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.

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 email, 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. 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.

I 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.

The Lord really showed me who I was when I was seven years old.

He showed me how wicked and depraved I really was, that as Ray Comfort says,

I was a lying thieving blasphemous, adulterous murderer at heart. I knew that I was destined for hell.

I deserved to go to hell. That more than concerned me.

I was just utterly hurt and realized

I'm guilty. 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. 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. 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.

I knew that if I turned from my sin and repentance and cried out to him for salvation and faith, that he would save me, and that's what

I did. That's when God drew my heart to him, and I've been growing in repentance and faith and trust in Jesus since then.

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.

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.

They said, okay, 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. But 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.

That I think, 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 be 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.

I'd 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, and 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. 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?

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. 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 didn't 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 the 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 image is 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 eagles' 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, and 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 could 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 inherent and it's divine,

I want to start with what God views human beings in the womb.

And 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?

Well, 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 mute himself.

Please, if you have a question for our guest today, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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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 a right to take a human life, or 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. 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. Great. If they keep refusing to repent, they definitely need to be treated like they're unbelievers.

So you need to be sharing the gospel with them and trying to persuade them with the scriptures that they are wrong.

Yeah, there's no way anyone has an excuse in the 21st century with the technology, the way the technology has developed.

Even if you want to exclude biblical argumentation or make the foolish claim that the passages that we are addressing today are up for debate and argumentation, they're not clear, etc.

There's no way. With the sonogram evidence that they have today, the 3D imagery that they have of the developing of children in the womb, the testimonies of abortionists who have converted to a pro -life position or an abolition position because they have even on one occasion,

I think it was Dr. Bernard Nathanson who was an abortionist before he 180 degrees changed his position on this.

I think it was he who as a part of his story heard a baby screaming in a garbage can after it was aborted.

Wow. But there's just no way that nobody has an excuse today. In fact, Jeff Durbin, I don't know if you're familiar with my friend

Jeff Durbin at Apologia Church who has a magnificent rescue ministry at Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics, and I hate to use that phrase there, they're death mills, they're not clinics.

But he said that every single woman that he has ever encountered, every one he has said, it really surprised me the first time

I interviewed him on this, every single woman without fail has acknowledged when they are going into that death mill, that infanticide mill, and he has approached them to give them the gospel and to warn them about what they're doing.

Every single one without fail, every woman has acknowledged that they knew that they were killing a baby.

This is not something that they were either certain they were not doing that or uncertain they were doing that.

They knew what they were doing. So this is something that people, we have reached the point where people don't care the pro -abortionists, the pro -infanticide folks that we see in the media, they don't care if it's a murdered baby or not.

That's why they even say up to the point of delivering a baby, many of them believe in murdering those babies, and they know that babies have been born prematurely at earlier stages of development in the womb and have successfully lived and thrived and grown to be healthy, strong adults.

They know that, that they are killing babies at even a later stage of development.

So this is no excuse anymore, is it? Yeah, we live in a very secular culture that we do not believe that we are going to be judged for murdering another human being.

This is why we need to have a biblical mindset of murder.

We need to understand that murder is wrong. We need to understand why murder is wrong.

And that's why, even though the Bible says thou shalt not have an abortion, it doesn't say thou shalt not have an abortion, the

Bible lays out several principles that you can use to build a good argument that abortion is murder, and you're going to be judged by God for murdering your child, and if you do not repent, you will face the ultimate consequences in hell.

In fact, we have to go to a midway break right now and pick up where you left off there. If anybody has a question, please send us your email and get in line.

There are people still waiting to have their questions asked and answered, but if you'd like to have yours be included in that, please send in your question to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. This is the longer than normal break in the show, so please be patient with us.

We are required to have this longer break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, is required by the

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Have you noticed the gap that exists between the Sunday morning sermon and the Sunday school classroom or the small group study?

So often we experience great preaching from the pulpit, but when it comes time to study God's word in those smaller settings, well let's be honest, it leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the word of God and is built upon sound doctrine, much less it's hard to find curriculum that will actually teach people how to study the

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May God bless you. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I am Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr.

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Joe O 'Reilly, an Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener from Ottawa in County Kildare, Ireland, sends you.

