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Sanctity of Human Life

David & Diane Vaughan share about what God is doing through ThriVe and the world around us.

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening

A stalwart for the pro-life movement. She’s worked with Thrive and just given her heart to it and has been an amazing example for our church and has continued to encourage us to stand for life. We’re going to hear from her and maybe from Pastor Vaughan a little bit as well. So please give it up for Diane as she comes up to share.

Test, test, can you hear me all okay? All right, perfect. Well, good morning. I’m always very blessed to be able to share with you about this most important topic, issue. And I’m getting my PowerPoint up on my screen so I don’t always have to turn around. So last year when I spoke, my husband said, “Diane, you turned around way too much. I’m staring at the back of your head. So don’t do that this year.” So I’m going to try not to do that. All right. And there’s a new pulpit. Wow, I don’t feel like I can hide behind the big old brown thing.

Well, good morning. Most of you all know me. My husband was a senior pastor of Liberty for many, many years, retired just a couple years ago. So most of you know me. I do see some new faces. So hi, my name is Diane Vaughan. I am regional manager of Thrive St. Louis. Most of you know what Thrive St. Louis is, but guess what? You can hear about it again. And then the new people who may not know much about it will be hearing a little bit about it. I am always very grateful that Liberty continues to talk about this issue every January. So thank you, Pastor Mike, Pastor Justus, for the opportunity to once again share with you. I dressed up for you. So I am in my scrubs, okay?

So what Thrive St. Louis is, we are a ministry and a medical provider to women who are in crisis pregnancy or who have an unplanned pregnancy. So we use medical staff, we wear scrubs, and we consider ourselves medical missionaries to the St. Louis community. So I was actually commissioned as a missionary in 2009. So that was almost 12 years ago. A couple years after that, I was asked if I would like to be on staff. And I loved what I was doing. I love the fact that as a nurse, I was doing ultrasounds for women with unplanned pregnancies who were considering aborting their baby, and I was so blessed to be able to show them [audio unclear] But, so I took on the nurse manager job. We grew and grew and grew. Our medical staff grew and grew and grew. And I became senior nurse manager. We began to have Thrives in different locations throughout the nation. So now I am regional manager of this location.

Our medical team, we get commissioned. We give these certificates of commissioning when they’re commissioned. They’re commissioned by a pastor. And so this one says I was commissioned by my husband, which was fun, many years ago. But this one says, “Certificate of commission, having believed that the Lord equips those called to His service”—and then I have a staff member’s name here who I have yet to give this to—“has been commissioned to fulfill this life-affirming calling as a local missionary of Thrive St. Louis.” And then it’s signed by our president, Bridget Van Means, and the pastor who commissioned. And we have a commissioning service. So we recognize ourselves as medical missionaries to the St. Louis area. So on behalf of our president, Bridget Van Means, our board and our entire team, thank you so much for being here and allowing me to share with you a little bit about Thrive.

Enmity and the Divine Image

OK. So I find it amazing that the very first words recorded in the Bible from God to the first man and woman who were created in His image were this: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” Genesis 1:27–28. I also find it amazing that God says in Psalm 127:3–5 that children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward, and blessed is the man who has a quiver full of them. But what is really striking to me is what God said to Satan after the fall of man. He said this, God said this to Satan: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” So of all the things that God could have said to Satan, He mentions that there would now be enmity between him and the woman. But what is enmity? What is it? For starters, it’s a very, very strong word. And it means a deep-seated dislike or ill will that suggests true hatred displayed by direct attacks or aggression. The word enmity, it’s derived from an Anglo-French word and it means enemy.

Now, why I believe the main reason for this enmity exists is because the Savior to redeem fallen man back to God, who was Jesus, would come through the womb of a woman and would ultimately defeat Satan. I also think that this enmity exists because every human that is conceived and develops in the womb of a woman bears something very, very, very unique unlike any other created thing. And that is the divine image. Humans bear the divine image of their Creator. So why else would there be any other reason for child sacrifice and bloodshed to have occurred since the beginning of time? Do you know that child sacrifice and bloodshed, it is mentioned in many books of the Bible, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea, to name some.

