Originally published at: Abortion | Corey J. Mahler Podcasts
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So, Abortion.
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I actually wrote an article on this topic back in 2019.
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To be clear, I still hold to the conclusions of that article.
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The title of that article, Killing Abortionists is Moral.
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The subtitle, A Threat of Deadly Force Against an Innocent, engenders a moral duty to defend.
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You can of course find that on my website, www.coryjmoller.com.
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I know, very difficult to discern.
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But let us step back for a moment here and discuss some fundamental matters.
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What is abortion sort of a fundamental issue?
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If you are going to discuss something, you should be able to define it.
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Now, when it comes to abortion, the term is actually over broad because there are two different, not quite different concepts, but two different subtypes under that umbrella term, and they are very different.
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It is important to understand that difference.
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We’ll get to why it’s important to understand that difference in a minute here.
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But first, the two types.
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The two types are spontaneous and elective.
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Now, a spontaneous abortion is a miscarriage.
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That is, the more common term used for what is technically a spontaneous abortion.
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And of course, an elective abortion is what we usually mean when we use the shorthand abortion term.
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The reason that it matters, the reason we should be careful in using these terms, is that one, terms matter.
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We should use words to mean what they mean, not abuse them, not misuse them, and not mislead people by abusing and misusing terms.
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And two, the left, they in fact do abuse these terms.
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And the reason they do it, of course, is for political ends.
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Now of course, there are also moral ends, in their case, immoral ends, evil ends.
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But they abuse these terms by saying that, well, what we, our side, the right, those who are, in fact, lower case, are right, what we are doing, they will accuse us of attempting to criminalize spontaneous abortion, which they will call miscarriage, of course, because that is the more common term.
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And they are conflating these two senses of abortion, spontaneous abortion on the one hand and elective abortion on the other.
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We, of course, are not attempting to criminalize spontaneous abortion.
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You cannot criminalize something like that.
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Well, yes, I mean, actually, you could, but that would be a very stupid thing to do.
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It would be like criminalizing sneezing or something even less voluntary, because you can at least decide, I am not going to sneeze.
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You can force yourself not to sneeze.
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You can’t really stop yourself from having a miscarriage.
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And so, no, we’re not attempting to criminalize that, because a miscarriage lacks the elements necessary to be a crime.
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And that is the next point, because what is abortion, ultimately?
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The answer to the question is that it is murder.
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Well, having defined abortion, what is murder?
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Because if we call it murder, we have to know what murder means.
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Now, for murder, there are, again, two different senses of the term that it is necessary to know.
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The first would be murder under the positive law.
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And to be clear, the positive law would be laws enacted by men.
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So under our criminal codes and the like, that would be positive law.
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And murder under those, I’m going to give a general definition.
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This is the one that you should use.
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Murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another with malice of forethought.
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Now, there are several requirements in this definition.
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Of course, it is an unlawful killing, which is to say, of course, that there are lawful killings.
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And most saliently is the mens rea requirement, malice of forethought.
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Now, what mens rea means simply is guilty mind.
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Because when it comes to a crime, there are typically two components.
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The actus reus, which is to say the guilty act, and the mens rea, which is to say the guilty mind or more commonly called intent.
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Now, some will think innately that perhaps murder has the highest mens rea, and it actually does not.
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And there are reasons for that.
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And I’ll get into those in just a minute here or so.
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The reason that it’s not the highest is because there are crimes that require what is called specific intent.
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And specific intent is the intent to cause the criminal outcome.
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You don’t need to have that for murder.
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So in a sense, murder has a lower mens rea requirement.
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That’s sort of an aside, but it does actually matter.
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Now, to get to the second sense of murder before getting into sort of more about mens rea, the second sense of murder would be under the moral law, which is of course more important than the positive law, because the positive law should comport with the moral law and not vice versa.
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The moral law is the law that flows from God’s nature.
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It is immutable, it is eternal, it is controlling.
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Now, under the moral law, here is the definition of murder.
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This is the definition I use, and I am again going to say this is the definition you should use.
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Under the moral law, murder is the insufficiently warranted killing of one human being by another.
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Now again, we have what one could consider a qualifier, or again, I guess more appropriately, it would be an element.
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The killing must be insufficiently warranted, which of course means that there is such a thing as a warranted killing.
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There are killings under the moral law that do not rise to the level of murder that are not immoral.
