What the Bible Says about Abortion!

Last week, during services, I was asked by a few about the anti-abortion ruling that the Supreme Court carried out a little over a week ago. And so I thought, since this is a topic that is in the news, we should always be watching what's going on in world events and be able to answer those who ask us about the reason of our faith. We have young people, children, grandchildren. They ask about these topics as well.

It's mentioned in the school. It's mentioned among themselves. And so this is a topic that it's time to focus exactly what does the Bible say about abortion. God's Word is the basis of truth. And as we just focus on what God's Word says, not what man is saying about it, you would think from some of the news that it's like Chicken Little. The whole sky is falling. We're not going to survive this ruling. And yet we understand that this is this present society. And it is slowly vanishing. It's deteriorating. And we know there's something much better that is coming in the future.

So we should be up to date about this subject, be able to answer questions about it, especially family, especially any relatives that you have and young kids. You might be an uncle. You have some nephews and nieces. Whoever they are, it's important for us to be equipped to answer, but according to God's Word, not according to man's opinion. Let's look at Deuteronomy 6, where we see God tells us to study and be prepared to answer, especially children and grandchildren and others.

Deuteronomy 6, verse 1 through 3, this is part of God's holy laws. It says, Have deep respect for what God has given us in His laws and His Word to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged. Believe me, we have been spared so much. Anguish, sickness, many of us would be dead by now if we would have just followed along in society's way of life.

And because we are following God, our life is prolonged. God not only blesses us, but we avoid so many wrong habits that we see around us. He goes on to say, Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you. God wants the best for us, not the worst, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Then He goes on in verse 6, He says, And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. So God wants us to be teachers, to learn sufficiently well that we can explain His laws, His holy and sacred way of life to them in a way that is attractive and positive, so it may go well with them. And all of these teachings in the Bible are based on one foundational truth. It's found in 1 John 4, verse 8. 1 John 4, verse 8. It says, and above... Let's see here... Get the right chapter...

1 John 4, verse 8. It says, He who does not love does not know God. For God is love. That's the foundational principle of the entire Bible. It means all of God's characteristics are governed by that principle of outflowing love toward others. God never does anything to damage and cause evil.

He does discipline us at times, just like a loving Father does. The loving Father does that out of love for His children, so that they don't stray into the wrong way of life. There's a proper way of doing it, disciplining with love. That's the way God deals with us. So, what about this subject of abortion? Where does this word come from? Abortion.

It comes from a Latin word, very similar, abortus. A-B-O-R-T-U-S. Abortus. In Spanish, it's aborto, because Spanish comes from Latin. It's even closer to Latin than English. And it comes from two different syllables. Ab, which in Latin means away from. And then abortus, which means something born. So it means pushing out what is being born, expelling it out of the human body. That's term. So it means to deliberately terminate a pregnancy by ending the life of the unborn child.

Now, it's interesting that they also use the term abort, which means here deliberately terminating, for instance, a launch. When the missile is launched and it goes off, awry, and starts, they say abort, abort, and they push the button, boom, the missile is destroyed. And in a certain way, in a woman's body, it's also something that is destroyed in the process.

So, as we look in the Bible, where does the thought and the subject of abortion come up? It has to do with Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27, because it has to do with human life. Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27, which also are foundational principles. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And so God had created all different animals according to their likeness and their kind. But man is different.

Man is higher than animals because he was created in the image of God. There is dignity there. There is something sacred that is not in any animal. Notice in chapter 5, there are actually two more areas in Genesis that talk about man being created in God's likeness. One is in chapter 5, verses 1 and 2. It says, this is the book of the genealogy of Adam.

In the day that God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He didn't make any animals in that way. He created them male and female. So talking there about man, it's talking about mankind, male and female. And blessed them and called them mankind in the day they were created.

So abortion is ending a human being made in the image of God. It is not some animal that is destroyed in the process. It's something very special and sacred. Notice the other scripture in Genesis 9, verse 6.

