Written by O. Palmer Robertson |
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
The Word of the new covenant gospel must forever be proclaimed. Through all the ages and even into eternity, the gospel must be verbally declared. Particularly by those select people called and commissioned to the gospel ministry, the Word shall be spoken. It must be articulated for people to hear. But even further, by all the disciples, all the brothers and sisters, all the followers of Jesus as their Lord and Christ, the gospel must be spoken. Nothing can ever replace the speaking out of the good news of the new covenant. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” Speak it out! Proclaim it to the nations! This spoken Word embodies the true and abiding hope of the world.

Introduction
In the progress of redemptive history, the preaching of the Apostles preceded any writing of new covenant scriptures by at least a generation. The apostolic preaching of the gospel began immediately after the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, which would have been about 33 A.D. But the first writings of new covenant scriptures came approximately twenty years later, with Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians in about 50 A.D. For approximately a whole generation the newly forming church of Jesus Christ depended for its inspired directives primarily on the preachings of the Apostles. The God-inspired new covenant canonical writings were not completed for another 40 to 50 years, until about 90 to 100 A.D. The extent to which this original proclamation of the gospel permeates the book of Acts testifies to its significance.[i] The writings of the old covenant scriptures continued to provide direction for the church’s self-definition. But the proper application of these prophetic scriptures in a new covenant context depended heavily on the ongoing analysis of their significance as provided by the preaching of the Apostles.
The question may be appropriately asked, Why did God order that these years must pass before the inspired scriptures of the new covenant could finally be produced for the direction of the church?  Several observations may be offered in response to this question.
(1) Time for “Occasions” (“Situational Circumstances”) To Arise
The new covenant documents, even the four gospels, must be read as occasional documents. That is, each of the writings of the New Testament were composed in response to certain concrete circumstances in the life-experience of God’s new covenant community. Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses in the most stringent terms one of the first and most persistent heretical challenges to the true Christian gospel. His first letter to the Corinthians deals with numerous problems related to a proper Christian lifestyle, including party spirit which divides the body, sexual immorality, discipline in the church, the use and abuse of spiritual gifts, the freedom of the Christian conscience, order in worship, the nature of the bodily resurrection, and the collection of offerings. His later pastoral epistles address the question of the maintenance of the “faith once delivered to the saints” as well as church traditions that must extend beyond the apostolic age. 
All these challenging circumstances would not present themselves within each of the various churches immediately upon the first re-formation of a people of God under the auspices of the new covenant. Lengths of time would have to elapse before all the “occasional” challenges of the emerging church would present themselves. In its proper time, the apostolic response to differing challenges to the well-being of the church would anticipate many aspects of the subsequent, prolonged history of Christ’s church. In the meantime, the public proclamation of the basic apostolic gospel could and must run to the ends of the earth.
(2) Time to Allow the Old Testament to Establish Its Foundational Role
As the speeches of the Apostles demonstrate so clearly, the faith and life of the new covenant people of God must rest squarely on the revelations found in the old covenant scriptures. With few exceptions, the messages of the Apostles recorded in the book of Acts look back to the prophecies of the Old Testament as the basis for their proclamation. A delay in the formation of the canonical scriptures of the new covenant would keep the way clear for this principle to be firmly established in behalf of future generations living under the new covenant. If the significance of the old covenant scriptures is widely ignored or altogether lost among numerous groups of Christians today despite the clear directives found in the preaching of the Apostles, how much more would their significance be obscured if the new covenant people of God had had access to a completed new covenant canon immediately upon the birth of the church? So it was quite appropriate that the gospel found its first formation through the apostolic preaching of the gospel in clear dependence on the old covenant scriptures apart from a completed canonical scriptures of the new covenant. 
(3) Time for “Chosen Witnesses” to Confirm Their Testimony
So long as eyewitness reports by “chosen witnesses” of the realities of the gospel were still available, the need for an inspired, written record of the new covenant regarding the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Christ was not so pressing (Acts 10:39-41).