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It is permissible to kill under certain circumstances.
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And now if we talk about what is insufficiently warranted, well, what sort of warrant qualifies?
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It would have to be a moral warrant.
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So for instance, if someone just annoys you, you are not allowed to kill him for being annoying.
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I know, terrible news, some people are extremely annoying.
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But you cannot kill someone simply for being annoying.
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That is not a moral warrant.
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That is, I guess, a personal warrant or a preference, a warrant or something like that.
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In order for a killing not to be murder, the warrant for that killing must be a moral warrant.
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So for instance, he who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.
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Someone who kills another human being, again, it would have to be without sufficient warrant, that person is a murderer, and it is the duty of the faithful prince to put murderers to death.
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The death penalty is not murder.
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It is lawful killing.
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Now, between these two definitions, these two senses of the term murder, we have some similarities.
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There are qualifiers for both.
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There’s the mens rea requirement for the positive law, malice of forethought, and there is the element requirement for the definition under the moral law, insufficiently warranted.
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Of course, these are different from one another.
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There are reasons for that.
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One is pure practicality.
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The positive law has to be enforced by the state.
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You have to have these hard and fast definitions in order to assess actions and then punish them if they are crimes.
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And the moral law is, again, immutable, eternal, flows from God’s nature.
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But it has to be transposed into positive law in order for the state to actually enforce it.
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So I mentioned that I would go over more of the mens rea, so I’ll go over that now.
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When it comes to murder, you have the requirement of malice of forethought.
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I’ll actually put up a graphic or a chart showing exactly what homicide is, at least legally speaking, the different kinds of homicide, what makes them different from one another, what the elemental requirements are.
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I’ll put that in the show notes or on the website.
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But just briefly, when it comes to killing, there are legal and illegal killings.
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There are lawful and unlawful killings.
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And essentially, the dividing line is mens rea.
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It’s why you committed that killing.
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Yes, there are warrants for killing if you’re in a war or something like that.
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But mens rea is what changes one level of killing into another, what can make a negligent homicide into a murder.
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And malice of forethought, as stated before, is not specific intent.
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It is not the highest type of mens rea.
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And the reason for that is because you can kill someone without the specific intent to kill him and have it still be murder.
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And have it be just as bad, or at least legally just as bad, nearly as bad as going out with the specific intent to kill someone and killing him.
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Now if you go out, find someone and stab him to death, that specific intent, you specifically intended to kill that person.
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Now, if instead of going out, finding someone and stabbing him to death, you go outside, start lighting sticks of dynamite, and just throwing them.
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You know, go to the park, just throw dynamite.
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You know, normal activity for certain people who fish that way.
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But you go to the park and you start throwing dynamite.
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And you kill someone.
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Well, you didn’t specifically intend to kill someone.
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You intended to go to the park and throw dynamite.
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But, that action evinces such a reckless disregard for the health and welfare of others, that that killing rises to the level of murder.
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That is, one could say, abandoned malignant heart might be the term used for that.
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It depends on the jurisdiction as to specifically what the law will say when it comes to the different things that qualify as malice of forethought.
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There are different ways to reach that standard.
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But if you go out and toss dynamite, and you kill someone, you are a murderer.
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Just because you did not intend specifically to kill does not mean that it is some lesser crime.
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And that’s the reason we have this higher, well, higher conception of mens rea, but lower requirement when it comes to murder.
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And to tie this into scripture, this is pretty much exactly what we have in the Fifth Commandment.
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Thou shalt not murder in our modern language.
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Thou shalt not kill in older English or certain other languages.
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And the reason we have that distinction, the reason we have this sort of confusion as to which specific term applies is because the term used for the prohibition actually encompasses both, but only part of killing.
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And the reason it encompasses it is because it’s exactly what I just said.
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It encompasses that reckless disregard, killing that is not specific intent, but is still murder.
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And so, it sort of encompasses a severe form of negligent homicide and up.
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Of course, it doesn’t encompass all negligent homicide, because those who murder, in the sense used in the commandment, have to be put to death.
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Whereas those who commit a merely negligent homicide, so for instance, the example in scripture, gentlemen who were out in the woods chopping wood and an axe head goes flying and kills someone, well, he’s allowed to flee to a city of refuge.
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He does not have to be killed.
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And so, that does not fall within the prohibition of the Fifth Commandment.
