What hope is there for blinded hearts? John Piper opens 2 Corinthians 4:4–6 to show that God grants sight by shining Christ’s glory within.

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Does eternal punishment in hell bring God glory? Pastor John challenges the rejection of God’s judgment by pointing to his unmerited mercies and perfect righteousness.

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The war against abortion did not begin with the now-overturned 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. From the church’s earliest days, church fathers taught “life for life” restitution for the death of an unborn child (Exodus 21:23–25) and cited David’s praise for God forming “my inward parts . . . in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Theologian Tertullian described abortion in AD 200 as the surgical extraction of a child from the womb in “violent delivery.” Where ancient society often discarded the life of an unborn child (or abandoned an unwanted newborn), the church cared for orphans and widows.

Even in America, Roe v. Wade did not mark the beginning of the battle against abortion. As I show in The Story of Abortion in America, the growth of urbanization and prostitution led to a huge rise in the number of abortions during the years prior to the Civil War — and a corresponding increase in pro-life activities.

A journalist in 1847 reported a conversation between a doctor and an affluent young woman seeking an abortion to “save herself from disgrace.” Asked how she would choose an abortionist, the young woman picked up a copy of the New York Herald, Manhattan’s most popular newspaper, and pointed to a thinly veiled ad for pills that should not be taken “if pregnant.” That was high society.

On the other end of the social ladder, one public health doctor estimated that sixty thousand prostitutes were in business nationwide — and without effective birth control, many had abortions. Rich or poor, thousands of women killed their children to protect their reputations or income. Others did so in the belief — in those days without photographs or much knowledge of fetal development — that their babies weren’t quite human until “quickening,” when mothers could feel their child moving in the womb.

Pro-life doctors tried to end the perception that early abortion was no big deal. Horatio Storer pushed his colleagues in the young American Medical Association to form a Committee on Criminal Abortion. In 1859, it declared abortion to be “no simple offense against public morality and decency, no mere misdemeanor, no attempt upon the life of the mother, but the wanton and murderous destruction of her child.”

Throughout the next decades, many of the most effective teachers of that truth were women.

Heroines for Life

The woman-to-woman educational effort began in the 1850s with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female to receive a medical degree in the United States. In her book The Laws of Life, she pleaded with women to

look at the first faint gleam of life, the life of the embryo. . . . The cell rapidly enlarges. . . . Each organ is distinctly formed. . . . It would be impious folly to attempt to interfere directly with this act of creation.

Blackwell said female doctors bridged public and private, “occupying positions which men cannot fully occupy, and exercising an influence which men cannot wield at all.”

In the 1860s, Dr. Anna Densmore French gained permission from the New York City Board of Education to use school property to teach schoolteachers about fetal anatomy. Densmore said, “Women would rarely dare to destroy the product of conception if they did not fully believe that the little being was devoid of life during all the earlier period of gestation.” She showed step-by-step that “life processes were going on from the very beginning of embryonic development.”

In the 1870s, Dr. Rachel Gleason directly addressed those who said, “Quickening is not till the four-and-a-half month, and so abortion before that time is no sin.” She responded, in lectures and in Talks to My Patients, “True, that is about the time that the mother becomes conscious of motion, but [the child] lives, moves, and grows just as truly before as after, only the motions are so slight as not to be appreciated.”

In the 1880s, Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham shot down the quickening doctrine in Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. She wrote, “Many women have been taught to think that the child is not viable until after quickening. [But] when the female germ and male sperm united, then is the inception of a new life.” She challenged abortionist logic in frequent lectures:

The life of the babe in her arms is to the mother more precious than all else. . . . By what false reasoning does she convince herself that another life, still more dependent upon her for its existence, with equal rights and possibilities, has no claim upon her for protection?