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When the lusts of the world are conceived they deceive many to carry out sin. Sin when it brings forth fruit leads to death. Millions upon millions of children have died and are still dying because parents and abortion providers have been deceived by lies of the wicked one and are acting out those lies in the murder and killing of their own and others’ children.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days… (Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NKJV).
The American Thinker recently posted an article republished on many Christian websites titled “What Hath Roe Wrought?” The author notes reasons abortion clinics are closing and Americans are turning against abortion. The reasons include studies documenting harm to many women from abortion; too many abortions driven by designer baby goals; and the profit generated through abortion. Recently at an Atlanta abortion clinic as a pregnant woman entered for an abortion, a woman standing against abortion called out, “You are a great mom! This procedure will hurt you because many women regret their abortion.” Many today are rightfully hoping and praying for abortion to end, but the way it is being opposed is with wisdom of this world rather than wisdom from the Lord.
The Lord does not call abortion one of the seven things He hates (1) because of the documented harm to the mothers who murder their own children – the Lord hates abortion because it is an abomination to Him. Christians oppose abortion because we are in a spiritual warfare against sin and abortion is sin. The articles that follow seek to frame abortion in its true context, that is the biblical context, so that the people of God might be thoroughly equipped in their prayer lives and evangelism to those on the road to death. In this manner, the Word of God will go out faithfully, and men and women will be saved for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
Abortion: Its Roots
“Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” (James 1:15 KJV)
These words of the Lord written by James trace the origins of all sin. Sin is conceived by lust and therefore the root of abortion is lust (2).
Lust of the Flesh
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines bloodlust as the “desire for bloodshed.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “enjoyment of being violent or watching other people be violent.” At some risk of lowering the level of scholarship, perhaps the Urban Dictionary defines the term most accurately in our context: “an uncontrollable desire to kill people.” The bloodlust of abortion is the insatiable appetite for the shedding of innocent blood. We often see this bloodlust in politicians and abortion promoters who speak so cruelly of children being killed. Rather than crying out, “Enough, enough,” they cry out “More, more!”
The recent U.S. house bill H.R. 3755 (dubbed by some the Unrestricted Warfare on Children Act) includes this line: “Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion services, has always been deficient in the United States for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) and their families.”
In Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, and many other cities, more African American children are murdered by abortion than are born alive. A large portion of politicians believe murdering half of all Black babies is not enough, it is deficient!
There are three things that are never satisfied, four never say, “Enough!” The grave, the barren womb, the earth that is not satisfied with water – and the fire never says, “Enough!” (Proverbs 30:15-16)
A devouring fire is never satisfied. Burning half the fuel is not enough – it wants more! A fire seeks to burn all and only goes out by reason of loss of fuel. So are those who hate innocent life. One half of minority children being slaughtered is “deficient.” When will it be enough? There is only one way – when all are consumed and there are no more to murder.
Lust of the Eyes
The concept of devouring fire and abortion is not a new idea. In ancient Canaan, there was a horrific idol named Molech.
God warned His people Israel against engaging in the barbaric idolatry of Molech in several places including Leviticus 18:21 and 20:3-5. And yet, the people quickly fell into the sin of worshipping Molech along with the Baals, Chemosh, and Ashteroths who seem to have utilized overlapping practices of requiring blood at the hands of their worshippers (3).
In I Kings 11:7, Solomon in his multiplication of wives built a high place for Molech outside Jerusalem. In II Kings 21:6 King Manasseh of Judah offered his son through fire as a sacrifice to false gods. Molech, required the shedding of the innocent blood of children at the hands of their parents. The blood was shed by burning the child alive in the devouring fire of the idol.
12th century Rabbi Schlomo Yitzchak wrote a commentary on Topheth (Molech) who is mentioned in Jeremiah 7:31 and gave this description of the practice:
“Topheth is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”
This horrific practice of which the Lord says, “I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart,” was one of the primary reasons that Judah was destroyed by Babylon. The lust of the eyes towards the idols of the world and their worship always comes with the shedding of innocent blood, one of the seven things the Lord hates (Proverbs 6:16-17). Similar practices are recorded throughout history in places such as Carthage and portions of the Roman empire.
