The Babes of Sandy Hook
The Events of December 14, 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut remain fresh in our hearts and conscience. The innocent loss of twenty children and six adults in such a senseless shooting is hard to reconcile in our thoughts. How could such evil exist in the heart of a young man?
The sad reality is that the Devil is real and is at work in the lives of men. The concept of evil is a constant theme in man’s history. However, evil is not of human origin. It exists separate from man. It is of Satan. It is his infectious disease spread by cunning schemes (Ep. 6:11). “You are of your father the devil,” Jesus proclaimed to the Jews who wanted to kill him (Jn. 8:37, 44).
We might ask, “How could Judas betray his master?” The answer is simple; “And Satan entered into Judas who was called Iscariot, belonging to the number of the twelve” (Luke 22:3). When men have allowed the great evil of Satan to come live in their hearts it has resulted in the loss of many lives, from innocent children to the Son of God.
David wrote in his famous 23rd Psalm, “I will fear no evil for you are with me”. The Lord taught us to pray, “Deliver us from the evil one” (Mt 6:13). Paul wrote that Christ’s sacrifice was done to “rescue us from the present evil age” (Ga. 1:4).
Evil is all around us, and in no way can we eradicate it. We cannot rid evil from society. We cannot keep evil from the hearts of our neighbors. When God is taken out of our government, schools, cities and neighborhoods it is replaced with evil, and history is filled with such examples.
On the morning of May 18th, 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan, Andrew Kehoe,55, murdered his wife with a blow to her head. He then went to the Bath School where he set off a very large amount of explosives he had planted days before. The first explosion killed 38 elementary school children and six adults. When the school superintendent showed up he set off a second explosion killing him. He then set off a third explosion in his truck killing himself. No guns were used in this country’s worse ever school killing. But the fingerprint of Satan is all over this evil deed.
In Egypt Pharaoh ordered the killing of any male child born to Jewish women. The babes were thrown into the Nile River and drown. (Ex. 1:22). After Jesus’ birth King Herod killed all the male children in Bethlehem under two years old in an effort to protect his throne (Mt. 2:16). Imagine the government coming into your home and killing your child before your very eyes. Oh, the horror!
Whether it is by explosives, drowning, sword, gun, or the act of betrayal, history has been filed with evil men who, like Judas, had Satan enter into them (Jn. 13:27). We can easily call to memory evil men, like an Adolf Hitler, who took innocent life with no conscience. (It is interesting that both Judas and Hitler took their own lives, as do many of these mass killers.) We must not give in to Satan and his evil ways, but through our faith in Jesus we can “resist the Devil and he will flee from us” (James 4:7). We must “overcome evil with good” (Ro.12:21).
Jesus said of little children, “of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 19:14). We can take some comfort knowing that around the throne of God the innocent children of Sandy Hook are now with the angel babes of Bethlehem.
-Dennis Doughty