[This sermon was delivered by Dr. D. James Kennedy on January 19, 2003 at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.]
TEXT: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."
---John 8:44
Every evil system that has come down the pike has been based upon a foundation of lies. To wit:
Nazism---based upon the lie that the Nazis were the master race destined to rule the world. Secondly, that Jews, according to their Supreme Court, were non-persons and therefore could be destroyed at will.
Communism---based upon the lie that state ownership of factories and farms would greatly increase output, production, prosperity, and wealth, and that the state, under Communism, would finally simply wither away. The result was that Communism brought about poverty, bankruptcy of nations, and famine. (In North Korea, one of the remaining Communist countries, there are, as we sit here, eight million people starving to death.)
Shintoism---based upon the lie that the emperor was god. It was the absolute conviction of Japanese officers and soldiers that it was impossible for them to lose a war, since their emperor was god---a lie that cost the lives of millions.
[Coral Ridge Ministries 2005. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.]
In fact, if you take all of the millions and millions of people that died because of those lies, it is a staggering number. No wonder Jesus said of Satan that not only is he the father of lies, but he was a murderer from the beginning. Jesus said "... all they that hate me love death" (Proverbs 8:36).
But the truth will out, and the truth of all of those lies has "outed." There is virtually no one that believes any of them today. Yet they once gripped the minds and hearts of men and brought bloodshed across the world.
Today is National Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, according to a proclamation made by the President of the United States, who said,
Our Nation was built on a promise of life and liberty for all citizens. Guided by a deep respect for human dignity, our Founding Fathers worked to secure these rights for future generations, and today we continue to seek to fulfill their promise in our laws and our society.
And so he declared this to be A National Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.
Abortion! Some would say, "Well, how dare you compare that to Nazism and Communism and Shintoism, which brought about the destruction of tens of millions of lives?" My friends, abortion has brought about the death of more lives than Nazism, Communism, and Shintoism combined. Let me be more emphatic: Abortion worldwide has brought about the deaths of more human beings than have died in ALL of the world's wars throughout human history. It is a horrible black blotch upon the escutcheon of American honor and decency---a total violation of the promise of the Declaration of Independence.
LIFE
The late Dr. Francis Schaeffer [author of A Christian Manifesto, 1981], from this pulpit, said that of all the inalienable rights, life is by far the most important. What do liberty and the pursuit of happiness mean to a man in a coffin? He cares nothing about the shackles that may bind his limbs. All of the great opportunities to purchase new inventions mean nothing to him. He could not conceivably care less whether the stock market goes up or goes down.
Without life, we have nothing, and we have been destroying it by the carload in America. It is all based upon lies by the father of lies, and I am afraid there are no doubt some right here in this sanctuary who have believed some of the lies of abortion. Lies and more lies...
But the truth is coming out. May I say the truth is coming out powerfully. Over 10 years ago, 57 percent of the people in this country believed in the "right" of abortion, and only 43 percent believed in the right to life. That has completely reversed. Today, 57 percent of the people in this country are pro-life, and 43 percent are pro-abortion.
Yet another lie that I heard just recently from some leader of the abortion movement said, "America is solidly pro-choice (pro-abortion)". That is a lie. Not only that, this week I read a recent poll that shows that those who are opposed to abortion have risen to 70 percent.
Did you happen to notice that virtually all of the pro-abortion candidates in the last election [2002] lost? All but one of those candidates proposed by NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) lost. Politicians are going to finally wake up that they cannot get on the abortion bandwagon and expect to get votes. They can expect now to get thrown out on their ears.
A LOOK AT THEIR LIES
Let us look at some more of these lies. The first most important and most common one is that "what is to be aborted is not a baby." There have been in the last 30 years of Roe v. Wade [January 22, 1973] some 43 million abortions performed in America. Probably tens of millions of other women went to abortatoriums (I choose the word carefully) and asked about abortion and decided not to have one. But the question they most often ask-- which has been asked tens or scores of millions of times-- is this: "Is it a baby?"
What were they told tens or scores of millions of times? They were told, "No. It is not." LIE!! "It's only POC-- product of conception." "It's just a clump of cells." "It's... it's like a... a wart. You'd want a wart removed, wouldn't you? or a mole? But it's not a baby!"
I remember one time a right-to-life leader asked an abortion clinic owner who was a physician this question: "Don't you realize that what you are killing are babies?" The abortionist became red in the face. He became furious with this man and said, "Of course they are not babies. We wouldn't kill babies. We're physicians. We protect the lives of people." That is not what he said. What he said in his anger was: "I am a physician. Of course, I know that it's a baby." But they didn't tell the women. Lies and more lies... That is what it is built upon.
