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The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth That Even Non-Christian Scholars Believe
[Author’s Note: If you have any non-Christian or skeptical relatives or friends, I strongly encourage you to share this info with them—especially at Easter time. God bless you!]
Last revised on 3-31-24
“This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses.” —Peter, the Apostle (Acts 2:32)
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now [in other words, “If you don’t believe me, there are hundreds of other living eyewitnesses still available whom you can interview; be my guest!”], but some have fallen asleep. Then, He appeared to James; then, to all the apostles . . . and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.
“For I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain. But I labored even more than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether, then, it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.” —Paul, the Apostle (1 Corinthians 15:3–11)
Prologue
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is THE central doctrine of Christianity—the very foundation and heart of the Gospel message.
If Jesus of Nazareth did not rise physically from the dead, then He is not God, His words cannot be trusted, everything He claimed and taught is ultimately meaningless, and humanity has no hope of salvation from evil, suffering, death, and the deserved wrath of an absolutely just and holy God on Judgment Day.
On the other hand, if Jesus did rise physically from the dead, then He is God, He is the single most trustworthy person of all time, everything He claimed and taught is true and of supreme significance for all mankind, and He is humanity’s only hope of salvation from evil, suffering, death, and the deserved wrath of an absolutely just and holy God on Judgment Day.
That is how much is at stake here, so there better be good reasons to believe Jesus’ resurrection actually occurred in history. But is there any historical evidence for the Resurrection?
It may surprise you to learn that the vast majority of reputable and credentialed New Testament critical scholars and historians today, from across the ideological and theological spectrum — that is, from very conservative Christians to radically liberal skeptics (i.e., atheists, agnostics, and so forth) — agree upon more than 20 historical facts concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth and the evidences for His resurrection.
For your consideration, 13 of these historical facts are presented in this article. I invite you to examine this data thoughtfully and with an open mind (i.e., don’t rule out the existence of God, the reliability of the Bible, or the possibility of miracles in advance), as well as with a sincere commitment to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
A Brief Word on Why Skeptics Should Give the 4 Gospel Testimonies the Benefit of the Doubt
In this age of hyper skepticism and general incredulity toward religion, especially Christianity, the default position of many thinkers today is to dismiss the Gospel accounts — which, important to note, comprise the best historical data available to us about the person known as Jesus of Nazareth — as untrustworthy, a priori (i.e., prior to examining them), which is something they would never do with the writings of secular historians.
One of the reasons usually given for this knee-jerk cynicism is that the Gospels were, in fact, written by Christians and must, therefore, be automatically rejected as unreliable due to the personal biases of the Gospel authors in favor of Christ. [Note: What’s often overlooked here is an historical criterion known as the “principle of embarrassment,” which is to say that the Gospel authors also reported many facts about Jesus that appear to cast Him and themselves in a negative light — that is, details which are embarrassing, awkward, controversial, and otherwise disadvantageous and/or self-damaging to the authors as well as to Jesus’ other followers, which further lends credence to the honesty and transparency of the Gospel writers’ testimonies.]
Another reason for distrusting the Gospels is that all four books contain reports of miracles, and that fact alone is enough to chase away most readers whose worldview will not permit the possibility of divine “interference” with the laws of nature. Apparently, it never occurs to such prejudiced minds that a devoted and faithful pupil and servant of Jesus might, naturally, have greater motivation than anyone else to record the facts about his beloved Master as accurately as possible — and all the more so when the writer in question had nothing to gain and everything to lose by reporting the exact truthfulness of what he witnessed or what he gleaned from interviews with eyewitnesses, as was assuredly the situation with the New Testament authors (continue reading to discover why this is true). That factor would seem to elevate the credibility of the four Gospel testimonies even higher.
Neither does it ever seem to occur to skeptics that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John describe the miraculous signs and wonders of Jesus with the same simple, straightforward, “matter-of-fact” language they employ when commenting, for example, that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea or that Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. The Gospels are replete with social, cultural, geographical, and political truth claims that have been externally corroborated by historical and archaeological research, and none which have ever been disproved. Furthermore, virtually all the writings of ancient Greek and Roman historians also contain reports of miracles, prophecies, and other supernatural elements, yet most scholars accept the basic historical reliability of these considerably lesser-attested works, without reservation. Why not give the Gospels the same benefit of the doubt?
Having said that, I’m now going to defer respectfully and gratefully to the immensely superior knowledge of the eminent Simon Greenleaf. If you’re not familiar with that name, I think you should be. Dr. Greenleaf stands as one of the most preeminent legal scholars of all time. In addition to being one of the founders of Harvard Law School, where he served as Professor of Law from 1833 to 1848, and to serving as an associate of Justice Joseph Story for 14 years, Greenleaf also published a three-volume work on the rules of legal evidence titled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, which came to be received as an authoritative text in all English and American tribunals.
Of greater interest to me and the topic at hand, however, is another of Greenleaf’s most respected publications: The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence. As the book’s title suggests, Greenleaf, who began his investigation as an unbeliever, subjects the data reported in the four canonical Gospel accounts to rigorous cross-examination, applying the same rules of evidence administered in courts of justice to ascertain both the personal integrity of the Gospel writers as well as the historical trustworthiness of their statements. In so doing, he persuasively demonstrates that the independent, eyewitness testimonies of separate historians Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — including the information they report about the Resurrection — would, unquestionably, be admissible in a modern court of law as credible, factual evidence. [Note: Nancy Kippenhan of the Liberty University School of Law has shown here that Greenleaf’s arguments remain true even in 21st-century courts of law.] More than that, the initially skeptical Dr. Greenleaf himself concluded that Christ’s resurrection from the dead was indeed an historical fact.
In this same book, Dr. Greenleaf reasonably requests that skeptics give the Gospel witnesses the same “fair hearing” that they would readily give the works of other ancient writers. To any readers who have misgivings or suspicions regarding the Gospel records, I exhort you to heed his words carefully (emphasis mine):
“In the absence of circumstances which generate suspicion, every witness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his credibility lying on the objector.”
This rule serves to show the injustice with which the writers of the Gospels have ever been treated by infidels—an injustice silently acquiesced in even by Christians—in requiring the Christian affirmatively, and by positive evidence, to establish the credibility of his witnesses above all others before their testimony is entitled to be considered, and in permitting the testimony of a single profane [i.e., secular] writer — alone and uncorroborated — to outweigh that of any single Christian. . . . But the Christian writer seems, by the usual course of the argument, to have been deprived of the common presumption of charity in his favor; and reversing the ordinary rule of administering justice in human tribunals, [the Christian’s] testimony is unjustly presumed to be false, until it is proved to be true. [Note: This is completely backwards!]
This treatment, moreover, has been applied to them all [i.e., to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John] in a body; and, without due regard to the fact that — being independent historians, writing at different periods, they are entitled to the support of each other — they have been treated, in the argument, almost as if the New Testament were the entire production, at once, of a body of men, conspiring by a joint fabrication to impose a false religion upon the world. It is time that this injustice should cease; that [1] the testimony of the evangelists [i.e., the distinct historical biographies/narratives authored by contemporaries Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John] should be admitted to be true until it can be disproved by those who would impugn it; that [2] the silence of one sacred writer on any point [e.g., Luke did not write about Jesus’ changing water to wine at Cana of Galilee, but John the Apostle did; and John did not mention that Jesus perspired drops of blood at Gethsemane (a rare but established medical phenomenon known as hematidrosis), but Luke the physician did] should no more detract from his own veracity OR that of the other historians, than the like circumstance is permitted to do among profane [secular] writers; and that [3] the Four Evangelists should be admitted in corroboration of each other, as readily as Josephus and Tacitus, or Polybius and Livy.
A Brief Word on the Significance of Early Christian Creeds
Paul’s core Gospel summary in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians (a.k.a. “The Resurrection Chapter”) is truly amazing, because it contains an ancient creed, or confessional statement, that even theologically liberal (i.e., non-Christian) New Testament critical scholars (e.g., atheists Gerd Lüdemann and Bart Ehrman) date to within one to three years of Jesus’ death. In fact, some scholars (e.g., James D.G. Dunn and Walter Kasper) believe the data in the first seven verses of this particular passage can be dated to within a few months of Jesus’ crucifixion, while at least one New Testament scholar (i.e., skeptic Larry W. Hurtado of the infamous “Jesus Seminar”) dates it even earlier still to within days of Jesus’ death!
Early Christian creeds (from the Latin word credo, meaning “I believe”) such as this one are concise, catchy, memorable statements of belief or “sermon summaries” that were transmitted orally, often in song or hymn form, until they became standardized. In a predominantly illiterate culture, as the ancient Near East was, creeds could be recited by heart even by people who couldn’t write their own name.
[Note: Every person reading this can remember songs you learned before you could read and write, as well as innumerable popular songs and church hymns you learned by ear/heart without ever actually seeing the lyrics. One that immediately comes to my mind is “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” or “The Alphabet Song,” both of which use the same tune or melody. In full disclosure, to this day, I still recall “The Alphabet Song” and sing it in my mind every single time I alphabetize anything! Obviously, setting words to catchy, memorable melodies is a powerfully effective way of transmitting and internalizing ideas. The ancient Jewish people understood this better than most, and they mastered the art.]
The Bible is actually filled with dozens of these incredible creedal statements, and they are extremely important in substantiating the authenticity, early dating, and historical reliability of the New Testament. The reason is that these creeds were originally formulated some 20 years before a single page of the New Testament was written, which means that the doctrinal beliefs they codify date all the way back to the months, weeks, and days following Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As Dr. Gary Habermas has written:
“Paul probably received this report [i.e., the creedal data he relays in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7] from Peter and James while visiting Jerusalem within a few years of his conversion. [Note: Cf. Galatians 1:13–24, where Saul of Tarsus/Paul spent 15 days with the Apostles Peter and James, the latter of whom is Jesus’ half brother]. The vast majority of critical scholars who answer the question place Paul’s reception of this material in the mid-30s A.D. [Note: This means the material originated even earlier than that.] Even more skeptical scholars generally agree. German theologian Walter Kasper even asserts that, ‘We have here, therefore, an ancient text, perhaps in use by the end of 30 A.D. …’ Ulrich Wilckens declares that the material ‘indubitably goes back to the oldest phase of all in the history of primitive Christianity.’” [Source: “Resurrection Research from 1975 to the Present: What Are Critical Scholars Saying?”]
What this tells us, specifically with regard to the 1 Corinthians 15 passage, is that the apostles and other Christians unquestionably began proclaiming the deity, atoning death by crucifixion, and bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth — the three most crucial components of the Gospel message — right from the outset in the early ’30s A.D. Therefore, no one can credibly claim that these key Christian doctrines were legends or myths about Jesus that people invented many decades or centuries after His life. That option is simply not tenable anymore, if it ever was in the first place.
With all that said, let’s now examine the historical-critical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.
The Resurrection Evidence
According to the well-established findings of world-class scholars Dr. Gary Habermas (distinguished research professor with a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Religion from Michigan State University and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Theology at Liberty University), who is inarguably the premier expert on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ (note: Gary is currently working on a 5,000-plus-page magnum opus on this subject), and renowned philosopher and debater Dr. William Lane Craig, who himself is also an expert in the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, the vast majority of reputable and credentialed New Testament critical scholars and historians today, from across the ideological and theological spectrum — that is, from very conservative Christians to radically liberal skeptics (i.e., atheists, agnostics, and so forth, including E.P. Sanders, Bart Ehrman, and John Dominic Crossan of the notorious “Jesus Seminar”) — accept as historically true (with a few exceptions, noted below) the following facts from the first century concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth:
Fact #1: Jesus of Nazareth was a real person of history.
This fact is a “no-brainer” and, with very few exceptions, is only disputed by unscholarly and intellectually dishonest conspiracy theorists who have not been specially trained in either New Testament studies or ancient Greco-Roman or Jewish history. Most of these individuals, who make a lot of empty noise on the Internet/social media, also have a militant pre-commitment to atheism and philosophical naturalism and are biased against all things supernatural, miraculous, and theistic. Legitimate scholars, including ones who identify as atheists or agnostics, don’t take these people seriously. In fact, Dr. Bart Ehrman, a well-known atheist and credentialed historian who specializes in New Testament textual criticism and the historical Jesus — and who basically makes a living trying to discredit biblical Christianity — actually wrote a book in which he vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus; and in it, he strongly reprimands the extreme skeptics and mythicists who deny Jesus’ historical existence.
In addition to the plentiful extra-biblical attestation we have from the independent, first- and second-century writings of the early church fathers to Jesus’ historicity, several independent, non-Christian, non-biblical writers also affirmed the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth within 150 years of His life, including the basic details of His ministry and death, as well as the beginnings of the Christian Church. Some of these secular sources, several of whom were critics and/or hostile enemies of Christianity, include the following:
Josephus (the most important Jewish historian of the 1st century A.D.), Tacitus (the most important and arguably the best Roman/Gentile historian of the 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Pliny the Younger (Roman politician of the mid-1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Phlegon (a 2nd-century freed slave of Roman Emperor Hadrian who wrote histories), Suetonius (Roman historian of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.), Lucian of Samosata (a 2nd-century Greek satirist who mocked Christians), Celsus (2nd-century anti-Christian Greek philosopher), and Mara Bar-Serapion (a Syrian prisoner of Rome who wrote a private letter to his son sometime between the late first and early third centuries, although most scholars date the letter to A.D. 73).
[Note: For deeper study into the ancient non-biblical evidence for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, watch this video.]
Counting both Christian and non-Christian sources, Drs. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona found that Jesus of Nazareth is referenced by at least 42 independent authors before the close of the 2nd century, nine of whom were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and/or contemporaries of the events recorded in the New Testament.
To put this in perspective, consider that only 10 total ancient sources reference Tiberius Caesar, the Roman emperor at the time of Christ’s death, within the same 150-year time frame.
Moreover, as author and historian John Dickson, who holds a Ph.D. in Ancient History, informs readers in his article “Most Australians May Doubt That Jesus Existed, but Historians Don’t,” whatever popular cultural opinion may be, the idea that Jesus of Nazareth never existed is, itself, practically mythical within the circles of professional secular historical scholarship. He points out that the most trusted reference works found in the personal libraries of all classicists and serious scholars of ancient history — such as the Oxford Classical Dictionary, Cambridge Ancient History, and Cambridge History of Judaism — all feature voluminous information establishing the historical authenticity of the person, teachings, and works of Christ, as well as many additional claims of the New Testament writers. “There is a reason for this consensus,” Dickson explains. “When you apply the normal rules of history to Jesus of Nazareth, this figure is plainly a historical one, not a mythical one. The early and diverse sources we have put his existence (and much more) beyond reasonable doubt. Perhaps only 49 percent of Australians [according to one survey] reckon ‘Jesus was a real person,’ but I wager that 99 percent of professional ancient historians — atheist, Christian, Jewish, or whatever — would agree with this minority view [i.e., that Jesus was a real person of history].”
Furthermore, in his remarkable investigative masterpiece Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World That Rejects the Bible, former atheist and cold-case homicide detective J. Warner Wallace carefully and cogently demonstrates through meticulous documentation, minutely detailed hand-drawn illustrations, and copious annotations that even if there weren’t a single copy of the Bible — or even so much as a manuscript fragment of the New Testament — still in existence anywhere in the world, we could still confidently reconstruct the central details about the life, character, nature, ministry, miracles, teachings, deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth simply by observing His absolutely unparalleled and uniquely inspiring impact on nearly every aspect of world history and the collective imagination and creative output of the human race from the time Jesus lived to the present.
Specifically, by looking merely at Jesus’ towering influence in the areas of literature (obviously including the writings of Christians from ancient to modern times but also the even more pervasive writings of secular authors, novelists, poets, playwrights, songwriters, screenwriters, biographers, researchers, editors, columnists, lexicographers, encyclopedists, etc.), science (including the founders of every branch of modern science, the vast majority of whom were Christians who rightly understood the discipline of science to be a means of worshiping and learning more about the Creator God, and many of whom wrote extensively about the Bible, Christian theology, and the person of Jesus of Nazareth), education (including the oldest libraries, monasteries, public schools, and universities throughout the world whose founding charters and buildings are replete with plaques, monuments, statues, etc., featuring quotes from the New Testament and sundry other references to Christ and the Gospel message), non-Christian religions/worldviews (i.e., the sacred texts of competing religions throughout the world and statements from their spiritual leaders give us enough information to piece together all of the most important details about Jesus Christ without the need for a Bible), and every conceivable category of the Arts (e.g., architecture, painting, sculpting, graphic design, music, filmmaking, etc.), Wallace makes an undeniable case that to erase the ineradicable “evidential trail” of Jesus’ historicity from this planet would itself require a miracle greater than any other!
