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The
Church of Yeshua Messiah (Jesus Christ) has always condemned the sin of abortion as pure evil, a sin right from
the very pit of hell its self. Believers in Yeshua Messiah during the first-century wrote about it in work entitled
the Didache, a first-century document. This page will show it, and other writing that
show it as pure sin. Fortunately, abortion like all sins, is a forgivable sin when one asks God for that gift of
forgiveness found in Yeshua's holy name and by His blood. Forgiveness
is near and dear to God because God's mercy has no shoreline.
Think of that, no shoreline! Our merciful God wants you to know the facts on the taking of a life of the unborn.
Before reading the rest of this page please look at the facts.
Just
The Facts!
Now
that you've seen the facts please read these...
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The Didache
"And this is the second commandment of the teaching. Thou
shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not corrupt boys. Thou shalt not commit fornication.
Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not deal in magic. Thou shalt do no sorcery. Thou
shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. Thou shalt not perjure thyself, nor shalt you bear false witness. Thou
shalt not speak evil. Thou shalt not cherish a grudge, and thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued.
(Didache
2:1-2 [A.D. 50-80]."
A second reading of the same text...
"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal.
You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You
shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child"
(Didache
2:1-2a [A.D. 50-80].
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The Letter of Barnabas
"The way of light, then, is as follows. If anyone
desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge, therefore, which is given
to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following. . . . Thou shalt not kill the child by procuring
abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born" (Letter of Barnabas 19
[A.D. 74]). |
The Apocalypse of Peter
"And near that place I saw another strait place .
. . and there sat women. . . . and over against them many
children who were born to them out of due time sat crying.
And there came forth from them rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes. And
these were the accursed who conceived and caused abortion"
(The
Apocalypse of Peter 25 [A.D. 137]). |
Athenagoras
"What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm,
while such is our character, that we are murderers? . . . [W]hen we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God
for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder?
For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore
an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those
who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it"
(A
Plea for the Christians 35 [A.D. 177]). |
Tertullian
"In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden,
we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts
of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether
you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one;
you have the fruit already in its seed" (Apology 9:8
[A.D. 197]).
"Among surgeons tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame
for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means
of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage
being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery..."
"There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is
managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes,
[meaning] 'the slayer of the infant,' which of course was alive. . ."
"[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they]
pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive"
(The
Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).
"Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception;
life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (ibid., 27).
"The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion [Ex. 21:22-24]"
(ibid., 37).
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Minucius Felix
"There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical
preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they
bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us [Christians]
it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide" (Octavius
30 [A.D. 226]). |
Hippolytus
"Women who were reputed to be believers began to
take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived,
since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant
person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the
same time!" (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D.
228]). |
Lactantius
"When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits
us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but he warns us against the commission of
those things which are esteemed lawful among men. . . . Therefore, let no one imagine that even this is allowed,
to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and
not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive [unborn]
souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not given.
"Can anyone, indeed, expect that they would abstain from the blood of others who do not abstain even from
their own? But these are, without any controversy, wicked and unjust" (Divine Institutes 6:20
[A.D. 307]). |
Council of Ancyra
"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy
that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them
until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity,
we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21 [A.D. 314]). |
Basil the Great
"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’
penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter,
canon 2 [A.D. 374]).
"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder;
not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge,
in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man,
or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are they who take medicines
to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees" (ibid., canon 8). |
John Chrysostom
"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication. . . .
Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?-where there are many efforts at abortion?-where
there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess
also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to
a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but
prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with his laws, and follow after what
is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was
given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of
longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For
even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24
[A.D. 391]). |
Jerome
"I cannot bring myself to speak of the many virgins
who daily fall and are lost to the bosom of the Church, their mother. . . . Some go so far as to take potions,
that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find
themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when, as often happens, they die with
their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of
suicide and child murder" (Letters 22:13
[A.D. 396]). |
The Apostolic Constitutions
"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft;
for he says, 'You shall not suffer a witch to live' [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion,
nor kill that which is begotten. . . . [I]f it be slain, [it] shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed"
(Apostolic
Constitutions 7:3 [A.D. 400]). |
Some of the info we used for this article comes from:
Catholic Answers, 2020 Gillespie Way, El Cajon, CA 92020
MHM does not hold to all of the Roman Catholic doctrine.
However, on there abortion doctrine, we certainly do agree with them.
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