In the 1890s, Dr. Prudence Saur hit the lecture circuit with her book Maternity: A Book for Every Wife and Mother. Every pregnant woman, Saur said, must remember that

the embryo is alive and hence quick from the moment of conception, [as] modern science has abundantly proven. It follows, then, that this crime is equally great whether committed in the early weeks of pregnancy or at a more advanced period in the life of the fetus.

In the 1900s, Dr. Jennie Oreman spoke of her “firm determination not to tolerate abortion.” She argued for challenging patients and not despairing if they nevertheless had abortions: Doctors could “control a part of the evil, though not by any means banish it. . . . Our duty as physicians is to be strong and firm in our ‘no.’ Practical moral sympathy is what the world needs, and not a flimsy sensual sympathy which is not altruism.”

Mary, Champion of the Unborn

One doctor, Mary Gould Hood, bridged the decades. The daughter of a country pastor, she graduated in 1874 with seventeen others from Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. In Minneapolis, she helped to found the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers. Hood also practiced at the Northwestern Hospital for women and children, which had an all-woman medical staff and an all-woman board of fifty directors.

After moving to Boston, her popular lectures were published as a book, For Girls and the Mothers of Girls: A Book for the Home and the School Concerning the Beginnings of Life (1914). In it she introduced the first moments of fetal anatomy:

The two cells unite, and become one, much as two drops of water, when they come into contact, merge into each other and become one drop. Thus the two cells, which in their origin come from two different beings, unite to form the new cell, which will result in a completely new and different human being. . . . What experience can be more sacred, or more marvelous, than that of the mother who understands that a new human has begun within her?

Hood, like other doctors, pushed back against the notion that life begins at quickening: “This phrase gives undue importance to the first feelings of the mother, for life has been present for eighteen weeks.” Hood also described how children quicken the mother:

Only yesterday there came to me a letter from a young mother who has two babies — one very young, and the other not able to walk. She writes, “There is always something to do for one or the other baby — but I was never so happy in my life.” Motherhood brings with it cares and responsibilities, but it also brings the greatest of earthly joys.

Woman to Woman

Sadly, the influence of pro-life female doctors decreased through much of the twentieth century. In 1890, the United States had fourteen women’s medical colleges, and Boston alone had 210 women doctors (18 percent of all physicians in the city). Many women were such impressive students that some formerly all-male medical schools went coed. For example, by 1893, 19 percent of students at the University of Michigan Medical School were female.

Ironically, the opening of those doors in Michigan and elsewhere contributed to the closing of eleven of the fourteen women’s schools by 1904. Then came the backlash, as medical schools shunted women into nursing, decreasing their influence in the medical world. Only after 1970 did the number of female doctors bounce up once again.

Today, about two of every five actively practicing physicians in the US are female. Many women are members of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Women lead thousands of pregnancy resource centers, post-abortion counseling groups, and many other activities that their pro-life predecessors would esteem.

These women each practiced medicine and truth-telling, providing care for mothers and sharing their wonder in God’s work at conception. Before the sonogram or ultrasound, they believed God watched each embryo while he formed him or her in secret (Psalm 139:13). Like the Egyptian midwives, their fear of God over public pressure saved lives (Exodus 1:17). And today, we desperately need more women to speak to women.

If God has given you children, join Mary Hood and thank him for the great earthly joy of motherhood. Also look for opportunities in your church or local community to serve mothers in crisis, such as by offering transportation or childcare for ultrasounds and prenatal appointments. Abortions by pill continue to increase, leaving many women isolated during and after their choice. Women in your mom’s group or Bible study may carry deep guilt from an abortion. Perhaps a woman like you could grieve with them and offer to walk through counseling.

And above all, please pray along with me that God will raise up even more Elizabeth Blackwells and Mary Hoods.

Why does the same gospel message offend some and delight others? Because the message of Christ crucified lands only on those whom God has called.

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Every August in the United States, nearly twenty million college students go back to campus.

Go back. It’s an interesting phrase.

