Yeah, yeah. When I was growing up, I lived all over the state of Illinois, but I went to high school in a Catholic town. And all the Catholics I talked to, they never read their Bible. There was a lot of drinking and smoking, but the two things that they were absolutely against was divorce and abortion.

And I grew up in a pro-life family. When my parents told me about abortion, I was horrified. I'm like, you mean they actually kill babies in their mother's wombs? They literally rip them apart, limb from limb.

And they toss them in the trash can like we're waste. And so it really bothered me when I was a little kid and then going to high school hearing only Catholics talk about that. That did bother me. It was, I think the church I went to, their main issue that they had with they didn't want to talk about abortion was because not just that it wasn't in the scriptures according to them.

They said there's different things you can pull here and there, but what they would do is, they said it was a Catholic issue. That was astounding to me. And they also thought it was political to talk about abortion.

And I'm assuming it must have been because they didn't understand that it was murder. I don't know how they forgot the fact that David talks about how God knit us together in the mother's womb. And I don't know how they could not recognize that as a human life being formed.

But did you ever have any kind of an explanation on how that disconnect could exist?

I think it's just, I don't know, there's a lot of people who are spiritually blind. Because if you read the Bible, it talks about the unborn in there being human beings. It mentions that with Elizabeth and Mary meeting together and guess who leaps for joy at the coming of the pregnant.

Exactly. A bag of molecules that can't rejoice.

Exactly. It all comes down to the issue of, am I going to be believing what the scripture says about human life? Or am I going to be believing what my feelings and the culture tells me about human life?

Is truth subjective or is truth objective?

Well, why don't we start to go through these biblical arguments that you have actually compiled in a booklet titled Biblical Arguments for Life. Why don't we start the journey through addressing all of these arguments or as many as we can in the two hours that we have ahead of us.

Yeah, and as I was saying, it boils down to whether we found our thinking on the scriptures or not. 2 Timothy 3 .17 says that all scripture is brewed up by God and prophet for teaching, for proof, and for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so if we're going to have the Bible as the foundation of our thinking, then we have to go back to the beginning, what God says humans are. And so it goes back to Genesis 1, chapter 1, verse 27. We'll actually start with 26.

Genesis 1, 26. Then God said, let us make man our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

Then verse 27. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And that's in the ESV. What Moses is doing here, Moses is giving us the creation account, how God created the heavens and the earth.

And he gives it in six sequential 24-hour days. And when God said, let's create man, he's saying that he's creating it different from every other creature. He's creating man to be in his image. The Hebrew for image is selam or selim.

In the images, but selim. And when you look up image in the Strong's Concordance, you see that an image is a likeness, resemblance, or representation of something. With man, God created man to represent him on earth and to rule over the earth as a steward.

That's where we get the foundation from. We start with what is a human? Forget what is a woman for a minute. What is a human? Is a human a bunch of cells just randomly mutated over millions of years? Or is a human a person that God designed to be his representation?

And if the latter is the case, then man is more important than ants, than birds, than eagle's eggs, than all these other things that we see in creation and value. Man is more important than that. And so he needs to be highly valued and respected.

The next thing we see in Genesis is, yes, man falls, and man has a death sentence now. Dying you shall die. And so we see that man has fallen, man is going to die, but that doesn't mean man has lost his value.

We turn to Genesis 9. In Genesis 9, in verse 5 it says, And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it, and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God created man, for God made man in his own image. That's ESV again. And we see here, even though man has lost his sinlessness, and that he has fallen, and that he's turned away from his creator, man is still in the image of God, he still has value, and if somebody is to take the life of a human, God demands the ultimate price to take the life of the person or animal that took the life of a man, or human.

Now, obviously, those that are pro-abortionists, even some that would claim some kind of allegiance to the Scripture, very rarely are pro-abortionists believers in the inerrancy of Scripture, or the sufficiency of Scripture, but there are many who claim, and I emphasize the word claim, that they have some sort of love for the Scripture, appreciation of the Scripture, allegiance to the Scripture.

