When 1.8 billion dollars, 2 million likes, and a photo campaign of very young children holding teddy bears wearing sexual bondage gear hits the presses, people in the modeling industry pretend to be surprised. 

Balenciaga’s photo campaign of young children holding sado-masochistic teddy bears, the set carefully displaying court documents legalizing child pedophilia and books filled with child pornography is par for the course for people like the Kardashians, who revel in flaunting their bodies wrapped in caution tape promoting the brand. But what does “Balenciaga” even mean?

I can glance at their images on Facebook and tell you exactly what it means, but most people can’t. As a nation, our laws have abandoned our children to idol worship. As they scroll, they are taught to worship themselves: they are the gods of this age, who choose their own gender; worship images of the Kardashians; cut their bodies into an image they design. They worship image. The image of man.

One of Balenciaga’s sick photo shoots shows an innocent child standing next to a roll of caution tape (which the plus-size star Lizzo wrapped herself in for the cover of Vogue). But (oops!) the tape in the photo with the child reads: BAALenciaga. In Latin, this means “Baal is the King.”

Baal represents many dieties and is the chief enemy of the God of Israel. If you know your Old Testament, you know his goal is for people to worship anything other than the God of the Bible.  As Rabbi Jonathan Cahn explains in The Return of the Gods:

He was the god who separated Israel from its God, who drew it away, who made it forget the God of its foundation. His mission was to take a nation that had known and been consecrated to God and turn it away from God (p. 42).

In a nation that once printed summations of Sunday sermons in its newspapers, where teachers once led their students in prayer, where magazines once upheld Christian values, Baal is back. We invited him in when America removed prayer from its public schools in the 1960s and banned the instruction of God’s Word to children in 1980.

Since children represent the future, if he could take hold of America’s children, he could take hold of America. So by removing prayer and the Word from the education of America’s children, he was weakening the transmission of faith to the next generation. The mission of Baal is to cause a nation that has known God to stop knowing Him and then to forget Him, and then to forget that it ever knew Him (p. 43-44).

In light of this, how can we teach kids to see through the messages of media for what they really are?

1. Share the gospel–because it is the Holy Spirit living inside of a person that gives them spiritual eyes to recognize deceit when they see it.
2. Teach the truths of God’s Word–the gods of Israel promoted child sacrifice, the feminization of men, and the destruction of the family. Teach them to recognize the activity of ancient deities that lead to the destruction of a nation.
3. Expose evil–as Paul writes, we are to take no part in the works of darkness, but expose them. (Ephesians 5:11)
4. Separate yourself from brands that promote the sexualization of children and support companies that take a stand against it (Romans 12:9).

When Christians refuse to take a stand against evil, they empower it. And worse, they fail to teach their children how to war against the principalities that rule this world (Ephesian 6:12).

And when preachers do not address the turning away from God in our nation and pick and choose preaching topics according to how palatable they are, we produce lukewarm believers who cannot stand up and call out evil.

I know I’m not going to be popular for it; popularity is not my goal. My goal is to teach young people how to discern truth from lies.

All of our books and studies teach girls how to see beyond the surface of media images and help them know the protective love Jesus has for them, the value of their bodies and dignity of their sexuality. Our warfare is not against the Kardashians or the designers or even the pedophiles who parade child models like commodities. Our battle is against the forces of darkness. We fight on behalf of the kingdom, which belongs to the children.

To turn a blind eye and continue supporting companies that obviously expose children is wrong. To let Nordstrom know that you will not shop there until they drop this designer, click here.

Sincerely,

Jen