“I dreamed the other night that I was thrown into a vat of blood,” the elderly preacher announced from the pulpit.

Sitting in the well-padded pew, I had believed that God had sent me to that tiny church about two hours from home to bring a message to the pastor, whom I had witnessed bringing a woman into the abortion chamber in Bakersfield to have her child killed that week.  But when I heard the preacher’s words it became clear to me that I was not God’s only messenger.

The preacher, named Marvin, continued.  “I struggled to get out of the blood, but the more I struggled, the more difficult it became.  Finally, the hand of Jesus came and lifted me out of the blood.”

Marvin interpreted the dream as a sign that God had taken away his consciousness of sin.  Turning to Hebrews 9, he emphasized the scriptural teaching that the blood of Christ has, once and for all, freed us of our sins.  “Ever since I had that dream,” Marvin said, “I am no longer aware of my sins.”

Obviously, I interpreted the dream differently than Marvin (and I wished he had continued on to  Hebrews 10:26-31 which spells out the punishments awaiting those who “insult the Spirit of grace” by deliberately sinning).

When the service ended, members of the congregation greeted me saying “we really agree with what you said, brother,” expressing appreciation for what I had shared during the testimony time as I thanked God for using us to save children from abortion.

When Marvin walked up to shake my hand, I asked him “what night did you have your dream?”

“Wednesday night,” he replied.  That was the same night that I first drove by this little church, and the night that I spent wrestling in prayer asking God to open doors to give me the opportunity to talk face to face with this pastor!

As the members of the congregation were greeting me, the pastor turned to Marvin, hesitantly confessing “oh, we met the other day.”  It seemed like he was trying to brush me off, but I had come too far to let that happen.

“I was really hoping for an opportunity to talk to you alone,” I replied.  The others around us began to walk away.

“Why don’t you just come over to my house,” the pastor said.  “I’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”  I chuckled to myself at the fact that he didn’t bother giving me an address or directions, knowing that I had shown up unexpectedly at his house the day before.

As I drove to the nearby community where the pastor lives, I sang praises to God, thanking Him for this divine appointment.  During my hours in prayer when I was anticipating the private meeting I had asked God to orchestrate with the pastor, I asked God not only to grant me favor and prepare the pastor’s heart to receive my message, but also to change my heart so that I would not approach him in the wrong spirit.  I asked God to help me to approach him gently, in the spirit of Galatians 6:1.  I prayed that God would give me the words to speak, and that He would keep me from saying anything which did not come from Him.  I also prayed that God would open my eyes to fully understand what brought this man to the point where he would allow himself to be involved in the death of an innocent child, because I hoped that this experience would not only reach the heart of this pastor, but that God would use the experience to help me to gain insights on how to reach pastors in the future.

When I parked outside the pastor’s house, I thought that I would have to wait a while for the pastor to arrive.  Instead, I saw his truck already pulling into the driveway.  “That was fast,” I said.

“Oh, I arranged for someone else to take the people I was going to drop off,” he replied.

It would have been easy for this pastor to brush me off, because it was already 9 o’clock at night.  When he invited me inside, I saw this as an answer to prayer, as God was already granting me favor with this man who could have been very hostile.

As I stepped into his living room, he said, “I want you to know that I have been wrestling with my conscience over this situation.”

“I am against abortion,” he told me, “except when the mother’s life is in danger or when the baby is deformed.”

Pictures of the pastor and his wife were displayed all around the room.  My heart was filled with compassion for this man as he told me “she died two days before our sixtieth anniversary,” the strain in his voice showing what a painful experience that was for him.

He then went on to explain that the young woman he had brought in for the abortion had grown up in his church.  He told me that I had been sitting right behind her mother and her grandmother during the service, and that the children I saw playing in the pew in front of me were the young woman’s children (siblings of the aborted child).  Her little boy (who seemed to resemble someone from the Andy Griffith show) had been looking over the pew throughout the service, grinning at me.

“She has had seizures, and the doctor prescribed anti-seizure medication,” he continued.  “He said that he wouldn’t have prescribed it if he had known that she was pregnant.  When the doctor found out that she was pregnant, he said that the baby would be deformed because of the medication.”  (Although the pastor didn’t know which particular medication was involved, this article explains the possible link between seizure medications and birth defects.)

“Her mother and grandmother told me tonight that they will arrange for me to meet personally with the doctor to hear him say firsthand that he recommended abortion.”

“If you do meet with the doctor,” I requested, “could you get back to me and let me know what he says?”

“Yes,” the pastor agreed.

