The Promised Land was brutally cleansed - Why?

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Atheists ask, Why is the God of the Old Testament so Cruel? He demanded the elimination of the tribes who lived in the Promised Land. That happened because God hates sin and we have a deficiency in our understanding of sin.

God is accused of brutality in Canaan, but the accusers are silent about the evil that He intervened to stop.

The absolute wickedness and extreme cruelty of the Canaanites towards their own children needs to be considered.

When God created the earth He wanted a creation that will never decay nor end.

That would require the most exquisite engineering skills and a complete subjection to the perfect will of God. Your entire body must be in subjection to your head. To be eternal, God's creation would have to line up perfectly with His plan and will.

Our unaided eye cannot see beyond the horizon. Our thinking is equally short term as we cannot see the future. We humans are not designed to set up something that is eternal. Any human thinking is so inadequate in this regard that God cannot permit human opinions to interfere with, and thereby mess up, His plans. We think we are clever. But compared to God we are very ignorant.

When God originally created the earth He made man last. This was deliberate. If man had arrived earlier he would have offered his advice and opinion on how the creation should have been done. That would have been a disaster.

Whatever humans make, it wears out and needs maintenance or replacing. The mighty city of Babylon is now a heap of ruins in the desert. We make a brief appearance on the earth and then fade out. Everything about us is limited and temporary.

Remember, God is thinking about the long term, the big picture: eternity.

Eternity requires perfection. There cannot be the smallest mistake. Each component must totally fit into the master plan. The scope is so vast that God alone can be in control. But it will never work until He is totally in control.

So whatever interferes with the smooth running of eternity, God will destroy. That is cruel, yes. But if sin with its errors are not wiped out then eternity will fizzle out and that is a greater disaster. There is no eternal life in sin. Thus sin has no long term future. Like a malignant cancer, it must be eliminated.

Ghengis Khan the Mongol created the biggest Asian empire in history during the 1200s. But about 40 million people died in the massacres and disease and famine that followed his conquests. His descendants soon got absorbed into the cultures of the conquered territories. His empire fragmented and faded away. Today Ghengis lies in an unknown grave and Mongolia is a small little state with almost no influence on the rest of the world.

This is just not a good enough example to have when thinking of a world-wide kingdom whose citizens have eternal life and peace with no death, no disease, and no sorrow or tears.

Hitler wanted his Nazi Third Reich to live for 1000 years. It lasted 12 years.

We humans just cannot make anything that really lasts long.

By 1945 Hitler had killed 6 million Jews to wipe out this scattered remnant of people that the Romans had kicked out of Palestine 2000 years ago, after which Palestine became a bleak and arid country.

But in 1948 the Jews returned to their land which now blossoms like a rose because the true owners are back in possession. The land is like a dog that jumps for joy when its true master returns.

So the God of the ancient Jews has outperformed every other nation. No other nation came back from the dead and revived a lost language (Hebrew) after 2000 years.

So God certainly knows how to keep things going. We can learn vital lessons from Him.

God has laid out His blueprint for eternal life in the Bible. Stay with every word of the King James Version. Every word you change is a spanner in the works of eternity and God wants eternity to last. He does not want eternity messed up by our opinions. He threatened to leave us out of eternity if we dare to change his Word by adding or subtracting i.e changing anything.

If you cannot interpret the King James Bible just the way it is written then you simply lack the revelation of what the Bible means.

God does not want to be worshiped by robots.

Animals live by instinct which means they obey the laws of nature and fit into their ecosystems which can thus survive for a long time.

Notice this. Animals, by instinct, stay with the laws of nature. Obeying natural laws is the key to the survival of earth’s eco-systems. Termites, fungi, bacteria, and earthworms all play a critical role in processing the soil so that plants can extract nutrients from the soil. But each one must know their place and stay in their place and use their God-given abilities for the welfare of the eco-system. These humble creatures are essential to our survival. Yet they operate mainly unnoticed under the ground. But they stay in the positions that God created them for. Obedient to His will because they have no will of their own. And thus nature rolls on for thousands of years.

Humans have free will and our kingdoms do not last for long.

The underground creatures have no free will and that enables nature to continue surviving in her endless cycles as human kingdoms rise and fall.

So the biggest problem that stops eternity happening is human free will.

