A Blessing Through Killing The Wicked

A Blessing Through Killing The Wicked

        The Word of the LORD:

“And Moses stood at the camp’s entrance and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites gathered around him. ²⁷ He told them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Every man fasten his sword to his side; go back and forth through the camp from entrance to entrance, and each of you kill his brother, his friend, and his neighbor.’”²⁸ The Levites did as Moses commanded, and about 3,000 men fell dead that day among the people.²⁹ Afterward Moses said, “Today you have been dedicated^[f] to the Lord, since each man went against his son and his brother. Therefore you have brought a blessing on yourselves today.” Exodus 32:26-29

        The Bible is against murder, but not killing. Killing can be done for various justifiable reasons whereas murder is unjustified and wrong. There is a difference. Any Christian who claims it is wrong to kill or soldiers are sinning because they kill enemies, or capital punishment is wrong because it murders criminals and life in prison is righteous, are not very intelligent or knowledgeable about what God’s Word says. Ecclesiastes 3:3 states that there is “a time to kill.” God commanded the Israelites all over the Old Testament to kill the wicked and commit mass genocide of wicked nations who were under God’s judgment. There were many wars fought with Israel against wicked nations. War then is much the same as it is now, except we do not literally have God commanding battles. Humanity is left on its own to figure it out. The problem is humanity is mostly sinful and the wars they start are for sinful causes. Even so, within this context there are righteous defenses to madmen. WW2 is one example of a righteous cause, a cause to fight the evils of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany led by madmen who wanted world domination and wanted to grasp it through murder and mayhem and the slaughter of innocent people. To allow such atrocities to occur and not stand up for it is insane. Hardly any normal person would claim it would have been better to let Germany and Japan do what they wanted and we should not have defended against them. All through history wars have been fought. Some wars have 2 sides who are both evil fighting each other much like what was described in the Old Testament where wicked nations fought other wicked nations such as described in Genesis 14.

        The key to being on the right side of any war is knowledge of the Bible and God’s standards of what is good. Obviously, if someone today wanted to fight the Islamic State most Americans would say that I.S. is an evil entity (whether or not one would think we should send troops or not). Being against them is righteous. Also, killing them is also righteous. Going to battle against I.S. and killing them is how you can stop them. In WW2 the Allies won the wars by going into battle and killing as many NAZIs and as many Imperialists on both the Western and pacific fronts. That is how you win wars. One side says, “we want to do this and will kill you to get it,” and the other says, “no you won’t because we will stop you and defend ourselves and kill you.” That is war. To win and to allow a better world to survive you must kill the enemy and as many as you can before have the advantage ot win so that they will surrender.

        It can be said killing is morally permissable also for capital punishment. Laws in the Bible over and over demanded the death of certain people who broke certain laws. Some laws were not punishable by death, but many were. Capital punishment is promoted by the LORD all over the Old Testament as well as supported by the New Testament when Paul states that “if you do wrong, be afraid, for [the government rulers] does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Certain grievous sins deserve the death penalty. Wasting time on people serving life sentences is a waste of resources. God does not teach that we should provide life imprisonment for murderers or rapists, but they they should be put to death.

     God told Moses to command the Levites to kill everyone they could going forward to the other side of the camp, and then back to the first side of the camp. It was a forward and back clean sweep of everyone including their own family members and neighbors. God demanded the death for the horrible sin of idolatry right after God had rescued the Hebrews from Egypt. Moses stated that the Levites received blessing from God because of the act of killing approximately 3,000 people in 1 day. God demanded the execution of the wicked and it was just, because God commanded it, and they were under his righteous judgment. Sometimes it really is correct to kill people and God will bless those who do it.

        I believe God blessed America and the Allies in all the the killing of enemies in WW2 and provided a temporary time of prosperity for America. But like the Israelites America has become lazy, stiff necked, immoral, and idolatrous. America will not last much longer at the rate things are going.

