When does life begin? Some may say when the heart beats, or when the baby can live outside the womb. Maybe there is some new measurement that scientists came up with using state of the art technology. However, the Bible says life begins before conception.

If you are a Christian your primary source for knowledge and truth needs to come from the Bible, because it is God’s Word and as a Christian you have accepted God’s Word over the world’s point of view, and even your own. If you accept what the world has to think, and that differs from God’s thoughts, then you are allowing the world’s views to supersede God’s authority. There is no human logic that can surpass God’s wisdom, and as much as you may want to find a loophole in the Word, well… there isn’t any. In John 15:24 Jesus states, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Nowhere does Jesus say you are still my friend if you find holes in my word and try to fill them yourself. If you have a hard time accepting this and have an argument to the contrary, remember this very humbling verse:

⁸ “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
⁹ For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
     so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NLT)

There are many verses that show God is very intentional when creating life, and that He plans each life before a husband and wife, or man and woman, lay with one another. Following are a four examples where God made promises to parents, and established purposes for the children. It clearly shows that God planned these children ahead of conception.

Sarah and Isaac

Before Conception

¹⁵ Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. ¹⁶I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” ¹⁷Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” ¹⁸And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before You!” ¹⁹But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

Genesis 17:15-19 (NASB)

After

¹ The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. ² And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him. ³ Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. ⁴ And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. ⁵ Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. ⁶ And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” ⁷ And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

Genesis 21:1-7 (NASB)

Manoah’s Wife and Samson

Before Conception

³ The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, “You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. ⁴ Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean. ⁵ You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

Judges 13:3-5 (NIV)

After

²⁴ The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, ²⁵ and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Judges 13:24 (NIV)

Mary and Jesus

Before Conception

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. ²⁸ Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

²⁹ Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. ³⁰ “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”

³⁴ Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”

³⁵ The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. ³⁶ What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. ³⁷ For the word of God will never fail.”

Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.

Luke 1:26-37 (NLT)

After

¹ At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. ² (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) ³ All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. ⁴ And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. ⁵ He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.

⁶ And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. ⁷ She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

Luke 2:1-7 (NLT)

Elizabeth and John the Baptist

Before Conception

¹¹ And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. ¹² And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. ¹³ But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. ¹⁴ And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. ¹⁶ And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, ¹⁷ and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

Luke 1:11 (ESV)

After

²⁴ After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, ²⁵ “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.”

Luke 1:24-25 (ESV)

From these four stories alone there is enough evidence to show that God doesn’t create life willy-nilly. No Christian using Biblical principles can refute the fact that all fetuses, wanted and unwanted by the parent(s), are planned by God. Or can they?

Maybe a Pro-life Christian could argue that the people in these examples were set apart with a special purpose, but that would mean God created some people with intention and a cause, and that the rest of us were born by pure happenchance and can meander aimlessly through life. This is not the case – in Luke 12:6-7 Jesus tells thousands of people, “What is the price of five sparrows—two copper coins? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.“

That verse doesn’t make is seem like our existence is happenstance. On the contrary, it shows each person is very intentional. If God planned Samson, then God planned you and me as well. As Jesus was planned to come into this world, so were we, and so are the hundreds of thousands of babies aborted each year.

Dear Pro-choice Christian bothers and sisters, remember what David said the next time you want to justify the killing of babies in the mother’s womb, or voting for legislation that protects abortion rights:

¹³ For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
    my soul knows it very well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
    I awake, and I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18 (NLT)

Questions

What arguments can you make to refute this post?

What Bible verses can you find to support your points?