Self-will is our biggest enemy.

So whatever God creates, if it is to last, it must obey His laws.

For a creation not to be an instinctive robot, God must provide it with free will.

But free will is too dangerous and destructive a concept for created beings to handle.

Look what happened when God blessed created beings with free will.

God first created spiritual beings, called angels, in Heaven where there was no sin. There was nothing to mislead them. There was no evil. They cannot say that God tempted them.

The chief angel was Lucifer, the light bringer.

God wanted to be worshiped in a glorious manner. So the chief angel had to be particularly glorious to fit this role. God wanted His creation to be magnificent, not mediocre.

After he fell, Lucifer took over and ruled the world’s political systems. As the chief angel he had been in charge of the other angels. So when he appeared on earth he still wanted to be in charge. Thus the Bible refers to him as the king of the city of Tyre. Lucifer is thus the hidden presence that inspires and controls politicians.

The mention of Eden shows that it was not the actual king of Tyre. Lucifer was in Eden where his spirit was symbolized as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

EZEKIEL 28:12   Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

Lucifer was the ultimate angel. Full of wisdom and with great beauty.

Sealed up. He claims he knows it all, and has got everything wrapped up. The angels must believe what he says. They must believe that he cannot be wrong. That same spirit infects the churches of today and after a while you end up believing that your church has the full truth, and thus is in need of no correction from outsiders.

The seventh and last Laodicean church says it is self-sufficient and has need of nothing. No need of correction by anyone else.

REVELATION 3:14   And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write;

REVELATION 3:17   Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not....

We think we have it all sealed up but do not know that we are in trouble. Satan has fooled us just like he fooled the angels at the beginning.

EZEKIEL 28:13   Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

Lucifer’s garments were covered with precious jewels and gold. You could not imagine more glorious clothing. His clothes showed off an unbelievable wealth. This was the ultimate in conspicuous consumption. He stood out in his beautiful appearance. His looked awesome. He was also a gifted and superbly talented musician. Pipes and tabrets are musical instruments that led the worship of God.

EZEKIEL 28:14   Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

Lucifer was on God’s holy mountain, elevated above the other angels. Super spiritual. He had the highest authority amongst the angels. As far as angels were concerned, he could not be improved upon.

Such was his supernatural power that he could walk on burning stones. We see an echo of this in the Hindu fire walkers.

He was anointed or covered with God’s Holy Spirit. The anointing radiated off him like rays of glory. When God sat on His throne with the angels in front of Him, then Lucifer stood behind God’s throne. The glory of Lucifer then covered the throne as it radiated out from behind the throne. The angels could not see Lucifer as God will not share His glory with another. They only saw the waves of glory that spread out and covered the throne.

That is why Jesus said to Peter, “Get thee behind Me, Satan”.  That was Lucifer’s original position, behind the throne of God.

EZEKIEL 28:15   Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

It is impossible to imagine a more perfect angel. Lucifer had everything. Iniquity means to know something is wrong and to do it anyway.

This was the hidden disaster of free will.

However much one has, one wants more. Lucifer had more than any other angel but that was still not enough. Any created being that is given much then directs their thoughts towards getting more. Free-will puts an emphasis on self or self-will. For a created being, self acts like a vacuum cleaner as it sucks things towards itself.

So far Lucifer had done no wrong but God knew his thoughts. He was created to lead the worship of God and to glorify God. But after a while he wanted the glory and praise to be directed towards himself, not God. This was all wrong. God created the angels to worship Him, not to worship Lucifer.

Just like church leaders. God gives them talent and ability. Then they begin to think they are important. Lucifer, the leading angel in Heaven is where sin started. Men are exalted to be church leaders and that is where sin's corrupting influence enters the church.

Jesus and John the Baptist were scathing in their comments to the religious leaders of the Jews.

EZEKIEL 28:16   By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

Merchandise. The presentation of goods for sale. To promote the sale of something by advertising or display. Lucifer was presenting his own glory and abilities to the angels to get their praise and worship. He was selling himself as a glorious object of worship. Someone to be admired. Someone to be praised for his talents. Just like film idols, singing idols, and sports idols bask in the praise of their fans. Just like politicians revel in their power over the people and rejoice in the ill-gotten gains of corruption.