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Now, to move on to the legal setup, as it were, without delving deeply into the law here, but just sort of the legal background, the superstructure of abortion in the US.
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Obviously, we have to start with Roe v.
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Wade, 1973.
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Instead of discussing specifically the legal underpinnings and all of that, because that has been gone over ad nauseam.
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There are plenty of resources.
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Go out and find them if you’re so inclined to read them.
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For some people, that will be interesting.
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For most, it’s probably a waste of time.
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But I want to discuss something more fundamental.
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Think about the state of society in 1973.
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Think specifically about technology, and think specifically within the technology subset of the even smaller subset of surveillance technology.
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In 1973, when you walked up to someone’s front door, you were not going to be on a doorbell camera because they didn’t exist.
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Now, there was closed-circuit television of a particularly grainy and terrible type, the kind that you somehow still see in footage of robberies of convenience stores because apparently they haven’t updated their technology in 50 years.
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But surveillance was at a much lower level.
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You had significantly less pervasive surveillance of individuals and just society generally.
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Now compare that to today.
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Today you have surveillance everywhere.
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You are on camera constantly.
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You’re on camera when you go to the store.
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You’re on camera when you go to the coffee shop.
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You’re on camera a lot of the time you drive.
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You’re on camera when you walk your dog through your neighborhood.
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There are cameras everywhere.
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And so today, you could not get away with things that you could have gotten away with in 1973.
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Now of course, what I am saying should be obvious to many.
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To some it will not be.
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But the point is, there are certain duties.
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There are certain tasks that fall to men that are incumbent on men when society, when the proper authorities, which is to say the state, the prince, does not do its or his duty.
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It is the doctrine of lesser magistrates in essence.
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And so where the prince does not do his duty, it falls to those below him and then those below them and eventually to individual men.
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And so if you have a country that has legalized the mass scale slaughter of infants, which is to say infant sacrifice, demon worship, to be blunt, there is a moral duty to end that.
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In 1973, it was very possible to end that then and there.
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Today you would not get away with it.
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Today you would be caught.
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Back then, very slim chance.
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And not only that, but society, by and large, probably would have agreed with you, probably would have protected you, would not have turned you in.
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Less of that today, depending where you live.
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So at present, not viable, not an option.
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There are other methods that will have to be used to resolve things.
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Thankfully, we are making some legal headway, which is good.
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But there is much work that remains to be done.
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To switch to, well, back to a more technical topic, let’s cover the types of abortion.
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When it comes to abortion, there are essentially two types.
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Surgical and chemical.
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For surgical abortions, there are various methods, various types of surgeries for terminating pregnancies.
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I’m not going to go over those because this isn’t a medical course.
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There’s no real reason to go over them.
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But I am going to highlight that there is one particularly heinous form, which is partial birth abortion, in which the child is partially delivered, and then typically the neck severed.
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And that’s just straight up inexcusable, completely…
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It is murder.
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There’s no way around the fact that that is just blunt homicide.
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And everyone participating in it knows that.
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Now the second type of abortion is chemical.
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Many will immediately think, oh, it’s the abortion pill.
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And you are correct.
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But there are two other kinds that people do not bring to mind.
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There is the abortion pill, which is very obviously an abortifacient.
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That is, it’s very nature.
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That is the reason it exists.
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And then there is Plan B.
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Plan B, so called, the morning after pill, is also an abortifacient.
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It seeks to stop implantation of the zygote into the uterine wall.
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And that is abortion, because you are aborting what is already a unique human life.
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That is, already a child.
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Just because it’s one cell or two cells or four or eight, however many cells, still a child, still a unique life, still entitled to protection and destroying it, still abortion.
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But I said there were three.
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And this is the one that will cause many people to have to reconsider some things in their lives.
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So-called birth control.
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There are a number of methods of birth control.
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The one I am referencing here is very clear, at least it should be, given that I am talking about chemical abortion.
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It is hormonal birth control given specifically to women.
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I am not discussing so-called male birth control, which I advise strongly against, deeply unwise, and sinful to use.
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Do not use it.
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Now, female hormonal birth control.
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How does it work?
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It is actually an anticonception or an abortifacient, depending upon the stage at which it works.
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Here is essentially the rough methodology.
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Again, not a biology course, not a medical course.
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I am giving an overview.
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So this is accurate, but not detailed.
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Three steps, in essence.
