Tulips & Honey Ep. 47: The Abolitionist Movement

Not to be like the world, and not to be like the great majority of American Christians, but to be like Jesus Christ! I don't know why you're clapping, I'm talking about you. What's wrong with you people? I'm serious. You can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. Hello Humblebees!

Welcome to Tulips and Honey. Hi Humblebees! Welcome back to Tulips and Honey. I'm your host Lauren and I am joined today by a wonderful brother in Christ, Michael Coughlin from Things Above Us blog and also Be A Berean is your podcast. So you have several other things that you're interested in, things that you're doing. So you're podcasting and blogging and then, of course, your ministry towards the abortion mill.

So, brother, thank you so much for coming on the program. I'm so excited to get to chat with you today. Oh, well, you're welcome. I'm glad I'm able to make it. Absolutely. Bright and early, too.

Thank you so much. What such a blessing. Oh, my goodness. And I won't be a complete basket case because this is the best time for my brain. It's early, early in the morning. I'm only a basket case after three blocks, so it should be good.

Oh, same here. Really? Oh, no kidding. Oh, high five, sir, the whips. Yeah, I'm a morning person. Nice.

Okay, great. Well, I'm glad we were able to connect early in the morning then. So let's dig into this. I'm really excited to get to the core of our conversation today, which is actually going to be about abortion. But before we do, brother, can you share with my listeners a little bit about your testimony and how you came to saving faith? When I was 30 years old, I began to investigate Christianity.

I had been raised as a Catholic, and I rejected that. And when I rejected Catholicism, basically for my sin, I rejected everything related to Jesus Christ. And I didn't really understand that there was like different versions of Christianity, I guess. So to me, I was just like, yeah, Jesus, not for me, no problem. And I was one of those kind of normal, I guess, maybe American pagan people who I just enjoyed what the world had to offer me.

And I was really, I was never an atheist. So I was really into different forms of spirituality. Like I was one of those people who would have told you I was spiritual but not religious. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I like loved when Oprah said that kind of stuff. Sure.

And so I started going through a pretty hard time when I was 30 years old. I was going through a divorce, and I had a friend that reached out to help me because basically I needed a place to live. And this guy I went to live with had just started to become a little more of a bold Christian. And so he was just really clear that I needed the Bible and I needed Jesus.

And I just kind of laughed him off actually at the time. And over time, God just drew me to himself. And it's significant because yesterday was Easter, so we're recording Monday morning. And I remember Easter of 2006, I woke up and I had been going to church with my friend every week and he went to his mom's house for Easter. And so I woke up Easter morning 2006 and it hit me.

So I was trying to be like a genuine seeker. Like I was trying to honestly investigate Christianity is what I said. And I thought to myself, well, if there was ever a day that I should go to church to learn what they're going to talk about, today would be the day. Right. And I went to church that day, and the guy who was speaking, and there was a guest speaker, and I don't know, I'd never heard who this guy was.

And this guy got up, and he basically did a whole sermon on, like, evidences for the resurrection. And he just explained all these things about the resurrection that they could, I guess, understand scientifically. I don't even remember it. But I just remember leaving and starting to be more and more convinced, like, this is, there's something to this.

Right. And that was really superstitious. So, like I said, I was the kind of guy who, I read horoscopes. I was into, if there had been an Enneagram, I'd have been into that at the time. I don't know if it existed yet or it wasn't popular yet. I would read books about different forms of like Eastern mysticism, and I prayed a lot.

I prayed all the time, and I was trying to like levitate. I was really into different things like witchcraft type things. And so I was superstitious enough, though, that all these prophecies that the Bible had predicted were kind of exciting to me. Sure. A guy rising from the dead was pretty cool. And, you know, I didn't understand, obviously, the significance yet, but it kept me kind of watching what was going on.

And so in late June, I decided that Christians were just helpless idiots and I needed to help them. So I decided I would read the Bible myself. So this whole time I've been going to church, but I was just listening to other people. And I started reading the Bible, starting in Matthew, verse 1, chapter 1. And after about four or five days I came to believe that Jesus Christ was my Savior And I asked him because I was taught to say a sinner prayer That's the kind of church I was at at the time.

And so I asked him to let me into heaven. And I didn't really think much of it. I just thought I was believing something different. I didn't know there was like a new creation and that stuff all came later. But yeah, that's pretty much my testimony. So 2006, July 4th, I think you said you were saved.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. So as I call it, I've always called it Independence from Sin Day. Right. I know every year I'm so excited because every year people are all celebrating freedom.

And I'm like, I know I'm celebrating freedom from sin. This is so great. But I love that the way that that happened for you, that you were actually trying to do something different with scripture, but God had his own purposes in it. And there's that story. I think George Whitley had this guy that was making fun of him because he's sort of a goofy looking person, you know, like Whitley had cross eyes or sort of a...

Whitfield. Whitfield, yeah. What was I saying, Whitley? Yeah. Whitfield, yeah. Now, Whitfield had this heckler that was following him around, and they had the Hellion group where they were like throwing pieces of rotten animals at him and stuff and feces, and they would go to that bar, and they would get drunk, and they would do impersonations of Whitfield preaching.

And I love that sort of that guy that opens up the Bible, and he's going to read it in his best Whitfield accent, and instead, as he's reading it, he's convicted of his sin. And he like basically he's giving the whole bar a sermon that he heard Whitfield say. Yeah, it was. Reading the scripture. Have you heard that story? I love that story.

It was a sermon from Luke 13, I think. Yeah, yeah. Where he says, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. And yeah, midway through he's converted. Yeah, and he just goes and sits down like. I mean, I can't even imagine what that would be like.

