UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.
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Psalms 106:37-38 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
NOTE: The charge that Christians are sacrificing children to Baal (demons) occurred to me again this week, and I thought I recalled having written on this subject once before. Sure enough, I wrote this article way back in early 2012 and it remains true today. It is worth repeating. Not because I wrote it, but because it is true. Local churches, pastors, writers, and many Christians in general are guilty of this evil when they demand that an abuse victim and her children remain in bondage.
Israel became conformed to the pagan idolatry in the Land. They did what the Psalmist describes — they sacrificed their children to the demons (Satan is behind all idolatry). They made them “pass through the fire.” Now, here is quite an incredible thing. The conservative church today decries abortion (and so do I). We call abortion the slaughter of the innocents, and so it is. The enemy is behind it. But…
What are we doing when we tell a woman (and sometimes a man) that no matter how badly she is abused, she and her children must stay in that marriage, in that home, and bear their cross for Jesus? How is it possible that something so parallel to sacrificing sons and daughters to demons can possibly be Christ’s calling to His people? In fact, we should assume that such cruel advice is nothing more than forcing a victim to sacrifice her children to a false god we have created — called, “marriage.” Which, of course, is not biblical marriage at all.
Now, let me be very clear. Many abuse survivors feel a load of guilt for not removing their children from the abusive environment sooner than they did. We should not increase that guilt and, in fact, should help lift it from them. Abusers are incredibly deceptive and it takes quite a long time to understand it and even longer to decide how to get out of it. The guilt lies with the abuser, not the victim. But, to spread the guilt around further — there is plenty of blame to be put upon anyone (frequently fellow Christians) who insist that the victim and her children must remain in that terrible environment and suffer.
I say again, this seems to me to be nothing less than insisting that a downtrodden victim of abuse is required by God to sacrifice her children to Baal.
A Cry For Justice 
We seem to be tracking on the same wave length. I just alluded this a couple of threads below.
Yes, I saw that just after I published the article! It really jumps out at you, doesn’t it? Baal is being worshipped in the church and offerings are being made to him. That means he has a priesthood functioning too.
I’ve been trying to find an article that Steve Tracy wrote about how the Evangelical Church has got its priorities out of balance by fighting abortion and the decline of family values, but ignoring the scourge of domestic abuse. I can’t find it at the moment, but if I do I’ll post a link here.
Fighting abortion is only half the battle. Fighting the destruction of the spirit which abusers cause to their families is the other half of the battle. We can’t fight evil if we only see one of the enemies.
And quite often, abortions occur because an abuser insists that his woman gets rid of that new life in her womb because he won’t stand for anyone else getting her attention.
Hi Barb,
Thought I would draw attention to the references ACFJ has made concerning Steve Tracy … Search Results: “Steve Tracy”
I think this is the article you may be referring to: Calling the Evangelical Church to Truth:
Domestic Violence and the Gospel [Internet Archive link]. Also, a link to Tracy’s website, Mending the Soul.
[eds note: we also have a tag “Steven Tracy” which can be found on on the top menu bar under TAGS.]
Thanks healinginHim 🙂
This is a hard hitting truth for me, as I was deceived by the church to follow the “C”hristian advice, (the LIE) and “stay” in the marriage, and suffer it out for the “sake of the children”, as I was told anything else was lack of faith on my part.
Let me tell you, this advice is anything but for the sake of the children, and anything but Godly.
A more applicable phrase would have been like this post points out- at the “sacrifice of the children”.
I wanted more than anything in the early part of the marriage to see my children brought up honoring and serving the Lord, and becomming sucessful in whatever they did in life.
But try as I did to impliment any and all good and Godly principles, my abuser was well at work covertly and overtly destroying my efforts in the undercurrent of our marriage.
Fast forward today, all of my older children now profess to “not” believe in God and none of them are goal oriented, or even motivated to get employment when they should.
One of them has said that they will make sure “not to marry” a professing christian, because of the spiritual abuse that they witnessed me suffer at the hands of the professing church “denying my truth” when I was seeking their help from my abuser.
Had I had this information that exposes the lies of the abuser, and the churchrs lies -, and the books that help us to see and get free from the abuse, I would have made amends to leave the marriage long ago, while the children were still young and impressionable.
I do believe had I done that, I would have seen an entirely different outcome in my children.
