Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today I want to ask you, I want to explore with you why it is time to change the way in which the church struggles to end the Holocaust of blood that is abortion and now infanticide as well. This has been weighing heavily upon my heart, especially since the New York legislature legalized abortion right to where the baby is in the birth canal and even out of the birth canal. And there was applause in the gallery all through that legislature.

What a shame. And I just think for me personally as a pastor, it's time to change the way in which the church struggles to end this Holocaust of blood that is abortion and infanticide. Along those lines, I want to pause for just a minute to highlight and to feature an event that's coming up Thursday, April 18. And it's a pro-life pastor's luncheon, a pro-life pastor's luncheon. And it's hosted by Emmaus Road Church.

And it's going to be held Thursday, April 18 from 12 p.m. to 1 30. And it will be at the Hilton Garden Inn. And that's located on Lindsay Boulevard in Idaho Falls. And we're going to explore some pro-life opportunities that are available to us now in eastern Idaho, particularly an outfit that's called Stanton Healthcare. Now, this is a really great outfit.

They're located in several places in Idaho already, and they're considering coming to Idaho Falls. And they do just a beautiful job of taking pregnant women under their wings who might otherwise have an abortion and then helping them not only to care for and nurture that child in utero, but also then help those mothers after the baby is born. And if they wish to put them up for adoption, they help with that. If they want to keep the baby, they help with that. All kinds of circumstances.

Stanton Healthcare. And they're considering coming into Idaho Falls if there's enough support. So put a bug in the ear of your pastor. Give him a call. Talk to him this Sunday, because this event is coming up pretty quickly.

That's the Pro-Life Pastors Luncheon. And if you're a pastor, then please respond. Put in your reservation at contact. This is the website for Emmaus Road Church. Contact at walkemmausroad.com.

That's all one word. Contact at walkemmausroad.com. I'll spell that for you. Contact, of course, C-O-N-T-A-C-T, at W-A-L-K-E-M-M-A-U-S-R-O-A-D.com. Contact at walkemmausroad to make a reservation.

And once again, that's the Pro-Life Pastors Luncheon. I'm going to be there and hopefully we'll see you there as well. Well, let me get back to my topic here, which is let's explore some ways in which we can end the Holocaust of blood that is abortion and infanticide. And there's reasons why I feel this way. First of all, four reasons.

First of all, we have reached an impasse, I think. As I look out on the scene, the abortion scene in America, we seem to have reached an impasse, kind of entered a perpetual circular loop with no way out. It's Groundhog Day over and over again, right? I've labored too long to end the Holocaust by appealing to the conscience of creatures who by definition have no conscience. Pro-abortion crowd.

If we were to wait to act until the denizens of death and denial did develop a conscience, I'm afraid we would wait an eternity. The old cliche of the frog in the boiling pot, I think is apt here. The temperature of the waters of abortion have gradually increased, have they not, with every passing day since Roe versus Wade was passed in 1973, such that it's boiling over now. The waters of abortion as evidenced by the legalization of infanticide in New York, that scene to the applause of lawmakers and the gallery. Meanwhile, this rising temperature of abortion has cooked the conscience of America as a collective.

Oh, hasn't it? Abortion has more or less cooked the conscience of America. It's time to change the terms of the debate, dear listener. I've become cynical over the years about the uneasy peace and symbiosis which seems to have developed between the proponents and opponents of abortion in this debate. Both sides form organizations that passionately advocate their positions, which gratify their equally passionate followings.

Each side raises rivers of revenue from their supporters, and then they go back to state and federal capitals and they advocate for their positions. Back and forth goes the momentum with seemingly no conclusive resolution having been made. The advocacy groups have a vested interest in keeping the debate alive. Dead children equal a live organization. And much the same can be said of our politicians.

Each politician has a position taken on the abortion debate. Votes are cast in campaign. Coffers choke with contributions based in part upon the candidate's stand on this important issue. What would happen to their political career if this issue went away? Oh, the politicians have a vested interest in keeping this debate alive.

Dead children equal a live political career. That's how cynical I've gotten, number one. Number two, it's time to change the terms of the debate because one side, more and more clearly I see this, one side is living within the bounds of the law while the other side is not. And the question you may ask then, who is living within the bounds of the law? And more importantly, whose law?