        The only time killing is justified is if it is commanded by God, which today God is not physically present and audibly commanding things. God’s Word is how we receive God’s commandments. Any execution and any war fought needs to line up with Scripture. A soldier is under the command of his government and sent off to battle, they are not held accountable for killing enemies in battle. On the other hand, unjustified death such as mass genocide of innocent people is sinful. The only mass genocide commanded by God was in the Old Testament because the nations were under his judgment, not one person was innocent in those nations and God had deemed that it was their time to go. It was a specific time in Israel’s history for their nation and society alone. It is not a command by God to kill everyone who is in a false religion. God is perfect and absolutely holy. He is a righteous judge and allowed to make decisions on who lives and who dies. Nobody else! No one else in the Old Testament made these judgments, but simply followed orders from God who literally was there telling them what to do. Through Christ, now days we understand that vengeance is God’s and not ours, so we spread the Gospel. But when we are attacked by evil forces, or our family is in danger by criminals we are very justified in defending ourselves even to the point of killing a criminal or attacker, as well as justified in sending soldiers to war to face enemies and hopefully killing them. I believe today the truest evil in the world we are threatened with are the radical Islamists, the Islamic terrorists, who are torturing, raping, murdering, at an unbelievable rate everyone who does not perfectly fit their ideology. These enemies are named the Islamic State and Al Qaeda (including all their affiliates).  I believe it is morally justified to kill as many of them as we can before they kill all of us. And believe me they will kill as many Americans as they can if they get here. Our government has a God given obligation to protect us and defeat such types of enemies. Sending soldiers to battle is the right thing to do, yet our President does not care. The time to kill is now!

Who Was Cain Afraid Would Kill Him?

Who Was Cain Afraid Would Kill Him?

        Cain was cursed by God because he murdered his brother Abel. When God questioned him about the murder He condemned Cain to life as a wanderer in the wilderness. The ground would no longer yield its crops for Cain to survive with sustenance. His previous skills as an agriculturalist would no longer work for him as the ground would always fail his crops because of God’s supernatural punishment making it impossible for Cain to have any success growing food. Cain most likely had to rely on others growing food and also hunting animals, or foraging wild plants he did not plant himself. Cain was afraid of this punishment and claimed it was too harsh because anyone who found him wandering around the wilderness would want to kill him since he murdered his brother. This excuse seems illogical since if the sole reason people would want to kill Cain was that he murdered his brother, how would it be any different if he had a farm and grew crops and stayed in one place? Wouldn’t people still want to kill him, and to find him easier in order to kill him since he is not wandering around? Wandering around would keep him out of people’s way and make it harder for people to find him if he is evasive enough. But Cain mentions that he would be banished from God’s presence. So Cain understood that in God’s presence there is protection. People who are not in the presence of God do not have God’s protection. Cain was banished away from a relationship with God. Even so, Cain was just making an excuse about his punishment and was the world’s first murderer.

        With Cain’s grievance, he made the claim people would want to kill him. He understood that people would want vengeance, and since he had the ability to kill someone, other people had the ability to kill as well. Since Abel had the ability to die by violence, Cain understood he had the ability to die by violence from someone else since he was human just as his brother. Cain had fear that there were other people who would kill him. Who were these people that Cain was afraid would kill him? This section of Scripture can be found in Genesis 4:13-14 where Cain mentions his fear of being killed. After reading this passage one would wonder who Cain could possibly be talking about since all that the Bible mentions are Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel existing and does not mention other people. So who was he afraid would kill him? There are a few options of who they could be.

        The only people that this part of the Bible mentions being alive were Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel (until he was murdered). No other children are mentioned until the next chapter when it talks about the line of Cain, and also Adam through Seth. It is possible that Adam had some daughters during this time that were alive during Abel’s death. Genesis 4:3 says “In the course of time” when referring to the grievance that Cain had which enraged him to murder. This was the time when Cain and Abel both offered sacrifices and God rejected Cain’s offering of crops. So after Cain and Abel were born there was a passing of some time. Genesis is not clear on how long this time was, but it had to be enough for Cain and Abel to be grown up and mature. During the course of time it is possible Adam and Eve had daughters and Cain may have taken one to be his wife and had children by this time, and it is plausible, by the time he murdered Cain, these children were old enough to be able to understand what Cain did and also had the ability to kill him. It is also possible that Cain’s sisters (Adam and Eve’s daughters) would try to kill him as well. Women do have the ability to kill men, it is not impossible.