“There can be no other answer: [Jesus of Nazareth] is easily the dominant figure in history. . . . [The four Gospels] agree in giving us a picture of a very definite personality; they carry a conviction of reality. To assume that he never lived, that the accounts of his life are inventions, is more difficult and raises more problems in the path of the historian than to accept the essential elements of the Gospel stories as fact. . . . So, the historian, disregarding the theological significance of his life, writes the name of Jesus of Nazareth at the top of the list of the world’s greatest characters. For the historian’s test of greatness is not, ‘What did he accumulate for himself?’ or, ‘What did he build up, to tumble down at his death?’ Not that at all, but this: ‘Was the world different because he lived? Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor and vitality that persisted after him?’ By this test, Jesus stands first.” —Herbert George Wells, acclaimed English writer and historian who was definitely not a Christian, responding to interviewer Bruce Barton in the article “H.G. Wells Picks out the Six Greatest Men in History,” The American Magazine, Vol. 94, July 1922, pp. 13–14
“[N]o pagans and Jews [i.e., writing in ancient times] who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it.” —Robert Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence, 2000, p. 15
“Despite the enormous range of opinion, there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree: Jesus was a Jewish man, known to be a preacher and teacher, who was crucified (a Roman form of execution) in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea. . . . [Granted, it is also true] that no Greek or Roman author [writing in] the first century mentions Jesus. It would be very convenient for us if they did, but alas, they do not. [Note: On this point, Tacitus and Suetonius are two examples of Roman authors who lived in the first century but who apparently didn’t write about Jesus until the early second century.] At the same time, the fact is again a bit irrelevant since these same sources do not mention many millions of people who actually did live. Jesus stands here with the vast majority of living, breathing human beings of earlier ages. . . . If an important Roman aristocratic ruler of a major province [i.e., Pontius Pilate] is not mentioned any more than that in the Greek and Roman writings, what are the chances that a lower-class Jewish teacher (which Jesus must have been, as everyone who thinks he lived agrees) would be mentioned in them? Almost none. . . . It is fair to say that mythicists as a group, and as individuals, are not taken seriously by the vast majority of scholars in the field[s] of New Testament, early Christianity, ancient history, and theology. . . . The idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern notion. It has no ancient precedents; it was made up in the eighteenth century. One might as well call it a modern myth — the myth of the mythical Jesus.” —Dr. Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, 2013, pp. 12, 20, 43, 45, and 96 (emphasis mine); quoted by Dr. Sean McDowell in a blog post titled “Bart Ehrman on the Existence of Jesus – Great Quotes,” dated August 11, 2015
Fact #2: Jesus died by crucifixion in Jerusalem.
This fact, considered virtually unanimously to be the most well-attested fact of the ancient world, obviously presupposes that Jesus of Nazareth truly existed in space-time history. (After all, one must first exist before one can die, right?!)
In fact, according to the four canonical Gospel eyewitness accounts (i.e., Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), which comprise the best and primary-source historical evidence available concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth and which ought to be respected as such, Jesus was crucified on a Friday between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., during the same week when the annual Jewish religious festival of Passover/Feast of Unleavened Bread was being observed, and His body was removed from the Cross and then buried before the Sabbath (i.e., Saturday) officially began that same evening at sundown. Contextually, these events had to have taken place sometime between the years A.D. 26 and A.D. 37, because it was during this period that Pontius Pilate ruled as governor of Judea.
[Note: According to the predominant Hebrew reckoning of time, which the Sadducees and Judeans typically followed, the start of a new day did not begin until sunset, or approximately 6 p.m. in the evening. The Apostle John appears to have employed this sunset-to-sunset system of dating when reporting the events of Passion Week (or, arguably, he simply followed the Roman system of telling time), whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke followed the alternative sunrise-to-sunrise system of dating, which was how the Pharisees and Galileans typically measured time and which also appears to have been the primary way that Jesus and His disciples ordinarily reckoned time. According to the sunrise-to-sunrise system, a new day started at approximately 6 a.m. in the morning. This would explain why the synoptists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) view Jesus’ crucifixion as having happened on Passover Day (i.e., Friday, Nisan the 15th, according to the sunrise-to-sunrise perspective), whereas John’s account views Jesus’ death as having happened technically on the Eve of Passover (i.e., Friday, Nisan the 14th, according to the sunset-to-sunset perspective). In short, although it can get confusing, the four Gospel writers do not contradict one another on the day or timing of Christ’s death by crucifixion; rather, they merely view it from two different perspectives of reckoning time. All four agree that Jesus was crucified on the same day, Friday of Passover Week, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. The calendar date differs by one number only because of the alternative systems of measuring the start of a new day. Also keep in mind that the term “Passover” was commonly used to refer to any aspect of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread and also that numerous meals were eaten throughout that holy festival week.]
Fortunately, astronomical calculations have helped scholars narrow down the year and season of Jesus’ crucifixion to two possibilities within that range of years: either the spring of A.D. 30 or the spring of A.D. 33. (Specifically, during the aforementioned time frame of A.D. 26 to A.D. 37, John’s date of Nisan 14 for Jesus’ crucifixion, which coincided with the slaughter of the Passover lambs, fell on a Friday only in the years 30 and 33.) For a compelling cumulative case for an April 7, A.D. 30 date for Christ’s death, see Robert Thomas and Stanley Gundry’s excellent A Harmony of the Gospels (particularly essays 10 and 11 in the appendices). And for a powerful argument in favor of the competing date of April 3, A.D. 33, which is largely based on Oxford scientists Humphreys and Waddington’s careful analysis of lunar eclipse data from the first century, see here.
Archaeological evidence verifying the fact that crucifixion was indeed the official method of capital punishment in first-century Rome is available here. This evidence also confirms that the New Testament Gospel writers’ descriptions of this brutal form of execution, as well as the vicious scourging/flogging practice that usually preceded crucifixions, are entirely accurate.
Additionally, in March/April 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an extensively researched and graphically illustrated forensic medical analysis of Jesus’ physical suffering and death in which they concluded that He was assuredly dead before He was removed from the Cross — indeed, even before the spear was thrust through His side. The authors deduced that “the actual cause of Jesus’ death, like that of other crucified victims, may have been multifactorial and related primarily to hypovolemic shock, exhaustion asphyxia, and perhaps acute heart failure.” The full article is available for viewing and for download in PDF format here.
Needless to say, the once popular skeptical theory that supposed that Jesus merely fainted or “swooned” on the Cross, only to be revived later by the coolness or dampness of the tomb (i.e., the “Swoon Theory”), after which He single-handedly removed the extremely large and heavy stone (which may have weighed up to 2,000 pounds) and evidently overpowered the armed soldiers guarding the tomb while He was suffering from catastrophic blood loss and traumatic wounds (not the least of which included a punctured lung and heart!), may safely be rejected as sheer nonsense.
“Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” —John Dominic Crossan, radical skeptic and biblical revisionist who reportedly rejects 80% of the New Testament sayings attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 1995, p. 145
“Jesus’ death as a consequence of crucifixion is indisputable.” —Gerd Lüdemann, German atheist and New Testament scholar, The Resurrection of Jesus: History, Experience, Theology, 1994, p. 50; quoted by Jeff Pallansch in an article titled “The Historical Basis for Jesus’ Death by Crucifixion,” dated March 22, 2022
“Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the traditional view that the spear, thrust between his right ribs, probably perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart, and thereby ensured his death. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.” —William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, MDiv; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI; JAMA, March 21, 1986, Vol. 255, No. 11
Fact #3: As a result of Jesus’ death, His disciples were grief-stricken and in a state of deep despair and hopelessness.
This fact demonstrates that none of Jesus’ followers were expecting Him to be raised from the dead. Indeed, all of them lacked faith. They were also forlorn and emotionally devastated. The reason this is noteworthy is that it seems to preclude the possibility that the disciples were suffering from grief hallucination (see notes under fact #6 below to learn other reasons why the “Hallucination Theory” doesn’t work), seeing as how hallucinations generally result from significant expectation, emotional excitement, and a strong desire to see or experience someone or something.
In contrast, the disciples had personally witnessed their leader be brutally executed via crucifixion, pierced through the heart with a Roman spear to ensure He was dead, tightly bound in a hundred pounds of linen wrappings and spices, and sealed in a tomb. They were utterly convinced that Jesus was dead and that His death was final, as they had not understood anything He had told them concerning His resurrection (cf. Luke 18:31–34). Moreover, they refused to believe the initial reports of His resurrection (cf. Mark 16:11 and John 20:24–29), and some of them remained doubtful even after personally experiencing the risen Christ (cf. Matthew 28:16–17)! Hence, far from waiting around in eager anticipation for the Lord to come back to life after His death, the disciples instead promptly locked themselves in their homes, where they remained overcome with bereavement and paralyzing fear of the political and religious authorities.
Fact #4: After Jesus’ death on the Cross, He was buried by a man named Joseph of Arimathea in his (Joseph’s) personal tomb in Jerusalem.
On this point, some of the more incredulous skeptics, such as Ehrman and Crossan, prefer to say that Jesus’ body was unceremoniously disposed of in a “common grave.” (Without warrant, Crossan even conjectures that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs!) This notion, however, is purely speculative and now appears to be held by only a small minority of scholars. Why? There are no competing burial traditions from the first century or even later, apparently, that dispute the multiply-attested, independent eyewitness burial accounts that appear in all four Gospels, the book of Acts, and the super-early creedal tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7.
Besides, even if Jesus’ body had been buried somewhere other than a rock-hewn tomb, that would not rule out His resurrection. In other words, He could have returned from the dead regardless of where His body was placed. Finally, the other accepted historical facts — namely, the many reported post-death appearances and life transformations of those who claimed to witness Jesus alive from the dead — would still have to be explained.
“Crossan must disregard all the evidence we find in the Gospels to make this claim, and he can adduce no countervailing evidence to the contrary besides the custom of the day. Jesus was certainly no common criminal, and the best records available to us claim He was buried in a special grave by Joseph of Arimathea. Accordingly, Crossan’s controversial claim may be dismissed.” —Douglas Groothius, Christian philosopher and apologist, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith
“What of the empty tomb? Again, the credibility gap seems to me to rule out deliberate deceit by the disciples, or that the women went to the wrong tomb and no one bothered to check, or that Jesus never really died, or that his body was not buried but thrown into a lime-pit (the burial is one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus, being recorded in 1 Corinthians as well as in all four Gospels and, for what it is worth, in the Acts kerygma [i.e., “proclamation”]).” —John A.T. Robinson, English liberal theologian and NT scholar who rejected the supernatural elements of the Bible and who held heretical views about basically every major Christian doctrine, The Human Face of God, 1973, pp. 131 (emphasis mine)
Fact #5: The tomb in which Jesus was buried was found empty shortly after His burial.
This fact is clearly the most contested by the more skeptical scholars, such as Ehrman and Crossan. However, Dr. Habermas’ extensive research on this subject has determined that 66 to 75% of modern New Testament critical scholars currently believe in the empty tomb because there are now 23 arguments supporting it versus 14 opposing it.
Regardless, the fact remains that no one, either in the first century or later, was ever able to produce the body or bones of Jesus of Nazareth after His well-attested death and burial. Indeed, the Jewish and Roman authorities had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to disprove the empty tomb claims, but they did not because they could not. As a result, their only recourse was to persecute the disciples of Christ and do everything in their power to silence the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, but this also they utterly failed to do.
“If the empty tomb story had really been created subsequently to convince doubters, the church could surely have made a better job of it. It rested it entirely on the testimony of women (which, in Jewish law, was not binding and whose visions do not even rate inclusion in the the Pauline list [in 1 Cor. 15:3–8 of the risen Christ’s appearances]), and it did not involve the apostles. . . . The evidence suggests indeed that [the empty tomb report] was very early tradition. It is, after all, squarely in Mark, and shows no sign of being his creation but rather ‘tradition with a long history behind it.’ Moreover, Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 15:4 that Jesus ‘was buried’ and that ‘He was raised to life on the third day’ seem to presuppose some connection between a resurrection and the tomb (and not merely the appearances) as part of what [Paul] received at his first instruction as a Christian and of what was universally believed by the apostles.” —John A.T. Robinson, English liberal theologian and NT scholar who rejected the supernatural elements of the Bible and who held heretical views about basically every major Christian doctrine, The Human Face of God, 1973, pp. 132–133
Fact #6: Jesus’ disciples had visual experiences after His death and burial in which they believed they witnessed actual, physical appearances of the risen Jesus.
The more skeptical scholars aren’t ready to concede that Jesus actually rose from the dead, of course, but they do at least admit that hundreds of Jesus’ followers sincerely believed they experienced Jesus alive from the dead.
Also bear in mind that the post-mortem appearances of Jesus occurred on at least 12 separate occasions, over a period of 40 days (approximately 1 month and 10 days), in a variety of locations (e.g., Jerusalem; Emmaus, which was 7 miles from Jerusalem; the Sea of Tiberias, which was approximately 70 miles from Jerusalem; and Galilee, which was at least 60 miles from Jerusalem), environments (indoors and outdoors), and times (daytime and nighttime) to individuals, small groups, and large crowds, including one incident in which at least 500 people reportedly saw Him simultaneously. [Note: There may have been many more than 500 “brethren,” as Paul called them, if women and children were not counted in that figure.] During that lengthy span of time (i.e., 40 days), these numerous eyewitnesses, who were spread across a distance of 70 miles or more, claimed that they saw with their eyes, heard with their ears, touched with their hands, walked with, conversed with, and/or ate a meal with the risen Lord. The witnesses’ clear and repeated emphases on the physical senses strongly lowers the probability that the figure they thought was the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth was really nothing more than a figment of their imagination (e.g., an illusion) or an immaterial spirit (e.g., an apparition or ghost).
Moreover, to surmise, as many skeptics have done over the years, that all of these purported witnesses of the risen Christ must have been suffering from a mass or collective group hallucination strains credulity beyond the breaking point. Noteworthily, clinical psychologists have confirmed in peer-reviewed studies that simultaneous group hallucinations in which more than one person in a group experienced an identical hallucination have never been clinically documented in medical or psychological literature. This is because a hallucination, by definition, is a very private, purely subjective (i.e., mind-dependent) visual or auditory experience that does not occur outside the mind of the hallucinating individual. In other words, what the hallucinating person thinks he sees or hears occurs only in that person’s mind/imagination; there is no external referent (unlike an illusion or a mirage). Thus, multiple people cannot share the exact same hallucination any more than they can co-experience the exact same dream or nightmare.
[Note: Non-simultaneous collective “visionary experiences” do occur, but they are rare, and they differ from true hallucinations. Moreover, even these require a “heightened sense of group expectation, not everyone in the group [even] experiences a hallucination, those that do see something have different [not identical] hallucinations from one to another, and the apparitions [i.e., the object or figure the people in the group believe they saw] do not carry on conversations.” These qualities are in clear contrast to what the New Testament records about the characteristics of the groups who believed they encountered Jesus of Nazareth after His death. None of those people were expecting to see Jesus (or any other dead person) come back to life (refer back to Fact #3 for more on this point), they all described witnessing one and the same person (i.e., Jesus of Nazareth), and some of them reported simultaneously conversing with Him and hearing Him speak.]
Keep in mind also that people in the first century only had access to primitive and very slow modes of communication (by today’s standards, especially). In other words, no one was spreading the news about Jesus’ alleged resurrection within hours or minutes via telegraph, telephone, radio, television, fax machines, computers, or “smartphones.” And certainly, no one living in Judea was instantaneously sharing “viral” photos or videos of the risen Christ on Instagram or Facebook so that all their “friends” and “followers” over in Galilee could get all worked up in a frenzy and start hoping that they too might get to see Jesus alive from the dead! The point is, nobody living in Judea, Samaria, Galilee, or elsewhere in the Roman world in the days following Jesus of Nazareth’s death had any reason to expect or desire to see a man who supposedly came back from the dead (especially in the physical sense).
Furthermore, despite being absurdly implausible (if not impossible), the “Hallucination Theory” also fails to account for the empty tomb (i.e., Jesus’ body was still absent from the grave—where was it?) as well as the seismic life transformation of the hundreds of people who claimed to see Him alive after His death (see fact #7 below), especially those of skeptics and enemies of Jesus, such as Orthodox Jewish priests and James (Jesus’ brother) and Saul of Tarsus (see facts #11, #12, and #13 below). For what reason or motivation would an unbeliever or an opponent of Christ imagine that Jesus had risen from the dead? And if they (or any of the other witnesses) had been hallucinating about the Resurrection, how hard do you think it might have been to talk them out of their hallucination, given the severely detrimental personal ramifications of maintaining that scandalous claim? Such persons surely weren’t expecting, much less desiring, to see Jesus come back to life! And why on earth would they, of all people, risk their lives to advance the resurrection claim and to serve and glorify a man whom they had heretofore despised and whose teachings they had vehemently rejected up to that point IF they were not absolutely certain that they truly had empirically witnessed Him alive in the flesh after His death? That just doesn’t fly.
Fact #7: After having these experiences, Jesus’ disciples were rapidly transformed from despondent cowards hiding out for fear of the authorities, into bold, relentless proclaimers and defenders of Jesus’ resurrection, even to the point of martyrdom.
