Attacks On The Family - Abortion - Part IV
May 2022 |
Rebekah became pregnant with twins, and the Bible says, “the children struggled together within her” (Gen. 25:22).
First, notice that God called them “children” and not pieces of tissue. And this obviously was after conception and before birth. The word struggling means that these two infants were tussling or pushing on each other while still in the womb. That means these twins, Jacob and Esau, were interacting with each other before they were born.
In Psalm 51:5, when David says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart notes, “This passage states that all are born in sin as a result of Adam’s fall in the garden of Eden.”1 So David was saying that before birth he was a sinner because at that point God considered him a person and a human being.
In Luke 1:15, regarding John the Baptist, the Bible says, “He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.” This is not referring to the baptism with the Holy Spirit because that did not happen until Acts 2. But it does indicate that John the Baptist was a human being who experienced the Holy Spirit and not just “tissue” in the womb of Elisabeth.
The same is indicated when Mary tells Elisabeth about what the angel said to her, that she would conceive and bear the Child Jesus. When Mary came near Elisabeth, the Holy Spirit moved on Elisabeth’s baby so that he “leaped in her womb” in reaction to Mary’s baby (Luke 1:41-42). This means that both babies were human beings, even though one had just been conceived and the other was six months old.
This is confirmed by Young’s Analytical Concordance, which says the Greek word for babe in Luke 1:41 is brephos, and it can refer to a child that is either newly born or unborn.2
There are several examples in the Bible of men who were called by God to work for Him before they were born:
- Isaiah 49:1 says of Jesus, “the LORD hath called me from the womb.”
- Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” This does not mean that God forced Jeremiah to serve Him, but that His intended purpose was for Jeremiah to be set apart so that he could be used of God, if Jeremiah yielded to Him. All of this happened before Jeremiah was born. It appears that God was already dealing with him as a human being and a person before he was born.
- In Galatians 1:15, Paul wrote: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace.”
The following shows that science also confirms that life begins at conception:
- “Since its own conception, the science of embryology has recognized that the union of sperm and egg gives rise to a new human being who then embarks upon an unbroken continuum of development until natural death. After all, the only logical beginning point for the creation of a new human being is when two sets of 23 chromosomes meet to begin an organism that has 46 chromosomes.”3
- The abstract, “When Human Life Begins,” states: The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop.”4
- “(The zygote), formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new being.”5
- “Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the female gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote.”6
Since life begins at conception, abortion is murder (Ex. 20:13, 21:12-14; Deut. 5:17, Num. 35:16-21) and a sin (Matt. 19:18; Rom. 1:29-32, 13:9; Gal. 5:19-21, James 2:11). Therefore, abortion is an attack on God and the family.
REFERENCES
1 Swaggart, J. The Expositor’s Study Bible. Baton Rouge: Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, 2005.
2 Young, R. Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible 22nd edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
3 Cloves, B. “The Conception Conundrum,” htpps://www.hli.org/author/bcloves/, April 20, 2017.
4 ”When Human Life Begins.” Abstract. American College of Pediatricians, March, 2017. https://acpeds.org/position-statements/when-human-life-begins.
5 Moore, K. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology 7th Edition. Philadelphia: Saunders, 2008.
6 Sadler, T. W. Langman’s Medical Embryology 10th Edition. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006.
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