And then, you know, becomes a big fan of what feels, I'm sure. But I love the idea of that. Like, you know what you meant for evil, God meant for good. And it's just such a wonderful, glorious thing to see God's mercy on people who didn't have maybe the best intentions, but he still has mercy on them anyway. So praise God for that. That is so wonderful.

Yeah. Once you were saved, did you, looking back, do you think that there is something about, Because I hear this a lot from people who come out of the Roman Catholic Church, that they drift into mysticism. Is there something about Catholicism that lends to that? Or what is it that draws people into that, do you think? It's a great question. You know, one of the battle cries of the Reformation was sola scriptura, right?

And what we mean by that is that the scripture is our sole authority. And once we abandon the Bible as our source of revelation from God, now I'm not saying that nature doesn't reveal God, we're talking about specific revelation here. Once we abandon the Bible as the only source where we think we're going to hear from God, we're really open to anything at that point.

And the Roman Catholic Church is really the leader in rejecting the Bible for other things in the most hypocritical way because they say they still believe it, right? Right. And so the Roman Catholic Church is going to lend itself to mysticism because they openly admit that the Bible isn't sufficient. That makes sense. That there could be more. And so when you're unconverted, right?

So we believe in regeneration. And when you're unconverted and you're seeking something, if the Bible isn't going to be your foundation, you're going to find something somewhere. And one thing I'll say about Roman Catholicism, though, is that Roman Catholicism had just enough Christianity in it to make you feel guilty. Yeah. It had just enough of God's law involved and explanation of God's holiness that we're able to see ourselves as guilty sinners before God.

We're able to think God's angry with me and will punish me and he has the right to. The things I'm doing are wrong. I mean, I had a guilty conscience all the time as a Catholic. Wow. The reason I left Catholicism, well, one of the reasons was I just loved sinning and I just didn't like feeling guilty about it. Right.

And so when you're feeling guilty about things all the time, you're going to seek something to assuage your guilt. You want something to take away that guilt. And if somebody's not offering to you the atonement of Jesus Christ, you're going to find something else. So alcohol, pornography, reading trashy romance novels. You're going to do something to try to forget about the guilt you're feeling, to try to cleanse your conscience.

And all you'll do is cover it more and more like Adam and Eve with fig leaves. So for me, though, the final factor, I was really a logical guy. I would go to the Catholic church and I would do all the sacraments. I was pretty Catholic. I wasn't a really educated guy yet. I was only, you know, 18 or 20 when I left the religion.

So I wasn't like a Catholic expert, but I did the rituals and the sacraments I was told to do. And I remember thinking one day, there's no way I'm tricking God. Right. Like it was if God's really mad at me for these horrible things I knew I was doing, He not going to be satisfied by me basically faking that I sorry by going through the emotions I really just saw it as I bribing God and God can be And I just felt the same way And so I knew that there was something wrong, but I just didn't know the answer.

So it's so wonderful that we can come to the same conclusions from different areas. And it really shows that God is not going to be held back by anything. Regardless of what's happening in our lives, God can still lead his sheep to him. So I just think that's really great. And thank you for sharing your testimony, brother. But speaking of life, like our new life in Christ, like you said, Easter was yesterday.

This is going to come out next week, so it'll have been a week ago. But Easter was yesterday. We celebrated, unfortunately, in our own homes. Couldn't go out. But not everybody is in lockdown, which is why I was really excited to get the chance to talk to you about this. There are, unfortunately, still abortion mills open.

What is going on with that? Why is it that they have not yet closed or been closed by the government everywhere? Well, you bring up a good point. And the way I see it is, as long as as a culture, and I don't say we meaning our culture, not necessarily individuals like you and me and your listeners. But as long as we acknowledge abortion is just a legitimate medical practice, it's some legitimate business service that's going on.

And there's really this hope that we'll shut them down during a pandemic is kind of a false hope. Yeah. I think we kind of hope, okay, well, maybe something can happen at least temporarily. But ultimately, the prevailing notion is still that this is just a legitimate service. Right. It's just an argument of how legitimate is it, right?

I mean, if some Planned Parenthood somewhere had an outbreak of COVID-19, they probably would shut down. Right. But what's interesting is that as long as we acknowledge any abortion at all, and this is why I'm an abolitionist, which means different things, I think, than people might think when they hear it. But as long as we acknowledge any abortions at all as legitimate abortions, you are always basically on a slippery slope to allow more.

It doesn't work the other way. It's not like you incrementally take away abortion. You incrementally just end up adding more. And so when we make any abortion okay, now it's just a question of when the COVID-19 hits, It's not a question of, oh, we shouldn't do abortion because it's this moral evil and there's a pandemic. It's, okay, should we keep doing it because there's a pandemic?

And the response, the predictable response from the abortionists was, well, absolutely, this is an essential, important service. And you can't argue against them any differently than on a normal basis. Sure. Yeah. It obviously hasn't worked. They're definitely still open.

So I want to get into a couple of different things based on what you were just talking about. But before I ask you a few more questions, can you explain to the listeners the difference between just being pro-life and being an abolitionist? Because I think this is really important. I'm an abolitionist. I think that this is a helpful distinction, and it's really a great answer, a great response to the problem of this.

So what would you say? What's the real difference there? So there's probably some better written definitions that people could look up. But in general, and this could offend some people, so I'm trying to be a little careful. But in general, pro-life has always meant that we're sort of ideologically opposed to abortion. And abolitionists believe a few things, and some of them are different, but in general, abolitionists believe that the only way to actually properly attack this evil of abortion is to declare that it's all bad all the time.

There's no, well, sometimes it's okay. Right. And kind of the opposition to abolitionism would be what we call regulation. So it's kind of like if a wife told her husband he could cheat on her once a year. Right. Still cheating.

Well, and here you go. It's February 15, and this guy is just looking forward to November 10 or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah. You kind of have this idea here that nobody would accept this. Right.

