I am old enough to have experienced the culture of abortion from the beginning – 1973. Here is my personal experience and memories and reflections of the progress and resistance movement over the years:

This is my experience. This is how I saw it. As you will hear in this message I delivered the Sunday after the ruling, I am thankful for the constitutional overturn. However, my heart remains heavy that personhood was not protected, the 14th amendment was not upheld, the protection of innocent life was not accomplished… in fact, the Supreme Court, while they did the right thing, they kicked the can down the road to the states… They avoided the moral argument. Now, the people can do what they want… as they always have. Man will continue to do what is right in his own eyes with babies… these precious babies. So, while I am thankful for our constitution and the constitutional argument, the reality is that the current moral climate will ensure that Americans in most places will continue to choose death. I believe the greatest fury of the battle is ahead of us, not behind.

Please open your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 4. Proverbs chapter 4. I was unprepared for the contemplations that would hit me when this decision was revealed on Friday. And I realized, you know, that I'd been, I was old enough to remember 1973. If you're under 50 years old, you've been aware and had been fighting this thing for maybe not as many years.

Proverbs four, verse 14. Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of evil. Avoid it, do not travel on it. Turn away from it, pass on. For they do not sleep unless they have done evil.

And their sleep is taken away unless they make someone fall for they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence but the path of the just is like the shining Sun that shines brighter ever brighter unto the perfect day The way of the wicked is like darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble. My son, give attention to my words. Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes.

Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life put away from you a deceitful mouth and put perverse lips far from you let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you ponder the path of your feet and all your ways be established Do not turn to the right or to the left. I read this passage because it speaks of the bright demarcation between the heart that inclines toward evil and the heart that inclines toward God. I think I'll be expanding on this next Sunday. I'm gonna speak about some of these matters of worldliness in the church.

But we had a remarkably invigorating announcement that carried so much memory, carried so many memories into my own soul. You know, yesterday, people gathered at Peace and Justice Plaza in Chapel Hill. People held signs like this. Abortion is healthcare. Keep abortion safe and legal.

Abortions save lives. It's astonishing to consider what has happened in America since the 1960s. Alan Hillman sent me a sign on an abortion clinic window that appeared on Friday. Here's the sign. The Supreme Court has passed a decision overturning Roe v.

Wade at 9 10 this morning, making abortion immediately illegal in the state of Texas. We are no longer taking any appointments or seeing any patients in this clinic. We are officially closed. We apologize for this devastating news. So we can praise the Lord for signs like that.

But abortion hasn't been going down and it's not going to go down because of technology and the places where abortion will be offered. I was a young adult Christian when Roe became law. But what I understood at that time is that It was part of a massive transformation that was taking place in all over the world, but particularly in the United States of America. It was the result of the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution was fomented primarily through the demonic musicians of the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.

These were demonic musicians. Some of you listen to their songs today. You know, the arguments against abortion are so simple. They are so simple and that it's wrong to kill an innocent being. And a baby is an innocent being.

And a baby is a separate being in a woman's body that deserves protection. It's the simplest argument. And all these other sham arguments that the pro-abortion people make are just, they're just absolutely ridiculous. But what happened in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was passed was all, was part of an already fast-moving freight train in American society and it was, and it was fomented by the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism.

And for example, by 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, Abortion was legalized in California, Hawaii, New York, Washington, and Alaska. Did I say California? It was legalized in California by 1970. Because what happened in 1973 was just a reflection of a sexual revolution that had already been in full motion.

And so during that time in 1970, women were flocking to those states. Now you're going to have women flocking to the pro-abortion states. But in 1970, the CDC says that 80.7% of all the abortions that took place in the United States took place in New York and California. So you need to see what's coming. I mean, people will get abortions and they'll travel.

The largest companies in the world, I've already offered money to find a pro-abortion state. To find a pro-abortion state. You know, it was Francis Schaeffer who galvanized my generation to rise up. And, you know, it was my generation that caused so many of the problems, but it was also my generation that finally rose up in the mid late 70s and in the 80s. And so many men and women of my generation were hauled to prison.

And some of their livelihoods were destroyed because they stood outside of an abortion clinic that doesn't happen anymore. You know, you who go to abortion clinics don't understand that it was illegal to do that and you would land yourself in jail, they would drag you off. And that doesn't happen anymore. When I was a young man, there were several young people in our church that banded together to show Francis Schaeffer's 10-part film, How Should We Then Live? It's so important when a younger generation rises up to say something to the culture.

