The title of this message is Jesus Christ and the Fight for Life, so I’m going to divide it into two parts: One will focus on Jesus Christ, and one on the fight for life and how they interweave. What’s so clear is that Jesus Christ came into the world to be admired, marveled at, and esteemed as the Lord of the universe and to capture our hearts and our attention for himself. Where that doesn’t happen, all manner of sin runs rampant, including abortion. So it is absolutely imperative that we lift up Jesus Christ as King and as Lord.

As I was pondering how to do that, how do you help Christ shine in this little assembly and then ripple out from here, I decided I want to talk about Christ in his works, and how they relate to the pro-life efforts. I’ve got about 11 aspects of the work of Christ to walk through with you, and then talk a little bit about the fight for life.

Twelve Aspects of the Work of Christ

1. Predestination

Listen to these words in Ephesians 1:3–6:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

So through Jesus Christ, God has predestined us for himself or not. The implication of this is that the Father and the Son are together in this pre-creation work of giving a destiny to us, which means that when you deal with a child in the womb, you’re not dealing with a being who will get his destiny upon birth. This child has a destiny, and when you tamper with him in the womb, you tamper with one who has a destiny appointed by God.

There’s a text that makes that really clear. You remember what Paul said about his own call to the ministry? Galatians 1:15 says:

[God] had set me apart before I was born, and called me by his grace…

Paul was keenly aware that before he was born, while he was still either nonexistent, or existent in his mother’s womb, God’s call landed on him. We dare not think of beings getting a destiny from God at birth. It would be totally contrary to the scriptures that God is only dealing with us after birth, only dealing with us when we’re outside our mother’s wombs.

That’s one implication of predestination. Another implication is that our own sense of being known, loved, and chosen by God in Christ before the foundation of the world brings a rock solid firmness to our own position in him, our destiny with him, and our being loved by him, so that the rough and tumble of life and warfare doesn’t knock us over so easily. To be rooted in eternity, not just in some decision that you made, but rooted in God’s mind for you from all eternity, is a powerful staying force.

2. Creation

John 1:1–3 says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

I am made, and you are made, by Jesus Christ. Therefore, we relate to every made human as a fellow image bearer of Jesus Christ. Jesus makes us, we are his creation. Put that together with Psalm 139,

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

So Jesus Christ is at work in the womb knitting. I remember in one of the pro-life sermons I preached from that text I asked the question, “Why would he choose the imagery of knitting?” I have watched my wife knit once or twice in 38 years. I’ve knitted more in my life than my wife has, because my mother taught me how to knit when I was a boy. I’ve knitted a placemat and a rug for the bathroom. I know the finger work that’s involved. To choose that term communicates that it’s not a single word that brings about a fully formed embryo, but rather he’s down there knitting. This is an intimate image that he wants us to see.

So Jesus Christ is the creator of these little ones. He’s doing it in the womb with his own knitting fingers. Woe to us if we butt in. “Do not trespass” is written over the knitting work of Jesus.

3. Providence

Colossians 1:16–17 says:

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

It’s that last one I’m focusing on. All things hold together in him. All matter, molecules, subatomic particles, flesh, bones, etc. hold together in Christ. Christ made it for himself, and Christ holds it together. All the processes of the world are Christ’s. Everything relates to him. There is no part that is apart from him, and nothing we do with any matter can be done without reference to him, including what we do with the baby in the womb.

4. Incarnation

Luke 1:35 says:

And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

Mary had asked, “How can this be? I don’t know a man. I’ve never had sex with anybody. How can I become pregnant?” The answer was the Holy Spirit will do this. The Holy Spirit will make you pregnant with the Son of God.

Therefore, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, was a zygote. He was an embryo. There’s not a word in the New Testament about him becoming Son of God at birth. Rather, everything points to the fact that the angel arrives and says, “The reason he’s going to be called Holy — the Son of God — is because the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and cause you to become pregnant with the Son of God.” Woe to us if we play fast and loose with this reality in the womb, which was once the very reality that carried the person of the Son of God.

