I woke up early this morning, way before I was supposed to get up and my head was full of thoughts and scriptures that the Lord was showing me. When I got up and started writing down the different scriptures and thoughts I decided that this evening I would start writing.

The first thought that came to my mind was being a fruit inspector. In many areas of our life we may wonder if something is from the enemy or the Lord. 1 John 4:1-3 says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God:and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

This verse shows the importance of knowing truth and not being led into deception. Right away this verse from John 10:10 came to mind. It says, “The thief comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy. I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly.

Isaiah 49:22 says, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I will lift up My hand to the nations, and set up My standard to the people.’” The word standard in Hebrew means a flag or banner. Think of a golf course with a flag at the end of each hole showing you where to aim the ball. That is a standard. I felt the Lord tell me this morning that John 10:10 is also a standard. We can use it to help us determine truth and aim the course of our life.

Does a situation steal, kill and destroy? Or does it bring life abundantly? Think of the many times in your life that you have been in situations and wonder how to pray. Teachings abound on every subject but not all are accurate. Sickness and healing comes to mind. Some believers think that God allows sickness to teach us a lesson, but I don’t see that supported in scripture. This doctrine has come about from experiences where people have not been healed so doctrine is created using reasoning to support their experience instead of making God’s word the standard that our faith must rise to. Does sickness and disease kill, steal and destroy? Yes…Does sickness and disease bring life more abundantly? No! So based upon that standard, sickness and disease are from the enemy.

Applying this same standard let’s look at a topic that’s prominent in the news today. It’s the issue of abortion.

I was a high schooler in the 60’s when Roe vs Wade was passed. I was not focused on what was going on around me and did not know until the mid seventies, when my first child was a baby, that abortion was such a grievous thing. The church I was attending encouraged us to get involved and informed and some of us went to a Women’s Lib convention in the city where I lived. People from both sides were in attendance and a Pro-Life group was there. In their session I watched a movie of a real abortion. It was horrifying! I was sickened by what I saw and it was my first exposure to what abortion was…no candy coating or justifying it’s need for women, just the cold hard truth.

Not knowing what I could do about it made me feel helpless. I believed it was wrong but what could I do? It was already a law. Taking the biblical standard of truth from above, does abortion give life abundantly, or kill, steal and destroy? Even if you believe in abortion I think you’d have to agree that it kills, steals and destroys. But many Christians believe in abortion. According to statistics, the percentages are almost equal for Christians and non Christians on who has had an abortion.

This is not meant to be judgement on anyone. What’s happened in the past is not my focus, I’m thinking forward focused here. There is not any situation that the blood of Jesus can’t cover and all sin, when repented of, is covered and forgiven. I used to be a part of a music ministry group called Redeeming Grace. Our primary purpose was leading worship at post abortion retreats where we ministered through song and set up an atmosphere for grieving women to come and be healed from their past abortions. Women from all walks of life were there, even pastors wives who had aborted a child, some their husbands didn’t even know about, so I am not judging in any way. I want to see all people healed and set free from their past sins and failures.

We were there to support these women as they processed through repentance, forgiving themselves, or a boyfriend, some even their mother who had encouraged or forced them to get rid of their pregnancy. The reasons were varied…this is inconvenient, I can’t afford this, I’m too young to be a mother, I need to go to college to prepare for my future, no one can know what I’ve done. The end result though, was the loss of a life, and then every one of these women lived with a life time of regret. Every one of these women could tell us what their due date was and how old their child would have been today. It was not just the loss (kill, destroy) of their child, but the loss (steals, destroy) of their peace and feelings of worth about themselves. Satan’s evil affects were on both, a double whammy. Nothing about their abortion experience brought them life abundantly, and killed a life in the womb.

Now I want to try to reveal through scripture why God’s ways speak against abortion. Going back to scripture, God in His word said to choose life. Here are a few scriptures to support this:

Deuteronomy 30:15-16 and 19-20: “See, I have set before you today, life and prosperity and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it….I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants., by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice and by holding fast to Him. For this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”

Deuteronomy 4:39-40, “Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. So you shall keep His statutes and His commandments which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”

Then Deuteronomy 11:26-28 is more clear as it says, “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse; the blessing if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God which I am commanding you today; and the curse if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today, by following other gods which you have not known.

God is clearly telling the children of Israel that there will be consequences moving forward, blessing from Him or curses that open up from their choices, depending on who (God or the devil) they listened to and obeyed.

God went as far as to warn the children of Israel before they got to the promised land. He told them NOT to take on the ways of the people who lived in the land God was giving them. What was it that the Canaanites, Hittites, Moabites and others were doing that was grievous to God? They were worshipping false gods and offering up their children for sacrifice to these pagan gods. This god went by various names but the two common names were Baal and Molech, different names but the same pagan god.

Deuteronomy 20:17-18 says, “But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hittite and the Jebusite as the Lord your God has commanded you, in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the Lord your God.

God commanded them to destroy all influence that could lead them away from following God completely. As they went through the land they removed MOST of the people but not ALL and Judges 2:11-13 tells the unfortunate result, “Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them, thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.

Judges 3:5-7 says, “And the sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, and Amorites, the Perizzites the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and they took their daughters for themselves as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

Unfortunately, today these words mean nothing to us. We don’t know what Baal is or Asheroth, some places called Ashtaroth or Asherah.. Some of my past blogs have gone into a lot of detail with links you can go to and explanations of what these things are. I won’t go into full detail again but to say that Baal worship includes human sacrifice, most of the time their firstborn and Ashtaroth was the female goddess of fertility. They sacrificed their babies for a blessing to conceive more children and for blessing on their crops and finances. I had been a Christian for over 30 years, reading the Bible through multiple times and still did not understand what these references were about.