The staff of Planned Parenthood, for example, may well slaughter children from inception to infanticide legally under the laws of man and then add to their crimes by selling the body parts from the baby. But a horrible price will be paid by all the nation for the transgression of God's law. His judgment, sooner or late, will fall. The shedding of innocent blood, if you're not aware of this in the scriptures, the shedding of innocent blood is given as a chief reason for God's judgment.

Proverbs, or I'm sorry, Psalm 106 verse 38 says, they poured out, that is Israel, Israel poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Conversely, what if another, grieved by what he saw, intervened to put an end to the slaughter of the innocents? Proverbs 24 11 says, rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. Perhaps this might involve interfering with the otherwise legal routine of butchery, but whose law is higher, God's or man's?

Such a person should not be considered a crazy actor behaving beyond the bounds of law. Rather, whatever his actions might be, protesting, persuading women outside of abortion clinics, seeking to have arrested corrupt Planned Parenthood officials closing facilities permanently or temporarily, or like one of my heroes, James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, exposing corrupt actors like Planned Parenthood who will not only kill children outside of the womb but dissect and sell their baby parts. Such a person like James O'Keefe should be considered a citizen using powers granted under the law of God and any reasonable interpretation of natural law.

And it is time that we acknowledge that it is the state that has gone over to tyranny, evil, and lawlessness. The federal government in particular has broken faith with the American people. The federal government may demand and command and compel our obedience, but it is increasingly difficult for me to see how we justify saying that we owe them our obedience by covenant precisely because they have repeatedly broken covenant with us such that we can no longer expect them to abide by the provisions outlined in our Constitution.

They no longer abide by the covenant of the Constitution on their part, but they expect us to abide by it on our part. We no longer live under the rule of law, but a rule of men, or perhaps closer to the truth, a rule of demons in many cases. A covenant or a constitution is always a two-way street. Our federal government was crafted by our founders to administer justice in a commonwealth of states, which states in turn rendered obedience and resources for that federal system to operate.

But the federal system, which was initially created to serve the states, has over the decades turned like Frankenstein's monster upon its creator, to tyrannize it. The federal system is now master over the states, which have become little more than regional provinces of that system. We have abundant evidence that the federal state violates the rule of law by living by a double standard of justice, one for the privileged like Hillary Clinton and another for the rest of us. The federal state plunders our wealth, taxes, inflation, and borrowing, while corrupt politicians use their power and influence to enrich themselves.

Most pertinent, the Supreme Court creates out of pure imagination, abortion as an extension of a shadow, of a penumbra, a right to privacy, and then they impose it tyrannically on the whole nation. And then adding insult to injury, that same federal system then funds an engine of Holocaust, like Planned Parenthood, millions of dollars under the guise of women's health care. Well, almost all of America has lost sight of its allegiance. Our allegiance first is to God and His law.

Those who rescue those being taken away to death are in reality, in the light of eternity, for God's law, only doing what legislatures of states like New York should be doing. Those who rescue those being taken away to death are only doing what the district attorneys of New York should be doing. Those who rescue the perishing are only doing what the United States marshals and county sheriffs of New York should be doing. Oh, dear listener, those who stop the Holocaust of abortion are only doing what every citizen of conscience in the state of New York should be doing.

Well, thirdly, another reason why we must consider and ponder and create other ways of dealing with this Holocaust of abortion is because of the church. No more chicken poop evangelical. No. Since World War II and the entrenchment of secular humanism, it seems to be the church's song has been caution Christian coward instead of onward Christian soldier. The national sin of abortion can be laid squarely at the feet of the church in America.

As goes the church, so goes the nation. All through our history, it is the church that has led the way on every issue that has grown and flourished our world. It is time to stop behaving like the nation's abused, bitch-slapped wife and take our stand. A number of factors have contributed to the evangelical church in America cowering on its knees in the corner. Four of them.

A. The American evangelical church has a gross misunderstanding of Romans 13, which briefly teaches one aspect of a Christian's relationship to the state, and it says in part, in verse 1, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Amen. Obedience we owe to legitimate government. Most Christian teachers interpret this as the unquestioned submission to government, no matter how evil it might be.

And it's a text, parenthetically, that the German Nazi regime employed to cow the German Lutheran church during the 1930s. And if this were the only thing the Bible taught on this subject, then we could skip our conscience and just blindly obey, as the church in the United States is doing today. But the Bible is also clear on the magistrate's accountability to God and the church, on the magistrate's responsibility to execute justice, practice justice and justice only, the Old Testament tells us. And then also the Bible is clear on our higher authority to God. We must obey God rather than man, as Peter says.