And even the men who think that they would want something like that, they don't because one day would not be enough. Right. You know, they'd want to, and the wife would be hurt, you know, whatever. That's why polyamory doesn't work in practice either. And so for abolitionists, what we say is that we're just not going to collude with or try to cooperate with evil for the most part.

We not going to sit down with a guy who likes to murder children and say okay how can we limit this to just a couple thousand instead of Right There's just no context for that. I understand the... But the problem is this, is that abolitionists get painted as people that don't want to save any babies unless they can save all of them. Right. And that's not the case because there's a difference between who I might try to help individually and who ideologically I might be trying to help through legal means.

So I think abortion should be, well, I don't even think abortion should be illegal. Abortion is already illegal. Right, exactly. Right. Murder, you cannot deprive anyone of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness here. At least in the United States, murder is illegal.

I'd argue it's illegal everywhere because of the natural revelation from the law of God, the general revelation. But murder is already wrong. So now the question is not – so what we're doing is we're negotiating with terrorists and saying, well – Yes, I was going to say that. Yes. Here's how many we'll let you do, and that's a problem to me. The pro-life movement, now there's a lot of people that would be pro-life that if you just sat and talked with them, they'd become abolitionists because they really agree with the ideology, they just don't know.

The second thing is, for me, the most important aspect of our life is proclaiming Jesus Christ as King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Savior of Sinners. And as much as I would love to stand and help babies be saved from being killed and assist with that, to me it's always most important that I'm doing it as a Christian battling against not flesh and blood, but the princes of the power of darkness, the spiritual forces in the heavenly places. And so I'm not able to be in partnership in certain contexts with people that aren't Christian because I consider this to be a spiritual endeavor as well.

Right. Does that answer your question? I'm not. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm okay with that.

I'm so thankful for your whole explanation because I feel like it's one of those things that if we just briefly touched on, people would still be confused because the differences actually are not slight. So what we're seeing in a few different states, before the shutdown and everything happened, we saw several abolition laws trying to get passed and pro-life people shutting them down. And so that's why I'm thankful that you explained it the way that you did, because it actually is an opposing force.

And I'm not exactly sure why they would be so against completely doing away with abortion. But what happens? Yeah, let me answer that, actually. Yeah, please. One of the reasons why pro-life people oppose abolition bills like in Texas and Oklahoma, for example, So, is that they, a true abolitionist bill from the Bible, you know, from a biblical Christian perspective, believes what the Bible says.

We believe that out of the heart comes blasphemies, murders, and all those things. So when a woman brings her child to an abortion clinic and either pays the money or applies to receive the money and she goes and she takes the medicines that she's supposed to take that's going to start this process and she allows somebody to reach inside her and murder her child and pull the remains out and all that stuff. When a woman does that, we look at that woman from a biblical perspective as a murderer.

She's not only a murderer in her heart, which she was when the whole process started, and in many cases, probably a lot of us are guilty of that. Sure. But she's also, practically speaking, a murderer because she's hired another person to kill another human being. And she's guilty of premeditated first-degree murder in any court of law. Right. You know, if she dumped her baby in a trash can after prom night, she's guilty.

If it was her grandchild and she just beat her too hard because her three-year-old grandchild wasn't listening, she's guilty. But in this special case, we've decided, hey, go ahead and murder this child. And so we consider this woman a murderer. And so because we think that murderers should be punished, that means that that woman would potentially then go to court and have to have a lawyer and be tried for first degree murder.

Right. Because that's what it is. I don't understand the pushback on that. Well, and then the pushback from the pro-lifers, and this is where we really differ in why pro-lifers will cancel a bill or, you know, not support an abolition bill. It's because the pro-lifers, they don't want to punish women. Right.

Because they don't have a biblical anthropology. So when they look at abortion, what they see is this big, bad industry that's somehow victimizing women. Right. And they see women who are in very tough situations, who choose abortion, and they don't feel good about it. Which is probably, there's probably a lot of women that get abortions that aren't proud of it.

Because they know it's, I mean, praise the Lord, their conscience still bears witness to them. And so the pro-life industry in general sees those women and thinks they are victims of something. I don't know exactly what, you know, and I would agree that most of those women probably are victims of something. You know, we've all been done wrong to. And they don't want to punish those women.

And they don't want those women to be eligible for things like the death penalty, for example. Right. And so what happens is they have to oppose a real abolitionist bill for that reason. And that's where we differ. And there's a lot of arguments. People say, well, don't you believe in mercy?

Like, yeah, I don't have any problem telling them about the mercy of God and letting them repent. But we've created a special category of murderers in our society who we basically are trying to give a pass to. And actually the verse I was looking up earlier was Proverbs 28, 17, which says, If one is burdened with the blood of another, he will be a fugitive until death.

Let no one help him. And there's just this sense that the Bible really takes seriously murder of humans. Yeah. And when we don't take it as seriously, we're just not aligned with God. And so do I think all people, and the other argument I guess is they'll say, well, abolitionists just want all women to be put to death. It's like, no, not necessarily.

We want them to have due process. Right. There may be rehabilitation that people think can happen. I don't know, whatever the local law is. But I really think if, I don't know, if there was a death penalty for murder and it was applied equally when people are found guilty of murder in a court of law by all the witnesses and everything that has to happen, I think it would make people hesitate to do it.

Sure, yeah, that's definitely what makes people hesitate to kill anyone else. So I think I've had this discussion with people several times and it's always fascinating to me when I say, okay, if you're walking around the street and you see a man and he's got a baby and it's a newborn and he takes out a bunch of knives and just starts cutting this newborn to pieces while it's still alive, you're really seriously not going to run over there and stop him from doing this. And the response is always, well, it's not the same.

