(This is my latest article for the Pastors Pro-Life Resource Center.)
The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps at the presence of Mary’s newly-conceived baby
In response to Gabriel’s announcement, Mary hurried to the home of her relative Elizabeth, who was in the midst of her own miraculous pregnancy, as Gabriel had also announced. When Mary greeted Elizabeth, the presence of Jesus (deep within Mary’s womb) inspired preborn John the Baptist to leap for joy in Elizabeth’s womb.
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(This is part of my recent series on the Gates of Hell.)
As we confront today’s child-killing Gates of Hell under the power and promise of Christ, we labor alongside others whose definition of Christianity looks different from our own. Some of our friends have become very offended at what they consider to be idolatrous prayers and practices of some of our co-laborers.
A Samaritan rescues an injured man who had been shunned by a priest and Levite.
If the Church is to faithfully confront the Gates of Hell, we must indeed first be sure to properly (and fully) identify these gates. Ignoring one gate while confronting all others is likely to prove to be futile in the long run.
Jewish leaders did not limit the concept of the Gates of Hell to Gehenna; the burning of children there only provided the most obvious, disgraceful example. Idolatry and false religions were represented in Scripture as snares which led the nation of Israel on the pathway to child sacrifice (Psalm 106:36-39), along with sexual perversions (Ezekiel 16 and Ezekiel 23).
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Through His foundational proclamation that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, Jesus set the stage for transforming the most repugnant atrocities in Jewish history into a decisive victory against the agenda of Hell.
Ezekiel 16: God’s abandoned baby
Jesus considered attacks against children to be particularly heinous (Matthew 18:1-14), so it is no surprise that the early Church made the protection of orphans a high priority, an essential aspect of “pure and undefiled religion” (James 1:27). Christianity’s emphasis on the value of children was an extremely counter-cultural concept in the Roman Empire, where newborn children were not considered to be fully human (as some philosophers even asserted that babies were more like plants than human beings).
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When Jesus promised that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, how did His first audience interpret His words? The answer to this question has far-reaching implications for those of us who confront the hellish powers of abortion today.
When Jesus spoke of Hell, He is usually quoted as having used the word “Gehenna,” which referred to a place well known to anyone who was familiar with Jerusalem. Gehenna was the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, also known as the Valley of Slaughter (Jeremiah 7:32) or Topheth (2 Kings 23:10): this was the notorious place where children were sacrificed, with the innocent blood shed in this place desecrating this land for generations to come (Psalm 106:38). Continue reading →