In Leviticus 18:21 God clearly commands Israel about Baal (Molech) by saying, “Neither shall you give any of your offspring to offer then to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am the Lord.”

God commands them again in Deuteronomy 18:9-10 which says, “When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives your, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer,”

But the unfortunate truth is clear…they did go into pagan worship and and they did offer their children to pagan gods. 2 Kings 17:16-17 says, “And they forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him.” (This is a polite way of saying they sacrificed their children to Baal by burning them up)

There are many other references that talk about this. They are: 2 Kings 21:6, 2 Chronicles 33:6, Ezekiel 23:37-39, then I want to list this last one from Ezekiel 16:20-21 which says, “Moreover, you took your sons and daughters whom you had borne to Me, and you sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotries so small a matter? You slaughtered My children and offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire.”

Here is another situation I would like to bring forth, one I had never known until I heard it preached a few months back and looked it up for myself. When the children of Israel were being instructed to go into the promised land and given the instructions on how to overtake Jericho, God, through Joshua, commanded them to NEVER rebuild Jericho once it was destroyed.

Here is the scripture from Joshua 6:26 which says, “Then Joshua made them take an oath at that time saying, ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city Jericho; he shall lay it’s foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates.’” Now, read 1 Kings 16:33-34…”And Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him. In his days Hiel of Bethel build Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abram his firstborn, and with his youngest son Segub he set up its gates, according to the word of the Lord which He had spoken through Joshua the son of Nun.”

Why are we not hearing these things taught in church? Scripture makes it clear that we are to learn from the mistakes of Israel and not repeat them. All of Hebrews, chapters 3 and 4, talk about the disobedience of the children of Israel… If I had not heard this from another “no nonsense, speak the truth” pastor, I would have never read through scripture and put together that in even this, God’s commands were disobeyed. From what was preached, two children were sacrificed and placed as corner stones for the city and the gate. It makes more sense now that Ephesians 2:20 makes reference to Jesus being the chief cornerstone, but again, if I didn’t know the Old Testament application, Jesus being the cornerstone isn’t as revelatory. If we don’t know our past history, we are doomed to repeat it. We hear this said in our natural realm all the time!

So, now that we see that sacrificing children was practiced during those days, I’d like to talk about our present day. Did any of you hear in your churches about the abortion bill that they tried to pass 2 ½ weeks ago? It was called HR3755, you can google it. Because of the threat of Roe Vs Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, the senate tried to pass an abortion bill to make abortion legal in all 50 states. This bill would have made the overturning of Roe vs Wade irrelevant. This bill would have made abortion legal up to BIRTH!

I have a question…how is this ok? How is this not a sacrifice of children? We don’t use a statue of Baal any more to place our children in while burning them alive, our medical technology is more advanced than that, but the children die none the less. Several sites I read online made reference to the “blessing” those who did this pagan practice were seeking in OT days, financial blessing, future fertility blessing, and convenience. Many, many women today abort their children because of convenience (this is not a good time for me to have a baby) or financial (I don’t have enough money to bring a child into the family) etc. So similar…

HR3755 was not passed, by one vote! Here is how the party lines voted. All the republicans voted NO…all the democrats voted YES except for one. The vote ended up being 49 to 51. I know this will not be popular to say but I will say it anyway. If you are a Christian and you are a democrat, you are standing on the side of death. This must be looked at…and again, it’s not being preached in church. Democrats are across the board voting to want abortion up to birth!

Now republicans on many issues these days are no better, so I’m not endorsing their behavior either…but at least on this issue of life or death, they stood for life.

How does this line up with scripture? We must be asking ourselves this question. We must begin to evaluate where we stand. Do our beliefs line up with scripture? If they don’t who needs to adapt? Revelations 19:6b-7 says, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.”

What does making yourself ready mean. In the Greek the word made ready means: to prepare, to provide and comes from the root adjusted. If we are the bride of Christ, we are the ones who must adjust. We must adjust our belief systems, our mindsets and our behavior. When we see in scripture where we fall short, we are the side that must adjust upward, even if it’s hard or inconvenient.

Why am I saying all of this? Because years ago the Lord gave me the calling of being a “watchman”. Then I received a prophetic word from a very trusted, Godly man, who through the Lord said I was to blow the trumpet and wake up the people. I have been trying to do this for a few years and I have paid the price for it. I am not well liked because of it. But who do I obey? I must obey God over men…

So, I will leave this now with you. It is up to you to seek God’s heart on this and allow the Holy Spirit to bring truth. If He doesn’t then that’s between you and God. If you can show me scripture to support abortion, I would be glad to have a conversation with you, not through social media but in person.

Churches, ask the Lord why you are not preaching these truths? Ask why new believers coming into your body are not being taught these matters which scripture say are matters of life and death, blessing and curses. If these believers who don’t know any better die and stand before God, who is responsible for them not knowing? We, as the body of Christ, must stand up for the truth of scripture. We will stand before the Lord guilty if we don’t.

Here is one last scripture that I came across this morning.

In my opinion, this scripture is clear. The spirit behind this practice is not the Spirit of the Lord, is is demonic. This practice does not bring life but stealing, killing and destroying which is the work of the enemy.

So let’s adjust where we have fallen short. Let’s repent where we have been in sin. Let’s line up where we have been believing compromises of the enemy. Let’s be the body of Christ that loves people by lovingly speaking truth. I love you all and am not writing this in judgment but want to see all come into the life of the kingdom of Heaven.