Because they were eyewitnesses and the authors of the resurrection message, Jesus’ followers were in a position to know whether He truly rose from the dead or whether they just made the whole thing up. They were also well aware that continuing to proclaim His resurrection would result in their own violent persecution and death, yet they were willing to proceed anyway.
Question: Would you be motivated to tell a lie if you knew the consequences would be any of the following: ostracism from family and friends, excommunication from the religion/synagogue that had given your life identity and meaning, imprisonment (understand that first-century Roman jails/dungeons were nothing like the cozy, humane penitentiaries of modern America!), severe beatings, brutal scourging, vicious stoning, beheading, and/or some other gruesome, excruciating means of death, such as crucifixion or being burned alive or eaten by lions?
That idea simply isn’t reasonable. If the disciples fabricated the resurrection of Jesus, they truly had nothing to gain (e.g., power, profit/prosperity, pleasure, popularity, or protection) and everything to lose (i.e., their reputation, relationships, livelihood, physical well-being, and even their souls if their previous religion, Judaism, turned out to be true instead of Christianity). Moreover, it isn’t conceivable that anyone could have gotten away with such a grandiose ruse in the very city where Jesus was publicly executed and buried (see notes under fact #9 below for more on this point).
Furthermore, even if the “Fraud Theory” were plausible (i.e., that the disciples simply lied about Jesus’ resurrection), it still would not explain the vacant grave of Jesus (where was His body?) or Jesus’ post-death appearances to hundreds of other eyewitnesses, not to mention the dramatic transformations those people also underwent in both belief and behavior, especially the skeptics and enemies of Jesus (Paul, in particular) who didn’t believe in Him to begin with and, consequently, definitely had no motivation to lie about His resurrection.
“The apostles surely would have cracked to save themselves. Peter had already denied Jesus three times before the Resurrection in order to ‘save his skin’! He surely would have denied Him after the Resurrection if the story had turned out to be a hoax.” —Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, p. 293 (emphasis mine)
Fact #8: The Resurrection of Jesus was the central message His disciples preached, and they preached the Resurrection shortly after Jesus’ death. Furthermore, the Resurrection was the central proclamation of the early Church, and it remains the central doctrine of Christianity today.
As explained at the beginning of this article, the well-attested early creedal tradition that Paul recorded in his first letter to the church in Corinth, Greece (i.e., 1 Corinthians 15:3–7) proves that the apostles and other believers unquestionably began proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection (as well as His deity, His atoning death by crucifixion, His burial, and His post-resurrection appearances) in the early ’30s A.D. Even the most skeptical scholars (e.g., atheists Gerd Lüdemann and Bart Ehrman) affirm this point and date this creedal information to within a few years of Jesus’ death, while other scholars (e.g., James D.G. Dunn and Walter Kasper) believe the data was more likely compiled within months of Jesus’ crucifixion. Logically, if the creed was formulated that early, then the beliefs/doctrines summarized in the creed, which obviously included the Resurrection (“and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”), had to have been believed and taught even earlier than the formulation date.
What’s more, even aside from this incredibly early church creedal confession, the consensus among both liberal and conservative New Testament scholars is that Paul composed his first letter to the Corinthians in the early to mid-’50s (between 53 and 56) A.D., a mere 20–26 years after Jesus was crucified, when the majority of apostles and other eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus were still alive.
Additionally, in Acts 2:14–36, the Apostle Peter preached the earliest recorded Christian sermon to a crowd of thousands in the very city where Jesus died and was buried, and the crux of his homily was the resurrection of Christ. Significantly, the book in which this sermon appears, the Acts of the Apostles, is arguably the best-attested book of antiquity (cf. here and here for more), and was most likely composed no later than A.D. 62 when, once again, the majority of apostles and eyewitnesses to the recorded events were still living.
“For Acts, the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. . . . [A]ny attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.” —A.N. Sherwin-White, British historian of antiquity who specialized in Roman studies, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, 1963, p. 189
For evidence of what the Apostolic church fathers — that is, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and others who were direct disciples/students of the original Apostles, such as Peter, John, and Paul — of the late first and early second centuries believed about Jesus’ resurrection, see here.
The centrality of Christ’s resurrection to Christianity is also beyond debate. The Apostle Paul, who’s been called the “darling of the skeptics” for his historical reliability and overall integrity as a writer, explained this fact better than anyone when he wrote the following:
“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, [and] your faith also is vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:14–19).
Fact #9: The disciples preached the message of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem, which is the same city in which Jesus died and was buried.
Jerusalem is the last place on the planet a person would have wanted to make up a tale about Jesus rising from the dead, especially if doing so were illegal and punishable by death. Why? Both the Roman and Jewish authorities, along with myriad other eyewitnesses, saw Jesus die and watched Him be buried and sealed in a specific tomb in Jerusalem. Thus, a fabricated resurrection story would’ve been easily and readily falsified, since all anyone had to do to silence the pesky Christians once for all was simply open the tomb in which Jesus was buried and parade His corpse around town. Christianity would have ended right then and there, and no one would have been more pleased to see it end than the power-hungry Sanhedrin or the Romans, who viewed Christ and His followers as a seditious threat to Caesar.
Of course, this never happened, because Jesus’ tomb was EMPTY, and His body was nowhere to be found. Indeed, the Jewish authorities knew and unwittingly admitted this fact, seeing as how they were the first to concoct and spread the “Stolen Body Theory” — that is, that His sneaky disciples stealthily rolled away the stone during the night and stole Jesus’ cadaver without managing to awaken the allegedly “sleeping” Roman soldiers whose job was to guard Jesus’ grave — a most serious dereliction of duty, mind you, that would have resulted in the execution of those guards (cf. Matthew 28:11–15)!
Fact #10: Soon after Jesus’ death, the Christian Church / Christianity was born, grew, and spread rapidly and widely.
Question: How could Christianity have originated and exploded in a location swarming with hostile religious and political authorities and eyewitnesses to Jesus’ public execution and burial IF Jesus’ body were still in the grave?
Why were so many skeptics and enemies of Jesus converted and the Roman Empire turned upside down (actually, right side up!) if He remained deceased?
What else besides the actual bodily resurrection of this man called Jesus would inspire so many people willingly to leave their families, friends, careers, and all the comforts of home to embark on arduous and dangerous missionary journeys to faraway places and willingly endure the most perilous conditions and life-threatening circumstances just so they could share the news of the risen Christ with the rest of the world?
Fact #11: Orthodox Jews, including strict, Torah-abiding Pharisaical priests (cf. Acts 6:7), came to believe in Jesus as Messiah and changed the Sabbath—their primary day of worship—from Saturday to Sunday in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.
This change would have been considered blasphemous and absolutely unthinkable within Judaism. In fact, not to observe the Sabbath in accord with Mosaic Law was a crime punishable by death (cf. Exodus 31:14). Also keep in mind that the Jews, including Jesus’ core disciples, as well as skeptics James and Paul, had no prior concept of a dying Messiah figure, much less one who would rise from the dead bodily before the general resurrection at the end of the world. In fact, they were expecting the Messiah to be a political conqueror who would overthrow the oppressive Romans and promptly restore the kingdom of Israel to its former glory. They also believed that anyone who was hung to death on a tree, as Jesus was, was under the curse of God (cf. Deuteronomy 21:23 and Galatians 3:13–14).
Furthermore, in choosing to follow Jesus as the Christ, Hebrew priests set aside the Levitical/Aaronic priesthood and gave up their sacred system of animal sacrifices. In Judaism, to abandon these more than 1,500-year-old social and theological institutions was to endanger one’s soul of being condemned to hell for all eternity. What, other than compelling reasons/proofs for Jesus’ resurrection, could have convinced scores of devout Jewish clergymen and “laity” to change their minds about these eternally imperative issues?
Fact #12: James, one of the unbelieving siblings of Jesus (cf. Matthew 12:46–50, Matthew 13:55, Mark 3:20–21, and John 7:1–5), remained skeptical until some time after Jesus’ death when he had an experience that he believed to be an appearance of the risen Jesus. After this event, James became a committed follower and apostle of Jesus and went on to pastor the main Christian church in Jerusalem.
Question: If your brother claimed to be God, what would it take to convince you that he actually is? He would have to do something really extraordinary, right? A feat that only God is capable of pulling off, no doubt? Yep!
By the way, according to multiple authors from antiquity, including first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, James was ultimately stoned to death for his faith in Jesus, ca. A.D. 62. That underscores how dramatic his conversion was from hardened skeptic to unwavering believer in his brother as resurrected Lord and God Incarnate.
Fact #13: Saul of Tarsus, better known as the Apostle Paul, a zealous Pharisee who had viciously persecuted Christians and who was determined to silence the message they were spreading about the risen Redeemer, abruptly became a devout follower of and missionary for Christ (the great “Apostle to the Gentiles,” in fact) after having an experience in which he believed he encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Syria (a.k.a. Aram), which probably occurred within 1 to 3 years after Jesus’ death.
Question: Why would Christianity’s greatest adversary suddenly become its greatest advocate — even to the point of death (note: Paul is believed to have been executed by beheading sometime toward the end of Roman Emperor Nero’s bloody reign, circa A.D. 64–68) — if, in fact, Jesus, the man whom Paul had detested and considered to be a blaspheming false messiah and phony prophet, had remained dead and buried? What would it take to change such a man’s mind so thoroughly and comprehensively about his enemy that he would write these words:
“But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” —Philippians 3:7–11 (emphasis mine)
One More Thing . . .
In Galatians 2:1–10, Paul notes that he, along with his ministry companions Barnabas and Titus, returned to Jerusalem 14 years after (i.e., somewhere between A.D. 50 and A.D. 53) his original meeting with Peter and James (i.e., the half-brother of Jesus, not to be confused with James the Son of Zebedee), which had occurred in the ‘30s, to meet with them a second time for the purpose of ensuring that the Gospel message he had been preaching to the Gentiles in the intervening years since that first meeting was the same central message all the other apostles were preaching. Significantly, in this second meeting, the Apostle John, another of Jesus’ three closest disciples, was also in attendance. Thus, the four apostolic pillars of early Christianity were assembled together in the same place, at the same time. I like to refer to them as the Christian Beatles: John, Paul, James, and Petros (okay, okay . . . Peter)! What a monumental, dream-team “pastor’s conference” that must have been!
Bottom line: One could hardly imagine a better group of sources from whom to learn the hard facts about Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry, personal character, teachings, miracles, suffering, death by crucifixion, burial, and—yes—His bodily resurrection. (Incidentally, in case you don’t know “the rest of the story,” the three other highly respected apostles did, in fact, give Paul and his colleagues their blessing and the right hand of fellowship.)
“The encouraging news about Paul’s writings, particularly 1 Corinthians and Galatians, is that he is a universally attested ancient authority on the historical Jesus of Nazareth, who was at the right place, at the right time, and with the right people — that is, three leaders of the early New Testament Church who were also eyewitnesses to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection — and he passes down to us their personal testimony. This is powerful historical evidence. Thus, one of the reasons we can be confident that Jesus rose from the dead is that we have Paul’s well-authenticated data confirming the event as historical fact — very early data, mind you, that he received shortly after Jesus’ death from no less an authority than the Apostles Peter, John, and James. Wow!” —Dr. Gary Habermas
Now, What’s YOUR Verdict?
This remarkable list of historical facts about Jesus that even non-Christian and non-religious experts on the New Testament acknowledge as true reveals two major takeaways.
First, it bears witness to the historical reliability of the New Testament writings — namely, for the sake of this discussion, the four Gospels (which, again, are the primary-source historical documents regarding the life of Jesus of Nazareth), the historically well-validated book of Acts, and the Pauline epistles of 1 Corinthians and Galatians, which are two of the seven writings of Paul that skeptical scholars greatly admire for their authenticity. (FYI, the others are Romans, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.)
Second, these combined facts require — nay, demand — an explanation that is adequate to make sense of their extraordinary, life-altering, world-changing significance. Thus, the key question here for everyone is this:
If your mind is open to the possibility that God exists, which in turn would mean that miracles or supernatural occurrences are, at the very least, possible, what is the BEST explanation for all of the aforementioned facts?
I invite my skeptical friends to think very, very carefully and seriously about that question. Please keep in mind, though, that it is not enough simply to speculate about alternative theories or naturalistic explanations for these facts. Anyone can say, “Maybe this happened” or “Maybe that happened” until the cows come home, but those are not arguments. An argument must be supported by actual evidence, and in this case, to disprove the Resurrection, one must posit counter-evidence from the first century that is not only plausible but that also better explains all of the above-mentioned facts (and some others that are not mentioned here) than the Resurrection does.
The historical evidence for Christ’s resurrection is there, it is extremely well-attested, and — in light of the enormous gravity of the claims that Jesus of Nazareth made about Himself, humanity, the afterlife, and the coming judgment of God — we all have to deal with these facts.
As Josh McDowell once said, this evidence “demands a verdict.”
So, what’s yours?
Recommended Resources
1) “The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection Even the Skeptics Believe” – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 – by Drs. Gary Habermas and John Ankerberg
2) “Did Jesus Literally Rise from the Dead?” – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 – by Drs. Gary Habermas and John Ankerberg
3) “The Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection“ by Dr. William Lane Craig
4) The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Drs. Gary Habermas and Michael Licona
5) The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Dr. Michael Licona
6) The Resurrection of the Son of God by Dr. N.T. Wright
7) I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Chapter 12, “Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?” by Drs. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
The End of the Innocents: What Everyone Needs to Know About Abortion
Abstract
This essay sets forth the scientific, philosophical, ethical, and theological reasons why abortion should be an absolutely unthinkable “choice” for any civilized society. The three-point argument may be summarized as follows:
1) The science of embryology, aided by technological advances in medical photography and ultrasonography, demonstrates empirically and conclusively that the unborn are unique, genetically distinct, whole, living human beings from the moment of fertilization (i.e., the instant that a male sperm and female egg unite); therefore, abortion procedures (surgical or medical/chemical), which are amply documented via graphic images and videos, undeniably entail the intentional, violent killing of living human beings (i.e., principally by dismembering them alive, burning or poisoning them to death with chemicals, or, in the case of late-term or partial-birth abortions, brutally stabbing the baby’s neck, suctioning her brains out, and crushing her skull).
2) Careful philosophical and moral reasoning reveals that there is no essential, ontological, or anthropological difference between a human being at an earlier stage of development (e.g., zygote, embryo, or fetus) and that same human being at a later stage of development (e.g., infant, toddler, teenager, adult) that would make it morally justifiable to kill that person in one stage of life but not in another, because the only differences between a pre-born human and a post-born human are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency, and those differences are completely irrelevant to the question of one’s humanity, dignity, worth, or right to life. (We could also add other factors, such as ability, age, appearance, ethnicity, gender/sex, health problems/defects, nationality, perceived usefulness to society, and whether or not a child is wanted by its biological mother or father, none of which would disqualify a pre-born child from the human race or justify killing him or her, any more than such considerations would justify killing post-born human beings.)
3) Last but not least, the Bible teaches that all humans have intrinsic, sacred value and dignity because all human beings are made in the image of God and, for the same reason, forbids the intentional destruction of innocent human life. Consequently, since science and philosophy establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the pre-born are indeed living human beings who are of the same essence and nature as post-born human beings, then we can know for certain that the commands of Scripture which forbid the shedding of innocent human blood also logically apply to the lives of the most innocent members of the human race: unborn children.
Originally published in 2015
Last revised on 9-27-23
Prologue
In May 2013, pro-life advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief when at least some measure of justice was served with the sentencing of Dr. Kermit Gosnell to life in prison without parole.
Now, you may be thinking, “Hey, that sounds interesting. But, umm . . . who’s Kermit Gosnell?”
If you’re not familiar with that name, I can’t say that I blame you. After all, Fox News and the syndicated CBN NewsWatch were virtually the only TV news outlets that closely followed this appalling story, at least until journalist Kirsten Powers and a bevy of Twitter users took the mainstream media to task for their dubious under-reporting of this unprecedented human rights case. But even after being publicly shamed, the major left-of-center networks (especially ABC, who didn’t even bother to acknowledge the story for a whopping 56 days) scarcely mentioned the Gosnell trial, all the while devoting inordinate coverage to political squabbles and the usual celebrity gossip frivolity. So, in case you missed the basic facts surrounding this story, allow me to spend the next few paragraphs filling you in before segueing to the broader subject of this article.
Kermit Gosnell was an abortionist who operated a nightmarish abortion clinic in West Philadelphia for more than three decades, over which time it is estimated that tens of thousands of babies, as well as several women, were killed under his “care.” Gosnell’s clinic was so unsanitary and shockingly macabre that government authorities dubbed it a “house of horrors” after having raided and investigated the sordid facility in February 2010.
Remarkably, the raid on Gosnell’s clinic was prompted not by complaints of medical malpractice or illegal abortions (even though 46 lawsuits had been filed against Gosnell since 1979 but were curiously overlooked by state regulators), but because Gosnell was suspected of illegally prescribing pain-killers to patients. That crime, though, as bad as it is, seems benign when contrasted with the unimaginable inhumanity that investigators came face to face with on that dark day.
