Satan Wants to Destroy Your Children
As most of you know, I receive a lot of hate-filled comments on my social media. I also receive them on this blog but I don’t publish them. I am going to show you this one I received the other day. I know it’s from a troll so I’m not sure it’s accurate, but I do know without a doubt that Satan is doing all that he can to destroy your children.
“I work with an organization that helps children leave fundamentalist Christianity and embrace secularism, feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. I am thrilled to inform you that we have had a lot of success reaching out to – and successfully converting!! – teens by going through the Facebook pages of your Facebook followers and reaching out to their kids. They’re so grateful! Every time you comment, we rescue more teens from your toxic ideology. Thank you so much for helping us find them!”
The public schools and universities are openly and unashamedly promoting these lifestyles to the students. This is an important reason why God wants mothers to be keepers at home full time with their children. He gave children mothers to protect them from the evil in this world. He wants you to know what friends your children play with; for bad company corrupts good morals. He wants you training them up in the ways of Him, and making sure your children know the Gospel and who they are in Christ!
The following is an article written by Karen Sargent called “Required Reading” and it was from the No Greater Joy March-April magazine.
I read an article yesterday that should be required reading for every parent. It was written by a young mom, Sloane (not her real name). She works with an organization called Bark, whose sole purpose is to protect children from online predators. Her story is chilling.
In the article, she recounts a typical day in her work with Bark. They start with a photo of Sloane wearing clothing a pre-teen would wear, glitter nail polish, chest bound with ace bandages. Team members use photo manipulation to turn it into a perky and innocent 11-year-old girl they call Bailey who, at that age, should be playing house and having tea parties.
Sloane uses an iPhone paired to a big-screen TV so the whole team can follow along. A video camera records it all because every speck of evidence is precious to law enforcement. The team creates accounts of fictitious young girls to show parents how pervasive the problem of online predation is.
Tonight Sloane is 11-year-old Bailey. She uploads a “selfie” to Instagram and writes a caption about being excited to see her friends tonight. Then she waits.
Sloane writes: “This part never takes long. It’s always unnervingly fast… on the very first night as Bailey, two new messages came in under a minute after publishing a photo… the numbers pinged up on the screen—2, 3, 7, 15 messages from adult men over the course of two hours. Half of them could be charged with transfer of obscene content to a minor.”
She goes on to describe in hideously graphic detail the conversations these men have with what they think is a little girl.
Are you hearing this, Mama? Are you paying attention, Daddy? In just two hours of an innocuous photo on Instagram, sick, twisted perverts are sending your innocent little girl pornographic photos of themselves and asking her to participate in activities too horrific to imagine.
Where are you while this is happening? Are you driving while she sits in the back seat and has her mind forever polluted by the filth of the world? Are you watching TV in the living room while she lies on her bed enjoying a little social media time with her “friends”?
It is not innocent or harmless entertainment. It is you standing at the door of your child’s mind and heart and actively inviting the devil in. It is not enough to put a filter on the Internet in your home. Your children have access to the Web everywhere they go. Their friends have cell phones with unfiltered Internet. Some girls are “groomed” through their school email accounts.
And it’s pervasive: social media, Fortnite and Minecraft, TikTok, and chat apps. Small children are targeted while watching My Little Pony videos on YouTube and playing games designed for very young children. Literally any time your child is on the Internet, he or she is a potential victim.
Last year, in a sting operation at the Jersey shore in which they posed as children online, authorities arrested 24 predators in the first week. In another county, 17. In another, 19. Those arrested came from all walks of life—“a police officer, a teacher, a minister, a nurse, a bank manager, a mechanic, a waiter, a dental hygienist, a college student…” There is no “typical predator” profile.
A state deputy attorney general said, “Nearly every game has a chat, so it’s hard for parents to keep track, even if they’re doing their homework.” Did you hear that? You can’t keep up.
Do you feel paranoid? You should. You are no match for the devil’s world. So what is a parent to do in this age of high-tech?
Say no. No, you will not have a cell phone or a tablet or computer of your own. You will not have a school email account (all necessary emails can be sent to the parents). You will not sleep over at your friend’s house. Your friend may not bring her cell phone here. You will not ride the bus to school.
Will that be enough? Will she be protected if we just homeschool and home church and don’t let her have a cell phone?
