On the Altar of Convenience

On the Altar of Convenience
John R. Petrilli

Have America’s unborn children become an inconvenience? Chuck Colson believes so. In his latest work, “The Faith”, he makes the following observation: “We no longer see children as gifts from God; we see them more often as commodities, something that we are ‘entitled to’ simply because we exist. We decide to have children or not on the basis of whether they will enhance our lives. We evaluate pregnancies according to their potential to produce ‘good outcomes’.”

Has our next generation become a disposal thing? The wife of the late singer Keith Green thinks so. Some years ago Melody Green published a tract entitled, “Children …Things We Throw Away”.

As America approaches its fourth decade of waffling over the sanctity of unborn human life, it is instructive to delve into a passage of Scripture that recounts an earlier period in history when a country tragically adopted the pagan practice of child sacrifice. I believe the reader will find that these ancient practices strikingly parallel the modern day practice of aborting the unborn.

GOD’S APOSTATE PEOPLE SACRIFICED THEIR CHILDREN ON THE ALTAR OF IDOLATRY.
2 Ki. 21:3-4, 7-8

God appoints men over nations. In His sovereign plan a fifteen year-old by the name of Manasseh was appointed to rule over Judah. Undoing all the positive spiritual reforms of his immediate predecessor, King Hezekiah, Manasseh ran the table on wickedness. In addition to reintroducing witchcraft and occultist practices, ungodly Manasseh rebuilt the very altars to false deities that good king Hezekiah had torn down. He dedicated these wicked edifices to the pagan gods Baal and Asherah, having the audacity to erect one such idol right inside the Temple that had God’s Name on it! But his crowning sin was offering up the very lives of children to the Moabite god Molech (2 Ki. 3:27; 16:3; 21:6).

What was really going on here? Paul tells us that pagan worship of false gods is actually the worship of demons (1 Cor. 10:20). Each time the people of Judah worshipped at the altars of these false gods, they were worshipping none other than the devil himself and his minions. Before you conclude that ‘that was then and this is now’, consider this. Satan never ceases his assaults on God and us humans who are made in God’s image. He just changes tactics. Today he is successfully striking back at God by destroying the lives of unborn children. One look at a disposed, dismembered baby will convince you of the pure heinousness and cruelty that only a superhuman power of darkness could ever perpetrate. And the false gods we worship? Their names have changed also ... from Molech to the god of career … from Baal to the god of personal convenience … from Asherah to the mythical god of a “perfect baby”.

GOD’S APOSTATE PEOPLE SACRIFICED THEIR CHILDREN ON THE ALTAR OF VIOLENCE.
2 Ki. 21:6

Note the kind of death these ancient children suffered. It wasn’t quiet (like a natural death), it wasn’t private (like an execution), and it wasn’t painless (like a lethal injection). No, to appease these demonic gods, these parents forced their own flesh and blood to commit suicide by passing through a fiery death. Nothing these parents heard or saw could prompt them to stop the execution, not the wild screaming or the sight of their child’s body going up in flames. They just hardened their hearts and watched their innocent child die an excruciatingly painful death, a death that should have only been reserved for murderers. Unlike God, who through angelic intervention, stopped Abraham from going through with the sacrifice of Isaac, these parents did nothing. They stood by and watched their children die.

Until one has viewed a video of an abortion, seen a picture of an aborted baby or discovered the aftermath of an abortion in a waste basket or dumpster, they really have no grasp of the incredibly violent nature of abortion. The movie “Silent Scream” gave us a close-up look at a suction abortion as the baby’s mouth opens wide with tortured screams of outrageous pain as its members are torn limb from limb. Such cruelty against their offspring cannot be found in any other species except Homo sapiens. From whence does this violence come? From hearts deceived and hardened by sin, hearts that have suppressed an affection that is inborn, natural, and purely instinctive. The apostle Paul predicted the arrival of such a day, and we are living in that day (2 Tim 3:3 ;1 Tim. 4:1).

GOD’S APOSTATE PEOPLE SACRIFICED THEIR CHILDREN ON THE ALTAR OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. 2 Ki. 21:9

When sin in a culture is present that’s bad enough, but when it escalates to the place where it receives the endorsement of a nation’s leaders, its days are certainly numbered. No civilization that’s embraced abortion has ever survived (when will we ever learn?!). Manasseh wasn’t content to set a bad example by sacrificing his son to idols, he convinced the entire nation to join in and kill their kids as well. Instead of upholding God’s prescribed penalty of capital punishment for child sacrifice (Lev.20:1-5), Manasseh gave the green light allowing everyone to practice it, elevating it to the level of official public policy. No one would be prosecuted for the murder of their offspring; in fact, they might even be praised by the wicked king for mimicking his horrific action.

