ABORTION: THE ABSENCE OF NATURAL AFFECTION

This article is Part Two in a series on Abortion. You can scroll down to read the first one. ---Billy Long

THE ABSENCE OF NATURAL AFFECTION

"WITH CHILD"

It is not insignificant that the Bible translators in the Old and New Testaments translated the Hebrew and Greek terms for pregnancy as being “with child.” The babe in the womb is a child…not a mass of tissue. The Bible says that Mary’s cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant had conceived a “son.” It was a son…not a blob of tissue. John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit, even as a babe, in his mother’s womb. Elizabeth, when she heard Mary’s greeting, was also filled with the Holy Spirit, and the babe John leaped within her womb. He was a person even before birth, and he supernaturally responded to the presence of the Son of God in Mary’s womb. (Luke 1:15, 36, 44; Matthew 1:18; Matthew 1:23).

God is the Father of spirits. Human procreation produces a physical body, but the real person is the human spirit that God creates and breathes into us when we are conceived. Psalm 139 reveals that our spirit along with God’s plan and purpose are given to us even before we are born. The Lord forms our inward parts (our spirit) and covers us in the womb. The Psalmist tells us that God “sees our substance, being yet unformed. And all the days fashioned for us were written in His book when as yet there were none of them.” We are trampling on sacred ground when we assault the babe in the womb. It is God’s nursery, a place where He is at work. (Ecclesiastes 3:20; 12:7; Psalm 139).

Jesus clearly manifested His love for little children when they brought them to Him. He took them up in His arms, laid His hands upon them, and blessed them. He also gave a stern warning. “Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” These sobering words should cause us to stand in the fear of God regarding how we treat them, even in the womb. (Mark 10: 13-16, Mark 9: 36-37, 42).

 

LACKING NATURAL AFFECTION

One of the characteristics of the latter days is that men and women will lack natural affection.  A people who forsake the Lord will at best become callous and indifferent, and at worse brutal, cruel, and barbaric. These adjectives describe abortion at any phase of pregnancy. How can killing a baby after it is born be anything but selfish, cruel, and brutal. A child is tortured and killed at any phase of pregnancy.  It goes against nature to blind our eyes to this disgraceful procedure. 2 Timothy 3:1-3; Romans 1: 31

CRUEL

A society without God can be cruel, heartless, unfeeling, and sadistic with no love for family or neighbor and no compassion or sympathy for the suffering. The nation that can kill babies will eventually progress to euthanasia, killing the infirm and the elderly. A friend of mine once said, “The generation that approved and legalized abortion may be the generation that will themselves be the first victims of the nation’s approval of euthanasia,” which will lead to the killing of any person or group that society deems unworthy to live. (Deuteronomy 28: 50).

The Apostle Paul uses the word “perilous” to describe the latter days (2 Timothy 3:1-3). This same word is translated “Fierce” in describing the Gadarene demoniac who was wild in the tombs cutting himself and breaking chains (Matthew 8:28). There are many historical examples that show the Apostle Paul was correct in his description of man’s potential for evil.   

The Nazis in World War II slew babies along with innocent men, women, and children in their prison death camps. Then when the war ended, Stalin allowed his soldiers and the civilian mobs in areas of eastern Europe occupied by the communists to kill innocent men, women, and children of German descent. These were innocent citizens who just happened to have German ancestry. The eastern European reprisals after the war were as bad as the murders that took place in the Nazi SS camps during the war. A documentary on the post-war slaughter that occurred is entitled “The Savage Peace.”

King Herod, being threatened by the birth of Jesus, sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to put to death all the male babies from newborn up to two years old. There are groups in our society today who advocate similar practice but in the respectable cover of the medical profession.

These examples show the potential degeneration and descent into cold, hard evil that any society is capable of when it starts down the “slippery slope.” Who knows how far this process will go in finding victims, and where will it stop? Without God, the heart can harden and grow in its beast-like propensities. Unless cultivated by an intimate relationship with Jesus through prayer and the written word of God, the Christian’s heart tends to harden. But an unbelieving person who does not know God and who despises His word has the potential to harden his heart, lose natural affection, and tolerate practices that are unspeakably callous. Governed by self-interest, selfishness, and self-centeredness people become desensitized to the pain and needs of others, and in arrogance and rebellion they become tools of the devil. This type of society tends to follow the Apostles Paul’s description of the progressive slide from passive complacency to the arrogant display and bold presentation of sin in its fullness.  Abortion has progressed (or rather degenerated) from initially killing what they claimed was “only a blob of tissue” to the current brazen and shameless proposal to kill the baby at birth and even after birth. This is one mark of a society moving toward the “fullness of iniquity” referred to in the Bible.

The Fullness of Iniquity

Biblical examples show us that God sends judgment when iniquity reaches its fullness. At that point the judgment of God is inevitable…unless there is nationwide repentance. The acceptance and approval of child sacrifice are among the abominations that will precipitate that judgment. When Israel entered the promised land, the iniquity of Canaan had reached its fullness. It was filled with every type of abomination including child sacrifice.  Leviticus 18:25 says, “For the land is defiled; therefore, I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out it inhabitants.”
 My guess is that unless there is repentance on a national scale, the judgment of God will fall on our nation for killing over 65 million babies in and out of the womb. The practice will then stop…but at great cost.

“Behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven. And all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts.”  Malachi 4:1

“For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it?” Joel 2:11.

“Who shall not fear You, O Lord…For all nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments are made manifest.”  Revelations 15: 4.