OT Slaughters

*sigh* - I have prayed for this person after reading your post. It's so humanistic to want God to meet our demands in order for us to consider him worthy of worship. And it's so sad that people push God away thinking they know him and they don't.

In Genesis, God told Abraham the whole long story about his children, grandchildren, and descendants - the story that Abraham would never live to see. God told Abraham that his people would be enslaved in Egypt for a long time and that he would eventually lead them back to the Promised Land, but only after the inhabitants who lived there had their sinful ways come to its limitations.

I see it like this. God gave those people hundreds of years to repent and a few did. God was patient. The New Testament says that God is patient because he doesn't want to see anyone perish. The book of Ezekiel says three times that God does not take pleasure in the destruction of the wicked.

And God DID spare some of those people along the way.

But- as the Bible predicted, the sins of those people came to its limit. God spared whom he spared for their moralities sake - such as the young women somewhere in Numbers who were of a moral nature. He spared Rahab and more.

I don't see this as God wantonly killing people.

After an in-depth [and I MEAN in-depth] study of Genesis through Ruth over the passed year and teaching it to others, I see all of this as God giving pagans an opportunity to repent. Most did not. As God said, their sins came to the point that they could not get any worse.

Then judgment came on those who remained in defiance against God.

If your friend could actually study Genesis through Ruth and really get into it, he would see this position in a whole new light.

He would see a patient and compassionate God who stays his wrath until it cannot be stayed anymore.

He is a God of wrath because he is holy. He is a God of patience and compassion because he is holy.

I pray that your friend understand the holiness of God and why God behaves perfectly.

 

3 Points.

#1. They are part of God's creation and thus He can do as He pleases with them.

#2. They were sinners in open rebellion against the God of all creation by worshiping idols. The wages of sin is death.

3#. The only place a question could arise is the children. Why would God kill the children who were not (yet) idolaters and were innocent of the sins of their parents? Simple. God is a God of Mercy. Rather than allowing these children to grow up and become like their parents, sinners, idolaters, and worthy of death, God, in His Mercy, brought them to Himself where they could be loved, cherished, nurtured in the things of the LORD.