A gray, eerie sky sagged over the quaint New England square. Villagers were emotionally gathered, with a blend of righteous indignation and fear. Directly in front of the crowd, a woman stands tied to a stake. An angry onlooker shouts, “Exodus twenty-two, verse eighteen!” Shaking his uplifted, tattered Bible, he continues, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. What we are doing is God’s holy work! The flames are transitioning from the hay to her dress. The sights and sounds that follow drive the little children behind their mothers. It is if they are the only ones who are troubled by this execution. The onlooker was quoting the Bible and the assembled mob, felt justified in this horrific act. What they were doing was biblical. Countless atrocities have been done by scripture-spewing zealots in the name of God. What do we do with this? Ignore it, and hope sincere truth seekers never think about it? We have a choice to make—read the Bible in a way where every verse carries equal weight or read the Bible through the lens of Jesus, God’s highest revelation. The Old Testament is a partial revelation of the God of whom Jesus is the perfect revelation. Can you see Jesus quoting that scripture and endorsing that execution? If not, then the Father did not instigate the witch hunts that swept Europe and colonial America between 1450 and 1750. Of course this is not an endorsement of witchcraft; rather, a declaration of our “love your enemies” Christ reflecting His Father. We live wide awake to the Triune God whom those before Christ’s incarnation were ever so slowly waking up to. Their understanding was gradually evolving from the mindset of the pagan nations around them. We live in the light of the ultimate revelation—Jesus!
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