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Kentucky Abolition Bill, Spiritual Exercises, and Bible Numbers
How Kentucky has joined the list of states with a bill to abolish abortion, Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, how to interpret numbers in the Bible, and more.
Anthony Langer
February 15, 2025
It’s Saturday, February 15, 2025.
Today’s edition covers how Kentucky has joined the list of states with a bill to abolish abortion, Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, how to interpret numbers in the Bible, and more.
“With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.” (Proverbs 25:15)
Of Christian Concern
KENTUCKY JOINS OTHER STATES IN INTRODUCING AN ABORTION ABOLITION BILL
On Thursday, Kentucky became the latest state to see the introduction of a bill to abolish abortion. Rep. Richard White, with co-sponsor Rep. Josh Calloway, filed HB 523, which would extend homicide protections to preborn children. Here’s the lowdown.
Abortion clinics in Kentucky have been closed since August 2, 2022, leading many news outlets to report that abortion is “banned” in the state. However, the best estimates suggest self-managed abortions via pill continue by the thousands each year.
These abortions are legal in Kentucky because of an explicit loophole in the law that exempts “the pregnant mother” from “any criminal conviction and penalty.”
To address this, Rep. Emily Callaway introduced a bill in 2023 that would have added abortion to the homicide code. The bill (HB 300) suffered opposition from the pro-life establishment and was never assigned to a House committee.
This year’s bill, Kentucky’s second attempt to legally end any and every abortion, has some differences. “HB 523 is a stronger, more comprehensive bill than HB 300 because it closes loopholes, strengthens enforcement, and explicitly ensures equal protection for the pre-born under Kentucky law,” says Jerry Dorris, one of the pastors spearheading the effort. He outlines eight ways HB 523 improves upon HB 300.
The measure seems to have growing support among the faithful, with over 120 Kentucky pastors signing Abolish Abortion Kentucky’s press release and messengers to the Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC) annual meeting in November overwhelmingly passing a resolution on the issue. The resolution “urge[s] our state leaders to take all necessary steps to legally abolish abortion and establish equal justice and protection for the preborn. . .”
KBC Executive Director Todd Gray reacted to the bill’s filing this week: “I am glad to see HB 523 filed as it gets to the root of the pro-life issue — extending the same rights to pre-born boys and girls as are recognized for those who are born. . . . I ask Kentucky Baptists to pray for the passage of this bill.”
Dorris writes, “Right now, the most practical and needful thing Kentucky Christians can do is contact House leadership often and insist that HB 523 make it out of committee and to the House floor for discussion.”
The Bluegrass State joins several others making similar efforts, including Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Idaho, Georgia, and Iowa.
Notably, North Dakota saw a historic occurrence on Wednesday when the equal protection bill came up for a vote on the floor. Though the bill failed to pass, it received broader support from legislators than previously seen. Pastor Jeff Durbin, who heads End Abortion Now, described the moment:
For the first time ever, as it was on the floor, you had numerous other legislators refuting the arguments against the bill and calling everyone to vote yes on it to give it a green light. It was something special. The conversation is changing, people’s minds are now being redirected to Christ, God’s Word, to consistency. . . . Though it did not pass—yet—in North Dakota, it is a tremendous victory because the conversation is changing and changing dramatically.
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Also Noteworthy
Pastor Jamie Bambrick’s post sharing his alternative to He Gets Us’s Super Bowl ad
→ President Trump appointed Paula White to lead the White House Faith Office last week. There was a significant backlash to this pick, as many Christians consider White to be a false teacher—a fact that Trump reportedly has been made aware of.
→ Wheaton College celebrated alumnus Russell Vought for his confirmation to serve on Trump’s administration, then apologized. Pastor and theological scholar Joe Rigney tells the story.
→ The religious campaign “He Gets Us” aired an ad during the Super Bowl for the third year in a row. As Forbes reported last year, the company’s goal, supported at least in part by Hobby Lobby’s multibillionaire owner David Green, is “to improve the image of Jesus.” Like last year, many Christians took issue with the messaging. Also like last year, Pastor Jamie Bambrick created an alternative ad.
→ Christian journalist Megan Basham shared that she is undergoing treatment for colorectal cancer and how to pray for her.
→ Pastor Joel Webbon of Covenant Bible Church in Austin, Texas, sparked controversy for a joke in which he suggested his crotch size was bigger than a church member’s. Many have called it out as inappropriate. One pastor said it was “course jesting” (a reference to Ephesians 5:4). Another recommended his followers “mark and avoid” Webbon.
→ A sculpture of a goat “plastered in fake $100 bills” with President Donald Trump’s face and the inscription “In Trump We Trust” at Mar-a-Lago “has sparked outrage from Christians,” Daily Mail reports.
→ A viral video taken by a Muslim student at Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden, shows bacon stuffed between the pages of Qurans, a religiously offensive act of vandalism. In a press release, the university condemned the act and stated they had not yet identified a perpetrator.
