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The Doorpost · Issue 28 · Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Life, Doctrine, and the Body That Suffers
“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.” (Isaiah 8:20)
Father, today we come to You across three very different stories that all call the Church back to its anchor. A Tennessee doctor looked at his own work, measured it against what he believed about human life, and changed everything. Churches in South Korea are discovering that practices rooted in divination have crept in through entertainment, anxiety, and the language of spirituality, and that the Word of God alone is sufficient to answer the questions those practices are pretending to address. And a travel ministry in Africa is doing the quiet, costly, dangerous work of getting persecuted Christians out of harm’s way, in the places where following Jesus costs everything. Anchor us, Lord, to Your Word. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Today’s issue covers Dr. John Gordon and the pro-life model of IVF he built at Rejoice Fertility in Knoxville, the troubling survey data on fortune-telling among Korean churchgoers and what the Western Church must learn from it, and the Africa-based travel ministry helping persecuted believers escape violence and reach safety. Go well.
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Top Stories
Three Headlines to Watch
1) Christian IVF Doctor Walked Away From a Comfortable Career Because Discarding Embryos Is Not Different From Abortion
Dr. John Gordon spent thirty years as a reproductive endocrinologist and co-director of a fertility clinic in suburban Washington, D.C. As genetic testing expanded and his clinic began helping couples screen embryos for sex, disease, and disability, Gordon grew increasingly troubled. The science had outpaced his conscience. He was creating life, selecting it, and discarding what was not chosen. “It’s too morally problematic,” he thought. “I don’t know where you draw the line.” In 2018, his wife Allison pushed him to act on what he believed. She looked at the comfortable life they had built and called it “ill-gotten gains.” Gordon walked away and bought a practice in Knoxville, Tennessee, which he rebuilt from the ground up around a single conviction: every embryo is a human life made in the image of God, and it will not be discarded, genetically tested for selection purposes, or donated to research under his roof.
His clinic, Rejoice Fertility, does not discard viable embryos. It limits how many are created in the first place, tailoring each treatment cycle to the patient’s ideal family size and using lower medication doses that produce fewer eggs. A wooden cross hangs in the waiting room. A Bible verse marks the recovery area. Gordon prays with patients before every embryo transfer. Patients travel from across the country to find him, many of them Christians who had ruled out IVF entirely until they discovered that a non-discard practice existed. Domenic D’Agostino, a patient who drove nearly two hours to reach Rejoice, put it plainly: “In my eyes there’s not much difference between discarding an embryo and abortion. We just weren’t really willing to do that.” He is right. An estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos are currently stored in facilities across the United States. The standard industry practice created them and then left them. Gordon is one of the few practitioners in the country who has decided he will not be part of that. Read the full story at AP News →
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Doorpost Reflection
The standard IVF industry creates human embryos and then decides which ones live and which ones are discarded, stored indefinitely, or used for research. That is not a neutral medical procedure. It is a decision about the value of a human life made in the image of God, and it is a decision that the Church must be willing to name for what it is. Domenic D’Agostino’s plain statement deserves to be repeated: there is not much difference between discarding an embryo and abortion. He is right, and more Christians need to say so out loud.
For years, many assumed that a pro-life approach to IVF simply wasn’t possible, that if you wanted fertility treatment you had to accept the industry’s standard practices. Rejoice Fertility is evidence that this isn’t true. A clinic can limit how many embryos are created, refuse to discard them, and still serve families who desperately want children. That is worth knowing, and worth sharing with every Christian couple navigating this painful and complicated territory. The pro-life position has always been that every human life matters at every stage. It is good to see that principle being applied inside the fertility space, even if the broader conversation still has a long way to go.
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Scripture: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” — Psalm 139:13–14
2) One in Five Korean Churchgoers Used Fortune-Telling in the Past Three Years — A Warning the Western Church Needs to Hear
A recent survey of churchgoing Protestants in South Korea found that one in five had used shamanistic services, including fortune-telling, saju (a form of divination based on birth data), horoscopes, or talismans, within the past three years. One in four said they did not strongly object to carrying a talisman. Korean church leaders are describing the trend as the “shamanization of faith,” driven by anxiety about the future, prosperity-oriented religion, the explosion of AI-generated horoscope content on social media, and a weakening of genuine community within church congregations. Pastor Lee Chun-sung, secretary-general of the Korea Christian Ethics Institute, noted the critical shift in how younger people approach these practices: “In the past, visiting fortune tellers or consulting saju was something people wanted to hide and felt ashamed about. But now, especially among younger generations, there is a strong tendency to consume saju and horoscopes simply as entertainment or fun.”
Theologian Dr. Seo Chang-won gave the sharpest warning: “I believe that people who call themselves believers while visiting fortune tellers or dabbling in shamanistic beliefs are falling into the sin of idolatry forbidden by God. Someone who accurately predicts the past is not necessarily able to predict the future. The future belongs to God.” Dr. Jung Jae-young, a sociology of religion professor, connected the trend to gaps in church community: when prayer requests and counseling details spread within congregations rather than remaining confidential, people stop bringing their real fears to the church. Fortune-telling fills the vacuum with quick answers to the exact questions the Church is positioned to answer from the Word of God. Read the full story at Christian Daily International →
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Doorpost Reflection
The Korean survey is a mirror the Western Church needs to look into carefully, because the same drift is happening here, often wearing Christian vocabulary. In many non-denominational and charismatic circles, the language of prophecy has gradually stretched to cover things it was never meant to cover: personality-based predictions about someone’s future, declarations about who a person will marry or where they will work, detailed “words” about outcomes that Scripture never promises to reveal. When prophetic language starts functioning like a horoscope, offering specific predictions about earthly futures rather than calling people to repentance, faithfulness, and trust in God’s sovereignty, it has crossed a line. The packaging is Christian. The practice is not.
