Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
"Why did a God of love order all the killings in the Old Testament?" It's important to understand because one's future life may be shadowed by unbelief and confusion. How can you love a God who orders killings, even of little children? We have only a short time to consider a problem that has filled lifetimes of scholarship. God help us:
We don't have two different "Gods" in the Old Testament and the New Testament, but we have two different ways of looking at one true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The dividing line comes at Mount Sinai, and those two different ways become the Old Covenant versus the New Covenant (Ex. 19:3-8). Two ways of looking at God!
Please note: there were no such "killings" before Mount Sinai--only the God of love revealed in His seven grand promises to Abraham and to his descendants (Gen. 12:2, 3). He promised to givethem "all the land which you see ... and to your descendents forever" (13:15). "The Lord your God," not their sword, will drive out the pagans before them (Deut. 4:36-39; 9:4-6). Like in His promises to Hezekiah to "drive out" the Assyrians, and to Jehoshaphat, "The battle is not yours, but God's. ... You will not need to fight ... stand still and see the salvation of the Lord" (2 Kings 19:20-35; 2 Chron. 20:15-17).
If Israel would believe the New Covenant promises of God, He would be able to send "the hornets" to drive out the Canaanites (Deut. 7:20). Sometimes (few!) the people temporarily believed and actually saw it happen (Joshua 24:12).
In Israel, "all the families of the earth [were to be] blessed," not killed (Gen. 12:3); only when pagan nations tried to destroy His people did God destroy them--in love to the world, for they were a curse that would corrupt the earth as in the days before the Flood.
Even today, confusion permeates the church over the Old and New Covenants. Is salvation by self-centered faith plus works of obedience? Or is it by heart-melting "faith which works by agape" (Gal. 5:6, King James Version) and itself produces obedience? And still today the Old Covenant followers "persecute" the New, as Paul told the Galatians (4:22-29). This is serious business!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: July 17, 2002.
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