572. Exclusive: Exposing Massive Lies You Have Been Told

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Apologia Radio – Episode 572

Title: Exclusive: Exposing Massive Lies You Have Been Told
Date: May 22, 2026
Host: Jeff Durbin (Jeff “the Coleman”)
Guests: Bradley Pierce (Foundation to Abolish Abortion), Luke the Bear

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Episode Overview

This episode of Apologia Radio centers on exposing what the hosts and guest Bradley Pierce believe are significant “lies” or misdirections within the modern pro-life movement—especially regarding the effectiveness and sincerity of so-called pro-life legislative efforts. The hosts challenge narratives pushed by leading pro-life figures and organizations, arguing that these groups often hinder true abolitionist progress, particularly around "equal protection" bills intended to criminalize abortion for all parties, including pregnant women. The episode also directly rebuts public claims recently made by prominent pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf, dissecting his positions point-by-point.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Truth About the Abortion Pill Court Case (07:27–12:54)

Bradley Pierce clarifies widespread misconceptions about current abortion pill litigation, distinguishing between what is claimed versus what is legally at stake:

• What’s at stake: The main issue is not an abortion pill ban, but whether the FDA should reinstate an “in-person” doctor requirement for prescribing mifepristone (the first of two drugs used in medication abortion).
• Reality check: Even if the in-person requirement is reinstated, abortion pills will remain easily available through overseas providers or U.S. organizations willing to sidestep standard channels.
  • “Even if they win this case and there’s an in-person requirement...you can still get these pills from overseas... [or] just use misoprostol for an abortion” — Bradley Pierce, 09:41
• Summary quote:
  • “It’s not even about banning mifepristone...It’s basically, you can still get your abortion pills...you just have to see the doctor in person first” — Bradley Pierce, 11:40

Key Takeaway:

Incrementalist legal fights over procedural issues are, in the hosts’ view, distractions from real justice for preborn children.

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2. The Need for Equal Protection Legislation (12:54–15:37)

• Argument: Only by passing equal protection bills—which criminalize abortion as homicide for all parties—can meaningful abolition be achieved.
• Illustrative analogy: Just as it’s illegal to transport and use marijuana across state lines (regardless of local statutes), “it should be illegal to murder people everywhere, regardless of the tool” — Jeff Durbin, 15:14
• Abolitionist creed:
  • “Murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone. The tool is irrelevant.” — Jeff Durbin, 16:53

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3. Challenging Scott Klusendorf’s “Prudence” Argument (19:04–26:08 and throughout)

Scott Klusendorf’s Position (from Gospel Coalition & public statements):

• Claims that American culture and legislatures "aren't ready" for equal protection bills that would prosecute women for abortion.
• Advocates for “prudence,” citing Proverbs 27:12 (“The prudent sees danger and hides himself…”).

Hosts’ and Pierce’s Counterpoints:

• “By what standard?” (23:43–25:57)

  • The team argues biblical prudence is defined by God’s standard—namely justice as revealed in Scripture—not by public sentiment or pragmatic calculations.
  • “Prudence is wise. But by what standard? There’s actually a book [Proverbs]...that tells us what is just and what is not.” — Jeff Durbin, 24:40

• Obedience over pragmatism:

  • “What’s the wisest thing to do? Obey God.” — Bradley Pierce, 29:24
  • “Fear of man lays a snare. If you want to fear man, God is warning you—fear man and it’s a trap…it seems like safety, but it’s not.” — Jeff Durbin, 20:48

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4. The “Culture Isn’t Ready” Myth (33:54–41:37)

Major Rebuttal to Pro-Life Establishment:

• Claim: Bills of equal protection can't even pass out of committee due to cultural opposition.
• Rebuttal/Evidence:
  • The hosts and Pierce recount multiple states (e.g., Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota) where such bills had enough legislative and public support to pass—until the pro-life establishment (not pro-choice activists) intervened to actively kill or derail the legislation.
    • “It was the pro-life establishment that came in and turned all the legislators against legislation they were already prepared to say yes to.” — Jeff Durbin, 38:40
  • “We had a bill in South Dakota…needed seven votes to get the bill approved by committee…two of the votes that voted against us were co-authors of the bill—until the pro-life leaders got to them.” — Bradley Pierce, 42:01

Poll Data:

• Polls in Tennessee show up to 25% of the public supports equal protection, including many Republicans and even some Democrats.

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5. Deterrence, Justice, and the Real Impact of Abolition Bills (44:03–70:34)

• Misrepresentation:

  • Klusendorf and mainstream pro-life groups claim abolitionists just “want to punish women,” which the hosts describe as a slander or straw man.

• Deterrence:

  • Penalties serve as deterrents against the crime of abortion, just as they do with other crimes like slavery (“If it had been illegal and I could have been prosecuted, then I never would have done it in the first place.” — Bradley Pierce, 69:14).

• Biblical and Legal Consistency:

  • Equal protection is about treating the preborn as fully human under the law—subject to the same due process, presumption of innocence, and prosecutorial discretion as any born person.
  • “Let the justice system decide on a case-by-case basis…stop writing laws that just treat every case the same.” — Bradley Pierce, 59:55

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6. The Sin and Danger of Partiality (61:04–65:14)

• Scripture commands impartial justice (Deut. 16:19, Leviticus 19:15, 2 Chron. 19:7).
  • “You shall not pervert justice…you shall show no partiality.” — Read by Jeff Durbin, 61:04
• The pro-life movement’s stance of explicitly exempting certain classes (mothers) from legal culpability is labeled as partiality, unbiblical pragmatism, and ultimately injustice.

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7. Call to Public Debate and Repentance

• Open challenge to Scott Klusendorf:
  • Inviting him to public discussion or debate, expressing hope he’ll re-examine his position in light of biblical standards and the evidence.
• Repentance as a Christian virtue:
  • The hosts and Pierce repeatedly frame deviations from equal protection as “sinful” and urge pro-life leaders to “repent” of prioritizing pragmatic or partial measures over God’s definition of justice.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Punishment isn't about a fetish with women—it’s about equal protection and deterrence. The pro-life establishment is obsessed with protecting a single class.” — Jeff Durbin, 72:00
• “Pro-lifers are actually the ones coming into state after state after state and flipping politicians who support equal protection to not support equal protection.” — Bradley Pierce, 43:23
• “The greatest enemy to the end of abortion in our nation is the pro-life establishment. And I can demonstrate that.” — Jeff Durbin, 75:17

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Key Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Insight | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 07:27–12:54 | Abortion pill litigation explained (Bradley Pierce) | | 12:54–15:37 | Summary of the equal protection approach | | 17:14–26:08 | Critique of “prudence” and call for biblical standards | | 33:54–41:37 | “Culture isn’t ready” myth destroyed by legislative stories| | 44:03–70:34 | Real effects of abolition bills, deterrence, false attacks | | 61:04–65:14 | Scriptural foundation for impartial justice | | 69:19–70:34 | Law’s deterrent purpose—testimonies from post-abortive women|

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Tone & Language

• Tone: Unapologetically direct, biblical, polemic—a no-nonsense call for consistency and faithfulness in Christian ethics and legislative action.
• Language: Earnest, frequently referencing Scripture, legal reasoning, and firsthand political experience.
• Discussion Style: Conversation alternates between analysis, storytelling (“war stories” from legislatures), biblical exegesis, and appeals to conscience.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive, abolitionist critique of mainstream pro-life activism, claiming that the “massive lie” is not coming from the culture or pro-choice lobby, but from the pro-life establishment itself. The hosts urge listeners to reject partial, pragmatic measures in favor of uncompromising biblical justice for the preborn, centrally defined as “equal protection.” The episode closes with an open plea for further public biblical debate within the pro-life movement.

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For further engagement, the hosts direct listeners to Apologia Studios' All Access and encourage open Bibles and critical thinking like Bereans in considering these urgent justice issues.

Transcript

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[Jeff Coleman]

Non Rockabotus Must stop. I don't want to rock the boat.

[Bradley Pierce]

I want to sink it. Are you gonna bark all day, little

[Jeff Coleman]

doggy, or are you gonna bite? Delusional. Yeah, delusional is okay. In your worldview, I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being so. You calling me delusional Using your worldview is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me. Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

[Scott Klusendorf]

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding

[Jeff Coleman]

them for their courage.

[Luke the Bear]

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make corrosives. Don't go in the world, make homies.

[Bradley Pierce]

Right.

[Luke the Bear]

Disciples.

[Jeff Coleman]

I got. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, Pastor.

[Bradley Pierce]

When we have the real message of

[Jeff Coleman]

truth, we cannot let somebody say they're

[Bradley Pierce]

speaking truth when they're not. Take an amazing journey to a place that will blow your mind and move your mind so you will never be the same again.

