The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18
You will have to forgive my church calendar ignorance, but apparently this is the time of year when the Christian Church remembers the ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, when King Herod ordered the murder of all of the young male children in the village of Bethlehem, in a vain attempt to murder the ‘Child King’, Jesus Christ.
This from Wikki:-
The Massacre of the Innocents is an episode of mass infanticide by the King of Judea, Herod the Great, that appears in the Gospel of Matthew 2:16-18. The author, traditionally believed to be Matthew the Evangelist, reports that Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. Like much of Matthew’s gospel, the incident is introduced as the fulfillment of passages in the Old Testament read as prophecies: “Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children.”[1]
The infants, known in the Church as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. Traditional accounts number them at more than ten thousand, though more conservative estimates put their number in the low dozens.
I know this will sound morbid, but I can’t help wondering what folks 2000 years ago, would think of our systematic, global ‘massacre of the Innocents’, in the form of abortions.
It is estimated that there were 961,000,000 abortions globally between 1920 – 2008. How does Herod’s crime compare with this slaughter of innocent human beings? The estimated current global monthly average is a staggering 1,206,000 abortions. Did you know that the USA alone is missing some 50,000,000 citizens through abortion? Is our generation as guilty as Herod?
Tags: Christianity, Science & Medical