5. Identification

Luke 15:1 says:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”

And Luke 7:34 says:

The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

In other words, Jesus came and he got down and dirty with those who were pushed away. Being involved in the pro-life movement redemptively, not just accusingly, will mean talking with, hanging out with, having lunch with, and going to the houses of people whose behavior we abhor. And doing it in such a way that a person might say, “This person is a friend of abortionists or abortion providers.”

I had lunch one time with a fellow named Bill, right down here. He was doing abortions on the ninth floor of the MMC Medical Building. Through Pro-Life Action Ministries I was able to get a connection with him. I wanted a face-to-face conversation with an abortionist, to talk to him. I wonder what that would have looked like had anybody known. Here’s John Piper, sitting across the table from a guy who three days a week is killing babies on the night floor up there. I’m going to come back to that and tell you about that conversation later. That’s just a word about identification.

6. Sacrificial Service

Mark 10:45 says:

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Now there are two relevances of that statement for the cause here. One is he did it for us, and had he not done it for us, had he not become a ransom for us, there’s no way we could do what we’re doing. I’ll come back to that and say why in a few minutes. The other one is simply pattern. Go serve. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I remember standing here in this room when this building came into being in the middle of the rescue movement. There were rescues in which we rallied in the old sanctuary that’s been torn down now and there were rescues in which we rallied in this room, and I was a part of those for about three years. It was in the late eighties or early nineties. This building went up in 1991 I believe, so there was one last rescue rally here.

One of the burdens that I had; one of the reasons the rescue movement did not go where we wanted it to go is because I failed and we failed in this I think. Across the country there was failure in this area. I pleaded with 100–200 people that were getting on buses to go out to sit down somewhere. I pleaded with them. I said, “You know the only thing that will compel the heart of America is our suffering, not our feistiness—not that we have a clever-radio-talk-show-host, get-the-last-word attitude. That will never work. It will always increase the alienation. But if we lay our lives down, if there are tears on our face, if it really looks like we care about women and children, if it costs us something and we don’t return evil for evil, they just might soften.” That did not happen for many people.

There are always weirdos in every group who just can’t keep their mouth shut, who get feisty with the judge, or feisty with the lawyer, or feisty with somebody across the street. We had a lot of feistiness happen, and we are in the grip of feistiness in America today. Right wing people are basically feisty people today, and it isn’t going to work. I just hope that there will be tears in the movement. Jesus came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The only way you make headway in missions, in evangelism, and in pro-life is to be willing to lay our lives down the way Jesus laid his life down. It’s hard not to get angry, and anger is not wrong in the face of this. But if anger dominates your demeanor in the cause, you will go nowhere.

7. Propitiation

This is very precious to me, and I think that this is the heart of the gospel. I know that’s a very unusual word. It’s not a common word. It means that Christ did something in his death that took away the wrath of God against sinners. Here are the key verses for removal of wrath,

First Thessalonians 5:9 says:

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

No wrath is coming to you because Christ died for you. Galatians 3:13 says:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”

So there you have the death of Christ on the tree absorbing the curse. Lastly, Romans 8:3 says:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

That’s your sin in Christ’s flesh. So those three verses, at least, make plain that we were under the wrath of God because of our sin, all of us —pro-life people and pro-choice people were all under the wrath of God.

Jesus Christ and the Father, conspiring in love for sinners, insert the Son between us and the wrath of God, and the Father ordains that his Son receive his wrath and we don’t, if we’ll receive him. If we are in him, then there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). You come to be in Christ Jesus by receiving Christ Jesus. If he’s in you, you’re in him.

Now why is that relevant? It means first, that God has freed you from the worst fear in the universe, God is no longer against you. If you live day by day, hour by hour, knowing God is for you and not against you, you’ve got a backbone in the cause of righteousness like you can’t believe. But if you think God is going to zap you at any point where you make a mistake in the pro-life cause, you won’t get anywhere. It’s the liberty and the strength that comes from knowing you’re loved, you’re accepted, there’s no wrath, and there’s only mercy flowing my way.

The second implication for this is that God showed us how great the debt is that he paid so that we could hope for it for the abortionists — for the fathers, for the women, for the boyfriends, and for all the liberal people who use language amiss to justify death. There’s hope because God paid such a price to remove his wrath from all who would receive his Son.

