RBV: II Kings 10:26

And they brought the sacred pillars out of the temple of Baal and burned them.

—II Kings 10:26

The burning of the sacred pillars of Baal occurred during the coup and subsequent reforms of Jehu, who overthrew the House of Ahab and destroyed Baal worship in Israel. It was a violent, bloody era in both the northern and southern kingdoms' histories. After Jehu personally slew Joram, Ahab's son and heir (II Kings 9:24), he sent pursuers to kill the King of Judah, Ahaziah, who had married a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel (verse 27), and later, ordered Jezebel to be thrown from an upper-story window and trampled her body under his chariot (verses 30-33). He incited the inhabitants of Samaria to kill the seventy sons of Ahab living in the city (II Kings 10:1-7). "So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his close acquaintances and his priests, until he left him none remaining" (verse 11). For good measure, he killed all the sons of King Ahaziah (verses 12-14), "and when he came to Samaria, he killed all who remained to Ahab in Samaria, till he had destroyed them, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke to Elijah" (verse 17).

Once he was firmly established as king, Jehu went after the worshippers of Baal, using deception to lure them into the temple of Baal, where he had them all killed (verses 18-25). Evidently, the entire temple had been packed with Baalists ("the temple of Baal was full from one end to the other"; verse 21), and eighty of his most loyal guards and captains slaughtered them without mercy. Thus, Jehu brutally purged Baal-worship in Israel.

It was at this point that his men brought out the sacred pillars from the temple and burned them. The previous verse indicates that these pillars were in the inner sanctum, the "most holy place" of the temple. The Hebrew word for "pillars" is mashshebot, which can describe both wooden and stone pillars that can be either functional (like doorposts) or monumental and religious. These pillars stood for the presence of Baal in his temple, much as the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat stood for the true God's presence in the Tabernacle/Temple. If the pillars were of wood, they were burned to ash, and if they were of stone, they were fragmented by heating them in a bonfire and then pouring water on them. Sometimes, depending on the level of abhorrence, they were pulverized.

Not to leave anything undone, Jehu "tore down the temple of Baal and made it a refuse dump" (verse 27). Modern commentators believe that he actually redeveloped the area and made the site a public latrine. So he showed his contempt for Baal and his adherents.

Sadly, Jehu did not take the next step and renounce all paganism. Instead, he upheld the national religion represented by the golden calves that Jeroboam I had installed at Bethel and Dan during the tenth century (verse 29). For this, God limited his reward to rule over Israel for four generations (verse 30). While he did what God had asked of him in ridding the nation of Ahab and Jezebel's influence, he did not completely embrace God's way (verse 31). 

There lies the lesson. If God tells us to overthrow what is evil in our lives, those things that cause us to sin—and He does command us to do so—then we had better do what we can to rid ourselves of those things completely. We cannot afford to leave any vestiges of evil lying around because they will return to haunt us.

Thankfully, we can do this through the sacrifice of Christ and the power of God's Spirit. God wants us to "go on to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1), or as James writes in terms of overcoming trials, ". . . that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:4). Our Father does not want a bunch of half-finished, partially loyal Jehus as children; He wants completely perfected sons and daughters who are wholly committed to His way of life.

"Potential Persons" and "After-birth Abortions"

The latest abomination to come down the medical-ethics pike is the February 23, 2012, publication of “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” in the Journal of Medical Ethics. This article is written by two ethicists, Alberto Guibilini and Francesca Minerva, both of whom are now working in Melbourne, Australia—he, at Monash University, and she, at the University of Melbourne. Both have ties to Oxford University in Great Britain.

The abstract of their article runs as follows:

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Yes, they actually wrote that in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. These two ethicists—who do not deserve the title—advocate infanticide on the same level that abortion is “largely accepted.” They generally conclude that the same arguments that can be marshaled in support of killing a fetus in the womb can be applied just as well to killing a child who has recently left the womb. Without apology, they argue that since, in their way of thinking, fetuses and newborns are only “potential people” and not actual ones, “the interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being” override any rights the fetuses and newborns allegedly have.

