Christians..Assuming you lived back then...?

Question

Numbers 31:17 - Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.18 - But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Would you liked to have been the person who sliced up kids with swords? Or would you have just liked to be the one who held the little child still while your buddy shoved a sword in his stomach in front of his mother or vice versa?

There could only have been so many designated virgin checkers, so you would have had to be a hacker or a holder more than likely.

What would you have done? This was God's command, you couldn't have opted out..I would have hated to have seen the penalty if you failed to do God's command.

A follow up question..What would you do today if your God gave you the command to kill everyone in your neighboring city? I don't want to hear that "he wouldn't do that", because he has done it before and supposedly God is immutable.

There are many more examples of God commanding people to wipe out multitudes of people, including entire towns.
1 Samuel 15:2-3
Leviticus 32:27
and many more.

I am not asking you to try to apologize for your God ordering this. You won't be able to do it with me because i know that God foreknew these events would take place and ran the plan anyways. And to tell me that God created an entire civilization of people that was so bad that they did all these horrible things to the extent that their children deserved to die horrible deaths.. yeah OK.

Anyways.. That's not my point in this question.

I am asking you what you would have done, or would you do, if God commanded you to do what he command his followers to do in these verses.

Answer 1

I'd do it. He'd only ask me if it was for a good reason.

Answer 2

This is one of the hardest commands in the Old Testament for us to understand (Christian or not). Moses commanded the Israelites: “You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.” This order must be understood within the context of Israel’s call to holiness and the ban (cherem) on the Canaanites.

Why Israel had to totally destroy the Canaanites:

1) The Canaanite civilization was a grossly wicked one and has earned the wrath of God (Deut. 9: 4). In exterminating the Canaanites and wiping out every trace of their awful religions, Israel was acting primarily as God’s agents of retributive justice.

2) Pluralism and tolerance of other religions at this stage of Israel’s national development would be fatal to Israel itself.
If allowed to continue, the Canaanites would be a ‘snare’ to the Israelites. Devotion to Yahweh will admit no compromise, no contamination or corruption of any kind.

3) Failure to obey God’s command to destroy Canaanite
civilization would jeopardize the success of the conquest of
Canaan by putting them in the position of the Canaanites –
subject to destruction. An example of this principle of Holy War is the story of Achan, who kept some booty from Jericho and hence defiled himself and his family. To purge the curse from the army of Israel, Achan and his family had to be destroyed.

4) The harsh command to destroy a whole civilization came only once in Israel’s history, when Israel’s future tenure in the land and spiritual progress were at stake. Israel’s war was not a war against individual Canaanites per se, but a war against the pagan civilization of Canaan.

Will God command us today to exterminate a Canaanite-ish nation? The answer is "No." The Church Age has been innaugurated almost 2,000 years ago. The Church has a mission to "Go and make disciples of all nations" - not to kill them.

Answer 3

That was a war against the Midianites. The Lord declared a holy war against the Midianites as one of Moses' last actions before the end of his life. The war was the Lord's vengeance for the Midianites' part in seducing the Israelites to engage in sexual immorality and to worship Baal of Peor. Those mentioned that were killed were killed to protect the inheritance rights of Israel. You have to keep it in context to understand the situation.

Answer 4

Now you're just taking bits and pieces of the bible and manipulating them.

You reap what you sow ... and those people willfully reaped destruction.

God never ordered the killing of innocent people and those who wanted to be saved, Jew or Gentile, were saved (for example Rahab). God is holy and righteous and so he is digusted with sin. Would you honestly tolerate a culture that practiced child sacrifices, incest, brutality, beastiality, cultic prostitution, etc... ???

And also remember .. God is the author of life and only he has the authority to take it, and whether you takes it or not, it's totally his right.

Answer 5

Now imagine you are infected by an organism which is very dangerous. if you are not able to suppress or destroy, it will kill you. what will you do?. This was happened in the past.

Now Jesus came and find a new vaccine called "salvation", by repentance. If you accept you will be saved. Think of that.

Now you need not kill instead develop immunity and love that will fight against it.

Answer 6

Times were different then, before God gave His son to us, but I'm still thinking it's a good thing I wasn't there.

Answer 7

What are you? Totally insane.
The Bible has about a history of a group of people, their customs and traditions. Plus theology of the Jesus Christ. The way of living in yr live. Please don't do that again. The subject is not for you.

Answer 8

Let me explain this to you by referring to a similar case where God tells Joshua to go in there and wipe them out.
Genesis 15:12-16 says this " When the sun was setting, a deep sleep overcame Abram, and a horror (a terror, a shuddering fear) of great darkness assailed and oppressed him.
And said to Abram, Know positively that your descendants will be strangers dwelling as temporary residents in a land that is not theirs , and they will be slaves there and will be afflicted and oppressed for 400 years.
But I will bring judgment on that nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.
And you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old (hoary) age.
And in the fourth generation they shall come back here again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full and complete.

