Related Articles:
- Chapter 1 - Abortion: The Religion of Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 2 - Abortion in Biblical Perspective
- Chapter 3 - Abortion ... The Devil’s Mousetrap
- Chapter 4 - The Origin of Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 6 - Modern Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 7 - Witchcraft, Feminism and Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 8 - Do What Thou Wilt - Witchcraft and Satanism
- Chapter 9 - Defeating Jezebel
- Chapter 10 - Tearing Down the High Places
Chapter 5 – The History of Human Sacrifice
by Eric Holmberg and Jay Rogers
Man was created in God’s own image, and it is precisely for this reason that killing of innocent human life is an abomination and a capital offense in the eyes of God.
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
- Genesis 1:27“Whoever sheds man’s blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man.”- Genesis 9:6
As horrific and hard to comprehend as it may be, one of the most widespread forms of worship among ancient peoples involved human sacrifice. Not only in Canaan, but also in northern Africa, India, Europe, and the Americas, the ancients believed that the blood of the sacrifice is what appeased the gods.
The pagan practice of blood sacrifice is actually a perversion of the rites given by God to His people, Israel.
To its priests He declared:
“For the life of the creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11).
Sacrifice to any other god was condemned as idolatry:
“They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot. This shall be as statute forever for them throughout their generations” (Leviticus 17:7).
As we look at the practice of human sacrifice in ancient times, keep in mind that, according to God’s perspective, these sacrifices were made to demons – the false gods of the pagan nations.
Carthage
The ancient city of Carthage was the capital of the Phoenician empire, one of the most advanced civilizations of their time. But recent archaeological expeditions have revealed another notable feature – the incredibly high incidence of child sacrifice. Altars on which children were sacrificed and stone markers, which marked the burial place of their remains, have been uncovered – along with the stone carvings on the markers that depict the children who were sacrificed. Clay jars were used to hold the remains. Burial grounds full of thousands of these ritually sacrificed children have been unearthed.
The Carthaginians were descendants of the ancient Canaanites and worshipped the same god, Baal or Moloch. Archaeologists have established that the primary deity that they children were sacrificed to was the goddess Tanet, the name being a regional representation of the more universal Ashteroth. Written accounts tell us that the priests of Baal would beat drums during the ritual sacrifice in order to drown out the cries of the grieving mothers.
As barbaric as all this may sound, we must remember that we are do much the same thing through abortion… with one obvious exception. Today we don’t commemorate or bury the children we sacrifice.
It would be easy to attribute these ancient sacrificial rites to primitive superstition and believe that science and intellectual advancement would eventually cause this type of brutality to lessen and finally cease. But archaeologists have also discovered that over Carthage’s history, the incident of child sacrifice, even in the face of considerable intellectual advances, actually increased… until it suddenly stopped.
And how did it end? When God judged Carthage. Roman armies invaded and destroyed the entire civilization, going so far as to cover the ground with vast amounts of salt so that the land could no longer be cultivated. The reason for this magnitude of destruction? The Romans, pagan though they were, were horrified by the degree of cruelty and evil that gave rise to these sacrifices and wanted to make sure that their civilization was completely obliterated.
To this day, the stark ruins of Carthage stand as a testimony that God is not mocked. This should also prompt us to ask ourselves a critically important question: How far are we from facing a similar judgment for our own commitment to rampant child sacrifice?
We know the Aztecs, a highly advanced civilization, practiced brutal human sacrifice.
The Roman historian, Tacitus, records that the ancestors of the English speaking peoples, the Angles, sacrificed to the Mother Earth Goddess. In his Germania, On the Origin and Geography of Germany, Tacitus describes this gruesome ritual as “a ceremony performed by slaves who are immediately afterward drowned in the lake.”
Jumping ahead a few centuries, the Celtic and Northern German tribes – the ancestors of English and German speaking peoples – were commonly pagan idolaters who sacrificed their own children to the Mother Goddess. Child sacrifice and abortion were practiced and were accepted as facts of everyday life – the necessary consummation of their rampant sexual immorality.
Where did the practice of child sacrifice ultimately take these societies? The Canaanites, Carthaginians, Indians, Aztecs, and Northern Europeans – everyone who practiced open, culturally-sanctioned human sacrifice to pagan gods and goddesses – were eventually destroyed, wiped out by invading armies.
The lesson for us so-called “moderns”? Nations must obey God’s eternal Law concerning the sanctity of innocent human life – or face the dire consequences.