But we can also see this enmity shortly after the birth of Christ. Historically, it is known, and maybe you’ve heard of this phrase, it is known as the massacre of the innocents. I’m going to read out of Matthew 2:1–3, and then verses 16–18 if you want to follow along.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet.

(Matthew 2:1–3, 16–17)

[audio unclear] The artist’s name was Giovanni, and it resides in the National [audio unclear] Satan’s enmity sought to destroy Jesus, but we know God intervened, right? [audio unclear] And in 2020 alone, there’s been nearly 43—this is just in 2020. There were nearly 43 million abortions that took place worldwide, and it was the leading cause of death.

Now I want to say something that if you’re listening online or you’re in the audience and you’ve had an abortion, you are so loved. So this, when we talk about this issue every January, it is not about condemnation or judgment. And Thrive wants you to know that we have a post-abortion support ministry that is led by women who have walked down that path and have really been through the healing of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness and the freedom found in that. They now want [audio unclear] “2.6 million on babies.” [audio unclear] “Abortions save lives.” It was provided and paid for by the Satanic Temple organization. This organization has come out from the shadows. And now it is open and shameless. It advocates for abortion rights. You’re going to see it pop up more and more. But probably in the past couple of years we’ve seen it start to be more outspoken and in the public eye. Okay, well what about this billboard? It says that the most loving gift you can give your first child is not to have another. These posters and billboards are in the public square. The enmity is real. And the evil now brazenly confronts us right to our faces.

Thrive’s Mission and the COVID Year

Thrive St. Louis. For almost 12 years I’ve been involved in this organization. And as I said in the beginning, a lot of you know what we do. This is our mission statement. We are a Christ-centered organization and we empower young men and women to make life-affirming, esteemable, and healthy decisions about pregnancy and relationships. Since 1983, when our founder Mary Nelson heard the Lord commission her, and she obeyed and was faithful to start the first crisis pregnancy center in St. Louis, she did that in 1983. But ever since then, Thrive has been waging war against the attack Satan has declared on women to destroy the fruit of their womb.

I knew at some point after becoming a nurse that God would call me into this mission field. I didn’t know when. I was a pastor’s wife. I raised four children, homeschooled. But in 2009 was when I stepped into it. It is 2021, and I’m still here. Why? I’m going to tell you why. It is one of the most amazing ministries that I have ever known in person, in my world, in my small world here in my St. Louis community. We provide a lot of services, and all of them are at no cost to our patients. We’ve grown. There’s a list. I’m not going to go through the entire list. But we offer a lot of wonderful services to women, some of their health needs, and of course then if they’re pregnant. Our parenting classes are amazing. And it’s an earn-while-you-learn program. We just don’t want to offer handouts, but we really help them, equip them to learn to be a good mom or a good dad. What does that mean? It’s hard, it’s tough, it’s a lot of work. People need support. So they get into our parenting classes. And then they earn what’s called baby bucks. It’s kind of like monthly money. They can go to our resource shops that are in all of our locations. And they can get then the material items that they need when they have a baby. You need lots of stuff. You need diapers. You need wipes. You need car seats. You need pack and plays. All the stuff. Formula. All the stuff. So that is provided all free through Thrive.

Every year in the month of January, as Mike mentioned, we talk about the sanctity of human life, the anniversary of what we mourn, which was when abortion was legalized in 1973. That was 48 years ago. I’m not going to tell you how old I was then, because then you’ll know how old I am now. But I was young. And every year when I prep to share about this, I always, you know, I’m thinking, I’m praying, I’m prepping about sharing once again about the massacre, the present-day massacre of the innocents. And I wonder, I think, maybe this year, maybe this will be the last year, because maybe abortion will become unthinkable. But until it is, I am so grateful to be part of Thrive. I am so grateful.