I won’t go into much of the lurid details here; but if you have the stomach for it, you may read the official Grand Jury Report. [Note: Pages 19–22 are especially disturbing.] What strikes me as particularly ghoulish is that Gosnell kept the extracted organs and limbs (severed feet seem to have been his favorite keepsake) of deceased babies stored in multiple jars and proudly displayed in what amounts to a “trophy case” — a bizarre and assuredly demonic hobby, if there ever was one. Some fellas collect stamps. Others collect comic books and baseball cards. “Doctor” Gosnell, in keeping with serial killer idiosyncrasies, collected the dissected cadavers of children he murdered and later mutilated. Truly, human depravity has no boundaries.
In addition to being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the 2009 lethal overdose of an abortion patient (i.e., a mother), as well as over 200 state abortion law violations, Gosnell was found guilty of the first-degree murder (read: infanticide) of three out of seven newborn infants he had been accused of savagely killing by stabbing their necks with scissors and severing their spinal cords after they had been delivered alive.
According to the testimony of various staff members, this barbaric practice, which Gosnell casually referred to as “snipping,” was a standard business procedure at his Women’s Medical Society clinic. One eyewitness, former employee Steven Massof, who also performed abortions at the clinic for a period of five years despite not having a medical license, testified that he personally saw over 100 born-alive babies killed in this grisly fashion. Moreover, the Grand Jury Report “documents multiple murders of viable babies [i.e., babies able to survive outside their mother’s uterus]” and states that “the evidence makes a compelling case that many others were also murdered (cf. pg. 25 of the Grand Jury Report).”
[Note: An award-winning documentary series, 3801 Lancaster, covers Gosnell’s bloody story and features eyewitness testimony from some of his former patients. The first film in the series can be viewed here, and you may learn more about the project here.]
What lessons should a civilized society learn from this stomach-turning trial (and others that are sure to follow), particularly with regard to the morality of abortion?
Let’s explore that question.
A “Complex” Issue?
Abortion may be the most divisive, “hot-button” talking point in modern society. Without a doubt, the issue invariably evokes strong emotional responses any time it is raised. Understandably, many people would prefer never to broach the subject because, let’s face it, working through weighty, controversial moral problems is not an easy task. But isn’t that always the case with the things that really matter in life? Religion and politics, for example, are widely considered to be the two most taboo topics of human discourse. However, when you get right down to it, nothing could be more important than what those two categories encompass: theology (the study of God and ultimate meaning) and morality (questions of justice and right & wrong behavior).
More often than not, abortion is mischaracterized as a “complex” issue for which there are no easy socio-political solutions. In point of fact, however, while the circumstances that influence a woman to consider aborting her child may be difficult (e.g., financial struggles, emotional/psychological unpreparedness, fear, or intense pressure from a boyfriend or parent), there is nothing whatsoever complicated about knowing and understanding precisely what transpires when an abortion is conducted.
Furthermore, ascertaining whether or not the act of abortion is morally wrong can be settled rather easily, too. We simply need to know the answer to one fundamental question:
What is the unborn?
Before one can answer the question, “Is it okay to kill this thing?” one must first know what the thing is.
To be clear, this is the crux of the abortion controversy. You see, if the unborn is not a human being, then abortion deserves no more justification than having a tooth pulled or one’s tonsils removed. And, again, if the unborn is not a member of the human family, then no one should be concerned about reducing the number of abortions that occur or keeping them “rare” and “safe.” (Think about it: If the unborn is not a human being, what would be the harm in governments deregulating and expanding abortion on demand? Why not make them permissible and accessible in as many circumstances as possible, as long as they only help improve a woman’s health?)
Conversely, if it turns out that the unborn is a human being, then abortion should be absolutely unthinkable.
But how can we be sure that abortion truly ends the life of a human organism, and is there any mystery or uncertainty as to when human life begins or at what point a human being “qualifies” for human rights protections?
To answer these questions, let’s first take a look at the scientific evidence.
Scientific Reasons Why Abortion Should Be Unthinkable
Scientifically, the biological field of embryology and astounding advances in medical photography and ultrasonography confirm with certainty the irrefutable fact that (1) the unborn is a living organism (e.g., they grow and develop, undergo cellular reproduction, metabolize by turning energy into food, respond to stimuli, etc.) and that (2) human life begins at the moment when fertilization occurs (not to be confused with implantation, which happens later) — that is, when the 23 chromosomes of a male sperm and the 23 chromosomes of a female ovum (egg) unite or fuse to produce a unique, living, entirely human, self-directed individual who is genetically distinct from his or her parents, complete with a unique DNA code and his or her own blood supply. Eventually (i.e., between the third and sixth months of gestation), this new human being also will develop a one-of-a-kind set of fingerprints.
“At the instant of fertilization, your baby’s genes and sex are set. If the sperm has a Y chromosome, your baby will be a boy. If [the sperm] has an X chromosome, the baby will be a girl.” —WebMD.com article titled “Conception & Pregnancy”
What is meant by “self-directed” is the amazing fact that the unborn actively organizes and develops itself from a fertilized egg to full maturity in accordance with the goal-directed genetic instructions “programmed” within it. As a matter of fact, if allowed to live and develop to maturity, a 1-celled tiny human (fertilized egg) will eventually become a 37.2-trillion-celled adult human!
Please pay attention to a vital point here: The unborn is not part of his mother’s body, such as an organ or an appendage or a wart. Rather, the unborn is actually a discrete, whole, body-soul entity with a separate genetic code all of his own.
[Note: On that last point, ponder this: Did you know that the DNA that makes you the unique person you are today was already in place when you were a single-celled conceptus? What’s more, all the genetic information you will ever have throughout your entire life, from “zygote” to senior citizen, was present the instant you were conceived. Thus, each of your inherited characteristics — including sex/gender, eye and hair color, potential height, and even certain personality traits — were determined at that earliest stage of human life. Somehow, the word “awesome” just doesn’t cut it. Without question, God’s ingenuity is absolutely unrivaled!]
At the beginning (i.e., the first few weeks or so) of prenatal development, this tiniest of persons is technically called a zygote (from a Greek word meaning “to join” or “to yoke,” in reference to the reproductive union or joining together of ovum and sperm). Then, from the time following fertilization through the 8th week of gestation, he or she is scientifically referred to as an embryo (from a Greek word meaning “to swell” or “to grow,” in reference to the fact that the unborn is a living, growing organism), followed by the term fetus (from a Latin word meaning “offspring” or “young one,” which is self-explanatory) from the 9th week of pregnancy through birth. Finally, once the child exits mom’s womb, he or she is referred to as a “newborn” or infant (from a Latin word meaning “unable to speak”).
[Note: Although I do use the terms at various times in this essay because of their familiarity, in general, I think we would all do well to abandon the use of dead languages (i.e., Greek and Latin) when discussing subjects as sobering as human rights and bioethics in the present age. For one, clarity is imperative to communicating truth, and archaic nomenclature is unhelpful and oftentimes confusing to modern English-speaking people. Furthermore, when we use these arcane words to describe the unborn, a more diabolical problem arises. The impersonal, crass, alien, science-fiction-sounding terms “zygote” and “fetus” have the unfortunate side-effect of dehumanizing and depersonalizing the child in the womb. (Using the popular euphemism “product of conception” or “POC” has the same effect.) To be certain, abortion-choice advocates are well aware of this linguistic power, and a great number of them deliberately use these terms as part of their strategy to distract people — including themselves — from an inconvenient truth: the empirical and axiomatic fact that abortion takes the life of a living human being.]
In addition, according to the fundamental scientific law of biogenesis, life comes only from life, and species reproduce only after their own kinds. What this means in practical terms is that cats produce cats, dogs produce dogs, horses produce horses, ducks produce ducks, and humans produce humans. The unborn species growing inside of a pregnant human, therefore, cannot be anything other than a human.
As you will learn from the following citations, standard medical literature (e.g., encyclopedias and medical journals) and biology/embryology textbooks have supported these basic facts of human reproduction and human development at least as far back as 1964, almost a decade before the Roe v. Wade decision:
“Starting at 10-and-a-half weeks’ gestation [i.e., during the first trimester of pregnancy], when something touches the fetus’s hand, he starts to close his fingers. Typically, the fetus moves all of his fingers together, except the thumb. Over the next few weeks, he starts to bend his fingers more deeply and move his thumb, as if he were grasping an object. By 15 weeks’ gestation, the fetus moves each finger separately and spontaneously explores his environment with his fingers. By 16 weeks, he will have a weak but effective grasp that will become so strong that by 27 weeks’ gestation, he will be able to support his own body weight momentarily by grasping!” —Tryphena Humphrey, “Some Correlations Between the Appearance of Human Fetal Reflexes and the Development of the Nervous System,” in Progress in Brain Research, Edited by Dominick P. Purpura and J. P. Schadé, Vol. 4, Growth and Maturation of the Brain (1964, pp. 93–135)
“The baby is, in fact, a living creature from the instant of conception, but its movements are first sensed by its mother about the eighteenth week of pregnancy. . . . [During the process of sexual reproduction, several hundred million] sperm cells are deposited near the mouth of the womb. These sperm cells may travel further, enter an oviduct, where one [and only one!] of them may meet with and fertilize one of the female egg cells. At once, by process of self-division, the fertilized egg cell (called a zygote)—in reality, a new, living individual—will begin to grow, feeding mainly on the food which it finds within itself. Leaving the oviduct, this fertilized egg cell fastens itself to the inner wall of the womb [i.e., implantation, which clearly occurs after the new living human individual has already begun to exist] . . . . The new human being exists as soon as the sperm cell has fertilized the egg cell, at which time the sex is determined. [Please notice here that a person’s sex is irreversibly determined at the moment fertilization occurs and is not, therefore, something that a doctor or a parent or anyone else “assigns” or “socially constructs” at some later point.]” —The New Illustrated Medical and Health Encyclopedia, Edited by Morris Fishbein, M.D. (1970, pp. 1076 and 1130, emphasis mine)
“The term conception refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops. . . . The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life.” —J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Friedman, Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics (1974, pp. 17 and 23, emphasis mine)
“Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created, which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition.” —E.L. Potter and J.M. Craig, Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 3rd Edition (1975, p. vii, emphasis mine)
Modern textbooks teach the same:
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct, human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.” —Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd Edition (2001, p. 8, emphasis mine)
“[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.” —Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th Edition (2008, p. 2, emphasis mine)
“Human development begins at fertilization, when a sperm [male gamete] fuses with an oocyte [female gamete or “egg”] to form a single cell—the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual. The zygote, just visible to the unaided eye, contains chromosomes and genes that are derived from the mother and father. The zygote divides many times and becomes progressively transformed into a multicellular human being through cell division, migration, growth, and differentiation. . . . The zygote is genetically unique because half of its chromosomes came from the mother and half from the father. The zygote contains a new combination of chromosomes that is different from those in the cells of either of the parents. This mechanism forms the basis of bi-parental inheritance and variation of the human species. . . . The embryo’s chromosomal sex is determined at fertilization by the kind of sperm (X or Y) that fertilizes the oocyte. Fertilization by an X-bearing sperm produces a 46, XX zygote, which develops into a female, whereas fertilization by a Y-bearing sperm produces a 46, XY zygote, which develops into a male.” —Drs. Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. (Vid) Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 10th Edition (2016, pp. 11 and 29, emphasis mine)
Accordingly, to deny the “humanness” or “aliveness,” if you will, of the unborn child at any stage of development or at any point during the gestation period (first, second, or third trimester of pregnancy) is to argue against the incontrovertible, long-established findings of science, the veracity of which has been made positively undeniable thanks to the powerful visual aids of 2-D, 3-D, and 4-D ultrasounds and advanced medical photography.
THE UNBORN AT VARIOUS STAGES OF PRENATAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
As you look at the following photographs of the unborn, please keep in mind that every day, somewhere in this country, scores of incontestably human beings just like the ones pictured here are being violently killed in each of these developmental stages and through all three trimesters of a woman’s pregnancy—and this is “legal.”
[Sources: WebMD.com, MedicineNet.com, JustTheFacts.org, and CloudNine4D.com]
FIRST TRIMESTER
6 weeks (1.5 months)
8 weeks (2 months)
12 weeks (3 months)
SECOND TRIMESTER
16 weeks (4 months)
20 weeks (5 months)
24 weeks (6 months)
Note: This is Lyla. She was delivered prematurely at 21 weeks of development and is now—as of October 2020—a healthy 6-year-old girl. In this photo, she was at 24 weeks of development. You may read her amazing story here. Bear in mind that babies are being brutally killed via elective abortion at this same age and later. In fact, in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, which was officially overturned on 6-24-22 (all praise and thanks be to the one true God!!!), it was asserted ignorantly and wrongly that a baby is not “viable” (i.e., able to survive outside her mother’s womb) until 28 weeks of gestation! Today, we know better.
THIRD TRIMESTER
28 weeks (7 months)
29 weeks (7 months)
32 weeks (8 months)
36 weeks (9 months)
[Note: If you would like to view still images or motion pictures/movies showcasing the captivating beauty and divine wonder of prenatal development through all nine months of gestation, I heartily recommend the following website: Just the Facts. Moreover, to watch a week-by-week slide show that describes the highlights of a baby’s development from zygote to infant, click here. See for yourself what the Bible means when it says that human beings are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and “skillfully wrought” by our Creator (cf. Psalm 139:13-16). Modern science — the ally, not the adversary, of Christianity — clearly and powerfully affirms this divine truth. As you behold the inimitable craftsmanship of the One who formed you in your mother’s womb and knew you before you were even conceived, ponder this question: Now that we are privileged to observe with our own eyes this sublime, wondrous process that practically screams to us, “YES, there is a God!” how could anyone continue to believe that the extraordinary complexity and intricacies of human physiology arose originally from non-intelligent, non-living matter (i.e., the theory of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation) and the blind, fortuitous, mindless, impersonal, purposeless, undirected forces of nature? I don’t have enough faith to buy that nonsense, and neither should you!]
“Conception to Birth Visualized” by Alexander Tsiaras
Pretend, though, for a moment that the scientific evidence were not as clear as it is. What if doctors could not be sure when human life begins?
As a general rule of safety and ethical responsibility, when in doubt, one should always err on the side of caution. More importantly, where human life is concerned — even the so-called “potential” for human life — one should always err on the side of LIFE.
Throwing caution to the wind and proceeding to destroy something that has even the possibility of being a human life would be recklessly negligent, perhaps even indicating malice aforethought.
Consider this: Imagine that you and a friend go on a hunting expedition together and the two of you get separated. After about an hour or so, you hear some rustling in the bushes and aren’t sure whether it’s the game you’re hunting or your friend. Question: Would you not first make absolutely sure that it’s not your friend in the bushes before firing your gun? I certainly hope so!
Alternatively, suppose you were working on a demolition crew and were assigned to demolish an old apartment complex. Would you not conduct an absolutely exhaustive search of every room in that building to ensure that no human being is inside before you ignite the dynamite or send the wrecking ball crashing through the structure? That would be unthinkable, wouldn’t it?
The bottom line is this: If a person honestly has any uncertainty whatsoever regarding the humanity or viability of the unborn, then he or she should never proceed with a decision that, if mistaken, would result in the death of a human being. There’s no room for error here. This is a risk no civilized society should be willing to take.
By eight weeks in the womb, the baby boy or girl sucks her thumb, recoils from pricking — so, let’s get our mind around this. At eight weeks, if we needed to take a little sample from the baby, she’s already got her own blood — it’s not mom’s blood; it’s not dad’s blood — and, so, we’re sticking a little needle up there just to prick the heel to get some information about what’s going on with the baby; and the baby will, at that prick, pull up its leg — will avoid pain! So, she/he feels pain at eight weeks. At eight weeks, she responds to sound. At eight weeks, all of his organs are present. His brain is functioning. (There’s new evidence that says that maybe they’re even dreaming.) Her heart is pumping. Her liver is making blood cells. Her kidneys are cleaning fluid. She has a fingerprint that is her own. And — look at me — virtually every one of the one million abortions that happened last year in the United States happened after this. —Matt Chandler, Pastor, the Village Church (emphasis mine)
Seeing Is Believing
For many people, the reality of abortion will never register in their hearts until they actually see what abortion does to its victims. This is because the term “abortion,” like many English words, has lost all meaning. Thus, to awaken the desensitized or deadened conscience of the masses, it has become necessary in our complacency-prone culture to restore meaning to that word by tactfully using graphic images of real-life abortions.
As pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf once remarked, “I’m convinced that the American people will tolerate abortion as long as they don’t have to see abortion.”
I believe he’s right, and that is why I have decided to share the following video, simply titled “This Is Abortion.” Although this clip is just over one minute in length, the visuals are gruesome and disturbing. Nevertheless, I encourage everyone reading this to watch the video in its entirety so that you may fully grasp why abortion is such a grave moral injustice against humanity — one that must be abolished wherever it is practiced. Sometimes, words just aren’t enough. Sometimes, seeing is believing.