        When reading Scripture it shows that it was unlikely Abel had a wife and children, since there is no mention of his line. It is also apparent that Adam and Eve did not have any other sons until after Abel was murdered. So Abel could not have had any descendants who would want to kill Cain. Only after Abel’s death does it mention Adam knowing his wife intimately again and bearing a son who was named Seth. One would assume a husband and wife would have had plenty of time to have sex various times; so it seems odd it took so long for Adam to have sex with Eve again to birth Seth. No witnesses exist today who were there, so we cannot say Adam and Eve had sex or did not have sex until that length of time. But it is possible they did not. But what is more likely is that Adam and Eve did have abundant sex and most likely bore daughters or figured out some primitive method of birth control. If Adam and Eve did bear daughters, Cain could have had one as his wife, before he murdered Abel, and had children that would be upset he murdered their uncle.

        It is obviously though that Seth was born after the death of Abel and not before since it mentions in Genesis 4:25 that Seth replaced Abel. The passage of Seth’s birth was not isolated outside of chronological order. In some instances throughout the Bible passages are not in chronological order; but in the case of this story in Genesis it is obviously in chronological order that Seth was born after Abel died since it explicitly states that Seth replaced Abel who died previously.

        Another possibility is that Cain was thinking about the future that there will be more people born eventually who might grow up to kill him. He could have assumed Adam and Eve his, own parents, would kill him; or that they would have another son who would try and kill him eventually. Humans lived several hundred years during this time, and no one had died of natural causes or old age yet, so Cain probably did not think about dying himself except by a violent act, since the only death he knew about was the one he committed on his brother. So it is plausible Cain was preparing for the future that someone at some point would kill him.

       An even more plausible explanation of who would kill Cain is that Cain had had children before he murdered Abel, and for some reason Abel did not take a wife. Abel was younger than Cain. Some scholars claim Cain and Abel were twins, but there is no factual evidence to prove this. The only evidence would be that they are mentioned one after another without a mention of time passing. If Cain and Abel were twins they would be sexually mature at the same time and most likely both have wives around the same time. Why would Abel wait? But if Abel was much younger than Cain it makes more sense. It would be understandable how easy it would be for Cain to murder him without much of a fight if he was younger and smaller. Also it would explain why Abel did not take a wife yet. Cain was older and was sexually mature before Abel. Abel could have been too busy worshiping God instead of thinking about romance. Cain on the other hand had a very different personality and could have been preoccupied with romance and took a wife. To populate the earth Cain had to have one of his sisters as a wife. Incest did not exist and was not called sin yet since the genetic lines were so pure, and this was the only possible way to populate the earth. Only later was incest mentioned as a sin in the Old Testament by God, and for good reason, since it is a fact that incestual relationships cause many deformities and mental illnesses. Within a few generations the ability to marry more distant relatives was available until family ties were so far apart that it was easy to find someone not related in the sense of our idea of relatives today. This ability could have happened within a very few generations.

        The best explanation of why Cain feared people would kill him is that he had taken a wife, had children (since Genesis 4:17-22 does not state when exactly Cain had sexual relations with his wife, it could have been before he murdered Abel) who were old enough to understand he murdered his brother, and word would spread to everyone including future generations who would hunt Cain down and kill him eventually. He could have had sisters currently alive who would want to kill him, as well as fearing his own parents might want to kill him. Who knows what Cain’s irrational and selfish mind would assume. Also, no one was immune to sin especially his own parents who were the first sinners. He could have also been thinking that Adam and Eve would have more sons and daughters who would grow up and also possibly kill Cain. God prevented this from happening by declaring that if anyone would kill him, they would be punished seven times over. God then put a mark on Cain to signify that by God’s command Himself, no one is to harm Cain at all, or suffer that fate. This mark on Cain was some visible marking on his physical body. It could have been a special design somewhere people could see easily. Probably his face. Whatever that sign looked like the people of the time knew exactly what it meant. So Cain was not murdered and died eventually most likely by a natural cause. This was an act of God’s common mercy on all people, both wicked and righteous.