The Spiritual Reality & Warfare of Abortion | Isaiah 34:14

The Biblical Case That Abortion Is Murder

Last week, then, we started a series on abortion, and we talked about what the Bible says regarding abortion and about the unborn, that God values the unborn just as much as He does people who are born, and that to kill an unborn child is equated with the same punishment as murder.

And so, many of you all may have caught the news that recently happened with Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, and there's a lot of changes coming in our nation that are going to be some for good and some for ill, because it's going to really cause, I think, a lot of polarity between the states, the liberal states and the conservative states, and things are really going to get, looks like they're going to get pretty intense.

We just saw people protesting this past Friday in downtown, so people want their right to kill their babies. You know, it's a sad state of affairs, but I'm hoping that we can continue to tackle this issue from a biblical perspective and really make sure that we can engage this issue with whoever we come across.

And another way of reminder, so if you all haven't picked up a copy of your book, Lime 5 yet, by Mark Crutcher, go ahead and feel free to take a copy, or for anybody else that you might know that could benefit from it, an expose on the abortion industry.

It's a very in-depth expose of what goes on in the abortion industry. So, like I mentioned, last week was the biblical case for why abortion is murder, and for the unborn, how God values the unborn just as much as He does the born, people who are born.

Conception, the Virgin Birth, and the Unborn as Children

And this part, too, is going to be a really interesting section, I think. It's the spiritual reality of abortion and the spiritual warfare of abortion, because there are definitely spiritual things going on, and you're seeing this climate come out in this recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

But one thing I wanted to mention, a few clarifications from last week. We must all learn to play devil's advocate, to test all things and to anticipate objections. And this is something that I was thinking about when I finished my sermon last week, that I kind of realized a few things.

And revisiting Matthew 1 .18 through 23, I read the passage in the NASB version, the New American Standard Bible, where it says that the child which is conceived, that, however, is not what the Greek actually says.

The Greek doesn't say child specifically. It says that which is conceived. So the ESV, for example, says in Matthew 1 .20, it says,. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

So that's what the Greek literally says. But of course, what it obviously means is the child. It's talking about the child. It refers to the child as a child that was conceived in other verses, including Matthew 1 .18.

So in Matthew 1 .18, it says, this is the ESV now. Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother, Mary, had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child.

With child from the Holy Spirit. So that Greek phrase is engastri ekousa. And gastri is like if, you know, there's a gastrologist or gastronomy, the study of like food, making good food. It's talking about your stomach, your belly, or for women, your womb.

And so it's having a child in your womb. That's what it means, literally being pregnant with a child in your womb. So it's still a human child. And it's very clear that the Bible still affirms that at a conception, the child is still considered a child in the eyes of God.

And even some may object. This is what I was thinking because the verses that we talked about don't explicitly address the scenario of a woman killing her unborn child. And that's what the professor was trying to get at, right?

That there's no verse in the Bible that explicitly talks about whether it's wrong for a woman to kill her unborn child. But we're going to cover some of that a little bit more today. Because we already established the fact that killing somebody is murder, including unborn children.

That is still murder. And some object, some may object. This is what I mean by testing, you know, being careful to test what we say and really making sure that we're getting to the bottom of something or to the central issue of what's going on.

So some might object that Christ's birth doesn't count because it was exceptional, because it was a virgin birth, right? However, Jesus was fully God and fully man, right? He was a full human person, human being.

He had a full human nature. Therefore, it still counts because if you're going to say that Jesus doesn't count because he was inhuman, then you're a heretic, right? That's heresy. To deny the full humanity of Christ is heresy.

The exception to Christ's birth is not the fact that he was conceived, but the fact that the source was different. Instead of the source being a man, the source was the Holy Spirit. So the source of Christ's conception was God, the Spirit.

But the conception itself, everything from the conception to that point on, was still fully human. It was still a fully human process. Christ became man in every single way that we do. The only exception being that the Holy Spirit conceived Christ in Mary's womb.

That's the only difference. So even so, in Luke 1 .37, which is one of the passages that the professor mentioned, it says, Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And I missed that when I read it last week.