The third reason this is important is that, as a model, Christ did not take innocent human life to enhance his joy, but he gave his innocent human life to enhance his joy.

For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross (Hebrews 12:1–2).

There are two ways to seek joy, if you’re a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant or a boyfriend who doesn’t want to be a father: Get rid of the baby or sacrifice for the baby. God did the latter and we should too. You people are the people that know that best because you are helping that happen; you’re making it possible for it to happen. You’re coming alongside the women and saying, “It can happen. Believe another way.”

A fourth implication is that when this really grips you, you become a very, very durable person. If the wrath of God has been propitiated by the work of Jesus Christ in dying on the cross and rising again, the only thing that flows from God to you is mercy, never wrath — only mercy. Which means every moment of every day without exception, the redeemed are receiving mercy from God. That is an amazingly endurance-producing faith. I hope you have it.

8. Expiation

Now that’s almost the same as propitiation, but not quite. Propitiation focuses on the removal of God’s wrath, expiation focuses on the removal of our guilt.

Ephesians 1:7 says:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

The weight of guilt is removed. It’s removed from us so that we have the strength to press on in the cause, and it can be removed from those who have had abortions so that they don’t do it again. Multiple or repeated abortions are the major source of abortions. Why? Because forgiveness feels so impossible, so what difference does it make.

My student, John Ensor, was a student at Bethel when I taught at Bethel and then went to be a pastor in Boston. Then he resigned as pastor about 12 years ago and founded A Woman’s Concern in Boston, and now there are five crisis pregnancy centers in Boston called A Woman’s Concern. He has come to speak here a couple of times, and he told me, “John, I used to so long to be effective in evangelism in my pastorate, and I was modestly successful. But since I got involved in these five centers that we’ve planted, I see people coming to Christ all the time because they can hardly believe the message I offer them of forgiveness at a moment when they so desperately need it. Because they know in the depths of their being what they have done is horrendous, and it will destroy their lives if they let themselves think it without Jesus.” He is so precious at that moment for all of us.

9. Domination

Colossians 2:13 says:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

When Christ died and the record of the debt of our sins was nailed to the cross — at that moment, Satan’s worst weapon was stripped from his hand. He can no longer condemn us by accusing us of sins for which we are not forgiven. And if Satan cannot accuse us of sins for which we are not forgiven, he cannot damn us. And if he can’t damn us, all he can do is gum us. There’s no teeth. The fangs are removed. He’s got some heavy duty gums, causing bruises, but he’s not going to kill us with his gums.

Now here’s the reason that’s so important to realize. This industry is satanic to the core. Satan was and is a murderer and a liar. Those are his names: liar, accuser, and murderer. The deception that reigns in the abortion industry and the killing that reigns must make Satan’s mouth drip. Therefore, when you engage against it you’re coming up against supernatural power. Don’t take it lightly. Satan will not sit by idly if you try to get near one of those abortion places. If you try to get between anybody moving there, the kind of eyes that you can see and the kind of voices that you can hear will be against you.

Where is that coming from? You know where it’s coming from. It’s coming from hell. Satan hates God and he hates every being created in the image of God, which is every human being, and he would destroy God if he could. Since he can’t, he will destroy what’s in the image of God. Therefore, these are glorious words, that when he nailed our sin to the cross he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to an open shame. Know your enemy and know your victory.

10. Intercession

Romans 8:33 says:

Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

You have an Advocate to apply the atonement, to sympathize with you as a High priest, and to pray for you when you don’t know how to pray in the perplexity of this cause. There are many perplexities. He’s’ praying for you, interceding for you.

11. Navigation (Lordship)

Colossians 2:3 says:

In [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

What I’m saying is that when Christ is raised, he’s at the right hand of the Father, his Holy Spirit is sent into our life, and we desperately need navigation through the perplexities of this battle. There are many situations, many questions in which we just don’t know the best ideal strategy, or what to say next, or what to do next. In him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Go to him, and you will find a great helper in lordship or navigating the waters of the pro-life effort.

12. Preservation

John 16:7 says:

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

He is Jesus in the Spirit, as Matthew 28:20 says:

I am with you, even to the end of the age.

