Sermon Tone Analysis

RESOLVED TO TRUST GOD IN SALVATION

Now open your Bibles tonight to Exodus the twelfth chapter.

Somebody says, “Brother Rogers, why do you preach from the Old Testament?”

I’ll tell you why I preach from the Old Testament: because I like to preach about Jesus.

And the Old Testament as well as the New Testament is full of Jesus.

You know, Jesus said, in , verse 46, “Moses wrote of me” ().

Did you now that?

Moses wrote of Jesus.

And we say this again and again: When you understand the Bible, you’re going to understand that the entire Bible is about the Lord Jesus Christ.

And if you read anything in the Bible, and somewhere there in type, or shadow, figure, form, or prophecy you don’t read something about Jesus, you go back and read it again, because you misread it.

Too many people go to the Bible to try to read something into the Bible, to put their ideas into it.

Or they go to the Bible to get some point to back up their argument, some ramification for some pet hobby that they have.

Friend, when you go to the Bible, say, “Lord Jesus, speak to my heart.

Holy Spirit, reveal the things of Christ to me.”

And you’ll find out that you’ll get a great spiritual blessing when you read the Bible this way.

Adrian Rogers, “Families under the Blood,” in Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust, 2017), .Human sacrifices

Human sacrifice is today, a part of urban legends or the serial murders of a few, craven madmen.

But dig deeper into history and you’ll find that it was a part of many societies and took place in most regions around the world.

These include the South Pacific, ancient Japan, early Southeast Asian societies, ancient Europe, certain Native American cultures, in Mesoamerica, and among the great civilizations of the ancient world.

Babylon, Egypt, China, Greece, and even the precursor to the Romans, all took part in ritualized killings.

In ancient Egypt and China, for instance, slaves were often buried alive, along with the body of their sovereign, to serve him in the afterlife.From prehistory to the 21st century, human sacrifice has been practiced around the world by numerous cultures.

Live Science takes a look at 25 cultures that practiced, or still practice, human sacrifice.2 of 27📷Credit: Shutterstock

Researchers Discover a New Reason Why Ancient Societies Practiced Human Sacrifice

Over a year ago by PHILIP PERRY

Watts and colleagues found anecdotal evidence that human sacrifice was a power grab, and a way to maintain social control.

Researchers employed a technique called phylogenetic analysis in the study.

This is usually used to follow the twists and turns of evolution in a species.

Sociologists adopted the technique to study language development.

Here, it was used to plot relationships among the different cultures being studied.

This helped recognize whether certain traits in one culture were present in another, and determine what relationship human sacrifice might have on social stratification.

Data was derived from historical and ethnographic records.

Though the methods differed and a variety of reasons were used to justify the heinous act, the results were always the same, the solidification of power.

What’s more, victims tended to be the same, someone of low social status, such as a slave or prisoner of war.

Phylogenetic analysis showed that human sacrifice started in egalitarian societies, but after it was introduced, these tended to become social hierarchies.

Once in place, ritualized killings helped leaders assume greater control.

Now do you remember that God from the beginning taught people that once we sin the correct judgment on us would be death, blood spilt.

God’s holiness demands a sacrifice.

The Egyptian Pharaohs would kill all their workers in the Pyramid, sacrifice humans to help them through the underworld.

They believed in preparing for the next world on the backs and blood of others.

They used their position to take life.

See before the flood, all their hearts set on evil.

Take a life to get ahead.

In all the world there was an awareness of the need for sacrifice to be right and have a stable society.

The Diagnosis was correct!

But their prognosis literally killed people.

It got bad again with Nimrod, he built a Ziggurat, a stairway to heaven.

What do you think he did on top of the Ziggurat.

Today Western Culture rejects the idea of sacrifice.

The idea that the wages of sin is death is OFFENSIVE to the world

Do you realize Judaism and Christianity

China sacrifice

Human sacrifice was practiced in China for thousands of years.

At a 4,000-year-old cemetery near modern-day Mogou village in northwestern China, archaeologists found hundreds of tombs, some of which held human sacrifices.

One sacrificed victim was around 13 years old.

