I dont understand how God could...?

Question

I'm a christian and I love God and believe everything he does.. but I was reading Ezekiel 9 the other day and I started crying so hard. God just tells his warriors to go and kill everyone that doesnt follow him. I dont understand how God could love us so much but still kill the people. And there is so many wars in the bible too.. shouldnt we treat non-christians with love? I think we should talk to them and help them understand. I know God does everything according to his plan but that just made me so sad and confused.

Answer 1

I have no answers for you, and I hope you'll see from the answers you get that nobody else does either. I very much admire you for thinking about this using your conscience.

Some would say that you have to understand the order based on the times. These are the same people who tell you that morality is not relative. A child who saw her family slaughtered and a soldier with a sword then coming to kill her loved her life just as much then as a child of today would. Deliberately targeting and killing civilians in war is wrong now, it was wrong then.

Ultimately, believers will have to tell you that you have to rely on God's judgment and that he must have known things the stories don't tell us that would justfy these killings. But I would think it would have been important to include those things in the story so that we could understand that God's orders to kill civilians were just. The Bible is supposed to show us that God is good, not just tell us while giving us examples that must make us uncomfortable.

Please keep your humanity. If people can spin these stories to justify the killing of civilians then, they can similarly provide rationalizations for conducting warfare in the Biblical manner today. That would be horrific.

Answer 2

Dear miss r,

The passage in Ezekiel 9 is avwarning to "christians" today. God is finished with the "church." The leaders of the churches are really satans servants (and they probably do not even know it). You might ask, "How?" They have perverted the Gospel of Jesus Christ-see questions in my profile. They (pastors, elders, Bible teachers, etc) said, "God says ......" when God did not say that at all. Please read Jeremiah 23. God's word is eternal, so the things that God spake in the Old Testament are as relevant today! The passage in Ezekiel is warning those who are truly saved to get out of the churches--see Revelation 18:4 and Matthew 24:15, 16. The people in the churches were supposed to be "checking" their Bibles to see if what the pastor said was correct. The people are to blame as well because they may only pick up a Bible on Sunday. We are supposed to love God and love His word-the Bible.

If you need more proof? Check the parable of the wheat and tares (Matthew 13:24-30). The "tares" are people who say they are saved but in reality they have never been saved. The wheat in the parable represent those who are truly born again.

Check Matthew 25-the parable of the 10 virgins. % of the virgins were foolish and 5 were wise. The 5 virgins that had "oil in their lamps" were saved. When the bridegroom (which pictures Jesus the Lord) comes, the 5 wise virgins go into the wedding feast-because they were saved. There are many more examples in the Bible.

Go to 2 Thessaonians 2. God tells us that satan-the man of sin-is now ruling in all the churches. In verse 7 we read, "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way." The "he who now letteth willlet, until he be taken out of the midst" is speaking of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has left the churches so it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to be saved, regardless of the accuracy of the preaching. If you read the rest of the passage, God tells us that those who remain in the churches are being sent a strong delusion so that they will be condemned.

There is so much more to tell you but I don't have the space. Check my sources.

Answer 3

You have raised one of the hardest questions a Christian has with which a Christian must deal. Why would a loving God demand massive genocide.

The difficulty is that we are not God. We don't know God's mind and cannot even begin to understand the wisdom with which he rules.

The Bible tells us that the people who lived in the land were an abomination to God. They worshipped "things they made with their own hand" and they sacrificed their children to these idols. They were also a danger to Israel. Even the great Solomon, wisest man in the world, was corrupted by these people and ended his life worshipping false idols.

How great was the danger? I have often wondered if the people of Israel had listened to God if we would have the mess we do in the Middle East today. I wonder if God foresaw that less people would die by destroying them than through the wars that would follow in our lifetime. See that is the problem. Only God knows.

I often wish that I could understand. I know that God loves but I also know he is just. So his response was just, just beyond our understanding.

This isn't a good answer. But it is a try to deal with a very difficult thing.

