More and more pastors are distorting God’s word.
Distorting the Bible is nothing new.
It’s been going on since the Serpent distorted God’s Word with Eve in the Garden of Eden.
We should expect Satan to twist and distort Scripture. But not ordained ministers and pastors. When they do it, it’s especially deceitful and harmful.
Regarding abortion, Rev. Al Sharpton recently said that “the Bible is about choice… If you are a minister, as I am, you can preach to people to convert them; you do not make laws to compel them.”
It’s true that the Bible is about choice, but not the kind of choice Al Sharpton is talking about.
God created mankind with free will. We all have the freedom to choose our behavior – and the beliefs we follow in life. But choice always produces consequences.
Joshua commanded the Israelites to “choose for yourselves today whom you will serve” – whether the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or the gods of the Canaanite people around them (Joshua 24:15). Their choice would have consequences that would affect their safety and security, their prosperity or poverty… and every aspect of their lives.
Jesus talked about a choice between two gates – the wide gate leading to destruction, and the narrow gate leading to life. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Choice produces consequences. Different choices produce different consequences.
Not all paths lead to the same destination. Not all choices produce the same outcome.
But apparently, Al Sharpton believes that “choice” – as it applies to pregnancy – produces the same reaction from God whether a pregnant woman aborts and murders her unborn baby or decides to carry her baby to birth and then give the child up for adoption.
In the second part of Sharpton’s statement, he says, “… you do not make laws to compel them.”
He is mistaken again. Laws do not compel obedience. They are statements of a moral standard of right and wrong that carry consequences for the choice one makes of either complying or not complying with the standard.
Laws can be statements of the government’s morality or of God’s morality. Many of our laws in the U.S. are based on the morality expressed in the Ten Commandments.
People can choose to obey or disobey any law. But disobedience always brings negative consequences. And all disobedience to God’s laws displeases God.
For this reason, pastors should be concerned about knowing and communicating the essence of God’s moral law for all – including His moral law regarding pregnancy and life.
Since it is God who creates the reproductive organs of women, and since it is God who causes conception to take place, it’s reasonable to think that God would have something to say about when it is that life in the womb begins, and when – if ever – life in the womb should be terminated.
But apparently, Sharpton doesn’t seem to care about what God thinks.
Passages like Jeremiah 1:4-5, “The word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” and Psalm 139:13-16, “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, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” clearly state that in God’s eyes, life begins at conception and that He has a plan and purpose for each unborn baby even before it is fully formed in the womb!
Another pastor who doesn’t seem to care about God’s opinion regarding pre-born life is Daniel Kanter, senior minister of the First Unitarian Church of Dallas.
He organizes day trips on airplanes for pregnant women every two weeks from Dallas to Albuquerque, New Mexico to help them get abortions.
He, along with many other pastors and clergy persons from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), believes that it’s a “fundamental right” for a woman to terminate her pregnancy and control her own body.
Neither Kanter nor the RCRC quote any scripture in support of this so-called “fundamental right.”
They would be hard-pressed to do so.
Scripture actually teaches that because God has created each one of us, He owns us. We don’t own ourselves.
Consider Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, AND THOSE WHO DWELL IN IT.” [Emphasis added]
Christian pastors should be familiar with this principle of God’s sovereignty and ownership of our lives, just as they should be familiar with the following Scripture:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:1-2)
“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.” (Colossians 3:17)
“Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16)
Just as it is not God’s will for us to kill ourselves, so it is not God’s will for us to kill the life that God has placed inside the body of a woman.
Instead of having the attitude of Jesus, who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not as I will but as You will” (Matthew 26:39), Christian pastors who support killing the unborn are saying in effect, “Not as God wills but as I will.”
Rev. Katey Zeh, a pro-abortion pastor who lives in North Carolina and who is the CEO of the RCRC, says that fighting for abortion rights – euphemistically called “reproductive freedom and dignity” – is central to her faith.
Her reasons are not based on specific Scripture, but only on the general principle of showing love and compassion for people during their most difficult times in life.
She characterized her visit to an abortion clinic when she was a seminary student, and holding the hands of women having abortions, as a transformative experience.
She said that “it was just so sacred to accompany people through this very vulnerable moment—which for me, as someone who follows the model of Jesus, that is what I see Him doing. He was someone who showed up for people during their most difficult moments, offered them care and compassion and love, and spoke up against unjust laws.”
She misunderstands. Jesus never did speak out against the Roman law that the Jews lived under during his lifetime on earth. Nor did he oppose the Law of Moses. What he DID speak out against was the hypocrisy of the Jewish religious leaders – and their misunderstanding and misapplication of Jewish law.
Ms. Zeh also doesn’t see the connection between the commandment, “You shall not murder,” and abortion.
She said in a recent interview, “In reality, if you look at the sacred texts, there’s actually very little speaking to this issue of abortion. If anything, there are pro-abortion texts in the Hebrew bible specifically, and really nothing in the Christian texts.”
She doesn’t give any examples of pro-abortion texts in the Hebrew Bible. Nor does she explain what she believes are the differences between the Hebrew Bible and the so-called “Christian texts.”
Instead, she believes that being against abortion is a “fringe belief” that is part of a “white Christian nationalist agenda.”
“In reality,” she says, “there is no one understanding of, ‘Is abortion right or wrong?’”
There may indeed be multiple “understandings” of whether or not abortion is wrong, but they are not based on Scripture.
The apostle Paul accurately describes those who invent their own beliefs apart from God’s Word: “For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” (Romans 10:2-3)
As Christians, pastors should take the lead in speaking of God’s love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness for those who have had an abortion.
As Christians, both individually and as members of a local church, we must do much more to show compassion and empathy toward pregnant women who are in crisis and who feel there is no way out of their crisis other than abortion.
We must not condemn them or judge them because they want to terminate their pregnancies on their own terms rather than on God’s terms – which would be through miscarriage.
We do not know what battles they have been fighting in their personal lives that have caused them to come to an abortion clinic.
But there are ways in which we can help.
Here are a few things we can do to support and encourage them:
- Pray with them.
- Pray for them daily.
- Offer to take them to the nearest crisis pregnancy center.
- Offer to meet with them weekly to do a Bible study on the Sovereignty of God.
- Offer to take them to your church.
- Pray about adoption yourself – I was adopted, and praise God for it.
- Support a crisis pregnancy center with your prayers and donations.
What do you think? Email me at craig@electionforum.org.
Read this similar article: Pro-Abortion Win: 5 Key Takeaways
Comments 2
Well said. Murder is just that. Murder. My dad was in the pulpit 75 years. One of his many words of wisdom was, “No one gets away with anything”. These pastors destroying the unborn are wicket, and shall not get away with this evil.
Besides prayers & donations, VISIT one and see how you might help practically. There are a myriad of needs that you might be able to help with.