It says she conceived a son. So at conception, it's already referred to as a son, just like somebody, a son who is born. It's a son when it's conceived or a daughter when it's conceived. It's fully conceived.

It's a full son or daughter. It doesn't take nine months for it to become your son or your daughter. It's your son at conception or daughter at conception. Then also to take another human, and that was a fully human birth.

That was not the Holy Spirit. And then in Genesis 19 .35 -36, that's the case with Lot and his daughters. So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

Thus both daughters of Lot became pregnant, or they conceived with child by their father. So there you see another human example in which there was an incestuous relationship because they wanted to preserve the father's seed, Lot's seed.

So this is really interesting because when I quoted Amos 1 .13 and Exodus 21 .22 -25, those were cases where the mother was attacked by somebody else, right? If two men are fighting, they accidentally hit the woman.

She was attacked by somebody else, not herself. So the child was attacked from somebody else. That was not her mother. And then in Amos, I think it was the Ammonites. The Ammonites were killing, ripping open the pregnant women and killing the children.

So again, it was somebody else who was attacking the child. It was not the mother herself. And so you see this kind of perverse logic that the professor uses to say, well, it doesn't address explicitly a woman killing her child in the womb.

And of course, this is just really perverse logic because we already saw God values the unborn. He has a predestinating. His predestinating power already has purpose for every single human being. And if you thwart that purpose, that life, whether it's before the womb or after, you're going to be held accountable to God.

It's capital punishment in the Old Testament. Even if it's an accident like we saw in Exodus, right? Even if it's an accident, you're still punishable by punishable offense by death. So this actually takes us to a very applicable scenario in our society.

Our society is extremely schizophrenic when it comes to abortion. Most states actually have homicide laws protecting the unborn in a similar scenario to Exodus 21 and 22. In Texas, for example, under a law signed in June 20th, 2003, and effective September 1st, 2003, the protections of the entire criminal code extend to an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.

The law does not apply to conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child or to a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent.

This is SB 319. It's called the Prenatal Protection Act. So in other words, if somebody kills your baby in the womb, they'll be liable for homicide. They'll be guilty of homicide and they'll be punished as a crime.

It'll be punished as a crime, as a homicide, crime of homicide. But you saw the twisted logic there. It doesn't apply to the mother, to conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child, or to a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or an abortionist with lawful consent.

So the exception is you're not allowed to kill a child without the mother's consent. But if the mother concedes to you killing her child, if it's under a lawful medical procedure, you can go ahead and kill the child.

It's totally schizophrenic. And that's the kind of times that we live in right now with the fact that it's perfectly legal to kill your baby if you're the mother that consents to it. And if the abortionist helps you kill the child or kills the child for you with your consent.

Pro-Choice Logic, Responsibility, and the Sin of Child Sacrifice

So now this is where we get to the sticking point of, really get to the sticking point of abortion. Because now with Roe v. Wade, we saw some trigger, they're called trigger laws, how Texas for example enacted a trigger law that if Roe v. Wade gets overturned, it's going to become illegal completely to do any abortions in 30 days.

They have 30 days to stop doing abortions since Roe v. Wade has been overturned. And several different states did something like that. So now they're becoming more consistent, which is a good thing. At least the conservative states are.

The liberal states are still going to be a mess. The question now is, what if the mother is the one who wants to kill her baby? Does that make the situation better or worse or excusable? Does that make it excusable because it's the mother that wants to kill the baby instead of somebody else?

Obviously, in fact, not only is that still inexcusable, it's actually worse, I would say. Because when it's the mother that's willing to kill her own child, that's child sacrifice. That's basically child sacrifice.

That doesn't change the fact that it's still murder and that it's child sacrifice. This is where it's really coming to a head here. An analogy to this, when it comes to abortion, when a mother wants to kill her baby, she hires an abortionist to do it.

Abortionists are a lot like hitmen. A hitman is somebody you hire for, you want somebody dead, you hire them, they kill them for you. It works very similar with abortion doctors except they're basically the only legal form of hitmen that we have.

Except when the government does it too. Sometimes the government is allowed to do that. A lot of people in the pro-life movement are really messed up about this because they claim that the mother is innocent and even in some cases the abortion doctor is also innocent.