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I need a church in the subject line. We are now back with my guest, and he didn't hear a word

I just said because I still had myself on mute accidentally. And Josiah, we have a question from our mutual friend that I mentioned earlier in the program,

Al Yerkes, and Al asks the question, let's see here, we've got to look it up again.

Al Yerkes, who I said earlier, is on the team with Todd Friel at Wretched TV and Radio, and I'm still looking for that ad, oh, here it is.

How do you approach and change the mind of a person who knows abortion is killing an unborn human being and they don't care?

Yeah, what we're called, we can't, sorry, we can't really change people's minds.

We can only present them the truth in the best convincing way we can, that when people don't care about killing other people, we warn them about the judgment of God.

That God is going to judge each and every one of us according to our sins.

That he's going to judge all liars, all thieves, all adulterers and murderers at heart, and that he is going to judge those people according to their sins.

He's not going to judge people according to the good things they do, because all good things come from God anyways.

Every good thing that they do has been allowed by God and caused by God in some way.

Every bad thing they do is on them. So God's going to judge them according to their sins, and because they're all for murdering children, and they're for murdering people, and they know they're people,

God's going to judge them especially for that according to their knowledge. Great.

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NASB and also obviously compliments of our friends at cvbbs .com are shipping it to you at no charge to you or to us.

And I'd like you to pick up now on more of your arguments from the Scriptures for life. Are you there, brother?

Oh, I'm here. I'm sorry, could you say that again? I said, could you continue? Can you pick up where you left off on more biblical arguments for life?

Yeah. Well, as we were talking about earlier, we need to base our thinking off of the

Word of God. All of our thinking needs to be based off of the Word of God. We have established that human beings have value and that because they're in the image of God, they're more valuable than all of creation.

We've established that life begins in the womb at conception.

We've established those things, and we need to make sure that we don't let our thinking be based off of—sorry, that got me distracted.

That's okay. That's okay. And one of the things that has concerned me is how are we, who are

Christians, who believe that unborn children are humans, that life is sacred no matter what stage of development that life may be involved in at the moment, whether they are preborn or whether they are toddlers or teenagers or middle -aged or elderly, all life is sacred.

And as they say, all lives matter. How do we conduct ourselves when we are at a barbecue, when we are at a

Christmas dinner table, when we have family, friends, and loved ones and neighbors over our home, perhaps to celebrate

New Year's Eve? We could go on and on and on with the different scenarios when we are interacting with lost people, and some of them may indeed be not only indifferent about the life of the unborn—they might be zealous and passionate and tirelessly active in the political arena, trying to preserve a woman's legal option to murder her child.

One of the things that has perplexed me is how are we to behave when we are in the presence of such people, in your opinion?

Sometimes it bothers me when I see, for instance, on Fox News, you will have a panel of people who would include pro -life people, conservative people, and liberal and pro -abortion people, pro -infanticide people, who are sitting around at the table discussing their differences in a lighthearted manner and chuckling in between conversations, making lighthearted jokes.

Fox News even has those that believe in the murder of unborn children hosting programs, and it seems that the people involved in this are relegating the importance of this issue to a lower level of importance, secondary, tertiary, or lower, because they would never speak in those warm and friendly terms and in that manner with those that were involved in killing teenagers in their garage.

How do we differentiate this? How do we conduct ourselves when we are in the presence of such people, in your opinion?

Yeah. It's a hard, multi -layered thing, because in any context, we could be around those people.

I have a family member that is very pro -LGBTQ +, all of that, and if anybody talks about it, they get very defensive.

And it's not the same level as abortion. They're both abominations to God.

But we need to be able to be very serious about the issue.

We need to have the biblical answers tucked away in our hearts so that we'll be able to confront them on it.

But we also don't want to be disruptive at family events.

We don't want to be disruptive at ballgames or whatever we come to.

We want to have those answers tucked away in our hearts, and we also want to have the gospel ready to be able to insert in there at any time that we can.

Right. I know that Jesus was a friend of sinners. He surrounded himself with people on occasion that were tax collectors, another term for thieves, and prostitutes, and so on.

So I know that one thing that I have to remind myself about, and I think it can be a general problem with conservative

Christians, and in my opinion, that's really the only kind. There are a lot of people who identify themselves as Christians or who others identify as Christians who are

Christian in name only, but we have to remember that the lost cannot be expected by us to think, and act, and behave like they are regenerate.