This passage occurred 430 years before Joshua entered canaan and it tells you why God ordered Joshua to go in there and exterminate the canaanites. It says "the iniquity of the amorites was not yet full". In other words, in Abrahams' day, even though those people were wicked, they weren't wicked enough to require Gods judgement on them. It took 430 more years before God finally said "that's it". You can't fault the bible for saying that God is going to judge sin. Nowhere in the bible does God ever tell the jews or anyone else to conquer people to convert them. In christianity, a forced conversion is not a true conversion. What happened with those Fox news reporters recently, where they were told "convert or die" could never be done based on a bible verse. The so-called innocents in those lands had 430 years to leave. I suspect that the real innocent ones did leave. I know that these people knew that God was going to judge that land because we read in Joshua 2:8-11:
"Before the two men had lain down, Rahab came up to them on the roof,And she said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land and that your terror is fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.
For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.
When we heard it, our hearts melted, neither did spirit or courage remain any more in any man because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath". Rahab told that to the two spies who went in to spie out the land of Jericho.
Those people had 430 years to leave before judgement hit. Sin brings disease. When people start all kinds of decadent forms of sex, you're going to have disease. The possibility of sexual diseases like aids and even worse which, back in those days, would have no treatment at all, could wipe out millions. I suspect that some of the tribes did have such diseases and anybody....man, woman or child that was infected had to be killed. If you read the passages on Joshuas conquests carefully you'll see that God didn't command everybody to be killed in every tribe. But some he did. In some tribes God said kill all men,women,children and even the animals. Why would God tell the jews to kill the animals? Animals were considered a soldiers booty in the ancient wars. It was his reward for fighting and they're not told to kill the animals in every tribe. But in some they were told that. I believe that's because even the animals in those villages were infected.
When you take a verse that says God killed somebody or wiped out a nation and use that to prove that the christian God is evil you’ve proved absolutely nothing, nada,zero,zippo,zilch. You could find those verses all through the scriptures. What you’re doing is starting with a god that you created in your own mind(sort of create your own reality) with no proof that the real God is that way. You’ve just defined him into existence.Some people have asked the question “did God create man in His own image or did man create God in his own image”?The answer is yes in both cases. God did create man in his own image and sometimes men do create God in their own image. Your created god just sits up on a cloud and twittles his fingers while people and nations are into the most disgusting immorality and injustice one could even imagine but this god of yours does nothing because your god doesn’t ever judge people or nations for any reason. He’s a very tolerant god who lets everyone do whatever they want no matter how disgusting it is and it’s wrong for him to interfere in any type of sin. There’s only one thing in the world that’s wrong to your god and that’s to call something wrong. That’s just how he is, after all, you created him that way. Then you take all these verses in the bible which say that the christian God judged these people for their sins and judge Him based upon your definition of god which you created yourself and offer no evidence that he even exists. That type of a god is usually very convenient for those who create that god in their mind. If you believe in a god like that you can live anyway you want because that god isn’t going to say anything about your lifestyle. If you want to cheat a little bit, why not? If you want to lie a little bit, why not? If you want to destroy the lives of those who you don’t like by vicious gossip, why not? Your created god isn’t going to say anything. That’s how you created him.
The christian God is a perfectly Holy, Righteous and Just God. He is going to judge sin, both in this world and the world to come. His judgement comes in stages….a little…then a little more….then a little more. If man repents he backs off. But if they refuse to repent and it gets down to the final stage, you’re dealing with Gods all out wrath. In that situation people are going to die. You say “what about old men and women, children and babies”. Old men and women can be just as wicked as anyone else. Check the FBI statistics and you’ll be shocked at what % of the murders in this country are committed by10,11,12 13 & 14 years olds(gangs use that age level to do all the dirty work because they know our laws won't come down hard on anybody under 18). As far as babies are concerned God never kills babies unless there is a real reason for it. They could have a disease like aids(the result of a sinful society where everybody is infected) or God could just decide that without adults around, these babies would just starve or be eaten by wild animals so why not just take them to heaven since, in the christian religion, babies automatically go to heaven where they spend eternity since they never reached the age of accountibility whereby they could reject God. To say that God just kills them because he likes to kill babies is inconsistent with the rest of the bible.
In the book of Jonah, God is about to destroy Nineveh for their wickedness. He sends Jonah to preach to them that they had better repent or else. Jonah obeys God and preaches but in his heart he doesn’t want them to repent. He hates the assyrians and wants God to wipe them out. But they do repent and God spares them. Jonah is so mad he wants to die. Notice what he says in Jonah 3:1-11:

1 But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry.
2 He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
3 Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."
4 But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"
5 Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city.
6 Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine.
7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered.
8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."
9 But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?" "I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
10 But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight.
11 But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

“A hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left” is talking about babies who are too young to know the difference between their right hand and their left. Notice that God is even concerned about the animals. I would say that accusing God aimlessly of killing just for the sake of killing is not exactly a Phi Beta Kappa move since someday you’re going to stand in front of him and give an account of yourself.