No, it is the same. It's the same as murder. It doesn't matter where you murder somebody. It's still murder. And so I think that what would be helpful is if people actually understood that due process is there for that purpose. It prevents the laws from being broken.

If we don't have any punishment for murder, any punishment for really any crime in this country, people are just going to commit the crimes and it's not going to matter. So it's fascinating to me to see the people that are completely logical on all these other issues. As soon as it comes to an issue that's just not culturally acceptable, They let all logic fly through the window and it doesn't matter anymore if what they're saying makes no sense.

So I'm excited to see a movement towards abolition, abolitionism, because this is a more logical perspective. If you're if you're just very concerned about the abortion, the abortion males, you're concerned about murder, then it would make more sense to say that you want it to stop completely rather than say, well, I just don't want it to happen. And, you know, I'm okay with burning a child alive with chemicals, but just as long as they're really small.

That makes no sense to me. I can't wrap my mind around some of the ideas that come down, like the heartbeat bill and things of that nature. Like, it's still a child. So it doesn't make sense to me. But I had a friend when I was 16, 17, I think maybe 17 or 18, something like that. And she contacted me to let me know that she was pregnant again, so she had already had a kid.

And her mom had encouraged her to go and get an abortion. I guess apparently her mom had had an abortion whenever she was younger. And so I told her, listen, you can live with me. I will work. I'll get a second job because I was already waiting tables at night. I was like, I'll help provide for the baby.

We'll do, you know, we'll make this work. We'll find a way that you can do this. And essentially she said, I don't want to lose my figure again. I just got my figure back. I don't want to have to go through pregnancy. And I was blown away by the fact that somebody would care more about their figure, their body shape than a human being.

And so there really is a sense of, like you said, just the total depravity, the sinning wickedness of a heart is really displayed here. Not everybody does it for those reasons. There are some people that just genuinely are being pressured by boyfriends or dads, things to that nature. And those people in the court of law, that information would come out, right?

Like they were being persuaded that would be figured out in court. And so I'm thankful that you made that distinction. So that being said, when you go to the abortion mills, do you have a pattern of things that you're doing? Is there something that you see that's more helpful? Do you have any suggestions for people? And should they be going right now during the pandemic if their state or county is in a lockdown?

See, my opinion is this. If your state or county is in a lockdown but that clinic's open, then you can go. And that's why I've been going. And, in fact, I'm not the best person probably to talk to about abortion clinic ministry because I haven't done it as much as a lot of other more experienced people. But, excuse me, I've been going. And one of the things that was interesting is this year, all my big plans for evangelism have been canceled by the lockdown.

Right. And so if anyone who knows me more than what this podcast has told so far is, you know, I regularly am out open air preaching at large, where large crowds are. And so these large crowds, these events that I normally would preach at have all been canceled. And so I've been working from home. And one of the advantages of working from home is I just have a little more free time then.

So I can take like a two hour lunch and I can head down to Planned Parenthood I can preach for an hour and come home and just work an hour late Yeah And so I been going to our local Planned Parenthood here and I don So I'm the kind of person who everything has to be perfect before I start a project. Right. It's not a good like thing because what happens is a lot of things I don't start.

Right. And so for a long time I knew I should do abortion ministry. I wanted to do abortion ministry. And then what happened was, well, I don't have enough signs, or I don't have all the answers, or I don't have a little kit with how to take care of your baby, or whatever it happened to be. I don't have someone standing there ready to adopt every child that walks by.

I had all these things that I thought I needed. And I finally looked at my wife one day. I said, I just need to go. I said, and if it's just me just preaching the gospel, that's got to be enough. Right. And if it grows, it grows.

If I become some guy that becomes an expert on finding adoptions and ultrasounds, like, great. You know, that's fine. But I just realized not going was worse than going and being not the best at it. Yeah. And so when I go to the abortion clinic, I always try to have someone with me because it is a much more dangerous place to be. There's no doubt about that.

And I even bought a GoPro camera specifically because of the possibility of legal problems and physical problems that could happen while you're there. Sure. I talk about pride. I talk about cowardice. I talk about a lot of different things. And there's people standing outside.

There's usually a police officer and a couple of these people they call pro-choice escorts. And I'll just preach to them forgiveness of sins, repentance, God's holiness, man's unholiness, man's unrighteousness. And then when cars show up with actual people that are going in, you just plead with them as long as you can. Don't go in there. Come talk to us.

Don't murder your child. I really just try to give people biblical commands and let them hear as much of the word of God as possible. One thing that's happened is because people aren't allowed to be in the building as much, though, And so there were a couple people that heard longer sermons. And what's interesting is I saw the escort lady last week instructing someone how to like drive down the street and park their car to wait.

So they're actually directing people away now when I'm there, which is unfortunate. But I guess if you're a Calvinist like me, it's like, well, it could be God's judgment on them. He's just keeping them from hearing the word. But so I try not to do anything overly special. If there's Catholics there, I'm not holding hands with them. In fact, I will preach against specific Catholic things because I want Catholics to go to heaven, too.

I'm not going to sacrifice being a gospel preacher for trying to save children. I'm going to trust the Lord to deal with the hearts of everyone who hears the word. And I'm going to try to stay true to what I think, you know, unequally yoked would mean in situations like that. Yeah. Praise God for that, though, that there are Roman Catholics there that are hearing the gospel.

So that's another aspect to this that I think is really helpful. And I'm glad that you mentioned street preaching. It was a street preacher that actually sent me the Paul Washer video that had the gospel in it. It was a street preacher from Texas. I can't remember exactly, but I think it was Austin, Texas. But I remember thinking that that was the coolest thing back then where I was like, everybody just wants to take, you know, in the Word of Faith movement, everybody just wants your money.