There's no question that the abortionist is a vile, wicked man. Abortion is evil. Killing babies for hire is an abomination in God's eyes. That's very clear. However, would the abortionist kill the baby if the mother had not conceded?

Obviously not, right? Yeah, yeah. But the issue here is the mother has to initiate the death. She's the one who has to concede first. This got me thinking, who bears the most responsibility? Who really bears the responsibility here?

Because without the woman's consent and without the woman hiring and paying the abortion doctor, that abortion will not happen. In fact, if no woman wanted to get an abortion, abortionists would be out of a job.

Right? So the issue here becomes an issue of choice. And here we see again, we go back to the Proverbs 6, 16 -19. There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.

A heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who soars discord among brothers. So here we have a situation in which the woman, I believe, bears the most guilt in this process.

Now, we have to address other issues involved. There's obviously issues of propaganda and deception on behalf of the abortion industry. There's no question that the abortion industry lies through their teeth about babies being not real persons and things like that.

But let's continue here and let's cover a little bit more scripture to kind of start to get a feel for the setting here. Now, one very important verse is Psalm 12, verse 8. Psalm 12, verse 8, which says,.

This verse is very powerful because it really reveals what our society, the state of our society today. When you exalt vileness as a nation, like the killing of the unborn, abortion, the wicked prowl on every side, the wicked roam free because they're not punished, right?

There's no justice being served when wickedness and vileness is exalted. And that is what we see. But now we see this coming to a head with Roe v. Wade being overturned. We're starting to see some change and some would say a positive direction, but not without cost.

I think. And so now we see here in John 10, 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I talked about last week how the professor didn't even mention that the devil's agenda has always been to steal, kill and destroy.

The thief who steal, kills and destroy. He wants to rob people of their life. He wants to kill, right? He's a murderer. And Christ is the one who says that you may have life and have it in abundance. So whose side?

What do you think about when you think about the issue of abortion, which is killing the unborn? Obviously, it falls on the side of the devil's agenda rather than God's agenda. And even even I'll even raise you one.

And John 8, 44, Christ is rebuking the Pharisees, the Jews and the Pharisees. And he says, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. The devil is a murderer from the beginning. And that is 100 percent in line with abortion because abortion is to kill an unborn child.

The Spiritual Warfare of Abortion: Ephesians 6 and the Demonic Powers Behind It

But now let's talk a little bit more about the issue here of the spiritual reality of abortion. Now, going OK, but before we do that, going back to the issue of whose choice it is. What is the motto of those who support abortion that you hear?

They are pro choice, right? They're all about choice. They're all about being pro choice, the woman's choice and right to choose to kill her baby. Right. So by their own agenda, their own affirmation, their own desire to give the woman a choice to kill her child.

She, by that very fact, bears the most responsibility because it's whose choice. It's the woman's choice. Right. That makes her the most guilty party in this. And that's where we have to come. We have to face the reality of the situation because they are they are condemning themselves and saying that it's the woman's choice.

It's a woman's right to choose. Therefore, you are responsible then for that crime. You and it's and that's just that's just a matter of fact. But the fact that they make this their sticky, their their motto and their their propaganda device, they are condemning themselves.

And so that is really important to understand with respect to who is guilty in this. It doesn't absolve the abortionist or the abortion industry. They are still guilty. But ultimately, the woman's choice to kill her child.

She bears the most responsibility in that. And of course, you know, some people this is where we have to have balance because some people say some people in the pro-life movement, a lot of Catholic organizations, too, they'll say, no, the woman is a victim.

The woman is a victim in all this. And she she can't be held responsible for. Even in Texas, the laws that just passed do not charge the woman with crime. The woman is not guilty even now, if she were to commit an abortion, the woman would not be guilty.

And in Texas, after after these new laws. So there's still a very dysfunctional understanding of justice here because we've been so conditioned by the devil's agenda in our society to victimize the woman who is the primary sinner in this aspect.

And, you know, some people say they there's a there's a there's a lack of balance in this issue because some people say, well, the woman is completely guilty, period. She's she needs to pay. She needs to pay the consequences without any other consideration for the situation, because the reality of the situation is the woman could very well be deceived herself.

