What, God? You want me to kill my son?

A woman drowns her five children in a bathtub. Her act is blamed on severe depression.
A woman straps her two sons, ages 3 years old and 7 months old, into their car seatbelts. Then she puts the car in gear and stands and watches as the car goes into a lake and sinks to the bottom drowning the two boys.
Right here in St. Louis about 15 years ago, a woman named Paula Simms was convicted of murdering one of her children and was strongly suspected of murdering another of her children a few years earlier.
The public is always outraged when any child is murdered. There is something about killing a young person that raises the anger of people in general. And especially when a parent kills their own child are there shouts of vengeance and rage.
In a day of very loose morality in many areas, a parent who kills their child is looked on as the ultimate law-breaker. The crime seems so senseless and impossible to conceive of that the public sees only two possible explanations: 1) that the killer is the most cold-blooded, evil person that could exist or 2) that the killer's mind must have snapped into a state of total insanity. In fact, in most people's minds, insanity is the only possible reason that a parent could kill their child. They do not think that anyone could be evil and cruel enough to murder their child, so they must be insane.
The story of Abraham and his son Isaac in the Bible has been viewed as a problem by some. A good Christian person recently said to me, "The whole story of God calling on Abraham to kill his son Isaac is just too much for me. There is no way, if a voice told me to kill my child, that I would do it. My children are precious to me. And if I got a message like that, I would know right away that it was not from God but probably from Satan. God would not demand that I break one of His Laws!"
The event spoken of is in the 22nd chapter of Genesis:
After a time, God tested Abraham's faith and obedience.
"Abraham!" God called.
"Yes, Lord?" he replied.
"Take with you your only son – yes, Isaac whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I'll point out to you."
The next morning Abraham got up early, chopped wood for a fire upon the altar, saddled his donkey, and took with him his son Isaac and two young men who were his servants, and started off to the place where God had told him to go. On the third day of the journey Abraham saw the place in the distance.
"Stay here with the donkey," Abraham told the young men, "and the lad and I will travel yonder and worship, and then come right back."
Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering upon Isaac's shoulders, while he himself carried the knife and the flint for striking a fire. So the two of them went on together.
"Father," Isaac asked, "we have the wood and the flint to make the fire, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"
"God will see to it, my son," Abraham replied. And they went on.
When they arrived at the place where God had told Abraham to go, he built an altar and placed the wood in order, ready for the fire, and then tied Isaac and laid him on the altar over the wood. And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to plunge it into his son, to slay him.
At that moment the Angel of God shouted to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Yes, Lord!" he answered.
"Lay down the knife; don't hurt the lad in any way," the Angel said, "for I know that God is first in your life – you have not withheld even your beloved son from me."
Then Abraham noticed a ram caught by its horns in a bush. So he took the ram and sacrificed it, instead of his son, as a burnt offering on the altar. Abraham named the place "Jehovah provides".
Genesis 22:1-14 Living Bible version

Here is what Halley's Bible Handbook says about Abraham:
"In that pioneer age of the earth, while nations were still not much more than tribal communities, prospecting and settling the more favored lands, Abraham, a righteous man, a believer in God, not an idolater, one of the few still holding to the tradition of primitive Monotheism, was promised by God that his descendants:
1. Should inherit the land of Canaan.
2. They should become a Great Nation.
3. Through them all nations should be blessed.
"…Abraham was not an idolater. But he lived in a world of idolatry. In the beginning man had had ONE God; and, in the Garden of Eden, had lived in rather intimate communion with God. But with his sin and banishment, man lost his primeval knowledge of God; and groping in his darkness for a solution of the mysteries of existence, he came to worship the powers of Nature which seemed to him to be the sources of life.
"…And to make their gods more real, images were made to represent the gods; and then the images themselves came to be worshiped as gods. Thus, man took his nosedive from original Monotheism into the abyss of innumerable polytheistic idolatrous cultures, some of which, in their practices, were unspeakably vile and abominable.
"…Abraham's countrymen were idolaters. His father was an idolater (Joshua 24:2). There are legends of his being persecuted as a child for refusal to worship idols. How did Abraham know about God? No doubt, by direct revelation from God. And moreover, taking the age figures as they are given, Noah's life was overlapped by Methuselah by 600 years while Methuselah's life was overlapped by Adam for 243 years. So Abraham could have learned directly from Shem Noah's account of the Flood and Methuselah's account of Adam and the Garden of Eden." Pages 94-95 Halley's

