Human Life: A Biblical Perspective
In January, 1973, abortion on demand was legalized in the United States.
On average, 3,836 pre-born babies have been routinely eliminated every day for 40 years, resulting in the deaths of over 50 million innocent lives. This is equivalent to 20 major passenger planes, each with over 190 children on board, crashing every day, each day of the year.
If such tragedies were to happen, there would be a national uproar. To place this in further perspective, this is more than eight times greater than the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by Hitler. Their names would fill the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall at least 800 times!
The Bible makes no distinction between babies in the womb and babies outside the womb.
The word “brephos” is used in Luke 1:41 and 44 to refer to a baby living in the womb, using the phrase, “the babe.” In Luke 2:12, 16 and 18:15 – 17, the same word is used to refer to a baby living outside the womb, translated “babe” or “infants.” According to Thayers Greek English Lexicon, it means, “an unborn child, embryo, fetus; a newborn, an infant, a babe.”
Protestant theologian Karl Barth wrote during the years of the Holocaust in Germany, “The unborn child is, from the very first, a child. It is still developing and has no independent life. But it is man and not a thing, nor a mere part of the mother’s body…he who destroys germinating life kills a man.”
The term abortion is not found in the Bible, however, numerous times the sanctity of life in the womb is proclaimed. Job declared, “Did You not …clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews?” (Job 10:10 and 11). In Psalm 119:73, we read, “Your hands have made me and fashioned me.”
David wrote in Psalm 139:13, “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.” In Isaiah 49:1, we read of Christ, “The Lord has called Me from the womb; from the inward parts of My mother He has made mention of My name.”
Scriptures also tell us that Jeremiah (1:5), John the Baptist (Luke 1:44), and the apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15), were known by God before they were born, and ordained to a specific calling while in their mothers’ wombs.
Dr. Howard Glicksman, M.D., a pro-life physician, was asked to speak at a gathering on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
In his article, “A Doctor’s Perspective On Abortion,” he wrote, “As a pro-life physician it’s always seemed to me that the issue of abortion was pretty straightforward. So I wondered what I, as a physician, could say that hadn’t already been said. Did the people really need a doctor to tell them what every child learns in middle school biology – that the human body consists of trillions of cells, each of which contains 46 chromosomes made up of DNA; that this, our own personal combination of DNA makes us physically who we are, and provides us with a unique fingerprint of identification; that when the 23 chromosomes from the sperm of the human father join with the 23 chromosomes from the egg of the human mother, they form not the father nor the mother, but a unique and separate human being, known as human life.”
Former New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani described the nearly 3000 lost in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, as “more than we can bear.” However, on a daily basis, abortion takes more lives than were lost in the September 11 tragedy.
In Proverbs 6:16, we are warned, “These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him,” and one of these is “hands that shed innocent blood.”
Pastor David Arnold
Gulf Coast Worship Center
© 2013 Rev. David Arnold Ministries, All rights reserved.