Idolatry. One of the problem passages she asked about is "Why does God order, I am a Christian and spend time talking with others often about God, but I have been speechless when they bring up the issue, for example, in I Samuel 15:1-3, Rick Wade served as a Probe research associate for 17 years. (2) Yahwehs command to kill the Canaanites was an act of divine genocide. So theeremlaws still apply, but in a spiritual sense rather than a physical sense. God had promised this land to their ancestor Abraham around 500 years earlier (Gen. 15:18-21), but it would be their responsibility, under the leadership of Joshua, to clear out the local inhabitants and take possession of the land. If you like what you're reading, you can get free daily updates through the RSS feed here. He points out 2023 Probe Ministries | Designed and Managed by Adquest Creative. Since Canaanite sin was regular and systematicthe entire adult population participated in the idolatrous systemGod judged the entire nation. Who is more qualified than the Creator to decide how long one lives? Similarly, the southern tribes (usually referred to as Judah) were deported when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem beginning in 586 BC. Then theres Sodom, God tells Abraham that because of the wickedness of Sodom He will destroy it. Rick Wade provides an expanded discussion of the issues around the Israelites battles against the Canaanites. When Jesus came, He shifted the battle to the spiritual realm; He fought spiritual powers and authorities. The Canaanites were the only people God commanded the Israelites to destroy Israel was not allowed to treat other nations as they treated the Canaanite cities. God was patient with the Canaanites Longman goes on to cite OT scholar Meredith Kline, who proposes a theory of intrusion ethics. Scripture tells us that the punishment for all sin is death (Gen. 2:17; Rom. Another observation is that the instruction is frequently to dispossess the Canaanites or move them out rather than to destroy them. 20:16-17). Rick Wade provides a biblically informed perspective of these Old Testament events, looking back at them with a Christian view of history and its significance. Gods enemies were dealt a crushing blow through Christs victory on the cross, but they will not finally be defeated until Christ returns to establish everlasting justice on earth. 20:1618), lest the Israelites learn the Canaanite ways (Exod. One should note that Joshuas commands in Deuteronomy 23 are given before the Israelites have completed their sweep through the land, so of course there are Canaanites there to marry. www.probe.org. Robert has written 111 articles on What Christians Want To Know! In regard to the Canaanites, God commanded, "In the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Bestiality. What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?Far be it from you to do such a thingto kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. 7:1-2). Dan. Because of that advance warning, it is possible that some people abandoned their cities. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. God is a God of . Why did God judge the Canaanites as wicked despite never appearing to them or giving them law? Though rebellion must be put down and rebels must be punished for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), God displays mercy for He is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). What about these people prompted such a harsh judgment? Tagged as: A biblical example of this would be Gods treatment of the city of Nineveh. (The Answer May Surprise You), It was merciful for God to protect the Israelites from idolatry. God did not just decide to command the Israelites to destroy all the inhabitants of Canaan simply because he promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit it; he commanded them to do it because the Canaanites were wicked, evil, sinful people. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 550. in communications (radio broadcasting) from Moody Bible Institute, an M.A. ", "How Can a Just God Order the Slaughter of Men, Women and Children? If He wanted to strike me dead right now, thats His prerogative (Reasonable Faith . Thanks for stopping by! Bible Based.We believe in solo-scriptura. Would 45 be ok? Abraham continues to bargain down to 10 righteous people. Copan, Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites. And how are Christians supposed to apply the erem laws today? Then they would simply abandon worship of the true God. However, the city repented, turned to God, and God did not judge them. When angels arrive, however, the men of the city try to rape them and not only does Lot not find anyone who will repent, Lot himself tarries so long that the angels take Lot and his family by the arms and all but drag them out of the city. Theeremlaws of the OT were an example of this intrusion. Canaan, because of its sin, was to be heremdevoted to destruction. The Bible is explicit concerning the sins of the Canaanites: idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality. Are We Held Accountable for the Sins of Our Forefathers? Although Abraham was Gods friend and the Lord wanted to give to him the land of Canaan for an inheritance. The problem with new atheist divine genocide claims is rather simple: God hates sin, but the new atheists do not.35 Consequently, they complain of divine genocide in the face of Canaanite sin! A Clear Christian Perspective, The Apologetics of Jesus: A Defense of His Deity, Bridging to Common Ground: Communicating Christ Across the Cultural Divide, How I Know Christianity Is True A Defense of the Gospel, Yahweh War and the Conquest of Canaan A Biblical Worldview Perspective, Personal Development/Relationships Emails, Trusting God on the Other Side of Bizarre, Cohfessions of a Missionary Addicted to Porn. Capital Punishment Reason 4 See also Leupold (1942, 463). He gets no pleasure in the death of anyone. A miracle child heralded by divine announcement, he grows up to become a one-man army against Israel's enemies. Skeptics have claimed that God was unjust when He ordained Israel to destroy the Canaanites. So the Lord said that Israel became like Sodom to me (Jer. This again reveals that Gods motive isnt genocide, but capital punishment. 10:6; 1 Kings 14:22; 2 Kings 17:10). 18:17 and 25:28. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as playing GodGod is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. 7:2-3. Rahab was later held up as an example of faithful obedience in the New Testament (Heb. For one thing, the Israelites would intermarry with them, and their spouses would bring their gods into the marriage with all that entailed. The Hebrew word means to devote something to total destruction.. Bring biblical wisdom to the confusing issues across the world by making a gift to our international work. [Ed. An obvious objection to the idea that God was judging the Canaanites is that it would be unfair for Him to do so if they had no opportunity to repent and be saved. He was keeping track of the measure of their sins, and, during Abraham's time, it was not yet "full." So the Amorites were warned that judgment was coming. note: please see Probes article Do Babies Go to Hell? by Probes founder Jimmy Williams.]. There had been a patient waiting from Abrahams time for the sin of the Amorites[to reach] its full measure (Toward Old Testament Ethics, Walter Kaiser, Jr., p, 267,Zondervan, 1983). Let us also remember that the problem with the Canaanite city of Sodom wasnt just sex among consenting adults: the men of Sodom, both young and old, tried to rape the visitors (Gen. 19:5). Christian Answers, [emailprotected]