Pastor John

Answer 4

It was an act of mercy. When you break Yahweh's laws you cause certain curses to enter into you bodies and you start a slow process of death, for the wages of sin is death. Would you allow a horse with a broke leg to live? No, it is in misery and you would release that horse from his misery. No difference here

People have a quality of life that a dog does not deserve and yet they don't understand what is bringing down their strength. The strength of Yahweh is in his 613 laws that promote health and guides on away from sickness, disease, and curses.

Those people that were put to death was to clear a way for your Savior, Yahshua the Messiah could grow up undefiled. Had one of those people entered into Yahsha's blood line he would have had the same confusion that you see today where people don't know the seventh day from the first or the clean from the unclean when it is clearly written for them. He would not have been the spotless sacrifice needed for forgiveness of YOUR SINS.

Believe it or not Yahweh knows what he is doing, let him and quit questioning his righteous judgments. Mankind is learning a great lesson WHAT SIN BRINGS TO THE PERSON. Death is not a permanent thing, Yahweh will put everyone back together whole again and He will point out to you what caused your death, WHAT LAW YOU BROKE to cause your demise, and you will never go that way again.

Answer 5

Tell the whole story. The ones NOT killed where all those who grieved over the condition of the city – how it had fallen into sin and idolatry. It was not a wholesale killing for no good reason.

Yes there are many wars in the bible just as there are many wars in the history books and the daily news. Nothing will change until Jesus returns.

Even Jesus cried at the sinful condition of the towns He visited. And He condemned them all.

Answer 6

Hey Miss R,

I totally understand. Much of what the Old Testament describes involves a God with a focus on sin and those who sin against him. It is a picture of a God with an incredible passion against evil in this world, so much so that in some cases the prophets of old declared judgment and wrath on people that might even be "innocents".

But you have to understand first, that no matter how mad God gets, he is CONSTANTLY reaching out to humanity, begging and pleading sometimes for them to come back to Him. Read the story in Hosea, for example. God tell the prophet to take a prostitute for a wife, as a symobl of how His people have been unfaithful to him, right in his face. And yet, when Hosea's wife is caught and put into slavery, Hosea is told to buy her back, EVEN when she has sinned.

God's purpose and plan in the Old Testament, and DEFINITELY the New, is to provide a way out, a plan of salvation. There are plenty of examples both ways. Don't despair and stay encouraged --- the essential quality of God, at His very core, is love :)

God bless.

Answer 7

The Old Testament is tragic. That is the point. It documents the violent wars, rapes, and genocides that occurred in the past, when the "letter of the law" gets corrupted by greed for money and power. It exists in the Bible as a warning to teach us why we no longer want to live that way. Greed and corruption brings death and destruction as the only way to wipe it out back then.

The New Testament brings redemption, through the sacrifice of Christ which breaks the vicious cycle of sin and suffering from the past. When we live by the "spirit of the law" which is truth and love, and do all things in that spirit, there is no more conflict, greed, war or death. Eventually all things, even bad things carried over from the past, can be healed by forgiveness and correction. It takes time to fulfill this process, but as long as we are moving forward and not repeating the past, we will eventually overcome.

In order to understand and correct by "free will" that is why we must learn from past knowledge; so unfortunately the tragic violence is recorded in history so we do not repeat the same mistakes or patterns. The point of Christ and Christian sacrifice is to break from the past by forgiveness and grace.

When we choose to do this by free will, that is when we find healing and recovery and gain spiritual maturity, not only in ourselves, but also in our relations with others and in greater society.

Answer 8

You need a good study Bible. There is more to the story as to why God gave an order like that. Gods ways are not mans ways, and man will never fully understand Gods ways. We are only human.

Answer 9

The people were already going to war;one side just happened to believe in God and asked for His help.

God is a God of love and wrath;which we get depends on what we do to deserve either one.

And killing was one of the main methods for punishment

In an I deal situation yes we would;but war is not exactly an ideal situation.

Again when going to war,peaceful talking is not on peoples mind.

Email me if you wanna talk.

Answer 10

I totally agree. I believe that all people whether Christians or non-Christians should treat each other with inherent respect due to the fact that we are all part of humanity.