[Jeff Coleman]

The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifices. Proverbs 21, verses 1 and 3, everybody. What's up? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is the Gospel heard around the world. I'm Jeff the Coleman and into those look to bear right there.

[Luke the Bear]

What up?

[Jeff Coleman]

You all can get more at apologiastudios.com that's a P O L O G I A studios.com go there, get all the past episodes of cultish Apologia Radio Shiologians provoked that's there, including all of the additional content you can get Apologia Studios at All Access. So sign up for All Access. You get all the Apologia Academy, get training in the Trinity, the defense of the faith, prayer, all that is there. And you get the full episodes of Collision. You get the after shows, you get the ask me any things and a bunch of additional content that is coming. We're working on all of it and we're very excited about this next year about what we're adding to all that you see here at Apologia Studios. A big thanks to everybody who's been a part of this ministry with us. By being a part of All Access, you literally are in this ministry with us. All over the world, people are being impacted by the content here at Apologia Studios. I was just speaking to some brothers in Armenia this morning for about an hour long zoom call this morning. And just the impact that Apologia Studios is having in Armenia is significant and God is blessing that is powerful. So thank you to everybody who's a part of this ministry with us. The people coming to Christ around the world through the gospel proclamation coming through Apologia Studios is as a result of us all working together in this ministry. So thank you. Thank you. And if you're not a part of Apologia Studios yet with All Access, Go sign up apologiastudios.com we have a lot of new things coming. You guys are all aware right now, if you've been seeing the past episodes, that we're doing our first fundraiser for Apologia Studios to add a bunch of new tools for you to benefit and to learn from and to grow with at Apologia Studios. Learn what you believe, why you believe it and be able to articulate that. And we're upgrading everything here. We're doing new set, we're doing new programming, we're doing a lot more cultural engagement so you can see the Christian faith defended. And so all that's happening right now, you go to apologiastudios.com give help us to get to our goal as quickly as possible so we can start this right away. And much of that is already underway. And so we we're talking about an app, new tools for apology, all access, new programming. All that's happening, guys. And I mean hundreds of millions of people have been impacted by this ministry and we just are not going to stop till the whole world knows Jesus. And so that's what we're doing. And so apolog studios.com give help us to get to the goal as quickly as possible and we'll be very thankful for that. So very important show today. Obviously the semi provocative title there. We needed to keep it general for a reason. We're noticing that some of the platforms are engaging in the throttling and the shadow banning and things like that right now. We just recently heard about somebody that was actually, they lost their channel as a result of mentioning transgender stuff. And, and so yeah, it's, it's, it's happening. And so we have to be cautious and wise with how we do some of the title and descript but very important episode today. Make sure you guys do all the things that YouTube likes do, the likes, the shares, the subscribe, do all of that so that all this content gets seen by everybody. And if you would share this because what we're going to talk about today is actually vitally important. Really, really important. So we're glad you joined us and we have one of our favorite people in the world on with us today from good old state of Texas, Yee haw. Bradley Pierce. Look at that handsome man right there. Let's, let's cut a shot right to Bradley Pierce right there. Gabe. That's Bradley Pierce. Foundation to abolish Abortion. Bradley I or end abortion now have worked together closely across the country, different states for bills of equal protection, bills of abolition across the United States of America. I don't even know at this point, Bradley, how many times we've done it and where we've been together. It's all just a blur at this point, but it's been all over the country. Bradley has written, I think, most of the bills of equal protection that have gone in across the country. And so Bradley, thanks for joining us once again on Apologia Radio. Brother.

[Bradley Pierce]

Thanks for having me. It's always great to be with y'.

[Luke the Bear]

All.

[Jeff Coleman]

All right, we got a lot to do today, so I'm gonna go fast. Okay. I'm just jumping right into it today. Okay. So Bradley, one of the first things we need to talk about is the recent news and all that's been in the media and talked about by the pro life establishment related to the abortion pill and the banning of the Abortion pill. I think a lot of our listeners, I think even like us, are confused as to where we're at right now with this and what the real issues are. And so I'd love for you to explain to our, our what's going on with the abortion pill and the banning of the abortion pill, the court case, all of that. We need your help understanding, get us into that.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yeah. So this has been, you know, the pro life movement talking about this for the past few weeks, that this is a really, really big case. It's going to be earth shattering as far as how it stops all these abortion pills coming in and you know, by extension stops all these abortions and all these babies from being murdered. And unfortunately that's not really what's going on. So this case is out of Louisiana and it's against an abortion pill provider and it involves the fda. So this may take me a little bit to unpack. So feel free to stop if you have any questions along the way. No, go for it.

[Jeff Coleman]

Go for it.

[Bradley Pierce]

So there's two pills in the abortion pill regimen. You have the first one is mifepristone and then the second one is misoprostol. So the first one, mifepristone, basically just to you know, make simplify things, the first one kills the baby, the second one ejects the baby. Right. Induces labor to remove the baby. So this. But you can actually do an abortion with just the second one. This. There's data that shows that if you do them together, 95% of mothers who use both of these abortion pills, mifeprostone, then misoprostol, 95% will have no complications and won't have to go to a hospital to complete things or to get, or to get things finished up. But you can actually do an abortion with just the second pill. That'll be important in a minute. Just misoprostol. And there's about an 85 to 90% likelihood that you'll have no complications. You won't have to go to a hospital to kind of finish things up. So a few years ago, the FDA approved mifepristone for doctors to prescribe that for abortions then. But there was an in person requirement that they had to, the woman had to visit the doctor in person in order to get that prescription. Then under the Biden administration, using Covid as a cloak for changing this, just like they did with a lot of other things, they changed that. So that way an in person requirement is no longer a requirement. So doctors can can see women, you know, see them via telehealth and then prescribe them with this first abortion pill, mifepristone. So a lot of people, so the argument here in this case is really it's not to ban the abortion pill. You know, it's not to ban both of them, it's not even to ban one of them. It's just to say that the FDA did not follow their own protocols in removing the in person requirement. And so therefore that should be thrown out by the courts and reinstate the in person requirement. So if they win this case, doctors can still prescribe the abortion pill. They just have to see women in person first. Now why that's significant from the pro life side is you have a lot of abortion pills coming into states where abortion is supposedly banned, where Planned Parenthood can't do abortions anymore. So you have abortion pills flowing into those states. So if you reinstate the in person requirement and doctors in those states can't prescribe the abortion pill, then at least in theory, well, that would make it where women have to go out of state and that makes it much more difficult and that's going to reduce the number of abortions. But we know that that's not actually what's going to happen because the other states that, you know where this is happening, let's say that doctors are not able to prescribe these pills anymore from those states, like New York or California, and ship them into states like Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, these kind of places. Even if that, even if they win this case and there's an in person requirement. Well, number one, you can actually still get these pills from non US clinics. Or first of all, you can still get them from US places just not prescribed by telehealth. Right. There's plenty of places even in the US that will ship abortion pills without a prescription, without, without a telehealth visit first. But even if you don't have that, you can still get these pills from overseas, from Austria, from India, from Africa, which they were doing right after the Dobbs case overturned Roe vs. Wade by the tens of thousands without any doctors or FDA or any, any prescriptions involved at all. So then that's very, very easy, very, very cheap to do that. And even if you couldn't do that, you can still get misoprostol and have what's commonly called a miso only abortion with that. And so again, the case isn't even about banning mifepristone, it's just about the in person requirements. So it's Basically, you can still get your abortion pills, it's even going to be FDA approved, that you murder your baby. You just have to see the doctor in person first and then you have the blessing of the federal government to abort your child. But really you don't even have to do any of that because it's still very easy, very cheap to murder your baby in lots of other ways without it.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's right. Very different, Bradley, than I think we've all been hearing in the media and from the pro life establishment as to what the current state of this is and ultimately where this is ending up, what it could do. And so thank you for that instruction on that. So, so let's just simplify it. How do we. This just seems like just such a ultimately weak attempt to end or abolish abortion in any state. And so what would be the thing that we could do that would just overcome all of this?

[Bradley Pierce]

Pass equal protection bills. Right, Pass bills of equal protection to make it illegal for anyone, illegal for everyone to murder anyone. And then it doesn't matter whether pills can come into a state or not, because it's going to be illegal to order, possess and to use those pills to murder children in that state. You know, states like Tennessee, Texas, yeah, they can't reach these abortion pill providers in other countries or even in other states. But you know what they can do? They can make it illegal for, you know, for Texas women to murder babies and they can make it illegal for Texas men to, to coerce women to murder babies. And that's what happens with equal protection. But that's what states are refusing to do.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's right. Very interesting. I mean, even the states, I mean this is, it's, even the states right now where marijuana is illegal, still currently illegal, following the old statutes and everything else. A lot of people in the surrounding states, it's, it's legal by way of recreation. Recreational marijuana is legal. So a lot of that, recreational marijuana is still making its way into, into the states where it's still forbidden, but it's still a criminal act to use that marijuana, even though in the next state recreational use is allowed and people are bringing it across the border, is still currently legal in that, in that state. So people understand how the law works generally. Right. Like, I mean, if you're, if you're a person where it's recreationally legal, you realize when you cross that state border doesn't matter, it's not allowed here to be consumed. And so you're going to, you're going to be penalized for it there. And so, so, so exactly like Bradley is talking about. The. The way to get around all of this is to just give equal protection to all human beings from fertilization, make them equally protected with the same justice in that state. And then you don't have to have these conversations about FDA approval and in person meetings with doctors and all that stuff with the pills. The real issue is just to establish justice for the preborn and then we solve all these problems.