Israel had a unique calling as Gods chosen covenant people. The most disturbing part of the conquest of Canaan for most people is the killing of children. Sue Bohlin reflects on how God has led her to trust Him through the trial of tongue cancer surgery. To answer these questions, we must understand the place of the erem laws in the history of redemption. Kyle Dillon (MDiv, Covenant Theological Seminary) serves as an assistant pastor at Riveroaks Reformed Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Tennessee. They were corrupt and depraved to the core. 33:11). Our enemies are the demonic forces that hold the world in captivity to sin, and our weapons are now prayer, preaching, and evangelism. And He said to Abraham, you and your children to the fourth generation must be patient too. 16:9; cf. For God does not show favoritism. In phase two, God fought against Israel when it broke its side of its covenant with God (cf. He can be reached at [emailprotected]. Read them in the archive below. Copyright 2010-2023 Telling Ministries LLC. No worldly government can exist unless it uses every necessary means to punish law breaking. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); IGRG: Did God Give The Canaanites aChance. Nevertheless, those that choose to reject Gods love will be lost (2 Peter 3:7). genocidal . Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity14 represented as an upright, bullheaded idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death. God destroys Sodom. That we commit similar sins today renders us incapable of appropriate moral outrage against these sins and thus we accuse God of genocide to justify our own sinfulness. 4:26; 7:4). 5. Of course Dawkins complains that Gods monumental rage whenever his chosen people flirted with a rival god resembles nothing so much as sexual jealousy of the worst kind.5 But does anyone think that if Dawkinss wife left him for a gingerbread man of her own baking, and then she began to tell everyone that he liked to play with his excrement, that Dawkins would tolerate the characterization of his feelings as no more than sexual jealously of the worst kind? However recently an atheist friend told me God was cruel and unloving and used examples from the old testament to prove it. Used by permission. Probably the ultimate sexual depravity is intercourse with animals. Why Your Church Needs Vacation Bible School, Gods Amazing Conversions Through Dreams and Visions Part Three, Gods Amazing Conversions Through Dreams and Visions Part Two, Ice Dragon: Legend of the Blue Daisies Movie Review, Phoenix Wilder And The Great Elephant Adventure Movie Review, The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island Movie Review. wars instituted by and fought with the, My eldest daughter and I have been discussing portions of the Bible with which she is struggling. all, and God plays fair with all peoples at all times, giving them equal chances for repentance and reformation. This document may not be repackaged in any form for sale or resale. Skeptics say if God is a God of love why did He bring destruction on certain nations of the world? And as a consequence, God used Israel to bring judgement upon them. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Longman writes: The war against the Canaanites was simply an earlier phase of the battle that comes to its climax on the cross and its completion at the final judgment. Help train Christians to boldly share the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that clearly communicates to this secular age. Abraham starts bargaining with God. The term genocide means a major action committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. {3} Some twentieth-century examples are the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis and the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda in 1994. God had warned them against that (Deut. A common attack today on Christianity has to do with the character of the God of the Old Testament{1}. Plano TX 75075
Jesus then warned, What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? In the worship of their gods, the Canaanites committed other evils. A book review of In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration by William Lane Craig (Eerdmans, 2021), Let Faith Oust Fact: A Review of The Whale, No Mindful Matter: The Explanatory Failure of Scientific Materialism, Una pregunta que los mormones no pueden responder, Connect with the Christian Research Institute. Imagine the teenage rebellion in those households! The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (around 2100 BC) came 600 years before Israel destroyed the Canaanite nation. Abraham decides to bargain again okay, okay but what about if Im 5 people short? Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, Article II, University of the West of England, at: www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/. Craig writes, For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. Additionally, some ANE manuscripts talk about party-boys and festival people who changed their masculinity into femininity to make the people of Ishtar revere her.17. God promised Abraham (Genesis 15), that his seed would inherit the land of Canaan. Also, this wasnt the entire destruction of a race as God didnt order that every Canaanite be killed but only those who lived within specific geographical boundaries (Josh. The modernistic notion that Melchizedek was merely the "high god" priest of the Canaanites (e.g., Baal), worshipped in pre-Israelite Jerusalem, is absurd (Hicks 1962, 343). Later when Israel disobeys God and allows the Canaanites to continue to live among them, the corruptive and seductive power of Canaanite sin results in the Canaanization of Israel.
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