And so I'm so grateful. I was so grateful for the different people and especially the young people who wanted to get together, you know, just right away on Friday night and rejoice. I was so thankful for that. But I thought, I thought that was me. That was me 50 years ago, 50 years ago.

Francis Schaeffer, I believe was almost single-handedly used of the Lord to mobilize a whole generation that has led to this result today. Here's what he said, here's the great evangelical disaster. He wrote a book called the evangelical disaster. Here's the great evangelical disaster. The failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth.

There is only one word for this namely accommodation. The evangelical church has accommodated to the world's spirit of the age. This is the most dangerous thing in the life of a church, is cultural accommodation. He said, we must understand that the question of the dignity of human life is not something on the periphery of Judeo-Christian thinking. And then he made a film called Whatever Happened to the Human Race.

Something happened though in the 1970s that put a shockwave across the world. It was called ultrasound. Bernard Nathanson was an obstetrician and a gynecologist. He was a co-founder, one of the co-founders of NARAL, which used to be called National Abortion Rights Action League. Now it's called Pro-Choice America.

And he says that He presided over 60, 000 murders of babies. But even in the rudimentary ultrasound of that time, he was shown an ultrasound of a 12-week-old baby being dismembered, doing what he had always done. And he never recovered, and he called it the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States. And then he made a film. It was called The Silent Scream.

How many of you have seen that film? Like five, the silent scream. That was one of the great shockwaves in the movement. Because you had a man who had killed 60, 000 babies, repenting, and telling the world what an atrocious holocaust it was. He wrote an autobiography in 1996 called The Hand of God.

Here's what he said, I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age. I mean, even by the time you get into the middle 90s The stat people's statisticians say 40% of women who are getting abortions were churchgoing women The church was was slow to come up to speed with what had happened. And even at the beginning, you had theologians who weren't sure a baby was a person at conception. But that changed. The ultrasound movement changed that.

And as they got clearer and clearer and clearer, I believe it was in probably 1998, I was part of a group of people who founded Pregnancy Support Services of Wake Forest, and where we would, you know, counsel women, try to find women who wanted to get abortions. And, but when the ultrasounds were affordable and when a woman would see an ultrasound, in almost every case, she just couldn't bear to have a baby, to have her baby killed in her womb. By the way, there's a fascinating story of the development of the ultrasound. It's really a fascinating, encouraging story. He was a Christian.

This man worked and worked and worked to try to find out how to do this and he kept at it and he kept at it and he did it for the glory of God. He did it in service to God. And I don't know if he had any idea if the ultrasound would strike such a shockwave, but it did. But the reality is that, you know, abortion wasn't new to America. Every pagan culture practices it.

It's part of the stream of pagan culture. Virtually every culture in antiquity was killing their babies. Rome. The Romans would abandon their children outside the city and let them die if they didn't want them. The Greeks developed chemical abortifacients to kill babies in the womb.

Persians developed advanced ways to cut babies up in the womb. The Canaanites, we know all about the Canaanites, they offered their children to Molech. That's why, That's why when people, when Christian people talk about abortion, you might hear the word moleck because there's a direct line. The Egyptians disposed of their unwanted children. And frankly, you know, if you study the classics, and you'll find that Plato and Aristotle and Seneca and Pythagoras and on and on and on and Cicero, Herodotus, Thucydides.

None of them disparaged the killing of babies. They were right in line with the stream of culture. Because this is what pagans do. And now, and now you have headlines like I read yesterday. Here's the headline.

Apple, Amazon, Disney, JP Morgan, and others vowed to help employees access to abortions after Supreme Court rules overturns Roe v. Wade. With a byline, we must keep up the fight. This is their worldview. You need to understand this is their world view.

These are the killers of the 20th century and the 21st century. When you hear the sounds of the classic rock and roll groups, you're hearing the clanking of the abortionist instruments. You are hearing the silent scream. You need to understand that. We cannot play patty cake with these people.

They're not playing patty cake with you. When you listen to Hollywood and Disney and Apple and Google, you need to understand who you're listening to. You're hearing the silence scream. So I think one thing that I wanted to try to communicate here is that this is what we're what we're it's not it's nice that the Supreme Court did what they did, but there's a far, far more grave and penetrating threat because it's the culture that's the threat. It was the culture that caused those states, California, New York, and Washington and so forth to legalize abortion before 1970.