[Bradley Pierce]

Let's just make it illegal to murder people that.

[Jeff Coleman]

There you go. Okay, we're done with the show today, everybody.

[Bradley Pierce]

All right.

[Jeff Coleman]

It's as simple as that seems easy. It does become an area of extreme frustration to see the pro life establishment fight these battles in this way. To take so much money. To take so much money and to really raise money off of issues like this, hey, we're going to fight this battle. We're going to speak on this. And they're raising so, so much money to play around the edges of ending abortion, when in reality, you could just give equal protection to the child in a womb that you say is worthy of protection. And there's the sanctity of human life. I mean, the very beginning of every pro life platform is that what's in the womb is human from fertilization and that all of life is sacred and human beings have dignity from the moment of fertilization. And so why don't we just do that? Right? Why can't we just go ahead and say it's not legal to murder any human in this state, including the preborn? And if you want to know the substance of the abolitionist position, that's it. And Bradley, I think, has helped to really popularize this statement from the abolitionists that is unassailable, and that is that murdering anyone should be illegal for everyone. Murdering anyone should be legal for everyone. The tool is irrelevant.

[Bradley Pierce]

Right.

[Jeff Coleman]

We're just talking about the act itself. This is a human being and you can't murder them. Justice for all human beings. And that's the simplicity of these bills of equal protection and abolition. So thank you for that explanation, Bradley. Okay, so another issue we're going to launch right into it because we have lots of content to get through here. We're not by any means going to be able to, though. We would love to.

[Luke the Bear]

Oh, we're not going to even touch it.

[Jeff Coleman]

There are. There's about an hour and a half of video footage with Scott Klusendorf that we would love to go through and rebut and refute every form of argumentation, but we're only going to do some of that today, which we hope will be beneficial for you. But to get into that conversation, Scott Klusendorf, very well known in the pro life movement and establishment. Scott Klusendorf has provided a great benefit to Christians, to the church, to the pro life community at large with a lot of his work. And so I think many of us are indebted to Scott Klusendorf with a lot of the effort that he's put into answering pro abortion argumentation, taking apart much of the pro aborts argumentation and lines of argumentation and their narrative. He's done a lot of good work in the past. A lot of good work. The problem I think that I see is that though Scott has done some incredible work in the area of argumentation and defending the humanity of the preborn in the womb, seems as though Scott has adopted the party line, the narrative, the doctrine of the dogma, the pro life establishment. And so he has offered even critiques and resistance to bills of equal protection and abolition in the past. And more recently, he's sort of muddying lines. But Scott recently wrote an article for the Gospel Coalition, correct? Bradley was the Gospel Coalition, right? Gospel Coalition on the issue of equal protection. Bradley wrote a response to that. And so I don't want to go into the whole article today except to hear Bradley give us the nuts and bolts, the bullet points of what Scott was arguing in his article on Gospel Coalition. And your response, you know, the base,

[Bradley Pierce]

I'll reduce it down to one to one scripture that he uses and one I used in response. But then we can go from there. But he starts off really kind of. His thesis was Proverbs 27:12, which says the prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. And his point is, you know, well, we have to use prudence. We have to use prudence in how we do things, you know, otherwise, you know, we could be running into a brick wall. And so we need to do this prudently. So, you know, then he basically that by that he means, he goes on to say, you know, America's not ready for equal protection yet, and if we push, push it now, it's just going to blow back and we're going to lose people and all of this stuff. My response was Another proverb, Proverb 29:25, which is, the fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.

[Jeff Coleman]

I just preached on that like two weeks ago.

[Bradley Pierce]

We're thinking we're in the same wavelength. So, you know, it says the fear. Whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. So if there's danger coming, the answer isn't. If there's, you know, if the world's doing things that we're afraid of, the answer isn't, wow, we should fear man more. And let's figure out how we can navigate around the scary things that man is doing. You know, there's, there's times to do that and there's appropriate ways to do that. But whenever God has commanded us to do something very clearly, then our answer is trust in the Lord. That's where we find safety. Yeah, by fearing God and not man.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's exactly right. The fear of man lays a snare. And what do snares do? When I was in my. And we're actually just, we happen to be in the exposition of that passage, message, we're going through the book of Proverbs. And so the fear of man lays a snare. And the point I made is we don't, you know, today many of us don't have to worry about what a snare is or a trap is because we're not doing a lot of our own hunting. We just go to the grocery store, we doordash stuff. It just comes right to our patio. But the fear of man lays a snare. What do snares do? Snares trap. For what purpose? To be eaten or consumed in some way. And so if you want to fear man, God is warning you, fear man and it's a trap. It seems like safety to fear man and to play it cautious and to be pragmatic and those sorts of things. It seems like wisdom. But the truth is fear of man will lay a snare, is you are going to be consumed and devoured and those who trust in Yahweh are safe. That's what scripture teaches clearly. And so, yeah, I think much of what Scott has to say, and we're going to play through some of it here, is just really that it's pragmatism, not principle. It's fear of man. And I do want to address something, and I think, Bradley, I'm sure that all of us have caught this. I can't tell you how many times I heard the word prudence or prudence in, in these broadcasts that he did. I'm not sure how many times he did it in his article. But prudent is another word for wise. Prudent is wise. And being a prudent person is being a wise Person using wisdom. And so I want to ask the question, as a Christian minister, as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, where you are throwing this word around, prudent, which means wisdom. And we're saying we need to be prudent. And I want to ask the question that we always ask here at Apologia Radio. I know Bradley asked it as well, and that's this. By what standard? By what standard are we prudent or wise? Because there happens to be a book, this book right here that is the revelation of God. Now God's throne is established on justice. The Lord of all the earth will always do right. That's what Scripture teaches. And these are his very words. And we happen to have not only the law, word of God, his actual law, his standards that he stipulated and he's prescribed to the world and to his people about what is just, what is right. He even speaks to legislators as to what they ought to do. And God's given us his word in that. So I'm going to say, like, by what standard? Well, we do it by the law of God. But there's also an entire book in Scripture dedicated to the question of wisdom and prudence. And so when someone says to me, I think we need to be prudent, the first thing I want to do is go opening my Bible to that book, the book of Proverbs, that tells us what prudence is and what wisdom is. That's the standard we ought to be using. And so I love the word prudent. I love the word wisdom. The question is, by what standard is something to be measured as wise and truly prudent? And I think that's the issue we would impress upon Scott Klusendorf is we would say, okay, great, prudence is great, but by what standard are we saying it's prudent? Because there's an actual book here that represents the revelation of God that tells us what is wise and tells us what is not wise. It tells us what is just and what is not just. And I think we need to be going to that book that represents the very revelation of God, the voice of God, God speaking, and ask those questions, is this prudent? Is this wise? And I think that's the standard we want to impress upon all of us as Christians is fine, prudence, wisdom, yes, we. We need to be wise as believers. But what is wisdom? And I want to say, thank God we have his word because we know actually what is wise. And I that's the. That's the direct pushback I would. I would have with brother Klusendorf is. Is let's see what actually is wise, not, let's invent it ourselves. You know, the heart is deceitful of all things and, and desperate and sick beyond cure. Who can know it? We're told not to lean on our own understanding, but to trust the Lord and He will make our paths straight. And so I think that that's how we want to approach this, is say, what does God's word say? Not what do we think is effective, what do we think will work, but we want to say, what does God tell us to do explicitly in His Word? And there can be no question about that in the area of justice for the preborn. God has spoken on this issue. We have his word. We know what wisdom is according to His Word. And that's where we should be going. We shouldn't be fearful of, well, I don't know if the culture is ready for this yet. I don't know if we're just faithful and we do justice and only justice like God says that we do. I don't know that we're going to be successful. I don't know that we're actually going to be able to do this, because I don't know if God is powerful enough to change hearts and minds and to establish justice among us. And so we need to do what's pragmatic for the moment. Now, we know these are right. We know that this is justice. We know that it has to be done. But here's the thing. We always hear not just from Klusendorf, but from all these legislators who cower and run away. They'll always say, it is right. It needs to be done. It's true, it's honoring to God. But they'll say this. They'll say, not yet, not yet. And so, Bradley, as we get into the video and the clips here, would you speak to those issues?

