The Sin of Pro-Life Incrementalism | T. Russell Hunter

Let me, let me open up. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Um, I want to start out with this. Some people start out with prayer. I'm going to start out with reading this passage and let it be a prayer for me and for y'all as we go through this material.

This is 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Um, I'll read it out loud. You can go to it if you want. Um, but this is me commending this talk to all of your consciences, uh, in the sight of God. Okay. So this is the gospel of the glory of Christ. Paul has just explained that we're we're ambassadors. We're ministers of a new covenant. And he says, "Therefore, we have this ministry. As we have received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

So, as I give my talk, I want to give it as a, a 2 Corinthians 4 man, and I hope I'm talking to good Bereans who are going to consider everything I say in the light of scripture. And note whether or not I'm adulterating the word or practicing cunning or craftiness, or whether I'm just openly, plainly stating God's truth, because as Luke already showed us, this is a biblical movement, and we're rooting it in the truth of God's word. So, renounce the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, not adulterating the word of God, manifesting the truth. If you don't know what that word adulterating means, it's like whenever you drink coffee the way that God intended you to drink coffee, the way that the Apostle Paul drinks coffee, black, or you can adulterate it, put like cream and sugar in there. Just, I'm, I try to define the big words. [snorts] So, so come, let us reason together. All right.

So, we're going to get into it. I start off often. You've seen me do this before. I'll do it quickly. Three things, just things that I believe, things that the abolition movement believes. We believe that we have the truth of God. That that's the truth of God. That's the word of God. God didn't just reveal himself in nature or reveal himself in our hearts and our minds that we can get to through philosophy and reason. No, we have the word of God. We've been given the word of God. Not only have we been given it, it's true and it's clear. We have a clear word from God. We have clear commands from God. The problem is never that we don't really know what God wants us to do. The problem is always that we don't really want to do what God tells us to do. So on and so forth. But we have, we have the truth of God. Secondly, we are given clear commands in his word. And then thirdly, and this is where I think a lot of people have struggles, even good people who believe the first two things. The third thing is is that when we do what God says, it's actually the best. This is a cuss word in these circles, but it's actually the most pragmatic thing that you can ever do, and that is to do what God says. So, those are the three things. Those are the sort of kind of what usually if a person believes those three things, they're a goner. They're going to be an abolitionist. You just got to talk to them a little bit. But usually, if they believe those those three things, they're, they're going to be an abolitionist. If they hear you and you're talking about abolitionism and they reject abolitionism, I would submit they have a problem with one of those three things.

Tonight, my talk will be called the sin of pro-life incrementalism. Notice it's the sin of pro-life incrementalism. It's not just the sin of incrementalism because incrementalism itself may not be sin. There are all sorts of things that you may do incrementally. It's even wise to do them incrementally and it's not sinful. So the sin of pro-life incrementalism. Why, why am I giving this talk? Well, I had a debate with Doug Wilson and it's on YouTube. It's on Bible dingers. Did anyone see that debate? So, a number of y'all seen it. Um, Doug did a great job. Yeah. Um, so, so there was that debate and then I pretty, I pretty much thought that was the end of all debates. I'm just kidding. That's prideful. But I thought that I, I didn't think it would need to be debated again. But we did debate it again. Uh, Doug called in reinforcements as did I. And we debated it again. And this debate went much like the first debate. And I think that it was just a very clear thing. But some people responded to these debates uh in a number of ways, but one of the ways that people respond to them is they said, um, yeah, this is all well and good, but like Russ, you kind of act like these guys are in sin. Not just like they have a different idea, but they're in sin. And that's where I, I disagree with you that I got that a lot. I got that in messages. I got that in comments. Personal people told me they just, they were kind of angry with me because I was calling it sin. It's all well and good to say it's I have a better strategy, but to to tell someone they're in sin, that's just, you know, we don't do that uh these days and we certainly don't do that to great and godly men. So that's what led to this talk because I do believe it's sin. So the sin of pro-life incrementalism.