With the development of sonograms and other various ways to hear the heartbeat and see the baby, now the coup de grace to that lie has been given to partial-birth abortion. This procedure, as you know, is where the doctor turns the baby around, brings him or her out feet first-- the feet, the legs, the hips, and the arms come out, until nothing but the head remains in the birth canal. This baby has kicking feet and toes, and hands waving in the air, and fingers that are grasping. There is no person in the world that would say that is anything but a baby. Yet the scissors are plunged into the back of his neck and into his brain. The brain is sucked out, the skull is crushed, and the baby is aborted. "It's only POC, a clump of cells. It's like a wart." LIES!! It is a baby, and scientists have concluded long ago that there is no place, from conception on, where you can say that yesterday this was not a baby, and today it is.
The greatest lie of all-- "it's not a baby." It was a non-person. That is what the Nazi Supreme Court said about Jews. That is what our Supreme Court said in Roe v. Wade about babies in the womb. It is interesting, of course, that they don't ever call them babies. They are "fetuses," they are "embryos," they are "zygotes." They are something, but they are not babies. They used to be called babies. It's interesting. Martin Luther translated the Scriptures from Latin into the vernacular in order that people might understand what is going on, but the abortionists have changed the language from the vernacular into Latin so that the people won't know what is going on. Deception and lies... That is what it is all about: Lies.
FALSE STATISTICS
"But pastor, don't you know that before Roe v. Wade there were up to 10,000 women a year dying from back-alley abortions?" Dr. Bernard Nathanson was a director of the largest abortion clinic in the world in Manhattan, New York. He supervised the abortions of 60,000 babies. He finally came to the place where he could not live with his conscience any more, and he gave it up.
Some time later, I was in Washington, and he called and asked if he could come there and have lunch with me. He came and we had lunch together, and I asked him, "Tell me, Dr. Nathanson, where did they get the statistics for the figure that 10,000 women a year were dying from abortions, prior to '73, prior to Roe v. Wade? Where did they get that figure?"
He gestured in the air above his head: "I gave it to them." He was the co-founder of NARAL, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. They have later changed their name. Where did he get it? Right out of thin air. He made it up "for the cause." He said this was true of most all of the statistics abortionists use. Lies!! All based upon lies.
By the way, were all of those 10,000 abortions performed with coat hangers, as they would have you think? He said that the vast majority of those abortions were performed by unscrupulous doctors who couldn't make a decent living in medical practice, so they performed illegal abortions. He also said that they are the same doctors who are performing them legally today.
How many deaths from abortions were there prior to '73? Ten thousand? Nine thousand? Eight thousand? Six thousand? Five thousand? In 1972 there were 39 deaths from abortion in America. By the way, how many women die from legal abortions today? Is it less than that? More than that? The CDC (Center for Disease Control) stopped counting deaths from abortions in 1986 because they said it was too difficult and confusing to get the statistics. Well, it was too embarrassing to announce the results to Americans. Nobody knows how many American women are dying from abortions today, but I suspect that cessation of statistics tells us a lot. Lies and more lies!!
ROE
Of course, abortion was legalized in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal through the first trimester. Who was Roe? Her name was and is Norma McCorvey. I met her here in our church-- a very interesting lady. She has become thoroughly pro-life and is an active speaker against abortion. She said, "It was all based on a lie. It was a lie that... that I told." She said, "Initially, I told Sarah Weddington [my lawyer], that I had been raped,... and I was not raped." That is what made it possible to get that decision. It was a lie. "I had never been raped. It was all based upon a lie," said Norma McCorvey-- Roe of Roe v. Wade.
Her lawyer followed suit. She told the Supreme Court that Norma had been blanketing the city of Dallas, Texas, looking everywhere for a place to get an abortion, and she couldn't find any place, no matter how hard she tried. That, too, was a lie. McCorvey said she went to just one place. She wasn't looking that hard for one, and she simply asked this woman if she knew any place where she could get an abortion. She said she didn't know of any place herself-- but she, the lawyer, had only recently gone to Mexico and had an abortion! So she did know where there was some place to get one. But it was a lie.
DOE
Then there was a companion case: Doe v. Bolton, which extended abortion from the first trimester all the way to the point of delivery. That is partial-birth abortion, which, of course, is where the abortion is performed within probably two or three seconds of when the baby would be fully removed from the woman's body. That was all done by Doe v. Bolton.
