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A new abortion drug and a possible end to the Israel–Hamas war · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, it's Monday, October 6, 2025.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're glad you've joined us for Denison forums, Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's Daily Article is written by our co-founder, Dr. Jim Denison, and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Note, I want to thank Dr. Ryan Denison for writing the Daily article last week, while my wife and I were traveling.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is a great privilege to partner with him in sharing this ministry with you.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two stories are leading the news for obvious reasons, but the connection between the two may not be obvious to many, which points to my point today.
• 0:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, pro-life supporters are strongly opposing a Trump administration decision to approve a new generic version of the Muffapristone abortion pill.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two weeks ago, federal officials said they were conducting a review of the safety of the pills, a decision the activists welcomed.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the FDA later stated that it has very limited discretion in deciding whether to approve a generic drug.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: One pro-life leader called the announcement a wildly disappointing decision.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second,
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mediators are set to meet in Egypt today for indirect peace talks between Hamas and Israel.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The talks come after Hamas has accepted some parts of the 20-point U.S.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: peace plan, including freeing hostages and handing over Gaza governance to Palestinian officials.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Axios, quote, this is the closest Israel and Hamas have come to ending the war since the October 7th attacks almost exactly two years ago.
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, however, senior Hamas officials stated that there are still major disagreements that require further negotiations and their statement made no mention of Hamas disarming a key Israeli demand included in the U.S.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: proposal.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In his new book, The Origin of Politics, how evolution and ideology shaped the fate of nations, the Cambridge Graduate and Science Journalist Nicholas Wade writes, a society operates under two sets of rules.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is the Rules of Human Nature, the inherited behaviors selected by evolution because of their survival value.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other is the Rules of the Society's Political System.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the two sets of rules conflict, a crisis is likely to follow, which the society must resolve on pain of collapse, in quote.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: In reading his book as a cultural apologist, I substituted the biblical theme of inherited sin nature for his description of inherited evolutionary behavior.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This theme is foundationally manifested in the Garden of Eden,
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: where our first parents sought in Genesis 3 verse 5 to be their own God.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: From then today, the will to power has dominated our fallen nature.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since as Wade notes, political scientists generally agree that the roots of politics lie in human nature, our will to power dominates our politics as well.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: He adds that human nature is often most evident
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: When political means are used to modify our basic drive for self-interest and power, our self-interest ultimately prevails.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: George Washington made a similar observation, quote, it is a maximum found on the universal experience of mankind.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interests and no prudent statesmen or politician will venture to depart from it."
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was because the founders recognized our fallen self-interest that they sought to create as John Adams noted, a government of laws, not of men.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But human laws cannot change human hearts.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the weak in shooting at South Carolina State University tragically illustrates, laws against murder do not prevent all murders.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pro-life supporters will be grateful whenever government officials act in ways that uphold the sanctity of life.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as today's news shows, we must not depend on them always to do so.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The same is true for political leaders engaged in war and peace.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Each side in the Israel Hamas conflict has its own self-interest and will act in line with it.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do political and legal structures not change the human condition?
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering an analogy, you would not expect me to be able to speak words that raised the dead.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reason the crowds were astonished when Jesus did this, illustrated in Luke 7 and John 11, was that such an act was indeed miraculous.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the problem.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fallen humans are just as dead spiritually and morally as if we were dead physically.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because, as Romans 6 verse 23 states, the wages of sin is death.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are dead in our trespasses, according to Ephesians 2.5, since our self-reliance cuts us off from the resurrecting and transforming power of our Creator.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Oswald Chambers explains in, my utmost for his highest, the disposition of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the disposition of self-realization I am my own God.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, the good news as he added in today's reading is this, the moral miracle of redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a total new life.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: This happens when we yield to God's spirit, allowing him to recreate the disposition that was in Jesus Christ.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here we discover one way God redeems the moral failures that dominate each day's news.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Chambers notes, God cannot work this miracle of transformation in my life until I am conscious I need it.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our father cannot change our hearts without our hearts consent.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why the First Beatitude in Matthew 5.3 is foundational to the sermon that follows.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are the poor and spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we honestly recognize our abject spiritual poverty, we advocate the throne of our hearts and in throne God as our king.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, we experience from Matthew 6 verse 10, the kingdom of heaven, the realm where God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine such a life-transforming grace-infused love-centered world.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, decide if you will pay the price to experience it personally.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously observed, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is Jesus calling you today?