The Issue of Abortion

The issue of abortion has taken on new life in recent months. There has been a wave of radical movement in this arena. The Governor of Virginia recently advocated for abortion even at the point of birth. The suggestions were made that a baby could be delivered and set on a table while the doctor and the mother deliberated over whether it was in everyone’s best interest to allow the child to live or die. One legislator from the south reasoned something to the effect of, “They’re going to die anyway. It would be best to kill them before they cost any more than they have.”

In response to this wave, there has been another on the more conservative, life-giving side. Alabama recently signed a bill making abortion illegal. Other states are working on similar legislation. My understanding is that the hope is one of these bills will make their way to the Supreme Court and allow for the possibility of overturning Roe V Wade.

In the midst of this, I read an argument from a young lady I know who attended our church as a child. She argued that while a baby in the womb is human, it is not immoral to abort it within the first and second trimester because, as she said it, it could not survive outside its mother’s womb. She likened it to a person who is braindead but artificially kept alive through life support. She claimed that, just as it is not immoral to “pull the plug” on that life, it would not be sinful to pull the baby out of its mother’s womb. It is, after all, just a life support system. She did argue that, once the baby could live outside of the uterus, it should be illegal to abort it.

I commend this young lady for taking the stand that the unborn are human. She stands where few of her age are willing to stand. I commend her too for standing for the life of the baby after it reaches the third trimester.

Her reasoning, however, for the morality of aborting the child in the earlier trimesters is wrong for at least two reasons:

One, in the case of the brain-dead person she set as an example, the chance of life is considered impossible. So long as there is the hope of recovery, medical personnel would wish to fight for the life of the person. Even when it is determined that life is impossible, it is still a matter of debate how moral it would be to, as she put it, “pull the plug.” In the case of the unborn, even in the earliest stages, the question of life is not on the table. Given the opportunity, the child will almost certainly live. Aborting a baby just because it cannot live outside of the womb is not much different than killing a person just because he cannot live without food and water.

Secondly, the act of “pulling the plug” is generally done in the most humane way possible. Loved ones gather tears are shed, much deliberation has taken place, every possible means of saving the person has been made and, when it is determined that it is no use, they are lovingly allowed to slip into eternity. This is not the case of the unborn. Unwanted, even hated by those involved, a team executioners are hired to kill the baby in the womb, always in the most brutal of manner: it is burned to death with salt water, or its brains are sucked out of its skull, and its body ripped apart limb by limb.

There is no moral connection that can possibly be made between loving allowing the body of one who is dead to slip into eternity and violently slaying an innocent, living, feeling human being and ripping it from the one place on this planet it should have been safe.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

Prayer

It’s the most I can do on behalf of others but the battle to remember that is fierce.

When real burdens happen, the flesh always wants to take leadership.

·      What can I do?

·      How can I fix it?

·      Who can I get to help?

Illness, financial trouble, legal issues, spiritual issues, we always want to find our own way out. When it is for someone I love, I am tempted to search every possible resource to solve their problem.

Of course, we want prayer. We wouldn’t be very good Christians if we didn’t want prayer. But we want to pray AND …

·      And money

·      And advice

·      And help

whatever practical thing that really fixes our trouble, we want prayer and that thing.

There are occasions when we understand we are unable to do anything. In these cases, prayer is valued. But even then we have conditioned ourselves to think so little of prayer that we either don’t really pray or don’t really appreciate prayer as we ought.

Oh, how I want to give myself to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

I Prayed for Revival

I read a testimony the other day from a pastor I’ve kept in touch with for more than 20 years. His ministry has been active and useful in the cause of Jesus Christ. His sons all serve the Lord. He has every reason to rejoice. 

His testimony read something like this; “I have prayed for revival for decades now. This week I saw it happen.” He was referring to an event sanctioned by the Southern Baptist Convention. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event held by a camp of believers who have compromised the faith on several fronts. He saw what he claimed was a revival in an event organized by a group our independent Baptist forefathers had the insight to come out of. Now their children and grandchildren are working their way back in. I promise the SBC has not gotten better. It’s that current independent Baptists are less discerning. 