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First, the hormonal birth control through changes to vaginal mucus and chemistry of the body, attempts to kill or prevent the sperm from reaching the ovum.
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Two, through chemical changes, hormonal changes, the birth control attempts to prevent sperm from penetrating the ovum, thereby preventing conception.
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Now, these two methods are objectionable for a number of reasons, but going over birth control is a topic for another time.
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It is involved and takes a while to cover.
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Objectionable, not yet abortion.
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But I said there are three steps.
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And here is the third, preventing the zygote from implanting in the uterus.
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That is abortion, because that zygote, as stated before, and to remind those who didn’t pay particularly close attention in high school biology, the zygote is the result of fertilization, of conception.
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That is a unique human life from the point of conception onward.
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And so preventing it from implanting in the uterus is killing it.
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That’s what that is.
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That’s abortion.
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And so every single woman on hormonal birth control is a murderess.
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Now, that’s going to make people uncomfortable because there are a lot of women who are on hormonal birth control.
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But the fact of the matter is it is an abortifacient.
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And if you engage in behavior that is tantamount to the criminal action, you have committed the crime.
00:22:57.920 → 00:23:13.040
So again, to be exceedingly, entirely clear, female hormonal birth control is abortion, and abortion is murder.
00:23:13.040 → 00:23:16.980
So I ask again, what is abortion?
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And to be entirely, exceptionally clear, abortion is murder, period.
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That is the ground, that’s the foundation, that’s the simple truth.
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Now for the Christian, we should think, and I quoted it earlier, we should think it should come to mind.
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Genesis 9, 6, He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.
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That’s a command from God.
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That is moral law, not civil or ceremonial law.
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That is an eternal requirement that flows from God’s nature.
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We are not permitted to oppose on moral grounds the death penalty.
00:24:00.900 → 00:24:04.040
We are required to support it.
00:24:05.280 → 00:24:12.280
Now other than murder, and I also mentioned this earlier, other than murder, what is abortion?
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Well, it’s also child sacrifice.
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And we have many examples in history of cults of nations of societies that engaged in child sacrifice.
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You have the Canaanites.
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God drove them out before Israel because of their evil.
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God did not give the Israelites the promised land because they were good.
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Scripture is very clear about this.
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He drove out the other nations.
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He dispossessed them because of their evil, their extreme evil.
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And what is always signaled out is their destruction of their own children, their burning of their own children to the various idols, child sacrifice.
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Abortion is not better.
00:25:04.600 → 00:25:06.940
Abortion may seem better to some.
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It may look like it is less egregious because you’re not letting the child be born and then burning the child.
00:25:14.880 → 00:25:20.200
But is it any less egregious to destroy a child in utero?
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One place above all others where the child should be safe.
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To give another example of a culture of a civilization that engaged in child sacrifice, you had the Carthaginians who were destroyed by Rome judgment from God for their evil because they also engaged in child sacrifice.
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Another example, the Aztecs, this time a new world example.
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The Aztecs engaged in rampant human sacrifice, including child sacrifice.
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When Europeans came to the new world, we wiped out much of that evil.
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And one way in which that evil was wiped out was via plague.
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If you can look at a plague that kills some untold number of people estimates very wildly, people engaged in human sacrifice and demon worship and not see that that is the hand of God, then you should probably pay a little closer attention to your scripture, or maybe perhaps just read it.
00:26:35.420 → 00:26:44.260
Now, there are those who will try to say that Europeans also engaged in child sacrifice, and there was some in Europe, significantly less.
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It essentially amounts to a handful of cultures from time to time in their history would leave out infants they deemed to be defective and let them die by exposure, which is its child sacrifice.
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It is slightly different in nature because it is purely practical, which doesn’t make it much less evil, but it is not as heinous as deliberately worshipping demons by burning your children to death or otherwise destroying them.
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Not excusing it in any way.
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It’s still evil, it should be stamped out, and it is good that Christianity did so.
00:27:27.640 → 00:27:33.660
But to move on and address a tangentially related issue about what is abortion.
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Many, when they discuss abortion, will say that, well, it violates the right to life.
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And yes, I used that language in my article on it in order to reach people who are in that mindset because I want them to actually understand what I’m saying.
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But ultimately, rights do not exist.
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To be clearer, more specifically, rights do not have independent existence.
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So what is a right?
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Well, a right is merely the shadow of a duty.