Go back sounds like the language of retreat, regression, or returning to where you once were. Sadly, that’s exactly what many people expect the college years to do. Students go back to school — and go backward in their walk with Christ.

The college campus is sometimes portrayed as a graveyard for faith. Stories of students walking away from Christianity are common enough that it hardly surprises us to hear a recent graduate say, “I no longer believe.”

But what if that doesn’t have to be your story? What if going back to campus becomes the very thing God uses to launch you forward?

Think of a slingshot. Before a stone moves forward, it first goes back. In the same way, what if returning to campus could become the means God uses to deepen your faith rather than diminish it? What if you stepped onto campus this fall with the expectation that God intends to use this semester to launch you forward in your relationship with Jesus?

Instead of allowing college to send your faith six feet under, let’s pray that God sends it eighteen inches — from your head to your heart. Let’s believe that this can be a season where, like the apostle Paul, you “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). That is our prayer for you as you start a new semester — not merely that you would know more about Jesus but that you would know him more personally.

To help you take a step in that direction, we’ve curated three back-to-school resources so you can grow forward as you go back.

As one student prepared to leave for college, she asked Pastor John a question that countless freshmen have wondered: How do I stay close to God amid all the distractions and temptations of campus life?

Pastor John’s five pieces of counsel won’t answer every specific question you’ll face, but they’ll provide the kind of biblical foundation that will help you navigate almost every situation. While all five principles are worth revisiting throughout the school year, the first and last stand out to me as particularly helpful.

The first is a call to adopt a wartime mentality. While campuses are busy preparing residence halls, class schedules, and welcome-week activities, Scripture reminds us that someone else is preparing as well: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Rather than producing fear, this perspective fuels vigilance and reminds you why daily communion with Christ is not optional but essential. When you prepare for the spiritual battle ahead, you’ll find fresh motivation to cultivate a vibrant devotional life.

The final principle is a call to humble dependence. Pastor John reminds you that self-sufficiency cannot empower the Christian life. Instead, he urges you to turn everything you read, hear, hope for, and fear into prayer. You have a good and generous Father in heaven who delights to answer the desperate prayers of his children.

This back-to-school article, written in 2013 by Marshall Segal, feels as timely today as the day it was first published.

Segal offers five foundational truths to help you honor Christ in every part of campus life. What I find especially refreshing, however, is Segal’s attention to the classroom itself.

Much Christian content written for students understandably focuses on life outside the classroom — avoiding temptation in the dorms, navigating relationships, or making wise decisions on the weekends. Don’t get me wrong; those conversations matter deeply. But you’ll also spend countless hours sitting in lectures, reading textbooks, and writing papers. You need a biblical vision for those moments too, and Segal provides one.

He reminds you that education is about far more than earning a degree or chasing grades. Every lecture, every chapter, and every assignment is an opportunity to better understand God’s world and learn to think Christianly within it. As he writes, “If we’re going to apply God’s word to the world, we need to know the world God has made.”

As you return to campus this fall, let Segal remind you that following Christ isn’t something you set aside when class begins. The classroom itself is one of the primary places where God intends to shape your mind, humble your heart, and prepare you for a lifetime of faithful service.

Nearly one out of every three freshmen never makes it to sophomore year. Simply surviving college is no small achievement. But Alex Chediak has a much bigger vision for your time on campus. He doesn’t just want you to survive. He wants you to thrive.

What I appreciate most about this brief article is that it gives you a compelling vision for who you can become. Too much advice for college students comes from a defensive playbook: Avoid this. Run from that. Don’t go there.

Chediak doesn’t ignore the defense. But the heart of his counsel is refreshingly proactive. From the moment you step onto campus, he urges you to pursue two things that will shape the rest of your life.

The first is to walk with the wise. Don’t wait until you’re isolated to look for godly friendships. From your very first days on campus, find a faithful local church, show up at a campus-ministry gathering, and ask God to lead you to what I like to call a “2:22 Crew” — friends who join you in fleeing youthful passions and pursuing righteousness, faith, love, and peace (2 Timothy 2:22).