This past year, it was hard for all of us, right? It was so hard. It was hard for businesses, hard for churches, hard for organizations, and for Thrive. It really was, since I had been around, since 2009, it was the most difficult year Thrive ever experienced. COVID-19 may have halted a lot of organizations and businesses, affected churches, but as an essential provider, medical provider, we were busier than ever. And we were busier with more abortion-minded and abortion-determined women who didn’t want to bring their kids now into a world that was full of racial unrest or into a world where there was a pandemic leaving so much uncertainty.

We almost lost one of our nurses. Her name is Gina. She has shared her story publicly. And anytime I mention a staff or I mention a patient or anything like that, they’ve given us permission to use their stories. So Gina, she was one of the first seriously critically ill patients in the St. Louis area with COVID. And this was back in March, and she ended up on a vent. She was younger than me, a lot younger than me, had three small children, was a wife. And she was a very, very, very strong believer, one of the strongest believers that I know. She was the real deal. Her faith was solid. But I’ll never forget the day she called me to tell me that she was positive. I could hear it in her voice. And she said to me that she had never, ever been so scared in her entire life. And that was before she was put on a vent. She was put on a vent. Miraculously, and there were people all over the world praying for Gina, she recovered, praise God, and is 100% today. So to God be the glory for that. So there’s our Gina right there.

The week that Gina had called me, I put in about a little over 80 hours a week. The next week, I put in a little over 80 hours a week. It was a lot, but God gave us so much grace. We forged ahead, and we took all the necessary COVID-19 precautions, and as medical missionaries to the St. Louis community, we kept our doors open. We didn’t get shut down for a week, but we kept our doors open, and we continued to minister to women. Here’s a few slides, a few pictures of some of our staff. Some of these were posted on social media if you follow any of our posts. We really tried to keep as upbeat and encouraging and positive as we could. And during a time like it was, it was hard. I had staff that was scared out of their mind because of what happened to Gina. And some of our staff had close contact with her. So obviously, we had lots of staff in quarantine, more waiting, it’s a waiting game. God is so good. I look back, I’m just like, wow, I didn’t even know. I didn’t even know how we got through all that, but we did. There’s a post on one of our social media sites and it said that we had supercharged COVID-19 safety protocols and routine in place.

So wow, what a time. In spite of the global pandemic, God’s Word says that He will work all things together for good. And in spite of that global pandemic, we really saw a lot of things, I guess, come to fruition because of the pandemic, which really helped Thrive. One of the things we did was we implemented telehealth medicine. That is a huge part of the future of healthcare. And this allowed us to be able to do video conferencing with women who couldn’t get to our centers, who needed to talk to somebody because now they had an unplanned pregnancy. So we implemented that. The downside to this though was that a lot of abortion providers also implemented telehealth. And that really led to the expansion of these telemedicine programs that were being used to dispense the abortion pill to women without them even coming into the clinic. That’s not good, not good at all. There’s an organization you might be familiar with it, Operation Rescue. It documented 69 abortion facilities that were using telemedicine to dispense the abortion-inducing drugs. So that side is a bummer, but for us, implementing telehealth allowed us to talk to women through video conferencing. Then it cut down the time when they did come in to get that lab-quality pregnancy test and ultrasound. It cut that time down because we did all of the education, consents, we did all of the options consultation, all through the video conferencing.

Another plus from the pandemic was that our material resources were usually only offered to those who came to our parenting classes. But we decided, because there was so much need, that we were going to open up our supplies and material resources to all of the women that came to Thrive. Sometimes women came and maybe they just came for STD testing, but yet had a couple little ones at home and needed diapers. So we opened it up and we were able to help so many women. We actually did what we called curbside pickup, and in some occasions we dropped off items to patients’ houses. And there’s a slide and I’ll show you that in a minute. So before I go on, what was really encouraging to us that even during the pandemic, our patients continued to give us a 99% positive rating after their experience with us.