Archaeologists have also found thousands of human sacrifices at Shang Dynasty (1600 – 1040 B.C.) sites in the modern-day city of Anyang.

The practice of human sacrifice seems to have stopped or become very rare by the time China was unified in 221 B.C. by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

The first emperor's Terracotta army, made up of thousands of life-size clay warriors, allowed him to take an army with him to the afterlife without sacrificing real-life warriors.

3 of 27📷Credit: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

City of Ur

The Great Death Pit at the ancient city of Ur, in modern-day Iraq, contains the remains of 68 women and six men, many of which appear to have been sacrificed.

Dating back about 4,600 years, a variety of fantastic treasures, including a statuette known as the Ram in the Thicket, which is made of silver, shell, gold, lapis lazuli and carnelian, were found in the death pit.

Archaeologists believe that the pit was used to bury Ur's rulers.

4 of 27📷Credit: Shutterstock

Mound 72

A 10-foot (3 meters) mound called Mound 72 by modern-day archaeologists holds the remains of 272 people, many of them sacrificed.

It is located at Cahokia, a city located near modern-day St. Louis that flourished from A.D. 1050 to 1200.

The archaeology of the mound is complex, but it appears as if people were sacrificed gradually in a series of episodes.

In one episode, 52 malnourished women ages 18 to 23, along with a woman in her 30s, were sacrificed at the same time.

In another episode, it appears that 39 men and women were clubbed to death.

The mound also holds the remains of two individuals who were buried with 20,000 shell beads.

It's possible that some or all of the sacrifices were dedicated to the two individuals.

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Inca child mummies

The Inca flourished during the 15th ccentury A.D., conquering large swaths of territory in the Andes and connecting it with a vast system of roads.

The Inca also practiced child sacrifice; their mummies have been found by archaeologists, often near the summit of mountains or volcanoes.

In one famous example, three child mummies were found near the remains of a shrine at Mount Llullaillaco — a 22,100-foot-tall (6,740 meters) active volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina.

Researchers found that in the year before they died they were "fattened up" with a diet of maize and dried llama meat; and before their death, they were given maize beer and coca leaves.

How exactly they were killed is unknown.

6 of 27📷Credit: Shutterstock

Maya sacrifice

The ancient Maya practiced human sacrifice on special occasions.

These sacrifices were sometimes conducted in their temples, and many of the victims may have been prisoners of war.

At the ancient city of Chichen Itza, victims were painted blue, in honor of the rain god Chaak, before being sacrificed and thrown into a well.

Some archaeologists believe that Maya ball games would, on rare occasions, end with members of the losing or winning team being sacrificed.

Evidence for these sacrifices is mainly found in depictions of Maya art, and not all archaeologists interpret the images as representing the sacrifice of a ball team.

7 of 27📷Credit: Charles Foster

Ancient Israel

The Hebrew Bible mentions human sacrifice being carried out by Israelites several times; however, researchers do not agree on how often the practice occurred or whether it took place at all.

Perhaps the most famous biblical story is that of Abraham who, in the book of Genesis, was told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Before the deed is done, God stops him and tells Abraham that he was only testing him.

Whether the stories in the Hebrew Bible indicate that human sacrifice actually occurred in ancient Israel is a source of debate among researchers.

Unless clear archaeological evidence is found it's unlikely that the debate will ever be resolved.

8 of 27📷Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Aztec civilization

The Aztec civilization in Mexico was centered at the ancient city of Tenochtitlán, in what is now Mexico City, and flourished during the 14th and 15th centuries A.D. Artistic, archaeological and textual records indicate that human sacrifices occurred with some regularity at Tenochtitlán, particularly at the Templo Mayor, one of the largest temples in the city, where the remains of Tzompantli (skull racks) have been found.

The Spanish conquered the Aztecs during the 16th century, bringing with them diseases that decimated the population.

The Spanish sometimes used the Aztec practice of human sacrifice to try to justify their conquest of the Aztecs.

9 of 27📷Credit: Bilwissedition Ltd. & C. KG/Alamy

Ancient Egypt

Human sacrifice occurred around 5,000 years ago during Egypt's early history.