Sunday, March 13th, 2011
Jesus and the Children
As Americans we are appalled when those who hate our country with its Christian heritage, strap bombs on their children and send them out as weapons for their pernicious cause to blow up innocent civilians, including non suspecting children who they label infidels because they don’t worship Allah. They even sacrifice their children to blow up others who worship Allah if they don’t worship him just the way their narrow Jihadist group prescribes (Ex. Shiites vs. Sunnis).
The North Vietnamese Communists would send children out to sweep for land-mines. In Afghanistan men often take in little boys for perverted purposes and, when they are no longer interested in them, discard them. Even in Europe in recent centuries children were often used for slave labor in terrible working conditions as they are still in many third world countries.
In ancient times children were used as human sacrifices to pagan gods. Jeremiah speaks for God to the children of Israel as they were imitating this abominable practice of their pagan neighbors. The prophet warns them that such sacrifice of their children will bring God’s sure judgment upon them: Jer. 19:5-8 “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter. . . . I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.”
In our society, in which so many of our leaders and citizens are in open rebellion against God and His ways, on average more than 4,000 abortions are “performed”, every day in this nation. Our minds cannot fathom the bloodshed! That is more than all the people killed by the vicious attack by the Jihadists on 9-11! Today, in the gospel of Mark, we will see how our Savior loved the children and that is why wherever true Christianity flourishes the lives, rights and innocence of children are cherished and protected.
