Opinion: The modern-day cult of Moloch

We are not entirely immune

“Don’t give any of your children to be burned in sacrifice to the god Molech—an act of sheer blasphemy of your God. I am God.” [BibleGateway: Leviticus 18:21 (The Message)] Molech is also spelt Moloch or Molek.

I have watched with horror the war, conflicts, and atrocity wielded with political rage on the issue of wearing masks, mask mandates, and other kinds of protection and prevention from contracting the Coronavirus especially in schools, in America and elsewhere.

I do not intend to postulate, but I would start from a basic premise. If you do not have natural or acquired immunity against the Coronavirus, you do not want to risk contracting it. Whilst the odds of succumbing to the COVID-19 disease with symptoms requiring hospital admission and the threat to life are somewhat minimal if you have no underlying conditions, the risk is not removed. Healthy people have died, very healthy children have died.

Protections help prevention

Now, until we had vaccines, the only way we managed the spread of the Coronavirus was through government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions along with mask mandates, social distancing, crowd control, and healthy preventions as avoiding enclosed places and limiting our interaction with people outside our immediate households.

For those who are vaccinated, the risk of contracting the disease is reduced, but the possibility of being a vector of transmission without presenting symptoms is there. Where a pandemic is in play, the responsibility is both personal and communal to hold the effects of the pandemic at bay and until the pandemic is eradicated and that does not seem to be in the near term, we still need to consider some preventative and protection measures for our sakes and those of others, some of who might well be vulnerable.

Children are vulnerable

As immunisation is still under review for administering to children in many domains because of side effects that could be life-threatening, children remain part of the vulnerable cohort if exposed to the Coronavirus and when exposed to it in the school environment might be vectors of transmission to their social and home communities. That should be in consideration and reasonably so.

To posit the argument for some protections when returning to the school environment as it is obvious that there are many strains and variants of the Coronavirus with highly transmissible rates in the community should never be up for debate, it should be one of the most agreeable actions to adopt except where clear medical exemptions require otherwise.

I am just perplexed

The politicisation of the mask mandates with parents vehemently protesting their children wearing masks in school settings where their children are meeting with others and whilst the same children no natural or acquired immunity to the Coronavirus is at first baffling if not irresponsible. It is madness of the order of utter befuddlement.

You begin to wonder if the people against the vaccination and other protections against viruses including the Coronavirus have not become like the worshippers of Moloch, the Canaanite deity amongst whom were involved in child sacrifice and allowing their children to pass through the fire, in religious antiquity.

For how is it not cultist child sacrifice if you're ready to expose your child to a virus that kills when there are some means even if imperfect to protect them just on ideological grounds?

How many of the children of any situation, community, city, state, or country have to die before politicians let go of the atrociously irresponsible for basic science and public health to matter?

I'm just dumbfounded, how many more child sacrifices before the god of obstinacy and ignorant ideology would be told, no more?

('Moloch' has been figuratively used in reference to a person or a thing which demands or requires a very costly sacrifice.) [Wikipedia: Moloch] It is my view that protesting the wearing of masks by children in school where it could protect them and prevent them contracting the Coronavirus is demanding a very costly sacrifice, the sacrifice of the children. That must be unacceptable in any healthy society.

The Cult of the Burnt Fornicator II - Judgment Day

A Jesus impostor in your vicinity

Judgment has come upon the man who deluded many and who as the leader of the Christian Praying Assembly in Lagos proclaimed himself as Jesus Christ with power on earth to punish sin.

Just like something out of a witch-burning activity in the 15^th Century, anyone caught in the sin of adultery or fornication – if that means anything to people today – was doused with petrol and set alight.

One of the said sinners did burn and lost her life in the process before the law in Nigeria waded in to seek justice for this abuse of power and criminal act. Months ago, in Cult of the Burnt Fornicator I wrote about this episode.

What is most disconcerting is the number of people who would follow a lie and engage themselves in cultist activities that seem to create more adherents as their increasingly bizarre and uniquely outrageous acts gain notoriety.

Proselytisers bring friends who feel they would be protected from greater evils by submitting themselves to a lesser evil which holds sway over their freedom, their liberty, their rights and their freewill; the stupid and gullible being lead by a con – there can be no greater partnership.

Ignorance that grates

Beyond this, it is the ignorance of the rule book that grates the most, a person going to church should and must be able to read a Bible in whatever language they speak, nowadays, Bibles are in pictures, in audio and fully dramatised in audio-visual sometime crass acting, but there is almost no excuse for not checking if what you have heard is really true.

We have a case where Jesus had to deal with the issue of adultery, it was a lesson in understanding the gravity of the offence but greater still, understanding the greater good of forgiveness, giving the adulterer the opportunity to repent and spread the news of forgiveness.

Men had arraigned to stone the adulterer to death as is expected of the law of the day, but rather than carry that sentence out, they approached Jesus to hear his view of the matter.

