The Children of Men

According to multiple Bible verses children are a gift from God and a source for the growth of His Kingdom on Earth. They bring parents pride and joy, teach parents patience and forgiveness and are a source for the growth of God’s Kingdom. The Bible gives us glimpses of God’s heart for children through different passages in both the Old and New Testament. I believe God is calling us today to consider scriptures that reveal that love for them in light of what is happening in our world today. I believe His heart cry to us today as believers in Christ, as parents and as grandparents to wake up and save the children!

Family was God’s idea from the beginning. He spoke these words to Adam and Eve in the Garden in Genesis 1: 27-28: “God created humankind in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land, and conquer it…” Psalm 127: 3-5 says: “Behold, children are a heritage of the LORD—the fruit of the womb is a reward. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them…” In Psalms 128 the blessing of children is further emphasized as the children will be like olive saplings around the table to all who fear the LORD and a later blessing of seeing grandchildren—your children’s children! In Isaiah 54: 13 we read: “All your children will be taught by the LORD. Your children will have great peace.”

God had instructed Moses in His ways and he had taught the people the reverential fear of the LORD and laid out in detail the requirements for blessings and likewise the curses for disobedience. The Bible reveals that their rejection of God’s instruction resulted in an eleven-day journey turning into a 40-year wandering in the wilderness! God continued to strive with His chosen people in order to bring them to Him in blessing, but they refused to listen and hardened their hearts. Consequently, only Joshua and Caleb and the generation twenty years old and under were allowed to enter the Promised Land. In Deuteronomy 1-4 Moses rehearses Israel’s failures in the wilderness and their unbelief and in Chapters 5-26 he rehearsed the Laws given at Mount Sinai with their warnings and exhortations. The new generation were taught the fundamentals of the Law and repeated the Ten Commandments in 5: 7-21. God wanted to make sure that the children were instructed in His ways. Chapter 6: 1-2 says: “Now this is the commandment, the statues and ordinances that the LORD your God commanded to teach you to do in the land you are crossing over to possess—so that you might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and laws that I am commanding you and your son and son’s son all the days of your life, and so that you may prolong your days.” God was passing on the responsibility of the future generation to the parents. In 6: 5-7 we read this charge given to the father and mother: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These words, which I am commanding you today, teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.” It is God’s desire to bless His children as indicated in 7: 12-16. He will show kindness; will love you; bless and multiply you; bless your children and possessions; will remove all sickness from you; will bring victory over the enemy.”

As we know from the Bible, the Enemy of our soul is Satan who seeks to oppose God and His children. We see that first assault in the Garden when he came to deceive and destroy God’s perfect plan for family and relationship with Him. Yielding to the devil’s enticement set mankind in opposition to God’s plan whereby the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life entered into the heart of man. Where God’s Spirit had once dwelt, mankind became a human spirit, with a body, and soul. It was in Genesis 3:15 that God rendered the first prophecy of scripture addressed to the serpent that identified him as the enemy of mankind: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Then began Satan’s long warfare against the work of God on behalf of humanity, which still continues. We see throughout scripture him rearing his ugly head against mankind as the Lucifer, the devil, ruler of demons, god of this world, accuser, murderer, father of lies, deceiver, prince of the powers of the air, roaring lion, dragon, adversary, tempter, Beelzebub, Belial, wicked one. The children of men have been and continue to be the targets of Satan’s attacks. This was evidenced when he attacked the first-born children of Adam and Eve and moved in the heart of Cain to kill his brother Abel—the son that brought a sacrifice pleasing to God!

We know that Satan’s fate is sealed as Jesus has paid the price for sin and destroyed the power of death for all who will believe in, trust in, and accept Him as Savior. Yes, God’s plan of redemption was set in place BEFORE the foundation of the world—the Lamb that was slain for the redemption of mankind! Satan knows that his time is short and his power is limited and he is doing double time to oppose God’s born-again children and to steal our children. We see him stepping up his plan to capture the hearts and minds of our children.

God brought me back to an old so-called “fairytale” from the past about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. As I researched it, I discovered some very interesting history behind the story. The setting took place in 1284 in the town of Hamelin, Lower Saxony, Germany. There are several versions of the account. One detailed a rat infestation, and a piper, dressed in a coat of many colored, bright cloth that appeared and promised to get rid of the rats in return for a payment, to which the townspeople agreed. Although the piper got rid of the rats by leading them away with his music, the people of Hamelin reneged on their promise. The furious piper left, vowing revenge. That same year the piper returned and led the children away, never to be seen again, just as he did the rats. The earliest known record of this story is depicted in a stained-glass window created for the church of Hamelin, which dates to around 1300 AD. The oldest account stated: “In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on June 26, by a piper, clothed in many kinds of colors, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced, and lost at the place of execution near the koppen.” Another account indicates that the so-called Pied Piper was actually a pedophile who crept into the town of Hamelin to abduct children during their sleep. The question was presented: “Did something happen that officials had been covering up? Something so traumatic that it was transmitted orally for so long in the town’s collective memory, over decades and even centuries?” Historical records suggest that the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin was a real event that took place. This could stoke real fear in parent’s hearts—worrying whispers that a number of real children have been lost to some frightening unknown force. The mystery of what really happened to those children has never been solved. The story also raises the question, if the Pied Piper of Hamelin was based on reality, how much truth is there in other so-called fairy tales that we were told as children?

As I read these accounts, my mind immediately went to the question: What would the Pied Piper look like in today’s world? As I look back over my lifetime, I can recognize a pattern. First, the industrial revolution took women out of the home and into the workplace separating parents as the primary influencer in the lives of their children. Prayer and Bible reading as well as the Ten Commandments were removed from schools. Television was brought into the home making the way for the degeneration of morals and values leading the way to this technological era with its movies, Internet, cell phones, video games, social media, virtual reality and now AI. But the reality is that slowly without notice the children of men have been seduced by the Pied Piper that has stolen them from homes and churches and instruction in the ways of God as commanded in scripture. The recent movie “The Sound of Freedom” is exposing those pedophiles who have seduced our children like the Piped Pier. There are 80,000 children that came across the border that are deemed “missing.” John and Reve Walsh who funded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after their 6 year old son was abducted and murdered, have received billions of photos of vanished children and have worked with law enforcement in the recovery of more than 376,000 missing children.

Harming children evokes severe judgment from God in scripture. One of the reasons God detested the actions of the pagan nations that surrounded Israel was because they sacrificed their children to their gods. Jesus said in Matthew 19: 14 “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” He gives specific warning regarding children in Mt. 18: 6: “But whoever causes one of these little ones who trust in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be sunk in the depth of the sea!”

God is sounding the alarm to us today: “Wake up! Stop being distracted by the world and Satan’s lures and invest in the lives of our children instilling God’s truth and ways and showing them the love of Christ! Recognize the Piped Pipers that are stealing our children and the godly heritage from them.” God will call us to account for these precious gifts He has given us! Jesus warns us in Mt. 24: 42-44 to stay alert to the thief that would enter our homes—to keep watch—to be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour we do not expect!