This morning I will be preaching in the morning services of Community Bible Church at 90th and Q with the text being an exciting and particularly illuminating passage of Holy Scripture, Luke 1: 26-45. There are several highlights of the passage we will look at including a heavenly announcement of world-shaking importance, a trio of excellent role models in faithful living for God, and one of the most dramatic proofs of all time of the sanctity of prenatal life, even its very earliest stages of development.The latter point reminded me of this 10 and a 1/2 minute video we created several years ago that illustrates how consistent and clear has been the Church’s teaching against abortion throughout her 2,000 year history. Indeed, though not having the remarkable knowledge we now have of embryology, including the highly complex and individually exclusive DNA data that each human possesses even at the single cell stage which is conception itself, the Church has taught the sacred right to protect the preborn persons from the poisons that were used to induce abortion.
How did they know? Well, beyond the common sense of knowing that the beginning is the beginning, they had the knowledge provided by biblical texts like the one I’ll be expositing this morning.
Anyhow, the video really is worth the 10 minutes. It is illuminating, challenging, and inspiring as it features comments on the requirements Christians have to respect and defend the lives of the yet born. And those comments come from such distinguished figures as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, John Chrysostom, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Thielicke, and Francis Schaeffer.