Once you’re rooted in a faithful Christian community, Chediak challenges you to see college as a training ground for the future. Whether you’re sitting in a classroom, gathering for a dorm Bible study, or worshiping with your local church, God is using this season to prepare you to be a force for good in this world.

For resources on specific questions and everyday college life — like “Should I drink alcohol?” “What should I study?” “How far is too far in dating?” or “Why am I so anxious?” — visit the Joy on Campus page, a collection of articles and podcast episodes specifically curated to serve college students.

Do you delight to fear God?

The servants of the Lord on earth do. The saints before the throne of God do. Even Jesus does.

Scripture makes it clear that, for those in right relationship with God, the fear of God is a particular kind of delight in God, a full-proof pleasure that ruins us to the allurements of sin and leaves us in quaking awe before the King of all things. To fear God is to be fully alive. It is the treasure of the saints (Isaiah 33:6; Proverbs 15:16).

Yet so often Christians treat the fear of God as if it were a relic of Old Testament piety, as if God were to be feared then but now all fear is gone. To many, the fear of God is the equivalent of a drizzly, gray autumn day. But this is not the picture we find in Scripture.

I want to entice you toward the fear of the Lord. Holy fear is a delight we dare not neglect. It is not only the beginning of wisdom; it is also the chief reward of the difficult discipline of joy. So what is the fear of God?

Awestruck Adoration

Scripture differentiates holy fear, the fear of the saints before God, from the fear of unbelievers. Those who have not hidden themselves in Christ should be terrified at the prospect of his wrath (Revelation 6:15–17). They are right to be afraid of God. But those in Christ are safe from eternal condemnation and wrath (Romans 8:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). As we’ll see, they are not afraid of God, but they do fear. We can summarize this holy fear in three statements.

1. Holy fear is the fitting response to seeing God in his majesty.

Fear is the fitting response to the full-orbed revelation of God. Surprisingly, when the saints experience the fear of God in Scripture, it is most often in response to God’s goodness, grace, and mercy, rather than his judgment and wrath. Consider Psalm 111. In this poem, the psalmist studies the great works of God. There is no hint of judgment or wrath in this psalm, only overwhelming greatness and goodness. And yet, the poet concludes his tour of God’s works by saying, “Holy and awesome [fearful] is his name! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:9–10).

We see this pattern throughout Scripture (e.g., Jeremiah 33:8–9; Hosea 3:5; Luke 7:14–16). As God’s people witness the greatness of his grace, mercy, and majesty in his works, the fitting response is holy fear, which is a kind of quaking wonder in the face of his staggeringly good glory. This fear causes us to dread departing from such goodness, violating it in any way, or belittling it by preferring something else. Thus, holy fear, in awe of God and aware of his fatherly discipline, acts as a bulwark against sin and folly (Romans 11:20).

It comes as no surprise then that holy fear is the exuberant song of the saints before the throne of God in Revelation 15:

Great and amazing are your deeds,
     O Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
     O King of the nations!
Who will not fear, O Lord,
     and glorify your name? (Revelation 15:3–4)

They sing fear and glory in response to God’s amazing deeds. It comes as no surprise, then, that Solomon concludes his exploration of God’s ways and gifts to man with this:

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Literally, this is “the whole of man” — the heart of what we were made for. But what about “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever”? Which is it: Fear and obey or glorify and enjoy? Rightly understood, there is no contradiction here. In calling us to fear God, Solomon (just like the poet of Psalm 111) invites us into the same kind of astonished enjoyment of God that most glorifies him, which is the chief end of man. When we are awake to God, we cannot help but be thrilled with God. And God in turn is thrilled with our thrill (Psalm 147:11). Fearing God and glorifying him are not two pursuits in Revelation 15:4; they are one. Our God looks good when his people respond to him in the heightened joy of holy fear.

2. Holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration.

For the saints, the fear of God is not the same as being afraid of God (see Exodus 20:20 for this contrast). Instead of distancing us from God, holy fear attracts us to God. It fits us to be friends with God (Psalm 25:14). As we see the overwhelming goodness and greatness of God, we balk at the thought of straying from the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13, 19). We turn from sin to him to be satisfied (Job 28:28; Proverbs 16:6). Yet this fear endures forever, growing deeper and fuller long after we are free from sin and its consequences (Psalm 19:9).

In this sense, the fear of God is a particularly poignant kind of joy in him. Thus, Nehemiah calls God’s servants those “who delight to fear your name” (Nehemiah 1:11). Perhaps the most important passage for understanding this holy fear comes in Isaiah 11, which is a prophecy about the coming Messiah:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
     and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
     the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
     the Spirit of counsel and might,
     the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. (11:1–3)

Notice the Holy Spirit, the great Comforter, is called the Spirit of the fear of Yahweh, and God’s Messiah will delight in this fear. This fear cannot be terror or dread or else he wouldn’t delight in it. This is our King’s thrilled pleasure in his Father. It should come as no surprise that the fear of God is an explicit blessing of the new covenant, for we have this Spirit within us so that we may share in Christ’s own tremendous joy in God (Jeremiah 32:38–40).

For the saints, as for Christ, holy fear is the affection of awestruck adoration; it keeps us fixated on him. The word fear qualifies the kind of affection we should have in the presence of God. In his book Rejoice and Tremble, Michael Reeves explains how holy fear relates to love and joy:

The living God is infinitely perfect and quintessentially, overwhelmingly beautiful in every way: his righteousness, his graciousness, his majesty, his mercy, his all. And so we do not love him aright if our love is not a trembling, overwhelmed, and fearful love. In a sense, then, the trembling “fear of God” is a way of speaking about the intensity of the saints’ love for and enjoyment of all that God is. (Rejoice and Tremble, 52)

In other words, fear specifies the kind of love and joy we should have for God.

An acronym may help draw these first two points together:

F — Focus: Holy fear is the proper response to seeing the glorious goodness of the great God.
E — Evaluate: Holy fear rightly evaluates the worth of God as the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty.
A — Adore: Holy fear is the adoring response of a child to his heavenly Father, an affection that draws the saints toward God.
R — Revere: Holy fear is the experience of awe and trembling thrill in the presence of a Being who is overwhelmingly holy, just, and good.

Holy fear begins by focusing on God and evaluating his worth and results in the affectionate response of adoring and revering him.

3. Holy fear is the foundation of all wisdom and happiness.

We all know the mantra of biblical wisdom: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” In other words, awestruck adoration is the foundation of true wisdom, which is the ability to see and respond to God’s designs in the world. As Solomon says, “The wise person has his eyes in his head” to see the patterns of God’s ways in the world (revealed in his word) and go with the grain of reality (Ecclesiastes 2:14).

But why is the fear of the Lord the foundation of wisdom? Because without an awestruck awareness of God, you don’t know the most fundamental thing about anything. Watch almost any nature documentary, and you’ll find assiduous study paired with laughable folly. Have you heard charming, sophisticated voices like David Attenborough’s marvel at the design of some animal, and then attribute that great work to natural selection? They see the wondrous works of God but do not fear the God behind the wonders. If you don’t marvel that all things are from him and through him and to him, you can never be wise.

Moreover, awestruck adoration is also the foundation of happiness. Psalm 112, a poem celebrating the wonderful well-being of those who practice awestruck adoration, begins,

Happy is the man who fears the Lord,
     who greatly delights in his commands. (112:1)

Here we see another dimension of the happy man: He fears God. Holy fear is the foundation of his happiness. And that fear is explained as delight in God’s words — great delight. This is not lukewarm affection for God but delight that threatens to burst the bounds of our capacity, like a flooded river buffeting a flimsy dam. To fear God is to be alive in the fullest sense — to be happy and wise and to tremble before the majesty of our King.

