Many modern theologians talk about Judeochristianity as if there was a person called JudeoChrist. There was not. God chose the most stubborn people on this world and he schooled them.
During the ministry of Moses they still kept their idols and their habits: the idol of Molech was worshipped with child sacrifice and Rephan is obscure: but they took the religious apparatus of Molech with them.
`though all idolatrous places were in Jerusalem, Molech was without Jerusalem; and it was made an hollow image, placed within seven chancels or chapels; and whoever offered fine flour, they opened to him the first; if turtle doves or two young pigeons, they opened the second; if a lamb, they opened the third; if a ram, they opened the fourth; if a calf, they opened the fifth; if an ox, they opened the sixth; but whoever offered his son, they opened the seventh: his face was a calf’s, and his hands were stretched out, as a man opens his hands to receive any thing from his friend; and they make him hot with fire, and the priests take the infant and put it into the hands of Molech, and the infant expires: and wherefore is it called Topher and Hinnom? Tophet, because they make a noise with drums, that its father may not hear the voice of the child, and have compassion on it, and return to it; and Hinnom, because the child roars, and the voice of its roaring ascends.”
Children are a blessing and having many children gives one confidence. That in the time of your ruling you have allies, and when your sons rule there will be care for you and your wife. It is good and normal to have children. It is not good and normal to seek a child free life.
Stephen, in his defence to the Sanhedrin, reminds the rulers of the religious community of Jewry that their forefathers did not follow Moses well or completely. They rejected him. As they rejected Christ.
30“Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 31When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight; and as he approached to look, there came the voice of the Lord: 32‘I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look. 33Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34I have surely seen the mistreatment of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, I will send you to Egypt.’
35“It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge?’ and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. 37This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up.’ 38He is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living oracles to give to us. 39Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, 40saying to Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ 41At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands. 42But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:
‘Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices
forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
43 No; you took along the tent of Moloch,
and the star of your god Rephan,
the images that you made to worship;
so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’”
We need to preach the gospel, with no amendments or variation. We do not want to be talking about a faith community. Those who would bring pagan ideas, be they wiccan, Celtic or Maori, into our worship need to be corrected, expelled if necessary.
The political groups that put the worship of death or nature ahead of people have to be disempowered, and, again, removed.
Our women need to make babies when they are young. They can be academics when they are older, for then babies they cannot make. Our courts need to stop worshipping the United Nations declarations, and start caring for the poor, the broken, the disabled, the simple and the children of this nation.
And we must shun the interfaith movements. Our interaction with other faiths should be but one thing: evangelism.
The Jews abandoned Moses, so were exiled. They abandoned Jesus of Nazareth, the one Jew who kept the law to the pagan Romans, and then the Romans destroyed their temple. They are a warning to us.
That we do not trust the powers of this age. That we do not join them. That we do not be like them.
