The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Traci B. during the 2008-2009 League.
Mission: Research - Sanctity of Life
When did we as God's creation gain the power to tell Him when life begins and ends? Well in 1990 there were 1.6 million abortions made in the United States. But every day there is an average of about 1,300 abortions a day. From 1990 to 2005 the abortion rate dropped 25%. God talks about the sanctity of life in the Old Testament Laws, and the Humanity of the pre-born.
God explains to us through out the Old Testament that consequences will be put on those who take an innocent life. In Exodus chapter 21:12 it explains that anyone who is to take an innocent mans life so will his life be taken from him. Numbers 36:32 we are not to accept any kind of ransom for a murderer's life that deserves to die. God tells us in Proverbs 6:16-19 that there are seven things that are just detestable to Him. One of those things includes hands that shed innocent blood. And is not an unborn child innocent blood? That child has had to make no choices of his own. All of his choices are made by his parents he is to be born to and the doctors.
"Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their father; each is to die for his own sin." Deuteronomy 24:16
So when God, our Creator, lays it out SO easily like he does in Deuteronomy. It shows us that no matter what case a child is conceived, weather it is by rape or own free will but just not at the right time, this Childs life should not be taken from him/her. It was not the Childs sin that conceived him, but his father, mother or maybe both.
In both the Old and the New Testament, God called us by name before we were born. It shows us this in at least 3 places in the Old Testament. One of the verses is the one stated below
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" Jeremiah 1:5a
And in Psalm 139:13-18 David is talking to God about how God knitted us in our mother's womb. In the New Testament God told the mothers of Paul, John the Baptist, what was to happen in their lives. In Galatians God called Paul even before he was born
"But when God, Who set me apart from birth and called me by his Grace, was pleased." Galatians 1:15
Luke 1 is the foretelling of John the Baptist.
"He will be a joy and delight to you and many will rejoice because of his birth, for eh will be great in the sight of the Lord, He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth" Luke 1:14-15
God values our life very much. We are his temple.
"Don’t you know that you yourselves are God's Temple and that God's spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him: for God's temple is sacred and you are the temple." 1 Corinthians 3:16-17
So we should not choose when life begins and ends. God should be the one to decide on that. He knows best, He sees what our life for holds like he did with Paul, John the Baptist and many others we see throughout the Bible.
