It has been over a week since the horrific killing of all the little children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. I haven’t done much writing since then. I knew I needed to write something about it but couldn’t bring myself to face it down until I was ready.
My heart was sick when I saw the pictures of the little children. Parents thought they were safe in kindergarten class at school. They should have been safe. They should have been safe like we all were when in kindergarten a long time ago. Do you remember those days? These kids were not taken by guns but they were killed by a crazy, selfish, jealous, evil young man. This man was no different than the very first murderer that bloodied his hands within a short time of the earth’s creation. His name was Cain and this started a long time ago. Killing has been a part of our society for ever.
Just to illustrate this is not the first and won’t be the last I submit the story of the “Bath Massacre”. It was America’s first school bombing and shattered lives just like last week but this was back on May 18, 1927. That mass killing of 38 children and six adults happened 85 years ago in a very small town in Michigan named Bath. The killing was done by a farmer named Andrew Kehoe, and he blew himself up as well. This man was a school board member; in fact, he was the treasurer and school caretaker. He was well known and trusted. He was having financial difficulties and taxes went up so he blamed the school for his problems. That morning he beat his wife to death and set his farm on fire. While the firefighters were busy with the fire on his farm he rocked the school with explosives. When he was seen in his car and people ran over to him he detonated a massive bomb inside his car and shrapnel killed the school superintendent and others. This was fairly similar to the mass killings last week and remains as the number one deadliest school killing in our nation’s history.
In the beginning, after God had created the earth he rested on the seventh day. And then, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2: 7). Then The LORD made the Garden of Eden and put the man there. You know the story. The man, Adam, was told that he could eat freely of any tree except the “Tree of Knowledge of good and evil”. Then the LORD caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and took one of his ribs and made a woman. Then the serpent tricked the woman into eating from the tree of knowledge and she also talked Adam into eating it as well. God was angry! He cursed the serpent and kicked them out of the garden and nothing would ever be the same. Sin and evil became a part of mankind.
In the 4th chapter of Genesis we read that Eve had two children. The first born was Cain and the second was his brother Abel. Cain was a farmer and Abel was a sheep herder. Cain gave an offering to the Lord from the ground and Abel gave an offering to the LORD of the first of his flock. The LORD respected the offering of Abel but didn’t pay so much respect to Cain for the offering he gave. Apparently Abel’s offering was one of faith and Cain had no faith. Cain was beside himself and very upset. He was wroth, which means angry and irate. His countenance fell so he was moping around. God asked him what was wrong and Cain explained. God’s answer was that He would give Cain a second chance and if he gets it right then it will be accepted. God also mentioned sin at Cain’s door. So God knew there was sin in Cain’s heart. So what did Cain do? He killed his brother Abel. Just like that! He snuffed the life out of his only brother. Why? Because he was jealous and he was only concerned with self and he was sinful and did not have the love of god in his heart. He had little regard for the life of others. Is that any different than what happened last week? I don’t think so.
So you see… this killing, this evil, this sin has been with us from the beginning. It will be with us until God reigns over chaos and evil in the end as written in Revelation. That day is coming soon.
Since the beginning all civilizations have been trying to figure out why. They want to know why men are willing to put their own lives in jeopardy to extinguish the lives of others. This has been puzzled over since Cain slew Abel. The theme of murder is used dozens of times each and every week by television script writers. It has inspired stacks of novels and multiple volume stories. Legal philosophers, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists have theorized endlessly to no avail. The cause of murder still remains a considerable mystery to those that do not study God’s word. But we, the studied Christian’s know. We know the core of where it comes from. Students of murder can spot only the visible and apparent reasons for it – greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, or a sudden insane anger that seizes a person and, a moment later, blots out all memory of his deed. (Or so they say. There are not any guilty people in prison you know.) Ted Bundy referred to the killer as “the entity”. No killer wants to take responsibly and he never did. But maybe Bundy was onto something. Maybe it was “the entity”.
If Bundy was thinking “the entity” was Satan he would very likely be correct. It sounded kind of strange back in Genesis when a serpent tricked Eve into eating the fruit of that tree. Was it a snake? No. The serpent was not a talking snake. The serpent is identified in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, as Satan himself. Satan beguiled Eve by taking the form of a serpent and using his evil and clever skill to scam her into it. We must remember that Satan did not force her to eat that fruit and he didn’t force Adam. They had to choose to do it. And we also choose daily between good and evil and between being in the world or of the world. So how do people get to the place where they can take another human life (or many human lives) simply to benefit some little feeling inside them? It is when the evil one has taken residence in the person. Certainly the professionals can put labels upon labels on top of it but at the root it is sin, it is Satan they follow and not God and it is a turning away from God.
In The Mind of the Murderer, W. Lindesay Neustatter remarks, “. . . motive, without the whole background in which it is set, tells little of the criminal’s psychology.” He classifies murderers as the schizophrenic (with delusions of persecution), the hysteric, the mental defective, the paranoiac (victim of a systemized delusional insanity), the epileptic (with epileptic automatism and amnesia), the constitutionally unstable psychopath, and finally the chap who is simply depressed possibly due to low blood sugar (momentary malnutrition). J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and author of The Psychopathic Mind; and Violent Attachments, says that such crimes occur as the result of a build-up of anger, frustration and planning, which undermines the already-fragile sense of self. They don’t take failure lightly and cannot tolerate humiliation. Having no way to relieve their stress, they let the steam build until it just explodes into violence. Their families are generally the easiest target and they have no inner defense against the flow of rage. Once it’s done, they often return to a sense of equilibrium and if they don’t also kill themselves, they often feel much better.
Jesus referred to Satan as “the ruler (prince) of this world”, (John 14:30). Jesus also spoke of two masters that people have the choice of serving. The two he spoke of were God and Mammon, (Luke 16:13). You see, Satan rules Mammon which is where most of the population put their treasures. People don’t actually need to choose Satan directly. Once they choose to serve Mammon as the master then Satan knows he has someone he can get to. Satan is very crafty. He gets to the weak willed that serve Mammon and takes over their lives. That is where the seed of this propensity to kill is sown. The origin that it comes from. Without realizing it this person falls into working on Satan’s side without even knowing it because they do not understand Satan’s schemes.
When Satan comes against you, be sure he has no power over you. He will have no power if he finds the love of Jesus Christ in you and finds you following the Holy Spirit instead of the ways of the world (Mammon). Follow the world into paganism and you could be the next bomber or shooter. I know you think I am over exaggerating this. But am I? Am I really?
Our land has moved away from the roots of a belief and faith in God. ‘In God We Trust’ is not anymore worth more than the bills it is printed on. Evil is taking over. Evil is at the heart of these killings. We know where it comes from. It was not a gun that killed all those children. It was an evil and sinful mind that like Cain had no faith in God. Put the blame where it belongs.
The gates of Hell have prevailed against the “church” and its leaders today. The tolerance of sin has made us powerless in this battle against Satan. Because of this failure we will likely see more of the kinds of things we witnessed last week. God forgive us. We need a genuine Holy-Spirit revival that will deliver believers from the love of the world and drive the prince of the world out of our churches. We need a healing in our land. Before Jesus went to the cross, He told His disciples, “The prince of this world comes and he has no power over Me”, (John 14:30). He, who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Next week we celebrate the life of the King. He is the only answer to this issue.
Merry Christmas to all,
“The Tubthumper”