I went on to tell him the story of Lorenzo Timothy, whose parents I had encountered outside the abortion center a few years ago.  “They told me that three doctors had assured them that she needed an abortion,” I explained.

The pastor quickly interjected “There were three doctors who told this woman she needed an abortion too!” seemingly hoping that the doctors’ recommendations would justify his actions.

Then I shared with him the amazing story of how I first met newborn Lorenzo Timothy during a time of prayer outside the abortion center.

I went on to tell him how over the years we have seen God display His glory through many seemingly hopeless situations like this, with the babies being born healthy, in spite of the doctors’ negative diagnoses.  “I know from experience that doctors often lie to women, trying to give them an excuse to abort their babies,” I explained.  “But I also know that God has the power to heal these babies if there really is something wrong with them.”  (But even in the extremely rare cases where we have witnessed the births of deformed children, we know that their mothers have been thankful that they did not abort their babies.)

I knew that this pastor’s sect focuses on the healing power of Christ’s atonement, and I had been reminded of that fact by what was said during that night’s testimony service at the church.  So I asked “did you ever pray that the baby would be healed?”

Without hesitation he replied, “no, that never occurred to me.”

He explained that the young mother had been experiencing problems lately and had fallen away from the church.

“We have seen many times how God uses a difficult pregnancy to bring someone back to Him,” I explained.  “But abortion usually alienates women from God.”

“That’s not going to happen in this case,” he shot back.  “In fact, she was getting together with her husband tonight trying to work things out.  That’s why her mother brought their children to church.  She told me tonight that she will be in church on Sunday morning.”

“Well, I hope you will share this with her when you have the opportunity,” I said, handing him a post-abortion pamphlet.

“I will,” he said.

“Did you pray with her before the abortion?”

“No.”

I recalled his demeanor when I had first seen him at the abortion center a few days earlier.  He had been standing in the alley with his arms folded, seemingly trying to keep his distance from the “Pray to End Abortion” signs and the crosses, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that prayer had not been on his agenda that day.  There had been nothing obvious in his behavior that day which would have led me to believe that he was a Christian, much less a pastor.

“Which scriptures do you see as justifying abortion when the baby is deformed?” I asked.

“There are no scriptures on either side of abortion,” he responded.  “You can’t name one verse that says that abortion is wrong.  It is just a matter of opinion.  You have your opinion, and I have my opinion.”

“Well, in Psalm–”

“Don’t you go to the Law, brother!” he interrupted, shouting emphatically before I had a chance to finish the scripture reference.  “We’re not under the Law, we’re under grace!”

All in all, our conversation was surprisingly calm, but whenever I mentioned something he perceived to be “Law” it seemed to hit a nerve.  This surprised me, because I had the impression that this pastor’s sect was very legalistic.

Trying a different approach, I asked “does a baby in the womb have a soul?”

“There is nothing in the Bible which teaches that,” he responded.

“What about in Luke 1 when Mary came to see Elizabeth and the baby leaped for joy in Elizabeth’s womb?” I asked.

My question seemed to trigger something, as the pastor took on a different tone of voice, as if he were standing in the pulpit.  “Yes, brother, John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother’s womb,” he began, and as he continued to talk, I realized that this must have been a popular sermon topic for him.

After he finished his sermonette, I quietly asked “if someone is filled with the Holy Spirit, doesn’t that mean that they have a soul?

“And if someone leaps for joy,” I continued, “doesn’t that indicate that they have a soul?”

“Well, Elizabeth was very far along in the pregnancy,” he countered.  “She was about to give birth to the baby.”

“Actually,” I responded, “I think that the scripture says that Elizabeth was about 6 months pregnant at this point.”

“No, it doesn’t say that,” he insisted.

“But John the Baptist was leaping in the womb at the presence of Jesus,” I continued, “and Mary was very early in her pregnancy, probably in her first month.  That means that the soul of Jesus was already present at this early stage of pregnancy.”

“Most people think that the Law ends with the Old Testament,” the pastor countered.  “They don’t realize that the first four books of the New Testament are also under the Law, because Jesus taught under the Law.”

“You mean because it was before the cross,” I replied, acknowledging his point because I didn’t want to get sidetracked into a debate on Law and Grace.

Emphasizing his position that babies in the womb do not have souls, the pastor asserted “The baby is not a separate person until it is born.  As long as its umbilical cord is connected, the baby is part of the mother.  The baby and the mother have the same genetic code.  They even share the same blood.”

“No,” I insisted, “the biological facts are very clear.  A baby in the womb has a different genetic code from its mother, and the baby’s blood does not mix with the mother’s blood.”