[Luke the Bear]

Be sure.

[Bradley Pierce]

At least we go to break first before we.

[Jeff Coleman]

Let's do that. Okay, so we'll do a quick commercial break, break, and then we'll come back. And I want to have Bradley just address everything I just said, because we hear it all the time. And it's one of the main things we have to get over as Christians and the church and as legislators. And so stay with us, do all the things like shares and subscribes. Let everyone know about this episode when we come back. Bradley's going to respond to that. We're going to go into some of the clips of Klusendorf arguing for this point. And so stay with us. Thank you guys for being with us. We'll be right back. This episode's brought to you by ion [e-mail] Go and check out the health benefits, the wellness benefits and longevity benefits of NAD treatments. NAD is nicknamed the fountain of youth for a reason. You have an abundance of this in your system when you're young. As you get older, it drops off. And now we found a way to get NAD into our systems. They do it through IV treatments, but they're very expensive and it's also extremely painful and difficult. However, Ion Layer found a way to get a high dose of NAD into your system through a medical patch you wear on your arm. You wear it for about 14 hours. You get a high dose of NAD treatment into your system and no pain at all. And it is a fraction of the cost of what you would pay for an IV treatment. In the coupon code, type in Apologia in all caps. They're going to hook you up with a great discount for an already amazingly cost effective product. And they bless Apologia studios and help us to stay on the air and do all these programs with you. Don't forget. Also, Ion Layer has added a glutathione patch as well. Glutathione, the master antioxidant. Go check out the health benefits of glutathione. I'm doing this stuff anyways. It's blessed my life in tremendous ways. And so if you want to focus on your health, wellness and longevity, nothing better in my mind than ionlayer.com for your NAD and Glutathione treatments. Ionlayer.com don't forget to put Apologia in all caps in the coupon code. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining us for the episode today, engaging with Scott Klusendorf's argumentation not just in his article he recently had on the Gospel Coalition, but also some of the videos he's recently dropped. Here with Bradley Pierce with the foundation to Abolish Abortion and Luke the Bear. Bradley, when we left for that last commercial break, I was talking about the issue of justice, the issue of God speaking to the issues of justice and wisdom in the world, the fear of man. And so I'd love to hear you speak to that.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yeah, well, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. It is, we have to ask, yes, we all want to be prudent, but what does that mean? Just like people say, oh, well, we should just love everyone. Well, yeah, I agree, but what is love in this case, you know, we're talking about prudence, talking about wisdom. I think about Solomon in the Bible and just think how the wisest man at least of his time, if not all time, and here he is, and you know what? He disobeys God. He builds the high places of idols at the urging of his wives and disobeys God and he's judged because of that. And you see, then at the end of his life, what does he say? It seems like this Ecclesiastes written at the end of his life. And what's his ultimate conclusion? Fear God. Fear God. And really he is like the prototype, the quintessential example of obedience is better than wisdom. In fact, you know, what's the wisest thing to do? Obey God.

[Jeff Coleman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the end of his life. This is the summary of it all. Fear God and keep his commandments. That's the whole duty of man. That's it. Fear God, keep his commandments. That's the whole duty of man. And, and you're right, God has given to us in his word through Solomon, wisdom. What? How? How do we live skillfully in this world? That's the question we're all asking right now. That's the most important thing because we can say with the pro life establishment, we can say, look, we agree with the knowledge question here, right? What do we know? What do we know is what's in the womb is human for fertilization. What do we know is that it is in the image of God. What do we know is that God says justice and only justice shall you do. And we can go on for days with this. Unequal weights and measures are an abomination. Toe vah. They are loathsome to God. We know that. We know that it's an abomination to acquit the guilty. But the question is, is wisdom, how do we actually live skillfully with that knowledge? Because we could agree on the knowledge aspects. We know this is true. God feels this way about these things. But wisdom is how to apply that. Wisdom is how do we actually apply these things? And that's the question is, you know, Scott says we want to be prudent. I say I agree. What is prudence? What is wisdom? We've got the book right here. God tells us exactly what to do. And like you said, Bradley, one of the things that God says to do or not to do is don't fear man. The fear of man lays a trap. It is a trap to fear man. And all so much of what I've heard from Klusendorf over the last week in some of these videos is just that point. It's fear of man. The culture is not ready for this. We can't do justice here because it's just not going to work. Those sorts of things. And you know, God's, I would say just. Just read the book of wisdom, read proverbs, God's wisdom from above, and see if you can come to that conclusion that what we ought to be doing is not standing on wisdom, but standing on pragmatism and what we think we ought to be doing. Because this won't work, because God's not going to act, and we can't do these sorts of things. And so let's get right into it. So this right here is one of the first ones that I guess apparently really burned Pastor Luke up.

[Luke the Bear]

Is this the first video?

[Jeff Coleman]

This is the first one.

[Luke the Bear]

Okay, hold on. Let me say something. So neither Jeff nor Bradley have seen this yet.

[Jeff Coleman]

So I've seen the beginning portion.

[Luke the Bear]

At the very beginning portion. It's okay. I want to say this. Scout's a brother. I don't want to assume ill motives and intentions, but I will say that much of what he says is just not true, nor accurate. And so we want to give him an opportunity to correct these things that he said before, you know, saying, all right, dude, you've been correct and now you need to repent because some of them are just flat out false.

[Jeff Coleman]

For example, give one example I think you mentioned. He said that none of these have passed.

[Luke the Bear]

He says that none of these no equal protection bills have passed Committee.

[Jeff Coleman]

Not true.

[Luke the Bear]

That's just false.

[Jeff Coleman]

Not true.

[Luke the Bear]

Boldly false. Yeah, so that's just an example. And like. And that's. We might get to it. I don't know how far we're gonna get, but it's in the beginning.

[Jeff Coleman]

Bradley and I have sat next to each other in the legislature before. Before the legislature with bill weren't in committee. They were before the legislature. And so.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, and. And I'll just say one more quick thing that I said as a disclaimer. Like he. To. To one thing he says towards the end of the first video that I will agree with is he's at times treated unfairly by those that call themselves abolitionists. Even in the chat, people are being rude and nasty to him. And so we're not going to name column. We're not. We are going to say like, hey, hey, brother, that's not true. You shouldn't say this. You should correct this and so it's

[Bradley Pierce]

also, and ultimately that's just, it's just a distraction.

[Luke the Bear]

Right, exactly.

[Bradley Pierce]

Let's, let's stick to the issues. You know, that's just, that's a classic ad hominem, you know, attack just to divert away from what's the debate's really about.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, exactly. You're exactly right, brother. And the reason I want to say this, because he kind of broad brushes everyone that that is for equal protection and abolitionism as like just big meanies. And that's not fair to do. We're not that way. We're not going to treat you that way. And to Bradley's point, that also is not a good response to the arguments.

[Bradley Pierce]

Right.

[Luke the Bear]

It's a cop out. So anyways, I just want to say that.

[Jeff Coleman]

Here we go.

[Bradley Pierce]

Punishment of women into bills.

[Scott Klusendorf]

Well, the pro life movement is committed in principle to the belief that each and every human being has an equal right to life regardless their stage of development. So it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a one celled embryo or a full term child in the womb. Here's the question. If you don't have the legal ability to pass a law that punishes women for having abortions because the culture overwhelmingly opposes you, and you're not only not going to get that bill through any state house anywhere, you're also not going to get any kind of public support for it, we then have to ask a prudential question and that is this. What is the greatest moral good we can do in a culture that opposes the pro life view almost wholesale? I mean, think about it for a moment, Micah.

