A national group of Satanists is putting their cards on the table.  They are opposing abortion restrictions and adamantly defending abortion as worship of their god.

Meanwhile, a group of liberal pastors in Maine claims that abortion can supposedly be the Christian thing to do. In an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News, “Why a Christian minister supports abortion rights,” their leader writes of the importance of “reproductive justice.”

Abortion is a spiritual battle. So what does the Bible have to say abortion?

I write this shortly after the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (and its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton) of January 22, 1973, that gave us abortion on demand. And here we are 63 million abortions later. That’s nothing to celebrate—but much to mourn.

Psalm 106:37 speaks of a time of disobedient Israelites, noting, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood…and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did.”

Did Christ ever address abortion? Not directly. But note how His brilliant statement on human relations, the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), has direct application to the subject of abortion.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,” He said in the Sermon on the Mount. You were once an unborn baby. Would you have wanted your mother to kill you in utero? The majority of those mothers feel forced, against their will, to abort.

When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, he was asked why he wasn’t “pro-choice.” He responded, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” Touché.

Dr. D. James Kennedy once said, “If you’re pro-choice, you should get down on your knees and thank God that you’re mother wasn’t pro-choice.”

Some people say that abortion doesn’t kill human beings. And yet everything you and I are—our sex, how tall we will be, the color of our eyes—all of these things were determined at the moment of conception.

And from conception to birth, it’s all one continuous period of growth. The Mayo Clinic documents the humanity and growth of the preborn baby in the womb until birth.

We look back at previous generations, and we say, “How could they have been slave-owners?” Well, I believe future generations will look back at us and ask, “How could they have been so complacent about abortion—especially when they had 3-D sonograms, giving them a window to the womb?”

Many times when a pregnant woman contemplating an abortion gets to see the sonogram of her unborn baby, she changes her mind.

David states in Psalm 139, “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

The prophet Jeremiah says this in the very opening of his book: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’” So, here’s this little unborn baby being appointed a prophet of the nations by God Himself.

Jumping ahead to the New Testament, in Luke 1, we read of two pregnant relatives visiting with each other. Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth says, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Baby? The Greek word in Luke 1 is brephos, which means baby.

Luke 2:12 says: “The angels told the shepherds, ‘This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’” The same word, brephos, is used there. Thus, whether in English or in Greek, the word baby is used for born and unborn alike.

The Bible also says that God has made human beings in His image. He has made us a “little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5). But many people today believe that we’re essentially “a little higher than the apes.” As the abortion ethic has spread in our culture, like a cancer, it has cheapened human life all the way around.

It’s time we follow the Biblical ethic and treat the unborn as we ourselves would want to be treated. Let them live.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Many readers here may know the name Joshua Harris, the former pastor of Covenant Life Church in Maryland, and author of the popular 1997 book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” which has sold over 1.2 million copies.

Christians throughout America were shocked this week to learn that Harris has divorced his wife and renounced his faith in Jesus Christ. “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus,” Harris wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend.  “By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian. . . I am not a Christian.”   Harris “apologized” for his views on sexual purity making sure to place emphasis on his regret for supporting natural marriage with an apology to the LGBTQ community.

As it turned out, the night before I read about Harris, I had just watched a PBS documentary called “Jeremiah” about war hero and Viet Nam POW, Jeremiah Denton. His book was, “When Hell Was in Session” which was made into a 1979 TV movie.  It led to Denton’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1980.

In his nearly eight years in a Hanoi prison camp, Denton was brutally tortured. He was also mocked as he was marched through the streets of Hanoi and pummeled with rocks. Admiral Denton was held in solitary confinement in a three-foot cell for over 2,500 days. After his release, Denton noted that there was one thing he held to which the Viet Cong could not take away – his Christian beliefs. His faith inspired other POW’s in his camp and kept them holding on during some of their darkest hours.

You may recall that Denton was interviewed by members of the Japanese press as a PR stunt by the Communist forces. He was beaten afterwards for expressing his support for America, which he knew would happen. Incredibly, the emaciated, almost unrecognizable, Denton also answered questions while repeatedly blinking the word “torture” in Morse Code as a message to our military leaders and human rights advocates.

It is striking how our pro-gay, anti-Christian culture seems to have so easily taken away from a prosperous, successful Josh Harris, what beatings, starvation, emotional abuse and deprivation could never take from Admiral Denton. Harris has chosen to conform to his captors. Jeremiah Denton never did.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.