Why would a man whose ministry has been so blessed return to where his forefathers left? I believe it can be found in his own testimony that he had been praying for revival for years. He has been looking for what he believed God had not granted him. He could not see the blessings of God in his own ministry. (I am sure he would acknowledge being blessed, but not that he has seen revival.) In some respect, he would have had to view what has been accomplished in his ministry as being less than supernatural, less than revival. 

We have got to get past this. We have got to get over calling HUGE results the work of God and the results of our own ministries as just routine. 

•    Every Sunday service

•    Every sermon

•    Every altar call

is the result of the work of God; supernatural, miraculous - a revival. 

Unless it is not. 

And preacher, only you know if your ministry has been of the flesh and not the Holy Spirit.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

Not a Novice

1 Timothy 3:6 (KJV)

Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.

He is 23 years old. He grew up in church, taught Sunday school, and did various other ministries around the church. Early he met his bride, and they moved to Arizona. There they united with a church and spent some time there. Soon they were on their way to another city and state to plant a church. 

Their website[1]gives little more information about his background than this. No name of the church he grew up in, no reference of any specific training, no mention of an authorizing church other than a vague reference to the church they left before planting this one. 

The website provides a doctrinal statement that is less than a page long. Of the eleven statements listed, two are in error, and one is questionable.

This young man also has a Youtube channel where he posts many of his sermons. Perusing through the message titles, I found several that are likely of questionable doctrine. His position on baptism is that one should not be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but in the name of Jesus only. He claims he is not a modalist, but I don’t believe he really knows what he is.

There is a trend today, perhaps not new but certainly much more evident than any other time since I have been in the ministry, of younger men with contentious natures assuming (or perhaps presuming) the working of the pulpit. 

They are generally bold, arrogant, and rebellious against those who have gone before them. 

They are novices.

Men like Steven Anderson, who has now many years of experience, have become locked in their novice state, refusing to be corrected. It appears that he has inspired a generation of novices who now rebel even against him.

These rebellious novices have a right to believe as they do, preach as they do and really, do as they do. I would not choose to stop them physically. But I do advocate for those who are not novices to warn against them. These young men are caught up in pride and in condemnation. They will hurt many by their vain and deceitful words. We must train up young men who cherish humility, submission, and maturity. 

Only then may we stop the mouths of these foolish novices.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields

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[1]I ran into this young man through the Facebook page I run called “Baptist History Faith and Practice." In this case I chose not to disclose the actual site and name of the man because I do not want to promote him in the slightest.

The Evolutionists are Angry at Themselves

I was thinking the other day about how much different the world is today because of the United States of America.

When England surrendered to George Washington, they marched to the surrender playing a tune called, “The World Turned Upside Down.”

The United States really did turn the world upside down.

The entire written history of mankind, prior to the Revolutionary War, was all about the Middle East and Europe.

Within a couple of decades after the Revolutionary War, hugely significant world events highlighted the United States.

Even in things that played out on the other side of the Atlantic, the United States became a key figure in the historical record:

• World War I
• World War II

Russia launched the first man into space in April of 1961

September of 1962 President Kennedy boldly, almost brazenly said, “We choose to go to the moon.”

And we took the historical record of not only being the first, but the only country to do that.

We changed the world.

The victory of the American Revolution came at the cost of the American Indians.

America could not become the superpower that we did without taking the land that the American Indians had occupied for who knows how long.

But that’s not anything different than what had always happened on the other side of the Ocean. European and Middle Eastern countries had always fought one another, trying to dominate over the others. They only reason they had not been successful in obliterating other nations was the balance of power.

Something different happened here.

Originally there were enough Indians to keep a balance of power with the white immigrants.

But then came disease.

Chickenpox, smallpox, measles – illness virtually wiped out whole tribes.[1]

It was natural selection – the survival of the fittest – a concept of the theory of evolution, that defeated the American Indians.

Which is really ironic.

The people who are most angry that white people took this land from the Indians are the ones who most strongly push the concept that led to it.

The evolutionists are the ones complaining about what evolution did!

Marvin McKenzie
In the fields

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[1]These same illnesses, had struck the Middle East and Europe too. Millions of them died at that time. The black plague helped Europe to defeat the Roman Empire. What happened here was not isolated to here.