By Rabbi Paul Kipnes

And God cries out:

Enough. STOP. KILLING. MY. CHILDREN!

Was MY message not clear enough in the Bible when my angel stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac on the altar on Mt. Moriah (Genesis 22:11-12)? Did you not understand, as generations of biblical scholars repeatedly tried to explain, that with those words in the Akedah (the binding of Isaac), I was being explicit: the practice of child sacrifice practiced by those surrounding you was an anathema to MY Creation?!

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” MY angel said. “Do not do anything to him.”

I know you love Me, I told Abraham. But this is NOT the way you show ME love.

Why do you allow yourselves to become so caught up in your country’s seemingly religious fervor which genuflects to the worship of weapons instead of heeding MY commandments to protect the lives of My children?

Week after week you allow MY children to be killed in their schools, in your supermarkets, and in MY churches, synagogues, and temple. Abraham acted quickly, heeding MY call to stop such actions; you however collectively throw up your hands, thus allowing your idol-worshipping neighbors to offer up MY children’s lives as an offering on the altar of their pietist pursuit of the right to bear arms.

I hear you spending so much time trying to discern  what I, God, want from you. Let Me be perfectly clear:

STOP. THE. KILLING. OF. MY. CHILDREN.

I no longer listen to your “thoughts and prayers” about this.

When the use of guns leads to regular killing of My children – whether they be in the classroom, the church can guard, or the community supermarket – and you do not act immediately and ceasingly –  them you have forsaken the lesson I taught to  Abraham.

I want you – and the leaders you elect – to unceasingly demand and create changes in plans and policy:

Be like Shirah and Puah, the midwives in Egypt, who defied the seemingly all powerful Pharaoh, placing the safety of MY children above their own safety.

Be like Tamar, who faced the ridicule and mortal endangerment, strategizing and then ensuring that Judah provided her child with the support and safety needed to survive.

And be like Noah who saved the World by saving the animals two by two (see below).

It’s time for you – gun haters and gun owners alike –  to make a break with your American civil religious deification of the right to bear arms, and rise up unceasingly to demand that My children are safe everywhere at all times from the scourge of this misguided and hateful sacrificial cult.

Protect MY children.

You are all MY children.