Knowing the law, knowing humanity

Jesus did not argue either the law or the sentence of the law, but he highlighted that fact that those who stand in judgment should themselves be free of guile and sin – let the man without sin throw the first stone, he said – then you all can then have a killing party, he implied. From the oldest to the last, they dropped their stones and walked away as conviction came upon each and everyone – meanwhile, the adulterer stood waiting for judgment deserved as Jesus scrawled in the sand.

At the end, there was not one accuser left and he who could pronounce judgment spoke mercy – “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more”. How, then can another man impersonating Jesus then be carrying out gruesome petrol burnings when the Jesus we know would not do such a thing?

As we have seen through the ages, the man involved in the act is often never caught or brought to judgment that is another issue.

The man the con

The problem is, as the man takes his sentence for murder and more heinous crimes, there are many who still believe that this religious tyrant is some messenger, a messenger of death and terror, I would say, as he tries to model his sufferings on the sufferings of Jesus.

No, people should not buy into that lie, I am no supporter of the death penalty, however, if he must die, I am happy that no one has decided to take the joke as far as to crucify him – however, it is evident that Jesus cannot die twice, a revealing truth that makes this religious cad, a false prophet and charlatan.

It would appear Nigeria needs a Religious Cons and Cults Tribunal to ascertain the qualifications of these preachers of woe, vet their practices, audit their accounts and testimonies, close their operations if found wanting and prosecute them to the limits of the law if they have been dishonest, deceitful, deceptive, cajoling and threatening.

I have seen many and they perform their deeds with impunity because the hold and sway of the superstitious and the incredible prevents seemingly rational minds from questioning the veracity of outrageous claims, all fearing a great wrath would befall them.

That is the power of these purveyors of evil, the ability to maintain an atmosphere of pervasive awe backed by the fear of evil rather than the courage of good.

This sentence would go to appeal, but it is time for the courts to hold up the mantle of justice for those who have been sacrificed on the altar of retaining the awe of the spectacular. The blood of the innocent, albeit gullible must be requited by a suitable punishment as a lesson to those who still seek to deceive.

References

Jesus Forgives Woman Caught in Adultery

Churches should be sanctuaries not prisons

How to spot religious abuse

Opinions on cults and religious abuse

The cult of the burnt fornicator - religious abuse

Churches should be sanctuaries not prisons [1]

The worship of Moloch

When I read on NaijaBlog that a church was making some of its congregation pass through the fire for their sins, I dismissed it with the thought that this was related to the worship of Moloch and left it at that.

Well, on further research it appears this was a more serious issue that now includes charges of a homicide and other counts of attempted murder.

There is no doubt that religious cults do thrive in Nigeria, especially where people are offered seemingly quick-fix solutions that lead to other deeper problems as the people are absorbed into cultist and socially unacceptable circumstances.

Charlatans as Reverends

Anyone, can rise with any title and declare themselves the megaphone of God for these times and people can be taken by spectacular shows and illusions that depict supposed miracles, they are milked of all their wealth and well-being with the promise of safety and deliverance.

Indeed, when in a church, one should in ways submit to the leadership of that church, but in the wisdom that includes understanding clearly that this leader can be trusted to do what is right. It is called discernment.

Only fools tread

Unfortunately, as sheep lead to the slaughter, many forfeit their God-given mental faculties to submit to lies and Old Testament foreboding which fills the congregation with self-loathing, fear, low-esteem and subservience.

Leaders in the church are supposed exercise authority that exudes leaderships, mercy, mentoring and grace. They are to lift up their people so they can go out and face the world with a sense of purpose, self-worth, integrity, honour and trustworthiness.

Sometimes, some of the congregation falls to temptation or heinous sins like fornication or adultery, it is a time to come together and counsel them and strengthen them to move on from the guilt of sin, if that is the prevailing doctrine to a state of absolution and sense of redemption.

Burning the sinner

To now hear that jerry cans of petrol were poured over offending fornicators and then they were set alight leaves one bereft of composure. Wherever this quack Dr and fraud got this teaching from escapes me – witches might have been burnt in the past but witchcraft is not fornication.

Separating the church from the state

Regardless of church doctrine, it is no more in the remit of the church to mete out the kinds of punishment that exemplified the Spanish Inquisition; the law is managed and administered by the state.

The church or any other religious organisation should defer to the state on matters of crime or civil justice where the society would have determined the punishment for the crime as their legislatures would have proposed after a fair trial.

The worst the church can do is excommunicate members who refuse to abide by the rules of membership. A church must not convene a kangaroo court and mete out punishments as if it were a court of law carrying out the affairs of the state.

One of many victims of religious abuse

In this case, Ann Uzoh King ultimately lost her life having suffered serious burns, a victim of cult movements in Nigeria that get no scrutiny from the authorities because followers and adherents have been brainwashed into thinking these rotten organisations are for their good.

Any right thinking person would know that these acts are completely wrong – however, is it any wonder that like opium, religion does deprive one of complete control of ways, means and heads?

References

Attempted Murder: King Granted Bail, Re-Arrested

Religious Abuse

How to spot religious abuse

Opinions on cults and religious abuse