And here's this guy going out, and he doesn't have a congregation to even tithe to him, right? I thought that was like, wow, the height of self-sacrifice. But once I became a Christian, I understood that this is actually just him being desperate for the lost. He wants to reach out to the lost, but I think that's really a great point. There are other people, too, that are hearing the gospel when you do this.

So what do you think is, if you were going to say, the worst way to not just go out and go to the abortion mills, but if you had some advice for things people to not do when they're addressing this at all, what would be your advice on that one? That's a really good question. So one thing is we bring signs that say things that are biblical or true. And so you said it's interesting a lot of other people might hear it.

There might be 20 people that hear me preach, but there might be 1,000 people that drive by and see the guys holding the signs. Oh, that's a good point. And so I definitely, I'm a preacher. It's kind of in my blood, I guess, or I don't know how you define this. It's just how I was born again. And there's people that come with me, and I would never want to devalue the importance of a guy that just stands there holding a sign.

Because where our abortion clinic is, it is five-lane, four-lane traffic with the middle lane to turn. And there are cars all the time, even during this pandemic. And they're beeping their horns, and they're giving them middle fingers. And so having good signs that clearly state something for people to be polarized by in a sense not just to cause angst or something but to make people who are driving by really think okay, babies are murdered there.

And they have to decide, do they agree with it or not? Do they support it or not? And for a lot of those cars, do they want that in their neighborhood or not? Right. Because neighborhoods that would rise up and eliminate these kinds of things would solve it. I mean, it doesn't matter what Roe v.

Wade says. If neighborhoods didn't want it, it just wouldn't happen eventually. Yep, that's true. Counties could begin to actually just say, we don't want that here in our county. If there was enough people. Yeah, that's a great point.

So definitely make sure you bring signs in. That helps. Yeah. Yeah, and get good signs. You can buy them. But I bought one years ago when Babies Are Murdered here first came out.

I ordered a sign. And then I just went to the store the other day and for more money than I probably should have spent, I made a sign. Just because I didn't shop around. I just bought a poster. I have two markers that will last me another five years. So the second thing is that you want to be careful of is I don't appeal to people's flesh.

I try to be very careful not to do that, at least not too much. So I don't say things like, oh, you shouldn't do this because it will make you sad. Right. I say you shouldn't do this because God's angry with the wicked every day and he hates the hands that shed innocent blood. So I try to use what I think God's word has proclaimed to people. And it's an effort by me to, like we said earlier, sola scriptura.

I believe that, I guess I think of it this way. I can either give people God's word or I can give them my words. And when I give people my words, it's tacitly saying, I sort of think my words are better in this situation. And I don't believe that. And I don't want to give that impression. And so I'm very careful.

I don't appeal to women's flesh. I appeal to the fact that they need to repent of what they're doing. And I leave it up to God to cause them to repent. And, you know, it's like, I don't promise to adopt your baby. I'm not here to tell you, hey, just don't kill your baby and someone will take care of it for you. I'm here to tell you, like, you've been given a gift by a God that actually hates you right now because of your sin.

Yet he's rewarding you, according to Psalm 127, verse 3, with the fruit of the womb. And now's your chance to repent. Yeah. I'm not going to keep your figure. I'll promise you that. Yeah, no, seriously.

It's true. Yeah, you don't have to have any kids. And by the, you know, the hottest women that have ever lived in Hollywood, they're all getting plastic surgery by 35 to try to maintain it. So there's really no advantage to abortion other than the immediate satisfaction That you think you got out of something. And I just don't try to appeal to that, I guess.

And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I could appeal to a few more of those kinds of temporary things to try to help somebody. But I just want to be really careful that I don't... I'm a gospel preacher. I'm a preacher of Jesus Christ. Paul said, woe to me if I don't preach Christ.

Or woe to me if I don't preach the gospel. And I just kind of feel like that's my role here. And so in my case, that very often seems to mean he's not going to do it where I can see it, where I can take credit for it, where I can try to take glory for it. I have to trust him. And I'm okay with that. To me, that's what I'm supposed to do.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the difference is so vast. Just like give an example for our listeners. The difference in what you're saying, if you were to address the flesh like you were talking about, that's what I heard for 10 years in church. And then one person actually shared the genuine word of God with me and I was saved from that. So I think you could go out there and you could appeal to, and we can, there are really great scientific arguments, that's true.

But if you are sharing scientific arguments and not the gospel, what good have you actually done? I just can't fathom that. Like, yes, I want the baby to live, but more importantly, I'd like for everybody involved in that, the father, the mom, and the baby, to hear the gospel. That would be so much more valuable to me than to think. I guess let me back up a little bit.

When I was 14, I was having, I'm 32 now, but that's just an answer. Yeah, I can attest to the fact that I've only had one kid. Apparently, unless God wants to do like a Rachel or Sarah thing, there might not be another baby for a long time. But I've had one kid and I can tell you before I had a baby, my body was, my figure was already gone. So just don't even worry about the figure.

That's not going to happen. But when I was 14 I started having some some issues and we didn have we didn have any insurance at the time And so my mom actually took me to a Planned Parenthood And at 14 years old they had her leave the room and interrogated me about basically assuming that I was being promiscuous And I was like, I'm 14 and boys are still gross to me. I don't know what on earth you're talking about.

It was very hurtful the way that they talked to me. Basically, they already assumed quite a bit about me that that wasn't true. And they were very aggressive saying, you know, we're going to be able to tell anyways. You might as well tell us the truth. And of course, when my mom found out that that's what they wanted her out of the room for, she was furious.

But I think the whole idea there, like if there had been somebody outside letting my mom know what was actually going on in there. Because she was, at the time, like a vegan and all about life and things of that nature, I just don't think that she would have been comfortable taking us in there. If there were people outside with signs that said, babies are murdered here, with pamphlets and things of that nature, that might have been a really big difference.