And then B. The American evangelical church also has a distorted notion of pacifism in Jesus' teaching, because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught important truths, like turn the other cheek and do not resist evil to others as you would have them doing to you, these kinds of things. Some Christians think that we cannot resist evil under any circumstances whatsoever, and just blindly put this as an absolute principle, how costly this has been for the lives of the unborn.

Principles in the Sermon on the Mount that I just summarized very briefly for you, not exhaustive at all, those principles in the Sermon on the Mount were given to witness to sinners to win them to the gospel. They were not given for us, the state, to win us participation in good behavior certificates. No. Peter also told the state of his date, we must obey God rather than men. And Solomon also prescribes, rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

That's activism. Pacifists, when they enjoy the benefits of a Christian culture, they enjoy them at the expense of others who labor to win those liberties. Activists do the hard work of winning liberties, making the investment of blood, sweat, and tears. Oh, pacifists are fond of saying, we enjoy these because of the providence of God. But these things do not appear out of thin air.

They are indeed providential, but they are providentially made possible by the sacrifice of the activist. We need more activists on this issue of abortion. C. The American evangelical church also practices a false dichotomy between church and state. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that our founding fathers wrote the Constitution to seal off religion from having any influence on government whatsoever. Although, of course, the government can dictate to the church what it should do, as happens when separation is practiced, right?

It's always one way. Oh, how false this is, the separation between church and state. That phrase, separation of church and state, is nowhere in the Constitution. And a little homework on Thomas Jefferson and his letter to the Danbury Baptists will show the phrase's first use and how it has been distorted by progressives ever since. In fact, John Adams remarked, this Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people.

It is entirely unsuited to any other, unquote. The morality and religion presupposed in that day was biblical Christianity, dear listener. Biblical Christianity was seen universally as the religion which did have in fact and ought to have in principle the most profound influence upon government and those who govern. Well, then, finally, D, the fourth reason why the evangelical church is cowering in the corner is that the American evangelical church has a deadly, fatalistic approach to eschatology and the future. Yes, evangelicals have bought into the Revelation Red Heifer Rapture rant, I call it.

That is, that Revelation Red Heifer Rapture rant goes something like this. Jesus is coming soon, and all the signs are there, and we can see it in the headlines, and there's no need to worry because people will all be raptured out before the Great Tribulation, when the bad guys will get theirs during the seven-year Great Tribulation, when the Antichrist will reveal himself in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, and on and on the rant goes. To the modern evangelical, all prophecy is in the future, and there's nothing we can do here and now to change things.

In fact, to try to make things better and transform our world along the biblical lines, along biblical models, is to stand in God's way, in their mind, stand in God's way of bringing about end times. Pastor, don't you want the rapture? Don't you want to see the temple rebuild? Don't you want Israel's rabbis to find the red heifer so they can inaugurate temple services again? Don't you want things to get as bad as they were in the days of Noah so God will bring about the Great Tribulation?

Brothers and sisters, the modern evangelical church with this kind of attitude, it's no wonder abortion thrives in our day. The modern evangelical church has a retrograde eschatology that retards Christ's return rather than furthering it and also puts a damper on their action in this world, on their application of the gospel in this age. One of the major roadblocks to ending abortion thus becomes an eschatology that by its very nature aborts Christ's gracious work before it can even be born in our generation.

No wonder abortion thrives and flourishes because indeed it is the church that has lapsed in her duties toward sanctification, in sanctifying this nation, sanctifying the world around it. We not only need to be sanctified believers individually, but we also then, by virtue of this, end up sanctifying the world around us and putting an end to abortion, parenthetically. Well, another reason that abortion is thriving and flourishing in America these days is because the abortion, the act of abortion, is the apple of Satan's eye. Abortion is the apple of Satan's eye. It is his precious, right?

Abortion is the centerpiece of Satan's banquet, the engine of his life force, the sacrament of his religion in our day. This has become more and more evident to me as the years go by. And it's nothing new, is it, in the history of redemption? It's nothing new. As I observe, too, in my peace, there will be blood.

I need to consult that lecture, and that's on our website, omnispotestas.org. The entire lecture is there will be blood, and in it we discuss how both God and Satan require the shedding of blood, and they have from the very beginning of creation, since the fall, there will be blood. And you can find that lecture on omnispotestas, O-M-N-I-S dash, P-O-T-E-S-T-A-S dot org, omnispotestas.org. And you'll find there that complete explication, there will be blood. And of course, there's ever-present blood in abortion.