I'm not saying that they should be permitted to get away with crimes and so forth.

I'm not speaking in that realm, but I'm talking about when we are developing relationships with them so that they trust us and have an open ear to what we have to say about the gospel of Jesus Christ, there has to be a certain level of ironic behavior.

And I am aware of that, but when it comes to abortion, it's just difficult for me to really fathom the actual way that we are to conduct ourselves.

And as I said, I already know that we have to present ourselves as ambassadors for Christ who are compassionate, and concerned, and caring for those around us who are headed for hell apart from embracing the gospel.

But it's just one of those things that it's difficult for me in my limited and sin -tainted thinking to reconcile these things.

Yeah, we have to be ready to deal with false converts, because the people who are presenting the abortion issue, if they know the scriptures, they know that they're in the wrong.

They know that they're twisting scripture to fit their own agendas, and they know that they're just trying to push their own personal or political agendas.

We need to warn them that not everybody who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but it's only those who do the will of the

Father, those who actually believe in Jesus Christ for who He really is, those who believe

His word for us is clearly interpreted, those who actually repent and trust in Jesus to save them, those are the people who are going to enter into the kingdom of heaven, those who give the

Lord lip service, and then live lives that are not repentant and demonstrate that they do not really trust the scriptures, they're going to be going to hell, and we need to warn them of the coming judgment, and perhaps that maybe

God will grant them repentance. By the way, this is just a question out of my own curiosity.

These pro -so -called LBGTQ plus individuals in your life that you share a dinner table with on occasion, are they also pro -abortion?

No. Oh, that's interesting, because I was about to say that if they were,

I would love to hear their answer if you were to ask them, and of course the question about depose is an impossibility because we know that this could never happen, but since these folks typically believe there are biological reasons for homosexuality, if we were to tell them, well suppose scientists prove that they can determine whether an infant in the womb, whether or not an infant in the womb was going to be born with homosexual proclivities, and people started aborting them for that reason, what would your opinion be about that?

I've always wanted to ask that of someone who is both either involved in homosexual activity or just in favor of it, that question, because it really brings it to where the rubber meets the road.

It makes it much more personal. Yeah, yeah. I've always wanted to ask them that question too, because they're obvious people who accept both, which is basically the

Democratic Party. They don't really have an answer, but they don't really have answers for anything.

All they do is just take truth, they take the counter -positioned truth, and they fight for that.

In fact, you don't even have to go to a hypothetical question that involves something that could never be scientifically proven, because we know this is not a matter of biology.

They could go to the fact that many people, I don't know what the situation is now in the 21st century, but definitely it was occurring last century in the 1990s.

There were couples in China who were aborting their babies if they were determined to be female, because they knew that they had a limited number of babies that they were permitted to have, and they would continually abort those that proved to be female in the womb, which is something you can determine.

And that's a good question to pose to a feminist who might be also pro -abortion.

Yeah. Basically, the abortion argument has to do with personhood.

Is an unborn person, is an unborn human a person or not?

From a biblical standpoint, we have the answer that, yes, the unborn are humans.

From a secular standpoint, they can't really determine who a person is.

The best argument they have is morality. Somebody who can make moral decisions, that's who a person is.

The problem with that thinking is that everybody's on a different spectrum or different level of morality.

There's always somebody worse than you that you can point to. Now, we're all completely evil and sinful in our mind, our heart, and our will, but there's people who have gone farther down the road, like people who've thought of murder to actually having committed murder.

And if that was the case in the secular mindset, Mother Teresa should be able to kill everybody, and somebody more moral than you should be allowed to kill you.

Right. What would be your next biblical argument for life? I would say that after you've determined that a person is a person, that you've determined that children and the unborn are people, the next part is just really answering objections to life.

One of the most common objections to life is rape and incest, where people say that you should be able to abort children basically because the father raped the mother, or because two people who are closely related to each other had sex and produced a child.

They would say that those are the exceptions. Including some conservatives like Sean Hannity, as I already mentioned.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest arguments that we have to deal with, and the issue with that objection on answering is you have to deal with two levels of problems here.

On the one hand, yes, rape is a sin. It was actually condemned as murder in Deuteronomy.