Lucifer was not guilty of a once-off mistake or error of judgement. “The multitude of thy merchandise”.  This was an oft repeated sin. Lucifer’s thinking was wrong for a long time before his actions manifested his thoughts as he sought to corrupt the thoughts of the angels.

A major fault of sin is that it is like one rotten apple that can spread corruption to the good apples. So one person’s sins can corrupt others who are around him.

EZEKIEL 28:17   Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

This is at the heart of the problem with free-will. “Thine heart was lifted up”. The elevation of self.

“I am better than another”.  As a famous boxer once said, “I am the greatest”.

Lucifer had beauty, wisdom, and intellectual brightness or genius.

But these God-given talents were used to boost his ego, not to serve God.

Scientists today have wisdom and many have intellectual genius. But so many of them use their knowledge to gain the adulation of atheists as they “prove” that there is no God and that the universe somehow created itself in defiance of all known laws of Physics.

The creation, if sufficiently talented, moves away from the Creator. This is the nature of sin.

EZEKIEL 28:18    Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffick; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

“Traffick” is related to the merchandising or the self-serving  benefits in the spreading of ideas and beliefs.

Lucifer was the leader of the angels.

Every church leader is a missionary or a mercenary in the ideas that they spread. A missionary believes that what he offers is for the welfare of people because he only presents the written Word of God, not his own opinions. A mercenary spreads the ideas of his denomination because his position and his income depend on his conformity. Self-gain for him can only exist within the religious system. Like a politician, he does not have his own opinion but has to submit to what the denomination believes.

So Lucifer, with his brilliant flow of ideas, turned many of the angels away from God and they began to follow him. Christians today endlessly follow their favourite pastor or leader.

Jesus made this comment.

LUKE 10:18   And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Free will caused the most talented and brilliant angel to corrupt his own thinking and then to also dazzle other angels until they took their eyes off God in order to admire Lucifer.

The first fall was in Heaven. Lucifer and many angels fell from Heaven into the pit of hell.

In the process they were cursed as they turned from angels into demons. Lucifer became Satan.

But there was no way back for them. They had been angels which means that they were spirits in spiritual bodies. Their spirits were cursed and turned into demons that now lived in warped and horribly demonic bodies in the spiritual realm.

Earth had been created in three dimensions, length, breadth, and height.

To make a prison cage for Satan and the demons, God created a fourth dimension for these lost spirits. One day they will be judged for the evil of their ways and then destroyed in the Lake of Fire.

Thus the fourth dimension is not eternal. It is subject to time. So God created time as a fourth dimension to house demonic spirits.

Scientists are aware of the invisible fourth dimension in terms of time. But physical science cannot discover the lost spirits that are in the fourth dimension. Scientists do not know what time is. They can measure the movement of a pointer on a watch face, but they cannot measure time.

There is no physics evidence for a fifth dimension.

Think of Heaven as a sixth dimension which is far beyond anything that humans can comprehend. Then the fifth dimension becomes a gulf that insulates Heaven from hell.

Once a saved Christian dies and enters Heaven they are at perfect rest because no demon can pass over the gulf of the fifth dimension to trouble them.

ISAIAH 14:12   How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

The first fall was from Heaven.

ISAIAH 14:13   For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

:14     I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Notice the emphasis on “I”.  Lucifer was obsessed with boosting his own ego. He was already the top angel but that was not enough for him. He wanted something higher. Self-importance eventually made him feel that he was just like God. God gets worshiped. Lucifer wanted to be admired and worshiped.

Pride comes before a fall.

Lifted up by his pride, he fell.

This was a disaster. Once a spirit has fallen into sin, there is no way back. It will just continue to sin and influence others to sin.

Then Satan got Eve to sin. Adam loved her so much that he sinned to be with her.

Jesus loved His church so much that he became sin in order that He could save her and be with her.

Adam trusted God to find a way to redeem them. God only accepted the shed blood of an innocent animal as the atonement for sin.

Sin had entered the earth. Cain lied to God and killed Abel. Man was heading downhill with lies and murder.

People got more and more wicked. God searched for individuals who wanted to serve Him but only found Noah.

GENESIS 6:3  And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

Despite their sin God gave them 120 years before He executed His judgement. But it made no change to their behaviour. Men prefer sin to righteousness.