[Note: If your computer, tablet, or mobile device cannot play the clip embedded above, please click here or try this alternate video.]
THE MOST COMMON SURGICAL ABORTION METHODS
ILLUSTRATED AND EXPLAINED
Besides “surgical” abortions, there are also “medical” or chemical abortions, which consist of a woman taking an abortifacient or “abortion pill,” such as Mifeprex (RU486), to end the life of the developing baby, usually within the first 7–9 weeks of pregnancy. A couple of days later, the woman must then use a “vaginal suppository,” such as Misoprostol, to ensure that the child — now dead from the abortifacient — is completely expelled from her vagina. Of course, the patient is literally informed on one website that Misoprostol “helps expel the pregnancy.” Yes, you read that correctly. They don’t want to admit that a dead human being’s little corpse will be expelled from the mother’s womb, so they resort to using utterly nonsensical language instead. According to this same self-proclaimed “kind” and “compassionate” abortion clinic, the woman “can expect to experience painful cramping and heavy bleeding for several hours.”
God, have mercy . . .
Philosophical / Ethical Reasons Why Abortion Should Be Unthinkable
The chilling irony of the Gosnell verdict is this: Had Gosnell killed those three fully delivered babies only seconds earlier when each baby was still positioned inside her mother’s body, he would not have been convicted of murdering those children. In fact, the only reason Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of first-degree murder in this case is because he killed those particular babies after they had been fully delivered alive.
Apparently, according to Judge Jeffrey Minehart, it was at that point — and not a moment sooner — that the babies became human beings worthy of legal protection.
When addressing members of the jury in the Gosnell trial, Minehart informed them that “state law defines a live baby as one that is fully expelled from the mother and showing signs of life such as breathing, heart beat, or movement. If a baby shows those signs, that baby is a human being (emphasis mine).”
Let me get this straight. In the view of Pennsylvania legislators, where a baby is located at the time it is killed is the determining factor that separates a human from a non-human and a murderous act from a harmless medical procedure? Am I missing something here? Is there a morally significant distinction between infanticide (i.e., the killing of a living and fully delivered baby) and abortion (the killing of a living but undelivered or partially delivered baby) that makes the first an abominable crime against humanity and the second an acceptable form of women’s “reproductive healthcare”?
As an aside, this egregious double standard is by no means peculiar to PA. Most states have fetal homicide (or feticide) laws that make it a crime to kill pre-born children for just about every act except an abortion. For example, even in California, the abortion capital of America, a person who kills a pregnant woman can be tried for a double homicide. Significantly, neither the humanity, nor the personhood, nor the inalienable rights of the unborn victim are questioned in that scenario. If, however, the same pregnant woman carrying the same unborn child consents to have her child aborted in CA, then the same state government won’t lift a finger to protect the life of the unborn. The only difference between the two scenarios is the mother’s consent. Incredible.
The irony gets even worse. In California, if an abortionist angrily assaults a pregnant woman (say, in a parking lot) and the baby in her womb dies as a result, that abortionist would likely be tried for the murder of an unborn baby (or “fetus”). Yet if that same individual (i.e., the abortionist) were to take a pair of forceps and rip apart that same baby in the womb of that same woman — provided he first obtains her consent — not only would their actions not be considered murder, but the baby in the womb also would not be considered a human being worthy of life. Can anyone explain that twisted logic to me?
Why is the killing of a baby ex utero (i.e., outside the womb) lawfully treated as the murder of an innocent human being, while the killing of that exact same living baby in utero (i.e., inside the womb) is lawfully treated as a morally innocuous medical surgery and a woman’s fundamental right?
For that matter, why is it illegal in many states to perform abortions on third-trimester babies (i.e., 6-9 months along) but still legal to kill babies in the second (3-6 months) and first (0-3 months) trimesters? Why the arbitrary age or size discrimination?
Let’s think this through carefully.
1) Is it because the smaller size of an early-term baby somehow makes her less human or less worthy of protection than a larger, late-term baby?
Riddle me this: Am I more human or do I have more value and a greater right to life than my 3-year-old nephew, simply because I’m bigger than he is? Put another way, do we have the right to kill people because they are smaller than we are?
2) Is it because the unborn does not necessarily look like a human being at earlier stages of development from our perspective?
Riddle me this: When you were a baby or a toddler or an adolescent, did your looks remain the same across each of those developmental stages? Is it reasonable to conclude that because your appearance changed naturally over time that you were somehow not fully human, not truly a person, or not deserving of basic human rights when you were younger and looked different from the way you look now in adulthood?
3) Is it because the pre-born is less conscious or self-aware than the post-born?
Riddle me this: A 2-year-old girl is less self-aware and cognitively developed than her 7-year-old brother, but does that make big brother more of a person or more valuable than his little sister? (Also bear in mind that the human brain continues to develop through a person’s mid-20s. Are people under the age of, say, 25, not fully human or not truly persons who have the right to live?) And do people become non-human or non-persons when they’re sleeping or when they’re anesthetized during an operation, for example? If your mother was in a serious car accident and wound up in a coma for several months, would it be okay for the medical staff to terminate your mom’s life to make room for another patient in need of a bed, having concluded that your mom is no longer a human worth saving, seeing as how comatose people are unconscious and apparently not self-aware?
4) Is it because the passage through the birth canal magically transmogrifies the unborn from a non-human, expendable “blob of tissue” or “clump of cells” into a valuable human person whose life is suddenly worth protecting?
Riddle me this: Does your essential nature, humanity, personhood, or intrinsic value change whenever you exit and re-enter your home? In other words, do you stop being “you” whenever you change location? And do you really have a good reason to believe that you were some one or some thing different in nature or essence before you exited your mother’s womb at birth?
5) Is it because an embryo or fetus is dependent on its mother and would not survive on its own, without help?
Riddle me this: Does degree of dependency determine a person’s humanity, worth, or right to live? Children are dependent on their parents for several years following birth, but does that give moms and dads the right to kill their kids whenever they become a burden or an inconvenience, financial or otherwise? (Watch out, teenagers!) Consider the ill, infirm, elderly, physically disabled, mentally handicapped, or those with other special needs. How about insulin-dependent diabetics or oxygen-dependent COPD patients? Conjoined twins share each other’s bodily systems. A great number of people depend on caretakers for their entire lives. Does the fact that these “dependents” cannot live on their own without some form of assistance or community (and who among us truly can?) somehow make them sub-human, less valuable than “independents,” or unworthy of life?
[Note: I must give credit to Greg Koukl and Scott Klusendorf for teaching me the importance of asking these thoughtful questions.]
I hope you will agree that the answer to each of these questions is an emphatic NO!
Ladies and gentlemen, the reasons our society is so mystifyingly inconsistent on the abortion issue might be summarized by three key words:
Ignorance (“I don’t know!”)
Indifference (“I don’t care!”)
and
Denial (“I refuse to believe that!”)
Many of us are simply uninformed regarding the hard facts surrounding abortion, which is to say, we’ve failed to do our “homework” on this subject. (The purpose of this article is to eliminate that ignorance!)
Others of us, due at least in part to the Truth-denying postmodern, relativistic milieu in which we live, simply do not care or do not see what the big deal is about abortion:
Why should it matter to me since I’ll never have one?
Who am I to judge?
Right and wrong are matters of personal opinion anyway, aren’t they?
If you don’t like abortion (as if it’s a flavor of ice cream), then don’t have one!
The rest of us simply don’t want to accept reality if it means we don’t get to live the way we want to live. But when the inescapable moral law of God written on every human heart collides with our desires for unrestricted personal autonomy and unfettered sexual “freedom,” all of us, without exception, have a nasty tendency to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18-25), even when that truth is staring us square in the face. (Some of you are doing this right now.)
Philosophically speaking, as demonstrated through the rhetorical questions posed above, there is no essential difference between the kind of thing you were as a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus and the kind of thing you are today as an adult human that would have made it morally justifiable to kill you when you were still in your mother’s womb, but morally wrong to kill you today.
In other words, if it is wrong to kill you now, it was also wrong to kill you when you were a zygote, embryo, fetus, etc., because you were the same living human being then as you are now — except that you are bigger, have changed locations (i.e., you moved outside your mother’s womb), are more developed, and are probably less dependent on your mom (or at least not dependent on her in the same ways).
As Harvard-educated philosopher Steven Schwartz once cleverly deduced, the only differences between the human you were as an embryo and the human you are now as an adult are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency (SLED). Not one of these four extrinsic factors, however, counts as an adequate reason to devalue or disqualify a person from the human race, let alone justify taking a human being’s life. An individual’s perceived usefulness to society, also known as the “utilitarian view” of humanity, is equally irrelevant to the value or dignity of a human being. Why? Read the next section titled “Theological/Biblical Reasons” to find out.
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life — the unborn — without diminishing the value of all human life. . . . I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives — the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a “mother”? I have also said that anyone who doesn’t feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don’t know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.
The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great breakthroughs in treating the unborn — for genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other medical conditions. Who can forget George Will’s moving account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than to cure?
The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother’s body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law — the same right we have. —President Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, 1983 (emphasis his)
Theological / Biblical Reasons Why Abortion Should Be Unthinkable
[Note: If you are skeptical as to whether the Bible is a reliable moral, theological, or historical authority, please click here.]
Two crucial questions remain: (1) What makes human beings valuable in the first place, and (2) Why is it morally wrong to destroy innocent human life?
The answer to both of these questions is vitally important:
Human beings are created in the image of God and are endowed by their Creator with transcendent and intrinsic value, which is to say that human worth comes from God and from within human nature rather than from some material or extrinsic/external consideration (e.g., function, looks, health, performance, or ability). Moreover, because of our unique relationship with God, the Very Source and Giver of life, humans possess certain privileges or “rights” that are inherent to our very essence, the most basic and paramount of which is the right to life, or the right not to be murdered.
[Note: The right to life is primal and is the necessary prerequisite to all other rights. Without it, all other human rights are meaningless. Obviously, if you don’t have life, then you don’t have anything at all! Thus, as far as governments are concerned, there is nothing more important or more deserving of protection than a person’s right to life; it naturally takes precedence over all other human rights claims.]
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him — male and female, He created them (Genesis 1:26-27, NASB, emphasis mine).
Scripture teaches that all humans have inestimable value and sanctity precisely because we are made in the image or likeness of our Maker. Indeed, God specially created human beings to be similar to Him in a variety of ways and, more importantly, to have a personal relationship with Him, which is something nothing else in the entirety of the created cosmos can experience or enjoy. This is why human beings are the most valuable and sacred of all living creatures. The Latin term for this teaching is imago Dei, and this fact forms the sole basis for what we call “human rights.” Indeed, it is God alone who is in a position to impart dignity, worth, and rights/privileges to His image bearers. Both the Old Testament (e.g., Genesis 1 and 2; 5:1; 9:6) and the New Testament (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:7, Colossians 3:10, and James 3:9) affirm this foundational doctrine.
Furthermore, because humans bear God’s image, the shedding of innocent human blood is an assault on the imago Dei and is, therefore, a grave offense to the Creator and is strictly forbidden. In fact, human life is so special in the eyes of God that He tells us that even an animal is to be put to death if it kills a human being (cf. Genesis 9:5 and Exodus 21:28–32). (Also see Exodus 21:12, Leviticus 24:17, and Proverbs 6:16-17, for example.)
“There are six things which the LORD [Yahweh] hates — yes, seven which are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood . . .” (Proverbs 6:16-17, NASB, emphasis mine).
** To take the life of another human being with premeditation or with intention (a.k.a. malice aforethought) is the biblical (and legal) definition of murder, and it is an extremely serious sin against both God and those who bear His image. **
Eastman’s 1897 Bible Dictionary adds the following details:
Willful murder was distinguished from accidental homicide [manslaughter] and was invariably visited with capital punishment (Num. 35:16, 18, 21, 31; Lev. 24:17). This law, in its principle, is founded on the fact of man’s having been made in the likeness of God (Gen. 9:5, 6; John 8:44; 1 John 3:12, 15). The Mosaic Law prohibited any compensation for murder or the reprieve of the murderer (Ex. 21:12, 14; Deut. 19:11, 13; 2 Sam. 17:25; 20:10). Two witnesses were required in any capital case (Num. 35:19-30; Deut. 17:6-12). If the murderer could not be discovered, the city nearest the scene of the murder was required to make expiation for the crime committed (Deut. 21:1-9).
D. Glenn Saul further expounds on the biblical understanding of murder in this excerpt from the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (2003):
Jesus removed the concept of murder from a physical act to the intention of one’s heart (Matt. 5:21–22). According to Jesus, murder really begins when one loses respect for another human being. Spitting in the face of another, looking with contempt upon another, or unleashing one’s anger are signs that a murderous spirit is present. Jesus forces us to move to the spirit behind the prohibition of murder. We are compelled to do all that we can do to protect the life of our neighbor and help it flourish. The writer of 1 John pushed Jesus’ teaching to its ultimate: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him” (1 John 3:15, HCSB).
HANG ON! WHAT ABOUT THE DEATH PENALTY?
In no way, however, does God’s mandate never to shed innocent human blood invalidate capital punishment, which is the divinely authorized shedding of guilty human blood. [Note: The term “innocent” in this context doesn’t mean sinless or without a sin nature; rather, it means “not guilty of wrongdoing and not deserving of punishment, particularly punishment by death.”] In fact, the existence of capital punishment proves the point that human life is sacred — so sacred, in fact, that the only penalty commensurate to the heinousness of homicide (i.e., murder) is the execution of the murderer. Understand that murder is the ultimate assault on the imago Dei (image of God), and is, therefore, a grave affront to the God who made humans in His image. By committing that most severe of all evils that one human can commit against another, he (i.e., the murderer) deservedly forfeits his own right to life.
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God, He made man” (Genesis 9:6, NASB, emphasis mine).
“For the One who seeks an accounting for bloodshed remembers them; He does not forget the cry of the afflicted” (Psalm 9:12, HCSB, emphasis mine).
God created government and entrusted governing authorities with the power to execute criminals if the punishment fits the crime. Does this make God Himself a murderer, or is He contradicting Himself? The answer to both questions is “no.” As the sovereign, absolutely just Author and Owner of all life and the Supreme Judge of humanity, God is the only Being who has the right or prerogative both to start and to stop a human life, which really amounts to His transferring a soul from one destination (earth) to the next (heaven or hell, ultimately). However, God also has the right to delegate His authority to others if He so desires, and this is exactly what God did when He instituted earthly government and granted governing officials the right to administer capital punishment in qualifying situations.
[Note: For more on this, read Genesis 9:6, Romans 13:1-7, and 1 Peter 2:13-17, as well as Greg Koukl’s article “Reasons for Capital Punishment” and the GotQuestions entry titled “What does the Bible say about the death penalty/capital punishment?“]
To be clear, there is no objective grounding or logical basis for human value, equality, dignity, identity, meaning, or rights apart from God, the Creator. In an atheistic/materialistic universe, these things could not exist and would be utterly unintelligible.
Furthermore, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, we learn that governments exist for the solitary purpose of defending — not determining or denying — people’s God-given, inalienable rights:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” —The Declaration of Independence (1776)
The government’s singular role is to secure human rights — that is, to promote justice by enforcing laws designed to protect the citizenry from people who would infringe upon their God-endowed rights to life, liberty, property, and so forth. Again, the transcendent Creator God is the sole source and guarantor of human value and rights. Thus, governments (i.e., people) have no power or authority to grant value or rights to other humans, nor can they take them away. (This is the meaning of “inalienable,” by the way.)
Consequently, while a woman has the legitimate right to make many choices in this country (e.g., to vote, to marry whom she wants, to work or get an education where she pleases, etc.), she does not have the right to make a choice that would result in the infringement or destruction of another person’s inalienable rights. More to the point, no woman (or man or child, for that matter) has the right to kill another human being — that is, a fellow image bearer of God — without proper ethical justification (e.g., self-defense, police use of lethal force to stop or thwart an act of violence against another, capital punishment, or military compliance with just war theory).
Put another way, nobody has the liberty to commit murder (i.e., the unjust intentional killing of another human being). Therefore, the right to life of the innocent pre-born child — who, remember, we are now in a position to know conclusively is a distinct human person from fertilization onward — overrides and annuls his mother’s Supreme Court-invented “right” to choose to terminate his life via elective abortion.
With that said, since we now know with scientific certainty that the unborn meet all the necessary criteria for what it means to be truly alive and truly human from the moment of fertilization, then we can know with equal certainty that the biblical commands that forbid the shedding of innocent human blood also apply to innocent humans in the womb. Period.
HOW DOES GOD PERSONALLY VIEW THE UNBORN?
