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Key Scriptures:
Genesis 1 28: "And God blessed them and said to them, "fe fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."
Exodus 4:11 "And the LORD said to him [Moses], Who has made men's mouth? or who makes the dumb. or deaf. or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the LORD."
Psalm 127:3 "the children are a heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward."
Psalm 119:13,16 "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb ... your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book, before one of them came to be."
Matthew 25:40 "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers at mine... you did for me."
A. Introduction
Mankind's radical rejection of the God of the Bible is nowhere more evident than in its refusal to respect innocent God-given human life. The very first command God gave man at creation was "Be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen.1:28). Abortion disobeys this flrst command of God to man by the murder of pre-born children. Unbelievers commonly promote abortion as a backstop to birth control. They are consistent in their rebellion against God's command to be fruitful and increase in number. They also combine this rebellion with rejection of the God-given pattern of marriage and family (see Lesson 10).
In his "population control" by birth control and abortion man not only disobeys God's first command to man after creation, but also the blessing God intends to come to him through children. The Bible teaches that children are a heritage from the Lord and a reward from Him. The man "who has his quiver full of them" is blessed. He "will not be put to shame when contending with his enemies in the gate" (Psalm 127:3-5). A God-fearing man is blessed as his wife is "like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table." Seeing one's children's children is part at this blessing (Psalm 128). Many Christians today have disregarded God's very first command otter creation and hence forfeited its attendant blessing.
Closely related to abortion, that is, murder of the pre-born, is so-called "euthanasia." that is, murder of the aged and the handicapped who are considered "useless eaters" (a Nazi saying). Euthanasia is now again practiced in post-Christian societies, as it was in ancient paganism. Abortion and euthanasia are expressly connected by their proponents to man's alleged evolutionary origin. The Bible teaches that man is unique because he was created in God's own image and likeness. God exacts the death penalty for murder of an innocent man "for in the image of God made He man" (Gen.9:6; also see Gen.9:5 and 9:7). But if evolution by "survival of the fittest" be man's origin, then to kill "unfit" or merely unwanted weaker or defenseless fellow human beings is quite defensible on utilitarian grounds.
A modern rationale for birth control, abortion and euthanasia is the alleged "population explosion." The actual facts about world population and the earth's capacity for sustaining mankind wholly deny this "population explosion" myth. At the root of it is godless man's wish to be his own master apart from God. Especially those who consider themselves the elite or leaders of modern society want to exercise God's prerogative of deciding who shall live and who shall die, who shall have children and who shall be sterilized. Their ultimate goal is a one-world government which will enforce this population control everywhere.
Bible-believing Christians, however, are to depend upon and trust only God, which is the essence of being a Christian (see Lesson 1). As the actual facts clearly show. God faithfully undergirds His command to be fruitful and increase in number, to fill the earth and subdue it. by providing enough and more room and food for all mankind. When we Christians agree to population control on the grounds of lacking world resources. we in fact deny that our Lord "is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made." We should rather say with the Psalmist. "The eyes of all look to you. and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing" (Ps.145:t3b. t5~16). Our Almighty, Changeless God is still the same today as He was when feeding His people Israel in the desert for forty years (Deut.29:2-6; Acts 7:36). Finally. even when hungry and tempted by Satan to distrust and disobey God our Father, let us say with our Lord Jesus Christ. "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord (including Genesis 1:281" (Deut. 8:3: Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4).
B. Abortion
The Bible clearly and repeatedly teaches that God knows and creates each and every human being from the moment of conception. and in fact from eternity (Acts 15:18; Ephesians 1:t). God tells the prophet Jeremiah. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" (Jer.1:5). God told His people Israel that the Lord "made you (andI formed you in the womb" (Is.44:2: see also 15.44:24: 49:1.5). A key Scripture is Psalm 139:13,16: "For you created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother's womb....Your eyes saw my unformed body. Ali the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be" That the pre-born child may even receive direction and sentiment from God the Holy Spirit is clear from Luke 1 :39~t4 where the baby ordained to become John the Baptist "leaped for joy" when Mary, pregnant with our Lord Jesus Christ, greeted John's mother Elizabeth. The Apostle Paul states that God set him apart "from his mother's womb" (Gal. 1:15). People with birth defects are also made by our Lord (~xOdu5 All: John 9:1-3). Because pre-born children are innocent, to kill them by abortion is biblically murder. (~)On January 22.1973 the United States Supreme Court overthrew the laws of forty-four states forbidding or restricting abortion in its Roe V. Wade 7-2 landmark decision. Abortion had already been legalized in a number of stales, and was generally permitted in cases of rape, incest, danger to the mother's life, and a handicapped baby. The Bible-believing Christian cannot agree that children conceived in rape and incest. nor handicapped children may be killed by abortion. Medical science today can fully protect the life of the mother in pregnancy and childbirth. At the very least every effort must be made to save both mother and child. Even mothers advised to have abortions because of uterine cancer have carried their babies to term successfully. Handicapped children need not be unrelieved burdens but can be great blessings from our Lord as He promises in Romans 8:28, and as this writer knows from personal experience.