So I wanted to go ahead and show you, read to you some of the things that some of these—when they’re done with their appointment, we give all of them a survey to fill out. And then it has some questions. And then it has a place for comments. I’m going to read some of these comments because, you know, I, here I am, I work for Thrive. So, yeah, I’m going to talk really great about Thrive. But here, from these patients coming. This one says, this patient said, “Been coming here for almost eight years. I love it, and I also want to thank every staff.” She circled that she was going to abstain from sex until she was in a monogamous relationship, such as in a marriage relationship. The next patient here said that the services provided from the beginning of making an appointment, all the way to being seen, has been phenomenal. “The aftercare resources, the prayer and the empathy is everything that all women need. Please continue and never change.” Here’s another one. “My nurse made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this.” Another abstain from sex. This one said, “No suggestion, just a comment. I appreciated Mary listening to me about what I had to say and praying for me, even though I don’t believe in God and have never felt His love or help before. Today I did. Thank you.” How about this one? “Diane and Rachel were awesome.” I’m awesome. God made me awesome. “They made me feel safe and completely comfortable. They also prayed for me. God bless them both. I am blessed.”

Okay, so the next slide after that is our telehealth. We use a platform called Doxy.me, a lot of medical providers do. And then the next slide does show our patients coming for diapers, wipes, and we just brought them out to their car. Again, some of them, we went to their houses, dropped the items off. And what was so amazing, it was just like our diapers, the storehouse of our diapers and wipes, they just never ran dry. And they just kept coming, so we could keep giving. And it was just like, God is good. God is good.

Another very encouraging thing that happened was every year in May the St. Louis area does what’s called Give St. Louis. It is not affiliated with Thrive at all. It’s a community-wide event that nonprofit organizations can take part of. But they raise money for nonprofits. And so for the fourth year this past May, we were number one again, people giving to Thrive. Not because of Thrive, they’re giving to life. And what’s really neat is the organization that came in second place was a foster and adoptive care coalition, so life was number one in St. Louis again. We were so blessed, and people, you know, even with the pandemic, I mean, you just saw people were continuing to be so gracious and generous and at a time when people are losing their jobs or people are having trouble making ends meet. So that was very encouraging to us. And then we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to do our annual dinner, but by the grace of God, we had our annual dinner. There was about maybe 900 people there. We had it at the St. Charles Convention Center, and they had just installed a new, I guess, airflow system that allowed very, very clean air to come through, and air that would even do away with bacteria and virus. So that was kind of neat. And we at our dinner—I’m going to show a little clip—but so we were really encouraged to be able to pull that annual dinner off. We didn’t know if people would come or not, but we took all the COVID precautions. You know, many people wore masks and that was great. But at the dinner, we just continued to be in awe of what we call the Missouri Miracle. And you may have heard of that phrase. I’m going to share a little bit in this video clip about the Missouri Miracle.

The Missouri Miracle and Going National

That’s awesome. In 2009, when I began at Thrive as a nurse sonographer, there were almost 6,900 abortions taking place in Missouri. In 2017, they went down to about maybe almost half of that, but a little bit more, to 3,900. In 2020 they went down to eight, and now they’re at zero. Now I’m not saying that the Missouri Miracle was because of Thrive. That was a God thing. And it took organizations like Thrive, Coalition for Life, pro-life legislators, people who are on the sidewalk at abortion clinics, it took all of that. It took money. It took prayer. It was all of that. And here’s the thing. The Planned Parenthood on Forest Park Parkway, they remain open. However, they’re not doing abortions there. It basically is a referral pump for women to obtain abortions across the river and to Fairview Heights. So Missouri women are still getting abortions. They’re just going over across the river. And so now there’s organizations really trying to work on that side at that Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights. But in Missouri, there is no stand-alone abortion provider that is offering medical chemical, the pill, abortion pill, or surgical abortion. And that is a miracle. It is a miracle.

Because I don’t have time, there was a lot of laws and stuff that occurred the past couple years. One of them you probably heard of, there was the Missouri Health Department did not reissue the licensing for that Planned Parenthood because it failed health inspections. Long story short, unfortunately Planned Parenthood, they won that battle and so they got their licensing back. That is why they still can be open. They are doing other health, women’s health services. Obviously they’re pumping out lots of contraception, referrals across the river for abortion, and STD testing and treatment and just some other women’s healthcare. But if you see this American United States map, I want to say that the colors don’t reflect [audio unclear] abortion facilities that closed, or they halted their abortions nationwide in 2020, leaving one state without an active abortion facility. And of course, that was Missouri. So what was really neat in this article by Operation Rescue, they put out this article fairly recently, is that now other organizations are seeing what has happened in Missouri and recognizing that. But you see here, so if you see Missouri, it has a zero. So cool. But if you look at the map, you see that there are still a lot of abortion clinics all over the United States.