Even the late apostate Bishop Spong, when he debated Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries on homosexuality, he claimed to have a love for the Scriptures and so on, but at the same time, out of the same mouth, publicly declared that taking the Bible literally was an extremely dangerous and even evil thing to do.

But you have those that will say, yeah, I can agree with everything you said, but there's nothing in there that says that a person is a human and is in the image of God prior to its birth. Obviously, we have technology today that proves that unborn children in many stages of early development even look like babies, but how do you respond to those that make these kind of claims?

Yeah, I agree with you, but who says that an unborn child is a human and in the image of God yet?

Yeah, that's a good question. Obviously, everything I mentioned talks about the value of human beings. So how do we know when that begins? That's the question, is when does life begin? When does this value take place?

And evolutionists say that what they were saying early on was that we went back through the evolutionary process. When we're in our mother's womb, so we start out as a fish, and we go to a monkey, and then eventually we become human.

And that's based off of really bad drawings that an evolutionist did. And as Christians, if I actually believe in the creation account, and I actually believe that the Scripture is inerrant and it's divine, I want to start with how God views human beings in the womb.

When you do that, you go to a passage like Exodus 21.

Yeah, the law about even if it's accidentally harming a child in the womb.

Exactly. Exodus 21 -22, 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, and the woman's husband shall impose on him, he shall pay as the judge has determined.

But if there is harm, we'll stop right here, then you shall pay life for life. This is the only accidental death that demands that somebody dies for taking the life of another. All the other accidental deaths in the Scriptures say that you can flee to a city of refuge.

Now, what Wayne Grudem does here is he asks the question, how important are unborn human beings if you get the death penalty over taking their life over somebody who has been born and has reached adulthood?

How important are unborn human beings in the eyes of God?

Are you asking me or is that rhetorical?

I think it is pretty rhetorical, but I was asking you. I was going to see if you had anything to say there.

Well, it's obvious that God makes no distinction about his care for humans, whether they are developing in the mother's womb or whether they are 90 years old.

That's right. God values all people, no matter what stage of development you're in. And if God values the unintentional taking of an unborn child and views that as murder that deserves a death penalty, how much more angry do you think he is for taking the life intentionally of an unborn child?

Amen. Well, we have to go to our first break right now. I'm going to remind my guest to please mute himself. Please, if you have a question for our guest today, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N, gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you have had an abortion.

Let's say you're even considering right now having an abortion. Or you have a daughter who is intending to have an abortion. Whatever the case may be, we understand things like that would compel you to remain anonymous.

But other than that, if it's just a general question on our subject, about what the Bible has to say about our subject, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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We are now back with our guest today discussing a very important issue. We have on the program a friend of Al Yerkes, who is on the team with Todd Friel over at Wretched Radio and Television. Josiah Nichols is his name, and we are discussing biblical arguments for life.

And we have an anonymous listener who asks, I was wondering if your guest believes that if a member of a church is pro-abortion, especially if they are actively involved in politics to promote and support a so-called woman's right to murder their child, should that person, if exposed, be placed under church discipline and excommunicated if they do not repent of this hellish ideology?

Do you want the long answer or the short answer?

Well, you could give one before the break. We have a break in seven minutes. If that's long enough, you could give the longer answer.

Okay. Well, the thing is that the person needs to understand that abortion is murder. They have to know what human beings are, that we're creating the image of God. Only God has the right to take a human life, has the authority to authorize the taking of a human life.

Other than, of course, in a death penalty situation when you have a guilty party who actually has murdered someone being executed.

Exactly. That's when God authorizes others to take life. So that's what we just talked about in Genesis 9, that God is okay with the death penalty for unlawfully taking the life of another person. So that person has to understand those biblical principles.

They would have to, for church discipline, they would have to reject those. And if they're continually unrepentant, yes, I think I would start the process of church discipline.