If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. (Jeremiah 1:6)
Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil. (Jeremiah 13:23)
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31)
I am thankful God has providentially exposed me to blessed and skilled exegetes of His most holy Word. One such individual is Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries. One of Dr. White's invaluable nuggets is the need for Evangelicals to think consistently.
None of us will exhibit theological certitude in our exegesis of God’s Word, but our failure should never be due to inconsistency in our thinking. Evangelicals must take the biblical command seriously to divide the Word of God rightly. I say again, most strenuously, it is a gross and heinous sin to misrepresent and misinterpret God’s Word. Let the Church pause and reflect upon this solemn biblical declaration: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
For that reason alone, I reject the approach where Evangelicals do not insist on the total ban on abortion in America, period, full-stop, and end of story. I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: I no longer classify myself as Pro-Life but be rest assured, I have not abandoned my Conservative bonafides. It is only now that I humbly regard myself as an Abortion Abolitionist.
For those unfamiliar with this growing movement in Evangelical circles, the term means just what one would expect. Abortion Abolitionists rightfully, morally, and most importantly, biblically call for the absolute and uncompromising end to all legal abortion in America.
I am not naïve in my political sophistication. I concede this will highly not transpire in my lifetime but I believe it to be the only consistent political and moral position men and women who desire to follow and bend the knee to the Sovereignty of Jesus Christ can take.
May the Church mightily pray that Evangelical young people will pick up the mantle from this current generation and earnestly find the resolve to protect life in the womb. I fear history as well as the Triune God will find this perverse generation to be Weighed and Found Wanting (check out a copy of my book that deals with the reasons professing Evangelicals should not vote for Democratic candidates until and unless they abandon their God-hating ideology).
Even though I fear this blog post will not move the needle substantially, I believe the matter to be cosmic in its cultural significance. Bill Maher, the influential host of Real Time with Bill Maher, publicly acknowledges what all rational and fair-minded people already know but apparently pretend is not an unassailable and inconvertible fact: Abortion is murder. Wow!
There is nothing earth-shattering here. At least there should not be anything earth-shattering with the declaration in the Evangelical Church. Especially if you are a cognitive thinking professing Evangelical who takes God at His Word, even remotely seriously, but here we had for all to see a prominent individual with a significant cache in popular culture dares to speak truth to culture.
Even more startling is that Maher doubled down on his hubris and stated that this reality did not bother him at all. Now, here is someone created in the Imago Dei state publicly for all to read and hear: he has no problem with a fellow human being also made in the Imago Dei slaughtered, butchered in the very place they should be the safest: their mother’s womb.
I must emphasize I blog with no hope whatsoever that pagan, God-hating individuals will bend the knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Evangelicals should fully expect carnal people like Bill Maher to act like carnal people like Bill Maher. What mature, God-fearing, professing Evangelicals do not do is think and act in manners wholly in line with carnal people like Bill Maher.
Absent direct divine intervention, Bill Maher will step into eternal Hellfire when he takes his last breath on Planet Earth. I state so with no malice or gleeful joy; I state it because all of the biblical evidence fully supports such a stark and most dire conclusion.
My ever-growing consternation is that many of my fellow AA professing Evangelicals freely and, in most cases, gleefully imbibe from the Democratic death trough. I personally know of close friends who proudly self-classify themselves as staunch Democrats:
Let me recount for your consideration:
The Democratic Party National Platform presently consists of
 Abortion on demand for any reason and no reason at all
Same-sex marriage as the Law of the Land with full government force.
Gender fluidity, with President Biden advocating for individuals as young as six to have the legal authority to demand medical assistance to change their sex assigned at birth.
Please wake me up because I must be stuck in a horrible nightmare. I am in a horrific dream where America gives more protection to baby whales than we do to human beings endowed by their Creator. If what is being done to life in the human womb was being done to baby cats, PETA would be marching on the Lincoln Monument and demanding Congressional, Judicial, and Presidential intervention.
It is inescapable logic that anyone who enters a political alliance with Joseph Biden partners with the dastardly logic of Bill Maher and is okay with the awareness that abortion is murder, and you (if you politically align with this culture of death) must be OK with that. I mean, if you were not OK with it, you could register your dissent, and I don’t know: DON’T VOTE FOR IT.
Yet, my more significant consternation for this blog post is now with professing Conservative Evangelicals as they fawn all over the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. In previous blog posts, I have repeatedly written against the ills of pragmatism. Pragmatism shows up most vividly in mega-church philosophy. Pragmatism gives sway to what works as opposed to the traditional God-honoring Evangelical philosophy of what is true, i.e., what is biblical.