Sadly, no. So much of life in the 21st century is technologically driven, and it is becoming exponentially more so every day. Eventually the children will leave home for work or school. It is not enough to shield them from the dangers that are out there; we must teach them to guard their own hearts. Train them to be vigilant gate-keepers of their own minds so that when the first glimmer of temptation shows up, they are so well trained they instinctively flee. We must insulate them from within, as Mike wrote in this article 18 years ago.
Parenting in 2020 is much scarier than it was when my children were little in the 1980s. The dangers are more pervasive than ever, but Ecclesiastes says, “There is no new thing under the sun.” The devil who wanted my kids in 1980 still wants yours today; he’s just keeping up with technology better than you are.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
1 Peter 5:8
19 thoughts on “Satan Wants to Destroy Your Children”
Thank you for the warning Lori!
This week for my online work, it was highly recommended that I get a TIcTic account for work purposes…long story short I got one and it lasted about 2 hours on my phone before I deleted it. Although I am fairly young I’m not up to date on technology. I will tell you this, I would never allow my kids to have one of those accounts. So many awful videos ?
I’ve only had one creepy guy message me on Instagram, and I blocked him immediately. Then I put that account on private when I started posting pictures of my baby brother so that I could control EXACTLY who could see my posts. I’m NEVER letting my kids have electronics and social media accounts until they’re old enough (my fiancé and I have yet to decide an age, but at least over 13) and we’re going to train them way before they get any that they are NOT to engage with any kind of harassment, bullying, and the sort. Report, block, and ignore, and be very cautious about letting ONLY those you know and trust follow your personal stuff.
I wouldn’t give my children a smart phone until after graduating high school and they could afford it. They would still have only a flip phone for emergency and texting. There’s simply too much temptation on a smart phone for the young to handle. The wicked images that could pop up would be destructive in their lives.
Just a couple of book recommendations for any who are interested.
Create a Better Brain through Neuroplasticity: A Manual for Mamas
By: Debi Pearl
Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Their Peers
By: Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate, M.D.
These are excellent reads!
I learned so much from them.
I am, in a sense, fortunate that my kids are all adults. We used Internet filters when they were kids, capturing emails, chat messages, websites, etc. and was not able to be disabled or even seen by a regular user of the computer, which has always been kept in a public area of the house. There are many things that can be done to reduce the risk to our kids, but teaching them God’s words and instilling Biblical principles is critical.
As I am in my early 20s, I was raised with all of this. I am so thankful for my parents who had honest discussions with me about the internet and set appropriate boundaries. I was not allowed to have social media or a smartphone until my mid-teens, and it was all monitored until adulthood; and whenever I questioned why all of that was necessary, they always explained their reasons.
I think nowadays, it is necessary to have a similar approach to this issue as Michael Pearl’s in yesterday’s post: you cannot hide your children away from the internet. They’re going to come across it sooner or later and they have to learn to deal with it with experience; however, clear boundaries have to be set and correspondence especially has to be monitored. Children and young teens are simply not equipped to handle the situation you mention (with the paedophiles online), so parents have to step in.
I was just reading about this very topic the other day in the AFA Journal. It’s so sickening how prevalent this is. What kind of a person wants to do those things to an innocent child?! I am so thankful my parents did such a good job protecting my sisters and I as children. More and more I realize how much I owe them.
I wanted to ask another question. It is related to a post on Twitter you posted about how women need to be good cooks. I can make a few meals that are simple and reasonably healthy, but I really want to develop “cooking instincts” as it were (knowing what goes with what, good chopping skills, being able to just throw something together, etc.) I know it will be important when I have my own household to run. Do you have any good cookbooks or other resources you would suggest for this topic? Do you have any go-to recipes that you use, especially for picky eaters who also don’t like soup? I also have a lot of trouble with healthy baking. Chocolate cake and pumpkin bread especially need some work, but around 75-80% of the recipes I try from online are dismal failures. Do you have healthy dessert recipes that you use, besides the healthy dark chocolate one? I would really, really appreciate any help you could give me. I feel so discouraged sometimes in this area.
By the way, I tried your homemade kefir recipe, and it turned out great! Couldn’t be easier. Thank you for sharing.
I have a LOT of recipes on my old blog, Always Learning, that are easy and delicious. Watch the Food Network channel. There are many YouTube videos you can learn from too. It’s easy but it does take practice. Now is a good time for you to learn, Sarah.
Both high-schools my teenage girls attend regularly hold net-safe workshops for both students and parents. Honestly, it’s scary how easily perverted men can access our children.