So when we’re weak, he’s strong. My wife and I were away on our anniversary a few weeks ago, and like we always do we read through a passage of scripture. This time it was 1 Corinthians 13, and we focused on verses 4–7, which is the definition or the description of what love does. We noticed amazing things as we meditated on it in relation to our lives. There are two amazing emphases, not just two, but two strong ones. One is that love is the opposite of pride, and the other is that love is the opposite of quitting, giving up.

Let me read you the key verses. First it says, “Love is patient.” Do you remember the old King James word for that? It says, “Love suffers long.” Love suffers long and is kind. Love suffers long, not short. We suffer long in the cause of love. The passage says:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

God has been good to give me a wife like that, and has been good to work in me some of that. We’ve had 38 years, and I think we’re going to finish. It would take a cataclysmic alteration of our faith for us not to finish together. Love endures all things, bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. Love never ends. Love suffers long.

Let’s be realistic, there’s marriage and there’s pro-life cause, and the issue is: Will you last, or will you just have a little adrenaline spurt with only a couple of years in the rescue movement, then say, “I’m not going to read those books anymore. I’m not going to look at those websites anymore. I’m not going to send anymore emails. I’m not going to be involved in MCCL efforts. I’m not going to be involved in anybody’s life. I’m just going to see no evil and hear no evil”? Or are you going to last?

Some of you are my heroes. I look at some of those out there and I know you’ve been at it for a long time. I admire you so much. I want to be like that. Those are my 12 ways of admiring Jesus by looking at the kind of work that he does in order to summon us into a greater admiration of and worship to and allegiance to Jesus in the cause of pro-life. So I draw a big therefore on this. Therefore, Jesus is for us. He provides everything we need in this cause. He’s relevant at every turn, and we should love him, trust him, and treasure him.

The Fight

Now I turn towards the fight for the next few minutes. What’s needed in this fight? It’s so obvious that knowledge is needed, but let me give you a little story that encourages you that if you know anything you’re needed. If you know anything, you need to open your mouth. There’s an apprentice in this church, Joe Rigney, who sent me an email a few days ago and said he was talking to a junior high student, and this student had never heard of abortion, let alone whether it was right or wrong.

He did not know what it was in America. I’m really naïve. I am so naïve I can’t believe that, but it’s true. I was telling somebody that today and they said, referring to a nine-year-old and an eleven-year-old, “I don’t think they know the word.” I suppose it’s possible to grow up in homes where parents sure don’t want to talk about it with kids — absolutely not — because issues arise that they don’t have any answers for. Then if they go to the right school and just navigate their way through, I suppose it’s possible.

The point is, it would help if America knew what it was, and therefore, open your mouth. I wish I had a million pastors to talk to, because I know that there are churches that never say a word about this. They are so cowardly. I’m preaching to the choir here, because you’re here because you agree with me. So just know that if you’ve got people around you who think they have nothing to offer, if they just know what it is they’ve got something to offer. So knowledge matters.

Twelve Reasons to Be Involved

I’m going to walk through a few things we know. All of these are arguments and reasons for why we should be so involved and so energized about this.

1. Minnesota's Fetal Homicide Law

We know that in Minnesota there is a fetal homicide law that makes a person guilty of manslaughter, or worse, if he kills a baby in a mother’s womb, unless the mama wants the baby dead; that is, unless it’s an abortion.

The implications of that are horrific because they mean, they imply, that might makes right. The difference between whether it is homicide when a baby dies in the womb or legal when a baby dies in the womb is one thing — will. It’s the will of the strong. It says, “I want it dead or I don’t want it dead. If I want it dead, it’s legal. If I don’t want it dead, it’s illegal.” That’s horrific. That’s anarchy to the core. If that is not seen; if that kind of logic is embraced by a culture, it will come down.

2. Inconsistency

We know that there’s an inconsistency between doing fetal surgery on a baby to save the baby’s life at a similar stage when down the hall the baby is being aborted, maybe even a cousin or a twin.

Steve Calvin (one of the most articulate pro-life spokesman, an expert in neonatology, and involved at the University down at Abbott) pointed that out a few years ago in one of his regular articles to this tribune that babies are being saved with surgery here and being aborted over at Regions at the same stage.