After the flood, God gave these instructions, verse 6. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God, he made man. Again, separating it from animals. This is something special. This is something sacred. It's not to be taken lightly. And God's great goal for mankind is given in Hebrews 2, verse 10. Here's the reason God created mankind. This is the same thing in Genesis 1, 26, and 27, but now it's expressed in a further step forward. In Hebrews 2, verse 10, it says, For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, talking about Jesus Christ, in bringing many sons to glory, I'm sorry, it's talking about God the Father, for it was fitting for him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons, which the term means children, to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. So God actually has in mind bringing humans made of matter into the God plane, the family plane, of making them being part of that glory in the future, making them into spirit beings that will live eternally into the future. That is the overarching purpose of having created mankind. And so, as we begin to see this important subject and dealing with human life, what does God tell us in his law? Let's go to Exodus chapter 20. This is where we find the Ten Commandments. In verse 13, it says simply, You shall not murder. The word here means killing another human being. God created man with that dignity and that image of himself. And so, that's the sixth commandment. You shall not murder or kill another person. And then, he further adds in the next chapter Exodus 21, in verse 22, where it actually talks about the unborn child. Here's a law that has to do with the unborn child. Exodus 21, in verse 22, it says, If men fight and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished according as the woman's husband imposes on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. So, here, sometimes there's a brawl going on and there's a pregnant woman. Sometimes she might be trying to stop the fight. But somehow, she is hurt in the process and she goes into labor pains and a baby is born. Now, it says in the Bible here that if there is no further harm to either her or that unborn baby, then you're just going to be fined. You're going to have to pay a price for the injury. But notice what it says here in the Bible Knowledge Commentary. And this is, again, the best understanding we have of this scripture. It says, If a pregnant woman delivered her child prematurely as a result of a blow, but both were otherwise uninjured, the guilty party was to pay compensation determined by the woman's husband and the court. However, if there was injury to the expectant mother or her child, then the assailant, the person who hurt her, was to be penalized in proportion to the nature of severity of the injury. While unintentional life-taking was usually not a capital offense that was accidental, there were other punishments, but it didn't mean a person had to die for it. If it was unintended, like it has the example of somebody that's chopping wood and all of a sudden that iron head of the axe gets loose. Have you ever had something like that happen? It happens sometimes. And sure enough, the head of the axe hits a person in the back of the head or somewhere and kills them. It was unintentional, and there is a penalty, but it did not mean that that person was going to be executed as a result.

It says here, here it clearly was capital punishment. Also, the unborn fetus, that unborn child, is viewed in this passage as just as much a human being as its mother. The abortion of a fetus was considered murder. A person's physical loss by injury was to be punished by a similar loss to the offender, the law of retaliation. This law was designed to restrict the exacting of punishment to what was equitable or equal. So, of course, believe me, if something like this was applied, where you had some man and all of a sudden this pregnant woman, and she loses a child, and then that person is arrested, taken to the court, and it determined that this was something that actually did happen, and it was cause of the death of that baby, there was a capital punishment. That person was going to be executed. Now, can you imagine if something like that was applied, everybody would know, how careful would you be when a pregnant woman is around? You would respect her a lot more, because you knew the consequences. Whereas today, it can happen all the time. They don't even consider that unborn child as a viable human being, but the Bible is different. And the Bible talks about the unborn child as something precious to God, that he is supervising the development of that child. Notice in Psalm 139 what David said when he was in his mother's womb. Psalm 139, starting in verse 13. It says, David talking to God in prayer, it says, For you formed my inward parts, you covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from you. When I was made in secret, because it's something that even a woman that is pregnant, she knows everything's going on, but it's inside of her in a secretive way. He says, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Talking about the body as a symbol of a sort of a cave with a baby being developed. Your eyes saw my substance being yet uninformed, and in your book they were all written, the day's fashion for me, when as yet there were none of them. So God is involved. It's very important for God, the human being that's being developed. Notice what the Living Bible Translation says about this verse. You made all the delicate inner parts of my body, and knit them together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous, and how well I know it. You were there while I was born, and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book. So God knows the process of bringing a baby to life in the mother's womb first, and then going out. This is from Gary Bauer, one of the helpers in the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, a famous Christian psychologist. In 1973, medical science wasn't nearly as advanced as it is today.