The pastor shook his head in denial, saying “I have never heard that before.”  This was one of several points in the conversation where the pastor became so upset that he threatened to throw me out of his house.  But somehow God allowed me to continue speaking to him calmly.

I went on to reinforce my point that the baby is a separate person from the mother by referring to the fact that male preborn babies have certain body parts which their mothers, as women, cannot have.

“How far along in the pregnancy was she?” I asked, trying to bring the discussion back around to his recent abortion involvement.

“Eight weeks,” he answered.

I happened to have a flyer in my Bible which displays a photograph of an eight week baby in the womb and lists several characteristics of babies at this stage, including the fact that the baby’s heart is already beating and the baby’s brain waves are already measurable.  I handed him the flyer and he looked at it for a few seconds, then put it down on the end table.

“I don’t believe that,” he retorted.

“Why didn’t you allow her to take literature from me as you brought her in for the abortion?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell what you were saying,” he claimed.

“Well,” I responded, finding it difficult to believe that he had not understood what I said, “you knew why we were there, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I knew that you were there to condemn women going in for abortions,” he answered.

“No, our message is not condemnation,” I insisted.  “Our message is that God loves both the baby and the mother and has a special plan for both of them, and that Jesus came to give mother and baby an abundant life, but the devil’s plan is to steal, kill and destroy.”

“Yes, I heard you say that,” he admitted.

“Is this the first time you have brought a woman in for an abortion?”  I had been hoping for an opportunity to ask him this question.

“No,” he confessed without hesitation.  I wasn’t surprised.

“The God who formed the eyes of that little baby saw what you did that day,” I said, “and He will hold you accountable for it.”

“Where does the Bible say that?” he asked.

“Let’s read the whole passage,” I answered, turning to Psalm 94 and reading it verse by verse.

“Don’t you see that God is trying to get through to you?” I pleaded.  “He even gave Marvin that dream about being thrown into the vat of blood.”

The pastor recoiled at the suggestion that the dream related to his abortion involvement.  “That was Marvin who was thrown into the vat of blood,” he insisted, “it wasn’t me.”

Turning to Isaiah 1, I shared with him how this scripture teaches that bloodguilt creates a barrier between us and God.  “I’m sure you have preached many times on Isaiah 1:18, but did you realize that the ‘crimson’ and ‘scarlet’ stains refer to bloodguilt?”

He sat, motionless, in silence.

“God is calling out to you now,” I implored him, “telling you that He wants to cleanse you of this bloodguilt.  But as 1 John 1 teaches, if you truly want to fellowship with God, you need to ‘walk in the light,’ confessing your sins.”

Throughout the conversation, God had led me to various scriptures which I had not planned to share with the pastor.  I had put some literature in my Bible at Matthew 18, hoping for an opportunity to share this passage.  Finally, toward the end of our conversation, I was able to go through this chapter with him, talking about first the preciousness of children (a point which had been shared from this passage during the testimony service earlier that evening), the ominous penalty awaiting those who harm children, the shepherd’s responsibility to seek to save one innocent member of his flock even if it means he must turn away from the other members of the flock, and finally, Jesus’ guidelines for handling sin in the church.

“This is the first step of the Matthew 18 process,” I told the pastor as gently as I could.  “And I do intend to continue the process.”

“I won’t allow any harm to come to this church,” the pastor replied. “I will step down if that is what it takes to protect the church.”

The pastor then tried to steer the conversation toward the particulars of his sect’s beliefs regarding the Father, Son and Holy Spirit all being embodied in Jesus.  It was clear at this point that he was seriously offended at the audacity of my attempt to correct him, because he seemed to feel that his decades of service in the pulpit placed him in a position where I had no right to challenge him.  It appeared that he might finally make good on his threat of throwing me out of the house, so realizing that it was approaching 11 pm and I had already said everything I had to say, I got up to leave.

I stood outside his front door as we concluded our conversation.  “Could I just pray for you before I go?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied, changing his tone.  “Why don’t you come back in out of the cold.”

He lifted his hands before God as an apparent sign of submission to His will as I began to pray.  I asked God to convict his heart, to bring him to repentance and to cleanse him of this sin through the blood of Jesus.  I also prayed that if I had spoken any words which had not come from God, they would fall to the ground, but that any words I had spoken through the Holy Spirit would go deep down into his heart and that he would be continually reminded of them.

Although he did not, to my knowledge, repent of his participation in the abortion during our conversation, I left rejoicing, thanking God for answering my prayers and knowing that the Holy Spirit would be faithful to cause the seeds I had planted to grow in his heart.

For further thoughts on this encounter, read my updated post “Delighting in God’s Law.”