The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

John 10:10 ESV

Sunday, December 2, 2012

He Died a Person Not a Casualty


Earlier tonight I preached a Sanctity of Human Life message, "The Sanctity of the Unborn" at New Life Romanian Baptist Church in Hollywood (Abortion was legalized in Romania in December 1989).

After reviewing the  Biblical accounts of the personhood of John the Baptist (Luke 1:15), Isaiah (Isaiah 49:1), the Apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15), and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5), I quoted Douglas Erlandson (Abortion: Answering the Arguments),

“God deals with the lives [of these men] from conception to adulthood. The Bible does not appear to recognize a special change in God’s dealings with man at birth. God values each of the above men while he is still in the womb – knows him, chooses him, shapes him.”   

I continued,

"...the  Biblical evidence is very clear. The unborn are created by God and for God. They were created in His image and they are recognized by God as distinct and unique persons from the moment of conception." 

After reviewing the scientific evidence for human life at conception, I said,

"Whether you approach the issue of the personhood of the unborn from a Biblical point of view - and we must - or from a purely scientific or biological perspective, the inescapable conclusion is that life within the womb is human life, a distinct person, worthy of protection." 

Later in the evening, I watched this moving video testimony someone had posted on Facebook. His parents CHOSE to be pro-life, allowing this precious PERSON to bless their lives, knowing their child, even if born alive, would have a very brief life. Their baby was five days old when he succumbed to severe medical difficulties...but died loved, cherished and with dignity.

Thomas Paine one of the authors of the Constitution wrote (The Rights of Man),  

“...All men are born equal and with equal natural rights, in the same manner as if posterity had been continued by creation instead of generation, the latter being only the mode by which the former is carried forward; and consequently every child born into the world must be considered as deriving its existence from God. The world is as new to him as it was to the first man that existed and his natural right in it is of the same kind.”  

You can watch the moving testimony of these parents, who perhaps unknowingly, lived out Thomas Paine's words.