17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted to the LORD. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent. 18 But keep away from the devoted things, so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you will make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. 19 All the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the LORD and must go into his treasury.”
20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
For most of my Christian life I have heard arguments both for and against war as a method by which God deals with nations on planet earth. It is clear he did that under the Old Covenant, but it seems there are many who choose, for whatever reason, to conclude He is not the same God under the New Covenant that He was in ancient times. First of all I think it is incumbent upon us to establish that one of His characteristics is that he is unchanging. 1 Samuel 15:29 tells us,
"Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind." Of course there are those who not only don't know God has a highly multifaceted personality, they also don't believe He functions with every single part of that personality in perfect balance at all times. Many picture God as a split personality, or a kind of a schizophrenic. Of course the facts as revealed in scripture reveal quite the opposite. At the very time God is pouring out His wrath on one nation, He is demonstrating His perfect love to those on whom He is not pouring out His wrath. When He was demonstrating His wrath on Egypt, He was at the same time demonstrating His love and care for His chosen nation, Israel.
"Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind." Of course there are those who not only don't know God has a highly multifaceted personality, they also don't believe He functions with every single part of that personality in perfect balance at all times. Many picture God as a split personality, or a kind of a schizophrenic. Of course the facts as revealed in scripture reveal quite the opposite. At the very time God is pouring out His wrath on one nation, He is demonstrating His perfect love to those on whom He is not pouring out His wrath. When He was demonstrating His wrath on Egypt, He was at the same time demonstrating His love and care for His chosen nation, Israel.
I quoted Joshua 16 above for the very purpose of demonstrating how He saved one harlot and all of her family at the very time He was destroying the nation from which she hailed. Her one, almost infinitesimal act of faith, saved her from His wrath. I believe there are basically three reasons the United States hasn't won a war since WWII: 1. we refuse to fight our enemies using a winning strategy; 2. our leaders have no will to win; 3. we believe war is moral.
One of the most basic things all winning nations apply to win wars is strategy. George Washington defeated the most powerful military in the world when he implemented what we now label terrorist tactics. It is also called guerilla warfare. Britain insisted right to the end that they march in columns, fire when told to do so, and never retreat. They even made sure their enemy knew they were coming by beating their drums in a vain attempt to intimidate them. The most powerful military in the world lost the Revolutionary War to a rag tag, unorganized, under armed group of American patriots, using guerilla warfare, picking them off from behind trees, rocks, logs, or anything that would conceal them.
Today, our leaders are so afraid of what the world will think of us that they refuse to use our superior fire power to annihilate our enemies and win the war with one frontal assault by destroying their ability to protect themselves. We place our highly trained and well armed soldiers in harm's way and tell them they can't fire at women, children, or anyone who has not clearly shown the imminent intent to kill them. The major problem with that scenario is that our enemy is using women and children to hide behind; and women and children are taking up arms and shooting at our soldiers when they are able to do so undetected. Our false sense of piety is literally getting way too many of our soldiers killed. We did the same thing in Vietnam, the Balkans, the first Gulf War, and to this day, we are doing no more than we absolutely have to do in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Libya to make it look like we are winning without looking like we are being inhumane. I am literally sick of hearing Americans suggest it is inhumane to kill our enemies. War is brutal; by its very nature it is immoral. That said, it is even more brutal and utterly nonsensical to fight it like a bunch of girls pulling each other's hair out because they don't want to appear too masculine by slugging each other in the face with closed fists. We are not the aggressors in this Middle-Eastern conflict. Our first priority, and we have made it clear to all of our enemies is peaceful co-existence.
Our recent killing of Usama bin Laden is an another excellent of what I mean when I speak of a false sense of piety. It has finally surfaced that our Navy Seals, arguably one of the most elite group of military personnel the world has ever known, went into another country flying in two stealth helicopters none of our allies or enemies even knew we had, landed one inside a multimillion dollar compound, dispatched several unarmed men and wounded at least one woman, brought our number one enemy back dead to one of our military ships, and then had to watch him receive a saints burial in strict accordance with his own religious beliefs. Then we have had to listen for days to left wing radical, socialist thugs in our own country suggest we should have captured him because he was unarmed. This liberal media has had the nerve to tell us it was murder to shoot an unarmed enemy of the United States who has directly ordered the mass murder of thousands of innocent, unarmed, non-military Americans. Then, as if that weren't enough, they have likewise suggested it would be barbaric to show pictures of his dead, lifeless, evil body to the world. Our leaders fail to understand that is the only kind of intimidation our enemies understand and fear.
Several biblical things come to mind when I read such foolishness and hear it spouted on television and radio: 1. God personally orchestrates everything that goes on on planet earth 24 hours of every day, 365 days of every year. He is not sitting idly by, watching what is happening trying, to devise a way to save us from total annihilation. He is a God of peace, but He is also a God of war. He sometimes told Israel to stand by and watch him destroy their enemies (II Kings19:35) ; and He sometimes told them to engage their enemies in battle and destroy them (II Sam. 5:19:25). In the aforementioned verses, God actually gave King David the strategy whereby he would defeat his enemies. 2. God used intimidation to scare the enemies of Israel (which made them His enemies by default). He had Samuel hew Agag to pieces with a sword (I Sam. 15:33). He had David line up the leaders of his enemies and chop off their heads ( ). 3. When going against an enemy sometimes innocent civilians get killed, but usually they aren't as innocent as we think. God knew one thing most today don't even consider; when the children of defeated enemies grow up they become the enemy. In most cases, the only people who were allowed to live when God sent His army against the enemy were single, virgin females. My conclusion about why that was so is that those single virgin females had the best chance of becoming brides of Israelis and thus adopting the God of Israel as their own.
In conclusion, it is important for those who think the God of love would have us love our political enemies into submission really should read the book of Revelation. In it, we discover the God of the New Covenant bringing the entire world to its knees in just seven short years. He destroys all vestige of man's pomp and pride, levels every city to the ground, levels all mountains, slays the beast and his false prophet, and annihilates the armies of the world in one hour. He all but totally destroys planet earth. He then returns and sets up His throne in Jerusalem from where He rules the earth for 1,000 years with a rod of iron. It really is an injustice to portray our God as a loving, benevolent, tender hearted, kind being without also pointing out he is a God of perfect justice, wrath, anger, jealously, and power. His love, separated from His justice would make him a weak, impotent god like Baal and the millions of false gods the pagans worship. It is an injustice to lost souls for us to present Him as anything but the Creator God who is going to judge all men, women, and children for their reaction to His provision for mankind's sin, His one and only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. and, most of all, it is an injustice to God for us to present Him as a paranoid schizophrenic or a split personality. He is a multifaceted being whose various personality traits are all functioning in perfect balance at all times. That's how His word describes Him, and any other presentation of Him is sorely lacking and in many cases just plain heresy.