And so that’s why Thrive, we believed that God called us to then go national. And so we now have Thrive medical centers in the United States: Central Virginia, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois, and we have several pending. And then we also have a Thrive Center in Uganda in East Africa. Did you know that about half of all abortions that take place in the United States only occur in six states? And that those states are California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, and Illinois. So we’re in three of those states and we have a goal to get into those other states. In fact, our newest commission is to see a thousand Thrive centers in a thousand months. That’s 83 years from now, people. And it causes us to set our sights on future generations. You know, back in the day, those founders of America, they looked towards their posterity. We don’t do that. We live in the instant. We don’t even think about, sometimes we don’t even think about tomorrow, let alone years from now. Well, 83 years from now, it’s going to be 2104. If the Lord tarries—who knows, Lord Jesus, may You come back, right? But if He gives us mercy and He continues to tarry so that we can keep doing kingdom work, we’ll be long gone, most of us here.

My grandson, if he has a child at 20 years of age—oh, did you know I was a grandma? And I love my grandson so much. And I’m having to keep those verses about idolatry before me. But anyways, my grandson, if he has a child when he’s 20 years old, my great-grandson will be 63 years old in 2104. And wouldn’t that be cool if my great-grandson thrived? He knew. He knew about Thrive. There’s Thrive all over his community. There’s Thrive all over the nation. There’s Thrive worldwide. And he knows. He’s heard about it because they exist. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Well, that’s our newest commission. And, you know, this world could use more Thrives.

I want to show you our report card from our last fiscal year. And there were almost over 3,000 choices for life that were made. This is not just the St. Louis Thrives. This includes our affiliates in the other states. So almost over 3,000 lives were saved. The gospel, remember, we’re not just a medical provider. We’re a missionary organization. And we share the gospel. And we share the gospel every time we meet with our patients. We do ask permission. It is done very tactfully. We’re not beating anybody over the head with the Bible or Jesus. So it’s done very, very tactfully. But most of our patients say yes to hearing about Jesus. So our last fiscal year, there were over 4,500 times that the gospel was given to a woman. And of those over 4,500 times the gospel was presented, there were almost 300 commitments made. 300 of those women prayed and accepted Christ. Now I want to convict all of us. And I want us to ask ourselves a question. How many people did we lead to Jesus in 2020? How many people did we present the gospel to in 2020? If you have any New Year’s goals, resolutions, make that your top. Be vocal about Jesus. The days are evil and there is no greater time. The time is now. Preach Jesus and see what God does.

This isn’t on here, but we also, just the St. Louis centers, which was three of those centers, just this past year we gave out almost 350 Bibles to women. All right, so this is cool. This is cool getting texts like this, getting emails like this. This is my work text. This is my work emails. One of them came from a staff member, and if you see down at the bottom it says, “I just had my first patient dedicate their life to Christ.” So cool. And then periodically we’re sending emails to one another. This one came from Lori, one of our staff members. She said, “Dear Thrive Team, I wanted to let you know that another patient rededicated her life to Christ yesterday. Our prayers are being heard. Please keep her in your prayers. My motto, every baby born alive, every mom and dad born again. That’s a great motto. To God be the glory, blessings, Lori.” So cool to get work texts and emails like that.

I’m going to close out with two more slides. They are two extremes. Both of these occurred at the end of December. One’s heartbreaking, the other is heartwarming. One reveals enmity in action. The other reveals redemption in action. This first slide, and you can run it. That was Argentina celebrating the legalization of abortion. They were celebrating more massacres of the innocents. It’s heartbreaking. Our world could use more Thrives. More Thrives need to be in Argentina. I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies, It’s a Wonderful Life, and I’m reminded of George Bailey in the movie when he made this passionate appeal to a room full of businessmen to keep the Building and Loan, to keep it going so people didn’t have to crawl to old Potter. Well this final slide is about one of our incredible patient stories. I’m going to refer to her as Patient K. Patient K didn’t have to go crawling to Planned Parenthood for an abortion. She got to come to Thrive.

