I recently visited the Mexican city of Cholula. In the US, we know it as the place where we get bottles of hot sauce for our food. It is also famous because of its Aztec ruins.

I visited those ruins, which include an altar where archaeologists believe children were sacrificed because of some small skulls found near it. There was a drought, and the Aztec priests believed that after death, the children sacrificed could convince the god responsible for the rain to send showers to relieve the people.

This happened around 600 years ago, but even thinking about it brings to mind images so horrible that we might conclude the experts have misinterpreted the evidence. Surely, people could not do such things.

But the OT says that other nations have done such evil. Verses such as Lev 18:21, 20:3, Deut 12:30-31, and 18:10 warn Israel not to sacrifice their children to false gods as the pagans do. Jeremiah 32:35 shows that some of God’s chosen people did not heed the warnings, but did what the Aztecs did at Cholula.

But that is ancient history. It is very easy to conclude that such evil practices could never take place today. But in Rom 1:28, Paul speaks of men’s depraved minds. They choose what is evil, and God gives them over to it. They do those things that “are not fitting.” The phrase means that they do things that should not be done. These things are not proper. They make no sense. The events at that altar in Cholula and the description found in Jer 32:35 would accurately describe practices that are “not fitting.”

Paul is not describing mankind as it existed centuries ago. He is stating a universal fact. What the Jews did in Jeremiah’s day and what the Aztecs did at Cholula could happen today. In fact, it does. We have all heard the stories of WWII and seen videos of how evil men sacrificed children because of their depraved thoughts. In our day, there are reports of hundreds of thousands of children who have gone missing after crossing the border into our country. Nobody knows where they went. What happened to them? We want to push those thoughts from our minds.

Maybe we don’t want to admit that the atrocious actions of the priests at that altar in Cholula still occur in our world. We live insulated lives that enable us to pretend such things don’t exist. But Paul’s description is an accurate one.

There is tribulation coming on the world in which evil will show its ugly face in all its depravity. Nobody will be able to ignore what is happening. The church will not be on the earth then, so if you have believed in Jesus for eternal life, you won’t see those things. But we should not be fooled. Depravity, which is not fitting, has always existed in our world and still does. It is not hard for us to observe the debased actions of men and women all around us.

There is only one solution. The King of Righteousness will come and put an end to all evil. Even if we are fortunate enough to live our lives without being impacted severely by the most extreme examples of the depravity around us, we should want it to end once and for all. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).