Invitation to Fear

Given the way many Christians orient toward the fear of God, as a gray and dreary thing, a wet blanket on our otherwise warm affections for God, it is easy to be left asking, Do I dare to fear God? But if we take seriously how the Bible speaks about holy fear as a pleasure to God, as the blazing affection of awestruck adoration, as the bedrock of wisdom and happiness, the better question is, Do I dare not fear God? Reeves reveals the stakes in no unclear terms:

The living God is not moderately happy but fearfully happy, and when we have [holy] fear, we enter into the joy of our Master. (Rejoice and Tremble, 59)

So, do you delight to fear God? How could you dare do otherwise?

Can the devil act outside Christ’s rule? John Piper opens Mark 1:27 to show that evil spirits obey Jesus’s command.

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Why does evangelism matter when God has chosen whom he will save? Pastor John unpacks and rejoices in our role as God’s instruments.

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Where is Christ when calamity strikes? John Piper shows from Colossians 1:9–20 how Christ rules over all things for his glory.

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The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. (Revelation 12:4)

[Let us] not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

The devil grinned from ear to ear in July of 2024.

His seeming setback in the Dobbs decision two years earlier now took a striking turn: The one major political party that had officially included a pro-life plank since 1976 dropped its advocacy for a federal solution to infanticide.

Abortion, and the so-called “woman’s right to choose” — and with it, apparently, a man’s right to pressure her to kill their child — is the single greatest, most egregious, most obvious moral issue in our day.

The twentieth century, the greatest century of slaughter in war and in the womb, gave us abortion on a new scale. And in the twenty-first century, at least in the United States, we’re tempted to sweep it under the rug rather than right the glaring wrong of our times. We know that abortionists are killing children. The abortionists themselves know. Politicians know. Men know. Women know. We all know.

The murder of humans, regardless of age and size, is not an issue “the states should decide” any less than slavery was. Infanticide is a reprehensible moral evil in any and every state, and in any and every nation on the planet.

We have been frogs, enjoying the warm water of late modern life, not realizing how the temperature in our pot has risen to boiling. July 2024 came and went so quietly that it showed many had already been cooked.

Signature Move of Satan

Infanticide is one of Satan’s signature moves, and we who have access to God’s word should not be unaware of the devil’s devices. Satan, we should know, is a master at asking, “Did God really say?” as he twists the meaning of God’s words, rather than outright denying them. Satan, we should know, perverts the goodness of God’s creation. And Satan, we should know, angles for gradual, almost indiscernible compromise. These are his moves. And once Satan learned of God’s purpose to send hope through childbirth, he began his rage against pregnant women.

The focus at the center of Satan’s irrational raging is God himself in Christ entering our world, in the promised seed of the woman, to crush the serpent’s head. Abortion is not just an assault on those made in God’s image, but an attempt to murder the image of God himself: Jesus. Evil, whether in the hearts of fallen angels or depraved humans, is not only anti-God but anti-Christ. It took one form before his coming: Try to snuff out the seed. It takes another form after his coming: Destroy hope and, even in the death throes, wreak as much havoc as possible. The devil mounted a pre-Christ campaign against male children in the promised line; now he mounts a post-Christ war on all children and the hope they embody for the future Christ has secured.

When man fell at the serpent’s temptation, God declared not only curse but coming reversal. Addressing the serpent, he said,

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
     and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
     and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

Whether Satan already knew the secret of the woman’s seed or not, now he knew. And now, even on a divine leash, he would unleash his demonic fury to cut off the woman’s offspring if he could. And oh, did the devil try: Through Cain to murder Abel. Through Pharaoh to murder baby-boy Hebrews. Through the wicked queen-mother Athaliah to wipe out the line of David. And through Herod to destroy the divine Son himself in human flesh.