Patient K

This was a year ago in December. This woman, called Patient K, called our helpline, wanting to get an abortion. She came into our center that same day. She had a positive pregnancy test and she had an ultrasound. The baby was very, very tiny, but it was viable so she could see the heart flickering. She just wasn’t sure still, needed time to think. Of course, after we do our part without manipulating patients, coercing them, we pray. We do what we do. We pray, and we place them in God’s hands. We offered her a repeat ultrasound. We weren’t sure. Some of them come back for a repeat. Some of them don’t. But she did. She came back for a repeat ultrasound. And this time, her baby was a lot bigger. And she saw her baby moving around, arms, legs, heart beating. She broke out in tears, but then she broke out in laughter. And it was joy. And she decided that there was no way she could abort that baby. The reason why she had considered abortion was because with her first pregnancy, she had to put her schooling on hold. And she had just started her master’s degree program. And here she’s finding herself pregnant. So she’s thinking, I can’t do this. I’m not going to stop my school again. Well, guess what? She had the baby and she completed her master’s program. And so she enrolled in our parenting classes all this past year. Now, this December then, she sent our helpline specialist who took that original phone call from her this text: “I made it, I’m done. I’m so excited to have graduated during COVID with a newborn and as a single parent. Some days I didn’t think it was possible. Thank you for being there for us.”

This patient wrote out a testimony. It’s like three pages long. If you want a copy of it, she says, please give it. You want a copy of her story, you let me know. I’ll get you that copy of her story. But the thing about this patient is that most of the times we’re going to share our victories with the people who mean the most to us. The fact that she contacted us immediately after she completed such a huge milestone really speaks volumes about the love and the support that was poured out on her the entire year of 2020 from Thrive. She came to the city location and the team celebrated her accomplishment, gave her flowers and a card and some Christmas items, and it was a sweet, beautiful ending to her story. So praise God for that victory. Our world needs more Thrives. And we need to look to our future generations and allow Thrive to be there for them. A thousand centers in a thousand months. This last slide is a great picture. And I just want to say that this baby, this pre-born baby, is giving a thumbs up to seeing our world having more Thrive Center locations. Thank you so much for letting me share again about my passion, my love, for what I do.

Thrive isn’t perfect. Not a perfect organization, but I see some fantastic fruit and I see women’s lives changed. I see physical life saved. I see spiritual death reborn. And I’m just really blessed to be able to be part of it. So thanks for the way you’ve supported. I know many of you, you continue to pray. The church prays, you’ve given, you’ve volunteered, you’ve provided material items. And I just want to ask you to keep those coming if you would. Because if we’re going to do a thousand centers in a thousand months, it’s going to take all of us to do all of these amazing things that need to be done. So, all right, David, if you want to come on up, my husband’s going to share for a little bit. And I probably went long, so I apologize for that. But I mean, always so much. Always so much.

The Word of God and the Dignity of Man

It’s a different podium, babe. Isn’t my wife awesome? Yeah. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, am I permitted to say, ladies and gentlemen? Yes. I heard that the powers that be said we can’t use gender language now. Here is the power. Here is the powers that be, right here. Ready? Here’s what God says:

And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

(Genesis 1:26–27)

Amen? Male and female, man and woman, mother, father, sister, brother, all kinds of gendered words in the Bible. So we need to speak God-speak. Amen? Of course, we know that God went on and blessed them. And the first thing He said to them was, get an SUV and travel, enjoy life. No, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” What a glorious calling, amen?

