Welcome to a firm foundation presented by Princeton Ministries with Dr. Ken Smith. This is Carol Smith, Ken’s wife. Please enjoy.

I don’t know if you have noticed it or not, but across our nation there has been a growing silence since 1973. The effects of this silence can be seen. It can be seen if you stand in a playground for the number of hours that playground is used by children is not what they planned, because there is a silence. Or perhaps if you stand on a line wanting to adopt a child, thinking that there are many, you’ll find that in fact, there is a silence within our adoption agencies, for there are few children to be received for adoption. And over the past twelve years, there has been a silence from close to 15 million unborn. Ronald Reagan, president of the United States, speaking before the national religious broadcasters, said this.

This nation cannot continue turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the taking of some 4000 unborn children’s lives every day. We cannot pretend that America is preserving her first and highest ideal, the belief that each life is sacred. When we have permitted the death of some 15 million helpless innocents since the Roe versus Wade decision, 15 million children who will never laugh, never sing, never know the joy of human love. Abortion has denied them the most basic human right, and we are infinitely poorer because of abortion. There are many reasons across this nation for people to oppose abortion. But I think as Christians, we must ground ourselves in any cause, in any event, with an understanding of what the scripture has to teach.

And it would be to our great help if we would turn to God’s word and to understand some of the principles about that unborn child as we would look to God’s word. Well, first, if we look to the scriptures, we would turn our attention to Genesis, the first chapter, verses 26 and 27. For here, in fact, is the creation of man. Here is the blueprint. Here are the qualities that God has placed in that new creature. We read God saying, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And so God created man in his own image. And in the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them three times. In this verse, it is restated that man is created in the image of God. Theologians refer to this as the Imago Dei, the image of God.

I think that here is to be found the heart of the concern of a Christian for the taking of a life out of that womb. Because it has to do with a quality that God has placed in the human race. It is not to be found in any other part of his creation. It is not to be found in a deer running across the field. It is not to be seen in a fish swimming across the sea. It is a quality that God placed in every human being, and it is, in fact, his image. The image of God begins at that moment when life begins to emerge within the womb. Now, the image of God is a concept that we seldom think about.

Usually when we think about being created in the image of God, we think about the fact that man is able to speak. And then we say, well, God must be able to speak. Or we think that man has a moral decision-making mechanism within him, a conscience. And so we say, that’s part of the image of God. But I think to look at the image of God as just simply the qualities that God has allowed us to be able to speak, to be able to make moral decisions, is not to completely understand what the image of God really is intended to do. For why would God give man the ability to speak? Why would he give him the ability to think? It was so that man might have a relationship with the living God.

The image of God is the fact that you and I were created by God to know more about him. He placed that in us that we might seek and understand more about him and his creation. The scriptures teach that man is made in the image of God. And it’s that image of God that holds man responsible before God, morally responsible, personally responsible. The heart of the problem with abortion in America and around the world is that abortion is destroying the image of God that God has placed in that new life. And so doctors scrape out the image of God. Doctors vacuum out the image of God. Physicians poison the image of God until finally that image has been destroyed.

And for a Christian, the greatest concern is that, in fact, the image of God that has been uniquely placed in the human being has been destroyed. It has been discarded. And as Christians, that we must think seriously about what in fact is being destroyed, simply a child or a child who is created in the image of God. And so for the Christian, there is an added dimension to the dilemma. It is not only the death of a child, but it is also the destruction of the image of God. But I would also point our attention to psalm 139, verse 14. This is a psalm that speaks about the quality of personhood of that which is in the womb. Notice how personal the description is. Thou knowest me right well. My frame was not hidden from thee when I was being made in secret.

Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance in thy book were written every day that was formed for me when as yet there were none of them. And if you were to look at other references within the scripture, you’ll find that the being within the womb is not referred to as some abstract being, but in fact has an identity, has linked to it the quality of being a person. The same descriptions about that child within the womb are used later to explain that same child who is outside of the womb. Did you realize, according to scripture, that God knows us while we are still inside of our mother’s womb? He knows us. No one has ever seen us.

Why, even the mother, who only a half inch away has the child within her, does not even know, except for a physical test, whether it’s a boy or a girl. But according to scripture, God knows us while we are still in the womb. Jeremiah one, verse four and five tells us, Jeremiah speaking now, the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you. That the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah was known by God before he was in the womb. When he came into that womb, and when he left that womb, he was still in the mind of God, a person.

Did you realize, too, that according to scripture, one of the greatest joys that we experience as Christians is to receive new life in Jesus Christ, to receive his spirit well. Did you realize that the spirit of God, that Holy Spirit, can bestowed and given to an infant who is still in the womb? John the Baptist, we are told, was filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother’s womb. Or perhaps you wonder about that child in the womb, and your mind might turn to the book of Galatians, chapter one, verse 15. For here we find a very interesting reference, because according to this text, we learn that God sets aside the child within the womb for God’s service.

Paul says, but when he who set me apart even before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles. One thing that Paul, after becoming a Christian, was convinced of was that God had a plan for him, a plan that did not begin in old age, but a plan that began even while he was in the womb, that he would be consecrated for that service, and even before being in the womb, that God had a plan for this child who would grow to be a man.