Massacre at Bethlehem

Before the devil pursued Jesus with temptation in the wilderness, and before he released his full, irrational fury on Christ at the cross, Satan first tried to consume him at the incarnational threshold, at Bethlehem.

The arrival of magi, star-gazing pagan astrologers, journeying to Jerusalem from the east, must have arrested public attention. They sure had Herod’s attention when they asked, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2).

Herod did not need to be possessed by Satan himself when his own soul was full of the same evil, the same anti-God and anti-Christ impulse that fills the devil’s soul. Such diabolical directions could have been whispered by Satan himself:

Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him. (Matthew 2:8)

Remarkably, in a great ironic reversal, the pagan astrologers found the child and fell down in worship, while the acting king of Israel waited to kill the nation’s Messiah. But when the magi didn’t eventually return to Jerusalem (having been warned in a dream), the serpent on the Jewish throne no longer held his peace.

Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16)

In doing so, Herod revealed the same spirit that had driven the devil’s fury for centuries, only now the effort to slaughter baby boys was not a preemptive attempt to cut off the royal line but an assault on the Son of God himself dwelling among us in human flesh and blood. Herod’s fury let loose the same venom that raged in Pharaoh, the same demonic spirit that called for child sacrifices to Molech and again centuries later in the Hinnom Valley, sacrifices Psalm 106 laments as offered to demons:

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. (Psalm 106:37–38)

Hungry Red Dragon

Revelation 12 captures with a grotesque apocalyptic image the satanic campaign as it sweeps across the centuries. A woman who represents the people of God is ready to give birth and cries out with labor pains. Meanwhile, a great red dragon stands before her “so that when she bore her child he might devour it” (Revelation 12:4). This dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (verse 9).

But Satan does not succeed: “Her child was caught up to God and to his throne” (verse 5). And what does the devil do when the anointed one has ascended and is out of reach? Does he concede defeat and sue for peace? The evil that once appeared rational now rages irrationally. He cannot change his certain fate, but still he comes after Christ’s people “in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (verse 12). Even as God protects his church through trial, and even as the inevitability of the devil’s defeat sets in, he continues his assault on the woman’s offspring:

The dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verse 17)

Infanticide Today

Infanticide was not only a signature move of Satan until the incarnation, but the impulse is so deeply ingrained in his soul, and in all evil, that the strategy continues today.

Abortion is not simply wrong. For those who have the Book and can observe Satan’s devices, this is profoundly, diabolically anti-God and anti-Christ. The devil’s hatred for God led to his hatred of Christ, led to his hatred of the church, led to his hatred of genuine human hope — a hope embodied in every human birth.

“To us a child is born” is history’s quintessential expression of hope, a sign that real good is yet to come — in fact, the best is yet to come (Isaiah 9:6). Each new human birth represents an avalanche of hopes: who this child might grow up to be, what joys and laughter this child will occasion, what love and good deeds will be unleashed, what human injustices might be righted, what divine grace might be seen and enjoyed.

A human life dies, and hope dies, in the horror of abortion. And Satan, defeated as he is, still grins to share his misery with as many as he can before his time is done.

Satan Loves ‘States Decide’

The devil delights in “the states should decide” and in the “woman’s right to choose,” just as he did in Eden. He loves the phrase “reproductive freedom.” In the end, these will be small, passing delights. His time is short. But all of us who are within earshot of Scripture know enough to be aware of his devices.

The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem and the raging of the red dragon in Revelation show us that abortion is not an issue of personal choice or state choice, not for those who claim the name of the Christ that this same devil sought to snuff out at his birth.

And for the many living casualties of the abortion industry today, who share in varying degrees in its evil, we have true hope beyond the hope-killing work of abortion. The ghastly irrationality of sin against God, embodied in the dragon and buried in some measure in the souls of all sinners, does have a remedy in the very infant that Satan tried to abort: “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11).