I don’t have much time. I’m going to be speaking in a few weeks here. I’m just going to mention something, a couple things in closing. We don’t have a lot of time. I believe that the theological issue of the day, the most fundamental issue of the day, is the inspiration of the Scripture. That is the issue. And it’s been the issue probably since, well, quite a while back. But as far back as the ’60s and ’70s, Francis Schaeffer has been kind of trumpeting this in evangelicalism. Now remember, church liberalism, going back, they abandoned the Bible a long time ago. But evangelicalism, which claimed to hold that Scripture was the verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God, well, that began to change in the ’60s and the ’70s. And Schaeffer pointed it out. And he called the church back to the Word of God as the Word of God. As the Word of God.

And he tells—by the way, do any of you read books here? Raise your hand real high. I want to see. OK, we’ve got some book readers. Everybody make a New Year’s list if you’re going to read this book this year? Anybody do that? Can I add a book to your list? This is Francis Schaeffer. I would encourage you to really get five volumes of his complete works. It’s not expensive because it’s in paperback. But if you really, instead—you like Steve Sanders, you can get, and I’m just teasing Steve—you can get a copy of The Great Evangelical Disaster. He tells the story of the watershed. I’ve read it here before years ago. But listen again. He says, not far from where we live in Switzerland is a high ridge of rock with a valley on both sides. One time I was there when there was snow on the ground along the ridge. The snow was lying there unbroken, a seeming unity. However, that unity was an illusion, for it lay along a great divide. It lay along what is called a watershed. One portion of the snow, when it melted, would flow into one valley, and one portion of the snow when it melted would flow into another valley. And it just so happened that this watershed, the snow that melted there, part of it would go to the North Sea, and part of it would go to Lake Geneva, and eventually into the Mediterranean. In other words, the point that Schaeffer makes about the watershed is this. He says, the snow lies along the watershed unbroken as a seeming unity. But when it melts, where it ends in its destination is literally a thousand miles apart. A thousand miles apart. And that’s how it is regarding our view of the Word of God.

And so what has happened in the church is the tinkering with the doctrine of inspiration, if you will, even in churches that profess to believe the Bible, and what you find is they change a little here, and they alter a little here, and they soften a little here, and that sort of thing. And the end result, I mean, if you’re just looking at it on the surface, you say, well, they believe the Bible, we believe the Bible, well, there’s unity. But in fact, that’s an illusion. Because where that little tinker ends up over time is a thousand theological miles away from a biblical position. That’s why we see what’s called progressive Christianity today. That’s why we saw the emergent church. That’s why we see the woke church. And you go down the list of all these evangelicals who in fact are denying what the Bible clearly says, even something regarding something as simple as male and female. That’s the theological issue that needs to be hammered constantly to the church: that the Word of God is verbally inerrant. Amen to that?

But I believe the moral issue of the day is abortion. Now you might say, there’s a lot of evil in the world. I mean, if we want to give a list of causes, I could name a bunch of causes. You know, there’s racism, there’s injustice, there’s oppression. There’s all kinds of evils. Why would you say abortion is the moral issue? Because of this. Here’s the connection. Only Scripture articulates the dignity of a human person. That’s the doctrine of inspiration. And all pagan cultures—and by pagan, I’m not using that word as an insult, but as a description of non-Christian—all pagan human cultures have and will practice abortion and infanticide and euthanasia. We don’t have to guess what happens when you abandon the biblical view of man. You don’t have to ask, because we know from history. Studies have been done. I was reading a, I don’t know what to call it, article, but this is a long scholarly piece the other day, about human sacrifice. A common feature of all pagan cultures. Abortion, a common feature. Infanticide, a common feature. Euthanasia, a common feature. Why? Because without a word from heaven, without God saying, these are made in My image, then man just destroys man. And there is no fundamental belief in the dignity and the value of human life without a word from heaven. That’s the connection.