Are you familiar with the Madeliene McCann case? That was my worst fear when my children were small, and we never let them out of our sight. Now, they’re so much more independent but also potentially vulnerable and it’s terrifying. When they’re tiny, it’s easy to think we will be able to relax when they get bigger but we can’t. We have to be just at vigilant as ever, perhaps even more so. I had no idea how much at risk my children would be as they grew. I truly thought the early years would be the hardest but I was wrong.
For the life of me I can’t figure out why some men are like this. What happened to them to make them this way? It is not natural for men to target children, I don’t think. Is it a mental illness or something?
Thank you! I will definitely look into these. Have a blessed day.
They have been given over to reprobate minds, KAK. Read Romans 1.
Lori, I would like to get your insight on something.
What do you think about leaving older kids at home alone for several hours while dad and mom go on dates? I know parents that do this on a weekly/monthly basis. My husband thinks this is a great idea. I’m not really comfortable leaving our children alone for that long on a regular basis.(They are fifteen and ten years old) I think this can open the door for trouble. However, I don’t want to go against something my husband desires to do.
I read this article when it was published in No Greater Joy. Bark has a video published on their website that documents Sloan’s work. (Obviously NOT appropriate for children). It is eye-opening, terrifying, and absolutely made my skin crawl. We live in a dark world. Satan prowls around like a lion, seeking someone to devour. And he would love to destroy our children.
This is why we homeschool. Why we have no social media accounts. Why we have only a handful of a few trusted adults with whom we will leave out children. And why unsupervised computer, TV, or smartphone time will never be permitted in our home.
Trust your husbands decision on this, Tamara. This is my advice to you since you are commanded to submit to him.
Lori, much as I wish that the comment in your article was from a troll, I actually think that there’s a good chance that it wasn’t. I am in my thirties and grew up in a godly Christian home with a mom who stayed home and homeschooled me. A girl I was friends with in my high school years (also homeschooled) became rebellious against her family and their standards and convictions. I tried talking to her about the error of her thinking but she just kept going further humanist and godless in her thinking. I finally cut off the friendship when it became clear that she wasn’t changing her mind, however my mother still stayed in touch with her mother. That was many years ago, and my mom now has Facebook and my youngest sister and brother have been allowed to have one as well. This former friend found my youngest sisters’ Facebook through my mom’s account and has been really going after her trying to recruit her for all the far-left causes she has long supported. All of this to say, that there are those actively recruiting young and impressionable teens through their parents accounts online. I think it’s something parents need to be aware of. Thank you for your writing and your ministry – it is a help and encouragement to me.
Thank you.
Oh, I know that it is happening, NM, and it’s tragic. I just don’t know if the one who wrote this on my blog was the one actually doing it. Trolls (Satan’s agents) love to cause people to fear and will do everything they can to draw people away from the Lord and His ways. They are serving the wrong master and will suffer for it.
My kids are now almost 24 and 22. We only.allowed a flip phone until after high school graduation and if they wanted anything else at that time they had to pay for it. My daughter was/is rather naive partly because of being adopted at almost 13 from another country. She got herself into trouble on Instagram at age 21 (she looks closer to age 14) and my husband and I are so thankful to God we stumbled onto it as she was starting to be stalked and we are also thankful she wanted our help. In my opinion 13 or 14 or really any time in highschool is still way to young to navigate this evil world online.
Everyone needs to see that video, people don’t realize how good predators are at finding vulnerable children. Remember too, that although girls are the most frequent target, your boys are not safe either. Many times it’s not even reported because of shame, because they’re a boy they feel they shouldn’t be vulnerable so they don’t tell a parent. A blog I read posts links to articles about women (often teachers) convicted of raping underage boys, and the frequency is stomach-churning. Those are just the ones reported and gone to trial. The female abusers often get off with a slap on the wrist, it’s treated like a joke, or that the young boy is “lucky” to have been pressured into a sexual relationship with an older women. Homosexual men will also target young boys and teenagers. It’s a way of “recruiting” if they can get a boy at a formative age, they can twist his thinking for life. Two specific places I’ve read about were libraries, where there are quiet places to meet and little supervision, and community plays. In the case of theater, the boy was actually warned by an older man about going to after-parties, and the tactics they would use to pressure him into gay sex. In the case of the library, the boy was groomed and raped, and then later used the library as a meeting place as a teenager where he met with older men.