So what is pro-life incrementalism? Well, obviously before we get to pro-life incrementalism, got to figure out what incrementalism is. Incrementalism dictionary, belief in or advocacy of change by degrees. And you'll see gradualism. Back in the day, it was called gradualism. You were a gradualist. But because the gradualists were all bad guys, it was a PR problem. So they changed it to incrementalists. So gradualist, incrementalist. When you, when you see movies like about the abolition of the slave trade, the gradualists are bad guys. So they call themselves incrementalist today. If you want to delve in deeper, what we do these days is we ask our AI overlords to give us a little bit more. Um, and uh, they give us more. It's the, you know, it's good. So incrementalism is a method of change characterized by making small gradual steps or adjustments over time rather than large sudden shifts. But here's a more detailed breakdown. I'm not going to read all this, but three things here very important to understand about incrementalism in general. Why would you make these small steps? Well, because you're managing risk, right? Because you might need to adapt to new information. There may be something new under the sun that you need to adapt to. And really, you want to build consensus. So, incrementalism, managing risk, building consensus, etc. Look a little deeper in here. Why would you want to mitigate your risk? Well, because this is a more cautious way to introduce change. Not always bad, just so you know. And also this consensus building very important to my talk and to understanding pro-life incrementalism and incrementalism incorporating the input and concerns of various stakeholders. Now, don't get weirded out by the word stakeholders there so you can understand the context of what I'm talking about. Incrementalism, incrementalist when they're going about their project, they look to the people, right? They look at the world. They do things like polling, for instance. Before they set out to change something, they run a poll or they do a study or they examine the culture to see where the culture is at because we're going to build consistent, manage risk, so on and so forth. So in essence, incrementalism is about muddling through change, making adjustments as you go, building towards a desired outcome. So there is a desired outcome, but you get there through small, manageable steps. So incrementalism, very important, is consiliatory. It takes what it can get. We all have all heard this a million times. So what is key to incrementalism? Compromise. It's absolutely key because you can't just get what you want. You compromise all along the way to getting there. So compromise is key, but there is a goal in mind, right? Pursuit though, and this is where we're going to get into the differences. So pay attention to this. I know it's simple, but I see a lot of people argue without seeming to understand this. Pursuits of the increments is key. Increments. Incrementalism is going to be pursuing the increments. It's yes, there's a goal in mind, but what do you pursue? The increments. So incrementalism, we get it. We're going to move quickly. It's a policy or approach by pursuing change by increments and increments alone. For it to be an ism, it's got to be increments and increments alone. So whenever it's increments alone that means that increment incrementalist oppose radical change. Right? Even if an incrementalist says I'm for both, if they have the opportunity to do both, you will see 99 out of a hundred times you may have some inconsistent incrementalist that they focus on and pursue the increment and they will actually go out of their way to oppose the radical change. I've been doing this for 16 years and I've never seen an incrementalist that does not in some way, shape, or form oppose radical change or immediatism, which where we're going next. So, why do they, why would they oppose radical change? Well, that's because it's disruptive. It's risky and it's unrealistic. Why is it disruptive? Wh why why are disruptive, risky, unrealistic things problematic? Well, we've already seen it. The AI told us because the constituents, the stakeholders, the people, the world, they aren't ready because they aren't ready. That's why we oppose anything that would be problematic to them. So the constituents or stakeholders, they, okay, they, the people are the guide for how fast you go, how much change takes place, right? What they want is what guides your project. So increments and increments alone. Okay? So incrementalism is the way of the careful man. Okay? It's the way of the cunning man. It's the way of the calculated man. You know what I'm saying by the calculated man? The man who's looking, looking at the situation, calculating it. It's the way of the cunning, calculated, considerate of the culture man. It is not the way of the 2 Corinthians 4 man because sometimes as as the apostle said in his letter, the open statement of the truth may not be what the people want to hear. So you practice cunning, tamper and adulterate. So incrementalism is not the method of that kind of man. All right? So it's not that man. It's the way of the prudent. It's the way of the cautious. It's the way of the reasonable. It's the way of the calculating. It is not the way of the reformer. It's not the way of the radical. It's not the way of the revolutionary. Very clearly. It is not the way of the man rampant. Okay. Educated people. I think the word rampant is funny, too. It's not why I used it. Okay. So obviously one of my favorite quotes. This was, uh, a quote that, uh, has has ended up in like the intro to like podcasts. Uh, I'm sure it's on mugs and shirts and people quote it and they always think it's about them, but it's not. Say it about pe, you say it about yourself, it's probably not about yourself. Anyway, desperate times call for faithful men, not careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage. And of course, this, as the laughter, this comes from Doug Wilson, Mr. Man rampant himself. But incrementalism is, I think, if I could define it, it's the way of the careful man. And their children will write our biographies. Amen. Okay. So a better quote that nails Doug Wilson is like one of the best writers anti-incrementalist ever prior, well, back in the day, earlier writings, as often people do in their earlier writings, um, he wrote that no grateful descendants are going to build a monument for us because we called for and got mild improvements. Right? Anti-incrementalism. Nothing work, worth worthwhile was ever accomplished by men who were prepared to be reasonable. Okay? And the voices of prudence and caution have always whispered to the reformers that their cause was hopeless. Just remember the quote. Put it in your mind. Doug Wilson. Okay.

