It's Saturday, November 2, 2024.

Today’s edition covers a report on abortion numbers in states with “bans,” a critical documentary about David Platt, the Affair of the Sausages, the delusion of self-righteousness, and much more.

REMINDER:

American readers, Election Day is this Tuesday, November 5—and suffrage (the right to vote) is a stewardship. “Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.” (1 Corinthians 4:2)

Of Christian Concern

PRO-LIFE LAWS DO NOT REDUCE OVERALL ABORTION NUMBERS, A NEW REPORT FINDS

A new report from the Foundation to Abolish Abortion (FAA) finds that “Pro-Life laws are not reducing the overall numbers of abortions.” In a press release, FAA identifies a factor that contributes “heavily” to this state of affairs: “Self-Induced Abortion remains legal in all 50 states due to the complete legal immunity from prosecution that Pro-Life laws give to women who induce their own abortions.”

In other words, one reason that states with “bans” on abortion are not reducing overall abortion numbers is that none of these states penalize mothers for having an abortion.

Other key findings from the report, which updates the original edition released in January, include:

• “At least 217,834 women from ‘ban’ states will procure abortions in 2024, an increase of 36,631 from 2019 overall numbers.” For a sense of the timeline, recall that Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022.

• “At least 71,100 Telehealth Abortions will be procured under shield laws in 2024.” Shield laws are laws that protect clinicians in certain other states “from criminal and civil litigation” for “offering telemedicine abortion services to patients in states banning abortion.”

• “Self-Managed Abortions remain difficult to count.” The report estimates that at least 62,077 self-managed abortions continue to occur each year in the states with “bans.” Remember, these murders are considered legal.

• An analysis of new data from January through March 2024.

The press release concludes, “These findings confirm that since preborn babies are not provided the equal protection of the laws, they remain essentially unprotected in all of the 50 states.”

Read the full report here.

Also Noteworthy

→ A new 2-part documentary aims to expose how McLean Bible Church “was nearly destroyed by the deception, disillusionment and false teaching” of high-profile pastor David Platt. Platt is perhaps best known for his bestselling and increasingly controversial 2010 book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. The documentary “The Real David Platt: The Hijacking of McLean Bible Church” has found supporters and detractors.

→  Stories of Christian persecution around the world:

• Islamists in Mozambique have killed around 5,000 people in the last seven years, including “attacks focused on Christian communities.”

• Islamists in Uganda burned a pastor and his family to death in their house after the pastor led three Muslims to Christ. Pastor Weere Mukisa’s wife was 25, and his children were ages 7 and 4.

• 74 Amish community members in Canada have been convicted for COVID-19-related charges, including not filling out a mobile app despite that they do not use modern technology due to their faith. They have been fined nearly $300,000, and liens have been placed on their properties. The Democracy Fund (TDF) has gotten the Ontario court to reopen their cases.

• Boko Haram militants beheaded four in Borno State, Nigeria, and released graphic footage of the murders. At least one victim is believed to be a Christian.

→ A record number of 373 fairgoers came to Christ at the Mississippi State Fair, thanks to the evangelistic efforts of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board.

→ The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, came under fire this week for excusing homosexuality in a podcast interview during which he said that “all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship and whether it's straight or gay.” He and other church leaders have proposed having “a service of prayer and blessing for [gay couples] in their lives together” if they “have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage...”

→ Spain has seen a growing number of evangelicals in the past decade, according to a new report by the Observatory of Religious Pluralism in Spain. The country has 1,000 more evangelical places of worship than ten years ago, 96 of which popped up in the last year, bringing the total to 4,455. In terms of the number of places of worship, evangelicals are a distant second to Roman Catholics (22,933) and followed by Muslims (1,839). Muslims are the only other religious group experiencing “significant growth.”

→ The YouVersion Bible app has now been downloaded more than 800 million times globally. Today, the app, which has over 2,000 Bible translations, is opened 270 times each second and downloaded onto new devices between 10 and 12 million times monthly.