3. Babies Live

We know a baby can live on its own somewhere around 24 weeks.

It’s getting younger. It’s very difficult and it’s very expensive, yet pro-choice people say it can be killed even at the end and beyond this stage if the mother is distressed by its live birth more than by its abortion. What morally significant factor makes that difference?

4. Personhood

We know that a baby living with or without an umbilical cord is not a morally significant criterion of human personhood.

The reason we know that is because we live in various kinds of dependency like that after we’re born. It might be a respirator or it might be a dialysis machine. Your personhood does not rise and fall with whether you’re getting your nutrition in dependence on other people.

5. Right To Life

We know that the size of the human being is irrelevant to personhood because outside the womb we don’t accord a six year old any more dignity or right to life than a two year old.

6. Little Babies

We know the developing reasoning powers are not the difference.

A little baby is not more or less deserving of care than an older human.

7. Conception

Scientifically, human beings are genetically human from conception.

All the genetic makeup is there. They are utterly different from monkeys, rats, and elephants. Left to themselves they just grow up, that’s all. They just grow up.

8. Organs

We know that at eight weeks all the organs are present, the brain is functioning, the heart is pumping, the liver is making blood cells, the kidney is cleaning the fluids, and the fingerprints are formed, and yet almost all abortions are done after eight weeks.

There was a booklet handed out in high schools here some years ago called Neon, in which in the section on abortion it discouraged high school girls from getting abortions before the seventh week, because it doesn’t work as easy. It’s just easier and more effective if you can do it just at the optimal time. So little babies like that are almost all of them.

9. Ultrasounds

We know that ultrasound is giving a stunning window into the womb that shows the unborn at eight weeks sucking its thumb, recoiling from pricking, and responding to sound.

These are amazing pictures. Pictures are so helpful. The good ones and the horrible ones both have their place, I think. You just need wisdom to know when and how to use them. The Star Tribune is a very liberal paper and very pro-choice. I remember when the anti-capital punishment effort was strong a few years ago they said in their lead editorial, “One video-taped execution in the electric chair of a man being burned with skin coming off and jolting would end capital punishment like that.”

I wrote them a letter, and you know what I’m going to say because they’re the ones who mock the use of video abortions, saying, “This is not a spectator sport,” or, “The women have rights.” They know in their hearts that if you go tonight and watch an abotion take place it will affect you. I’ll tell you where you can watch one. If you want to be sick when you go to bed, just go to abortionno.org and be ready, there’s no warning. It comes up live and moving, an abortion in process. Hands and arms and legs being taken out piece by piece. You can watch it online tonight. Don’t go there unless you have a very strong stomach. It’s taken me a long time to be able to just eat.

10. Justice

There is a principle of justice, we know this, that when two legitimate rights conflict like the right of a woman not to be pregnant and the right of a baby not to be killed, the right that is least costly to human life is the one that governs.

So yes, it would be nice if men and women were responsible enough, and nobody had to be pregnant when they didn’t want to be pregnant. But once one is pregnant, then there are two conflicting rights, not just one. The taking of life and being pregnant are not commensurate moral realities. We know this.

11. God's Law

We know that the Word of God says thou shall not kill.

Now let’s go back to my lunch with Bill. I went to lunch with Bill, the abortionist, with a piece of paper that had 10 reasons why you shouldn’t kill babies. I pull it out and I said, “Look, I just want to understand you, and if you’ll let me try to help you understand me I’ve got 10 reasons here why I think you should stop doing abortions. These are all reasons, some from reason, some from experience, and some from the Bible that you should know you’re killing babies and shouldn’t do it.”

He just put his hand up and said, “You don’t need to read those because I know I’m killing babies.” He just pulled the rug out from under me just like that. I was floored, I did not expect him to say that. So I just said, “Why do you do it then?” Do you know what he said? He said, “My wife pressures me to do it.” That’s what he said. Then I asked why, and he said, “Because for her, and I’m going to support her in this, it is the most important justice issue for women in America.” I asked him to explain.

He said, “Look, when two people have sex and a baby happens, the guy walks away and the woman can’t walk away. That’s not fair. That’s unjust. Therefore, to make equality happen you give her the right to be in the same condition he’s in.” That was the issue. It’s a justice issue for women. Now behind the justice talk is also liberty to have sex anytime you want and be able to walk away from it without consequences, but that was very, very illuminating for me. The Bible says you shall not kill, not even to preserve your reproductive freedom.