I heard a Satanist say they require getting their hands in blood, and they can do this on their floor of abortuaries. There will be blood. Both God and Satan require the shedding of blood, and they have from the beginning. God demands the shedding of blood for the remission of sin, while Satan demands the shedding of blood for the redoubling of sin. God demands the blood of the one who sins, while Satan demands the blood of the innocent.

The pattern is really quite simple, but it is profoundly opposite, even as the abortion debate illustrates for us. God says, for example, the soul that sins shall surely die. Ezekiel says this to Ezekiel, the soul that sins shall surely die. Blood is therefore required because, once again, as Leviticus tells us, the life of the creature is in the blood. Consequently, since blood is the very symbol and essence of life, as Hebrews says, without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

Very important principle. Remission of sin is uppermost, and without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. Mercifully to us, God has always accepted the shedding of the blood of a substitute in our place, has he not? Under the old covenant, that blood was the blood of bulls and goats that looked forward to Christ. The old covenant, blood of bulls and goats, animal blood that anticipated the final blood of the final substitute, the perfect substitute, Jesus, under the new covenant.

Since then, the acceptable blood, which looks back to that final blood of the final substitute, is the blood of the cup, Lord's Supper. What's important here is the mercy and grace of God in first, the shedding of blood for the remission of sin. That is a principle of mercy and grace. Sin is remitted. Sin is taken away.

And secondly, accepting the blood of a substitute, Jesus Christ, in our place. Well, that is how God works. Satan too, however, requires blood of his devotees. But it is not to remit sin, but to redouble it. God sheds the blood of the guilty in order to reestablish innocence in his creatures.

Satan sheds the blood of the innocent in order to increase guilt in his creatures. Nothing could be more antithetical than the difference in the demands of blood between God and Satan. Satan too, in his occult rituals, that is, secret and hidden ceremonies, Satan requires and demands the shedding of the innocent blood of children. You see where I'm going with this in abortion. Satan demands in his occult rituals, which are secret and hidden ceremonies.

He demands the shedding of the innocent blood of children. While God requires in his occult rituals, that is, open and revealed ceremonies, that is, our worship ceremonies on Sunday, they are occultic in that sense that they're open and revealed ceremonies. They're not hidden and secret. No, they are open and revealed for all to see. So God requires the blood of the guilty sinner through a substitute to make them once again his innocent children rather than guilty people, right?

And so the Bible tells us plainly that his people Israel sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, as the psalmist says. They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Well, today, today, the idols of Canaan appear as the idols of choice, and our land is polluted with blood, and God will judge. Indeed, abortion is a choice. How often do you hear that, right?

The mantra from pro-choice people. Abortion is a choice. Abortion is a choice. And indeed is a choice, a choice in which one party has no voice. Abortion is a choice in which one party has no voice.

Oh, mother carrying your child, what if you gave your child a chance to speak his voice, yay or nay, for life? What do you think he would say? Give that one a voice. Have that child, oh, pregnant woman. Well, indeed, abortion is a choice, but abortion is a choice in which one party has no voice.

And that choice is often exercised increasingly in the name of Satan. Openly today, a brief Google search will give results. I'm not going to nauseate you with some of the particulars, but a brief Google search will give results replete with satanic abortion rituals at abortuaries, covens practicing at Planned Parenthood facilities, and even satanic lobbyists in state and federal capitals advocating for various abortion bills. This is coming out increasingly, dear listener. Oh, church of Christ, you unintentionally mount the shoulders of the beast of revelation here amongst us.

Now you mount his shoulders so that you may peer into the future to identify some supposed beast to come while he absolutely eats your lunch in front of your face. Oh, Christian, what good is it to imagine how you might resist the beast of the great tribulation when he actually has you marked in the forehead and hand right now? Well, that's a lecture then for another day as well, but just note that part of the beast system is abortion, and I urge you to find creative ways to battle it, and we'll explore those in the future as well. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

New Geneva meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Once again, join us for Sunday worship. Perhaps you've been thinking of crossing our threshold. This is the time to do it. Please come during the Easter season.

Please come on Easter Sunday and join us for worship. We meet at 10 a.m. at 1014th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard, and you can give us some feedback. You can get some more information by calling us at area code 208-523-0196. That phone number again, area code 208-523-0196.