Posted on 01/26/2009 7:49:31 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
Abortion is not new. The act of murdering unwanted infants dates back to ancient times. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, we find a record of an abortion and God's reaction to it.
Read
Ezekiel Chapter 16:1-14
1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices 3 and say, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. 5 No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised. 6 " 'Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, "Live!" 7 I made you grow like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare. 8 " 'Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign LORD, and you became mine. 9 " 'I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. 10 I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. 11 I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12 and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13 So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. 14 And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign LORD.
--New International Version
What we see the Lord saying to Ezekiel is what He wants to say to us today. The Lord has a message to us regarding our own detestable practices. Specifically the practice of aborting unwanted babies.
We notice first off that the child is from Canaan. Her father was an Amorite, her mother was a Hittite. The fact that this child was a minority perhaps explains why she was selected to die. Abortionists usually target minority groups. In the US, we find that while African-American women make up only 13 percent of the United States population of women who are of child-bearing age, 37 percent of all abortions are performed on black women. The abortion rate among black women is more than three times higher than that of white women. Abortion is not only murder, it is a racist act.
While abortions today are performed in utero with modern surgical equipment, abortions in Ezekiel's times were carried out as he describes in verses 4 and 5; the child was simply born and tossed in a field. While it may seem shocking to see the events of an abortion outlined in Scriptures, we must continued to be shocked and outraged that abortions run rampant in America today.
Notice that the Lord came to Ezekiel with instructions to confront the nation regarding the evil act of abortion.
And while America has many serious issues facing us today; with economic problems, political concerns, a dependency on foreign oil, terrorist concerns - at home and abroad, and on and on, we - as a nation - will get nowhere unless and until we first address the number one obstacle to our success as a nation. And that is abortion.
The Lord has another message for us found in 2 Chronicles 7:14
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
With this in mind, lets conclude with a prayer first offered by Rev. Joe Wright in Topeka, Kansas in 1996.
Heavenly Father,We come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that's exactly what we've done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism.
We have worshipped other gods and called it multi-culturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem. We have abused power and called it political savvy. We have coveted our neighbors' possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Uh. That's like saying Adam, seconds before God breathed his soul into him, was only cannibal food.
Creation is a process, not simply an event (or did you flunk biology?) And that process even starts before conception and continues thereafter. Not only does God do the in-womb knitting, but especially note verse 16 of Psalm 139:13-16 and Jer. 1:5:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Jeremiah spoke as God's mouthpiece: "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." (Jeremiah 1:5)
Therefore, our creation has an otherly-dimension about it -- we can't be reduced to mere beasts residing in human wombs pre-birth.
Aside from all of this, you'll note that if we were going to take your distinction seriously, and claim that Adam's creation was our prototype, too, then none of us would have belly buttons. Your breath of life, hooked to your respirator Mom, occurred in the womb.
Isn’t abortion also murder?
Good biblical burn...
A Child born and tossed in a field is murder, not abortion.
+++++
I once heard the term “Postpartum Abortion” used as a joke, but I think the idea fits here.
Gen 2:7
then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
I can appreciate your attempt here but the Heavenly Father is not talking about a flesh being, but His most favorite piece of real estate upon this earth.
That was in reference to one specific individual if you'll read the whole passage.
As for the soul reference and Adam, read Genesis 2:7
Finish the verse, please...
Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices...
And the number one detestable practice in this passage? The killing of unwanted children.(Abortion) If abortion as we know it was availabe then... they would have been doing it.
If Adam’s shaping literally as the KJV renders the story from the clay like a potter’s plaything was indeed his genesis, then that would have no bearing on the ensoulment of his descendants shaped within their mother’s wombs. The unique manner in which God kicked off the process would have no bearing on the different manner by which He elected to sustain it.
—New International Version does not provide the Bible student means and methods of finding words used in the original.
I have read the rest, but from the King James which reads a bit different. And because I can look for myself from the Strong’s what words the translators used actually mean and in this case Hebrew.
(Yeah, God the Creator -- the "Individual" who sovereignly knows people before they are knit & woven together in the womb...What? You think God has a "vision" problem and has trouble seeing the cloudy future?)
As for the soul reference and Adam, read Genesis 2:7
Yeah, well all that shows is that Adam was no "momma's boy" It didn't mean that had the Serpent Satan happened to have had a demon abortionist at his side minutes before God ensouled Adam that Adam would have been fair game to dismemberment.
So what? You think Adam was initially created a "beast" and only became a human person thereafter?
By your logic, abortions upon nine-month gestationally aged pre-borns are A-OK.
Of course it is. (Elsewise, those who claim it isn't have to concede that Jesus was not only "fair game" in the womb, but that no blood-guilt would have been incurred had He been aborted by his unmarried teen Mom)
You are properly angered in your spirit with regard to the murder of the unborn. The passage has to do with the birth of a people — a nation — Israel. Nobody, no unborn child, no infant either, dies in that passage.
If one wants to use Scripture to defend a stance against abortion, there are more than enough passages that speak of the evils of taking innocent life or harming a woman and her unborn child while she is pregnant. There is absolutely no need to pervert this Passage of it’s actual meaning.
This is about foundling Israel being accepted by God and covenanted with God.
The imagery, though, is of one who’s just been born, isn’t it? I believe the Spartans would dispose of unwanted babies that way.
It isn’t an abortion, but it is an attempted infanticide. It is also an allegory, and Ezekiel uses many, many allegories.
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