An Appeal to Southern Baptists to Support the Pro-life Cause
If you are a Southern Baptist and you care about the pro-life cause in the SBC, now is the time to make your voice heard. Speak up for the incremental gains we have made over the last several decades, and keep pushing the ball down the field until we get into the endzone.
I am writing this short essay as an appeal to Southern Baptists who care about the pro-life cause. Right now, there is an effort underway by what I believe to be a tiny minority in the SBC to reverse the SBC’s longstanding commitment to the pro-life cause. They call themselves “Abolitionists,” but they are not the only ones who support the abolition of abortion. All sides of this debate want to see abortion abolished. The Abolitionists, however, condemn and repudiate the pro-life movement’s efforts to restrict abortion in whatever measure possible.
After the Roe decision in 1973, the pro-life movement eventually coalesced around an incrementalist strategy to abolish abortion. Pro-lifers realized that because Roe prevented them from passing laws to outright end abortion, they would have to take whatever ground they could to save as many unborn lives as possible. So we have tried to pass parental notification laws. We’ve supported the Hyde Amendment to prevent taxpayer funded abortions. We’ve supported fetal heartbeat laws in an attempt to outlaw abortion. We supported and passed a ban on the reprehensible procedure known as partial birth abortion. Etc.
The so-called Abolitionist movement condemns all of these measures as compromises with evil. The abolitionists even oppose any exception to save the life of a mother. The only laws or public policies they support are ones that completely abolish abortion all at once. Anything short of that fails to honor the humanity of the unborn. Not only do Abolitionists oppose pro-life policies, they also publicly condemn and shame pro-lifers as compromisers with evil.
To use a football analogy, pro-lifers would love to have a 100-yard touchdown run. But if that isn’t possible, then pro-lifers are eager and willing to take 5-10 yard runs in a sustained drive down the field toward the same end. Abolitionists only accept 100-yard touchdown runs. Anything short a 100-yard touchdown run should be condemned and repudiated as a grave compromise with evil. That’s the difference between the pro-life movement and so-called Abolitionism. It’s not about the final goal of abolishing abortion but about how to get there. Pro-lifers will take whatever ground they can get. Abolitionists are all-or-nothing.
If we had followed an Abolitionist strategy, we would not be on the cusp of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The Mississippi fetal heartbeat law that is the basis for the Supreme Court’s recently-leaked Dobbs decision is a pro-life, incrementalist law. Abolitionists oppose that law and thereby support an all-or-nothing approach that would have undermined the most significant pro-life victory in two generations.
Southern Baptists have expressed themselves clearly decade after decade in resolution after resolution to be on the side of the pro-life movement. Southern Baptist resolutions have long supported incrementalist measures to abolish abortion. We have put ourselves on the side of those moving the ball down the field 5-10 yards at a time. We would welcome a 100-yard dash for the endzone. But short of that, we’ve been more than willing to support measures to take whatever ground we can get. That is why we have supported legislation to outlaw partial birth abortion, to keep the Hyde Amendment in place, to pass parental notification laws, etc. Our record on this goes back at least 41 years.
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Moses Raising and Lowering His Hands
As we zoom out from this story and behold the canonical trajectory of types and shadows, we can say that Moses typifies Christ, the one who would ascend the mountain and lift his hands to a cross to accomplish victory. Though wearied and weakened physically, the Lord Jesus prevailed because he acted with divine authority.
I’ve argued previously that the New Testament does not identify all Old Testament types. I’ve illustrated this point by discussing the famous example of Rahab’s cord and whether that cord has anything to do with the cross.
In this post I want to consider the narrative in Exodus 17:8–16, when the Israelites defeat the Amalekites as Moses raises his hands with the staff of God. How might we teach this passage in light of the person and work of Christ?
Consider the scene itself in Exodus 17:8–16. The Israelites had to fight the Amalekites. Moses told Joshua, “I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand” (17:9). We’ve seen this staff before. The “staff of God” was involved in the exodus plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and—most recently in Exodus 17—in the striking of the rock from which water flowed.
So up the mountain Moses went. But then we get an intriguing description of his movements. When Moses’s hands were raised the Israelites prevailed, but the Amalekites prevailed whenever he lowered his hands (17:11). Why would the position of Moses’s hands have anything to do with winning or losing the battle below? Because Moses’s hands held the staff of God. The point was the staff, not Moses’s hands. As shown in previous stories in Exodus, the staff represented the divine authority and power of God.
As the battle unfolded below, Moses was on the mountain acting as the mediator and intercessor for the Israelites, raising the staff of God that symbolized divine power and authority.
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Why Does God Speak Clearly? The Clarity of Scripture Part 2
Every time you open the Bible and understand what it says, you are basking in the goodness of our clear-speaking God. The clarity of God’s Word is a testimony to his kindness, his love, and his generosity. God wants to make himself known to you! He wants you to understand his Word! God communicates clearly with us because “he is good and does good” (Ps 119:68). Praise the Lord that his Word is clear because he is so good!
The Bible testifies that you can read the Bible. In other words, the Scriptures are clear. Unambiguous. Intelligible. Understandable. This conviction about the clarity of Scripture is essential to the Christian life and has been the steady assumption of the church throughout history.