She can fall prey, especially young girls, you know, young girls that get again in a situation with pregnancy and are scared for her parents finding out or, you know, they get scared and they get manipulated by abortionists or Planned Parenthood abortion clinic to to kill her child.

That's all very possible. But that still does not absolve her from her crime. It is still her sin that she killed her child. And the scripture is very clear about that. And a lack of a lack of knowledge or lack.

See, then that's the reality of the situation is nobody is fully ignorant of this reality that you are conceiving in your womb a child, no matter how much, you know, Planned Parenthood may lie about it.

It doesn't change the reality. What God says about the child, what the word clearly says about the child, that it is full. It is a full person. And therefore it is a murder to kill your unborn child. So we have to be careful to keep a right balance in this issue and consider the reality of the situation that, you know, we somehow it's almost I think it might be like a Catholic thing because they hold up Mother Mary, you know, Mother Mary is this immaculately conceived person because she bore Christ.

And and it's like, you know, the woman, just because the woman is bearing the child, that doesn't make her guiltless. It doesn't absolve her from the fact that she's the one who elected to have the abortion ultimately and therefore primarily the one responsible.

So really something to think about. We have to think very carefully about this issue biblically. Now, Ephesians 6, 10 through 18, we're going to talk about the spiritual reality here of abortion. And this is where it's going to get really we're going to really dig deep into the spiritual aspect of this.

Ephesians 6, 10 through 18. It says this. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. So this passage is describing the reality of the situation that we face as believers.

Our enemy is not primarily flesh and blood. Our enemy is spiritual. It's the devil and his minions. It's the devil and the demonic entities that pursue his agenda on the earth. This is very important because a lot of times this can get overlooked as well.

The reality is that abortion is spiritual warfare. It is the front line of spiritual warfare in many ways. If we turn to Leviticus chapter 20, we're going to talk about there's two devils primarily associated with abortion in the Scriptures.

One is Molech and the other is Lilith. We're going to talk about Molech first in Leviticus chapter 20 verses 1 through 5. Leviticus 20, starting in verse 1. Molech is a gruesome false god in the Old Testament.

I'm going to read from Smith's Bible Dictionary about Molech. This is one of the most gruesome things that would happen in the Old Testament. When people would worship Molech, there was a big idol. It had a hollow stomach because they would kindle a fire inside the stomach.

It was made of brass so it would get hot when you would heat it up. It had hands laid out like this, like human hands. The people who wanted to offer their children would heat up Molech. They would start playing drums and then they would offer the baby into the skillet.

It would become incinerated and die from the skillet. It is a gruesome, horrendous thing, but abortion is not much different from that gruesome of a sacrifice. It's very much along the same lines. The reason they would beat out the drums, you all might suspect why.

They would beat the drums because of the screams of the child dying. This is what happens when we cannot turn a blind eye to this. It's like beating the drums to something that's so clearly immoral and clearly murder.

Some scholars even say that they would try to make the baby laugh before burning it to make it an acceptable sacrifice. We cannot afford to ignore this kind of issue. Some of the ways you abort a child, I don't think it's practiced anymore, but it used to be practiced that you would put salt, saline solution in the womb and that would burn the child alive.

It's very similar to them offering children to Molech. Here you see the children are obviously born. They're obviously born, so it doesn't, like the professor said, it doesn't explicitly address the issue of an unborn child being offered up.

But it still doesn't change the reality that back in those days it was more difficult to get abortions done. But again, the child sacrifice is still child sacrifice. We're still talking about a child in the womb.

The only difference is location. That's the only difference is either it's in the womb or it's outside the womb. That doesn't change the fact that it's still a child, that it's still a baby, a human baby.

So this was really gruesome. And this is in fact, there are so many parallels to the abortion issue with the Holocaust. This is something similar happened during the Holocaust when Nazis would be killed, when they would gas them.

Churches, neighboring churches would often sing, they would turn up the hymns, they would turn up the music to drown out the screaming sounds of the Jews being killed, the people being killed in the gas chambers.

