The headline goes like this: “Priests hold a ceremony to bless child offerings to Moloch, Baal and other deities.” The story in part says this: “Liberal priests have taken to ‘blessing’ child sacrifice sites to signal support for those who choose to offer their babies as sacrifices to pagan gods.”

The story continues: “Various leaders of an interfaith group burned incense as part of a ‘ritual blessing’ in order ‘to show that religion could be a source of support for child sacrifice rights’. … Religious leaders run what is called the Religious Community for Child Sacrifice Choice (RCCSC). The organization aims ‘to end religious stigma around infant sacrifice’.

“A spokeswoman for RCCSC said it is ‘a multifaith, intersectional, and antiracist movement for pagans offering freedom and dignity. … We reject the shame and stigma that religious conservatives have long attached to sex, sexuality and reproduction and child sacrifice’.”

Actual story

OK, perhaps by now you might have gathered that all of the above is something I just made up – but only ever so slightly. It is actually a very true – and very diabolical – story. Except it centres around liberal religious folks blessing abortion clinics that were just reported on.

Part of the actual story goes like this:

Liberal pastors have taken to “blessing” abortion clinics to signal support for women who choose to abort their babies according to a Friday report from The New York Times. At an abortion clinic in Maryland, a Presbyterian pastor, Baptist minister and Jewish cantor burned incense as part of a “ritual blessing” in order “to show that religion could be a source of support for abortion rights,” according to the New York Times. The women wanted to counter religious opposition to the procedure….

“You all are blessings to those who come to you for care during some of their most vulnerable and sometimes painful moments,” Rev. Katey Zeh, an ordained Baptist minister, told the abortion clinic staff. Zeh leads the “blessings” at abortion clinics through an organization she runs called the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice (RCRC), the NYT wrote. The organization aims “to end religious stigma around abortion.”

“RCRC is a multifaith, intersectional, and antiracist movement for reproductive freedom and dignity,” the group’s website states. “We reject the shame and stigma that religious conservatives have long attached to sex, sexuality and reproduction.”

Hundreds of abortions have already been performed in the year-old Women’s Health Center of Maryland clinic, which serves many residents from nearby West Virginia which outlawed abortion in 2022, according to the NYT. “God will forgive me for my decision,” one woman reportedly wrote in a community notebook in the clinic’s recovery room.

So there you have it folks. God is supposedly now in the business of blessing those who kill the very lives he has created. God’s name and reputation are being maligned with the murder of unborn babies and the sexual revolution that goes with the abortion culture.

One can see how what is happening today has clear historical overtones. Indeed, two decades ago I wrote on the obvious parallels about what the Bible describes as a heinous sin – child sacrifice – and the modern-day sacrament of abortion. Here is part of what I wrote back then:

Yahweh clearly warns his people that when they dispossess the Canaanites, they must eradicate them entirely, so that they do not get polluted by their evil practices: “The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.’ You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” (Deut. 12:29-31)

The total elimination of the Canaanites was called for. Unfortunately, Israel did not obey the Lord on this, and the Canaanites and Canaanite practices remained. And sure enough, soon Israel became contaminated by these abominations:

“Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.” (Judges 2:11-13)

And it kept going from bad to worse. For example, “Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites.” (2 Kings 16:2-3)

Thus Psalm 106 laments: “they shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters”. (v. 38) And because Israel followed the practices of the Canaanites, they too had to face judgment:

“Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned sacrifices in it to gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as offerings to Baal – something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” (Jer. 19:3-5)

This shedding of human blood is something so evil that it did not even enter Yahweh’s mind. And this was not mere murder but officially sanctioned human sacrifice. Hosea can describe the situation as one where “bloodshed follows bloodshed” (4:2).

Any modern-day religious leaders thinking they are doing God a service by blessing what he hates are as good as an example as any of rank apostasy and moral depravity in our churches. God severely judged both pagans and apostate Israelites for doing this back then, and he will act today in similar fashion.

These leaders need to get on their faces before God and repent. Now is the time of mercy, but it will not last forever. As I said in the conclusion of my earlier piece:

We as a culture seem to be just as idolatrous as the Canaanites were. We seem to be just as much involved in sexual promiscuity. And we seem to be just as much involved in murder. They often go together. If God had to act against the Canaanites, does he not also need to act against our own culture? Have we not provoked the wrath of God as much as the Canaanites have?

Our only response can be repentance and then obedience. We need to wake up to the tragedy of abortion, and seek God’s heart over it. If not, certain judgment awaits.

That is still 100 per cent true. People like Rev. Katey Zeh may think they are pleasing God, but the only god they are pleasing is their master, Satan. At the very least, we need to pray for people like this. Only God can break through the deceptions and evil that they are now fully overcome with.