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And so what we actually mean when we oppose abortion, if we’re saying right to life, what we’re talking about ultimately, the actual reality is that there is a duty not to murder.
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And that duty is incumbent on everyone.
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And so the so-called right to life is a shadow of the duty not to murder.
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So the right to life exists just not independently.
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It’s a philosophical point, but it is an important point because there is a world of difference between a duty and a right.
00:28:43.260 → 00:28:46.080
So what do we do?
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What do we do about abortion here and now?
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Today, what should we be doing with regard to this issue?
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Well, first off, simply take a stand.
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Take the hard stand.
00:28:59.800 → 00:29:01.440
Abortion is murder.
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And those who procure abortions are no less murderers than those who perform them.
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Which is to say, women who obtain abortions are murderesses.
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So do not compromise.
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Exceptions for incest, rape, and the quote life of the mother unquote are false.
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These only weaken our position.
00:29:27.220 → 00:29:35.200
When two lives are endangered to address the life of the mother exception, the moral choice is to attempt to preserve both.
00:29:35.920 → 00:29:39.260
Unless there is a higher moral duty to one.
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So, in the case of a woman and her child, even if the life of the woman is given some sort of preference, then it should still be the goal to save both.
00:29:48.920 → 00:29:53.020
Termination of the child should not be an option.
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You do not get to murder one individual to save another.
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Yes, you can expend more effort toward saving the woman than saving the child.
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But, you cannot kill the child in order to save the woman.
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So we must recognize what the real solutions are to move on.
00:30:17.000 → 00:30:22.880
We have to recognize what the real solutions are to these problems, to the problem of abortion.
00:30:25.100 → 00:30:27.620
The solution isn’t marches.
00:30:27.620 → 00:30:30.800
The solution isn’t rallies.
00:30:30.800 → 00:30:32.440
The solution isn’t pickets.
00:30:32.740 → 00:30:34.660
The solution isn’t holding up signs.
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I’m not saying these things do not work, do not have an effect.
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I’m not saying we should not engage in them.
00:30:42.960 → 00:30:46.080
I am saying they do not solve the problem.
00:30:46.080 → 00:30:52.580
I am saying they do not actually address and resolve the issue.
00:30:52.580 → 00:30:56.920
And let me permit me to quote Bismarck.
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Nicht durch Reden oder Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden, sondern durch Eisen und Blut.
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To translate, not through speeches or majority, votes.
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Will the great questions of our time be decided?
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Rather, through iron and blood.
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Ultimately, power is the answer.
00:31:29.320 → 00:31:34.440
And we must obtain it and then use it.
00:31:36.480 → 00:31:41.940
The ultimate solution to this problem and so many others is power.
00:31:41.940 → 00:31:47.120
And the reason it’s power is because those who wield the power make the rules.
00:31:48.500 → 00:32:02.400
And so if you are just out picketing or marching or doing anything like that, if that’s all you’re doing, then you are just losing slowly, or not so slowly in some cases.
00:32:02.400 → 00:32:05.480
You have to have power.
00:32:05.480 → 00:32:09.700
What actually changed the law on abortion in this country?
00:32:09.700 → 00:32:20.980
Well, having control of the executive and thereby getting at least some control of the court and thereby changing the law.
00:32:20.980 → 00:32:24.320
Power is what actually changed things.
00:32:26.200 → 00:32:32.900
Now, I recognize that of course, not everyone is going to run for president and appoint Supreme Court justices.
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Not everyone is going to be a Supreme Court justice, et cetera.
00:32:37.300 → 00:32:39.720
I’m not saying you have to do that.
00:32:39.720 → 00:32:40.720
Support the right people.
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Listen to the right people.
00:32:43.780 → 00:32:48.480
But here is what you can do in your daily life.
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Other than of course, the first two points.
00:32:51.240 → 00:32:54.560
Take the hard stand and do not compromise.
00:32:54.560 → 00:32:58.580
And of course, you can take the third one as well, which is to recognize what the real solutions are.
00:32:58.580 → 00:33:03.480
Recognizing them and being intimately, directly involved in them, two different things.
00:33:03.480 → 00:33:05.200
So do the first three things.
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And here’s a fourth.
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Hold your pastor accountable.
00:33:10.140 → 00:33:11.960
Talk to your pastor about the issue.
00:33:11.960 → 00:33:13.880
See where he stands on abortion.