12. Wrong Desire

Finally, we know that James 4:2 says:

You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.

The deepest reason why there is abortion is because the deep longings of the soul are not satisfied by Jesus Christ. Christ came into the world to be our King, our Lord, our Savior, our Friend, and our Treasure. Where he is rejected the human soul grasps for sex, it grasps for food, it grasps for power, it grasps for fame, and it grasps for all kinds of things, idols, because the true God that satisfied is spurned, and abortion becomes an essential piece in the idolatry that replaces Christ.

Exposing Works of Darkness

So we must be about the exposure of this, and here I’m just going to close by referring to where I’m going on Sunday because I’ve spent a lot of time on the message for Sunday, which is the piece I have left out here. That’s why the sermon on Sunday is entitled, “The Evil I Left Out in 1992,” because some of these pieces are just taken from a 1992 sermon. The evil I left out was about abortion and race. It’s going to be a very risky sermon. It’s going to get me in trouble. There’s going to be all kinds of people who will call the way I talk racist, and others will see what I’m trying to do and be more sympathetic, so you can pray about that.

The text for Sunday is Ephesians 5:6–11, which says:

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Expose them. Now what that means, I think, for the pro-life movement is that every angle at which you can see evil in this you should put light on it. There are so many evils in abortion, so many — grandmama evil, and mama evil, and boyfriend evil, and husband evil, and social evil, and baby-effecting evil, and Godward evil, and Christward evil, and Holy Spirit-ward evil, and racial evil, and on and on. The ripple effects of this evil in our culture are so great we should be shining light on all of them.

So I’m not going to talk about that here. I’m going to close with a word of hope. In the last 34 years, 2,300 crisis pregnancy centers have arisen to care for women, most of them by Christians. I remember standing over doing rescues at the Planned Parenthood center. I remember the kinds of taunting that would be given about how Christians don’t care about this or that. You know, I don’t hear much of that anymore. Maybe I’m naïve, and maybe I’m not on the streets as much as I used to.

But as I’m listening in the media and beyond, the pro-choice people have had their mouths shut when it comes to Christians not caring about women. They just care about babies, and they only care about them before they’re born, not after they’re born. That is old talk that doesn’t hold anymore, not with 2,300 centers ready to stand with you before, during, and after pregnancy for years to give you everything you need, find a home for your baby, and help you make a home for your baby. There are so many now that it is so easy to gainsay, I don’t hear it much anymore and we should praise God for that.

Let us outcare Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood does not care about the poor. It does very little to help the poor with their babies. I’ll close with John Ensor, who I referred to before. John has seen something that I’ll try to make plain in my message on Sunday, namely that today the bulk of abortions happen in four states: New York, Florida, California, and Nevada. In those states and the others, it mainly happens in cities, in the urban centers. For example, in Florida 40 percent of the abortions happen in Miami. In Miami there are 40 abortion clinics and one ultrasound equipped crisis pregnancy center.

John has spotted this, so has Focus on the Family, and so has Carenet. They’ve seen this is an urban issue; it’s an urban phenomenon. Ninety-four percent of abortions happen in urban centers, which is what gives the racial flavor to it. Most crisis pregnancy centers are not there, so John and the others are teaming up. John’s vision is called Heartbeat of Miami, and he moved there a month ago with his wife from Boston to begin to plant pro-life pregnancy centers in Miami. The idea is to canvas the nation and go face to face at the heart of the beast in the city.

Here’s his closing word:

The abolition of abortion is in sight and will be looked back on by future generations the way we currently look back on slavery, when the pregnancy center movement is established in our cities and led by the black, Latino, white, Christian community.

I think we should focus a lot of prayer there. I know that I’ll be mainly talking to white people on Sunday, just like I am right now. But I hope somehow God will grant the message to be heard in the Latino and the African American community. Join us in this. Why would you be content with 13 million black babies destroyed? It’s one third of your population, like a scythe cutting through the community. Why would you be content with that in order to stay politically where you are?