It’s Saturday, August 9, 2025.
Today’s edition covers a note from yours truly, the birth of the world’s oldest baby and its ethical context, whether it’s proper to say “God died on the cross,” and much more.
“An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.” (Proverbs 18:15) — This is the heartbeat and theme verse of Project 18:15, helping you grow in knowledge as a Christian.
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Note from the editor
Dear reader,
I launched Project 18:15 on April 8, 2023—two years and four months ago yesterday. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, you’ve had an email briefing of Christian news, plus insights from Scripture and/or church history, in your inbox every weekend since.
This endeavor requires significant time and effort each week, which is both a pleasure and a hustle. I hope the enrichment for you has been equal to the effort.
After these many months of a weekly grind, I now come to the need to take a pause, take stock, and evaluate what this project will look like moving forward. So, there will not be a regular edition of Project 18:15 for the next several weeks as I take some time to rest and plan. I’ll see you back in your inbox with an update, Lord willing, mid-September. Thank you for your faithful readership!
Sincerely,
Anthony Langer
Founder and Writer
Project 18:15
Of Christian Concern
JOY AND HORROR: THE WORLD’S OLDEST BABY AND IVF’S CRUELTY
On Saturday, July 26, the oldest baby in history was born.
Thaddeus Daniel Pierce is “a record-breaking baby [who] has been born from an embryo that’s over 30 years old,” MIT Technology Review reports.
Created in 1994 through in vitro fertilization (IVF) along with three other embryos, one of Thaddeus’ biological siblings was transferred and born to their biological mother, Linda Archerd, 30 years ago.
Archerd had planned to give birth to the other embryos, which were frozen in storage, but her then-husband did not want more children. After their divorce, she won custody of the embryos and held out hope that “she might use them one day, perhaps with another partner.”
That day never came, but, as a Christian, she was unwilling to discard them or donate them for research, despite increasing storage costs. She then learned she could put them up for adoption.
The Adoption Process
Precious few clinics are willing to work with such old embryos, which require special thawing processes and are thought to be less likely to survive, but a Tennessee facility called Rejoice Fertility has no such limits. “Every embryo deserves a chance at life,” says John Gordon, the reproductive endocrinologist who runs the clinic.
The embryos were ultimately matched with Ohio couple Tim and Lindsey Pierce, 34 and 35, respectively, who had been trying for years to have children and had indicated to the clinic that they were open to “anything and everything.”
Upon thawing, one of the embryos stopped growing, and the remaining two were transferred to Lindsey’s uterus, where only one developed into a fetus.
Little Thaddeus is two weeks old today. His postnatal life begins in a bizarre situation. His biological sister is 30 years old, his biological mother is 62 and menopausal, and his adopted parents are only a few years older than he is.
A Horror of Massive Proportions
There were an estimated 1 million frozen embryos in storage in the U.S. in 2017, and that number has likely only increased. It is a well-established fact in embryology that “a genetically distinct human organism is formed” at fertilization. That is to say, every human life begins as an embryo. Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of embryos (humans), if not more, have been abandoned by their parents in storage. In the words of Florida endocrinologist Dr. Craig Sweet, who is concerned about the preservation of embryos “for ethical, not religious” reasons, “I think many of us realize that we have a bit of a mess and I’m not sure doctors know how to fix it.”
Many little ones like Thaddeus need rescuing. Notice, however, that though Thaddeus and his living sister survived, their two other siblings did not, highlighting yet another pernicious aspect of the IVF industry: the procedure itself creates a situation in which doctors and parents collude to gamble with human lives, intervening in a life-or-death process that previously was the domain of God alone.
Some Christians contend that IVF is an affront to God’s design for procreation, seeks to circumvent His sovereign choice to close or open a woman’s womb, and is motivated by an outsized desire for children that proves to be selfish in light of the often fatal outcomes.
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Also Noteworthy
The flag of Mozambique (Public Domain)
→ “ISIS soldiers behead Christians in Mozambique, burning church and homes” in what the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “a counter-terrorism research nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.,” calls a "silent genocide," Fox News reports.
→ The American Academy of Pediatrics now says interventions for children with Trisomy 13 and Trisomy 18 “should respect the same moral principles as are applied to other children…” — The new guidance states that, despite “previous characterizations” to the contrary, these disorders—“chromosomal syndromes associated with a range of congenital anomalies and universally severe neurodevelopmental impairment”—are not “uniformly lethal.”