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See if he has any misconceptions about it.
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Teach him about the issue if necessary.
00:33:20.160 → 00:33:23.200
Of course, that implies that you need to learn about the issue first.
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If you don’t learn about the issue, you cannot teach him.
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If you find yourself unfit for the task of teaching him, then direct him to those who are fit for the task.
00:33:36.260 → 00:33:38.480
There are plenty of resources out there.
00:33:40.500 → 00:33:50.240
Now, vitally important, one more point under holding your pastor accountable, get him to preach about the issue.
00:33:52.580 → 00:33:58.800
It is vitally important that pastors preach about relevant issues.
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I am not saying, of course, that they have to do that all the time.
00:34:01.600 → 00:34:14.100
I attend a liturgical church, we follow the cycle of readings, typically the sermon is on the gospel reading, sometimes might be the epistle or even the Old Testament reading, but we follow a cycle of readings.
00:34:14.100 → 00:34:19.100
That does not mean there is no room for preaching on these issues.
00:34:20.200 → 00:34:29.120
The issues come up in the readings, address them when they come up, or if necessary, take a Sunday to address them.
00:34:29.120 → 00:34:30.640
This is a vitally important issue.
00:34:32.400 → 00:34:47.520
God destroyed nations throughout history for their evil, and one of the main issues has always been child sacrifice, because ultimately the demons want us to destroy ourselves.
00:34:47.520 → 00:34:55.820
And there are a few better ways to do that than destroying, literally destroying, the next generation.
00:34:55.820 → 00:34:57.520
And so that is why this keeps recurring.
00:34:58.160 → 00:35:01.260
And so, your pastor should address this issue.
00:35:01.260 → 00:35:04.000
So get him to preach about the issue.
00:35:04.000 → 00:35:06.860
We have Advent coming up shortly.
00:35:06.860 → 00:35:10.000
We’re looking forward to the birth of the Christ child.
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There will be opportunity to bring up this issue in a sermon, to address this issue in a Bible study.
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It is incumbent on every pastor to address this issue.
00:35:27.180 → 00:35:31.560
And so, in conclusion, two points.
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We have to stop making weak claims.
00:35:39.680 → 00:35:51.620
There’s always the temptation to make exceptions, to say that, oh, well, these women were deceived, and so they didn’t really commit murder.
00:35:51.620 → 00:35:52.920
They’re not murderesses.
00:35:53.580 → 00:36:01.100
And, yes, there are some women who were deceived, particularly very young women who are forced into abortions.
00:36:01.100 → 00:36:06.120
And we do have to recognize it’s still murder.
00:36:07.320 → 00:36:30.460
There may be necessity of changing the punishment in these cases, because those who actually meet the requirements of murder, those who fulfill the elements would be the abortion so-called doctor, those who push for the abortion, those who legalized abortion, etc., many others.
00:36:30.460 → 00:36:35.660
But there may be some women who are victims, but not all.
00:36:35.660 → 00:36:44.020
There are many women who go out and procure for themselves abortions knowing full well what they are doing, knowing exactly what it is.
00:36:45.320 → 00:36:50.000
There are those on social media who will say that abortion is part of their religion.
00:36:51.060 → 00:36:53.800
So stop making weak claims.
00:36:53.800 → 00:36:55.960
Don’t make excuses.
00:36:55.960 → 00:36:58.620
Don’t try to make these exceptions.
00:36:58.620 → 00:36:59.880
State what it is.
00:36:59.880 → 00:37:01.260
Murder is abortion.
00:37:01.260 → 00:37:03.040
Those…
00:37:03.040 → 00:37:04.780
Abortion is murder, rather.
00:37:04.780 → 00:37:10.720
Those who commit abortion are murderers, and murderers deserve death.
00:37:12.660 → 00:37:17.640
So point two, be unashamed of scripture and the moral position.
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Don’t balk from stating what scripture says about these things.
00:37:24.240 → 00:37:27.060
Memorize Genesis 9 6.
00:37:27.060 → 00:37:32.140
Know what God says about those who commit child sacrifice.
00:37:33.440 → 00:37:39.520
Do not be ashamed to stand on the truth of scripture, what scripture is and what scripture says.
00:37:40.560 → 00:37:43.180
Take your stand on God’s word.
00:37:45.320 → 00:37:48.520
So those are my two points in conclusion.