In the Roe v. Wade case, the Supreme Court dodged the issue of life. Justice Harry Blackmon wrote in the majority opinion, quote, We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. But it's not a difficult question today. Fifty years ago, science had not developed as much as today. Every biology textbook tells us that life begins at conception. At that moment, all the DNA is present to determine everything about a person, from their gender to the color of their eyes and hair. And by the way, that baby's DNA is not the same as the mother's DNA. So this is a separate individual from the mother. Yes, the mother feeds the baby and helps in every way, but this is a separate individual. The DNA is the mixture from the mother and the father, and the mother is not the main cause of the baby developing. It already has all its DNA, which is unique to that baby. No two babies are born. Even if they're identical twins, they still have differences. It goes on to say, 50 years later, from 1973, we now know even more thanks to advances in medical science. Ultrasound machines and sonograms have given us a window into the womb. We can see the humanity of the pre-born baby at every stage of pregnancy. Doctors now perform surgeries on babies in utero, which means in the uterus, when necessary to save or improve the life of that baby. They can go in and do surgery. Yes, it is a human life. We also know that a baby's heart begins beating around week four. Brain activity can be detected around six weeks. At eight weeks, 90 percent, which we're talking about four months, I mean two months, 90 percent of the baby's body, including its eyes, are formed. At 12 weeks, which is three months, the pre-born baby can feel pain and recoils to avoid the abortionist's knife. All of that is documented. There's no controversy over that. Let's go to Luke chapter one and verse thirteen to see what it talks about John the Baptist before he was born. Here the angel Gabriel is talking to Elizabeth and to her husband Zachariah. Luke chapter one verses thirteen through fifteen. It says, So even before he was born, God gave that baby the Holy Spirit. And there are only three cases in the entire Bible that we know that was the case. Jeremiah, which God said that he supervised even before he was born. He was going to be a prophet and gave him his spirit, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.

Now, what we're living today is not the normal situation about the subject of abortion. Back in the 1940s and 50s, abortion was so rare that it was hardly discussed at all. People had strong families. Basically, everybody had children. And there were certain moral principles that avoided multiplying this. But in the 1960s, with the so-called sexual revolution, which actually was the sexual devolution, it wasn't something that was positive. It devolved. And with the creation of the pill, which avoided pregnancies, plus the wild styles of those days, then a lot of teenage and young adult women got pregnant outside the marriage. And it became rampant. It just grew by leaps and bounds. And so people were clamoring that something needed to be done. And these abortions could not be done in some way place that was unsafe. And then the Supreme Court stepped in in 1973 and said that abortion was going to be allowed in the United States. And from then on, the federal government poured millions. Instead of trying to deal with the problem of teenage pregnancies, they just dealt with the effect. And so it has been for the past 50 years. Do you know that close to one million babies are destroyed here in the United States? It's 930,000, which is an average, that never get to live their life. They were made in God's image. They have a right to life. And yet, they are in their life being ended. So this is from the Population Reference Bureau. It says 56 million average of abortions are done each year in the last 10 years. 56 million abortions. That's the size of many large countries, much more than Chile or Argentina or Peru or all of those. And yet, that type of population disappears every year. In fact, about one-third of all the pregnancies don't ever come to the birth of the baby. Only two-thirds of the pregnant women actually have children. And the great majority of that other third has to do with this obligated and, as it mentioned here, about deliberately terminating a pregnancy. Now, tomorrow is the 3rd of July, and then on Monday is the 4th of July. And it's interesting when you think how this country was founded with the Declaration of Independence. July 4th, 1776 is when it was finally proclaimed. That's why we celebrate the 4th of July. That this Declaration of Independence says, we hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men, this is talking about all humans, are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, which means they can't be taken away. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, how about those unborn children? Do they have the rights of the Declaration of Independence? A right to have life, to be able to live a life of liberty, and to pursue happiness, or not? So, you see, we're not applying that. It's just those people that are born that are able to do that. But, unborn children, they are not taken into consideration under this Declaration of Independence. They should have their rights protected as well.

In the Constitution, the first ten articles is called the Bill of Rights. And, these Bill of Rights back up that a child that is in the mother's womb has a right to life.

The first article has to do with the freedom of religion, and press, and other things. So, it talks about the freedom of religion. That no state, no government will establish an official religion in the United States. But, it's sad that now a lot interpret that first amendment as not freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. So, they're completely separating and ostracizing religion from the classroom, and now much more around our communities. But, if we've ever had people in the past that we know of, or have had some abortion going on, remember you can always repent and be forgiven by God. There's no such thing as a sin that cannot be repented of and forgiven, no matter how serious it is. In the church, we always are going to welcome people that repent, change their lives, ask God for forgiveness, and we go forward. That is something personal between that person and God. But, how about the future? The future that God has planned has a very bright future. It is very positive, because this problem with abortion only has to do with this present society, which is slowly dying and it's going to fade away. Notice what it says in 1 John 2. Starting in verse 15. It says, Talking about the society today.