→ A forthcoming Jimmy Stewart biopic will highlight the beloved It’s A Wonderful Life actor’s stalwart Christian faith.
→ U.S. divorce rates are down, and “births to unmarried women have plateaued,” according to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS). Sociologists are heartened by the possibility of a “marriage renaissance.” However, there is an unsettling trend that could overshadow the positive numbers: young adults are not getting married. IFS “estimates that record shares of today’s young adults—about 1-in-3—will never marry and never have children—about 1-in 4.”
→ The Spanish town of Jumilla has barred Muslims from using public facilities to celebrate their Eid festivals. Daily Mail reports that the measure “prohibits public facilities such [as] sports halls and civic centres being used for 'religious, cultural or social activities alien to our identity' unless officially organised by the local council.”
Content Catch-Up
Recent notable content of Christian interest.*
Full-length negatives of the Shroud of Turin (Public Domain)
→ Pastor and Oklahoma senator Dusty Deevers explains “why God’s sovereign rights shape law, sin, and salvation.” (Thread)
→ Podcaster and author Jon Harris suggests American Christians’ views on Israel are changing. (Thread)
→ YouTuber Ruslan KD debunks a new “study” that many are hailing as definitive proof that the Shroud of Turin isn’t Christ’s burial cloth. (Video)
→ An X user debates the AI chatbot Grok on its claim that same-sex parenting doesn’t harm children. (Thread)
→ Instagram content creator Alexandra Fasulo sings the praises of the Amish heroes she says are still quietly rebuilding Chimney Rock, North Carolina, a year after the devastation of Hurricane Helene. (Video)
→ In a Joe Rogan podcast clip, athlete and former Navy SEAL Chadd Wright explains a Reformed understanding of salvation. (Video)
→ Protestia shared a rousing video clip from Paul Washer’s ministry HeartCry Missionary Society in which a rough-looking, tattooed felon shares his heartfelt gratitude for Jesus saving him. (Video)
→ “It’s not ‘go and make decisions’; it’s ‘go and make disciples.’” In an unidentified podcast clip, evangelist Mike Gendron argues that Catholics who are born again must leave the Catholic Church. (Video)
*Not necessarily an endorsement
The Bible, Briefly
Did God Die On the Cross?
Raising of the Cross, by Sebastiano Mazzoni, 17th century, Ca' Rezzonico (Public Domain)
Christians affirm that Jesus is God and that Jesus died on the cross. So, is it proper to say “God died on the cross”? That was a question that Bibledingers host Nick Amado put to a panel of Southern Seminary professors in a podcast episode earlier this year.
Christian Theology professor Dr. Stephen J. Wellum answered, advising caution: “Yeah, I would say you have to be very careful what you're saying.” The key point, he explained, is how one is using the word “God”: “If you're using ‘God’ to mean the entirety of God's being in the sense that the divine nature died, of course that's incorrect.”
Instead, it is only God the Son who died:
So, what we mean by “God died on the cross” is…[that] God the Son—not the Father, not the Spirit, [but] God the Son—died on the cross. So, you can say the Son of God, who is God, died.
Vital to understand, though, is that His death was limited to His human nature:
But he died in and through his humanity, because you can't have the divine nature—God the Son in his divine nature—dying, right? So this is why you have to go back to Scripture in the sense that there's a real incarnation.
In other words, Jesus truly died because, though He is God, He became a real human.
The Son of God, who is the Divine Son with the Father and the Spirit, assumes, or I even like the word “add”—people don’t like that term, but I mean, there's an “addition” or “tak[ing] on” or “assumption” of—a human nature, so there's two natures.
This understanding makes sense of Scripture, Wellum says.
So you think of the book of Acts where Paul can say, you know, ‘God shed his blood’ [Acts 20:28]. …But of course it's God the Son in and through his humanity that died, so you have to be very careful when you say ‘God died’ without that qualification. It's very misleading.
In short, grasping this doctrine hinges on recognizing that Jesus’ two natures are distinct—He is both God and man, and His death as a man did not affect His essence as God.
[H]is death on the cross is a divine act through a human nature, and that's why we have a divine-human redeemer. But you have to have all of that in place to be true to Scripture and to make theological sense of it.
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