So, back on track here. Incrementalism, opposition to radical reform. And opposition to radical reform is opposition to immediatism. Hence, abolitionist versus incrementalist. It's not just us against them, it's them against us. Immediatism, I'm not going to talk a lot about it, but I will say there's a definition for it as well. A policy or practice of gaining a desired end by immediate action. Right? Very simple. Specifically, a policy advocating the immediate abolition of slavery. They thought it was the applied ideology or doctrine of dealing with sin. And they thought slavery was sin. So it's full, total, urgent. There's much more to incrementalism, but for my talk or to immediatism for my talk, it's instead of pursuing the increments, no duh, it's going to be pursuing that end goal that the incrementalists are wanting at the future, it's pursuing that now. So pursuing the end goal immediately. Now, since I mentioned that it's the biblical approach to fighting sin, just so you have the logic of immediatism and why it is that it's derived from the Bible, when you look at like Christ when he's talking about dealing with sin, you should know this, but maybe the the kids, we don't like, you know, Christ says some kind of crazy stuff, right? Like your hand causes you to sin. Uh, what do you do? You chop it off, right? That's pretty urgent, pretty final, right? Christ isn't saying maim yourself. He's giving you instruction that you don't deal with things gradually or piecemeal. You deal with them finally and totally. Your eye gouged out. If you're dealing with some kind of sin, which I've dealt with sins, we've all dealt with sins, right? You know that if it's a sin that you're dealing with and you coddle it and you keep it around a little bit, it's never going away. But if you stop it. So I'll use like alcoholism. If you're struggling with alcoholism, you don't go from drinking every day to drinking every other day. You will continue to drink, right? You have to cut that out. If you're an adulterous affair, you don't go from, you know, all the time to occasionally like on weekends to once a month to just on business trips to just long walks. No, you cut it out. We all understand that whenever you fight sin and you keep it around as you fight it, you fail. The abolitionist of chattel slavery, they believed that that any sort of keeping of any form of slavery around would cause it to never be done away with. So, so what do incrementalists say about immediatists? Of course, immediatists, they lack prudence, right? This is just the other side of the logic. They lack caution. I'm sure a lot of you in this room have heard this, uh, every time you've talked to any one of these fine folks. Um, they fail to build consensus. That's very true. Although there's a lot of people in this room, good job abolitionists. Um, they fail to build consensus. You know, incrementalists because they're not prudent. They're not cautious. They say these wild crazy things. They don't really build movements. Uh, but God. Um, why they're disruptive. The things they're saying, like putting an end to the slave trade was disruptive. If, if we stopped, the British thought, if we stopped our participation in the slave trade, the French would take it over and that would destroy our economy and that would be bad for Britain. It's disruptive. It's, oh, it's risky. Don't do that. And it's dangerous. The primary thing they were saying, we can't abolish child slavery in the United States because it will be dangerous. Like all of a sudden, black people and white people will be having babies together and we can't have that. You know, so the arguments are always you got to gradually get to get to places. Not immediately, not totally. Give us, give us a bridge. So incrementalist, immediatist, just so we're clear before moving on, they pursue increments, we pursue abolition. They pursue, they focus on increments, we focus on abolition. They demand increments. They ask for increments. They demand increments. They say abortion stops a beating heart, and they demand a heartbeat bill, right? We say abortion is murder. We demand that the laws against murder be applied equally to all people. So they call for things to get mild improvement, steps in the right direction. And we call for the total and immediate abolition of abortion. All right? So it's not just bills. It's very easy to see this in bills. You can look at the language of a bill and you can see this bill is calling for some abortion but not all abortion, where an abolition bill is calling for the active abortion to be abolished. Right? But you also will see this in the the campaigns and the candidates and the cultural projects of the incrementalist. It'll be focused on on, you know, these increments. So, it infects not just their legislation, which they say they can't do anything about now, but they, it also affects the way they talk to people. In abolition bills, of course, it's not just our bills. It, it's our campaigns, it's our candidates, our cultural projects. Everything we're doing is directed at this total and immediate abolition. So, I wish I had more and better pictures, but if, if you need some evidence, um, don't look at these pictures too closely. You might see some of your friends, um, you know, protect me. I'm 15 weeks old. You see what I'm saying? Versus something like created in the image of God. We've all been there. Like, you know, conception type stuff. You look at the pro-life movement whenever they, they, they launched something recently, a couple years back, um, following the Dobbs decision, they had a new north star, and that was going to be personhood from conception, but not criminalization because the culture is not ready for criminalization. Culture is not ready for the idea that mothers would be punished for breaking the law that says thou shalt not murder. Right? And culture is not there yet. So we don't have it in our national federal bill or state bills. And of course, the