So we see that Abraham grew up within a totally different cultural background than what we know today. Most people of his day had sacrifice to their gods as a regular routine – even, incredibly, on special times and under special circumstances, they sacrificed their children to the god Molech. Abraham had seen this done around him.
And let us not forget that this was long before Moses had received the codified form of God's Law on Mount Sinai. The few monotheistic people that existed in Abraham's day lived by their own code of "conscience". Any ideas of deity were of a God or "gods" that required humans to "tow the line" and do whatever is required to please the deity. Abraham believed in one God and wanted to be obedient to that God. The concepts of faith and obedience were the cornerstones of both monotheism and the polytheistic culture of that day.
So through whatever means God used to draw Abraham to Him, Abraham had total trust in God causing his full obedience to God as he knew Him.
Now as to the idea of recognizing whether God was talking or some other spirit, let us consider the time element involved in Abraham's relationship with God leading up to the message of Isaac's sacrifice.
The only way that God could deal with the people of that day was to speak to them directly or to speak through holy prophets. God first spoke to Abraham in Gen. 12:1-4 when Abraham was 75 years old. Other direct speaking from God is recorded in Gen. 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:1-21, 17:1-22 (Abraham is now 99 years old), 18:13-15, 18:23-32, 21:12-13. These are all messages that Isaac would be born and from Isaac would flow God's chosen people. Abraham believed God in spite of his apparent impotency and Sarah's age. And everything happened just as God said it would.
Now comes Genesis 22 where the sacrifice command is given. Josephus, the Jewish historian, supposes that Isaac was now 25 years old and that he was certainly not just a "boy". Based on the fact that Isaac is considered by theologians as a Type of his great Antitype, Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was sacrificed at 33 years of age, Isaac himself may have been as much as 33 years old. This would make Abraham between 125 and 133 years old then.
This means that Abraham had been speaking directly to and hearing directly from God for 50 to 63 years. HE KNEW GOD'S VOICE! Abraham knew every little inflection and distinction in God's voice. His whole life activity for 50 years had been based on what God had said. I am sure that there were many intimate conversations about the future between Abraham and God that were not recorded in the Bible. Abraham had a fellowship and a knowledge of the personal characteristics of God greater probably than of any human being around him.
Now I totally agree with my Christian friend that if a "voice" told me to kill my child, I would not do it. But the message of Isaac's sacrifice did not come from just a "voice". This came from a Personal God, a Personal Creator God who Abraham KNEW! For at least 50 years, Abraham walked and talked with the One God of all power and glory! Abraham KNEW what God had done for him, what God's plans were for Isaac, and what awesome power God had to bring about His will.
So, being wired with the culture of the age, to obey and please Deity, Abraham willed to do as God said. Sure, it was a far out thing for God to ask. But other "gods" of the culture around him had appeared to ask the same thing of their followers. Maybe, to Abraham, this was just a strange way for deity to test followers. And, remember, the 10 commandments had not been given.
Abraham knew, and he KNEW THAT HE KNEW, that God's promise was sure and reliable. Isaac would have children. Isaac would live on. There was no doubt of this in Abraham's mind, because God had said it! And Abraham trusted God! In verse 5, Abraham told the young men with him that he and Isaac would return again together to them. Abraham looked on this whole event as just some ritual which his God required of him. But he recognized that the bottom line of his whole relationship with God was that from him, and from Isaac, and from Isaac's children would come a nation of God's people on this earth. After all the personal conversations of at least 50 years, he could have no doubt about what was going to happen.
So what can we say is the lesson we are to glean from this event? WE ARE TO LEARN TO RECOGNIZE GOD'S VOICE! We, as converted new creatures with Christ living right within us in a living union, are to learn on a daily basis HOW Christ speaks to us, WHAT He sounds like, and HOW He would have us live. This can only come about when we take the time to have a "quiet time" with our Lord. I don't know in exactly what way God spoke to Abraham but Christ will speak to us if we will just tune out the world for a while and tune in the world of the spirit. This is what life is meant to be for our new species – the Christ-person. Life is a union of thought, word and action between my human soul and the Spirit of Christ within me.
I may not have 50 years as Abraham did to learn all the little shades of personality of Christ within me, but I can KNOW Jesus' voice when I hear it. Jesus sounds a lot different from Satan. AND AS I GROW DAILY IN MY AWARENESS OF UNION WITH CHRIST, I HEAR A SATAN WITH A LOT SHAKIER VOICE THAN HE USED TO HAVE! In fact, in some areas of my life, Satan has downright "lost his voice". He can only try to influence me by deception over who I am. Satan has no power over me except what I give him. He can send messages all he wants in his shaky voice, BUT THE POWERFUL VOICE WITH THE POWERFUL CONTENT IS THE ONE I CHOOSE TO HEAR – THE RESONANT VOICE OF CHRIST FROM WITHIN! I am perfect in Spirit, and am growing toward perfection in my soul.

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