Because that particular Planned Parenthood in downtown Denton was right next to a mall. It was right around all of the restaurants and everything. It was just right there in the center of everything where everything was at. So I think that's helpful if you're going to go anywhere, if you're going to do anything. I always say if I'm going to do anything, I would really prefer to make sure the gospel is involved.

So with that being said, brother, can you share the gospel with anybody listening? And maybe if there's somebody listening that was considering abortion or has had an abortion, sort of maybe speak to that person that's listening. Sure. And one of the points... That I'll jump off of what you just said though is that is it for the most part people know the science Yeah, I could spend a lot of time proving to somebody that that Babies a baby or a fetus is a baby and and the thing is is most most people are like, okay I still want an abortion right exactly And so it may it may help a few people But for the most part people know what's going on and they get an abortion even even young girls You would have known if somebody raped you when you were 14 before you liked boys, you would have known if you were pregnant that there was a baby.

You wouldn't have been like, well, I don't know what it is, so we better take care of it. These are things we understand inherently, and that's because God's given us a conscience. And our conscience is a gift from God that isn't perfect, but it tells us when we've done something that's violated it. And so to the extent that our conscience is aligned with God's law, we will feel guilty when we violate God's law.

And we'll also feel guilty when we violate our own laws. So if you've made up your own rule like on top of God's law, that's, you know, in the Bible, you know, Corinthians and Romans talks about dealing with our consciences and with other believers' consciences. But we're all given this revelation from God that he hates things like murder. God hates lying.

God hates stealing, thievery, and God hates sexual immorality. And sexual immorality includes perverse things, but it also includes just people who are heterosexual who are having sex outside of a marriage. It includes people that engage in just watching pornography. And so you have this wickedness that comes from our hearts because Adam and Eve sinned in the garden bringing a curse on all humanity.

And Adam, our federal head, brought a curse into the world. And so that's what we call original sin. So we're all conceived as children of Adam, represented by Adam before God. And in God's eyes, we're wholly wicked. We're totally depraved. And even though that doesn't always manifest itself in doing all the worst things possible all the time, in God's eyes, we're always falling short of whatever it is his standard would be, which would be moral perfection, because God's morally perfect.

He doesn't have to accept anything lower. And so our conscience helps us to know this, and then God's law also helps us. So then once we read things like the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make any graven image, You shall not use the name of Yahweh in vain. Honor the Sabbath. Honor your father and mother. You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not lie. And then it all gets kind of summed up at the end in a way. You shall not covet anything that's not yours. Right?

So you're sitting there like, well, I've never had sex with my neighbor's wife. Right. But simply thinking about it is enough to condemn you before God. I never took my neighbor's car, but just sitting there kind of watching it, wishing it was mine instead of his, that's stealing in the eyes of God. Covetousness is the root of all the evil we commit against one another.

And so God had a plan, though, from before time began to send his son into the world to save sinners. And so Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God is one and God is three persons. So it's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, entered his own creation, took on a human nature. So now he has a divine nature and a human nature that are both.

He's truly God and truly man. He's not less than God. He's not less than man. And he's not half God, half man. He's truly God, truly man. And Jesus Christ came into the world, was conceived in the womb of his mother, was conceived, you know, as a little baby.

You know, and his cousin, John the Baptist, leapt for joy when he was in his presence while he was still in his mother's womb. So if you're ever looking for evidence that pre-born people are people, right? Right. That's a great example. Yeah, and Jesus Christ comes into the world, and he's raised by these sinners. And he had this mom and this dad that weren't any less sinners than we are.

And it says in Luke chapter 2 that he was submissive to them. And so here you have the Son of God perfect in every possible way. Submissive to sinful parents to show that he was going to do everything that was righteous. He was going to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law so that God could then justify sinners. Because Jesus Christ grew up, became a man, he preached the gospel, he did miracles, he did all the things to prove who he was.

And people still didn't believe him and people still then crucified him. And when Jesus Christ died, he not only was being killed by wicked sinners, but God the Father was pouring out his wrath toward his people on his son, Jesus Christ. And so Jesus Christ is called the propitiation for our sins, and that means that he satisfied God's wrath perfectly.

So propitiation, it means he satisfied God's wrath. He was our expiation. He removes our filthiness because of his atoning death. But he didn't just die and stay in the grave. So sin brings death, but Jesus Christ rose from the grave. And so when he rose from the grave three days later, he fulfilled all the prophecies, and he showed that he had power over sin and death.

That God was satisfied with the sacrifice that was made for sin. And so now God can be both just and the justifier of men, of sinners by those who have faith in God. And this is because God's justice demands punishments for sin. And so God made the only way that a sinner can be justified in his sight. And that would be that if you receive the righteousness of Jesus Christ through imputation, which was the same way you received the unrighteousness of Adam.

And so God, the key is this, you have to believe that Jesus Christ took on your sin and was punished for it and that he rose again. And that the only righteousness you have before a holy God would be the righteousness of Christ. So you die, you stand before God, and if God gave you a chance to speak, which you won't, but if God gave you a chance to speak and said, Well, here, what's your defense for all of your sin?

And the devil's standing there accusing you, and you know everything you've done wrong. If your only hope is that Jesus died in your place, then you're granted eternal life, and you get to go to glory and be with Jesus and serve him for all eternity. And that's the gospel. That's the good news, that Jesus Christ came so that sinners could be forgiven.

And so that God could, not that he ever would have lost them, So he could maintain all of his holy attributes and everything could work perfectly and he would never change and he would never do anything that compromises his perfections. So is there hope for the people that are listening if they've had an abortion? Does this apply to them or is this just for other people?

Jesus said all manner of sin will be forgiven, right? Except for blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. So if you've had an abortion, you're guilty of murder before God. And Jesus Christ, this is important to understand, murder is horrendous. And in fact, it's so bad that it's one of the few things that we can do in this world where God pretty much demanded you should be killed.