Abortions have been around for a long time. It wasn’t until January 22, 1973 that the federal government of these United States of America declared it their public policy to not recognize the unborn as a human being, and therefore susceptible to slaughter. Until recently, thanks to decent past leaders, there was no federal funding of child killing, but now there are powerful forces at work to not only legalize but also fund this murderous industry. A first-century example of government sanctioned and supported abortion is found in the ancient Roman Empire. Colson writes, “… the Romans employed abortion and infanticide to produce more male workers” (The Faith, p. 179).

GOD’S APOSTATE PEOPLE SACRIFICED THEIR CHILDREN IN RECORD NUMBERS. 2 Ki. 21:9,16

History records that when King Charles took the throne of England, he turned the royal court into a brothel. It wasn’t long before the entire country adopted his profligate ways, plunging it into wholesale debauchery. The need for a nation to elect or appoint leaders with character can be seen in the incredible amount of influence they leverage. Manasseh’s led his people down the slippery slope of child sacrifice, and it ran rampant from that point on. Things got so bad that the Israelites’ sinful actions exceeded the exceedingly wicked practices of the very pagan nations whom they were to destroy and displace. An epidemic involves a significant portion of a population, but a pandemic occurs when an entire culture is inundated by something. Judah bought into child sacrifice hook, line, and sinker. The result was an unprecedented amount of bloodshed that literally filled the streets of Jerusalem across the five and one-half decades of Manasseh’s terrible reign.

According to “Carenet”, a reputable and reliable Evangelical prolife agency, 234,000 evangelical Christian women choose to abort their babies each year. I wonder what that figure would have been just 20 short years ago. Hmmm. America is fast approaching the infamous figure of fifty million. That’s how many living, heart-beating, brain-functioning unborn babies have been mercilessly offered up on the altar of convenience. As I sit here writing these figures I can’t believe such a terrible thing has happened in a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles. But, tragically, it has. Who would have thought that a nation born out of a quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would deteriorate to the point where it now subjects its youngest citizens to a vicious prenatal execution? God have mercy on us!

THE PRACTICE OF CHILD SACRIFICE AMONG GOD’S APOSTATE PEOPLE LED TO THEIR NATION’S DOWNFALL. 2 Ki. 21:12-14

When God pronounced, “Thou shalt not kill”, He meant every word. He has never taken murder lightly, and never will. There’s only so long that a nation or people can live in rank disobedience before it comes under divine judgment. God is just, and sin will always eventually be punished. The people of Judah were given a time frame in which to repent, and failed to take advantage of it. Persisting in their wicked disposal of their most precious commodity, their own children, God sent a reply in the form of upcoming cataclysmic judgment. God’s plumb line sized-up the situation, and then He rained down retribution so intense that news of it made people’s ears tingle. In today’s lingo, the story of Judah’s downfall would be “all-the-buzz”.

The Lord promised that His judgment would be complete and thorough, much like the way a housekeeper makes sure that the household dinnerware has all the food cleared off, is washed clean, and then wiped dry. Judah would witness their enemies overrunning their towns and villages, pillaging, plundering and looting everything they had called their own. They’d be left penniless paupers enslaved to a foreign power that had no concern for their welfare and wanted nothing to do with their God.

Does God ever judge by dropping His hedge of protection around a people? He most certainly does! Even the remarkable period of spiritual reform and revival under Manasseh’s successor king Josiah wasn’t enough to spare Judah from the consequences of her horrific sins. One wicked king’s influence brought the entire nation down (Jer. 15:4). She went down at the hands of world-dominating Babylon, and entered a long period of captivity in that pagan, godless land (2 Ki. 25). Once the Babylonian army laid siege to Jerusalem, the city was no longer recognizable. No more Temple, no more palace, not even a single home was left standing (2 Ki. 25:8-10). And the people? Carted-off to live as slaves in Babylon.

On 9/11/01 another foreign power attempted to lay siege to our homeland. Jihadist of terrorists planned to destroy, not only human lives, but some of America’s greatest landmark buildings of significance. The idea was to leave behind a totally devastated political and economic landscape. While America wasn’t annihilated, 3,000 of its citizens didn’t see another day, and it is taking years for our economy to rebound after that infamous day in 2001. Whether or not 9/11 was a direct judgment from God is known only to Him at this point in time. If it wasn’t, it was still an act of God’s mercy because we have the blood of those fifty million innocent lives on our hands, and an accounting will eventually be made for our monumental failure to protect life.

God in mercy gives individuals and nations a window of opportunity to turn from their wicked ways (Jer. 18:7-10 ; Rev. 2:21). To heed God’s call will bring spiritual, economic and social healing back to our land (2 Chron. 7:14). To ignore God’s invitation to repent will bring certain judgment (Psa. 9:17).