And it's a very similar parallel to the Nazi Holocaust and the abortion Holocaust that we have in this country, except now the abortion Holocaust is six times worse. Because we're talking about over 60 million babies killed in 50 years, where Hitler only got a chance to kill 10 or 11 million.

So we have to be really careful to be aware of the issue and to really pray, to fast and to pray and to seek to be salt and light and good Samaritans with respect to the issue of abortion because it is an abomination in the eyes of God.

And this is where you see God punish very clearly child sacrifice. And that's ultimately what abortion is. It is child sacrifice. You are sacrificing your child for your benefit, for some kind of benefit.

Just like Molek would offer you health or wealth or prosperity, you think that by killing your child you're going to be more prosperous or more wealthy or more better off because you won't have to be chained down by some baby that you have to take care of.

That's the lie of the devil. And Psalm 106, 34 to 31, describes a summary of what would happen with Molek, with what happened with the false worship of Molek. In Psalm 106, verses 34 and on, it says,.

They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord commanded them, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to 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. Thus they became unclean by their acts and played the whore in their deeds.

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and he abhorred his heritage. He gave them into the hand of the nations so that those who hated them ruled over them. So here you clearly see that God executed justice on Israel for this wicked sin of child sacrifice.

God will not clear the guilty in this. And that's why it is very necessary, it is very important for us as a people of God to offer forgiveness and hope exclusively through Christ and his gospel. That is the only way that men and women who are guilty of the crime of abortion can be absolved of this murder.

Only through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ on the cross, through the gospel, and by believing in him alone. So you see in the case with Molech, abortion, this child sacrifice, is sacrifice done unto demons, unto false gods.

Here is the context, here's some more context of the demons and the pagan nations in Israel, in Babylon. If we turn to Isaiah 13, in Isaiah 13, in verses 1 -3 and then 9 -19, it's going to give us a little bit more context as to this issue.

Isaiah 13, 1 -3 and 9 -19. The oracle concerning Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos saw, on a bare hill raised a signal. Cry aloud to them, wave the hand for them to enter the gates of the nobles. I myself have commanded my consecrated ones and have summoned my mighty men to execute my anger, my proudly exalting ones.

Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land of desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light.

The sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light. I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity. I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low to the pompous pride of the ruthless.

I will make people more rare than fine gold and mankind than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble and the earth will be shaken out of its place at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of its fierce anger.

And like a hunted gazelle or like sheep with none to gather them, each will turn to his own people and each will flee to his own land. Whoever is found will be thrust through and whoever is caught will fall by the sword.

Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes. Their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. Behold, I am stirring up the meads against them who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold.

Their bows will slaughter the young men. They will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb and their eyes will not pity children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor of the pomp and pomp of the Chaldeans will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them.".

So here you see the fierce anger with which God judges a nation that engages in this kind of sin. It is so fearsome that he will say that their own children, their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes in God's judgment.

God will judge them by plundering their houses, ravishing their wives and dashing their children to pieces in judgment over their wickedness that they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb and they will not pity children because of God's fierce judgment on them.

And in Isaiah 13 and verse 20, it says,. She will never be inhabited or settled from generation to generation. No nomad will pitch his tent there. No shepherd will rest his flock there. But desert creatures will lie down there and howling creatures will fill their houses.

Ostriches will dwell there and wild goats will leap about. Hyenas will howl in her fortresses and jackals in her luxurious places. Babylon's time is at hand and her days will not be prolonged. So you see the desolation that God will cause in a nation that is guilty of these kinds of sins.

That God said that he will destroy people so utterly he will make them more rare than fine gold. And in Isaiah verse 13, I mean, I'm sorry, Isaiah 13 verse 21, the King James Bible says wild beasts of the desert shall lie there and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures and owls shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there.

There's some interesting words here being used. The satyr shall dance there. Ellicott's commentary says this. In the satyrs, literally hairy or shaggy ones, we may find either goats, translated as goats, as in Leviticus 4 .24 or 16 .9, or as the English version suggests, a mythical form of grotesque animal life, the demons or devils of Leviticus 17 .7 and 2 Chronicles 11 .15.