abolitionist, we go to the D Washington DC proposing that they carry a bill that doesn't create that increment, right? Because it's not about what the culture is ready for, it's what the culture needs to hear. So I will say this, when you, when you do the thing of incrementalists, for some reason, it comes in in pink and blue and balloons. I don't know why, but it frequently, I'm just kidding. That's not a point. Um, but you will often find that you've got people standing with you in the incrementalist. It's a massive movement. It's a larger movement. It is pretty much the majority opinion of the conservative, as a Christian, um, culture in the West. Um, you're going to find yourself standing alone. But I will, I do like to report and I just wanted to put these cute kids up on the screen that, um, I think we're having more babies than those incrementalists and raising them up, putting signs in their hands before they know how to read. I love it. [laughter] So, so you might find yourself standing alone, but I, there, there are more and more people all the time and, you know, more coming up. Incrementalists, they get to celebrate. They get to pop the champagne when an increment is passed because it's all about celebrating the increments, right? So, you get to celebrate. You get to shake that thing up and make abortion unthinkable and talk about how you've, you've accomplished your great goal and then, you know, for the next couple of years, pretend like abortion numbers haven't stayed the same or gone up. You get to celebrate increments. Um, abolitionists, you're just kind of stuck on your knees or on your feet or online or wherever you go praying and working towards the total abolition. There's, there's only one thing we get to celebrate. So, if you, if you wanted, if you wanted to join a movement for the fields, it's not this one. So, so I think that's very, very clear. Now, incrementalist, immediatist, we got it. But when they start to be debated, we get into some pretty dicey debates um from time to time and there'll be arguments and usually I just want to debate someone straight up on immediatism and incrementalism without them straw-manning abolitionism. So this is my straw man here wearing a, uh, you notice he's wearing an abolitionist shirt. This is a new shirt. It's now available store.abolitionist.abolitionistrising.dog. But, um, you know, I straw man them. I put him in a shirt. It's all about selling shirts. Um, so I, I added the money tag there. Um, but what the incrementalist argues is that we're all incrementalists. We're really all incrementalists. I'm just, you, you guys are delusional. Like you think it can happen overnight. Well, immediatists are not overnightists. And no one would buy that shirt. So, so overnightists, we're not overnightists. It's not, if you've been paying attention, obviously it's not about how long it takes. It's not about time. That's just, that's not. You could be an immediatist for a long time. You could be an incrementalist for a long time. Actually, incrementalists have been incrementalists for a long time. If you're judging their movement on pragmatism, it's terrible. But it's not about time. It's about, again, as I said, it's about the pursuit. It's about what you're calling for. It's the policy. So now since we're talking about policies, that's why the issiatism and immediate incrementalism. So all right. So the policy, an ultrasound bill, right? Can an, can an immediatist and you know, incrementalist be compared? It's very easy to see an ultrasound bill. Okay. I do think abortion is murder and it should be abolished, but right now I can't get that. So I'm going to put forward a bill. If you look at an ultrasound, then you can kill a, kill, kill a baby. You get to put forward that bill. You might get to pass it. You might get to celebrate it. But your problem is it was an increment. You still need an abolition bill. Then you might have sort of like a fetal pain bill. What if you started with babies that feel pain like at 20, 22 weeks, something like that? What does the abolition have to do? You don't get to do that. It's just the abolition bill. That's all you get, right? There's only one thing to do here. I'll explain why. And this is going to explain why it's in. You got the heartbeat bill. Other, uh, all sorts of bills. The focus of the incrementist is to save some babies. Does that sound like a good thing? Saving babies, >> right? Nothing wrong with saving babies. Um, but that is the focus. The focus of the incrementist is to save some babies, an incremental amount of babies. How could that be sin? How could that be problematic? We'll get there. And the focus of the immediatist isn't to save babies. It's to establish justice. A lot of people get confused and they think that the reason that they can beat us in a debate is because they're saving more babies than we are. And it's really shocking for you to be sitting there with a, a baby on your sign and a baby on your shirt and to say like, I'm not trying to save babies. I'm trying to establish justice. Why is that? Because I think it'll save babies. But logic. Okay. So, what are we trying to do now? Save babies. Now, well, you may be able to practice child sacrifice in the battle against child sacrifice and save some babies, but that would be unjust. You might have to keep justice from being established in order to save some babies. You might save a baby with an ultrasound bill, but to write and pass an ultrasound bill, you have to write injustice. You got to allow abortion. To write and pass a fetal pain bill, you got to write injustice. You got to say that babies who don't feel pain are not as protected. Who don't have a heartbeat. That's injustice. And you are okay with injustice because it's saving some babies. The abolitionist is not okay with injustice even if it promises to save babies. Why? Well, if you remember the earlier slides, you know, a hundred slides ago, doing what God says is best, right? So, okay.