[Jeff Coleman]

So we're going to stop there. Have to stop there. To start. We would have a hard time getting through this hour for sure. So here's the truth. Bradley and I have sat before committees and we've also, we have a bill that, that passed through the Louisiana committee overwhelmingly 7 to 2 and went to the floor in Louisiana. So this, this notion that our culture is so not ready for this and we just can't do it. So what can we do to rescue any baby at all? Okay, listen, we are in a place right now where I can tell you without question and I can prove it to you. I can give you names and I can give you dates, I can give you all the details. Where, say for example, Louisiana. That bill that went to committee and then passed Committee 7 to 2, overwhelmingly. We polled the legislators that week and we had an overwhelmingly, an overwhelming majority of yeses to pass the bill on the floor in the House. In the state of Louisiana, we had more than the votes that we needed. We had so many votes, actually, I was told that if the governor wanted to veto it, he wouldn't have been able to. That's how many yes votes we had in Louisiana. And so this notion that like, we just can't get these out of committee and we can't get these things passed, that's not true, Scott. It's, it's. In fact, I would, I would actually say it's. It's actually when you take all the context and the truth and the data and all the information, it's actually a lie to say that we can't get these passed. The truth is, is we haven't been able to get these passed because, for example, in Louisiana, overwhelming 7 to 2 get out of committee. Yes, it gets to the floor. We have all the yes votes that we need that week. But what actually happened is it was the pro life establishment that came in and turned all the legislators against the legislation they were already prepared to say yes to. That's a fact, Scott. That's a fact. So this notion, this narrative that you're spreading, brother, that we just can't get these past committee and these, it's just not in the context to pass it. Those legislators in Louisiana, it's not, by the way, not the first state has happened in where the legislators were literally saying, tell us what to do. How do we vote? This seems like this is in accordance with all that we believe. The. My answer is yes, how do we vote? And then in comes the pro life establishment. We're talking about National Right to Life, Louisiana Right to Life, Students for Life. You name them, they come in and they tell the legislators, don't you dare pass that bill. If it means that the woman will see any penalties for the unjustified taking of life in the womb, if it, if it means she'll see any penalties that goes against what we believe. That's the real issue. Scott. Scott, you have to. You are a brilliant man. You are far more brilliant than me. And I mean that sincerely. You are a sharp, sharp man. And that's the real issue. And you need to see it. That the real issue is that the establishment itself opposes equal protection. Scott, you may not oppose equal protection, like deep down, I'll grant you that. I mean, you've said it a few times in these, in these videos that you think that's where we ought to be going. At some point there has to be some penalty because, yeah, this is murder. And we have to, you know, Be consistent with it. And. But here's the thing. The industry that you're supporting, that industry has a dogma, they have a creed, okay? And that creed is that she, she cannot see any penalty. It must be with impunity and immunity. And Scott, you know this, you've been doing this for longer than me. You know that they write that legislation into their bills, that, that it can be criminal for everybody else, but not for her. They will literally write it into their legislation. And so the issue is that we just can't get it into committee or we can't get it out of committee. The truth of the matter is, is it gets literally killed. Not by the pro choice establishment, it gets killed by the pro life establishment. They kill it. They killed it in Louisiana, they killed it in Texas, they killed it in Arizona. They've killed it everywhere we've gone. They killed it in Colorado, they killed it in Tennessee this year. They killed it in Chicago, they killed it in Ohio, they killed it in Kentucky. It was the pro life establishment. They killed the bills. And so when you say, Scott, that the culture isn't ready. Not true. Not true. The churches in those states fully, they back this. They support it. The SBC voted for abolition. All the members voted and passed for abolition for the SBC and their members meeting. So don't say that we're just not ready. The churches aren't ready. Yes, for sure. Some churches still need to be educated and equipped on this issue. But in Louisiana, we had the churches, we had the votes. It was the pro life establishment that came in and killed the bill. It's not true. Scott, you're not telling your viewers the truth.

[Luke the Bear]

Truth.

[Jeff Coleman]

You are not telling them the truth. And I can prove this to you. And if you wanted to do a public debate on the issue, I'd be happy to do it. I would treat you with honor. I would treat you with respect. Or do it with Bradley. And you can, we can hash these issues out publicly. And I could demonstrate to you, without question, incontrovertibly and irrefutably, that what you're saying about this right now in terms of the culture is not ready, is in fact not true. Because it's actually the pro life establishment that's stopping these. It's not the culture.

[Bradley Pierce]

Culture.

[Jeff Coleman]

It's not the culture. I'll give you one example of this. I'm going to pass it on to Bradley, and here it is, and that's this. Bradley, you and I were together before a legislature. Was it Missouri? Was it Missouri?

[Bradley Pierce]

Yeah. We were In Missouri.

[Jeff Coleman]

Missouri. So we, Bradley and I. Scott, you need to hear this. Bradley and I are in Missouri. We're sitting before a legislature and a committee in Missouri. Bradley and I are arguing on behalf of a bill of equal protection to allow it to be heard, to go to the floor and to vote that day. All the leftist and pro boer organizations showed up that needed to show up. Planned Parenthood's representative, all of them, they were there. But amazingly, Scott, they weren't sitting next to us. They were sitting behind us. And the reason they're sitting behind us is because the people sitting next to us were the pro life establishment leaders from Missouri arguing against the bill of equal protection and the end of abortion in the state of Missouri. The pro aborts realized they didn't need to argue against the bill. Why? Because it was the pro life culture, not their culture, the pro life culture that came to fight against the bill that day. And so you are not telling people the truth, Scott, when you say the culture's not ready. We can't get these things out of committee. The truth is we have got them out of committee and we've got them to the floor. And it was the establishment that you support that killed the bills. So don't say that it's the culture not ready. It's the pro life establishment that's not ready, Bradley.

[Bradley Pierce]

Amen. Exactly. So I'll tell another story even more recent than those, and those are all amen to every one of those. But just this year, this legislative session, we had a bill in South Dakota and we had the votes on the committee to get it to the floor. And then what happened? The pro life leaders come out and start putting pressure on the committee members. And we ended up, we needed seven votes to get the bill approved by the committee to get it to the floor. And we got five votes. Guess who two of the votes were that voted against it? That voted against us. They were co authors of the bill. They had been. They were co authors of the bill just a couple days before until the pro life leaders got to them. We had the vote. I mean it's in black and white. They were literally co authors. They were full public supporters of the bill. And then they got flipped by the pro life leaders coming in and saying, oh no, you shouldn't do this.

[Jeff Coleman]

Right?

[Bradley Pierce]

So yeah, saying that, oh no, you can't get any of this stuff passed. We're not ready for this is baloney.

[Jeff Coleman]

It's not true.

[Bradley Pierce]

In fact, if I go talk to Christian legislators and Jeff, I know you'll say the same thing. If I go talk to a Christian, a sincere, Bible believing Christian legislator, and I say, here's what the Bible says, here's what the Constitution says, here's what logic says. Equal protection, abolition. Do you agree? It's easy. It's an easy sell. They say, yes, yes, I do agree with that.

[Jeff Coleman]

Yep.

[Bradley Pierce]

Until the pro life leaders come in and say, not so fast.

[Jeff Coleman]

Right.

[Bradley Pierce]

They are the ones flipping politicians who support equal protection to not support equal protection.

[Jeff Coleman]

Yeah.

[Bradley Pierce]

They're coming into state after state after state and doing that. And my other response is, you know, there's so many, there's all. What do you mean? We don't have the votes, we don't have public support. What about all these states that are supposedly pro life states? I thought pro life meant that we were wanting to abolish abortion. Well, guess what? It turns out as we're seeing again and again and again, pro life to the leaders of the pro life movement actually means opposing abolishing abortion.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's exactly right.

[Bradley Pierce]

That's what we're seeing over and over and over.

[Jeff Coleman]

Yes.

[Bradley Pierce]

And I, you know, some, some recent data that I, I saw today, there's actually, this is the first kind of polling I'm seeing like this and I'm excited about it. I saw polling out of the state of Tennessee today.

[Luke the Bear]

I saw this.

[Bradley Pierce]

I don't know when it came out.

[Luke the Bear]

It was yesterday, I think.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yesterday. Yeah. Okay. That showed nearly 25% of the people polled in Tennessee support equal protection protection. And that includes Democrats, right? Nearly 25% of people. So let's, if we assume, you know, half of those are Democrats. Right. Half of the Republicans, you know, support equal protection. And so this whole thing about, well, the culture's not ready, the culture's not ready. Like, how do we get the culture ready? How do we get there? It's by, it's not by doing what Scott's doing, which is pouring water, you know, pouring cold water on what God commands and poo pooing it and muddying the waters and all of this. No, the way we get the culture ready is by the bold proclamation of the gospel, by a bold proclamation of what God commands, and by a bold witness of Christians who are willing to stand up and say, I'm going to do what God says, no matter the cost, no matter fear of man. That's what I'm going to do. Here I stand, I can do no other. And we want Scott standing with us. And I wish he would.