The answer is not to shut down every church that exercises spiritual gifts, nor to gaslight sincere believers. The answer is to hold everything to the standard Isaiah 8:20 demands: does it speak according to the Word? The Bible is clear that divination, fortune-telling, and the seeking of hidden knowledge about the future from any source other than God are forbidden. Deuteronomy 18 does not make an exception for practices that feel spiritual or wear a Christian label. The future belongs to God. The Church’s job is to call people to trust the One who holds it, not to offer them a more comfortable version of the same anxiety-driven prediction-seeking that drives people to horoscopes.
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Scripture: “There shall not be found among you anyone who… practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD.” — Deuteronomy 18:10–12
3) The Travel Ministry Quietly Moving Persecuted Christians to Safety Across Africa
Maria is 27 years old and lives in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Last year, Islamic rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, an ISIS-affiliated group that has pledged to target Christians across central Africa, emerged from the forest near her farm. They beheaded her husband, kidnapped her son, and shot her twice. She crawled into the bush, bleeding. A stranger found her. She survived. “When they killed him, I felt dead too; I lost my mind. My first thought was the children, how would I provide for them,” she said. Maria is one of the Christians being helped by a travel ministry that operates across sub-Saharan Africa, assisting persecuted believers in reaching safer areas by providing transportation, relocation support, and connections to local church communities who can receive them. The ministry asks not to be fully identified for security reasons.
The ADF was responsible for more than 200 civilian deaths in eastern Congo and Uganda last year alone. The broader picture across Africa is staggering: of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith in the past year according to Open Doors data, the vast majority died in sub-Saharan Africa. In the DRC, in Nigeria, in Ethiopia, in Mozambique, in Mali, believers are being killed, displaced, and driven from their communities at a scale that the Western Church has barely begun to reckon with. The travel ministry documented in Religion Unplugged’s report is not a large operation with a significant budget. It is a small, determined group of people who have decided that getting Christians out of the path of violence is worth the personal risk of doing it. Read the full story at Religion Unplugged →
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Doorpost Reflection
Maria crawled into the bush with two bullets in her body while her husband’s killers walked away with her son. She survived because a stranger found her. She is still in danger. Her son is still missing. And somewhere in the DRC, a small ministry is trying to get people like her to a safer place. This is the Church doing what it has always done in the darkest places: showing up, at personal risk, to carry the wounded toward safety. It is not glamorous work and it will never be on a conference stage. It is simply faithful, and it is exactly what the body of Christ is called to be.
The Church in the West has resources that most of the persecuted Church in Africa can only imagine. Money, logistics, communication infrastructure, political influence. We are not helpless witnesses to what is happening. We are members of the same body as Maria, as the Christians of North Kivu, as the believers being loaded into vehicles in the middle of the night by people whose names we will never know. Hebrews 13:3 commands us to remember those in prison as if we were in prison with them. That is the standard. Pray for this ministry. Pray for Maria. Find organizations doing this work and fund them. The Church must show up for itself.
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Scripture: “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” — Hebrews 13:3
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Daily Scripture
Verse of the Day
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“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.”
Isaiah 8:20
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Isaiah spoke these words in a time when Israel was being pressed from every direction to consult mediums, necromancers, and spiritual advisors of every kind. The anxiety of the age was real: there were armies on the border, political uncertainty, and the fear of what was coming. Sound familiar? Into that environment, Isaiah set the standard that has never changed: to the law and to the testimony. If what is being spoken does not align with the Word of God, it has no light in it. It is darkness wearing the clothing of guidance. The test is not whether a word feels true, or whether it brings comfort, or whether the person speaking it seems genuinely spiritual. The test is whether it speaks according to this Word.
All three of today’s stories turn on that standard. Dr. John Gordon applied it to his own hands and his own clinic and changed everything. The Korean survey documents what happens when the Church stops applying it and lets anxiety-driven spiritual practices fill the gap that sound teaching should occupy. And Maria’s story, and the stories of every persecuted Christian in central Africa, are stories about people who held to the Word when the cost of doing so was everything they had. The law and the testimony. That is the anchor. That is the light.
Father, hold us to Your Word today. Where we have drifted, bring us back. Where the practices we have adopted have quietly departed from what Scripture permits, give us the courage to name it and turn from it. Where we have measured our work or our choices by comfort rather than conviction, give us the integrity of Dr. Gordon, who looked at what he was doing, weighed it against what he believed, and changed. And where Your people are suffering in the fields of Congo and the villages of Nigeria and the border roads of the DRC, let them feel the weight of our prayers and know that the Church has not forgotten them. We are one body. We show up for each other. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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