But any doctrine of Scripture must always be traced to its source in the doctrine of God. God’s Word is, in part, as God is. Why do you talk the way that you do? Because of who you are. Why does God speak the way that he does? Because of who he is. Which means that if we affirm or deny the clarity of Scripture, we’re necessarily saying something about the character of God.
So why does God speak clearly in his Word? What does the clarity of Scripture teach us about God? For that answer, we turn back to the beginning.
Created to Communicate
At the genesis of mankind, we get a glimpse into the clarity of God’s Word. God said on the sixth day of creation, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26). Who is God talking to? Not the antelope or the trilobite. “Us.” According to the text, the persons of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit – engaged in a divine deliberation when they created the first people. And the decision of the Godhead was to make man “after our likeness.” Unlike the antelope and the trilobite, mankind would be made in God’s image.
While there’s plenty of debate about exactly what’s included in the reality of “the image of God” in mankind, one parallel is clear: God made man, like him, to communicate. As the Trinity, God is inherently a communicator. The Father perfectly radiates his image in the Son (Heb 1:3), the Son joyfully glories in the Father for all eternity (John 17:5), and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son (John 15:26). God is a communicator, and so man, made in God’s image, also communicates.
In Genesis 2:16-17, we find the first recorded communication between God and man. Still on the sixth day, after God had formed Adam from the dust but before he formed Eve from Adam’s rib, God speaks to Adam and says, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” God not only communicates within himself, but he speaks to his creatures as well. And in this first sentence spoken from God to man, notice that God expects Adam to understand. Adam’s life depends on it! This means that out of the box, God made mankind capable of both listening to, understanding, and even speaking with language (Gen 2:23).
God made man and God gave him language. Human language is a gift from God. Words and sentences are not tools that homo sapiens evolved into or developed through burps and grunts over millennia. On humanity’s birthday, we could hear, we could speak, and we could understand.
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Challenging History-Making Days
Here we have an inkling of the great obstacle facing western Christianity. How clever the evil one is; he penetrates the political, sexual morality, and scientific realms in order to blind and enslave mankind. Sadly, the Church itself does not stand unscathed in this attack. Fortunately, there is power to the truth, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” (I John 4: 4)
To any with the slightest interest in history, we have just passed through perhaps one of the most tumultuous history-making days of this century. To observe the dismantling of Communism (Marxist-Leninist style) around the world, almost without a shot being fired, is both awesome and baffling at the same time. To the amateur historian, it is either the most remarkable and miraculous event to take place or it is the greatest deception ever yet to be played out on the human race. Only time will reveal what is the truth behind this seemingly crumbling empire. What a comfort to know that God knows.
As our attention shifts from Eastern Europe to Communist China, Cuba, and Korea, we can only wonder what the future holds for these nations. More importantly, we should be certain as Christians to turn our eyes upon Jesus, trusting Him to forge ahead with His wonderful and merciful plan of redemption for all peoples in such days as these. If Communism is truly passing, the vacuum must be filled with something. Western civilization, with its permissive, pornographic, violent, drug-hallucinating societies, can only shudder at the possibilities.
True students of the Word of God and of prophecy know that the only light flashed on the future indicates ominous, evil days before the end comes and our Savior returns in glory. In all our wonder and elation, it behooves us to be wary, perhaps even trembling, as to what great evil crouches at the threshold of the future to rise next. If ever there were days when Christians should pray without ceasing, those days are now! Next to being a student of Scripture, being a student of history provides insights which both infidel and ignorant lack. The one reveals the will of God, and the other the will to power of various evil men.
Paul Johnson, an insightful and investigative British historian, offers perceptive clues as to from where modern history is coming to where it is advancing. He notes that “The nineteenth century saw the climax of the philosophy of personal responsibility—the notion that each of us is individually accountable for our actions—which was the joint heritage of Judeo-Christianity and the classical world.” According to him, “the impact of relativity was powerful because it coincided with the public reception of Freudianism. “Marx, Freud, Einstein – all conveyed the same message in the 1920s: the world was not what it seemed. . . Moreover, Marxist and Freudian analysis combined to under-mine, in their different ways, the highly developed sense of personal responsibility and of the duty towards a settled objectively true moral code, which was at the centre of nineteenth century European civilization.”
Here we have an inkling of the great obstacle facing western Christianity. How clever the evil one is; he penetrates the political, sexual morality, and scientific realms in order to blind and enslave mankind. Sadly, the Church itself does not stand unscathed in this attack. Fortunately, there is power to the truth, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” (I John 4: 4)
Even as we gapingly watch the dismantling of Communism, we reside in the midst of the dismantling of the moral moorings of our own society and of the impact of Christianity on society. It has proceeded so cautiously that some of us are just now waking up to the fact that we are in hot water (boiling water at that)! Do any of us recoil with pain at the anti-Christian, anti-God environment in which we live? The only way the Church of Jesus Christ can advance in the hellish nightmare into which we have slipped in this century is to stand firm in our trust in God, to press on to holiness of life, and to proclaim release to those still in chains of bondage. Let us give heed to the words of Peter: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (I Peter 5: 8,9)
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa; this article originally appeared in October 1991 in her church newsletter.