So, let's get into the word of God. I'm going to look at two passages. I wish I could look at a third or maybe 10 because it's all through the Bible, but I'm going to look at two passages. One I'm going to look at is in the Exodus, and I'm going to look at particularly the immediatism and incrementalism debate that went on between Moses and Pharaoh. And then I want to look at the incrementalism immediatism debate that went on between Saul and Samuel. So first, if you want to, and I'm not going to read the whole thing because the whole book Exodus is the whole thing is just like one long commentary on lots of things, but commentary on abolitionism in all its forms. All the tenants, all stuff starts out. The people, uh, the, the Hebrew people have Israel has become enslaved in Egypt. They were put there for a good reason to protect them from famine. It was a good, it was sort of a judgment but sort of a protection. They were in a, in a form of slavery that preserved their lives. But the Pharaoh who didn't know Joseph or his God died and began looking at the Hebrews, seeing that there were too many, so on so forth. So he began to deal harshly with them. He tried to thin them out by working them hard. They just proliferated. He tried to thin them out by, um, uh, asking them to abort their children, having the midwives abort their children. That didn't happen. That didn't work. And then he just had the children snatched up and thrown into the river. So the whole thing starts out, um, about killing babies. Surprise, surprise. We get the birth of Moses and we get God hearing the plight of his people. Moses, uh, you know, sees the plight, comes to life. He does the, what an incrementalist would do and he kills one slaveholder and he has to run away. I won't go into too much commentary on that. But you can't kill one slaveholder, uh, and think that you're going to abolish abortion. Side note for anyone who has those temptations. So Moses is called by God, burning bush, go. What is he told? Go into, tell Pharaoh, let my people go. Right? So Moses is like, we're leaving. Why? So that they may worship me. So that they may be a nation and I may be their God. We all know I'm not going to go through the details. I'm going to leave out the, uh, really interesting thing that Moses' wife did along the way. Um, uh, but Moses with his brother Aaron goes in before Pharaoh. And what does he say when he goes before Pharaoh? A little timid. He's right. He doesn't say it all perfectly to begin with, but he does deliver the message. Let my people go. What does Pharaoh say? Does anyone remember Vacation Bible School? F, who is your God? Right? Like, who's your God? And then Pharaoh interprets it as, um, you guys are lazy and you got too much time on your hands. You're, you're dreaming a thing. You're dreaming things up. You think that you could like go in the wilderness and like worship your God. You got too much time on your hands. And so what he does is he says, "Your quota for bricks is the same, but now you have to go find your own straw." Remember this. So Moses and Aaron leave the council there with Pharaoh, go back to the people and said, "Here's the deal." [laughter] "Your work's going to be harder." Those were the stakeholders. You listening to me? Like those were the stakeholders. Moses comes back to them and says, "Guys, we got ourselves an issue." Pharaoh says, "Same amount of bricks. Got to take his straws." What do the people do? They grumble. What does Moses do? He talks to God. God's like, "Go back in. Say, 'Let my people go.'" Moses goes back into Pharaoh. Pharaoh again, like, "Who's your God?" Moses doesn't deviate what he's calling for. They're going to be a three days journey. That's like way outside of Egypt when you're walking, but like three days journey. Like Moses asked for this. Pharaoh says no. We get, we start getting the plagues. Moses is faithful doing the thing that the people are grumbling about, the thing that's causing them trouble. He's being disruptive. He's being dangerous. And he says, "Let my people go." Eventually, what happens? Pharaoh doesn't like the plagues. And so, what does Pharaoh do? VBS. They do not teach this in VBS because VBS curriculum is written by pro-lifers. I swear it's a conspiracy. No, it's just, it's a bit in the weeds. It's in the reads. So he says, "How about Moses?" Um, the gnats are particularly troubling. And he says, "How, how about Moses? How about I do let you go, but the women and the children have to stay?" Is that a good step in the right direction? Moses says, "No." Right? We all know where this story goes. Moses says, "No." Pharaoh's like, "Get out of my sight. I offered you an increment. You didn't take it. This was something good. This was something that you wanted. What are you doing? Get out of my sight." More plagues. When the plagues pile up, Pharaoh eventually is like, "Come back in here. Let's talk." What does Pharaoh do? He offers him another and better increment, right? You can go and your women can go, but your children can't go. Which is a weird increment. You want to know if Egypt valued the family? Well, clearly not. Leave your children here as slaves, right? You, your women, your children, they can go like you got to leave your kids. No, right? More plagues, more pressure. It gets really intense. Incrementalism is a temptation and it's not working. And I believe that Pharaoh is a good, throughout scripture is often used as the tyrant and as a Satan figure. Right? So, what does Satan do? He brings him back in and he gives him a great increment. He says, "You can go, your women can go, your children can go, but your animals." Why? Because it's a trick because they cannot live as a nation outside of Egypt without their animals in the wilderness, right? So he, he provides a trick, a temptation, an increment that looks really good. We're talking about like if you want to have an analogy to pro-life stuff, it's like personhood without criminalization. Okay, this is a big increment. And Moses standing there in the obedience and the faithfulness of God, knowing that God has backed him up, stands there and he's like, "Not a hoof will remain in Egypt." >> And in the back of his mind, he's talked to God and God's already said, "You're going to go. Your animals are going to go. Some of the Egyptians are going to go and they're going to give you lots of gold and silver." And he knows this because he believes the word of God. So he stands on the word of God. He leaves. He rejects all the increment increments. Pharaoh says, "If I ever see you again, I'll kill you." It didn't happen. Uh, spoiler. Um, Moses goes back. We have the death of the firstborn in Egypt. And then, of course, as you see in the picture, um, Gustav Doré, right? I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that right. This is Pharaoh pleading with hipster Moses leaning against the thing like, [snorts] "What are you saying?" HE'S LIKE, "GO. JUST PLEASE GO." RIGHT? And they go, men, women, children, spoils, they go. Now, we just get that story. We get immediatism and incrementalism compared and contrasted. If you look at it, it's got all the hallmarks, right? You've got grumbling people. You've got stakeholders that say stop. They asked Moses to stop. If you want to try to wrap your minds around it in the sense of like voting in America, the abolitionists were saying there was a candidate. He was running for president and he had tweeted from Truth Social that he would veto bills of abolition. He actively said as commander-in-chief, as the, as the executive who enforces the laws in this country, I will veto the establishment of justice. I will uphold the right to abortion. In fact, there are laws that say you can't put pills in the mail, but I will disregard those laws. Now, that guy was running against somebody who was bad. And so, abolitionists were kind of like, man, you know what? It's like voting for somebody who's against what we're for. Do we do that? Well, abolitionists said, "No, we shouldn't. All the people of God should say, 'Hey, Trump, be for the total abolition of abortion. It's not going to cost you the election. You could shoot someone in Times Square and people would still vote for you.'" Probably advocating for the abolition of abortion is not going to cost you any votes. What's wrong with you? We wanted all the people to do that. But you know what the people told abolitionists? The immediatist, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you cause people not to vote for our guy, we're going to have to make bricks without straw. Our taxes are going to be bad. It's going to be difficult for us. We're going to be reading books to our kids at the library whenever we take our kids to the library to listen to books being read to them by, like, the world's going to go nuts. We can't. It's dangerous. Abolitionists, you are going to cost us this election. Stop. [snorts] Get the best that you can get. >> I don't know if that's convicting to you, but maybe it should be, but that's not why I'm talking about it. I'm talking about it so you understand incrementalism and immediatism.