Both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible reveal with vivid and moving language that God views the unborn no differently than He views human beings outside the womb — that is, as incalculably valuable, sacred, and precious in His sight. The most profound and wondrous of all such examples is that God the Son Himself voluntarily condescended to become a pre-born child—even a fertilzed egg/zygote! Consider the following passages of Scripture (and these are by no means exhaustive) and their implications with regard to abortion and infanticide:
OLD TESTAMENT
JOB 10:8-12
Your hands fashioned and made me altogether,
And would You destroy me?
Remember now, that You have made me as clay;
And would You turn me into dust again?
Did You not pour me out like milk
And curdle me like cheese;
Clothe me with skin and flesh,
And knit me together with bones and sinews?
You have granted me life and lovingkindness;
And Your care has preserved my spirit (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: As he continues to come to terms with the suffering his Maker had permitted into his life, Job uses strikingly expressive language to describe God’s active involvement and loving care in delicately crafting, forming, and preserving his life from start to finish. The same could truly be said of every human being seeing as how the same God created all of us.
PSALM 22:9-10
Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb;
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth [literally, “a womb”];
You have been my God from my mother’s womb (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: In this passage, the psalmist David confidently confirms that even when he was inside his mother’s womb, he belonged to God. We have no reason to believe that this awesome truth doesn’t apply universally to all children in the womb and not exclusively to King David.
PSALM 139:13-16
For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: In this magnificent psalm of praise, David conveys with the utmost awe and wonder the fact that the all-knowing, providential Creator was directly and intimately involved in planning, creating, and fashioning every detail and moment of his existence, from the time he spent in his mother’s womb all the way through the very end of his life. Moreover, David acknowledges that he was foreknown by God even prior to conception. Once again, there is no reason to believe that David thought this was true only of his own life and not the life of every human being.
EXODUS 21:22-25
If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: This passage dealing with the civil penal laws that applied to the Israelites living under the Mosaic Covenant demonstrates that God considers unborn children to be of equal worth to their mother and, therefore, equally as human and equally as valuable as adult human beings.
In their book When Critics Ask (1992, pp. 79–80, emphasis mine), Drs. Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe offer several helpful insights into this sometimes mistranslated and needlessly controversial passage that, given the topic at hand, are simply too edifying not to share here:
EXODUS 21:22–23 — Does this passage show that unborn children are of less value than adults?
PROBLEM: According to some translations of the Bible, this text teaches that when fighting men cause a woman to have a “miscarriage,” they “shall be fined” (v. 22, RSV). But, if the fighting men caused the death of the woman, the penalty was capital punishment (v. 23). Doesn’t this prove that the unborn was not considered a human being, as the mother was?
SOLUTION: First of all, this is a mistranslation of the verse. The great Hebrew scholar, Umberto Cassuto, translated the verse correctly as follows:
When men strive together and they hurt unintentionally a woman with child, and her children come forth, but no mischief happens—that is, the woman and the children do not die—the one who hurts her shall surely be punished by a fine. But if any mischief happens—that is, if the woman dies or the children—then you shall give life for life. —Commentary on the Book of Exodus, Magnes Press, 1967
This makes the meaning very clear. It is a strong passage against taking the life of an unborn baby, affirming that the unborn are of equal value to adult human beings.
Second, the Hebrew word (yatsa) mistranslated “miscarriage” in a few translations actually means “to come forth” or “to give birth.” It is the Hebrew word regularly used for live birth in the OT. In fact, it is never used for a miscarriage, though it is used of a still birth. But, in this passage, as in virtually all OT texts, it refers to a live, though premature, birth.
Third, there is another Hebrew word for miscarriage (shakol), and it is not used here. Since this word for miscarriage was available and was not used, but the word for live birth was used, there is no reason to suppose it means anything else than a live birth of a fully human being.
Fourth, the word used for the mother’s offspring here is yeled, which means “child.” It is the same word used of babies and young children in the Bible (Gen. 21:8; Ex. 2:3). Hence, the unborn is considered just as much a human as a young child is.
Fifth, if any harm happened to either the mother or the child, the same punishment was given, “life for life” (v. 23). This demonstrates that the unborn was considered of equal value with the mother.
[Note: For a deeper study of this particular passage, see Greg Koukl’s insightful article titled “What Exodus 21:22 Says About Abortion.”]
ISAIAH 49:1, 5
The LORD [Yahweh] called Me from the womb;
From the body of My mother, He named Me. . . .And now says the LORD [Yahweh], who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him so that Israel might be gathered to Him . . .
Significance: Stunningly, this is a Messianic prophecy, which means that the prophet Isaiah is here describing the awesome truth that the coming Messiah, God the Son, would somehow become a human being and be formed in the womb of a woman and be divinely called and named while in utero. For more on this amazing point, see my comments below on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke!
JEREMIAH 1:5
Before I [God] formed you in the womb, I knew you,
And before you were born, I consecrated you;
I have appointed you a prophet to the nations (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: In this remarkable verse, the prophet declares in no uncertain terms that God personally foreknows and foreordains human life, as well as the special purpose/calling of an individual person before he/she ever begins life in the womb.
NEW TESTAMENT
GALATIANS 1:15-16
But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles . . . (NASB, emphasis mine)
Significance: In these verses, the Apostle Paul, like Jeremiah before him, reinforces the fact that God foreknows, foreordains, and sets apart or sanctifies pre-born people by His grace to accomplish His glorious will in the world.
LUKE 1:15
For he [John the Baptist] will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: Here, an angel visits Zacharias (also called Zachariah or Zechariah) in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and announces that God is going to bless Zacharias and his infertile wife, Elizabeth, with a son in their old age who, in fulfillment of biblical prophecy, will serve as the forerunner to Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. Significantly, the angel explicitly says that the Spirit of God will fill this miraculous child—that is, John the Baptist—while he was “yet in his mother’s womb.”
Throughout the biblical record, there is no instance or indication anywhere that the Holy Spirit ever entered or resided within or “filled” anyone or anything other than a living human person, because human beings are the only creatures God made in His own image. Indeed, it is only the body of an image bearer of God that can be called “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19). Accordingly, it would be both inconsistent and unfathomable of God to give His Spirit to a non-living, non-human creature or a mere “clump of cells.” No, the fact that God gave His Spirit to John when he was in utero, still developing in his mother Elizabeth’s womb, powerfully demonstrates the awesome value, love, and purpose the Almighty Creator has for pre-born children.
MATTHEW 1:18-25 and LUKE 1:26-38
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus (NASB, emphasis mine).
. . . the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son; and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”
Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason, the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: Gospel writers Matthew and Luke here inform us that Almighty God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, loved His enemies so much that He condescended to leave the glory of heaven, lay aside His divine privileges and prerogatives (for approximately 33 years), and humble Himself to the lowliest, most vulnerable, and most helpless extent possible by becoming a pre-born human, for the ultimate purpose of sacrificing His perfect life so that sinful rebels such as you and I could be spared the just penalty our sins deserve (i.e., eternal punishment in hell) and instead be reconciled forever to the holy God whose laws we’ve repeatedly broken in thought, word, and deed.
That’s right: Long before He was born as a baby in a manger on that first Christmas in Bethlehem, God the Son, the Lord of all creation, volunteered to be supernaturally conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of a young virgin—a woman whose very life He had planned and created, mind you—and personally submitted to going through all the various stages of human gestation and development—a wondrous biological process that He Himself invented!
Getting more specific, the eternal, self-existent, uncreated Second Person of the Trinity willingly became a *fertilized egg* or, as embryologists might say, a single-celled “zygote.” Next, He developed into an “embryo,” and later a “fetus,” and after the nine months of pregnancy were completed, God Incarnate eventually traveled down Mary’s birth canal and continued life as an infant, and then as a toddler, and so on through adulthood. (Try to wrap your mind around that!)
Notice also in the text how many times these Gospel authors, both inspired by God, refer to the unborn Jesus with personal pronouns (e.g., “He,” “His,” “Him”) and as a “baby,” a “Child,” and a “Son.” Truly, on the basis of these two passages of Scripture alone, it would be utterly preposterous for anyone to claim that God the Father did not consider His own Son to be an actual human person while He was in Mary’s womb or that Jesus’ value as a pre-born human was less than that of Mary or Joseph! Likewise, it would be equally ludicrous to surmise that the Lord Jesus would Himself deny the humanity, personhood, or inherent value of unborn children when He was once one Himself.
But let’s continue exploring Luke’s Gospel account, as it gets even better.
LUKE 1:39-45
Now at this time [i.e., when Elizabeth was in her sixth month of pregnancy], Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord” (NASB, emphasis mine).
Significance: Luke’s account of Mary visiting Elizabeth powerfully draws attention to the awesome work of God the Spirit in the miraculous pregnancies of these two godly Jewish women, but it also contains some truly marvelous, but often overlooked, evidences for the humanity and personhood of the unborn.
If you will recall, Luke informs readers in the verses preceding this passage that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the Baptist when the angel Gabriel gave Mary the news (i.e., the Annunciation) that she would soon conceive Jesus. From this we can infer that John was approximately half a year older than Jesus (i.e., humanly speaking). Thus, to put this in modern terms, upon Mary’s visitation, Elizabeth was in her second trimester of pregnancy (i.e., 4-6 months of gestation) and Mary was in her first trimester (i.e., 0-3 months). In other words, at the time, John the Baptist was a “fetus” (i.e., older than eight weeks), and Jesus of Nazareth was likely an “embryo” (i.e., eight weeks old or younger).
Bearing this in mind, note carefully the personal characteristics that Luke and Elizabeth ascribe to both John and Jesus while each was still developing in his mother’s womb.
John, who was roughly 24 weeks along here, is clearly referred to as “the baby” and is said to have “leaped” in Elizabeth’s womb “for joy,” thereby conveying not only awareness (sentience) of but also excitement (emotion) over the sound of another person’s voice.
However, I contend that it goes even deeper than that, for while the text indicates that John responded to the sound of Mary’s greeting, the passage also strongly implies that it was the fact that Mary was carrying his Lord and Messiah in her womb that caused the unborn John to react so joyfully. Indeed, I believe John, by God’s supernatural enablement, was aware even as a “fetus” that he was in the presence of Deity.
Additionally, Elizabeth tells Mary that Jesus, who was most likely in an embryonic state at the time (though possibly still a “zygote”), is “blessed” and, incredibly, refers to the pre-born holy Child as her “Lord”!
Clearly, as King David, the prophet Jeremiah, the Apostle Paul, and other biblical writers also emphatically affirm, whatever a person is destined to be and to accomplish outside his mother’s womb—be it king, prophet, apostle, or Messiah and Savior—was foreknown and settled as fact in eternity past by the sovereign, omniscient, eternal God of all life. Is it not, then, grossly blasphemous to doubt, much less to deny, the humanity, personhood, or worth of any unborn child at any stage of human development, particularly that of the pre-born Christ child?!
Think about that very carefully.
Simply put, God morally forbids abortion because it is equivalent to murder—the intentional (in fact, pre-meditated) killing of innocent human life. He has made His moral will on this issue perfectly clear for all people to know, both through the special revelation of holy writ and through the general/natural revelation of conscience and reason. At the end of the day, then, no other opinions on the issue matter. God’s laws transcend and overrule man’s laws.
“Behold, children are a gift of the Lord;
The fruit of the womb is a reward” (Psalm 127:3, NASB, emphasis mine).
“God has made it very clear: Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit murder. And we shall not commit murder of our neighbor or our brother, our mother or father, or of ourselves. We are not our own. It’s interesting that in Roe v. Wade, the argument was given that they simply wanted women to have the autonomous control of their own bodies. Now, isn’t it fascinating that Humphry, in Final Exit, posits his argument [in favor of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide] simply on the fact that a person needs to have the autonomous control of his own body. But my friends, the problem is, it’s not your own.
“‘Know ye not that you are bought with a price, and ye are not your own?’ Nor is your life simply some chemical or biological accident — some concatenation of amino acids in some ancient, primordial slime. But it is a divine gift given unto you by God! It is sacred and inviolable. And it is not to be taken and flung back into the face of God, thanklessly!
“We are doubly not our own. We did not create our life; it was created by God. And beyond that, God even came into this world and died in great agony to redeem it. So, it is twice His — by creation and redemption. It is not our own autonomously to do with as we will. ‘Ye are not your own’!” —Dr. D. James Kennedy, from the sermon “Modern Myths: Suicide is a Viable Option”
[Note: For a fine summary of the Bible’s teachings against abortion from an eminent Bible scholar and expositor, I recommend Dr. John MacArthur’s article “Is Scripture Clear About Abortion?“]
What About the “Hard Cases”?
Let me be clear: Sexual assault and abuse (rape, molestation, incest, etc.) are horrible, repulsive sins and very serious human rights violations that should never be treated as anything less. In pursuing justice, a morally just society must hold the perpetrators of sex crimes accountable while at the same time demonstrating the utmost compassion and care to the victims of those crimes.
But what happens in the rare cases when sexual violence results in the conception of a new human life? Suddenly, the woman who was sexually assaulted is joined by another innocent survivor of the assault whose life is also unquestionably impacted by the assailant’s crime. How, then, should a morally just society treat both of these innocent survivors of sexual assault? Again, I would argue that both the woman and the pre-born child should be equally treated with the utmost compassion and care.
Many abortion-choice advocates believe that the mother who survives an act of sexual assault ought to abort the baby conceived in the assault because, they reason, going through with the pregnancy and having to look at that child would be too emotionally and psychologically painful for the woman/girl to bear.
That raises a key question: How should a civilized culture treat human beings who remind us of a painful event? I mean, is it morally justifiable to kill those people if it might help us feel a little better about past trauma? “Out of sight, out of mind,” right? Or, to put it more simply and directly, as philosopher Peter Kreeft once phrased the question:
Does hardship justify homicide?
This is a question of crucial importance. What sense does it make to inflict capital punishment (!) on an innocent bystander (i.e., the baby) of a crime for the sins of the criminal (i.e., the rapist/the child’s biological father), whose punishment — if there even is one, since rapists often get away with their crime(s) — is usually much less severe than the death penalty?
Moreover, wouldn’t killing the baby only serve to protect the abuser’s or rapist’s reputation — as well as enable him to continue repeating his crimes undetected — while significantly multiplying and exacerbating the holistic suffering of the woman who survived the assault?
Indeed, this seems to be the routine scenario in the majority of the “hard cases.” Consider the following testimony from Edith Young, who was raped by her stepfather and pressured into aborting her child:
Her mother and stepfather procured an abortion for her without telling her what was to happen. Twenty-six years later, she still had emotional and physical scars from her incest and abortion experience. She said, ‘The abortion has not been in my best interest. It only saved their reputations; solved their problems,” and “allowed their lives to go merrily on.” —Aborted Women: Silent No More, David C. Reardon, (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1987) (emphasis mine)
Furthermore, do two wrongs ever make a right? In other words, can one act of evil (e.g., rape) be remedied or magically erased by a second, even more horrific and violent act of evil (i.e., brutally murdering an innocent, defenseless baby)?
Finally, wouldn’t the haunting memory of choosing to destroy the life of her very own child considerably compound the mother’s existing trauma by adding a lifetime of devastating guilt, depression, and shame? Indeed, this appears to be the shared experience of the majority of post-abortive women who became pregnant as the result of rape or incest. Having discovered this truth for herself, one rape survivor reasoned that by choosing to give her baby life instead of selfishly ending her baby’s life through an elective abortion, she actually chose what she called “the easy route.”
Bottom Line: In order for any society or government to be truly just, it must be committed to protecting the lives of all people, especially those individuals who are most vulnerable to harm or exploitation. The helpless child who was conceived by an act of rape or incest is no less human, no less valuable, and no less made in the image of God than a child who was conceived by consensual pre-marital, extra-marital, or marital sex and is just as human and every bit as entitled to the inalienable right to life as her mother is. For these reasons, I contend that it would be grossly unjust and immensely evil intentionally to kill an innocent baby, regardless of the circumstances surrounding that child’s conception.
[Note: At this point, you may be thinking, “What about the life of the mother?” Please refer to my commentary here on the critical distinction that exists between “elective abortion,” whose design and goal is always to destroy an unborn child’s life, and legitimate “lifesaving maternal healthcare,” whose goal is to save the lives of both the mother and the child, if possible, yet which sometimes results in the undesirable and tragic death of the unborn child.]
One remarkable fact that the mainstream media never reports and which abortion proponents routinely dodge is that the majority of women who reportedly conceived a child through rape or incest have courageously and selflessly chosen to give their baby life, rather than death, and have never regretted that decision. According to Dr. David C. Reardon, “In the only major study of pregnant rape victims ever done, Dr. Sandra Mahkorn found that 75 to 85 percent chose against abortion.”
Some of these women of course decided to select a loving, adoptive family (of which there is no shortage) to care for their baby instead of raising the child themselves. Adoption is a beautiful, life-giving alternative to the deadly “finality” of abortion, as it allows the birth mother, who may not be ready for motherhood, to return to her life as a non-parent, while at the same time ensuring that her biological child is alive, loved, cared for, and given the opportunity to fulfill God’s good, unique, and significant plan for his or her life on this earth.
