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.

Jesus equated Hell with Gehenna, a notorious place near Jerusalem where innocent children had been sacrificed by being burned. When wicked people plot to destroy the innocent in places like Gehenna, God promises to avenge this innocent blood by catching the wicked in their own traps (Psalm 9:12-16). This is a major theme of stories throughout the Bible, such as Haman being hung upon the pole he made to kill Mordecai in the book of Esther. Gates are often identified as places of judgment in scripture (Deuteronomy 16:18), and Jesus emphasized that those who murder the innocent warrant the judgment of Hell (Matthew 23:23).

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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