GENESIS 6:5   And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Sin just corrupted the thinking of mankind. Evil thoughts produced evil deeds.

So sin corrupted mankind. Multitudes of people rejected God. Yet Noah served God as an example and people just rejected him.

Another problem with sin is that it makes people reject those who serve God.

GENESIS 6:11   The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

:12   And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

Sin produces violence and corruption. Mankind had forgotten that this is God’s earth. Violence and corruption have no long term benefits. Cain’s spirit, the desire to kill, remains in sinful humanity. That is no foundation for eternal life.

Then God became angry as sin accumulated. He sent a Flood that wiped out everyone. Noah had warned them for 120 years but they rejected what he said.

The nature of sin is to reject what God says. But God hates sin and eventually His patience ran out.

While sinful men have free will they will overwhelmingly choose evil, even as they chose the murderer Barabbas instead of Jesus.

Then God chose one man Abraham and gave him the Promised Land of Israel for his descendants, the Jews. But God was also going to make a set of Laws to govern man’s behavior.

DEUTERONOMY 9:5   Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.

The Jews were not all examples of virtue, but the tribes that they were going to eliminate were really disgusting. Thus God was doing two things.

As in the Flood, He would exterminate degraded sinners like the Canaanites and Amorites. It is after all God’s earth. If you allow me entry into your house, then I must behave myself.

Then the Jews would also learn an important lesson. If God got rid of these degenerate sinners to make a home for the Jews, then if the Jews also degenerated they could expect God to get rid of them too.

DEUTERONOMY 18:9   When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

The people who lived in the Promised Land were very degenerate. They had not learned the lesson of the Flood. Their main cities were Sodom and Gomorrah and these were cesspools of evil in Abraham's day before God destroyed them.

The Jews were not to copy the heathen pagan customs.

A note of warning. The pagan Roman emperor Aurelian in 274 AD declared 25 December to be the birthday of the sun god. The bishop of Rome then made this the birthday of the Son of God around 350 AD. A Roman Catholic mass or celebration was invented, called Christ’s mass. This soon became Christmas and included the pagan upright tree that was decorated with gold and silver. Jeremiah Chapter 10 warns us not to follow pagan customs.

JEREMIAH 10:2   Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

:3   For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

:4   They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

:5   They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not:

This has always been the problem with sin. Instead of eliminating pagan beliefs, the righteous embrace them and modify them to suit themselves.

Nowhere were Christians ever asked to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

But so strong is this pagan tradition and the Roman pagan tradition of gift giving in December, that the Catholic church decreed that the wise men came to the stable to give presents to Jesus. The Protestants followed their mother Catholic church in this error, despite the Bible saying that the wise men went into a house and saw the young child who was no longer a baby.

MATTHEW 2:11   And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

Right from the beginning God realized that if truth and error mixed, error would infiltrate the truth.

So in the Promised Land, God determined to give the Jews a fresh start by eliminating the disgusting level of perversion that the Canaanites had achieved.

The Canaanites knew of God’s judgement on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham’s day where He wiped them out men, women, and children. They had known of Abraham’s righteous example which they scorned and rejected.

Yet God allowed another three generation to pass before He destroyed them. They had ample time to repent and change, but as typical sinners they had absolutely no desire to do so. They preferred to sink further into sin.

Deuteronomy 12:31  "You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

Molech was one of the main gods as well as Baal who was their sun god.  The statue of the idol Molech had a big fire in front of it. Parents threw their babies into this fire to gain favour with Molech.

Baal worship involved sex orgies. Even decent women were expected to serve as temple prostitutes. Human sacrifices, usually of the first born, were necessary to appease Baal. Parts of the human sacrifices were eaten. In Canaan they worshiped Baal by eating human flesh and were called Can-ni-Baals which later became cannibals.

The behavior of the Canaanites could not really have got much worse at the time that the Jews eliminated them.

JEREMIAH 19:5    They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal

Despite what happened when Sodom was destroyed with fire, the people of the Promised Land continued with these same sins.

LEVITICUS 18:22   Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

:23     Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.

:24     Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:

As sin multiplied like a contagious virus, they also degenerated even further by getting involved with animals.

They were worse than the people of Sodom. And the people of Sodom had been really bad.