Quite the opposite of what the general public assumes to be true, testimony after testimony reveals that these brave women — who understandably tend to prefer to be labeled “survivors,” as opposed to “victims” — view their “unplanned” children as irreplaceable, heaven-sent “blessings” and “gifts” who came from the benevolent hand of an always purposeful, redemptive, and caring God who specializes in bringing good from evil and beauty from ashes.
Four such survivors tell their amazing, life-affirming testimonies in the first video featured below. In the second video directly beneath it, several children (now adults) who were conceived in rape share their incredible stories.
[Note: According to structured surveys that the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute conducted in 1987 and 2004 with abortion patients, the percentage of women who reported that rape or incest contributed to their decision to have an abortion was only 1% or fewer than 0.5%, respectively. A more recent private study reveals that the actual number of abortions performed state by state for reasons of rape or incest is actually much smaller than the well-known Guttmacher figures. Regardless of whose stats are more accurate, however, innocent human beings certainly can and do come into being as the result of sexual assault; and many of them are being put to death for no fault of their own. And yes, I understand that in certain states, convicted rapists are inconceivably given custody or visitation rights over their biological children, and I agree that this is morally insane and inexcusable. Such laws absolutely need to be changed ASAP, and I believe that convicted rapists should be, at the very least, lawfully required to pay child support; however, here’s the thing: We can improve those laws without having to exterminate innocent babies who are conceived by circumstances beyond their control. This isn’t an either/or scenario!]
“The greatest act of love is sacrificing your own life to save the life of another. The opposite of this, which [to be logically consistent] would be the greatest act of hate possible, is sacrificing another person’s life to save (or simply to benefit) yourself. Maternity is laying down your life for another; abortion is laying down another’s life for yourself.” —Stephanie Gray Connors
Abortion Should Be “Safe”?
No one with a healthy, functioning conscience would use the word “safe” to describe an abortion unless that person is being dishonest or is ignorant of what an abortion entails.
Please understand that a successful abortion, by design, always violently destroys the life of at least one human being — that is, the unborn child. Furthermore, women also sometimes die from abortion, often from health complications caused by this invasive, unnatural, violent, and traumatic “procedure.”
[Note: For more on this, refer to Abort73.com’s abortion facts sheet and scroll down to the subheading “Abortion Fatality.” FYI, they use the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute for all their abortion statistics.]
Moreover, copious testimonies from post-abortive women demonstrate the holistic (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual) harm that abortion frequently inflicts upon mothers. And though they are often overlooked, the biological fathers of aborted children suffer in numerous ways, too. Assuredly, a single abortion impacts more people than most of us realize — mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, church congregations, communities, and on and on.
Finally, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I suggest the following:
Poisoning and burning a baby alive with a toxic solution, dismembering a living person piece by piece, and stabbing the back of the skull and suctioning the brain out of a living human being are exceedingly too horrific to be described as merely “unsafe.” Truly, such actions are incomparably inhumane, sadistic, abhorrent, and EVIL, regardless of how “clean” are the instruments used, how “board-certified” is the abortion provider, or how “sanitized” is the facility in which such barbarity transpires.
Abortion Should Be “Rare”?
What sense would it make to reduce the number of incidents of a particular behavior if the behavior in question isn’t harmful or wrong? If abortion doesn’t take the life of a human being, then why should it be made “rare”? When the majority of abortion-choice proponents make this claim, they’re either being disingenuous or are simply parroting talking points they’ve heard others say. You can quickly find out for sure by saying something along these lines:
“I’m glad you think abortion should be rare, because it indicates that you understand abortion isn’t good for society. But why is that exactly? [Help them think through the reasons behind their natural disapproval of abortion.] And since you obviously think something about abortion isn’t right, would you be willing to support legislation that would outlaw abortions except in the rare cases of pregnancies resulting from sexual assault/rape? Although I personally don’t believe there should ever be any exception for intentionally putting a baby to death, an abortion ban that allowed for these exceptions would at least put an end to the vast majority of elective abortions in this country (i.e., over 99%), thereby saving the lives of untold millions of pre-born children. Wouldn’t you want to see that happen? After all, at least until fairly recently, most Democrats and ‘pro-choicers’ claimed that they believe abortions should be ‘rare.’ Well, outlawing this practice in all but the exceptional cases, such as rape and incest, would make abortions truly rare in this country. You’d be in favor of that, right? If not, and you’re really 100% pro-abortion ‘on demand, without exception, and without apology,’ then why even bring up the rare rape/incest cases in the first place?”
This is a very reasonable and appropriate question to ask someone who claims she believes abortions should be rare. If the individual says “no” in response to this proposal, she has proven she doesn’t honestly want abortions to be made “rare” after all. Again, she is probably just repeating a popular pro-abortion slogan that she’s never taken the time to think about carefully.
By the way, Barack Obama, the most extreme and unyielding pro-abortion president (possibly politician) in the history of our republic [although the Biden/Harris administration is now, in 2022, giving him a run for his money], claims from one side of his mouth that he believes abortions should be “rare.” However, in practice, literally every time he was given the opportunity actually to make them rare, Obama’s decisions instead resulted in the de-regulation and expansion of elective abortions in America. In other words, the president who claimed he wanted to see fewer abortions in this country only helped give us more abortions.
[Note: To get a better idea about President Obama’s radical abortion views, I highly recommend Professor Robert P. George’s article “Obama’s Abortion Extremism” and “President Barack Obama’s Pro-Abortion Record: A Pro-Life Compilation,” courtesy of LifeNews.com.]
“On this fundamental issue, I will not yield; and Planned Parenthood will not yield.” —Barack Obama, from a speech given to Planned Parenthood (July 17, 2007)
Of all his offenses (and they are many) against the most helpless and defenseless members of the human race, what takes the cake for me is Obama’s two-time refusal to support a law designed to provide basic lifesaving healthcare to infants born alive after failed abortions.
In effect, then-Senator Barack Obama twice voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.
If the picture isn’t clear enough for you, let me put it this way: As a state legislator, Barack Obama voted to protect men like Kermit Gosnell. Clear enough?
From President Obama’s point of view, which is disturbingly shared by an ever-growing number of his fellow Democrats, a baby who survives a failed abortion remains a target “marked for death.” From their perspective, the woman (or man, as is often the case) who paid to have that child aborted is guaranteed the right not merely to a choice, but to a corpse — that is, a dead baby — even if that baby has completely exited his mother’s womb. If the mother does not want her child and the abortion doesn’t get the job done, then that child must be exterminated some other way instead.
Infants who manage to survive failed abortion procedures are murdered passively or indirectly by neglect, starvation, or refusal of basic lifesaving medical attention, or they are actively murdered via suffocation or a more vicious means, such as Kermit Gosnell’s savage stabbing and mutilation methods. When it comes to the wickedness that a human being can perpetrate against fellow humans, I cannot imagine anything more cruel, wicked, inhumane, or Satanic than this, yet a large percentage of pro-abortion lobbyists and lawmakers (especially within the Democratic Party) believe these unconscionable and medically unnecessary acts of literal infanticide, which some are now astonishingly calling “after-birth abortion,” should also be legally permissible.
Abortion Should Be “Legal”?
The notorious Supreme Court cases Roe v. Wade and the lesser known, but arguably more impactful, Doe v. Bolton (both decided on January 22, 1973) “legalized” abortion on demand in America, for all practical purposes, through all nine months of pregnancy. I say this because Doe made it possible for a woman to obtain an abortion under virtually any circumstance and at any stage of pregnancy, as long as she cites “health” as the reason for aborting her child.
[Note: In the irony of ironies, neither of the plaintiffs in Roe (the late Norma McCorvey) and Doe (the late Sandra Cano) ever actually had an abortion. McCorvey gave her baby up for adoption; and Cano never even sought an abortion, but a divorce! What’s more, both of these women later testified that their cases had been based on fraud and deceit (McCorvey was never actually raped, as she had originally claimed; and Cano, who had always been opposed to abortion, had her name attached to the Doe v. Bolton case against her knowledge). In addition, both of these women went on to become staunch defenders of the unborn and labored to overturn their infamous anti-life cases, to no avail. Incredible.]
Pro-life educator and activist Scott Klusendorf summarizes the import of these two historic cases and explains why changing present abortion laws is just as important as changing people’s minds on the issue:
In Roe v. Wade, the court said [that] during the first six months of pregnancy, the state may only legislate against abortion to protect the woman, not the fetus. Roe also said that, during the final three months of pregnancy [i.e., the third trimester], the state may act to protect the unborn, provided the woman’s health is not jeopardized. Notice the key word there: “may.” [In other words, a state may intervene to protect the unborn; but no state is obligated to do so.]
But, then, Doe v. Bolton defined ‘health’ so broadly that you could drive a Mack truck through it. It could mean physical health, mental health, emotional health, or anything.
People’s hearts need to be changed on abortion, but laws regarding abortion also need to be changed. The laws are unjust — that is, they are not in compliance with the will of God. We don’t just [need to] change hearts [which only God can do, but He often does so through human instruments]. We also need to change laws.
[Update (6-28-22): The Supreme Court of the United States officially overturned Roe V. Wade on 6-24-22!!! All praise and thanks be to the one true God for mercifully giving American voters the privilege and power, through our elected representatives, to stop the slaughter of the innocents on a state-by-state basis! As wonderful as this historic victory in the battle for human life is, however, please understand that it will still be legal, in varying degrees, in the vast majority of American states (at least 37) to destroy the lives of innocent human beings in their mother’s womb. This is morally unacceptable, and so, in a real sense, the fight to abolish human abortion—and to make this egregious evil as unthinkable in the minds of people as human slavery now is—has only just begun.]
Key Takeaway: In this essay, I have offered empirically verifiable scientific facts, careful philosophical reasoning, and a straightforward argument based on the clear moral and anthropological teachings of the Bible to make the case that an abortion unjustifiably destroys the life of an innocent human being. For that reason, no government should lawfully permit, much less promote through taxpayer funding, this most heinous crime against humankind.
Thus, the next time you hear an abortion-choice advocate say, “Abortion should be safe, rare, and legal,” remember that what they’re actually saying is, “Violently killing innocent human beings should be safe, rare, and legal.” Absurd, is it not?
No Sin Is Unforgivable
Whether you’re a woman who has had an abortion, a man who has coerced or condoned an abortion, a counselor who has deceived a woman about the living human growing inside her, a parent or friend who has encouraged or pressured a woman to abort a baby, or a physician who has personally taken the life of an unborn child, the first thing you need to realize and acknowledge is this BAD NEWS:
You, like the rest of fallen humanity, are guilty of doing great evil in the eyes of an absolutely righteous and perfectly just God whose holiness demands that all evil be punished and that justice be served for every offense.
“. . . just as through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and [physical & spiritual] death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned . . .” (Romans 5:12, NASB, emphasis mine)
“There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, there is not even one. . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10-12, 23, NASB, emphasis mine).
“The person who sins will die” (Ezekiel 18:20, NASB).
“For the wages of sin is death . . .” (Romans 6:23, NASB).
“. . . without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22, NASB).
The second thing you need to understand and accept as true is this incomparably GOOD NEWS:
Jesus Christ, the sinless God-Man who lived a life of flawless obedience to God the Father, took your place on an instrument of execution (i.e., a Roman cross), voluntarily suffered the death penalty to satisfy God’s righteous anger toward you for the crimes you have committed against Him and others, and physically rose from the dead both to prove He is truly God and to confirm the Father’s acceptance of His perfect sacrifice, is offering even now to pardon all of your wrongdoings (past, present, and future, which includes abortion), remove all of your guilt and shame, cleanse your conscience, make you a brand new creation, give you HIS own righteousness, adopt you into His eternal family as His daughter or son, and use your life on earth in magnificent ways to carry out His awesome rescue plan for this broken world.
Think you deserve any of those generous gifts? Think again! As hard a pill as it may be to swallow, what every human being really deserves is eternal punishment in hell. Hence, it should make sense that if one rejects the only provision — that is, faith in Christ — that God mercifully has made available to save us from His just judgment of sin, then that person will get exactly what he or she deserves in the afterlife.
“. . . it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment . . .” (Hebrews 9:27, NASB, emphasis mine)
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him [i.e., not just mentally assenting that Jesus is the Son of God, but wholeheartedly trusting in Him alone for salvation] shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. . . . He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath [or judgment] of God abides on him” (John 3:16-21, 36, NASB, emphasis mine).
This is what makes God’s grace truly “amazing,” as John Newton’s famous hymn proclaims, for without it, we would all be completely without hope. However, when we humble ourselves before the Lord (our ultimate Judge) and confess to Him (i.e., agree with Him about) our sins with sincere and contrite hearts, God responds by pouring out His unmerited (i.e., you cannot earn it through your performance) favor and lovingkindness on an infinitely undeserving race of rebels who are idolaters, blasphemers, murderers, adulterers, thieves, and liars at heart. Yet the greater our sins against Him are, the greater Jesus’ grace abounds toward those who turn to Him in genuine faith (i.e., trust) and repentance (i.e., turning away from and forsaking your sins) — and the greater the glory God receives in the end:
“. . . but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more . . .” (Romans 5:20, NASB, emphasis mine)
“. . . God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5, NASB, emphasis mine).
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9, NASB, emphasis mine).
“. . . if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Romans 10:9-10, NASB, emphasis mine).
“And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, NASB, emphasis mine).
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, ESV, emphasis mine).
“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified [i.e., legally acquitted in God’s court and credited with Christ’s righteousness] by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Romans 5:6-11, NASB, emphasis mine).
“For I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12, NASB, emphasis mine).
You see, humanity’s greatest need is to be made spiritually alive and transferred out of a wrong relationship with God (i.e., separation from Him on account of our sins), which is how each one of us begins life, and placed into a right relationship with God (i.e., reconciliation with Him through faith in Christ, who bears all our sins upon Himself and covers us with His holiness). In his thoughtful article “Can God Forgive Abortions?” best-selling author Randy Alcorn expounds on all of this with pastoral delicacy, clarity, and biblical fidelity. I highly recommend it.
“Jesus answered and said to [Nicodemus, a pious man and religious leader], ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again [i.e., born spiritually or born of God], he cannot see the kingdom of God‘” (John 3:3, NASB, emphasis mine).
“For [God] rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13, NASB, emphasis mine).
Still, if there was only one resource I could share with abortion survivors and anyone who desires to experience the redemptive power and holistic healing of Christ, it would be this poignant work of art from the outstanding Anchored North Films:
After you have personally made peace with God by confessing your sins to Him, receiving Christ’s forgiveness, and trusting Him exclusively as your Lord and Master, commit to doing the right thing by the grace and power of God’s Spirit from this point forward. Join the fight to end abortion and help promote a culture of life wherever you live. By sharing your story and the liberating love and mercy you have received from God, you could be a source of immense comfort and hope for other abortion survivors, as well as an influential force in dissuading others from making this disastrous decision.
Let’s Review
1) The science of embryology, aided by technological advances in medical photography and ultrasonography, demonstrates empirically and conclusively that the unborn are unique, genetically distinct, whole, living human beings from the moment of fertilization (i.e., the instant that a male sperm and female egg unite); therefore, abortion procedures (surgical or medical/chemical), which are amply documented via graphic images and videos, undeniably entail the intentional, violent killing of living human beings (i.e., principally by dismembering them alive, burning or poisoning them to death with chemicals, or, in the case of late-term or partial-birth abortions, brutally stabbing the baby’s neck, suctioning her brains out, and crushing her skull).
2) Careful philosophical and moral reasoning reveals that there is no essential, ontological, or anthropological difference between a human being at an earlier stage of development (e.g., zygote, embryo, or fetus) and that same human being at a later stage of development (e.g., infant, toddler, teenager, adult) that would make it morally justifiable to kill that person in one stage of life but not in another, because the only differences between a pre-born human and a post-born human are size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency, and those differences are completely irrelevant to the question of one’s humanity, dignity, worth, or right to life. (We could also add other factors, such as ability, age, appearance, ethnicity, gender/sex, health problems/defects, nationality, perceived usefulness to society, and whether or not a child is wanted by its biological mother or father, none of which would disqualify a pre-born child from the human race or justify killing him or her, any more than such considerations would justify killing post-born human beings.)
3) Last but not least, the Bible teaches that all humans have intrinsic, sacred value and dignity because all human beings are made in the image of God and, for the same reason, forbids the intentional destruction of innocent human life. Consequently, since science and philosophy establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the pre-born are indeed living human beings who are of the same essence and nature as post-born human beings, then we can know for certain that the commands of Scripture which forbid the shedding of innocent human blood also logically apply to the lives of the most innocent members of the human race: unborn children.
Rest assured, it is most certainly not above anyone’s “pay grade” to know when human life begins or when human beings are entitled to human rights. (Sorry, Mr. President.) Rich or poor, employed or not, all of us can and do know the answer to this simple question. Medically and scientifically, that case was closed a long time ago, in fact. Frankly, a little common sense and moral intuition should have been enough to settle the matter; but now you know the basic scientific, philosophical, and theological reasons why abortion is morally wrong and why no one can continue to feign ignorance about the greatest human rights issue of our times. ALL who have read this article are now without excuse!
“Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter. Oh, hold them back! If you say, ‘See, we did not know this,’ does He who weighs [judges] the hearts not consider it? And does He who keeps your soul not know it? And will He not render to man according to his work?” (Proverbs 24:11-12, NASB)
Now, What Will YOU Do with the Truth?
One question remains, though: Now that you know the truth about the unborn, will you defend these little ones by laboring to end human abortion?
In the pagan nations of the ancient Near East, parents sacrificed their children (i.e., burned them alive, usually) to “appease” their false deities, such as Molech (see, for example, Leviticus 18:21 and Jeremiah 32:35) — an abhorrent practice that incurred a special outpouring of God’s judgment upon the nations responsible.
Today, parents sacrifice their children to less conspicuous “gods” that go by various names, such as “Choice,” “Convenience,” “Progress,” “Sexual Liberty,” and “Reproductive Freedom.” In America alone, the mortality rate of aborted children is more than 2,000 per day, more than 1 million per year, and well over 53 million since 1973, when a so-called “constitutional right” to abortion was fabricated out of thin air by the governmental overreach, interpretive gymnastics, and jurisprudential dereliction of seven unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court justices — all of whom were men, by the way. (Be sure to recall that last point the next time you hear someone make this strange claim: “Men shouldn’t have any say about abortion!”)
[Note: The actual death toll of aborted babies in the U.S. is even higher than these numbers (i.e., well over 60 million, as of 2022). One reason we can be sure of this is that California, which performs more abortions annually than any other state, has not submitted abortion stats to the Centers for Disease Control in several years. New Hampshire and Maryland also apparently have not volunteered this data in some time. See here and here for more about this.]
As a matter of fact, the leading cause of death in America is neither heart disease, nor cancer, nor smoking. Contrary to popular belief, the biggest killer of Americans is abortion, and by a considerable margin:
These are hair-raising figures, folks, and they should drive us to our knees in humble confession and repentance to the Almighty, whose patience with the wicked, although great, does have an expiration date.
“When the LORD [Yahweh] your God cuts off before you [Israel] the nations [of Canaan] which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’ You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates, they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:29-31, NASB, emphasis mine).
May the Lord Jesus Christ, the Author of every human life and the Grand Designer of human development (both prenatal and postnatal), transform America’s “culture of death” and mercifully redeem (not “bless”) the USA, a nation that still, after half a century of bloodshed, lawfully permits and selfishly rationalizes the wanton slaying of innocent little human persons by the thousands per day — that is, thousands of sacred souls whom our Creator lovingly and carefully knit together in their mothers’ wombs, tenderly fashioned in His own likeness, and graciously granted the gift of, and right to, LIFE.
How long will God’s people remain silent, apathetic, uninvolved, or willfully ignorant of the facts presented here and many other places in this Internet/Information Age? How long will we choose to live in denial of the moral atrocities occurring right under our noses, when we are the only people on the planet divinely commanded—and divinely empowered—to be the salt and light of this sin-darkened world? WHO will stop the evil, if not us?
“In the end, it’s not enough to regulate abortion; it must be abolished. And it’s our prayer that the tragedy of the Gosnell story will move us closer to that day. Will you join us in praying for a day when our nation cherishes and protects life, especially those tiny members of the human race still in their mothers’ wombs?” —Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family
Join me in praying for the universal abolition of human abortion and an unprecedented national and global spiritual Awakening that will, among other things, cause ALL people everywhere to view this egregious sin the same way that we now view human slavery—that is, as absolutely unthinkable and intolerable.
Encourage your church leaders and fellow Christians to expose this great darkness and engage the battle to expel it.
Get informed and learn how to make the case for life — “from the womb (i.e., the beginning of life) to the tomb (i.e., the natural end of life)” — persuasively and articulately.
[Note: For additional help with this, refer to the recommended resources featured in the final section of this document.]
Educate others with the truth you have learned.
Become politically active and resolve to vote only for 100% pro-life, pro-family politicians who have a proven, consistent, uncompromising, pro-life track record.
[Note: No matter what their lips may say, the extremely rare Democrat candidates who claim to be “pro-life” have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to part ways with their party and protect unborn children when the going gets tough. And even if one of them were to try, they could not realistically make any difference when 99.9% of their party is unreservedly committed to keeping abortion legal and to expanding it. The indisputable reality is that unrestricted access to abortion “on demand and without apology” is held to be a sacrosanct right/idol within the modern Democrat Party, and this is a cause they have literally made a central part of their official political platform: “We oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right [i.e., to abortion without restriction].” This position was publicly and unequivocally reaffirmed during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, where the participants also literally booed God, angrily and vociferously at that. By their own words and actions, repeated year after year, representatives of this particular political party adamantly and shamelessly express contempt for the moral will of Christ on almost every social and moral issue. To put it mildly, wherever the Democrat Party may have been positioned on the ideological and moral spectrum prior to the 1970s, it is now positioned far to the left of that location and continues to veer further and further left by the hour, it seems. Make no mistake: The Democratic Party of the 21st century is definitely NOT your great grandfather’s Democratic Party.]
Speak for and defend those who cannot speak for or defend themselves (cf. Psalm 82:3-4).
Get involved with and/or financially support pro-life organizations and ministries (refer to the recommendations at the end of this document).
Volunteer to offer your services at life-affirming crisis pregnancy centers.
Prayerfully consider going that “extra mile” and commit to adopting unwanted children and/or counseling women and men outside abortion clinics or at other medical facilities, or on the Internet, or anywhere else you possibly can.
Spread the truth about abortion via e-mail, social media, blogging, etc.
Share this blog post!
Please, just stop doing nothing!
“Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17, NASB).
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” —attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for ‘good’ men to do nothing.” —Edmund Burke
Recommended Resources
1) Abort73
3) The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf
4) Stand to Reason’s Articles on Abortion
5) “The Sound of Abortion” by Peter Heck
6) 180 Movie by Ray Comfort and Living Waters Ministries
7) “LIFE: An Inalienable Right” by Dr. D. James Kennedy
8) “Is Scripture Clear About Abortion?” by Dr. John MacArthur
9) “Can God Forgive Abortions?” by Randy Alcorn
10) “Back to Science Class for the Science Guy” by Dr. Robert P. George & Patrick Lee
11) “Taking the Easy Route After Rape” by Alan Shlemon
12) Save the Storks – a wonderful pro-life organization that offers free and confidential pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, and STD screenings to women in need
13) Pre-Born! – an exceptional Gospel-centered ministry committed to glorifying Jesus Christ by leading and equipping pregnancy clinics to save both babies and souls, particularly by providing donor-supported ultrasounds.
14) “Why Adoption Is a Redemptive Pro-Life Option” by Jenn Hesse
15) How to Choose an Adoption Agency by National Council for Adoption
16) Nightlight Christian Adoptions – a pro-life, Christ-centered adoption agency that offers free counseling and 24/7 support to women facing unexpected pregnancy
Take Courage in 2016: Christ Has Overcome the World!
Down is up? False is true? Evil is good? Darkness is light, and vice versa?
2015 = the year reality was inverted and Western society succumbed to what any honest observer, frankly, would have to call “moral insanity.”
To be sure, there was never a dull day or moment in the marketplace of ideas last year. Let’s review some of the most troubling and puzzling ones that made headlines and heads turn:
Black lives don’t matter?
Police officers’ lives don’t matter?
Precious unborn (and born) little persons’ lives don’t matter to the point that the remains of their brutally murdered little bodies can be harvested and sold without apparent consequence in a “civilized” country?
Meanwhile, less valuable creatures (animals) and inanimate things (environment/climate) that do not bear the sacred image of their Creator not only DO matter but matter as MUCH as or even MORE than human lives?
Governing authorities who are more concerned with being “politically correct” than simply “correct” devote less time and energy toward developing a decisive strategy that could actually defeat Islamic terrorism and MORE time and energy apologizing to and defending the very heart of the problem — that is, a theological/political ideology whose historical hallmarks are bloodshed, coercion, and oppression and whose sacred text (the Quran) unequivocally teaches its adherents that all non-Muslims, especially Jews & Christians, must either convert or be killed?
Keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens is supposed to dissuade or deter violent lawbreakers and hell-bent terrorists from doing evil?
Disarming citizens and taking away their best means of protection against said criminals keeps them safer?
Man (the clay) can now “overrule” and “redefine” the eternal laws and purposes of his own Maker (the Potter)?
Foundational social institutions in place literally from the inception of the human race may now be radically altered and/or completely overthrown simply because a fickle populace suddenly deems it “progressive,” “modern,” and on the “right side of history” to do so?
Personal identity and what it even means to be human are self-determined, fluid concepts based primarily — if not exclusively — on one’s sexual attractions and/or actions (by the way, there IS a vital difference between the two); and they are no longer contingent, in any way, on the Creator’s all-wise and perfect design & will for His image bearers?
Male is female?
Female is male?
Gender distinctions are but a social construct, at best, or an illusion, at worst?
Boys may now share dressing rooms and showers with girls if they “identify” as female?
Concomitant with the above notions, children (and grownups) are now not only allowed but also encouraged (by the state and by parents) to undergo irreversible physical mutilation so their bodies can match their (terribly) confused minds instead of the infinitely safer and more sensible alternative of being provided professional counseling to help them align their misguided thinking with the objective, empirical reality of their anatomical/biological design? And it’s now a crime (in some places) even to offer them such help?
People who happen to agree with the worldview and teachings of the very One who made the world, humans, sex, gender, and marriage are demonized as “haters,” “bigots,” and a colorful variety of something-or-another “-phobes” when they resist the cultural pressure to go against God and conscience, while those who harass, threaten, slander, libel, sue, financially ruin, fire, blacklist, imprison, or run them out of town for holding a view different from their own (or for not celebrating their lifestyle) are lionized as exemplars of “love,” “diversity,” “tolerance,” and “inclusivism”?
Glamor Magazine’s 2015 “WOMAN of the Year” has male genitalia?
The media and progressive radicals make believe that Bruce and “Caitlyn” are literally two different persons, and they expect the sane world to join them in their odd fantasy, as if it would be strange and harmful NOT to do so?
And on and on the madness goes . . .
So, 2015 really was the year reality got turned inside out and upside down, right?
Well, from man’s perspective, that certainly seems like a fair assessment. But from God’s point of view?
What, are you kidding me?! 😉
No, as He has been from all eternity, the “great, unchangeable I AM” and the immovable “Fixed Point” is still “the same yesterday and today and forever.” Therefore, no matter what anyone down here says or does, the natural laws and ethical standards that emanate from the Almighty’s changeless nature and holy character apply to people in 2016 as much as they applied to people living 4,000 years ago; and they will continue to apply a million years from now. (FYI, before someone makes a fuss, no, the “civil” and “ceremonial” laws of the Mosaic Covenant — not to be confused with the “moral law” of God — were never intended to have universal application. Those were peculiar to theocratic Israel and served a crucial role in God’s plan to rescue humanity from what we really deserve, a fact for which we should all be eternally thankful.)
The point? Well, first, reality does not and never can change because God, who Himself is ultimate Reality and who holds all things together in Himself (Colossians 1), does not and never can change. Moreover, Christ is SOVEREIGN over human affairs, which means that anything and everything that happens does so only because the Lord has permitted it to happen both for His glory and for our ultimate good. As a result, each one of us who is in a right relationship with God on account of Jesus Christ has neither a reason nor the right to despair or be fearful or anxious about ANYTHING that occurs on this fallen planet.
As John Stonestreet reminded me earlier this week in one of his BreakPoint commentaries, Jesus’ consoling declaration of victory to His disciples in the 16th chapter of John’s Gospel is every bit as relevant to the present time as it was to the first century:
“In this world, you have tribulation; but take courage: I have overcome the world” (v. 33).
Christians, which world did Jesus overcome? THIS world — that is, the same world that Jesus created as good and perfect but that we, His rebellious enemies, have so horribly corrupted, and the same world Jesus graciously & mercifully condescended to enter into as one of us (yet without sin) and personally redeem with His precious lifeblood. And do you know what else “the world” He conquered entails? The year 2015. Yes, that’s right. Jesus has overcome ALL the moral insanity and cultural chaos that dominated the headlines of that wild & crazy year. And guess what else? Jesus has ALREADY overcome “the world” of 2016 and all the bad things that most assuredly will come to each of us during this new year.
Thus, not a single event — regardless of how evil, vile, cruel, unlawful, horrifying, unjust, tragic, sad, crazy, foolish, or downright weird — that transpired in 2015 fazed, surprised, or worried God in the least, and neither will any event that comes down the pike in 2016 and beyond. As the psalmist wrote, “the LORD has established His throne in the heavens, and His sovereignty rules over all” (Ps. 103:19).
In other words, the risen, glorified, ascended Christ is not fretting, weeping, or nervously wringing His hands as to what might happen tomorrow or the next day or the next year. On the contrary, He knows all things, He sees all things, and He holds tomorrow as well as today in His omnipotent hand. Furthermore, He reigns confidently upon His heavenly throne where He constantly exercises complete control of the universe and patiently awaits the appointed moment of His Father’s choosing, during which time He will return to earth for His Second Advent, judge the living and the dead, put all wrongs to right, make all things new (including the earth), and rule forevermore as King of kings and Lord of lords!
Without a doubt, we can know for certain that because of the events of 2015, particularly in America, 2016 is guaranteed to be a pivotal year for social, political, and moral transitions across the board. Yet as we move forward into another 12 months, filled as we are with the usual hopes and fears, please bear in mind the following:
Whether Americans will cry out to God this year for His mercy toward us and repent of our national & individual sins against Him and one another OR whether Americans will proceed to shake our fists at the Lord, pretend as if we ARE God, and forge stubbornly ahead down the path of self-destruction, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and sin)!
Whether local churches will resolve to stand firmly on the unchanging, authoritative Word of God and contend earnestly for His truth this year OR whether professing Christ-followers will continue to compromise and betray the Christ they claim to follow by rejecting or attempting to “revise” His teachings to suit themselves, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and apostasy/spiritual adultery)!
Whether all people will finally realize this year that there is only ONE race — the human race — and that having different shades of skin (dark, light, or somewhere in between) does nothing to change the fact that ALL humans are made in the image of the same God and are therefore equally valuable OR whether racial tensions, hate-mongering rhetoric, and senseless rioting will divide and destroy even more communities, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and racism, prejudice, hatred, bitterness, unforgiveness, and stupidity)!
Whether we will go to the polls next November and elect a president who holds the only accurate view of reality (i.e., the one God has revealed to us in Scripture and nature), who has executive experience, who has the credentials to lead with moral clarity, wisdom, humility, faith & integrity, and who actually respects the Constitution and promises to nominate only those judges who are committed to doing the same OR whether we will foolishly choose to empower yet another ungodly secular humanist and socialist whose worldview and policies oppose the expressed will of Christ at every turn, who thinks he/she is above the law, and who believes man/government can solve man’s problems when man IS the problem, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and politics)!
Whether America’s armed forces & allies will utterly demolish ISIS (or the “Islamic State”) this year and every vestige of militant Islam on the earth OR whether bloodthirsty jihadists will succeed in subduing whatever remains of the free world and set up sharia law on every continent (I say “fat chance!” to that), take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and terrorism and war and all the world’s religions)!
Whether God’s image bearers (i.e., you and I) will discover this year that our identity, worth, and purpose can be found *exclusively* in the One who made us for Himself OR whether we will cluelessly and hopelessly go on searching for these things in all the wrong places, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and spiritual blindness)!
Whether the sick or hurting on your prayer list will be healed this year OR whether a loved one will contract a serious illness or suffer in greater ways than before, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and sickness & suffering)!
Whether the introduction this year of a brand new life will cause your family to grow OR whether the departure of a familiar life will cause your family to grieve, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and death)!
Whether heroes/role models will rise this year OR whether they will fall, reminding us that humans (sinners) inevitably WILL let us down but that God never can or will, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and idols of all forms)!
And whether or not Bruce Jenner and the silly media will come to their senses and stop referring to him as “Caitlyn” in 2016, take courage: Jesus has overcome the world (and every variation of nonsense and/or insanity)! 😀
COME WHATEVER MAY, all the adopted sons and daughters of the one true God can rejoice in our Savior’s comforting declaration of His TOTAL triumph over this cursed creation, which is a promise for ALL history and time — past, present, and future:
“Take COURAGE! I have OVERCOME the world!” – Jesus Christ
In closing, I will leave you with David Platt’s encouraging Tweet from Christmas Day 2015:
“He came the first time lying in a manger (Lk 2). He’ll come the second time riding on the clouds (Rev 19). Come, Lord Jesus!”
Come, Lord Jesus, indeed!
Happy 2016, everyone. 🙂
Upholding Truth 