The New Testament The New Testament The New Testament Years ago, I wrote an article stating that there are a lot of doctrinal issues on which we Jesus Christians have never stated clearly what our position is. The reason is that no one person can say, this is what everyone in our community believes. We cannot expect new members to immediately understand, much less support, all that we teach, until after they have had some time to think through the various issues. So abortion has hardly been mentioned, privately or publicly. Nevertheless, in this video, I'm going to make some points about abortion, which I hope people will be able to use to understand our position on other issues as well, including many political issues. Near the end of this video, I will share some thoughts in relation to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and whatever other variations are out there by now. But first, abortion. It is partly because of how abortion was used as an excuse to fuel the worship of Donald Trump that I have been thinking about it more recently. But concern about the use of fetal cells in the development of vaccines is another area where I personally have given some thought. Did you notice that I said a moment ago that we have hardly ever discussed abortion among ourselves privately? Let me explain. This has happened because we just don't do or need abortions. They are largely a non-issue. Most of us are celibate, and our married couples nearly all practice birth control. Nevertheless, about 30 years ago, one of our members experienced an ectopic pregnancy. What that means is that she became pregnant, but the egg was stuck in the tubes to the uterus. It was growing, but it had no chance of surviving outside of the womb. What it would do, however, is kill the mother when the tubes burst. This woman was one of the most extreme opponents of abortion in our whole community, yet she had the fertilized embryo aborted. The mother grieved for the aborted embryo and even gave it a name but I don't recall any controversy over her decision to have it aborted. As far as I know that is the accepted position among virtually all anti-abortion advocates. They believe that abortion is justified in the case of an ectopic pregnancy. The developing embryo would have been about 2 cm long when it was aborted. That is less than an inch long. You could call it an ethical dilemma, but only barely. Nevertheless if we could imagine a situation where we knew that a fully grown person was going to die anyway and we knew that person was going to take the life of another person on his way out I think most of us would be sweating blood just thinking about a decision to hasten the death of the person who was doomed anyway, if it would save the life of another person. Why is that? Isn't it because we think of the fully grown person as being more human, more alive, more like us, than an embryo the size of a large pill? Now, over the years, the atopic pregnancy argument has been stretched and stretched with one new situation after another being justified, right up to the termination of a pregnancy when the baby is clearly able to survive outside the womb, and in situations where there is no other reason for the termination except that the mother does not want the baby to live. Day after day, doctors who have taken the Hippocratic oath to do harm to no one will dismember these babies inside the womb and pull them out, piece by piece, simply because the mother tells them to do so. In my opinion, the ethics no longer amount to a dilemma. It is no longer about death for the mother or even about some serious threat to the mother. It is about parents who were too lazy to use birth control, yet too selfish to let their materialistic lifestyle be upset by a little baby, even though the baby had no choice in its own conception. Many professing Christians are outraged at the slaughter of innocents that is going on in countries like America every day of the year. Doctors and nurses are being told that they will lose their jobs or be barred from practice if they do not participate in these killings as well. Now, there is some hope that changes in the Supreme Court during Donald Trump's reign could slow down the slaughter when a test case has had time to reach that August body in the next few years. I hope so. But is that really what the election was fought over? Catholics standing side by side with fiercely anti-Catholic evangelicals were a strange anomaly indeed. It lent support to the possibility that the Catholics, at least, were voting on the basis of abortion concerns alone. But after the Supreme Court had been stacked virtually to capacity, evangelical support still did not wane. If anything, it has grown. Were evangelicals really just putting up with Trump's incredible narcissism because of some concern about aborted babies? Or was it just an excuse to justify the racism, the sexism, the religious bigotry and above all else the insatiable greed that Donald Trump represented to all of them Go outside evangelical circles and ask people to list half a dozen things that they believed Donald Trump stood for and I think you would be lucky to find one person in a hundred who even knew that he supposedly opposed abortion It was not a policy that fit well with his lifestyle. Wouldn't a man who paid hush money to his mistresses also be happy to arrange abortions for them? Now, on the other side of Congress, we have Joe Biden, a Catholic who seems as much like someone who would never resort to procuring an abortion as Donald Trump seems like a man who would. But why doesn't Joe Biden speak out against abortion on demand? I don't know, and I can appreciate that serious voters would like to hear an answer to that question. but what I am saying in this video is mostly aimed at illustrating just how complex and how convoluted the arguments and the justifications are. Take the COVID vaccine, and other vaccines for example. Somewhere back in the early days of vaccines, there were aborted fetal cells used in starting a culture that has grown from that original culture over the years, without any need to keep supplying more fetal cells along the way. I frankly do not understand the science behind all this, but the main two points I've picked up are that a. aborted fetal cells have been used at some stage in the overall development of vaccines, and yet b. this is not being fueled by new cells from more recently aborted babies. It is necessary to get those two extremes into perspective in order to explain why it is hard for me to give an absolute answer about such things as vaccines based on the use of aborted fetal cells alone. Could they have come from an ectopic pregnancy in the first place? And if they did, would that be a bad thing? Or would it have been a very inspiring example of good coming from the tragic loss of one small embryo, which never had a chance anyway? I recently conducted a survey on this channel, where I asked everyone to give only one reason, their best reason, for opposing the COVID-19 vaccine. Out of the hundreds who responded, only one person mentioned the use of aborted fetal cells. So, once again, I assume that my own revulsion at the widespread use of abortion around the world is not really the big issue that so many religious people claim it to be. It seems that, for some people, it is handy to bring up abortion from time to time as I cover for the real reasons behind what they shout in political assemblies. I get the feeling that many of the people who speak out strongly against abortion when it suits them politically don really care that much in reality There are any number of issues which are more appealing to them and sadly most of the other arguments against wearing masks or getting vaccinated are totally irrational Now, I said at the start of this video that my position on abortion could be taken as a signal for where I might stand on other issues as well. One of those issues would be that of homosexuality. Like the atrocities that are being carried out in abortion clinics all across the world, sexual perversions are another blight on the face of humanity at this stage in human devolution. But pharisaical bigotry and hatred of gays offends me as a Christian far more than the sexual behaviors of consenting adults. consenting adults, just as Jesus was outraged by the behavior of the Pharisees against a woman who was caught in the act of adultery. Ironically, our new breed of Pharisaical religious leaders have themselves been caught up in scandals involving prostitutes, mistresses, group sex, and massive numbers of child abuse offenses. They turn a blind eye to adultery among members of their congregations, and they justify divorce and remarriage on virtually any grounds. But then, they take the high moral ground against gays. That has to be the absolute worst sort of hypocrisy and self-righteousness. In the light of all that, being forced to take a stand on gay sex is a bit like Jesus being forced to take a stand on paying taxes to Caesar. I'll be damned by the Pharisees if I defend them, and yet I fear that I'll be damned even more by God if I don't. I'm not talking about their behavior, but just about the hatred that they have experienced at the hands of hypocritical religious people everywhere. That's why I keep finding myself on the left side of politics, at the same time that I'm deeply concerned about where the left is going to ultimately lead us, as they continue to push ahead without God, and sometimes in very strong opposition to God. I just can't help to see that Jesus would be on the side of the outcasts and oppressed and not on the side of religious hypocrisy and bigotry. But I also know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the political left is well and truly lost spiritually. There is only one candidate who can meet our needs, and he's not coming back until after the counterfeits have done their worst. But I'm going to hang out for his return, and to do the best I can to live according to his teachings in the meantime. If you feel the same, please contact me, and maybe together we can make a difference in these final days of the world's collective insanity. My address is on the screen right now. Thank you for listening. God bless you.
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