They go on to say that adoption is not a valid alternative to infanticide because “the interests of the actual people involved matter.” Thus, for example, since the birthmother may suffer “serious psychological problems due to the inability to elaborate [her] loss and to cope with [her] grief” in giving her baby up, her interest trumps the newborn’s right to life. Does that make any sense at all? To them, it does because they do not believe that the newborn is a person capable of having interests. In their minds, the newborn is sub-human, to borrow a term from eugenics, for in calling them “potential persons,” they are assigning them not-quite-human status.

We might think that their logic is horribly convoluted, but it is actually quite “sound” in the sense that they are not guilty of employing any readily apparent logical tricks. They are simply following accepted definitions and practices to their “logical” conclusions. What is wrong—indeed, terribly evil—are the foundation and suppositions of their philosophy. Since the original beliefs and assumptions are false, all of their subsequent conclusions take them further from the truth, though they may be ably reasoned using the accepted rules of argument.

As Jesus Christ admonishes us in Matthew 7:24-27—His parable of building on the rock—our beliefs must be solidly built on a true and immovable foundation. The thinking of Guibilini and Minerva is akin to the “foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matthew 7:26-27). In this case, the house is liberal Western society, and under beliefs like “after-birth abortion,” it will come crashing down in utter ruin.

A reading of the article brings out that the authors ignore the foundational question of the sanctity of life. They make no argument regarding the salient question, “When does life begin?” It is apparent that they have already resolved and accepted the position that embryos, fetuses, and newborns do not have a right to continued life unless “actual persons” grant it to them. “God is in none of [their] thoughts” (Psalm 10:4). Having rejected God’s very existence, and thus His revealed instructions for abundant living, they have set themselves—human beings—up as the highest authority, arbiters of life and death. With such power, they can decide by their own values and reasoning processes how and when any biological entity becomes a person deserving of a future existence.

What a brave new world men and women have created for themselves in their desire to live without God!

The sixth commandment, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), covers this transgression quite adequately once we accept that the newborn child is certainly a living human being—and has been for many months. While the Bible contains no direct statement that life begins at conception, many passages show that God is involved in people’s lives before they are born (see Psalm 139:13-16; 51:5; Isaiah 49:5; Jeremiah 1:4-5) and that the fetus is aware and responsive to God (Luke 1:41, 44). God even commands life for life if a fetus is miscarried after a fight (Exodus 21:22-24). The weight of biblical evidence falls on the side of life and full humanity for fetuses and newborns.

Actually, this brave new world of abortion and infanticide on demand is simply the modern equivalent of ancient pagan practices like the abhorrent idolatry of the Canaanites in Old Testament times. Pagans would sacrifice their children to their gods to “ensure” that the living would have better lives. They would make a child “pass through the fire to Molech” (an act obviously forbidden by God; Leviticus 18:21) to supplicate the god to give them fertile fields, victory in battle, or some other blessing. Ironically, these ancient people held the life of a child as more dear than today’s uber-selfish individuals do, as the latter most often abort babies merely for their own convenience.

Concerning this horrible sin, God says of the people of Judah in Jeremiah 32:35, “And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.” As punishment, Jerusalem was “delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence” (Jeremiah 32:36). When such practices become commonplace, the society is ripe for destruction, as God intimates in Genesis 15:16 and Leviticus 18:24-29; 20:22-23.

There is nothing ethical about “potential persons” and “after-birth abortion.” They are the products of the twisted thinking of human beings tuned in to the broadcasts of a hateful Satan the Devil (Ephesians 2:2-3). He wants to destroy human life. Hundreds of millions of abortions are not enough to sate his appetite, so he has deceived people into taking the next step toward annihilation, infanticide. Could there be any better reason to increase our prayers to God to send His Son soon?