Like once you've murdered, there's no like, well, maybe you can reform yourself and spend the rest of your life. I even said something like that earlier because individual societies could do that. Right. But according to God, no, if you shed man's blood by man's blood, your blood will be shed. The key is, though, is that Jesus Christ's atoning death is worth so much more than even your worst sins.

Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the most notorious serial killers to ever live, and he was a pervert, too. And Jeffrey Dahmer, by all accounts, came to believe in Christ at the end of his life, before he was murdered himself. And I would rejoice to see Jeffrey Dahmer in heaven because it's for the glory of Jesus Christ that Jeffrey Dahmer would have been forgiven.

God is no more justified in his words and righteous in his judgments by condemning Jeffrey Dahmer to hell than me or Mother Teresa. We all deserve to go to hell for our sin against God. And how it manifests is really just a symptom of the disease Some people cancer causes a different outward symptom They all still die of cancer Right Oh, that makes such good sense.

Yeah. But so, yeah, if you've committed abortion, you can be forgiven. It's not a willy-nilly thing, though. You don't keep doing it. You know, people who've committed abortion that actually get saved should become the most ardent anti-abortionists there are. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah. I found that very fascinating that some of the people that would be professing Christians that are against abolitionism, that it's usually because when they were younger, they did have an abortion. And they they're saying things like, well, you know, I just understand how these these women are feeling at the time. And I'm like, well, I I remember my sin, too.

I remember my idolatry, my lustful thoughts, my pride. I remember being a sinner and it's disgusting and I would not want to ever look approvingly at that whatsoever. So it's fascinating to me to see that pushback, but I really appreciate you giving that gospel message and hope for people who I know there are people because I've heard from these women that are pretty sure that there's just no way that God would save them after what they've done.

And it does cause depression. We're not saying that there's not like there's a lot of things that happen to a woman's body after abortion. There's a lot of bad things. But the only reason why we're focusing so much on the gospels, because that's the answer to all of it. It's the answer to the abortion and it's the answer to the depression and all of the things that happen after the fact.

So if we can get the gospel out, that would be so much more helpful. Before we move on to the shenanigans, which I actually, instead of, in lieu of shenanigans, I actually have a serious question for you, which is not something I usually do. So like, you're such a special guest and it's so early in the morning that I was able to focus on an important question for you to end it.

But before we do that, I was wondering if you could tell our listeners what kind of projects you have coming up because your podcast, your blog, I love your podcast, by the way. You've been addressing atheists, the friendly atheist, I think. Is that like a handle? Is that like? Yes, we call themself the friendly atheist. Interesting.

What standard does an atheist have to use for friendly? Kind of an interesting thing there. But so your podcast has been such a blessing to me. It's really been helping me understand how to address those kind of issues. And your blog, too. You're a really great writer.

So what kind of future projects do you have coming up? I don't really have projects, per se. I just, my practice with the blogging and the podcasting, for the most part, is I blog or talk about what's going on at the time in my life. So if anyone followed Things Above Us for a while, you know that last year I was working on Psalm 119. So I was just writing about it every week pretty much.

And so I don't have any big projects that I think about ahead of time. I'm really an off-the-cuff kind of guy when it comes to that stuff. And I have been going through the atheist thing on the podcast. And I've thought about going through a book of the Bible verse by verse. I don't know. I'm sort of moved impulsively, actually, by my own emotions with those things.

I'll do a devotion with my family and think, oh, this is great. I should podcast. Right. Then the next day, I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't interest me anymore. Yes. Oh, my goodness.

I just like that. That is so funny. That is funny. Yeah. I try not to just be on top of hot topics. You know, I don't want to be that guy who just, whatever's in the news this week, that's what I'm talking about.

Although, I don't shy away from it either. In fact, on the 17th, so I guess that'll be before this is published, but, you know, I wrote an article about this kerfuffle between Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan. Oh, okay. And if you're, you know, if you're 32, I don't know if you know who they are. I know, I know their names, but I didn't know they were in a kerfuffle.

But I love the word kerfuffle. Yeah, me too. I love using it. But, you know, like, so to me, like, those people meant something when I was a kid. And I remember who they were. And so seeing them in the news just catches my eye more than in my other people.

And so, you know, there were some things going on with them that I just, I wrote a little bit to help Christians think through it. So, you know, I enjoy, I just, I do it as if it's cathartic for me to write. I do hope to be providing good teaching. Some of it just helps me work my thoughts out. Podcasting helps me work out my thoughts. Part of why I got a podcast was just to have a place to drop preaching.

It wasn't so much that I wanted to podcast as much as if I preached a sermon or if I had an open air experience that I wanted to share It seems kind of weird like yeah you just went and preached in the open air and you published it online And for some people are like well why would you even do that And the thing is, is I don't do it so that pastors around the world can learn how to preach. They have their own classes they could take. And most of them have already been trained or qualified in some way.

But there's other people that are learning to open air preach. And listening to Steve Lawson exegete scripture, that might be great for learning, but that doesn't help people necessarily know how to handle things that happen on the street or outside a clinic. So some of it's to help a much smaller group of people. And so I like to believe if you listen to my preaching on the street, you'd still think, oh, that was good, that was edifying or helpful.

You might not feel like you got really deep into the scripture, and that's okay. That's not why I'm preaching on the street. Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. No big projects, though. I'm sorry.

No, no, that's perfect. I'm so glad you explained that, too, because I think it's really, really helpful. I love podcasts. I think everybody that has the ability to podcast should podcast because that's just another avenue to reach people with the Gospels, another avenue to bring glory to God, to educate other believers. And that's so helpful because there are probably people like you that say, I can't start this until I have everything right.

