Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
recently I visited the website of CARM (
Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry), to search for interesting, new theological insights. As usual, some articles were demonic and reprehensible, while others were Godly and brimming with Biblical Truth.
However,
one in particular caught my attention:
Quote:
(Deuteronomy 2:33-34) - "And the Lord our God delivered him over to us; and we defeated him with his sons and all his people. 34So we captured all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, women and children of every city. We left no survivor."
The command by God to kill all inside a city is seen by many to be immoral and a demonstration that the Bible is not true. But, we must examine the issue in light of its context, its biblical context, not in light of present day, non-Christian assumptions. If we want to see if it is moral or not, we must know which morals are in question.
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What the author of this article forgets to mention that the assumption that "because God does something which would be "evil," He therefore can't exist" is a fallacy, as God's existence is, in principle, independant from His Moral Behavior.
But for the rest, I agree with the author here. Of course, when you apply modern "morals" to the Bible, the Bible becomes reprehensible; but then we forget that modern "morals" are result of humanistic "enlightened" thinking, specifically designed to mock God's Word.
That's why evil doctrines like the demonic Geneva Convention are so completely opposed to Biblical Morality: they are the product of a culture which desires to mock God, and one example is the condemnation of genocide as an evil thing. God doesn't think it is evil, so neither do I. To explain this, let's read further:
Quote:
First of all, the context of this verse is dealing with the wickedness of the Amorite king Sihon of Hesbon, a city of the Amorites (Num. 21:25). They were a wicked people (Gen. 15:16; 2 Kings 21:11). When the Israelites wanted to pass through their land during their exodus from Egypt, the Amorites refused them safe passage and attacked the Israelites. However, they were soundly defeated by Israel (Num. 21:21-31). It is in this context that God delivered them over to the Israelites; that is, in the context of the battle.
Why would the decision of the Amorites be so serious to God that He would have all their people wiped out? The answer is simple. God tells the Israelites why the people were destroyed. It was because of the wickedness of the Amorite people."It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," (Deut. 9:5).
God has declared that the Amorite people deserved to die because of their sins. They remained unrepentant (unlike Nineveh) and the righteous wrath of God fell upon them via the Israelites. Since all are sinners, all deserve to die. They were no exception. Nevertheless, God is merciful by allowing them to live. In the case of the Amorites, God was gracious to them by letting them live and enjoy life with its generic blessings from God (provision of rain, sun, water, etc.), while He encouraged them to repent of their sins. They refused to turn from their immorality and were finally wiped out.
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The author does really well here, in describing the Patience and Mercy of the Lord. You see, God doesn't order genocide without reason: the Amorites got it coming. The Amorites committed the Sin of not worshiping Yahweh, while it was Yahweh who provided them with rain and water, and who created the sun on Day 4 of Creation.
And as the author rightly remarks, all deserve to die:
Romans 3:23:
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God
Romans 6:23:
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Note that God doesn't exclude anybody here. Many fluffy-bunny liberal Christians like to believe that babies and little children are innocent and have not sinned, but the Bible doesn't support this ridiculous assertion anywhere. So, everyone on this planet deserves death, also the babies, little children, unborn babies and mentally disabled people.
But here both is the crown jewel of this great article, as well as the point I disagree strongest with:
Quote:
Also, the death of a child might be a very merciful thing because had the child grown up in the sin of the Amorite culture, it would surely have suffered the eternal wrath of God. If the "age of accountability" notion is correct, then God delivered them into His hands and it is possible that by this they were spared eternal damnation.
The final and most important reason for their destruction is that God needed to keep the messianic line pure so that Jesus could be born and thereby redeem His people so that believers could go to heaven. Without Jesus' sacrifice, all would be damned. If the Amorites were allowed to live, surely they would have influence the Jewish nation in a harmful way thereby threatening the arrival of the Messiah. Therefore, God in His righteous judgment executed judgment upon them.
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First of all, the notion of the "age of accountability" (which says that little children or retards are sinless) is heresy, plain and simple. Scripture never supports such a notion, and even contradicts it:
Psalm 51:5:
Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Psalm 58:3:
The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
However, the truth is that these children wouldn't have a happy life, as they would grow up in the sin of the Amorites. So, by slaughtering them, they are spared a life full of sin, pain and unhappiness, so that only an Afterlife of sin, pain and unhappiness remains. Truly, Our Lord is merciful in ordering the genocide of these people. Praise Jesus!
The second part is probably even more important here. The Amorites no doubt would have had a bad influence on the Israelites, and cause them to worship idols, and their seed would intermingle with the seed of Israel, which is prohibited by the Law:
Deuteronomy 7:1-3:
When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:
Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.
God had decided that the Israelite race was above all others, because the Messiah would be born in the race of the Israelites:
Deuteronomy 10:15:
Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.
Therefore, to prevent future contamination of both the seed of Israel and the minds of the Israelites, the genocide on the Amorites was necessary. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a Jesus, and all of us would burn in Hell! Isn't allowing the birth of the Messiah the noblest purpose man can think of? Of course this justifies genocide.
Note that, if you were a True Christian™, you wouldn't have doubted the righteousness of this genocide in the first place, as God is Love (1 John 4:8), which justifies it. I am mainly addressing the hypocritical false Christians, who cherry-pick the nice parts of the Bible and ignore the harsher parts, to make the Bible agree with their "enlightened" humanistic worldviews. I hope I have clearly shown that this position is untenable.
I would like to conclude by praising God for His Love and His Justice, like Jeremiah did:
Jeremiah 32:18:
Thou shewest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the Great, the Mighty God, the LORD of hosts, is his name.
Yours in Christ,
True Disciple