I was told over and over to not leave for the children’s sake – looking back I should have left years EARLIER for the children’s sake. Esp for my oldest daughter – she got it worse than the boys (esp behind the scenes when I wasn’t there) – and self-mutilated for years and tried to commit suicide because of her dad’s abuse.
The thing that still makes me the angriest about my ex-church is that they showed no compassion to her at all, or my other children as well. When our second daughter started hurting herself because of her dad, at a young age, and knew I had to get out. Again the church showed no compassion and told me he wasn’t abusive enough for me to get a divorce. I did anyway, and, thanks be to God, found a church who did support me thru a nasty separation and divorce; the pastor “got it” that my girls’ self-destructive behavior (both starting very young) was due to their dad’s abuse. Thanks be to God I got out in time for my 2nd daughter and she now barely remembers how she used to hurt herself and used to be so afraid she’d someday marry a guy like her dad.
Of my all our children from that marriage my oldest son and my 2nd daughter are still in the church, but the others have left. My oldest daughter wants nothing to do with the church; my other sons “have drifted away” (quoting one of them). I tried so hard to raise my children to love God and His (true) church, and to live godly lives, not realizing until the end how much their dad’s abuse was undermining all I was doing. I grieve for my kids and continue to pray for them, and I never ever ever will tell someone in an abusive marriage to “stay for the children’s sake”.
[Eds. note: Comment was edited to eliminate identity information.]
I remember being horrified when I found out that in our current society there are people who deliberately get pregnant so that they can sacrifice their child to the evil one. Yes, this is happening as we speak. But, when God started opening my eyes to the truth about evil and abuse and the truth about people born without a conscience, it occured to me that those who KNOW about this and don’t tell others or don’t try and prevent them from getting into relationships with them in the first place are actually aiding those who emotionally sacrifice their children to the devil.
When Jesus identified people who belonged to their father the devil in John 8:44 he made it very clear that these people existed and that they actively wanted to carry out the same evil their father the devil did. It says that he was a murderer from the beginning not holding to the truth as there is no truth in him. [We have read about the reseach that links low capacity for empathy with brain imaging (MRI) and sociopathy, a.k.a. psychopathy. Eds: some material condensed and tweaked here, to avoid conveying the idea that we are any of us professional psychologists or neuroscientists.] The only emotions that register are those that relate to the psychopath themselves. They are utterly selfish to the point of having no concept that others really exist except as objects with the equivalent emotional value of a cup or blanket.
So, when we don’t forewarn everyone that this is a real thing and has a genetic / chromosomal component BEFORE someone decides to get into a relationship or give birth to or adopt a child, we essentially condemn them to the fire, and their children as well. It’s heartbreaking that none of us were told the truth so we could have at the very least, made decisions based on truth, but instead we are here digging through the rubble of our lives, having to learn the truth while re-wiring our mind with this truth.
It’s been several years now of truth re-wiring my mind and it’s still amazing for me to realize how deep the lies of the evil one go and how until God tore the scales off my eyes, I absolutely believed them and thought that evil was good and that all people started out as a blank slate.
So many people focus on the abortion aspect of birth control / decisions but nobody seems to be doing anything to prevent people with a conscience from making birth choices based on truth. (Why do I not include psychopaths in birth control decisions? Because they never make decisions based on truth or what’s best for anyone else and their reasoning is like that of an unreasoning animal 2 Pet. 2:12.) If we continue to lie to and deceive those who have the capability to love and care about others by refusing to tell the truth about all these things once we know the truth about them, we then bear some of the guilt when they and their children are sacrificed in the hell fires that burn hot and destructively around people without a conscience.
I wish that even ONE person had told me what psychopathy actually looked like and it’s inherency. My entire life may have been changed with this wisdom and my children’s as well. My testimony is my life and the truth God has shown me through his word and in my life. The reason we share our testimony is many fold but one of the reasons is because God puts us through things first, so that when we TRUTHFULLY share our walk with others, they can see that God KNEW about them and what they were going through and cared about them even before they knew about Him. And that He was with the person giving the testimony as well and had a GOOD plan for their life. This is called hope. I wish I could save even one person from the horror of watching thier children being sacrificed to the evil one via the fires of the lie that all people are capable of loving others, but I’ll settle for letting even one person know that they are not alone and that God does have a good plan for their life.
Barb commented:
Amen.