God’s Rights

by Micky Galloway

In recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings, there has been a lot of discussion about individual rights; most recently the ruling about Roe versus Wade, overturning the landmark decision of 1973. Since Roe versus Wade 1973, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLTC), says it reached an estimated 62,502,904 abortions, by tracking data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute. (Note: California, New Hampshire, and Maryland numbers are excluded from the data.) In all the discussion about human rights, women’s rights, etc., it seems God’s rights have been ignored. Some have given lip service to God asking, “What does the Bible say about abortion?” Then it is concluded that the answer is silence. Foolishly ignoring God does not mean He has not spoken.

Consider: God’s rights prevail! Genesis 18:25, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Psalms 19:8, “The precepts of Jehovah are right.”
Psalms 33:4, “For the word of Jehovah is right; and all his work is (done) in faithfulness.”
Psalms 119:128, “Therefore I esteem all (thy) precepts concerning all (things) to be right; (and) I hate every false way.”

God has the right to answer the question: “When does life begin?” In the court’s decision, that question was not addressed.

In Luke 1:36-44, John was a “babe” and “leaped” in his mother’s womb. Verse 36, “This is the sixth month with her.” Verse 41, “The babe leaped in her womb.” Verse 44, “The babe leaped in my womb.” There are two indications in this passage that there is human life in the unborn infant. (1) He “leaped” (movements indicates life). (2) He is called a “babe” (Greek, brephos). The Greek word, brephos is used in the New Testament to identify a human infant, either born or unborn (Arndt and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon, page 146). (See also Luke 2:12,16; 18:15; Acts 7:19; 2 Timothy 3:15; 1 Peter 2:2). NOTE: Luke, qualified both by profession (“Luke, the beloved physician,” Colossians 4:14) and by inspiration used this same word to describe the infants put to death in ancient Egypt under the command of Pharaoh, “They cast out their young children (Greek, brephos) to the end that they might not live” (Acts 7:10). If the parents of John the baptizer had secured the services of an abortion clinic during the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, they would have been doing the same thing that was done by Pharaoh recorded in Exodus 1:15ff; they would have been casting out their “babe” (Greek, brephos) to the end that he “might not live!”

While Jacob and Esau were in Rebekah’s womb, they were living children. “The children struggled together within her” (Genesis 25:22). The language shows that the life in the body of a woman is a child, a human being. Before delivery or after delivery, he is an innocent, dependent human being.

Job asked, “Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?” (Job 3:11; cf. Job 10:18-19). Job could not “give up” what he did not have. Yet, he argues that had he so died he would have been “at rest with kings and counsellors of the earth” (verses 13-14). If he had been “as an hidden untimely birth” (miscarriage), he would have been where “the weary be at rest” (verses 16-17).

God knew Jeremiah before his birth. “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). See also, Jeremiah 20:17-18, “… because he slew me not from the womb; and so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb always great. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?”

The Psalmist considered the Lord watched over his development in his mother’s womb (Psalms 139:13-16).

God has the right to answer the question: “When does death occur?” Death is defined as the separation of the human spirit from the body. “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). Describing death, the wisdom writer said, “… and the dust returneth to the earth as it was, and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Certainly, one may die at birth (or before), but as long as he is alive, the human spirit is within him, for without the spirit, his little body is dead. If death occurs when the spirit departs the body, life exists when the spirit and body are together. The above passages confirm that this exists in the womb!

With these facts in mind, what effect does abortion have on this life? Dear friend, life is a precious gift from God. “He giveth life and breath to all things” (Acts 17:25). Solomon writes, “There are six things which Jehovah hateth; yea, seven which are an abomination unto him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood …” (Proverbs 6:16-17). Abortion therefore is taking the life of the innocent.

An editorial in the September 1970 issue of the official journal of the California Medical Association stated,

“The reverence of each and every human life has been a keystone of western medicine, and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong, and enhance every human life. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine, until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because, while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.”

Perhaps accepting a new ethic is not so new after all. Pretending that God does not exist and His word does not address the issue before us is foolishness, but it is not new! “For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, (even) his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse: because that, knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks; but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:20-22).