But I believe the church has the moral force [audio unclear] believes in the dignity of a person. So the job’s really ours. It’s ours to do. No one else is going to [audio unclear] is capable of anything, anything. And thus we see today the continuing moral collapse of our society. I mean you understand how bad it is, I hope. The people today cannot tell a man from a woman. People today cannot give a sound reasoned response to why two men or two women should not be married. I mean we have gone that far. And when a society condones killing children, they will not stop with killing children. And I’m getting old now. See the gray? See the hair fading away? I was speaking on these issues in the ’80s, and I cannot tell you how often the mentality I encountered was that, oh, well, these things will never happen in America. Now, if you would have asked people in the mid-1900s when I was born, 1955 sounds ancient now, doesn’t it? Would prayer and the Bible be taken out of the public schools? They would have said no. It was taken out, ’61, ’62. If you would have asked, will abortion be legalized in America? They would have said no. It was, in ’73. If you would have asked, would gay marriage be happening in America? They would have said no. Go down the list of all the things that have happened and continue to happen in America, and the people would have said, no, that won’t ever happen in America. Well, it has. And it’s a simple historical fact that it will without a word from heaven. Because moral relativism leads to the void. It leads to the abyss. And a society that kills its children will not hesitate to kill those that dissent.

And we’re in a very dangerous place now as the church. If you are attuned to what’s happening, we’re seeing massive, massive censorship of conservative voices in our society. Well, what is the most conservative voice in this society? The church. And I know what you’re thinking, you know, well, not here in America. That, my friend, is the illusion of the snow on the watershed. More to say about that in the future.

Now, I know it’s one of the cardinal rules of the contemporary pulpit. You never leave people feeling somber, right? But the fact of the matter is, in spite of the darkness around us, we see these places of light like Thrive. And if you want to be a missionary, if you want to preach the gospel, if you want to hand out the Word of God, if you want to minister to people, this is a way to do it right here, right here. Not only are lives literally being saved, souls are being saved for eternity. Right here. And you can be part of that. You can be part of that. And I encourage you to be part of that. I encourage you to talk to my wife and say, yeah, I want to be part of that. I want to fight the darkness. I want to be part of the light. I want to be the light that Jesus says I am. Amen. Be the light. Be the light.

Closing Prayer

Let’s stand together. I’d like to close in prayer. Do we have a microphone we can pass around or use? I want to invite you to come to the mic and pray. As I said, you know, we’re living in very troubled times, and one of the most important weapons, if not the most important weapon that we have, is prayer. Now, one thing I want to say about prayer before you pray is, sometimes Christians talk about prayer, and what they mean is an excuse not to do anything. So they pray, but then don’t act. If you’re not going to act, then don’t bother praying. But we need to be a praying church, amen? I mean a really praying church. Not perfunctory prayer. But we need to be a praying church that follows our prayers with action. We can’t ask God to do something that we’re able to do. We ask Him to do what is His will and then we do His will. And we know His will is not for innocent children to die. That is not His will. It is not His will to see this moral morass that we are living in right now. That is not His will. So we pray for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Open mic if you care to pray, amen.

Heavenly Father, we thank You, God, that You’ve given us a revelation from heaven in Your Word. We thank You that we know the truth, because You are the truth, You have spoken the truth, and You said that Your Word is truth. We thank You for that. I pray that we would be ambassadors of that truth. We thank You also, Lord, that we have access to the throne. We have access to the Lord of lords and the King of kings, the One who rules the nations. And so we come to that throne now, Father, and we ask these petitions.

Yes, Jesus. Yes, Lord. Amen. [audio unclear: congregational open-mic prayers] Father, You have called us for a special time and place. We would rise up to be a light in darkness, to be a voice for the truth. The path ahead is going to be a struggle and it’s not going to be easy. We pray for revival, not only here at Liberty, but the church in America. You have called us to stand up. If Your servants keep silent, You can raise up the rocks to cry out. May it not be so. We need a voice. You don’t have to raise up the rocks.

Lord, I want to thank You for our time this morning. We thank You for the freedom to worship, the freedom to declare and study Your Word. We pray that You would preserve that freedom. I pray that we would be willing to fight for that freedom. Lord, I ask that You give this church a spirit of prayer, a spirit of repentance, and a spirit of boldness and action. I pray, God, that we would not be passive observers, but active warriors for Jesus Christ. And I ask this for Jesus’ glory alone and not our own. All God’s people said, Amen.