Content Catch-Up
Recent, notable content of Christian interest.*
Larry Sanger, cofounder of Wikipedia (Photo: Larry Sanger)
→ Wikipedia founder and formerly skeptical philosopher Larry Sanger, now a Christian, shares his testimony. (Article | Video)
→ Pastor James White of Apologia Church in Mesa, Arizona, voices concerns about the rise of Hitler love among Christians: “Chances are, pastors, it is already very much present in your own fellowship.” (Post)
→ Christian scholar Nancy Pearcey argues, contrary to the popular notion, that knowledge of the earth’s roundness (i.e., not flatness) was widespread well before Christopher Colombus. (Post)
*Not necessarily an endorsement
Church History Tidbit
The Spiritual Exercises
Exercitia spiritualia, 1548, first edition by Antonio Bladio (Rome)
The Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), published with papal approval in 1548, is the most influential writing of the Counter-Reformation—the Roman Catholic Church’s internal response to the Protestant Reformation.
Christian History Institute describes the book as “a training manual for a four-week retreat, outlining the meditation exercises to be undergone for spiritual growth and strengthening the participants’ submission to God’s will.”
The participant is directed to meditate five times daily, repeating the exercises for a week before progressing to another subject. Each week focuses on a different topic:
Week 1: Sin
Week 2: The Kingdom of Christ
Week 3: The Passion
Week 4: The Risen Christ
This practice is the basic training of Jesuits (the Society of Jesus, which Ignatius founded), but in modern times is also practiced by some laypeople, presumably most often (though not exclusively) Catholics.
See an archived translation of the Spiritual Exercises here.
The Bible, Briefly
Numbers In the Bible
Photo: Ron Lach
Numbers in the Bible are sometimes used in ways unfamiliar to the modern reader. “They are to be understood,” Westminster Theological Seminary professor Kirk Lowery writes for The Apologetics Study Bible, “in the same way that any other part of the text is understood”—namely, with the textual and cultural contexts in mind. That means we must discern how the writer uses numbers in the text itself and, as best we can, how the ancient audience would have understood them.
Lowery asserts that “the biblical writers used numbers literally, rhetorically, and symbolically. They are never used mystically.” Here’s a breakdown of his observations.
Literally
Often, numbers in the Bible are used “in the ordinary way”—to count. “Tolls and taxes were recorded,” Lowery explains, “[and] censuses were taken.” The Hebrew Scripture (the Old Testament) sometimes refers to “arithmetic: addition (Gn 5:3-31; Nm 1:20-46), subtraction (Gn 18:26ff), and multiplication (Lv 25:8; Nm 3:46ff).”
Round numbers are common in the Bible (e.g., “a hundred” in Genesis 26:12; Leviticus 26:8; 2 Samuel 24:3; etc., and “a thousand” in Deuteronomy 1:11; 7:9). Sometimes round numbers are preceded by the word “about” (e.g., “about 3,000 men” in Exodus 32:28), though not always. This is important to note when questions of accuracy come up since the writer is giving a ballpark estimate, not an exact sum.
Other times, apparently rounded numbers are actual amounts, like “1,000 pieces of silver” in Genesis 20:16). “In general,” Lowery suggests, “one should assume a number is not rounded, unless there is reason to believe otherwise.”
Rhetorically
Sometimes numbers are used rhetorically. This occurs in poetic parallelism:
“Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” (1 Samuel 18:7)
Perhaps most often, it occurs in “the formula x . . . x + 1 to express progression, intensification, completion, or some sort of climax”:
“Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment…’” (Amos 2:6)
“For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:20)
Symbolically
It’s popular to interpret numbers as having symbolic meaning. But what are those meanings? “The numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, and 40 among others have been assigned various meanings such as ‘unity,’ ‘perfection,’ ‘completion,’ and ‘generation.’” But, it turns out, these meanings don’t come from the Bible. In fact, “only one number in the entire Bible is explicitly said to be symbolic”—the number 666 (Revelation 13:18).
“Any other symbolism for a number must be inferred from the biblical text itself by demonstrating a frequent association of a particular number with a particular concept.” According to Lowery, there is only one candidate: the number 7. However, its uses are so diverse that nailing down a single association is difficult, though perhaps a notion of “completeness" or "perfection" is the best inference.
Never mystically
All the other “traditionally associated meanings” come from “the sixth century B.C. Greek mathematician and philosopher, Pythagoras,” who started a religious cult based on numbers. His ideas about numbers influenced Jewish thought, which developed Gematria, a method of calculating the numerical values of words to divine a supposed hidden meaning. Gematria, in turn, influenced Christian thought even among early church fathers, though not all of them.
Unfortunately, this method of interpretation lacks biblical support. Lowery concludes:
There is no hint in the Bible that there is any message encoded in the letters of the text. . . . God's message of salvation for mankind was intended to be intelligible to everyone, of all ages and from all cultures. . . . God does not speak to us in “code.”
P.S. Speaking of Kirk Lowery and numbers, he offers an insightful and encouraging explanation for how so many Israelites could have survived in the wilderness. See The Bible, Briefly from an earlier edition of Project 18:15.
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