This is, uh, not from Vacation Bible School. Well, if your VBS covers, uh, 1st Samuel chapter 15, you are in like a reformed, reformed Baptist church. Like, like the kids have like 1689 tattooed on them or something. Okay. So, so 1 Samuel 15. This is, okay. Saul has been made king, right? Saul is big. He's tall. He's beautiful. He's a wonderful guy. He's like going to make Israel great again. He's like, "Man, he's awesome." And anyway, man, it's like he's got a gold toilet. Uh, this guy Saul. So, Saul has been made king and he's out doing what kings do and fighting battles with people. Um, and, uh, as he's going out to do battle, there was this thing that happened. We can connect Exodus for people who love the Bible. I love the Bible. You can connect what these people ended up in the wilderness and there was someone who came out to fight them immediately, right? And they were a big problem in the wilderness. Well, Saul comes into, uh, conflict with those same people. And Samuel has told Saul, Samuel's the prophet of God, that when you come into the battle with these people and their king, King Agag, you are to kill them all. Right? Just to kill them all. Why? Because they attacked us right after we left the promised land. They're evil, vicious, bad people. Not going to get into it, but this is why it's not taught in VBS. God says, "I want you to wipe these people out." Saul, the great man, says, "Okay." He goes into battle, and what does he do? They win the battle. They beat their opponents. They beat them. And instead of the immediate obedient faithful action of killing them all, what does Saul do? He lets the king live. And so when Samuel shows up and he also lets the goats live. This is a famous quote. "What is this sound of sheep that I hear?" Right? So Samuel comes into to the camp and he's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're supposed to immediately, utterly, totally wipe these folks out. But I, I see that you've left some of the leaders alive, and I see that you've left some of the animals alive. It seems like you've kept some of the women. What the heck is going on?" And Samuel explains to Saul that he is in trouble for being disobedient to God. And what does Saul say? He puts a big religious show on and he builds an altar and he says he did it for God. And that the reason that he didn't kill King Agag was because the people wouldn't stand for it. The reason that he didn't kill the animals is because the people wouldn't stand for it. So he capitulated to the people and he disobeyed God. And when Samuel was like, "That's wrong." You know what Saul said? "I will do this incrementally. I am going to kill those animals and eat them and, you know, enjoy them, maybe mate some of them. I'm going to kill them and I'm going to kill the king. But right now, I like to sort of like leave him alive and parade him around and show how beautiful and glorious I am." And if you're aware of what happens, this is when Samuel goes before Saul and he says, "You are no longer walking with God. You are no longer king and I have another." And there's a shepherd boy named David who is not going to be an incrementalist when it comes to these things. All right. So, do we see in scripture, these are just two passages. Um, I didn't plan to do that much time on it, but I hope it is at least clear from those passages. Um, the immediatist and the incrementalist. Just a, as a slight catechism. Who is the intim, uh, incrementalist? Moses or Pharaoh? Pharaoh. Right. Who's the immediatist? Uh, Saul or Samuel? Oh, my favorite part. Samuel. He grabbed a sword and he hacked the king to bits in front of, right? VBS. It would be cool. Like, color this, color this picture, children. My kids would be like, "Are, is all art red like that?" So, so anyway, so that's, that's just to get a light. So that's descriptive passages of people being seen as faithful and obedient and God helping them when they're immediatists and disobedient and faithless and God deposing them whenever they are incrementalists. But those are just descriptive passages. Kind of hard to make arguments against sin from descriptive passages when people are adulterating their coffee and the word. So let's look at the law of God. So, Leviticus chapter 20, let me just read it. This is Yahweh speaking to Moses and he's laying out the law and its many implications for his people. And he says, "You shall say to the sons of Israel." Leviticus chapter 20, verse 1-5. "Any man from the sons of Israel or from the sojourner sojourning in Israel, anyone among you who gives any of his seed, his children, to Molech, that's the child sacrifice demon, shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. Three, I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from among his people because he has given some of his children, some of his seed to Molech so as to defile my sanctuary and to profane my holy name. The reason God talks about it is like children are conceived in the image of God and they develop in the place of the incarnation. You can't kill a person, Genesis 9:6, because they're made in the image of God. To attack a person and murder them is to attack God. And God says that if you do that, your blood will be shed. Full stop. And that goes for children. Child sacrifice. If anyone's killing their children, you must punish them. Four. If the people of the land, however, should turn a blind eye. If this is going on and the people turn a blind eye to that man when he gives any of his children to Molech so as not to put him to death. Verse 5, then I myself will set my face against that man and against his family and I will cut off from among their people both him and those who play the harlot after him and playing the harlot after Molech." I love saying harlot over and over and over again in churches. Um, this is in the word of God. Okay. So what's going on there? If people practice child sacrifice, they must be punished. If people practice child sacrifice and you don't punish them, you must be punished. Understand the logic there? So, if there are people who are killing their kids and you turn a blind eye to it, you've got yourself a God problem. So, here's our culture. We have a culture, advanced technology. We know when we have children very early, right? Period's a little late, cycle a bit off, send your husband or your boyfriend or yourself to Walgreens or wherever and you pick up a pregnancy test and you take it and you find out whether you are with child or not, right? We've all heard this phrase, you're with child. You find out you're with child and in our culture that's whenever you've got a window for child sacrifice, right? You don't want to be with child and you're allowed to kill those children. So you think about it and you can order a pill, series of pills. The first pill kills the child. The second pill crushes them and puts them onto your floor or into your bed or into your toilet. Or you go to a child sacrifice center and they stab and destroy or suck or tear apart the child. And this goes on in our culture every minute of every day around hundreds of millions of professing born again followers of Jesus Christ. And we largely turn a blind eye to it. Okay. So what does this do to our culture? Well, according to Leviticus, God turns his face away from us. Right? When we worship the creation instead of the creator, he turns us over. Right? He turns his face against us. Not just away. Not just like, "Oh, fine." Against us. He opens our borders. He destroys our economy. He confuses our sexual understanding. We have a God problem and we all know it. All right? Just get on the internet, watch. There's a cool YouTube channel you can watch. You want to see how problematic people are in our culture. We've lost our minds, right? And it's because we have child sacrifice and we're not punishing those who commit it. So this is the law of God. So, a pro-life bill in our situation and an abolition bill in our situation. Every single increment, like how many increments are are are available to us? If we, we're trying to get rid of this, this, this God problem we have, the abolition bill, uh, we, we say, "Oh, we need to criminalize this now. If we don't criminalize this, God's against us." The pro-life bills say, "Well, we do want to do that maybe eventually, but we'll criminalize it later." So what does criminalizing it mean? It means punish the people who sacrifice their children. That's got to be in your law. If it's not in your law, [snorts] you got a, you got a problem. And the increments, right? All these increments that don't have punishing but are going to get to that at some point in time are the incrementalist strategy. So the law of God happens to be on our side. But is the law of God on their side? I would say their laws are against the law of God. And not just Leviticus chapter 20. Okay, we're not going to look at all these, but this problem that we have is not just in one random place of the Levitical law. If you look at the prophets of God, Isaiah 10:1-2, this was already quoted. Luke said, "Woe to those who make iniquitous decrees that make the fatherless children prey." Like, if you write a law and you make a decree that allows any fatherless child to become prey, woe to you. I'm against you. Right? God's consistent. It's in the prophets of God, not just in Isaiah. Use Bible Hub. Cross cross-list that. You're going to get it in Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. You're going to get it everywhere. You also are going to find it in the wisdom of God. Proverbs 17:15. Those who acquit the guilty, right? Abominations all throughout the Proverbs. You're going to get it in the son of God. Like God is going to actually look at your culture and whatever you did not do for the least of those being murdered in your midst, you did not do for him. And he's going to say, "Goat, I don't know you." Right? If you have a problem with that passage, it's like the parable of the good Samaritan. We've got a priest and a Levite not paying attention to a, a man who's dying on the side of the road and a Samaritan, not a Hebrew, helps him and he's the one who loves the neighbor. Scripture interprets scripture. So this God problem is throughout the word of God. So can we deal with the evil of child sacrifice incrementally? Well, this is what the word of God also says. It says that we are to do justice and only justice. Like you justice and only justice. I didn't put this in the Bible. Abolitionists didn't put this in.