Who is Doe? Her name is Sandra Cano. She wanted an abortion so bad that she was willing to fight to bring about abortions to the very last minute. That is the story. That is a lie. That is a lie that most Americans have bought. Here is the truth: She didn't want an abortion at all. She never had an abortion; she never wanted or sought an abortion.
What she came to a lawyer (Margie Pitts Hames, an ACLU lawyer) to get was a divorce! But this ACLU [Atheist and Criminal Liberties Union] lawyer saw in this woman an opportunity to advance the cause of abortion even farther, so without telling her client, she proceeded to push this case all the way up to the Supreme Court. Sandra Cano never even knew it was happening! The case came up with no evidence-- something unheard of-- before the Supreme Court. There was simply a supposed affidavit that stated that Sandra Cano said that she would "go crazy" if she had another baby.
Cano was pregnant and wanted her baby. She had two babies who were in the care of the state, and she wanted them back. She loved babies; she wanted to have babies. To say that she would "go crazy" if she had another baby was a lie. She wanted, said the lawyer, to be sterilized. Absolutely preposterous! She didn't want anything of the sort. The case was all based upon lies. Every evil system is based upon lies from the father of lies himself. Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton-- all lies. Today, both Roe and Doe are very active pro-life speakers throughout the country.
THE LIE CONTINUES
We are told, "After all, it is the mother's body. She has the right to do what she wants with her own body, doesn't she?" How many have bought that lie? Of course, there are a lot of things we have the right to do with our bodies. We can abuse them. We do that. We can become couch potatoes; we can make them humongous; we can let them waste away; and we can pierce them-- have them tatooed and put things in our ears and noses and tongues and belly buttons and all of that kind of thing-- but we don't have the right to kill our bodies. That is attempted suicide, and that is a crime. So, no right is absolute. We have free speech. Go into a theater and cry "fire," and you will find out what the end of your free speech is. You may spend time in jail to contemplate that.
We don't have the right to choose to do whatever we want with our bodies. For example, suppose that you are a Siamese twin and you get upset with your sister. She is part of your body-- no doubt about that-- so you take a knife and stab her in the heart. Your defense? "It's my body; I'll do what I want with it." Think you would get away with that?
Is the baby the mother's body? No. It happens to be living there. She has contributed to it, but the fact of the matter is, that which most essentially determines who that individual is, is based upon the DNA. The DNA of the baby is always different from the DNA of the mother. Not only that, 50 percent of the time, it's a different sex. It's a boy.
I remember seeing a cartoon that showed two beautiful little children of about five years old sitting upon a cloud somewhere in Heaven. Obviously, they had both died. One of the little children says to the other one, "How could she have done that to me? Didn't she realize that it was my body?" It's a lie. It's all based upon lies.
CHOICE
But we believe in "pro-choice," don't we? Choice has been elevated to the stature of a god. Of course, we believe in many choices, and certainly women have many choices, as do we all. They have the right to choose their husband in America. In some countries they don't, but here they do. They have the choice to go to work or not. They don't have that in Afghanistan, but we have that choice. They have the choice to go to school, or graduate school. They didn't have that choice in Afghanistan either, but in this Christian nation they have that choice. They have the right to choose whether or not they want to have children. Every woman, married or not, can choose whether or not to have sex. Many women say, "I have a choice." The truth is, she had her choice, and she chose to have sex and produce a baby.
No, choice is not an unlimited thing either. There is the matter of informed consent, which we all believe in. I remember when the head of one pro-life ministry had been protesting out in front of an abortion clinic, and the owner wanted him to stop. He told the owner, "I'll be glad to stop. All I ask is that you give me a little tiny desk over in a little tiny corner of your abortion clinic and just let me explain to the women what an abortion really is and what it is that they are carrying within them." That is informed consent. (Most of these women seeking abortions don't even know it is a baby. In fact, one study showed that when shown a sonogram of what was in their wombs, 90 percent of women who came for abortions walked out. It's not a "clump of tissues;" it's a baby sucking his thumb, perhaps.) All he wanted was a little tiny desk just to have informed consent.
Did the abortionist say, "Well, of course, we believe in choice, free choice, but that choice has to be an informed choice, so certainly, come on in and talk to them"? No, he didn't say that, either. What he said was, "Over my dead body." You see, abortion is a fantastically profitable industry. Planned Parenthood alone had an income in 2001 of more than $670 million. In a decade, that is almost $7 billion. They are not going to give that up very easily. No, they don't want informed choices. The only choice they want to give a woman is "Tuesday or Friday?"