But we also know that in Leviticus, that the son will not die for the sins of the father.

It's in Deuteronomy 20, 24, 16.

It says, Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers.

Each one shall be put to death for his own sin. And so, yes, the father did a horrible sin, but the child that's the result of that shouldn't be killed.

Now, that might still have some eternal scarring issues for the mother, but if you are not able to deal with your child that was conceived in that, there's lots of people willing to adopt, lots of people willing to adopt your child.

There's tons of people looking for it. That's one option. But the ultimate thing is we don't determine personhood from the sins of the father, or else you should be able to die for something that your parents or ancestors did.

The problem with incest is it's also considered an abomination.

And it's also, there's a scientific problem on top of that, that there's a terrible risk of the child either being mentally or physically handicapped from some genetic disease.

The answer to that is, yes, that could happen, that somebody is mentally or physically handicapped.

But if that's the argument that you're killing people for that, we should be able to kill people with Down syndrome, we shouldn't have any

Special Olympics, that you would, basically what you're saying is that people in wheelchairs, people with any kind of handicaps or diseases should be killed off, and that they should never have been born.

As the Nazis did. Exactly.

It shows how much you do not value human life when you say children should be killed for genetic diseases or being mentally handicapped.

And also, you don't know what that person's going to do in life. There's the man born blind in the

Gospel of John, in John chapter 10 verses 1 through 41.

He was a beggar that was assumed to have been born, or that was assumed to have sinned because he was born blind.

And so the disciples asked Jesus, who sinned, this man or his parents?

And Jesus said, no, he was born blind so that he could give glory to God.

Now, in this specific man's case, the glory given to God resulted in physical healing and confounding religious leaders and proving

Jesus to be the Son of God. Well, if his mother killed him after birth, like what a lot of abortionists do, they don't just want to kill babies in the womb, they want to kill babies outside the womb.

If his mother did that, then, basically, he would have never been able to use by God in this way.

But our argument isn't the potential good somebody could do. Our argument is people are created in the image of God, have an errant life and value, and therefore to kill them is murder, and that will incur

God's judgment. We're going to take our final break right now. It's going to be more brief than the other breaks.

If you have a question, please send it in as quickly as you can because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back right after these messages.

As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

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Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

.com. That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com

or call them at 908 -996 -7654. That's 908 -996 -7654.

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you love

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Hansen is doing is

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Becoming a parent. My name is A .M. Brewster. I'm the president of Truth Love Parent and host of its award -winning podcast.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

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today and mention Chris Arntzen of Iron Shoppin's Iron Radio. We are now back with the final segment of our program today.

We have been discussing biblical arguments for life with Josiah Nichols. I want you to, before we take any more listener questions,

I want you to summarize what you really most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today when it comes to biblical arguments for life.

Yeah, it all starts off with what is a person? What is a human?

And it all boils down to we're created in God's image. The unborn are created in God's image, children are created in God's image, and therefore it is wrong to murder them, lest you incur the wrath of God.

And all of our thinking has to be based off of the scriptures. It has to be based off of a clear interpretation of what the

Bible says. Okay, we have an anonymous listener.

How do you best approach someone who has been convicted that they have murdered their baby and now have come to their senses and perhaps even true repentance and faith in Christ, but they still are plagued with the guilt of this act?

What tangible ways can you comfort and encourage and bring this person to biblical truths regarding the perfect sacrifice of Christ that covers all sin?

Well, that does it. You have to remind them of the sacrifice of Christ that covers all sin.

One concrete example that I would point them to would be Paul, who persecuted the

Church of God when he was Saul of Tarsus, and how even though he was a murderer, even though he oversaw the murder of Stephen, he was shown grace and he was given the call to make disciples and to repent and to trust in Christ.

He got salvation despite of all the evil he'd done. And even though they have committed the sin of murder, they are no more guilty in the eyes of God than I am.

I mean, I'm the poster boy for total depravity right here. So if God can forgive a wretched, horrible human like me,

He can forgive you. You need to repent and to trust in Jesus. Yes.

Well, thank you, Anonymous. And if you are a first -time questioner, please give us your full name and your full mailing address so that you can also receive a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

who mail out these free Bibles and everything else that our listeners win when they contact us with a question.

