The Truth About Abortion

The following passage is quoted from an article published by the Washington Post on September 23, 2008:

"...the proportion of abortions obtained by women younger than 20 dropped steadily, falling from 33% in 1974 to 17% in 2004. For those younger than 18, it fell from 15% of all abortions in 1974 to 6% in 2004. At the same time, the proportion of abortions obtained by women in their 20s increased from 50% to 57%, and the share done for women age 30 and older rose from 18% to 27%. Although abortion rates have declined among all racial and ethnic groups, large disparities persist, with Hispanic and black women having the procedure at rates three to five times the rate of white women."

Do you know what this means? Read it again. In 2004, only 6% of abortions were for girls under 18. That means that abortion is not about protecting young girls who are sexually abused or who make a mistake and can't take care of the baby. No, the stats tell us that 57% of abortions are for women in their 20s, and 27% are for women age 30 and over. These are not young girls who don't know what else to do and need help. These are mostly adult women who don't want the responsibility. These are mostly women who want to murder their unborn children because children are inconvenient. Here is another quote from the same article, proving what I just wrote:

"The proportion of all abortions performed for women who already had a child increased from 46% in 1974 to 60% in 2004."

Life is precious, people. We need to fight for it.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." - Psalm 139:13

Was the Bible "Lost in Translation"?

Critics often claim that the Bible has been translated and re-translated over and again numerous times throughout history. They claim that our Bibles today are nothing but “translations of translations of translations” and are therefore inaccurate. However, this statement is false.

Each version of the Christian Bible (NIV, NASB, NKJ, the Message, etc.) has been translated one time and one time only, each from the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. The only exception is the Old King James Version, portions of which were translated from the Latin Vulgate Bible. The Latin Vulgate itself was translated from the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts by Christian scholar Jerome in the fifth century AD.

Word for word, the most accurate translation of the Bible is the New American Standard version. When I took Greek in college, I compared my translations of New Testament passages with the NASB, and for the most part they were identical.


Note: The Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, also called the Inspired Version of the Bible, is not considered valid. Smith supposedly created this “translation” through divine inspiration, since he was not intellectually qualified to perform any sort of actual linguistic translation. The work is merely the Old King James Version with some significant additions, clarifications, and revisions to support Mormon doctrines.

Did Jesus Really Exist?

Some people doubt whether Jesus even existed. Was he a historical person, or a made-up character? However, early Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources make mention of Jesus. These include Tacitus (Annals), Suetonius (Life of Claudius, Lives of the Caesars), Pliny the Younger (Epistles), and Lucian (On the Death of Peregrine). Additionally, there is a letter from a Syrian, Mara Bar-Serapion, to his son. In it, he compares the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Jesus. Due to the amount of extra-Biblical evidence, most agree that Jesus at least existed.

Author Josh McDowell was as an agnostic in college when he decided to prepare a paper that would disprove the Christian faith through historical evidence. However, he instead ended up converting to Christianity after he was unable to do so. His writings became the best-selling book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Another good book on the subject is The Case For Christ by Lee Strobel.

Some may claim that Jesus was one prophet among many, or simply a great, human teacher. However, Jesus claimed to be Son of God, the prophesied Messiah, and also claimed the power to forgive sins. He was executed for these claims, despite having committed no other crime. If Jesus was not who he said he was, that would make him either a liar, a raving lunatic, or both.

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a devil, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.” - C.S. Lewis

Is There Historical Evidence For the Bible?

Through sources outside the Bible, we can reconstruct the history of the Bible and the timeline of past events, pinpoint the dates of empires and kingdoms, rulers, and battles, as well as explore discoveries and inventions, early technology, and ancient economies.

Through Biblical archaeology and painstakingly careful excavations at far flung sites, many of the Bible’s records of cities, fortifications, and structures have been verified. Artifacts and documents from distant time periods help evaluate both history and the Biblical record. However, the real power of Biblical archaeology and historical research is not just the ability to confirm the history of the Bible. It is more amazing that there is no known case where archaeology has ever decisively disproven the Bible.

The NIV Study Bible includes a chart listing more than thirty major archaeological finds relating directly to the New Testament. These include Herod’s temple and winter palace, an early synagogue in Capernaum, the pool of Siloam, an inscription about Pontius Pilate, and many others. A large compilation of historical and archeological information can be found online at www.facingthechallenge.org.

Is the Bible Reliable?

People often wonder whether the Bible is reliable. How can we be sure that a collection of documents written many centuries ago has been faithfully and correctly transmitted to us today? This is a good question. Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on the myth of ‘blind faith’ to answer it. We apply the same tests to the biblical documents as we would to any other ancient writing.

The Old Testament

There are more than 14,000 existing Old Testament manuscripts and fragments copied throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the European regions that agree dramatically with each other. In addition, these texts agree with the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, which was translated from Hebrew to Greek sometime during the third century BC. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in Israel in the 1940’s and 50’s, also provide phenomenal evidence for the reliability of the ancient transmission of the Jewish Scriptures. The Hebrew scribes who copied the Jewish Scriptures were highly trained and meticulously observed, counting every letter, word, and paragraph against master scrolls. A single error would require the immediate destruction of the entire text.

The New Testament

We have found copies of numerous ancient manuscripts written by different authors. They have discovered 643 copies of the writings of Homer, which have a 95% accuracy rating. Other ancient writings by Herodotus (8 copies), Euripides (9 copies), Plato (7 copies), and Aristotle (5 copies) have been discovered. In these cases, there are not enough ancient copies to reconstruct the original. Therefore, scholars are unable to determine an accuracy rating.

More than 5,300 known ancient copies and fragments of the New Testament exist in the original Greek. These texts have a 99.5% accuracy rating.

As previously stated, apart from the New Testament, the only other ancient writing which has any level of accuracy associated with it is Homer. And yet the New Testament has a far higher degree of accuracy than Homer. Scholars universally accept the copies of Homer’s writings as being accurate. It is undeniable, then, that the New Testament is by far the most accurately reconstructed ancient document in existence.

Tertullian, an early church leader, stated that by 150 AD, the Church in Rome had compiled a list of New Testament books matching our list of today. We have 32,000 quotes from before 325 AD, from Irenaeus (182-188 AD), Justin Martyr (before 150 AD), Polycarp (107 AD), Ignatius (100), Clement (96 AD), and many other second and third century fathers. All but eleven verses of the New Testament could be reconstructed through their writings alone.