I'd like to read this same passage from the voice translation. Not quite accurate. It says, So when will abortion end? In society. We can read about it in Revelation chapter 11 verse 15. Revelation chapter 11 verse 15. It says, Then the seventh angel sounded, and there were loud voices in heaven. By the way, this has to do with the Feast of Trumpets, which is the next feast, because it's talking here about the seventh trumpet. And that's going to happen one day. We're looking forward to the change of this society into Christ's society. It goes on to say, It comes from this verse here. And could have sung it, but I don't think he understood that kingdom of God. He thought he was going to heaven. No, heaven is coming down here in the way of the kingdom of God. So that's when it's going to end. Christ is going to put an end to abortion, not man. This present ruling, it's not going to stop abortion. Most of the states are going to go along. And eventually, because that's the way society is, we're having more pregnant teenagers outside of the wedding and of wedlock than ever before. And many are just living with their companions. And so they're not even getting married. What chance do these children have? Many don't even get to be born, but that's not the end for them. Notice what it says in Revelation chapter 20. Revelation chapter 20. And we can go and read verse 6 first. It says, The previous verse says, So it talks about a resurrection after those thousand years, which we call in church speak the second resurrection. Because if there's a first, there has to be a second. Or else it would have just been said the resurrection. But it separated the first from the second. And then it goes on to say, dealing with the second resurrection.

Verse 11. It says, When Christ sits on that throne, it's like everything is going to change. It's going to be Him beginning to judge the people of this second resurrection, which probably is going to be like at least 90 or 95% of all of mankind. Because only about maybe 5% probably will be part of that first resurrection, if that many. But the rest are going to resurrect in this second. And notice what it says about them. It says, And I saw the dead. In other words, this is the time now when they get to be resurrected. Small and great. Other translations have the most insignificant to the greatest. All of these kings and powerful people, they're going to all come up at this time standing before God, showing that they've come back to life, physical life. And books were opened. It talks about the biblia. That's the term which has to do with the Bible. The books. We've got 69 books in the Bible, as we currently use here. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. This is the opportunity for their names to be inscribed. Of course, why open the Book of Life if none of their names are on it? Because if their names would have been on it, they would have been part of the first resurrection. So here, it's talking about an opportunity to have their names written in this Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which are written in the Book. So this is always the standard that we're all going to be judged by. Now, we believe, although God has the last word, that these unborn babies will be part of that resurrection. Because if life begins at conception and that life is interrupted, that was a being that Jesus Christ died for. They have a right to be born, and they'll probably be tiny little babies at that time. And if those of their first resurrections are going to be in charge under Christ, we'll supervise how these babies are going to grow up and develop. I'd love to take care of a lot more kids than in this life. Just give me another hundred babies. Well, Cottie and I can take care of them and the family and everything else. I just love to have more kids. And that's going to be a wonderful opportunity to watch them grow, because they are innocent. They didn't have a chance to have their names inscribed. But again, God has the last word, because He knows exactly how to get it done. And so, let's go to the last verse in Revelation 21. After all, judgment has been carried out.

It says in verse 1 of Revelation 21, Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. So, all the geography of this earth, all the topography, all would have...the surface of the earth has been, as 2 Peter 3 mentions, it's all been purified. And the sea was completely evaporated. And then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, talking about humans, that all have been resurrected. And now spirit beings, under Christ, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. So, this is the big family reunion that we all look forward to at that time. There won't be death, there won't be any sin involved. We'll all be able to enjoy being part of that family of God. And then it says, verse 4, And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Then He who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. New stage begins at this time. And He said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. So God has a program, and He's carrying everything out. God is going to work all things out for the good. God is love, and He's looking for the best results in the long run. So hopefully we better understand now the subject of abortion, as it is revealed in the Bible, and to encourage others that God is in charge, and He cares for all that were made in His image. And there is a wonderful result in the end. Let's give God thanks, instruct our children and others as we can, set a good example for them, and look forward to that coming kingdom of peace, righteousness, compassion, and love.