And we thank CVBBS .com for providing that invaluable service to us.

It doesn't cost us a cent to send these out because of their generosity. We have another anonymous listener who says,

I'm remaining anonymous because there are people in my own family who I always have arguments with, especially when we're gathered together at the holidays over this issue.

The issue is that these folks in my family believe that it is completely sane and acceptable and logical to say that you are personally opposed to abortion, but you would never bring yourself to making those decisions for others.

That seems to be the rhetoric with most politicians who want to straddle the fence and try as best as they can to appease people on both sides of the issue.

How do you respond to those sorts of folks? My personal response is usually,

I'm personally opposed to rape, but I wouldn't want to stop anybody else from doing it. Or I'm personally opposed to school shootings, but I wouldn't stop anybody else from doing it.

You present it on the same level as any other horrendous sin. We also have

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York. Bobby in Hartsdale said, what was it that first compelled you to write your booklet on this issue when there are other things already available in print on this subject?

Yeah, just to be frank, I wrote this before a school paper for my

Master of Divinity, and he said it was the best paper he'd ever read on the subject.

My professor did. And I was thinking about it, and there's really no other short book on this subject.

You can buy Scott Klusendorf's book. He did a phenomenal job on it, but it's over 100 pages.

You can buy all these other materials, but you don't have a quick, clear, easy -to -access reference guide like this one.

This presents all the scriptures that you can use for this argument.

As I said, it starts with being created in the image of God. I present the verses for that.

That murder is sin. I present the verses for that. That killing children is seen as murder in the eyes of God.

I present the verses for that. And that the unborn are seen as humans.

I present that. I also present the biblical arguments against rape and incest and ectopic pregnancies, which aren't abortion.

They're saving the life of a mother. Then women's health. Actually, killing a child in the womb of a person who's unhealthy does more harm than letting the person have birth, and it's the only moral option to let them have the child.

So it's the only one that presents all that information in basically 35 pages.

Which also means it's an excellent item to purchase in bulk for the pastors and elders and deacons listening.

You should be buying this by the case and putting it in your church narthex or lobby or whatever you call it, in track racks, or even just putting them on the seats or pews for everyone assembling to pick up.

Because this is an issue that everyone needs to be further equipped to defend the life of the unborn.

And so therefore I'm urging all of the listeners to get a hold of this.

By the way, how would they get a hold of it? It's available on Amazon right now.

So just type in Josiah Nichols Books on Amazon and you should be able to go right to it.

Just type in Image Biblical Arguments for Life. It'll come right up there.

I do plan on making it available in other places as well. Just kind of taking time to do that.

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who's asking a question that is an excellent question.

I very rarely hear this specific question come up in conversations about abortion.

Arnie says, when a woman has a miscarriage or a baby that has been born prematurely, should that baby, if of course it is deceased, always be treated with the same dignity as an adult who dies?

In other words, a burial, a sermon at the funeral, etc.

It seems that people who believe in life before birth can even be guilty of treating the child's body in the same way that pro -abortionists do.

Yeah, it definitely needs to be mourned. My wife had a miscarriage, our first child, and our pastor was not very kind to us about that.

He was like, oh well, at least it was early enough. You don't have to have a funeral. Wow. I was like, well, we want to mourn.

They didn't do anything for us, so we just mourned at home and with family.

So you're agreeing with the listener, though. But this should not be just treated as an organ of the human body has been removed or something.

This is a death. But we are out of time. It's been a joy speaking with you, even though the subject matter is gruesome, but it is always a pleasure to have a well -informed

Christian on the program who can defend the sanctity of life with such biblical evidence.

And how do our listeners get a hold of you in the event that they want to invite you to speak at their church or for any other reason?

You can contact me at josiah .rob .nichols at gmail .com.

You can try to contact me through using hermeneutics .org. And you can also contact me on Facebook at Josiah Robert Nichols.

And Nichols is N -I -C -H -O -L -S. Yes. Great. Well, folks, also grab your calendars and mark them for tomorrow.

We should have a fascinating interview tomorrow with Dan Nelson, the author of Early Baptists, a comparative study of the

Anabaptist and English Baptist movements. And I am looking forward to that discussion as well.

I want to thank you again, Josiah, for being such an excellent guest. I want to thank everybody who listened to the program.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.