Content Catch-Up

Recent, notable content of Christian interest.*

→ Reflections From a Megachurch Implosion: Ten years ago on Thursday, the multisite megachurch Mars Hill Church announced it would be closing after a series of public conflicts surrounding the then-resigned controversial pastor Mark Driscoll, whom an internal investigation found to be guilty of “bullying" and "patterns of persistent sinful behavior.” Pastor David Fairchild, who led one of Mars Hill’s campuses, posted a thread this week sharing ten lessons he learned from the church’s “implosion” one decade ago. (Thread)

→ American’s Systemic Psychosis: Generations Radio host Kevin Swanson interviewed Christian author and attorney Jack Richardson, IV, on his latest book America’s Systemic Psychosis: How Our Nation Lost Its Mind and How to Get It Back. The conversation ranges from the insanity of the current zeitgeist to the co-opting of churches into the Marxist agenda, to many Christians’ habit of causing their own persecution, and beyond. Richardson highlights the disconnect from reality that can be observed in both those who are pushing evil forward and those who fail to push back. (Radio Show)

→ Nightmarish Natural Disasters: In the Bible, God says, “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). The prophet asks, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6b). On Thursday, Wolf of X posted a thread of videos capturing hair-raising natural phenomena and disasters. (Thread)

• RELATED: “4 Surprisingly Comforting Verses During Tragedy”

*Not necessarily an endorsement

Church History Tidbit

The Affair of the Sausages

During Lent of 1522, when the Roman Catholic Church strictly required its members to fast from certain foods, including sausage, the pastor Huldrych (or Ulrich) Zwingli caused quite a stir.

On the first Sunday of Lent, Zürich’s local printer Christoph Froschauer hosted twelve guests in his home, including Zwingli, and served sausages. Zwingli did not partake but his presence gave tacit approval. When word got out about the occasion, “Froschauer was arrested and the others denounced,” writes scholar Joshua J. Mark. But then, AZwingli defended them in his sermon, Regarding the Choice and Freedom of Foods in which he argued that fasting during Lent – or at any other time – was unbiblical.”

Scholar Stephen Nichols summarizes Zwingli’s sermon like this: “Lent’s not in the text, and this Roman Catholic Church has built all of these structures around us and all that is doing is obscuring the gospel.”

The Bishop of Constance furiously demanded Zwingli’s removal but the city council instead set up a debate (the First Disputation of 1523) between Zwingli and a Catholic delegation. Mark writes that after a second debate (the Second Disputation of 1523), “Zwingli was firmly established as the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Zürich…”

Ultimately, Nichols says, “The whole city votes on it [and] they become Reformed.” So, “the affair of the sausages,” as it came to be known, was Zürich’s “95 Theses” moment.

Mark notes that Zwingli’s leadership of the local Reformation continued “until his advocacy for forcible conversion of Catholics by war resulted in his death during the Second Kappel War in 1531.” His resorting to war as a means of conversion explains why Zwingli’s statue in Zürich portrays him holding a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other.

The Bible, Briefly

The Delusion of Self-Righteousness

How easy it is to criticize the wickedness we see in our culture but give a pass to the wickedness in ourselves. Below is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Bluegrass Chronicles earlier this year calling out the depravity of the baby organ black market, the surrogacy industry, pro-abortion politicians…and the rest of us.

Lest we forget ourselves, let's pause for a moment of self-reflection. We, too, are damnable creatures. The Bible says:

“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

Maybe you’ve never physically murdered someone, but have you ever been cowardly? Have you ever been sexually immoral? Have you ever lied? Have you ever loved anything more than God (that’s idolatry)?

Of course you have. We all have. Self-righteousness is a delusion.

Solomon writes, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Paul quotes the Psalms when he agrees,

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10–11)

Jesus Himself says flatly, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

So, kings, prophets, apostles, and the Lord Himself agree: all of us are morally abhorrent, and reprehensible before a holy God.

Regardless of how you’ve sinned, you have sinned—and all sin is damnable. As James writes, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). If you break the law, you’re a lawbreaker. Even the smallest sin is bad enough to earn you hell forever.

So, even as we call out the evils around us, let’s be careful: “For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Romans 2:1).

But that doesn’t mean we go easy on these evils. It just means we hold ourselves to the same standard, and “pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).

You can only do that if you have repented of your sin and given your life to Christ, believing that His death on the cross paid the price for your sin, and believing that He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven where He presently reigns at the right hand of God the Father, and—as the Apostles’ Creed says—will come again to judge the living and the dead.

What did you think of today’s briefing?

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Why "18:15"? The name Project 18:15 is based on Proverbs 18:15: “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” The aim is for this weekly email—a Christian news briefing, a Bible study, and a Church history lesson rolled into one—to be one way you keep abreast of current events and acquire knowledge you might not acquire elsewhere.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.