To oppose abortion includes loving assistance to mothers and families with difficult pregnancies. As with poor relief (see Lesson 6), the church through the personal outreach of its members should help not only with money and material gifts, housing and food, but also with Christian counseling and discipling, job training and finding employment, and adoption services. While much Christian work in these areas is already being done, much more is possible.(*)
Since 1972 some 22 million babies have been aborted in the United States. Abortion is now legal in two thirds of all countries of the world, and about 55 million babies are aborted world-wide every year. In Communist China women are physically forced to abort their second child and then sterilized. The Communist government there would rather kill children than change its unrealistic economic policies. Nor is abortion the final indignity inflicted upon the babies.
We now "harvest" organs from and experiment with the bodies, sometimes still alive and without anesthesia. of aborted babies, proven to feel pain at twelve weeks of fetal age. The Nazis also "harvested" body fat, hair and gold tooth fillings from their innocent victims during the Holocaust. As always when man disregards God's Word, man is the loser. The most "effective" birth control devices, the Pill and the IUD, are actually abortion-causing as they prevent the attachment of the newly conceived baby in the wall of the mother's uterus. These devices can also cause untold short-term and long-term harm to the mother. As to outright surgical abortion procedures, women undergoing abortions are the first who pay in physical and emotional after-effects. Abortions contribute to later sterility, premature births, handicapped children (especially mentally retarded), women's resentment against men, terrible guilt feelings when reminded of the abortion, loss of concern for their own well-being, and so on. Society at large also pays as it ages and is forced to import young workers from abroad to do its labor (`In America almost one third of the population is now over 45 years old. and the financial Support base for social security is so rapidly eroding that people now in the work force will most likely be unable to collect social security when they retire. The same situation faces Europe and the dominant Russian people in the Soviet Union. Muslim peoples whose religion commands them to "be fruitful and increase in number" just as does Scripture, and Vietnamese and Hispanic peoples also hostile to birth control move everywhere into the gap left by once Christian but now materialistic God-denying Westerners.(*)
C. Euthanasia
Because the U.S. Supreme Court's abortion decision was based on the uncertain and subjective "quality of life" criterion, it left the door wide open to legalized killing at not only the pre-born but the already born, it their "quality of life" is considered inferior. Such legal killing has already taken place. As far back as 1971 an infant with Down's Syndrome and an intestinal obstruction easily correctable by surgery was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland The baby was "treated" by being left to starve to death, a process taking fifteen days. In April 1982 an infant with Downs' Syndrome born in Bloomington, Indiana, was "treated" for malfunction of his esophagus not by appropriate and feasible surgery but by being starved to death. This time a United States District Court officially sanctioned the killing despite the fact that several couples willing to adopt the infant as their own stood by. (*)Newsweek Magazine reported on a major symposium on infanticide held at Cornell University in August 1982. The scientists participating in this conference concluded that infanticide is not "deviant behavior" or wrong It is rather as "normal" as any other instinct and may be a beneficial evolutionary adaptation A photo caption accompanying the Newsweek article read, "Does evolution favor the murderous?" The article declared in bold-faced type: "Biologists say infanticide is AS normal as the sex drive -and that most animals, including man, practice it."(*)
The Nazis, anti-Christian and evolutionist fanatics, agreed. German's mentally retarded were the first whom they deliberately exterminated. The methods were starvation (as now in Americal), injections, and experimental. gassing. Of course what was done first to the defenseless retarded would soon include other defenseless people labeled "subhuman" and "useless eaters." Such killing of people considered "subhuman" or "unfit" was common in ancient pagan society (though the word "euthanasia" - a euphemism meaning "good death"..was not used till the 17th century). Handicapped infants were routinely exposed Only with the rise at Christianity did this practice gradually cease. The Bible teaches that "the Lord hates...hands that shed innocent blood" (Prov.6:16-1 7) and that he that takes pay to slay an innocent person is cursed (Deut 27:24-25). A handicapped, sick or elderly person depending on others is our neighbor whom we are commanded to love as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). The weakest members of society are more necessary to it (I Cor.12:22-25) Finally, "as we have done it to these the least of Christ's brethren, we have done it to Him" (Matthew 25:40).