[Jeff Coleman]

I wish he would too. He's a Brilliant, brilliant man. We need him to be consistent and be on our side. If men like Scott would come out and be just fully consistent, stand on his principles and do this with us, I think it would just have. We'd have a dramatic shift. A dramatic shift when people realize, oh, we've had some inconsistencies here. We've been doing this wrong. We've been inconsistent with our own principles. We're doing things that contradict what we say we actually believe. Scott, we need you to be consistent. We need you to stand, we need you to abandon these inconsistencies and these things that are not prudent, they are not actually wise. And Scott, they're just not true. You're telling people something that maybe you've believed in the past. It's just not true. And it could be demonstrated to you that it's not true. Bradley, I didn't get to mention to you that when I was on a recent trip to Atlanta to pull together the pastors to support the next bill of abolition in Georgia, I ended up, in the providence of God, in this. Getting off the plane, getting into a line, and, you know, the Atlanta airport is just always packed. And so it's shoulder to shoulder. Everyone's trying to sort of like, get through this one door to get to baggage claim. And in the providence of God, getting off the plane when I did, getting into that line, I literally go through the door with a guy right next to me with his buddy, shoulder to shoulder. And he says, jeff? And I said, yeah. And he's like, oh, I'm just so thankful for your ministry. Watch you all the time. It turns out they're from South Dakota and two pastors, South Dakota, solid dudes. I ended up, Bradley, waiting for 45 minutes before I even went to get my bag just to talk to them about the fact that we had a bill in their state that we need their support for the next time it comes in. And they were like, I didn't even know what. What bill. I didn't know this was. Was going on. And then when I told him what happened in South Dakota, about how the pro life establishment came in and actually turned it and flipped it and killed it, they were shocked. And what they told me, Bradley, is this. They said, that doesn't make any sense. They said, our state is pro life. That's what they said. They said our state is pro life. They said. They said all the churches, they were pro life. This is what they said. This. This is what we want. What do you mean it didn't pass it had. They said it would have to pass in South Dakota. I said it would have. If not for the pro life establishment coming in and actually killing the bill, it would have. And they were just dumbfounded. They said, there's no way that this wouldn't pass in South Dakota, not with our context, not with our churches. So that goes against. That's men on the ground in South Dakota that were saying, as pastors, that doesn't make any sense. How is it possible? And when I shared with them that it was the establishment that came in and flipped those people and turned people off to voting for it, they were shocked. And they were saying, we're all in, we're all in. What do we need to do to make sure it passes next time? Because this makes literally no sense to us at all. And so when someone says that culture is not ready, I want to say, look, we don't use that argumentation elsewhere. Why are we using that argumentation when it comes to preborn lives? For example, I am very confident that when the apostles went into the Roman Empire preaching the gospel in the first century, when they were calling people to an unconditional surrender to Jesus and to submit to the lordship of Christ and to come and die and rise again, I'm very confident that that culture was opposed to that message of repentance and faith. When Jesus was speaking to large crowds of people and he says, if anyone comes to me and is not hate, and he's naming your favorite people and he says, and even his own life, he's not worthy to be my disciple, I think that people could have said to Jesus, you know, Jesus, come on. I mean, these people aren't ready for this completely. I mean, the culture's just not there yet. I mean, you're calling for unconditional surrender. Turn from all your idols, all, all your false gods, all your sexual immorality, all your lies, all your murderous thoughts. I mean, Jesus, you're telling people not to even lust in their hearts, not to just not do adultery, but you're saying, don't even have it in your heart. You're saying, don't even hate somebody in your heart. I mean, Jesus, that kind of unconditional surrender, the culture in Rome is simply not ready for yet. And yet that's how Jesus preached the gospel. That's how the apostles went into the Roman Empire and preached the gospel. And yeah, admittedly, Scott, and you know this, there were consequences. Consequences like Paul being on the run for his life, being lowered out of windows for preaching that message. Consequences like people taking oaths not to eat until Paul is dead. Consequences like people taking beatings for Jesus. But they didn't dumb down the Christian message and the call to repentance and faith because the culture was not ready yet. That's not how Christian truth comes into the world. Let's wait till they're. They're all the way there before we do that. And I'll say this final word and we'll play the clip here. Here. Yeah, what's that? You want to say something else, too? Yeah, absolutely. Let me say it just quickly. We are not going to convince people to receive, accept, adopt God's standards of justice, his wisdom and his truth by giving to them injustice, a lack of wisdom, and things that aren't true. You can't. Listen, you can't get somebody to accept the Christian worldview by abandoning the Christian worldview to do it right. Like someday we want people to accept the Christian worldview. So let's give them something that's not the Christian worldview to start. And then maybe after a long period of time, after sort of dumbing down the Christian message and giving them to. Giving to them a caricature of the Christian worldview, maybe one day we'll get them to adopt the Christian worldview. That's not how you get it to happen. I mean, if you want somebody to know the truth, to receive the truth, to believe the truth, you have to give them the truth.

[Luke the Bear]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jeff Coleman]

The truth. And you trust God. You trust God to open eyes and hearts and ears and to bring people to life, to believe that message. That's fundamental to the Christian message. And nobody is supposed to deny that. But we're not employing it here, Bradley.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yeah, I mean, we're going to let our culture drive and dictate to us what we do. The culture is decaying. The culture is dark. What does Jesus say to do to that decaying and dark culture? Be salt and light. And guess what? That's not just in our homes. That's not just in the streets, that's in our legislatures, that's in our governments, that's in our bills, and that's what our bill should be doing. So if the culture's not ready, guess whose job it is to get the culture ready? The Christians. We're the salt and the light. So we're supposed to be bringing that. And we bring it in our legislation, we bring it in our arguments. And I really believe, like that Tennessee polling number, I think that the Tennessee bill moved that, moved that needle on that. I bet it was way lower than that until our bill got. Until we had a bill there that brought attention to this, and it got killed by the pro life movement there, too. But that number is higher now, I believe, than it was before. That's how we move the culture, by bold proclamation and bold action and obedience to God.

[Jeff Coleman]

You know, I think we need to get back to the kind of childlike Christian faith that we have our children sing about.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yes.

[Jeff Coleman]

You know, there's that song that all of us know, and it's Hide it under a bushel. No, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine. So that song is saying what to our children? We're equipping our children. To do what? Not hide the light. Don't hide your light. Don't hide your light. We tell our kids that. We tell them to sing those songs, and then we grow up into adults. We start fearing, man. We start thinking about consequences. We start trying to be pragmatic. We start trying to create our own rules of prudence. And we. We violate the very songs we teach our children. And we say, no, you. You can hide your light under a bushel for the moment so that maybe one day there is actual light. No, don't hide your light. Be salt and be light. Okay, quick commercial break, everybody. We will be right back. More to. More to listen to with Klusendorf. We got through about, I don't know, 15 seconds. Be right back.

[Luke the Bear]

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[Jeff Coleman]

Welcome back, everybody. Let's do some more. This is that first conversation Scott Klusendorf talking about equal protection bills. Here we go. Well, it was supposed to work, but I'm using an Apple computer right now, which, as everybody knows, are the worst. You know, I've never had. What kind of computer do you use, Bradley?

[Bradley Pierce]

Apple all the way.

[Jeff Coleman]

Apple all the way. I've never had as many problems with a computer as I do Apple computers. Why is that, I wonder. Someone help me with that.

[Bradley Pierce]

You know, I don't have any problems. Maybe. Is, Is it. Is it.

[Jeff Coleman]

Have you tried pressing play? Gabe, you may be in the other room behind a wall, but that doesn't mean I can't hit you from here. Did you say try hitting play? I click play and exit. Everything's frozen. Every time I switch tabs, it's frozen. I have to reload the page. I'm telling you, it's Apple. It's, it's, it's evil. It's the mark of the beast. It just did it again. Hold on a second. Okay, Red.

[Scott Klusendorf]

States like Montana, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, to name a few, are either writing abortion rights into their state constitutions or they're refusing to even protect babies who survive abortion procedures like what happened in Montana. So in that culture, do we really want to lead with bills that say, hey, let's prosecute women for murder if they have an abortion? I'm arguing that that's going to cause more children to die because it means we won't be able to pass legislation that might actually protect them. So my, my argument is not that in principle, it's always wrong to prosecute women for having an abortion. In fact, my position is strictly this. Yes, I believe there should be consequences, but my argument is what those consequences should be must be prudently considered.

[Jeff Coleman]

Bradley, what does that even mean? You want to respond to that? I think it's great. I mean, Scott, I think it's great that you're saying that there must be consequences because it has to be consistency on this issue. And by the way, Scott, you're arguing for prudence. The book of wisdom says to acquit the guilty is an abomination to God, and so it is loathsome and detestable to God to acquit the guilty. So if she's guilty, we have to say, God's word says you show no pity. In with the issue of justice. That's what God's commit. God commands show no pity. If someone's guilty, you have to say, I'm sorry that I'm sorry you're guilty and we can't acquit the guilty. It's loathsome. So I am thankful this God is saying that, Bradley. I mean, it's refreshing to hear him say there has to be some kind of penalty, saying, but like, what kind of penalty? And that's, that's an important question to answer.

[Bradley Pierce]

So go Ahead, Riley, if only God had told us, then we would know what's prudent. If only God gave us some clear, like, description of what prudence actually is in this context, then we would know because obviously God's the most prudent of us all. Actually, God does say, he does say exactly what we should do about this. And you know what, it's actually the same penalty, you know, maximum penalty that we have for killing born people in most states. And so maybe we should be that because that's what God says. Maybe that should be. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's the most prudent thing to do.