But perhaps one of the most important pictures for us of the importance of the womb and what happens within that womb of a mother is to remember that Jesus, our Lord and our savior chose to be born in the womb of Mary. Shall we say that while he was in the womb that he did not exist? Shall we say that he had no identity? Why? Luke 131 reminds us of the words of Gabriel to Mary, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high.

I believe, even from a casual reading of scripture, that it is biblically inescapable that the child within a womb is fashioned by God for purposes that God would have for every individual that God anoints, God decides upon service. God knows the life of that child and that anyone who would enter to tamper is in fact destroying what God has planned. It is biblically inescapable that the child within the womb has, in fact, the image of God imprinted upon him or her. Now, this is not just my opinion. The history of the church stands behind this belief. Did you realize that it was not until the revelation of God to the Jews that abortion became a controversial subject? As we look at history, we find that the Greeks practiced abortion. The Romans practiced abortion.

Why, it was even considered a noble deed to take if it would be a newborn girl and to place her out on a hill to die. That was the world in which the Christian lived. But it was first the jew who received the testament of God in the Old Testament and saw the importance of the image of God. And it was the Jewish people who first said, abortion is wrong. And they stand as the unique group in that primitive history of man to speak out against abortion. But they were quickly supported when Jesus Christ came and many began to follow Christ. And the unique quality of those first century christians was that they were opposed unanimously to abortion.

Clement, who lived in the second century, said this, we should not kill by various means the human offspring for these women who, in order to hide their immorality, use abortive drugs, abort at the same time their human feelings. Athenagorus, one of the Church fathers of the second century, said this while he was speaking to Marcus Aurelius. What reason would we have to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderers and will have to give an account of it to God? Tertullian, the great church Father, who influenced the history of the church, perhaps unlike any other in his day except Augustine, said this. In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb.

Centuries later, John Calvin said, the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of its life. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it comes to light. I think the history of the church shows that the first 19 centuries of the church have stood in strong protest against the practice of abortion. It is not until our own time that the church has, in fact not only stopped speaking against abortion, but in some cases supports abortion. This is new to church history. Well, what is the current status of abortion in America?

Since 1973, Roe versus Wade, there have been some 15 million abortions. Just to get that figure in perspective, that means the entire population of New York City gone. It means every man, woman and child in the state of New Jersey has been killed over the past twelve years. There are some 4250 abortions performed per day, which means the city of Princeton wiped out in five days. Of every 1000 births in the United States of America, 359 are aborted. Abortion has become the most practiced medical procedure in our hospitals and clinics across the United States, the number one medical practice. There are many objections given to those who would be opposed to abortion. Perhaps one of the most common refrains is that the child, in fact, is not a child. And that myth still is around.

Bernard Nathanson, who himself was the founding father of abortion in America, has since changed his mind. He wrote a book called Aborting America. Nathanson is Jewish. Nathanson has no christian belief. He has come to the conclusion that abortion is wrong simply from medical, for medical reasons. He says, and I quote, I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had in fact, presided over 60,000 deaths. There is no longer serious doubt in my mind, says Bernard Nathanson, that human life exists within the womb from the very onset of pregnancy. Life is an interdependent phenomenon. It begins in the uterus and ends at death. Abortion must be seen as the interruption of a process which otherwise would have produced a citizen of the world. Another objection to those who would oppose abortion isn’t it unfair to bring an unwanted child into the world?

Well, I think we live in a day when there is no such thing as an unwanted child. Our adoption lines bear clear testimony to the fact that any child that would be born within these United States will find a home, that there is no such thing as an unwanted child. Literally. There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting to receive in adoption a child? Well, there are some who say abortion will prevent child abuse. On the surface, it sounds like an interesting suggestion. The facts do not bear it out. Dr. Bernard Farber, sociologist from Arizona, state ethicist Paul Ramsey from Princeton, both. And there are mounting physicians and sociologists who see this connection, see that there has become a connection, philosophically in the United States because of the violence that we inflict in abortion, with the growing number of child abuse cases.

The thought being that if it is now acceptable to destroy a child while it is yet unborn, then isn’t it philosophically all right to abuse a child, although I don’t kill it while it’s living? And the fact that there are now over 2 million reported child abuse cases in America, a phenomenon that was virtually unheard of until recent, the recent decade. Well, there are some who say, wouldn’t it better if we know that a child is to be born handicapped, that we prevent that child from being born? I think perhaps this is one of the most monstrous lies that has been placed upon the church of Jesus Christ. How often have I heard people say, it really doesn’t matter to me if it’s a boy or a girl, just so long as it’s healthy? A Christian can never say that.

For a child to be born handicapped, for a child to be born without a limb, for a child to be born blind or deaf, do we then say that God has failed? Do you remember in Exodus, chapter four, when Moses did not want to speak for the Jewish people, he said, I stutter. It was God who said, who has made man’s mouth? Who makes man dumb? For we ask this in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to a firm foundation presented by Princeton Ministries. This programming is supported by you, the listener. You may go to our website, princetonministries.org, or send your donation to Princeton Ministries, post office box 2171, Princeton, New Jersey 8543. That’s Princeton Ministries, post office box 2171, Princeton, New Jersey 8543. The Lord bless you, and Dr. Smith looks forward to hearing from you. We would like to thank Rone’s web development company for making this webcast possible. You can find their link at the bottom of our website, princetonministries.org.