D. Population Control
The rationale for population control has been the myth of overpopulation said to strain the world's resources. This idea fIrst become famous with the British clergyman Thomas Malthus (1 766-1834j. (~)He theorized that population tends to increase faster than food supply, with disastrous results unless the increase in population can be checked. He predicted that by 1880 life on earth would be characterized by chaos, violence and mass starvation. He was wrong, and somewhat changed his views in his later years. However,(*) Malthusianism influenced Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and modern population controllers, including those in the US. government today. The facts are that per capita food. Output between 1950 and 1977 increased by about one third, and world food output has continued to match or outstrip population growth since 1977. Some of the most dramatic increases have occurred in the poorest countries, like India, which can now feed itself. As to other materials needed for mankind's sustenance, the best informed experts in the field agree that we will not run out of anything essential to the industrial process. (*) As Jacqueline Kasun puts it in her thoroughly researched 1988 book The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of Population Control, "The message is clear, The boat ["Lifeboat Earth"] is extremely well stocked" (p41). Princeton professor Julian Simon fully agrees, and he sees in the population itself "our ultimate resource" (The Ultimate Resource [Princeton University Press, 1981]).[~) John Clark of Oxford University and one of the world's most prominent authorities on world food supply and population, showed already in 1970 that at the very high American-type food consumption standards and "the general use of agricultural methods already practiced by the average farmer in the Netherlands" 35.1 billion people could be fed (Starvation or Plenty? [New York: Taplinger, 1970], pp.157,160). Many other similar well-documented studies have been available for years. Today's population explosion propaganda is a smokescreen to scare people into accepting a one-world government exercising world-wide collectivi'st-totalitarian population control
In sum. neither birth control, abortion or euthanasia, much less population control by national or world government, are acceptable Christian solutions to social problems. We must rather address our problems in dependence upon and obedience to our Lord Who commanded man at man's creation to "be fruitful and increase in number: fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen.1:28).
Review Queslions:
1. Cite Scriptures showing children are a blessing from God.
2. What is God's penalty for killing an innocent person? Why?
3. Why is evolutionism related to abortion and euthanasia?
4. Cite Scriptures showing God provides for His people. Cite facts confirming this.
5. Cite Scriptures showing God foresaw and creates each person from concepilon & before.
6. Name some harmful effects abortion has on women and on society.
For Further Reading:
Gary Bergel, When you Were Formed In Secret Elyria, OH: Intercessors for America, 1980
Cohn Clark, Starvation or Plenty? New york: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1970.
Jacqueline Kasun, The War Against Populctian. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1988.
C. Everett Koop, M.D. and Francis A. Schaefter. Whatever Happened to the Human Pace? Pevised Edition. Westchester, IL: Crossway Books. 1979, 1983
David C. Peardon. Aborted Women-~Sitent Na More. Westchester, IL Crossway Books, 1987.
Suzanne Pini. Beyond Abortion. A Chronicle in Fetal Expenmentation. Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ.. Magnificat Press, 1988.
Julian t. Simon, The Ultimate Pesaurce. Princeton, NJ.. Pn'nceton University Press, 1981.
Fredric Wertham, M.D., A Sign for Cain (Chapters 8 and 9 on the Nazi euthanasia program). New York: Macmillan. 1966.
Student Summary For Lesson 9 Biblical Creation And Society
Lesson 9 Abortion; Euthanasia; Population Control
Key Scriptures:
Gen.1:28; Exod. 4:11; Ps. 127:3; Ps.139:13, 16; Mat. 25:40
A. lntrroduction
1. God's first command to man: "Be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen.1:28) and its blessings (Ps.127:3-5; Ps.128) rejected
2. abortion and euthanasia roofed in evolutionism
a. death penalty for killing innocent fellow man because man created in God's own image Gen. 9:5, 6
b. if man evolved by "survival of fittest," OK to kill "unfit"
3. "population explosion" myth behind drive tar population control
a. actual facts show there is room and food for many more
b. God provides for His creatures Ps. 145:13b, 15-16; Deut. 29:2-6: Acts 7:36; Deut. 8:3; Mt.4:4; 4:48.
B Abortion
1. God knows every human being from before creation Acts 15:18: Ephes. 1:4; Jer.1:5; ls. 11:2, 24: 49:1, 5; Ps.139:13, 16; Lk. 1:39-44; Col.1:15
2. abortion in USA and worldwide
a. legalized by U.S. Supreme Court 1/22/1973
b, Bible forbids abortion of children from rape, incest, or when handicapped
c. medical science today can fully protect life of mother
d. handicapped children can be great blessings Pam. 8:28
e. Church must help in problem pregnancy situations
f. 55 million babies aborted per year world-wide; yet 35 billion people can be fed with 1950s agricultural methods
3. the high penalty for abortion
a. after-eftects on women who abort
b. decrease and aging of whole societies other peoples faithful to God's command of Gen.1:28 fill gap (e.g. Muslims)
C. Euthanasia
1. becoming acceptable as a "normal evolutionary adaptation"
2. practiced in ancient pagan societies and under Nazis but wholly antibiblical Prov. 6:16-17; Deut. 27:24-25; Mt. 22:39; I Cor.12:22-25; Mt.25.'tO
D. Population Control
1. introduced by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
a. taught population increases faster than food supply
b. influenced Darwin, Marx, and modern population controllers
2. facts show load supply and resources ample
a. per capita food output increased by ca. one-third 1950-77:
b. world food output matched or outstripped population growth since 1977
c. dramatic improvement in poorest countries, like India
d. industrial process wel supplied
e. population itselt is "our ultimate resource"
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