The Bible. The Bible actually says this. Deuteronomy 16:20. It's justice and only justice. It's not eventual justice. It's not other things. And maybe justice will accrue or be an implication of it, or maybe we cannot do that and it can become unthinkable. No, you will pursue justice and only justice. You will maintain justice in your courts. And again, this is from the beginning to the end. And I'm not going to quote all these passages, but this is turntables over stuff. This is to God. If you do not maintain justice in your courts, you are in trouble with him. So establish justice. That's why that's what we are for.

Well, can you establish justice incrementally? Okay. So, I got a lot of atheist friends and followers apparently on YouTube. So, they like the reason and the logic. So, let's think about this logically. And I promise I'm getting I'm getting close to an end. Let's think about this logically by reason. If you're to establish justice and only justice and you have a God problem, unless you criminalize abortion, when you get all your stuff together, all your money, all your your building your consensus, and you're doing everything you're doing, and you go to write it down, how many things besides justice can you write logically, reasonably? There's nothing else to write. There's no other bill. There's nothing you can do. If you're not seeking to establish justice, you're bringing the wrath of God. So establishing justice, as I said, that's the immediate position. That's what abolition bills do. I think that we have reason on our side. We have logic on our side. And we've got the word of God on our side.

What does the incrementalist have on their side? Well, they weren't, as we remember, looking to the word of God. They were looking to the people. Remember AI told us and what AI says is just a reflection of what we've all said. That's what incrementalism is. It's not look it doesn't it's not reasonable. It's not logical. It's not consistent with the word of God. But you know what it is? It's not disruptive. It's not scary. The stakeholders are ready for it. Do you smell what I'm stomping in? What do they got on their side? Well, they've got prudence. They've got realism. They got to be realistic. You know, there's nothing more realistic than telling Pharaoh, "Let my people go." And they've got polls and they've got polls. And the polls show that the people, I think it's like 13% would tolerate criminalization. And that's why they don't put it forward, right? Because it's not it's not realistic, be prudent. They got to build consensus. So that's all of their stuff. They don't even want you to mention criminalization. They don't even want you to mention that it's murder. So on and so forth. So as they build, they're consistent, they're cautious, they're prudent, and they compromise. And as they compromise, they become careful men because they don't want to be disruptive. They don't want to be dangerous. So careful men have always cautioned the reformers that their cause is helpless. So even careful men know this to be true and they end up on the side of the world against logic, reason, and the word of God.

But they're doing something clever these days. Incrementalists are doing a new thing. They're calling it smashmouth incrementalism. What is the difference between smashmouth incrementalism and incrementalism incrementalism? Does anyone know? One has the word smashmouth in front of it. Okay. Now, Doug, friend of mine, he says the reason that abolition bills can't be the only thing we support right now is because they're hopeless. I wish he would read his own darn quotes, his own books, or burn them. And he also explains the polls. You might be able to abolish abortion in like Oklahoma, but not California because God doesn't exist in California. The people are not ready, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. So, we got to be smashmouth incrementalist. As we grow, important, powerful people have to start commenting on this. And so, he coined smashmouth incrementalism. And in the video where he coined smashmouth incrementalism, he explained the reason this isn't compromise is because if you give us what we're demanding now, we will most certainly be back in the next legislative session demanding more. Like, if you let us go out of Egypt, we will come back. And then we'll say, let us take our women next time and back. They would have never left Egypt. And it would have been just because Pharaoh is against them. It would have been because God would be against Moses. That part that I said doesn't get mentioned. God almost killed Moses on the way. Look it up. Has something to do with fores. See, you guys are illiterate. I said that. And you got to read your Bibles. It's in there. Zapora. She was a tenacious woman. Reminds me of my wife.

So, the problem is is smash mouth thinkerism. Oh, this was subtle. Did you notice this is a quote from Doug Wilson and this is Scott Clusenorf and Scott Clusenorf is the chief apologist of the pro-life establishment. Has been for many, many years before Doug had coined smashmouth incrementalism. And he says essentially the same thing. Smash smashmouth incrementalism is textbook incrementalism. All it is is a cunning, tempering, adulterating, godless, wicked trick to deceive even the elect into fighting against God. Put a fancy name on it and call it godly, but then deny the power thereof. So let just so you so you believe me, here is this is not that is not Doug Wilson. He would never wear those glasses. He has people for that.

So this is what we have to do as Christians. We need to think with a worldview principle in mind. And that worldview principle is this. We will never stop our efforts to end abortion until every child is protected in law. We will do that. However, along the way, we are going to work nonstop to limit the evil in so far as possible. will save as many lives as we can along the way to saving all children. Again, that's not compromise. That's prudence. This is identical to what Doug Wilson said, right? We're going to limit the evil as much as possible all along the way. He's got the goal. It's not it's not different. So, these guys, what's going on right now, if you're someone sitting in the room, this talk is for you. If you're like, I reject the incrementalist. Those those incrementalists, they're they're godless and they're unbiblical and they're bad, right? I'm with the smashmouth incrementalist. You've been duped. All he did was steal it, right? He tried to steal it by giving it a name, but it's the same garbage. Hot gay garbage. These are careful men seeking to build a consensus and they know that abolitionism is not yet popular enough and as soon as it is they'll be with us and they have a massive problem. Their problem is God. Their problem isn't us. It's not losing debates in front of everybody on YouTube. It is God is their problem. I hope you understand.