Everything has to be together. And if you can be a beneficial part of that and you can help somebody get out and just do it and street preach, that's a street preacher reached out to me. I just love that. That would be wonderful to have more men out there street preaching. And so I'm really thankful for your blog. I'm thankful for your podcast and all of the work that you're doing out there.

And I think it's helpful, too. I was just going to mention this really quickly that you address certain issues because it gives your readers a little bit about what's going on in your mind. I feel like if somebody's listening, they're like, I might want to start a blog. I might want to start a podcast. I'm not sure. But who would really want to hear what I think?

Well, we do. We want to hear what you think. As believers, it's almost like getting to know a brother in Christ that you're nowhere near. I can read what your opinions are on things there. So do you have anything else that you want to add about abortion before I ask you my serious shenanigans question? I think that people should be involved.

So I think people should be involved in the Great Commission. So that means you either should be, you know, there's like extremes. Like I'm like the guy standing on the street, even if I'm alone, like preaching the gospel. But I think everybody should find a way to be involved. And if the way that you're involved is you give $50 a month to some abolitionist group that's actually fighting for abolition and not just pro-life type of legislation, okay.

If the way you're involved is you hold a sign, if the way you're involved is you preach, maybe you work at a – there's a lady at my church that works at a maternity resource center where it's there to help people. I think there's different ways people can get involved, but I think this touches us pretty seriously. And I think people should be making some, I mean, being a foster parent or an adopt, a parent who's ready to adopt, that's one way to be involved.

Yeah. So I'm not saying you have to do, everybody has to do the same thing. But I think there's Christians out there that just, they've turned a blind eye to it in a way that is unacceptable. You could be trying to do more about what is one of the prevailing moral evils in our society. And the difference between this and sex trafficking, which may be worse, is I don't really know where the sex traffickers are.

Right. They're not advertising it. Yeah, I just know statistically there's like two houses in my neighborhood where it's probably going on. You know, I know statistics, right? And I know where I could probably go find some of it. But the fact of the matter is that we know where abortion is happening and we know that there's legal things that can be going on.

You know, I went and spoke at my state house on an abortion issue. Wow. And it was really easy. And anybody could do it. Any citizen. I don't even know if you have to be a citizen.

Oh, wow. And, you know, people can be involved in different ways or just support that kind of thing, you know, just give people moral support. So, yeah. Absolutely. Oh that so helpful Thank you brother I hope that that encourages everybody listening to actually get involved because there are different ways I think sometimes people think if they not the ones out there doing the street preaching that they can be involved But like you said there financial ways you can be involved You can pray for people You can encourage people And if you know somebody that is going out that probably is the person to encourage Anyways hopefully that encouraging My only last question for you and then we can close out is do you have any like really crazy stories from things that have happened there at the clinic when you were preaching Well, there's really just one crazy story, and it's not that crazy.

Well, it might sound crazy. My friend Andrew, who's a pastor, was out preaching, and it was actually his first time open air preaching. So, he's an experienced preacher, but it was his first time standing on the street and preaching. And he was preaching after I had already preached. And what it seems like happened is I woke some guy up who was in his house sleeping because I was too loud.

And this guy came around the corner and this guy was gigantic and he had a big dog with him. And he said he's going to take his dog off the leash and have his dog attack us. Oh my goodness. Yeah, it was pretty scary. And my friend Andrew just stood his ground and he actually just kept telling the guy, I love you. It all happened really fast.

We have a video of it. It happened so fast. But at the moment, it was like, this is it. This is it. And I joked with him. I said, you almost died like Jezebel with dogs licking up your blood.

But then the guy was bluffing. This guy didn't want to go to jail for having his dog bite. Right. You just want us to stop. Sure. Yeah, our abortion clinic so far has been pretty non-eventful.

We don't get a lot of people that speak to us, interact with us, argue with us. There's very little overall, so it's been uneventful in that sense. Well, that was pretty crazy though, to be threatened with a loose dog. That's crazy. And brother, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on the program.

Thank you for addressing all these issues. It's been such a blessing to talk to you. How can we be praying for you? Well, pray for my family. I have a couple little boys that still haven't professed Christ, and their names are Wesley and Michael. And Wesley in particular, though, he's over six years old, and he can understand a lot of things, so I'd love to see him profess Christ.

I have an older daughter named Bailey who is not a Christian and she could use prayer. And then I have two other kids, Nicholas and Alexandra, who are both Christians and so pray for their sanctification. And then for my wife, my wife wants to be a godly woman. She wants to serve the Lord and she wants to serve, you know, me to serve the Lord. And what I was going to say is one of the things that you can do when you want to help with abortion ministry is, you know, when I go preach an abortion clinic, my wife's the one that basically takes all the punishment.

You know, I might, whatever, I might have to lay down my life for it one day. Like, you know, that's almost, you know, unexpected, but it's possible. But my wife's the one that's got to take care of the house, take care of everything without me being there. And then I come home and I'm tired or whatever it is. And so pray for my wife, Erin, that she would be able to do the things that God's called her to do, which are part of supporting that kind of ministry.

Lord willing, she'll never preach a word on the street, but she'll be responding. I'm responsible for, you know, I mean, I've estimated I've preached to at least a million people now. Wow. Praise God for that. That is wonderful. But that's all because of someone being at home taking care of things.

So when I come home, there's food, there's clean clothes, you know, whatever it is. And so pray for these people that are already behind the scenes of the front lines. But in particular, I appreciate prayer for my family. Absolutely. Well, we will definitely be praying for your family, brother. And thank you so much for joining us.

God bless you, brother. You have a wonderful day. All right. Bye, Lauren. Thanks for listening, Humble Bees. This is Tulips and Honey.

Over and out. I think that diamond still needs a little more polish. Yeah. Thanks for watching! Ha ha ha!