Who Determines How You Think?

Good evening to the blessed of the Lord! Good evening to men and women and young people who are more than conquerors in every situation.

Pro-Life, Pro-Choice

I want to tell you up front that this is not a message about abortion. It’s a message about how we have come to the place of using terms like pro-life and pro-choice. But I want to set the foundation.

In Genesis 4:1 it says “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.”

When Eve conceived, when she got pregnant, as far as God was concerned she was going to have a son.

Look at Genesis 25:23. “And the Lord said unto her (Rebekah), Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowel; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”

Rebekah had two human beings struggling inside of her. Both of these children would lead to the establishment of nations. Do you see this?

Turn to Judges 13 and look at verse 5: “For lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazareth unto God form the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines.”

God prophesied Samson and what he would do while he was still in the womb. Do you see this? I ask you ladies and gentlemen: whenever a woman gets pregnant do you not think that God has a plan in mind for that child?

Let me remind you that this is not a message about abortion. I’m just laying the foundation for where we are going tonight.

Go to Psalm 139:13. “For thou hast possessed my reins; thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” Now let’s read it from the Amplified Bible. “For you did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

Who is the “You” in this verse? It’s God. Do you see this ladies and gentlemen?

Isaiah 49:1 – “Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from afar; The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.”

“From the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name.” When my mom was pregnant with Barry, the Lord knew Barry. Barry not a fetus. Barry was not just tissue in my mother’s womb. He knew Barry’s name. He knew Sean’s name. He knew Cindy’s name. He knew your name when you were in your mother’s womb.

Do you see where we’re going here? When a mother gets pregnant, God knows His plan for that child from the moment the egg is fertilized. God has a plan for that child.

One more. Jeremiah 1:4, 5 – “The the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

Every person inside a mother’s womb – God has a calling for that person.

How many of you know that the term “pro-life,” when it was first used, had nothing to do with abortion? It was used by some in the early 1960s counterculture, and we now known as Hippies, to criticize aspects of mainstream culture that they considered cruel.

The first documented appearance of “pro-life” is in the book Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, published in 1960. I’m looking at some of the folks in the room. That was a long, long, long, long time ago. ? It’s about Summerhill, an English boarding school, and was written by its headmaster, A. S. Neil.

Neil wrote: “No pro-life parent or teacher would ever strike a child.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that means that my Mom and Dad were not pro-life! (Laughter) And it also means that your mom and dad were also not pro-life. This means that Doris and I are not pro-life. Just ask Stephen. (Laughter) This means that some of you in this room tonight or watching are not pro-life either.

“No pro-life citizen would tolerate our penal code, our hangings, our punishment of homosexuals, our attitude toward bastardy.” In other words, a person who is pro-life will not have a child out of wedlock.

One of the earliest documented uses of “pro-life” as a synonym for opposition to abortion is found in the September 16, 1971 Chicago Tribune article, “Collegians Who Campaign for the Unborn.”

A student group at the University of Minnesota called Save Our Unwanted Life, or SOUL, was simultaneously opposed to both abortion and the Vietnam War. Members of SOUL used the term “pro-life” to argue that adherents of the antiwar left who supported abortion were being hypocritical. In other words, how can you be against the taking of life in war and support the taking of life by abortion?