Today, as children are sacrificed to the gods of this world, their parents turn up loud music in their cars or on their headphones to drown out the words of God presented by Christians on the street warning them of the cries of their little ones that call to for their parents and their Creator for help and protection! So it was many years ago as the babies screamed in the flaming arms of the idol Molech that the priests beat the drums and blew the trumpets drowning out the cries of agony.
Pride of Life 
“Reproductive justice!” “Bodily autonomy!” “International human rights!” “Women’s health!” Such are the rallying cries of the wicked as they lead their followers to murder their own flesh and blood. Like the “Answer to the Jewish Question” of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, so the euphemisms of our day are the death sentences of millions of innocents. Why?
“The wicked in his pride persecutes the poor” (Psalm 10:2 NKJV).
Lord willing we will consider Psalm 10 in more detail in future articles but to introduce the chapter and its teaching, the wicked in their pride think God doesn’t know, see, or care what they do and through vain words they carry out atrocities on the innocent. This foolish pride is a root of the sin of abortion.
Abortions: Its Cause
When lust conceives it brings forth sin. When sin is finished it brings death. The lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life have conceived together to bring forth sin in the form of abortion. Their fruit has largely been born through deceit.
In my experience at several Atlanta abortion mills, few if any parents enroute to murder their children have ever thought about shedding innocent blood. They have never thought about minority abortions as a percentage of the minority population. They may have never heard of “bodily autonomy,” and in the many conversations with folks, I have never heard that term used in their own defense. What they have said are things like this:

If the life in the womb seems to be an inconvenience then the right thing to do is to abort.
There is no moral issue with abortion as the baby is not “viable.”
The mom’s choice to abort is a valid choice.
God understands their difficult decision and will accept or at least forgive them if it is wrong.
It is better to end the baby’s life than to lose friendships over pregnancy.
It is better to abort the child than to raise the child without a father.
No one can judge their decision, as God says, “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

What these ideas have in common is that each is false. Those who believe these things and practice their belief have been deceived by the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Jesus said,
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44 NKJV).
When the lusts of the world are conceived they deceive many to carry out sin. Sin when it brings forth fruit leads to death. Millions upon millions of children have died and are still dying because parents and abortion providers have been deceived by lies of the wicked one and are acting out those lies in the murder and killing of their own and others’ children.
This is what the devil subtly came to do: steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Those that participate in such murder are demonstrating two things: 1) They are children of their father the devil; and 2) They do not have eternal life abiding in them, for murderers “shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).
Abortion: Its Defeat
And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (I Corinthians 6:11 NKJV).
There are many individuals and groups today that call themselves “pro life.” Some mean by this that they are for laws that limit and restrict abortion. Others mean that they want mothers to know that they have other options besides abortion. Still others consider mothers to be victims of abortion and want to help rescue them. None of these ideas will hinder the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. They will not defeat Satan, his deceit, and his deceived children from bearing forth the fruit of their sin, which is death. There is only one way that sin is defeated and it is not found in politicians, laws, or slogans. Sin is defeated by a person whose name is Jesus Christ.
To those who are living in sin and murder, deceiving and being deceived, the Lord calls out from Heaven:
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the LORD, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword”; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken (Isaiah 1:16-20).
The defeat of abortion and all sin comes from the one who bore my sin on the cross and shed His blood for me, even Jesus Christ. God has made “Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (II Corinthians 5:21). Christ Jesus came to save the murderer. The one who was a captive to Satan and sin Christ came to set him free.
Christ did not sugarcoat sin or tell people their sin was ok as so many are apt to do today, but He came telling them it was evil, of their father the devil, and He could set them free. How can sinners, murderers, evil men and women be set free? By repenting of their sins and believing in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. For this reason Jesus came into the world, to set the prisoner free!