That was because of the sexual revolution. We need to understand that this freight train of secular culture is the problem. And I am grateful for what the Supreme Court did But look out for the freight train because the freight train has only increased in speed And it's a bigger train. It's a bigger train than it ever was before Francis Schaeffer said was before. Francis Schaeffer said, if you're troubled about what's going on in this society, he said, We must not concentrate merely on the bits and pieces.

We must understand that all these dilemmas come on the basis of moving from the Judeo-Christian worldview that the final reality is an infinite creator God over and over into this other reality which is that the final reality is only energy or material in some mixture or form which has existed forever and which has taken its present shape by pure chance. That's in the Christian Manifesto. What he's saying is that you have a worldview that's driving this freight train, fueling this freight train, that says that you are just a collection of cells. You're just protoplasm. Man is not made in the image of God.

God is not holy. Schaefer, way back in those days, He said this, every abortion clinic should have a sign in front of it saying, open by the permission of the church. You know, It really struck me when we were meeting Friday night that it's likely that almost every, or at least the majority of the prayer meetings we've had in the last decade and a half, we've prayed about this. We've prayed that it would end. We prayed that these would be closed down.

We prayed. We prayed almost every Wednesday night. So I praise the Lord for that. Wired magazine has weighed in just yesterday on the positive impact of abortion. Quote, American women's rate of marriage has halved.

That's a good thing, women are getting married. It's cut in half since 1970. Their college degree attainment has quadrupled. The number of children who do not bear children has more than doubled. And the number of women who forego jobs because they're raising children is half what it was.

This is a highly secular magazine telling us what has happened but you can see that there's a an opposing worldview. Put it put more simply over the past 50 years because of access to legal safe abortion women have been able to make choices that reshape their lives. Now that Roe has overturned, some of those choices and some of those life paths may not be available anymore. The ability to determine the timing of your childbearing is a pillar of this new modern family. Abortion rights are fundamental to women's progress.

They're part of the package of self-determination and autonomy that are foundational to women's lives. What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that I am rejoicing over this decision. But I'm also very sobered by two things. First of all, Legislation is not our only hope.

The only hope is the gospel. The only hope is that God would change a heart to love his ways. That's the only hope and that's our business. That's what we do here. That's what we are all about.

When we gather together and when we go out, the most important question is, do I know the Lord? You can make all the laws in the world and people's hearts won't be transformed. This law didn't transform any hearts, by the way. Not one single heart did this law transform. It only galvanized hearts in the direction they were already going.

It only concentrated the fury of the ungodly forces. The greatest, I believe, and we'll see how this plays out, but I believe the greatest battleground is ahead of us, not behind us. And some of you who are younger might find yourself involved in this battle for the rest of your lives. But this is this is not a time to just relax and say oh boy isn't it wonderful what's happened. It is it's a short-term victory and we should we should we should seek for short-term victories.

And we have, we have two men who are running for office in North Carolina. E.C. Sykes and Fred Von Cannon, who if elected could quite likely overturn the pro-abortion laws of North Carolina. I mean they are in position to do it. I praise the Lord for that.

You know this happened because God saw fit to appoint more conservative Supreme Court justices. I praise the Lord for that. I praise the Lord for voters in various states and legislators in various states who are moving against the pro-abortion proposition. And by the way, There's more of that happening right now than in my entire lifetime. There are things that have happened in the last five years that were unthinkable in the years before, in the 45 years before in this battle, we actually had a president and a vice president of the United States, a vice president attending an anti-abortion rally and a president endorsing the rally.

That never happened, as far as I recall, in 50 years. And that anti-abortion laws would be being passed in states, that was not happening for most of these years. For decades it didn't happen, as far as I recall. And it's been happening. It's happening right now.

And that wonderful, that beautiful sign on the doorway of that abortion clinic in Texas, we are closed. It's illegal for us to do this. I praise the Lord for that. Bottom line is this. Do not love the world or the things that are in the world.

Because all of this is happening because of love for the world. Don't love any part of it. Understand who it is that's behind all this. They're some of the most famous, some of the richest people on the planet. You need to know who they are.

And I would counsel all of us to take the position of David, I hate the work of those who fall away, but let's keep praying and let's keep voting and and and let's keep crying out for life. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I am so thankful for this church. I'm so thankful that they have exerted so much effort, so much, so many hours, so many thousands of hours to stand up and say to the world there's a baby inside there. Lord, I praise you for the people in this church and the people all over the country who have said that.

And I pray, oh Lord, that you would come and cause a great awakening in this land so that this killing would stop. Amen.