[Jeff Coleman]

And what does, Bradley, what does equal protection do in a state is it takes that human being in the womb and it makes them the same as the born person. And so what does it do is it puts, puts any, any violation into the justice system, right? That's all we're saying is that it has to go into the justice system. There has to be equal weights and measures. There has to be cross examination, there has to be witness, lines of independent testimony and witness. That's what we're arguing for. We're just saying equal protection means that that baby in the womb gets treated equally as any born person. What is so complicated? Here's my question. What is so complicated about this question where complicating a question that is rather simple, if you say in the pro life movement that the baby in the womb is a human from fertilization and is worthy of equal protection, then shouldn't you be behind a bill that says do it? But then everyone has excuses. They start saying, yeah, but what kind of penalties? We're saying put it into the justice system and make sure they're treated the same. That's all we're saying. And by the way, the pro life establishment and pro life leaders raise money from Christian churches, from Christians and pro lifers to say that we are going to fight for the preborn as though they were human from fertilization. And that's all we're saying. We're saying, well, let's go ahead and do that. Let's go ahead and be consistent with our profession of faith. And what we say we believe, let's do it and let's do it as the legislature. And then everyone over complicates it and says, well, what exactly would the penalty be be? We're saying, well, shouldn't it be the same as any born person? I mean, that's all we're saying is it's the same, right as any Born person. Now, of course, we know that God has said in his word what justice truly is for the unjust taking of human life. But all these bills are saying is simply put it into your court system and treat them the same.

[Bradley Pierce]

Right, Right. Yeah. Well, you know, we use the phrase equal protection as shorthand, but really, like the full constitutional phrase is equal protection of the laws. Right. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to pass a law to have equal protection of the laws. Then we have a justice system that presumes everyone's innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, unanimously to jury of your peers with a whole lot of due process. Then we have that justice system that's there to determine on a case by case basis what actual justice is on a case by case. But we're saying, let's just start with this. How about our laws are equal. Equal. Right. And biblically, what this is called is impartial justice, justice without partiality. Right. That's what equal protection of the laws is. And that's what we're, that's all we're calling for. And so, yes, what is a maximum penalty in your state for killing of a born, For a, you know, for an intentional, without justification killing of a born person? Well, this should be the same thing for this. But then prosecutors, the whole justice system can decide like, okay, what do we actually charge for? You can actually charge for all the way down to something like a simple assault if you choose to. I'm not saying that's the just thing to do, but that's what, that's what you can do with the homicide of a born person. So that's what the law would allow. We're just saying the law should be the same. And so let the justice system then apply it on a case by case basis, taking into under consideration all these different circumstances, and stop writing laws that just treat every. Every case the same. We have a justice system to deal with that.

[Jeff Coleman]

Scripture says in Deuteronomy 16:19, it says, you shall not pervert justice. You shall not pervert justice. That sounds very much like when God says, you shall not murder, you shall not lie, you shall not commit adultery. These are called commands. These are commands. When God says you shall not, that is a command. It is his law, raw word. And so we recognize the weight of God's command when it comes to the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue.

[Bradley Pierce]

All right?

[Jeff Coleman]

So we recognize the weight of it. You shall not. You shall not. And we, we know that. Well, that's not up for interpretation. Right. In. In term, you can't finagle that. You can't try to weasel your way around it. So in some sort of pharisaical way, you shall not. As a command from the Lord, in Deuteronomy 16:19, God says, you shall not pervert justice. And so people want to say to the abolitionists, guys, you're being unreasonable here. We know that that's justice. We know that God commands against that. But we need to be prudent here. We need to be pragmatic and look at the landscape here and say, like, well, what? How can we work our way to one day do justice? Because right now we should probably be unjust to get to justice. What we're saying is, abolitionists, is very simple. Simple. God's command is, you shall not pervert justice. And, and, and listening to Scott and even the gentleman he had in his. In his last broadcast, what I see is nothing but excuses for the injustice that they pursue. And what they say, we ought to be doing this right now. God says, you shall not pervert justice. And as Bradley just said, connected to the don't do injustice. You shall show no partiality. You shall show no partiality. And you shall not accept a bribe. For a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. So you shall not pervert justice and you shall show no partiality. What's being argued on the other side, outside of the abolitionist community is that you can do injustice, you can pervert justice, and you can show partiality now for the moment. And so where God says in his word, justice and only justice shall you do. That's a command of God to the legislators. Why aren't we telling him that? The pro life establishment is saying justice and sometimes injustice. Can you do, should you do, ought you to do in the moment? Because we're just not ready for this justice yet.

[Bradley Pierce]

We need to do some evil. We need to do some evil that good may come.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's exactly right. Another one is. That's beautiful. Exactly. Leviticus 19:15. A command of God. Again, you shall not. Or, sorry, you shall do. So you have. You shall not. Then you have. You shall do. You shall do no injustice in court. You shall do no injustice in court. And all I hear from the pro life establishment is the excuses for why we should do injustice in court. We should have injustice in our legislation. Why? Because we're just not ready yet. We're just not ready yet. Yet. You shall not be partial to the poor or deferred to the great. But in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. And that is our argument right there for abolitionists. We are saying, in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. That child in the womb is my neighbor. Right. And God commands, in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. That's the command. And so now in second 2 Chronicles 19:7, now then, let the fear of the Lord be upon you. Be careful what you do. For there is no injustice with the Lord our God, or partiality or taking bribes. And so the warning, I think, to the pro life establishment and to leaders like Scott Klusendorf, which I have a great deal of respect for, is be careful what you do. Be careful what you do. Because there's no injustice with Yahweh or partiality in him. So be careful. Be careful what you do. Here's some more. It's doing it again. I'm, I'm officially getting a new computer because this is, this is happening far too often at this point. We're getting a new computer. So.

[Bradley Pierce]

Well, before we go any further, just explain. Maybe for people that don't know what exactly we're talking about, what are you are equal protection specifically, like, what makes them different from maybe normal pro life legislation.

[Scott Klusendorf]

Equal protection bills go beyond saying let's ban abortion from conception and they allow women who have abortions to be prosecuted for murder. Now, it's true that the bills that are being put forward allow prosecutions to exercise or prosecutors to exercise discretion on a case by case basis. But the basic argument from equal protection advocates is this, that any law that is written in code exempting women from prosecution for murder is biblically wrong, immoral, and is not worthy of the pro life movement. So that's the basic idea. And that's what happened in March in Tennessee when they tried to. When equal protection advocates put forward a bill that would allow prosecution for murder, pro life groups opposed it and they worked to defeat it. And of course, the accusation was, well, these pro lifers are morally compromised. They have no principles. But is moral compromise the driver behind opposition to these bills? Actually, I don't think so. I think the driver is pro lifers are looking at the culture and saying, if we lead with legislation like this in the current, current moment, we're in. We're actually going to be subjecting babies to greater risk. There's going to be more abortions because there'll be fewer pro life votes that will enact laws to save children. So I am unwilling to sacrifice children so that we can punish women.

[Jeff Coleman]

So, okay, Bradley, I'll let you go for.

[Luke the Bear]

I'll let you just watch this whole time.

[Jeff Coleman]

I just want to say. I want to say this, Scott, not brother. Thank you for that admission. I don't think that you intended to do that. But you just admitted to something that is the opposite of your previous argument. You said that the culture is not ready. We can't get these passed, we can't get them out of committee, all of those things, we can't get them voted on. But you literally just admitted almost in the next breath that the people who killed the Tennessee bill were not the culture, the pro abortion culture. You just admitted that it was the pro lifers that came in and killed the bill in Tennessee. I thought it was the culture that was opposed. It turns out it was the pro lifers who are opposed.

[Bradley Pierce]

Right.

[Jeff Coleman]

And the culture's not ready for this. Okay, but it was the pro lifers that showed up and killed the bill. And you admit that they killed the bill, that they worked to defeat the bill. So is it the culture's not that, not that's not ready, or is it the pro life establishment that's not ready or doesn't really believe that the child in the womb deserves to be equally protected? Because I think that that's probably more the case.

[Luke the Bear]

And I don't want to ask Scott if he supported them in their efforts

[Bradley Pierce]

to kill our bill Bradley. I mean, obviously he's support, he's supporting them after the fact. Right. He's giving them cover with, with this article and with these shows. So I mean, he absolutely is supporting those and giving cover fire to those who are killing abolition bills. So I think that is something that. I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong what he's doing. I think he needs to repent of it. I think it's sinful to oppose what God commands. And so I do think that it is a sin issue he needs to repent of. And I love him, you know, I love him as a brother and, and one thing I appreciate about him is that most of the time, you know, whenever he is stating, all right, here's the abolition position, he does it pretty fairly. He actually doesn't straw man, you know, too much, much. So I do appreciate that about him. But even at the very end, though, you know, the last words out of his mouth or, you know, I don't think we should do this and I not remember exactly what he said, but, you know, I don't think we should do something that's not going to save babies just because we Want to punish women?

[Jeff Coleman]

Yeah.

