Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected
| PentecostalTheology.com
at your church and in what context?
I got to thinking about it and in 28 years and several churches do to moving locations, I have only heard it addressed once and in this context….. “you can settle the abortion debate if you can answer this one questions, does life begin at conception?”
Whether right or wrong, I have not heard a church publicly condemning the act of abortion. At the same time, I wonder how many preachers here feel it should be legal.
Varnel Watson
Joe Absher does it daily but this one seems a good topic for Link Hudson How about you Michael Ellis Carter Jr.
Michael Ellis Carter Jr.
Troy Day I did it on The last two Sundays
Varnel Watson
video?
Joseph Steven Girdler
Very often.
Varnel Watson
video?
Bishop Bernie L Wade
Sunday
Varnel Watson
tell us
Joshwa Bedford
Vernon Dalton
2 weeks ago. I said if a female is old enough to have a baby then she is old enough to know how not to have one. Also less than 2% of abortions are from rape, incest and medical conditions combined. Once we can agree that the other 98% are babies sacrificed on the altar of inconvenience then we can discuss the other 2%.
Varnel Watson
yap – sure thing – good information % of abortion per state has increased though DESIRE to have abortion has decreased Who is sacrificing who is the question to be answered from our pulpits It is TIME for PENTECOSTALS…
Joshwa Bedford
I’ve addressed it about 2-3 months ago in a Sunday school lesson. I also addressed it a number of times on my Facebook page. Abortion is the leading cause for death in the United States. Breaks my heart.
Robert Baker
My opinion is if it endangers the life of a mother an forcelly Rape that should be an exception if your willing to have sex you should take on the responsibility of being a parent an if the man dont like it or dont claim the child burn there Tail in child support an what ever it takes 2 except the responsibility Amen
Varnel Watson
Robert Baker understood – should we educate on the subject in church. I believe we already do around Christmas time
Varnel Watson
‘Early Jewish and Christian writings are very useful to help enlighten modern audiences about culture and ideas of these ancient civilizations. Whereas modern people have perverse incentives to reinterpret the Bible to fit their ideology, these writings help illustrate double standards in reading comprehension.
One such area is abortion. Some modern people attempt to make the claim that the Bible does not condemn abortion as murder. They willfully misunderstand Exodus 21 to make this claim. In this Exodus text, God gives the death penalty to negligent homicide of the unborn baby:
Exo 21:22 “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
Exo 21:23 But if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life,
Some individuals claim that the “harm” does not refer to the unborn baby, but that is not genuine to the text. A woman has a premature birth and the text links this to the harm that may or may not follow. The premature birth (there is no evidence this first part is referring to a miscarriage death) causes the assailant to pay restitution. But Exodus adds, if any harm follows (as opposed to “no harm” against the unborn baby), then it is a “life for a life”. The Jews took killing people’s children very seriously.
Conversely, if the woman was not pregnant then presumably no restitution is due. If this text was about the woman and not the baby, then why include the fact that she is pregnant? Why include the premature birth statement? What is the contrast between the premature birth and the later scenario? Aren’t there other texts that deal with unintentional manslaughter? To make this passage dismissive of the life of the baby is a gross injustice to the text.
Interestingly enough, “an eye for an eye” is only found in this text dealing with unborn babies. Killing unborn babies, even accidentally, was a capital crime in the Old Testament.
The Jews were notoriously pro-life. Tacitus (56–117AD) criticizes the Jews on this point:
Still they provide for the increase of their numbers. It is a crime among them to kill any newly-born infant. They hold that the souls of all who perish in battle or by the hands of the executioner are immortal. Hence a passion for propagating their race and a contempt for death. They are wont to bury rather than to burn their dead, following in this the Egyptian custom; they bestow the same care on the dead, and they hold the same belief about the lower world.
In one of the earliest Christian texts, The Didache (50-120AD) this belief is attributed to Christians in general:
thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born,
The “sorcery” mentioned is about potions or poisons. Probably this is referring to chemical abortifacient (with the same meaning being possible in both Gal 5:20 or Rev 9:21). This practice is both mentioned by Minucius Felix and Basil (condemned in both cases). In any case, the text distinguishes between babies aborted in the womb and babies aborted after birth. This is repeated in the The Epistle of Barnabas (c80-120AD):
Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born.
The text distinguishes between born and unborn babies. Both forms of abortions were prohibited.
No only this, but in the Apocalypse of Peter (c100-150AD) there is a horrifying image. All those women who have had abortions are forced to wallow in excrement/vile/gore up to their eyes. Their unborn babies encircle them, crying endlessly (the image is of their own children, whom they have murdered, piercing their ears with the infant cries they never were able to hear). And from the babies, fire shoots into the eyes of the mothers who aborted them:
And hard by that place I saw another strait place wherein the discharge and the stench of them that were in torment ran down, and there was as it were a lake there. And there sat women up to their necks in that liquor, and over against them many children which were born out of due time sat crying: and from them went forth rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were they that conceived out of wedlock (?) and caused abortion.
Born “out of due time” is referring to in utero abortion. The idea is that the abortion cuts short the pregnancy. It is these babies that are present and taking vengeance.
In a lost fragment of the same text, snakes crawl over the bodies of the mothers and eat their flesh:
But the milk of the mothers, flowing from their breasts and congealing, saith Peter in the Apocalypse, shall engender small beasts (snakes) devouring the flesh, and these running upon them devour them: teaching that the torments come to pass because of the sins (correspond to the sins).
While this lost fragment may be spurious and the previous text limitedly received (the Muratorian fragment accepts it as legitimate), it does show the cultural values of the Christians of that day.
Athenagoras of Athens (c 175-180AD) describes how Early Christians detest abortion (even abortion via chemicals in the womb) as murder:
And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God s for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it.
There is an emphasis on children in the womb.
Both early Jewish and Christian theology was dead set against abortion. The Jewish values clashed against the Roman values. But the early Christians were strongly ingrained by the earliest Church Fathers to oppose abortion. It took Augustine (354–430AD) and the Talmud to shift opinion away from these values.’
Varnel Watson
Joe Absher Isara Mo there was this guy in the group Wrong Randy or something who had said he would totally advise FOR abortion I just dont get it The Bible couldnt be more clear on this I dont know if there was an article by William DeArteaga but there should totally be one about the DEMONIC ROOTS of the whole abortion worship of false gods and demonic dieties https://news.yahoo.com/first-arrest-prosecution-praying-public-211946577.html
William DeArteaga
I wish I had time to write it.
Varnel Watson
William DeArteaga should be good
Jeanette Elizondo
Often !!
Robert Erwine
every time the subject of your mom comes up
Varnel Watson
way good of a topic for Christmas