The faithful proclamation of the full counsel of God and of His holiness, righteousness, perfection, glory, sacrifice, redemption, and salvation – in other words, the gospel of Jesus Christ – will defeat abortion. As the gospel goes out, lost souls are saved. As lost souls are saved, the day of the Lord is hastened. As lost souls are saved, they and their children live. As children live, the abortion doctors have no more work to carry out. Sin is defeated by Christ and His glorious gospel.
Go Ye Therefore!
Many people view the proclamation of Christ and His Word to the lost and dying at abortion mills as folly. Just before Christmas I was surrounded by a group from another religion who told me, “God’s Word that you’re reading cuts people to their hearts. We don’t want to do that. We want to show them love.” A group then exceeding thirty people stood on the sidewalk and sang Jingle Bells and the 12 Days of Christmas as mothers carried their children into the modern day temple of Molech to pour out their blood a sacrifice to their own idols and lusts.
Let us not be deceived, the world and its religions, even sadly, many in various pro-life movements, are no friends of the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are no friends of preaching when it is preaching of the cross. They consider it foolish and powerless. Instead they desire men’s wisdom. Fifty years of men’s wisdom later, abortion is alive and well. It is high time for the gospel of Jesus Christ (4) to be preached and to give no quarter to those who would seek to stop it.
Christ sent us into the world not with wisdom of words but to preach the gospel!
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”  Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,  but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (I Corinthians 1:18-25 NKJV).
The Kingdom of Heaven has come, Satan is bound, Christ is ruling, all power in Heaven and on earth has been given unto Him, He is destroying sin and setting free those who are slaves to sin, and He is doing it by the proclamation of His Word and by His Holy Spirit. Here is how abortion is defeated – by Jesus Christ the Lord and giver of life. Go out to the fortresses of Satan and proclaim freedom to the prisoners through that everlasting Word that cuts to the heart of men for their salvation. Christ is for you in this! Who can be against you? Make Christ known, call all to repentance and faith, and Christ will be glorified, wickedness will subside, souls will be saved, and children on the path to death will live.

“These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood…” Proverbs 6:16-17
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” I John 2:15-17
See I Kings 18:25-29 as the prophets of Baal cut and butchered themselves over their altar. See also II Kings 2:26-27 when the Moabites who worshipped Chemosh were in a fix in battle the king offered up his oldest son as an offering spilling his blood all around.
The gospel message can be read of further here, here, and here. The gospel call can be read here and listened to here (Spurgeon) and here.

Ben Stahl is a member of Redeemer Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Doraville, Ga. This article is used with permission.

Written by David W. Hall |
Thursday, July 27, 2023
There is strength in the PCA. It is not time for a funeral. Instead, it is time for a sober assessment and perhaps some correction of purpose and strategy statements. Considering these dismal performances (if that is one’s assessment), one might ask, “How has the PCA grown?” That answer could be the most positive thing to come from this study. The conclusion is that the PCA has had a strong and consistent growth, numerically and financially from the churches in the under-300 category. 

Pastor David W. Hall has given us the first published history of the inaugural 50 years of the Presbyterian Church in America. Single copies are available for purchase from Amazon.com, and discount pricing is available on bulk orders from the author.
Below is an excerpt charting the growth achieved and challenges overcome by the PCA following the joining and receiving of the RPCES.
PCA Church Growth, 1985-1989

Excerpts from a mid-1980s PCA document reflect the guiding principles for the desired PCA growth in the 1980s. The 1984 Assembly approved these purposes for our foreign mission board, which would also become operational for much of our home missions works in the ‘80s: “To reach . . . peoples with God’s Good News through the testimony of church-planting teams . . . Success will be judged by observable church growth.” (Min14GA, 346)
That Assembly heard that the term “observable” in the above purpose statement was to be understood as “that which is describable (possibly measurable) to such an extent that progress toward the accomplishment of our purpose can be compared to previous expectations” (Ibid, 355), and that “church growth” could be understood as “the final test of our ministry. The local body must grow in an observable fashion, qualitatively and quantitatively. We must be able to establish a causal relationship between . . . personnel and church growth.” (Ibid, 356)
Amendments to the package from the floor suggested that it was clear to most of the commissioners at that Assembly that this mission agency had embraced the numerical growth school of thought prevalent at the time. That this was so overt can also be discerned by comparing the final action of that Assembly on this recommendation. Rather than approving that entire recommended package, the Assembly amended this attempt from the floor to read finally: “To reach . . . peoples with God’s Good News through the testimony of church-planting teams . . . Success in observable church growth will be an important means of evaluation” (p. 355).