A goat-shaped form like that of Greek pan. So here it's talking about the word satyr is used for the word for a demon, a devil. And it resembles a hairy goat, kind of like the Greek version of the pan, the false god pan.

And like the satanic god Baphomet. Baphomet is a false god with the head of a goat, and it has the torso of a woman, and it has the legs of a goat. So this is what's often referred to as a satyr. And so here we see more demonic activity.

It's basically describing the desolation that God will cause on a nation and make it a ruin and a breeding ground for wildlife and for devils to inhabit. So in Isaiah 34, we come across yet another spirit called Lilith.

And this is the spirit of feminism and abortion. In Isaiah 34, verses 1 -6, we see here, Isaiah 34, 1 -6, it says, 2 -7, 3 -8,. So this is describing how God is judging the nation of Edom, the Edomites.

Isaiah 34, verse 14 from the Amplified Bible says,. The creatures of the desert will encounter jackals, and hairy goat, or the satyr, will call to its kind. Indeed, Lilith, or night demon, will settle there and find herself a place of rest.

There you see God's judgment laying waste to a nation, making it a ruin and a breeding ground for wild animals, wildlife, and for devils. A breeding ground for devils to inhabit. The Lexham English Bible says,.

And desert creatures shall meet with hyenas, and a goat demon, the satyr, shall call to his neighbor. Surely there Lilith shall repose, and she shall find a resting place for herself. That word Lilith there, in other versions it gets translated as screech-owl.

But there's other words for screech-owl. The only time the word Lilith is used is in this passage, and it's significant. In the Good News translation, it says,. Wild animals will roam there, and demons will call to each other.

The night monster, or Lilith, will come there looking for a place of rest. One author says Lilith is a female spirit, a demon also found in the Old Testament, Isaiah 34, verse 14. Supposedly Lilith and her followers roamed the world to seduce men and kill infants.

There's also a related Midrashic tradition. So Midrash in Hebrew and Jewish tradition is stories that fill in parts of the Bible that the Bible skips over or leaves out. So the Bible, as you may know, encompasses thousands of years.

And a lot of these years are skipped over. They don't go into much detail, because otherwise the Bible would be a huge, massive tome. So Midrashic traditions are stories that people tell to fill in certain parts of the Bible that the Bible doesn't speak to.

One of them mentions the first eve, in which, this is a curious idea, first recorded in the medieval alphabet of Ben Sirah, that the demon goddess Lilith was Adam's first wife, who abandoned him after their first and only sexual affair.

And this is also referred to in literature, for example, in James Joyce's Ulysses. It's a famous poem. It says, then spake young Stephen Orgulas of mother church that would cast him out of her bosom of law of canons of Lilith, a patron of abortions.

So this was common knowledge that it was kind of understood that Lilith was this demonic spirit that would go after children and seduce men. Ellicott's commentary for English readers says this. The English satyr expresses fairly enough the idea of a demon brute haunting the waste places and palaces of Edom, while the screech owl is the Lilith, the she-vampire who appears in the legends of the Talmud as having been Adam's first wife, who left him and was turned into a demon.

With the later Jews, Lilith, sucking the blood of children, who was the bugbearer of the nursery. Night vampire would perhaps be the best rendering. So there you see again. And the pulpit commentary says the screech owl, the word here used Lilith, occurs only in this place.

It may be doubted whether any bird or other animal is meant. Lilith was the name of a female demon or wicked fairy in whom the Assyrians believed a being thought to vex and persecute her victims in their sleep.

The word is probably derivative from Layla, night, and designates the spirit of the night. A mischievous being who took advantage of the darkness to play fantastic tricks. A Jewish legend made Lilith the first wife of Adam and said that having pronounced the divine name as a charm, she was changed into a devil because she basically disobeyed Adam.

She refused to submit to Adam and therefore God turned her into a demon, according to the story. It's not true. The demon is real, but the story is not true. That's just used for enticement for people to get into the worship of this demon.

And so it was her special delight to murder young children. And this is from an article called Lilith, A Feminist in Paradise. Lilith was first talked about in Genesis 1 as a woman who was created by God to be co-equal to Adam in all measures.