The Devil is
often found in Scripture attempting to imitate God. However, the imitation game
he plays is to distort and twist the truth and character of God into some
profane form of idolatry among men. In fact, even in his five famous “I will”
statements, he proclaims to make himself “…like
the Most High.”[1]
This is because he has no other reference point. What he himself attributes to
Deity is only what has been revealed to him. There is no knowledge Satan
possesses which did not first originate in the Godhead.
As we read
through the book of Genesis, it is easy to miss some of the "firsts" in human history. For example, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son, the promised son, up until that point there had never been a human offering. There was no such thing as child sacrifice. It did
not exist. The sacrificing of human lives did not come into the mind and heart
of man for another few hundred years. (This is according academic sites.)
The promised son
Isaac was born in 1851 B.C. God more than likely commanded Abraham to sacrifice
his son at age twelve which would bring us to 1839 B.C. By looking through both
Biblical and archaeological records, you will find no evidence of child
sacrifices anywhere in the world until after this event on Mount Moriah. Certain
civilizations and tribal groups which flourished in the Americas such as the
Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecs, Toltecs and Incas did not come into these practices of human sacrifices until sometime after 1500 B.C.
There is also no
record of child sacrifices in the Bible until the time Moses records the Law on
Mount Sinai in 1445 B.C. The command is found in Leviticus 20:1-5 which begins
by saying,
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, Any one
of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any
of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land
shall stone him with stones…
The reason you
do not find child sacrifice in Genesis is because it did not exist. The reason
God was not giving Abraham the land of the Canaanites at that moment in Genesis
15:13-16 is because one of the sins God would later judge them for (i.e. child
sacrificing) was not a practice. The Canaanites had not yet fallen into this
depraved form of idolatry.
This then gave Satan well over three hundred years to
begin deceiving mankind into thinking that they could appease their gods by slaughtering their children. Although we know that Isaac was not physically
sacrificed on that altar, the Devil took that godly test of obedience and turned
it into a vicious and evil attack on mankind which eventually ran rampant
through civilizations all across the world.
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