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!
Ehud's 18 Inch Dagger 