Tag: Massacre

The Lost Christmas Story

The Lost Christmas Story

We could call this the ignored story behind Christmas or we could call it, “The Grinch that Almost Stole Christmas.”  As we see the Christmas settings around town there will always be a nativity scene.  We usually see the beautiful manger scene with baby Jesus but there is one missing figure every time.  It’s not Frosty the Snowman or Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer and it’s not Santa.

Throughout the World Christmas pageants are common and have been a tradition in many churches. Our Sunday School classes have Christmas plays that always include three characters, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus.  There could also be some angels, wise men, shepherds and/or a few animals. There is one person however that is never in the Christmas pageant.  And it’s right that he not be there for he is the vilest individual one could run into.  But he is an important figure in the story and must be kept in Christmas.

 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.  (Matthew 2:13)

My post revolves around the second chapter of Matthew and verses 13 to 23 of the Holy Bible.  Beginning back in Chapter 1; verse 18, Matthew describes an angel’s message to Joseph in a dream, followed by the journey of the magi in response to the appearance of the star, the magi’s conversation with Herod, their worship of the child, the slaughter of the innocents, and the holy family’s flight into Egypt, precipitated by another revelation to Joseph in a dream.

So, you see, the one figure from the biblical narrative you won’t see portrayed in a child’s Christmas pageant is King Herod. He is way too mean, nasty and evil to be involved on that holy night.

Most of us know the story of the wise men coming into the court of King Herod and asking where they could find the child born King of the Jews.  Herod, was thought of as the King of the Jews and believed he was.  Herod was crafty and thought he could have the foreigners lead him to this child born as King of the Jews and do away with him.  But, the wise men saw through the evil plans of Herod and returned home, “by another way.”   This is usually where the Christmas eve story typically ends.

That was only part one, though, of the two-part story.  The second part is what everyone wants to ignore because the details are just horrific. It gets a “R” rating for the intense violence.  We can’t be sharing this with kids heading home to put out milk and cookies for Santa.  We never want to replace visions of sugarplums with horrible nightmares.

You see, King Herod was enraged when he found out the magi had double crossed him and did not lead him to the Christ Child.  Because of this he sent his soldiers out to commit such an atrocity it ranks up there with Hitler’s deeds.  He commands them to break into every Jewish home in the region in and around Bethlehem, find every male child and cut their throats.

You may or may not know there is a Christmas carol about this wicked action.  It is called the Coventry Carol. The words are a melancholy lullaby, sung by grieving mothers to their dead children:

Herod the King, In his raging,

Charged he hath this day,

His men of might, in his own sight,

All young children to slay.

 

Then woe is me, poor child for thee,

And ever mourn and say,

For thy parting, nor say nor sing,

By, by, lully, lully.

The carol tells the story of everything having been sweetness and light.  But then, it all changed and they heard the pounding of fists on their doors as Herod’s soldiers were after all the newborn sons.   The mothers of the City of David weep their bitter tears, and they cradle their lifeless babies in their arms:

Lullay, Thou little child,

By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod was in his final year of his 41 year reign and he was definitely evil enough to commit these atrocities.  He was king in name only because the Romans were calling the shots then. It was Herod’s job to carry out all the dirty work like subduing a rebellious colony on behalf of the emperor.  And Herod relished his dirty duties.

To let you know the type of guy King Herod was:

During his reign, he had at least nine wives and at least 14 children and perhaps more. He executed one of his wives named Mariamne for adultery, her mother declared herself queen charging Herod was unfit to rule so Herod put her to death without a trial.  There were two young sons from his marriage with Mariamne and he looked at them as a threat so he executed them.  After murdering his wife, mother and two sons he named his eldest son the exclusive heir to the throne.  But then he grew jealous of the crown prince and had him executed. The emperor was so appalled that he refused to allow any of Herod’s remaining sons to claim the title of king- although three of them would eventually rule as “tetrarchs” each governing one third of his father’s realm.

Thirty-three years later, one of them, Herod Antipas, would look upon Jesus at last, as he stood before him in chains, wearing a crown of thorns.

Would anyone doubt that this man was capable of ordering the soldiers to kill babies?

We know that Jesus escaped that fate because an Angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream and warned him with instructions to flee to Egypt.  Some may find it troubling that God would send an Angel to rescue Jesus but let all those little babies die.

That is a part of the theological issue we face so often: the problem of evil and sin, the question of why a just and an all-powerful God allows human suffering to take place. With that question answered elsewhere in no easy way, King Herod is well suited to play the role of evil incarnate.

So, Herod does not belong in a Sunday School Christmas pageant or play. But we must not forget about him.

King Herod is important to the Christmas story because he will help us remember what kind of world we live in and why this world needs a savior.  Jesus did not come to the world to bring a mid-winter festival.  He was not born into some Christmas card scene, rather He was born into a World where Families wander homeless and corrupt tyrants rule by murder and deceit.  Jesus didn’t come to offer respite from the world.  He came to save the world.

For us,

His Christmas weary disciples,

We have a role in carrying out the mission, by using the spiritual gifts he gave us along with whatever material resources we have.

It may be easier to remember the mission if we keep King Herod in Christmas.

 

 

 

DESIRE TO KILL

NewtownIt 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”