[Bradley Pierce]

It's like, well, that's you. That, that's not why anyone wants to do this. That's not why anyone wants equal protection. Because we're just like, boy, I just can't wait to punish women. Right? It's. Why do we have punishments in our law? Because they create deterrence. Right? Those threats of punishment, those threats of penalties deter people from committing crimes in the first place. And then yes, if people go through with it, then yes, I do believe in, I don't, I don't believe that retribution is a dirty word. I think that that's something that God, God commands of us, that the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground and it pollutes the land and there is no atonement for the land but by justice upon the one who commits it. And so yes, I do believe that. But the primary purpose is not because we want to punish women, it is to deter. Because there's so many women, so many post abortive mothers that we talk to all the time and they say, say thank you for what you're doing. I'm supporting the sequel protection bill. I'm telling my legislators support it. Why? Because if it had been illegal and I could have been prosecuted, then I never would have done it in the first place.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's right. That's right. The law has that effect. It is not merely punitive punishment, it is also deterrent. As Bradley said, it's a deterrent. So for example, today it's illegal to engage in channel slavery to kidnap and enslave other human beings. It's a deterrent. Right. But that law is on the books. It's a deterrent. It's not just about punishment. It's so that everyone knows that this is something that will never be accepted in our world, in our society. Right. And so that's, that's the benefit of abolishing slavery in the proper way where it's a crime for everybody involved. The abolition of slavery didn't happen with like, well, most of the people will be prosecuted, but we'll have a class over here that's still allowed to do it without punishment. That's not how abolition works. Everyone knows it's not how the law works. And the benefit of doing it in the way that we did and having actual abolition of slavery is that everyone realizes that if you engage in, it doesn't matter in which part of the ladder you're at is that you're all going to be seen as culpable and no one's allowed to do this. And so what's interesting about these bills of equal protection is they go in, the pro life establishment can't argue with them and say that what we're saying is not true. There is not saying, no, we don't believe it's in the image of God. They're not saying, no, we don't believe that it's human from fertilization. They're not saying, nah, we don't believe it's worthy of protection. What they're saying is when they see the bill, as simple as it is, it could be written in two lines practically. They're saying, the problem is, is that we have this class of people that we do not want to see culpable or guilty of this. And so their real opposition to the bill, Scott, and I think, you know this is that when they see the bill of equal protection, they agree with everything that's in it. But they have this other dogma or doctrine that immediately comes to the surface because Bradley's not mentioning a woman. I'm not mentioning a woman. We're just simply mentioning the baby and the status of the baby in the womb, saying, equal protection for that baby. It's the pro life establishment that's going, but what about the woman? They're bringing up the woman. So Scott, you said in your last part there, you're like, you know all of this, I'm not willing to give all this up just so we can punish women like we have some fetish with punishing women. No, actually, I think that if I could be just straightforward and as blunt as I can possibly be, I think that those have a fetish. Those that have a fetish over the women is the pro life establishment. They're the ones that are obsessing about the woman, saying, no, she must be, it must be with impunity. It must be legal immunity. It has to be for her. We're saying, why are you mentioning the woman? We're saying everybody involved in the harm of this human being is to be culpable. That's all we're saying that child is equally protected as my life. And you keep mentioning the woman. Why are you doing that? It's because of partiality. It's because of unequal weights and measures. It's because deep down the pro life establishment, as part of their dogma, believes that she cannot be seen as guilty and she must not be punished. And again, Scott, I'm grateful to hear you say, I hope you see this. I'm grateful to hear you say that you believe There must be some punishment for the woman. I'm grateful to hear you say that. That's a start at least. But I think if you're honest with yourself and the facts, you have to confess and admit to the fact that the pro life establishment does not agree with you largely. There may be other people coming along like Lila Rose and others that are saying, no, we got to be consistent here. We're being kind of inconsistent. But let's be honest. That letter that went out to legislators across the country as a result of our bill, the 76 organizations, I think, that wrote against our bill, they all stated on record, record with their own hand and their own authority saying we do not want to see her ever prosecuted. So, Bradley, we're going to go into, we're actually going to stop here. Everybody. We're going to go into the after show. Bradley and I are going to finish, spend a few minutes together in the after show. For all of you at Apologia Studios, get the all access, get in the after show. But Bradley, some final thoughts for everybody before you go over to the after show. What do you want to say? His final thoughts?

[Bradley Pierce]

I mean, I just hope that Christians are paying attention and I hope that they're considering these arguments with their Bibles open like Bereans. I'm very grateful that Scott is willing to come out and talk about this and get into this discussion. I'm very grateful for that. So this is what needs to happen. And there needs to be more that are willing to come out even if they oppose us. Come out and show yourself and if you feel so strongly about your position, come out and, and defend it. And then I want all the Christians to open up their Bibles and look at these things and weigh them against the word of God and see where they stand. And then, you know, I think you're going to come down on the abolitionist side.

[Jeff Coleman]

That's right. I think having a discussion, a public discussion, maybe a moderated debate or discussion in some form with Scott Klusendorf and with either you or me or both of us or, you know, get around a table together would be very, very valuable. It'll be very, very valuable. I think we need to talk as Christians about this issue and we're talking about literal lives that are at stake. You know, Bradley, when you and I mentioned the many, many times that we've been in different states and before committees and all the rest, I mean, we're talking about lives that are at stake here. We've seen the ability to pass an abolition of Abortion bill thwarted and stopped by the pro life establishment. So I have said that the greatest enemy to the end of abortion in our nation is the pro life establishment establishment. And I can demonstrate that that's not just me trying to be provocative. That's, that's what I really believe because I've been there with the establishment leaders right next to me fighting against the bills of abolition. I've been there when we were going to have all yes votes and pass a bill to abolish abortion in Louisiana and then it was killed by the establishment. So I see that as the greatest enemy. It wasn't the pro choicers that were there, I think in Louisiana. What was there? Like three pro choicers that showed up that day to make noise.

[Bradley Pierce]

Noise, Right.

[Jeff Coleman]

And it was, it was, it was. However, what was it? It was the legislators walking around with that letter that day from those pro life organizations telling them not to pass that bill. That's where it came from. And so that's what I mean by the pro life establishments. The greatest enemy to the abolition of abortion in our nation because we could have passed it and it was stopped by them. And so thank you guys for watching today and encourage everybody to go to apologystudios.com go to the store. Store. You can get some tracks that you can go out. There's tracks here for doing evangelism at the abortion mill, reaching your Mormon neighbors. There's just straight gospel tracks. There's shirts and T shirts and all that stuff there. Help support the ministry of Apologia studios by going there, get some of that stuff for you guys and Pastor Luke.

[Luke the Bear]

And yeah, of course we want to thank our partners, Dominion Wealth. You can go to reform money. Check them out, get a free consultation. They're great. And people that watch us regularly always hear me mention Bradley Pierce's name. And so for fun onesies today, I'm going to let Brad talk about Heritage Defense himself.

[Bradley Pierce]

Yeah, well, we, we're grateful to be work with y'. All. So Heritage Defense, we defend the parental rights of Christian homeschooling families. Become members. If your parental rights ever come under attack, you can reach us 24 7. You have a social worker at your door, you know, for some kind of false or overblown allegation of child abuse or neglect. You know, maybe some neighbor calls or some disgruntled family member or a child gets injured and you have or have a dispute with the doctor. Right. Anything like that, you call us. And as members get 24,7 access to our attorneys, schedule a call with one of our attorneys about if there's something not urgent you just have questions about. You can get that and even non members if you go to our website, heritagedefense.org and get access to our law and policy vault that has parental rights laws in all 50 states on dozens of issues use. But that's, that's what we do is try to stand behind and stand for the Christian biblical family.

[Luke the Bear]

And if you time it just right, you might even get Bradley's handsome voice on, on call there. So, but you can go to, you can go to heritagefense.org put apology in the coupon code, get your first month free.

[Jeff Coleman]

Right on everybody. Hey, one last word here we are doing our first fundraiser in over 10 years of ministry here at Apologia Studios. We're doing everything we can to, to more fully equip you and your family and your church and your friends in the Christian world. Be the defense of the Christian faith, the gospel itself. Thank you so much to everyone who's already participated. We've raised almost $20,000 already. Help us to get to our goal. We have new tools, new programs, new forms of engagement, our app and all that stuff. It's just going to bless you. It's going to truly bless you. Our goal is to help you to know what you believe, why you believe it and be able to articulate those truths. And we don't want to stop until the world knows Jesus. And so that's what we're doing. ApologiaStudios.com give help us to get to our goal and we're going to get everything started here. We're already in plans and production for so many things. It's all coming. We're grateful for all of you guys that have stood with us for so long and for those of you guys who give for this. And so apologiastudios.com give and go with us to the after show at apologiastudios.com Bradley and I are going to spend a few minutes together over there and we'll catch you guys next week on Apologia Radio.