Now this is John Knox. He had a very abolitionist beard before it was cool. And John Knox has a favorite quote. Y'all know what? What did John Knox say? He said, um, "One man and God is a majority." Right? You've heard that quote. Let's flip it on its head. A massive consensus of a lot of people who agree with you and not God, I don't know how to make it as poetic, is a problem. Minority. It's a minority. Okay, that that works. Thanks. I'll make a note. All that consensus building, all of that poll and all of that adjustment of the bills and all of that attempting to be winsome and pragmatic and wise and step by step by step. Every single time you put a bill forward that makes fatherless children pray, God says woe to you. Every time you put a bill forward that doesn't establish justice, God says you are being disobedient. And every time you do this and you don't punish child sacrifice, God says, "My face is against you." Doesn't matter if 99% of the country believes that abortion is evil and it should be abolished but not criminalized. There are still going to be reading to our children at libraries because that's coming from the judgment of God. Sorry to be prophetic on you, but that's how that works. So the consensus building, we just need God.

Okay. So is having, this is where I'm like, okay, this is so simple. I'm giving the simplest talk in my life. Is having but because it is this simple. Is having a massive problem with God sin? Cuz people said, listen, you got your you got your lane, they got your lane. Why can't we all just get to the destination together? Well, it's cuz I think they have a massive problem with God. I think they've deceived the elect. I think they've they've they've led Christians into endorsing things that God says if we endorse he will he will be angry with us. So the question is pro-life incrementalism sin? Well, is having a massive problem with God sin? Like what is sin? Like come on. Yes. I mean it's just we're like yes. Having a massive problem with God is sin. You know what the incrementalists say? I've asked them point blank. They say it's not a pro. God will tolerate it. And you know what they do? I'm not going to go into this, but they say, "Well, listen, listen, listen. God one time let Moses give certificates of divorce." So, because God let Moses do that thing, we can do this thing that violates all of scripture and the law of God and brings us under his judgment. But no, we don't have a massive problem with God. And so they speak smooth things and they tell you peace peace it's okay we're winning we're we have big we have big lectures and I get to talk I get to go to the oval office etc etc so this is the divide textbook incrementalist say that they don't have a sin problem and I'm worried that they not only have a sin problem but they have an unbelief problem because the reason they're not standing with us is because they don't believe that it's possible. They don't believe that second Corinthians 4 stuff, right? They say incrementalism is not sin. Okay? They have the appearance of godliness, but what do they do? Deny its power. That's what we're witnessing. And if you're kind of like, I never really thought about this. I need to repent. Awesome. But if you're still kicking in against the pricks, I'm just telling you, search yourself. Why are you okay with this? Just because somebody says they believe the gospel and the entire law of God. They have a reputation of being a theocrat or a theonomist or believe in the believing in the postmillennial truth as I do. Like just because they say all these great and godly things when it comes to tossing the mountain of child sacrifice in the sea, they look at the mustard seed and they just say, "We can't." They deny the power of God. Denying the power of God. Is that a sin? Okay. What is sin? Kids know like in our church, sin, you know, it's missing the mark, right? It's doing anything that God would not have you do. Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. If you're looking for some kind of a silver bullet, is pro-life incrementalism sin? Why would you do pro-life incrementalism instead of abolitionism? Well, because I just really don't have enough faith. Okay, it's sin. All of it. Incrementalism, whether you wrap it in tin foil, it's still crap. And it's still all of it proceeds from sin. A lack of faith, a fear of man, a desire not to be laughed at, desire to be a part of the consensus. You may want to do it because it gets you on more platforms. You may want to do it because it'll get you to be friends with the president. And you're not going to be one of those people being told by the people when they grumble about how bad it's going to be. You're not going to be told that you are disruptive and destroying the culture. The Christian nationalists, they told us we're destroying the culture because they fear Kamala Harris more than they fear God.

So, does incrementalism proceed from faith? No. Or a fear? Well, what does the fear of man do? It brings a snare. So, incrementalism and immediate immediatism. Incrementalism is the way of the careful man. Immediatism. It's the way of the obedient man. It fears man. What does the immediatist fear? Like what do I fear? Like why do what when I think about our laws and how they bring the judgment of God and I want to change them? Who do I fear? God. They make plans with man and we walk humbly with our God. We all quote it, right? Micah 6:8. He has he has told you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord I man I'm sorry I sung in front of y'all. Sorry my wife is like stop justice and mercy and humility faithfulness with God. Incrementalism is saying, "God, your way of justice and only justice." That is foolish. We've got a better plan. It's not humility with God. It's canon press knows better than God. And what do they do? They practice cunning. And we rely on the power of God.

So, I want to bring up this last picture and I'll conclude. Notice this picture. When you think about the difficulty of being an immediate abolitionist, remember when he stood on the word of God and he went before the tyrants of the world and he didn't listen to the grumblings of the people. God showed up. God doesn't show up whenever we're doing the things that he tells us not to do. God doesn't show up whenever we're doing things that he has not commanded us to do. He shows up whenever we stand in his truth. And that's how we're going to abolish abortion and hack. That's an interesting conclusion. And hack a god to death. So disobedience to God is never effective ever. You think it can be effective. You think you can invent in your mind some way to get to the abolition of abortion in a way other than what God has prescribed. But doing what God says is not only the only way not to sin, it's the only way to achieve your goal. So, do we understand? Is it simple? Do we need to have an altar call? I have a sword and I'll hack you to bits. No, I'm just kidding. All right, that's all I got. Thank you.