As he runs for a second term in office, Donald Trump released a long-awaited public statement detailing his stance on the hot-button item of abortion for the 2024 Presidential election. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the majority of states that have had abortion initiatives on the ballot have seen Pro-Life legislation defeated, most surprisingly and depressing even in Red States.
Clearing demonstrating his true moral convictions, Donald J. Trump openly acknowledged his chief concern is winning elections, not legally safeguarding every life created in the womb by their Creator.
So let me understand this moral reasoning: Evangelicals are supposed to be content with life having legal protection at some arbitrary point, be it six weeks or sixteen weeks. Sorry, miss me with this pitiful political accommodation to pragmatism.
If you align with Joe Biden and the Party of Death, then I will regard you as the enemy. I am prepared to treat you as the vile opponent of what is Good and Holy. I will allow it to look like hate because I love God and His Word that much. I love what the Triune God loves. I hate what the Triune God hates. The Triune God hates murder, and even Maher acknowledges that Abortion is MURDER, period, full-stop, end of story.
Yet if you are a professing Conservative Evangelical and you align with the candidacy of DJT, I give you the same backhand. Death at six weeks or any point along the birth continuum is, guess what: STILL MURDER.
With fear and trembling, I will give no quarter to the legal government-sanctioned murder of any person created in the Imago Dei. God and He alone have the moral authority to give or take life. If that political philosophy means the other side wins [temporally because God always wins, even if we cannot see how or live long enough to see it], so be it; the results always reside with the Creator, and I am okay with that even as the other side wins. I will understand my assignment: that is to fight and advocate for life at every point of the continuum, from natural birth to natural death.
My job as God's creation is to yield to God’s Sovereignty. His ways are my ways; His thoughts are not thoughts. I must allow my yays to be yays and my nays to be nays, but I am never responsible for the results. Thus, my theological reasoning must remain at the forefront whenever I step into the ballot box.
I can never, with any theological certainty, tell you what the mind of God is on matters like immigration or the economy, but I can speak with a full chest about what His mind is on issues like abortion, gender, and marriage.
So, shame on you professing Evangelical who consciously aligns with good ole Joe and the Party of Death. You do so with full cognition that they enthusiastically support abortion and same-sex marriage and reject God’s gender binary.
Similarly, shame on you professing Conservative Evangelical and even to a greater degree because you are the very ones who extolled during the 1990s that character mattered, yet those calls magically disappeared when the candidacy of DJT gained traction.
The character issue alone has driven me to the conclusion that I would not support DJT's candidacy in 2024. His waffling on the abortion question only solidifies my conclusion.
The abortion issue is the issue of this generation. Even liberal organizations like the Guttenberg Institute estimate over 63 million lives created in the Imago Dei have been slaughtered since 1973. Planned Parenthood reports an all-time high number of abortions in 2023 AFTER the Supreme Court overturned Roe due to the exploding practice of government-sanctioned chemical, mail-order abortions.
Every citizen in this current perverse, debased generation will give an account of their position on the abortion question.
I do not stand with the Democrats or the Republicans. I stand with God, and I know I am on firm ground even if I stand alone.
Yet, I humbly realize God will always have a faithful remnant who refuses to bend the knee to Baal. I salute you and encourage you to hold the line. We may lose the battle, but God assures us that Evangelicals will never lose the war. Evangelicals do not win because we are more cunning, wise, or righteous. No, Evangelicals readily accept the biblical conclusion that we are the most wretched sinners, just like all of the rest.
Evangelicals win because God the Father has given His only Son all power in heaven and on Earth. Jesus Christ already sits on the throne. He is already King of King and Lord of Lords. Jesus Christ will soon burst through the skies and ultimately return to Earth and rule!
For those who politically align with the Party of Death, I fear for you.
·      Christ-followers feverously protect life at all costs, especially life in the womb, as it has no one to speak for them.
·      Christ-followers strenuously oppose attempts to legally redefine marriage because God ordains and legislates the institution of marriage.
·      Christ-followers ardently refuse to join the wicked sexual revolution and endorse anyone, especially the young, rejecting the sex/gender assigned to them at birth by their Creator.
Yet, I close with a shot across the bowel to my Conservative Evangelical brethren.
Christ-followers do not sanction the murder of any life created in the Imago Dei. We accept the political reality we live in a Democratic country, so the majority will rule the day, but our marching orders never change.
We fight, realizing we may not always win the temporal war, but God has promised there awaits a grand reward if we faint not. God is looking for Lion and Lioness, not housecats.
As usual, let me know what you think. Do I make the case or not? Until then, keep your hands to the plow and seek to serve for an Audience of One.
With fear and trembling,
Ricky Kyles Sr. DEd.Min