The Assembly further rejected the exclusively numeric standard of evaluation in these words, which were approved as amendments from the floor: “It is therefore our responsibility both to sow broadly and to reap the whitened fields . . . there may be exceptions, but under such church growth is the normal indicator by which we . . . will evaluate our effectiveness. . .  Obedience to the Scriptures is the final test of our ministry. Such obedience will result in God’s blessing, which by the graciousness of our God may often be observed in qualitative and quantitative church growth.” (p. 125)
Thus, this mission purpose statement was diluted away from the total identification of numerical church growth as the observable manifestation of God’s blessing to the admission that such numerical church growth serving, at least as an “indicator” and the expected norm.
Below is a summary of a study to evaluate how well one of the PCA’s leading missions agency, Mission to North America (hereafter MNA), has done according to those criteria. MNA should be grateful to the commissioners who amended the original purpose statement (as should MTW), for these statistics reveal that not only would MNA have failed to reach such standards as proposed initially, but further that numerical church growth in the PCA has not even matched the diminished predictions as amended from the floor. In fact, after 1989, the PCA may be in a non-growth modality for the first time in its young life. If so, it is hoped that the appropriate agencies will hasten to make methodological adjustments to remedy some strategy problems.
Most of the non-repeatable transfer growth from other denominations (chiefly the PCUS) has vanished, and the atypical absorption of the RPCES was history, having been completed in 1982. With no imminent scenario of absorbing the OPC, for the years 1985-1989, the growth of the PCA has been measurable in terms of constants, which before 1985 were in flux. In short, the last 5-6 years had provided the PCA with a typical pattern of growth or slow growth. At the earliest opportunity, key strategists would desire to look at this honestly to make recommendations wisely for the future.
With the unmistakable warning signal of slowing growth, a trend for five years or more would not be ignored, after having proven its trend line. Planners for the future of our denomination will want to give this phenomenon (which hopefully will be reversed) attention sooner rather than later. Stewardship requires that we consider the measurable statistics in the lean years as well as in the fat years. Such “stewardship” measurability factor was given as part of the original justification for the emphasis on measurability. This recent trend line should call the strategists attention.
This study is one such attempt to ask if it is empirically justified for leadership to advocate the imitation of the largest churches within the PCA, as is normally and routinely done. We now have a long enough period to put forth some reliable statistics to compare our measurable growth. Given the available data, one might begin with the most prominent churches and ask: “Have the largest churches in the PCA grown greater than, equal to, or less than the denomination-wide average for the five years 1985-1989 and 1989?
From a comparison of the changes in large and medium-sized churches for the five years, the net number of churches in the 300-900 membership range is mainly unchanged, as is the net number of churches with over 300 members in the whole denomination. The year 1989 and the five-year period (1985-1989) saw little change in the total number of churches in this bracket which could be studied. Thus, the PCA (neither in the one-year nor the five-year slice) is notadding a gross number of churches to the pool as targeted.
Yet the most startling statistic is that the growth rate of the PCA has steadily declined from 5.4% to 5.0% to 4.0% to 2.9%, and most recently to 1.2% in 1989. When asked about the reasons, no one seems prepared to offer the two most likely explanations for such a declining growth rate.
The two most obvious reasons are that (1) one-time bonuses, such as the J&R with the RPCES in 1982 and transfer growth from the PCUS, are non-repeatable, and (2) the top quartile of the membership, contained in these largest churches has performed more poorly than the rest of the church. Without this inhibitor of growth from the top 25%, growth would have otherwise continued in the 5% region. Whatever the other possible reasons, these statistics could either be ignored to our detriment or taken seriously and used as a stimulus for policy adjustments before it is too late.
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