Destroy them!

We live in an age where it does not matter what you do now.  If, twenty or thirty years ago you did something wrong, you are still condemned.  You are derided as useless, fit for the garbage heap and a hypocrite.  

Let us look how the God of the Bible handles mistakes. 

#  Abraham is the ancestor of the Jews.  According to the standards of our day he deserves to be denounced because he selfishly put his wife in a predicament with  foreign leaders on two occasions.  He should be dismantled and removed from his position.  Well, not if God has a say.   The Lord called him ‘Abraham my friend.’  Isaiah 41:8

#  God sent Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  He had fled Egypt 40 years before because he murdered an Egyptian.  In our time he would be shouted down, ‘You murderer!  Out!  We will not listen to you!’  Yet God used Moses to lead His people out of Egypt.  Moses was the leader of the Israelites for 40 years and wrote the first 5 books of the Old Testament. 

#  King David took the wife of one of his trusted supporters.  Later he caused her husband, Uriah, to be killed in war.  In our time he would be derided as a scoundrel and his history should be expunged from the Bible.  Yet God forgave him when he confessed his sins and said about him,  ‘I have found David, son of Jesse a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’  Acts 13:22b  

#  Saul was an educated, devout Jew and Pharisee.  He made it his business to persecute, arrest and even have those who believed in Jesus, killed.  If he lived in our time, he would surely be shouted down as, ‘Persecutor of Christians!  Unfit to live!  Traitor!’  Yet God stopped him in his madness, made him the apostle Paul and gave him back some of his own medicine.  God personally taught him the hidden treasures of His Gospel plan.  Paul wrote 13 of the letters to congregations in the New Testament.   

#  Jesus warned His disciple, Peter, that he would betray Him three times during the Lord’s trial.  Peter did exactly that.  If he lived today, people would denounce him and ‘send him straight to hell.’   What did Jesus do?  He gave Peter the opportunity to repeat three times that he loved him.  The Lord Jesus told Peter, ‘Feed my sheep.…  Follow me!’  John 21:15-29 

Maybe we should learn from God.  We live in a world where people search for the ‘dirty laundry’ of others and parade it for all to see.  Who cares if that person changed?  As long as he can be humiliated and degraded (tear down his monument).  Who cares that Jesus teaches mercy and said, ‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged.’  Matthew 7:1  

The lesson

We will all appear before God to give an account of what we did while on earth.  That means all people, not just some.  Maybe it is wise to leave judgement to God. 

Kill them all! Part 4, the Midianites

In Part 4 we discuss the Midianites (part 1, part 2, and part 3). God commanded Moses to take vengeance on them for the Israelites.¹  This particular group of Midianites led the Israelites into immorality. ²  They don’t represent all the Midianites because Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite, and it would be inconceivable for Moses to act against his father-in-law. ³

When the Israelites went up to capture Canaan (Israel), Balak, king of the Moabites, plotted with the Midianites to get rid of the Israelites. ⁴  They failed, but the prophet, Balaam, advised the Midianites to entice the Israelites to immorality. God was so angry that a plague killed 24,000 Israelites. ⁵  That is when God said, ‘Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor….’  ⁶

In Numbers 31:1 God tells Moses, ‘Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites….’

The following verses give the record:

• ‘They [Israelites] fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man.’ ⁷
• Moses was angry because they did not kill the women, and gave the command, ‘Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man.’  ⁸

The enemies of God immediately assume that all the Midianites were killed, but were they?  In Judges 6 (40-50 years later) we meet them again: ‘Because the power of the Midianites were so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other easten peoples invaded the country…. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.’ ⁹ 

So after the command to take vengeance on the Midianites, they were oppressing the Israelites: ‘The Midianites, the Amalekites and all the other eastern people had settled in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand of the seashore.’  ¹⁰  It is only after the victory of Gideon that they disappeared from history. They may have intermarried with the Ishmaelites, since there is no record of the annihilation of women and children.

If the Midianites were totally destroyed by the Israelites in Moses’ time, why were there so many of them in the time of Gideon? Later we will discuss why Moses commanded that the boys and married women had to be killed.

We have discussed the three main events which supposedly prove that God is a Cosmic Tyrant who has no love for people.  In the following blogs we will discuss some aspects of God’s vengeance on those enemies of Israel. The main issue is whether there is more than meets the eye? Did the Holy Spirit communicate more than we understand from a superficial reading of Scripture?

References

1. Numbers 31:1.
2. Numbers 25:9.
3. Numbers 10:29.
4. Numbers 22:4,7
5. Numbers 25:6-18
6. Numbers 25:16-18
7. Numbers 31:7
8. Numbers 31:17
9. Judges 6:2-3,6
10. Judges 7:12

Christian Bale and Moses

Christian Bale is the actor who plays the role of Moses in the film, Exodus: Of Gods and Kings. He said about Moses:

• ‘I think the man (Moses) was likely schizophrenic¹ and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life.’ 
• ‘He [Moses] was a very troubled, tumultuous² man and mercurial.³ But the biggest surprise was the nature of God. He was equally very mercurial.’

He based his pronouncements on so-called ‘significant research’ which included the Torah, the Koran and Jonathan Kirsch’s, ‘Moses, A Life.’ Bale said he was surprised by the complexity of the figure – and his creator ⁴  The words that Bale uses to describe Moses and God gives one an idea of his theological insight: not much.

Why don’t Christians kill him, or burn down his house because of his insults?

Let’s imagine that we have a holy command to stone Bale. Would that be part of God’s plan? No, the God of the Bible has a better plan than violent retaliation.

• God made man, and even though many doubt it, He loves people, and wants them to be with Him eternally, ‘…[God] wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.’ ⁵
• God’s plan in Jesus is brilliant.  Jesus, the Redeemer said, ‘For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.’  ⁶
• Dead people don’t read the Bible, or hear about it, so that they can be convinced by the Holy Spirit to change lanes and join God’s Kingdom. No harm must come to Christian Bale from any real Christian. His life cannot be terminated by man. He must have the opportunity to decide about Jesus and the Kingdom.

Does Christian Bale just go scot-free?

Does the fact that God gives a person time on earth to come to his senses, mean that nothing will ever happen to those who ridicule God and His people?  No, they will give an account later, on Judgment Day: ‘The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.’ ⁷

Why does God wait so long?

While alive, all people have the right to choose either for or against God’s Kingdom. This means:

• No unbeliever is to be threatened by any Christian, because at the Great White Throne Judgment all people’s motives and attitudes will be exposed and judged.
• All people who ever lived, will appear before God to give an account of what they did while alive. Scripture will be the ‘Constitution,’ the measurement of a person’s deeds – for or against God?
• Christian Bale will also be there. The books will testify whether he has changed his life to love God, or not. The consequences will be entirely his own free choice.

Summary

We see the brilliance of God’s plan. There is no need for Christians to judge people outside the church, kill them, or burn down their facilities. God is the Judge, and He has appointed a time for justice at the final Judgement.

References

1. Schizophrenic – a long term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion and behaviour.
2. Tumultuous – excited, confused or disorderly
3. Mercurial – subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind
4. The Guardian, Monday, 27 October, 2014
5. 1 Timothy 2:4
6. John 12:47b
7. Revelation 20:12c