PROBLEMS
Another lie: "Oh, there is nothing to it. You can do it. Why, there won't be any problems." How many women have heard that? In 2001, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in England did a vast study on abortion and found out the number and percentage of women who had abortions and had medical problems sufficient to require a doctor's attention and care. Applied to the number of abortions that have been performed in America, it means that every year 140,000 women have physical complications from their legal abortions sufficient to require a doctor's attention. How many of them die? Nobody knows, because of the great lie that is going on.
What about the emotional problems that so many women have today? How great are they? Well, Nadine, who had had an abortion, said this: "I have been emotionally tortured by this experience for the past 24 years. It's made my life a pit of depression and anxiety."
The British Medical Journal did a study of a great, great many women who had had abortions. Listen to what they found: When they compared women who had abortions in the previous year with the general population of women who had not had abortions, the women who had aborted were three times more likely to commit suicide in one year and seven times more likely to do so than women who gave birth in the previous year.
But they are all told there is no problem, there are no complications, and there is no post-abortion syndrome of emotional disturbances. That, too, in recent years has been shown to be another lie. It's all built upon lies.
RISK OF CANCER
Would you like to hear the most recent lie? The connection, which is known as "ABC." I wonder how many of you know about ABC? Do you know your ABCs? Well, that refers to "abortion/breast cancer" syndrome. The medical journal of Britain, called The Lancet, one of the most prestigious in the world, noted that breast cancer is epidemic in America-- where 180,000 women a year are diagnosed with the disease. It is the second largest cause of cancer deaths for American women. It is extraordinarily rare in Third World countries. Why? The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, said the answer is very simple. It is small, it is simple, and it is one word: babies.
You see, when women become pregnant, they begin to produce huge amounts of estrogen. In the first month it increases 2000 percent. It goes up to seven times the average of a non-pregnant woman. What estrogen does is produce thousands and thousands of cells in the breasts that are undifferentiated, that are used to produce milk, lactation, to feed the baby. But after the baby is fed, there is a process that causes these cells to go back and disappear. But when abortion cuts off the process, everything stops. The cells are not removed, and these undifferentiated breast cells are extremely cancer-prone.
Therefore, interestingly, Janet Darling, a researcher at the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published a study in 1994 that showed that a woman who had an abortion before delivering a baby faced a 40 percent increased risk of developing breast cancer. If they were younger than 18, it was 150 percent. If they were under 18 and aborted their first pregnancy beyond eight weeks gestation, their increased risk of breast cancer is 800 percent. Yet they are being hauled out of school by Planned Parenthood, without the approval or knowledge of their parents, and having abortions all over this country. Now, that makes me mad, because it is a lie that is killing thousands of women in this country.
Yes, my friends, every evil system is based upon a foundation of lies. But this foundation is crumbling. As it has crumbled in Nazism, Communism, and Shintoism, it is now crumbling in abortion. As many as 70 percent of the American people now believe that abortion is the killing of babies-- and the politicians had better wake up or they better get a job as a dog catcher.
FORGIVENESS AT THE CROSS
I have no doubt I am speaking to some ladies who have had abortions-- ladies who were deceived by these lies. Ladies, let me tell you that there is mercy with the Lord. There is forgiveness with Him. Some of you have been carrying around guilt, some of you have experienced depression, and some of you may even have tried to commit suicide. There is forgiveness with the Lord. He is kind and merciful to all of those who will come unto Him. Go to Him. Confess this to Him and ask Him to cleanse you, to remove the darkness, and fill you with His joy. He will do that.
Talk about free choice. Most of the time the woman is escorted into the abortion clinic by her boyfriend or her father. The woman has very little choice. Great pressure is put upon her. Gentlemen, there is mercy with the Lord for you, if you repent and if you confess. Dear friends, we need to pray about this great scourge of death that has swept this country and the world, that God will take it away. We have a greater opportunity now than we have had at any time since Roe v. Wade thirty years ago. Pray that it will take place.
One other thing you can do about abortion: Share the Gospel with someone. No one needs to be contemplating an abortion. Did you ever think that just bringing another person to Christ will help get rid of abortion? These abortatoriums are not run by Christians, any more than pornographic theaters are. They are run by unbelievers, by ungodly people. When people are converted, they begin to want to see life. "All them that hate me love death," the Bible says, but when we love Him, we love life, for He is the giver of life.
As the number of Christians in this country continues to grow, we are going to see abortion swept away from America. Abortion will be a great blotch on the history of this country, as Nazism is a blotch from the past on Germany. It will happen, but all that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing, and of course, you need to vote for godly candidates.
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PRAYER: Father, we thank Thee for the victory that you are going to gain in America. This nation that was built upon godly foundations can be restored again, and we look forward to that glorious day. In Christ's holy name. Amen.
