Before starting, I want to mention that this post represents a major moment. It is my 800th post!
"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Say
to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the
strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech
shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him
with stones. I Myself will set My face against that man and will cut him off from
among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to
make My sanctuary unclean and to profane My holy name. And
if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when
he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then
I will set My face against that man and against his clan and will cut
them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring
after Molech.'"
- Leviticus 20:1-5
Molech was a prosperity deity of the Canaanites, worshiped by human sacrifice. In particular, a worshiper sought prosperity for himself by sacrificing his own infant by fire (see, e. g., Jeremiah 32:35). The Israelites absorbed this practice from the surviving Canaanites among them after they settled in the Promised Land. This was exactly the reason that God had ordered that no survivors were to remain of the Canaanites after the Conquest: "When the Lord your God brings you into
the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away
many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites,
the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven
nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following Me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and He would destroy you quickly" (Deuteronomy 7:1-4).
What made this crime of Israel particularly heinous, even more so than among the Canaanites, was that God claimed the Israelite children as His own (Ezekiel 16:20). As evil as human sacrifice always is, the Israelites were sacrificing the children of God to a demon (Deuteronomy 32:17)! What greater act of sacrilege could there have been?
Roughly 70% of Americans profess to be Christians, yet almost three-thousand babies are killed by abortion every day in that same America. Why? Because the parents of those children believe that their lives will be better iF those children are dead. How is that not the same crime described by Moses roughly forty-three centuries ago? I see no significant distinction.
And that should bring each of those professing Christians bolt upright in his seat, because the God they profess warns of dire consequences for that ritual of child sacrifice. More importantly, He also warns of consequences for those who sit idly by as the crime of child sacrifice occurs around them. Silence is not innocence. Silence is complicity, and God judges it as such. In God's eyes, the silent Christian is the accomplice in every child sacrifice.
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