(John the Baptist, from the womb of Elizabeth recognizes Mary's voice and leaps for joy before the Lord Jesus in Mary's womb - like the story of dancing before the Ark of the Covenant in OT)
[excerpted from a message from a sister in Christ, Barb From 40 Days for Life, Southfield]
As Christians observe Christmas, an encounter which occurred nearly 9 months prior to Jesus' birth provides a lesson applicable today. In Luke's Gospel, after telling Mary how Jesus would be conceived by the Holy Spirit, the angel Gabriel said, “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’... In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?'... And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.”
To what did Elizabeth (and the fetal John) respond?
Because the journey from Nazareth to Judea takes about 5 days by foot, Elizabeth and John had responded to the one week old embryonic Jesus in the womb of Mary. Based on this passage alone, shouldn't Christians oppose abortion and embryonic-destructive medical research?
Sadly, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice provides cover for those Christians who ignore clear language from the Bible. One theologian, Dr. Paul D. Simmons, wrote this: “The passage [Luke 1:41-42] makes it clear, for instance, that it is Elizabeth who responds to God's revelation. She does the speaking, declaring the special blessedness of Mary and her child to be. The central point of the passage is theological and practical. It deals with the special role and authority of Jesus. … It is faulty biblical interpretation to generalize form (sic) this passage to the personhood of every fetus. Such an approach confused the intention and meaning of the text with a contemporary debate that is entirely foreign to the mind of the writer.”
This theologian was capable of recognizing the “child to be” when it was Jesus Christ. Yet he cannot imagine that God could use this incident to show modern people the inherent dignity of the human person from the earliest moments of his existence by revealing Himself within the first week of His Incarnation. Dr. Simmons underestimates God.
Without seeking to impose personal beliefs on non-Christians, shouldn't Christian clergy exhort their own congregations to follow God's law, which condemns the killing of the innocent? Should Christian clergy warn their congregations about Planned Parenthood, an organization which subverts Christian morality of purity and fidelity in marriage? Meanwhile, women and children go to slaughter; physical for children, spiritual for women.
If Christians refrained from involvement in abortion and did not support foundations funding human embryonic-destructive research, abortions would decline by over 75% and human embryos would still be protected from medical researchers in Michigan. Christian parents who bring their minor daughters to abortion centers to have her “child to be” slaughtered or to Planned Parenthood for contraception continue to be a grave scandal to Christianity. Other Christians remember that Jesus also was not “wanted” by His community. Bethlehem would not accommodate His nine-month pregnant Mother and “Herod and all Jerusalem with him were distressed” at news of His birth.
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