GENESIS 18:20   And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;

God had agreed to spare Sodom if Abraham could find ten righteous people in the big city. But even that was too many to find.

That is why sin is so effective because sin is so popular. People in their self-will prefer sin to righteousness.

The Canaanites could not say that they did not know about God’s judgement on sin.

They had heard of God’s power when He swallowed up the mighty army of Pharaoh in the Red Sea. They knew judgement was coming because God had destroyed the kings who tried to stop Moses on his march to the Promised Land. Yet they never sought to repent.

Even after the walls of Jericho fell down supernaturally and only the harlot Rahab and her family were saved, the people of Canaan still resisted the Jews instead of turning to God as Rahab had done.

The Canaanites through their abominations had themselves become abominations.

They were simply a source of corruption to others. Like a cancer, they needed to be cut out. Even the smallest piece of cancer must be removed else it will spread. They had corrupted their children.

Jewish children, using them as playmates, would be corrupted by them.

DEUTERONOMY 7:1   When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;

:2     And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them:

Sin is like diseased flesh, it needs to be amputated before it destroys the entire body. There can be no compromise with gangrene. A little gangrene is still dangerous. Just give it time to grow.

:3     Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

There must be no relationship with sin. It is evil. Water flows downhill and it is easier for morals to go down than up. “Go with the flow” is human nature. But the flow is always down hill.

:4   For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.

Sin very easily corrupts young children.

:5     But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

We must have nothing to do with sin. Smoking. Drinking. Swearing. Pornography. Dirty Jokes. Gambling. Cheating etc.

These must be cut out of our lives.

:6     For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

If we want God to choose us to serve Him, we must mean business with God. Christianity is not a part-time hobby. It is not a casual interest.

A surgeon wants a completely clean blade to remove a cancerous growth and has zero tolerance for germs. God has the same attitude towards sin. He does not condone a little bit of sin. Because sin grows.

GENESIS 15:16   But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

God gave them four generations to clean up their act. But they simply got worse. Their accumulated wickedness was so great that God could no longer tolerate their presence in the land. They forgot that it was God Who made the land and thus it was God’s land.

The Canaanites had the witness of Abraham and his altars but they preferred their own gods. Set in their error they refused to change and would lead many Jews astray if they stayed

Their pagan worship was not just bad, it was gruesomely depraved.

When God purged the world of their filth, He did humanity a favour.

The laws of Physics, like the gravity force, are ruthless. Step over a high cliff and you fall and die. Even if you stepped over accidently. Even if you stepped over while trying to help someone.

Our physical laws were set up by God (Scientists cannot explain where the Laws of Physics come from) so that the physical world can function and maintain life.

Many factors have to be exquisitely accurate for this to happen. Scientists cannot explain where this accuracy came from. Our world, our solar system, our ecosytems, and our bodies are all fearfully and wonderfully made.  As such they belong to God. We just live in them.

But the laws of God’s science have to be obeyed.  Breaking a law produces a death sentence.

There is a law that says if you drive too fast, and if something goes wrong at a high enough speed, you die.  Speed kills. This is a merciless law that has cut so many lives short.

James Dean the famous young actor was warned by an older actor Sir Alec Guinness not to drive his new powerful sports car.  He ignored the advice and within a week he was dead in a crash. Fame gave him money. Money got him a high speed car. Too much speed somehow cost him his life.

So laws are designed to keep us alive and if we break certain laws we effectively destroy ourselves.

When falling into sin, God’s Law is just as merciless as what the gravitational law is when falling off a high cliff.

In the day you eat thereof you will die.

So the law of sin is quite clear and quite brutal. If you sin you will die.

You may die young, or middle aged, or old but you will die.

God does not change the laws of nature to suit our behavior. We have to change our behavior to suit the laws of nature. If we want to stay alive.

God makes it clear that He has zero tolerance for sin. God hates sin. God wanted to create humanity with eternal life and endless happiness. But sin forced the introduction of death because there is no eternal life in sin. Death is like a shadow that is attached to sin, just waiting for a chance to pounce. Man introduced death when he chose to sin and thus separated himself from eternal life.

Sin and death cannot be separated.  But most of mankind , because of their free will, preferred to carry on in their sins and then had to pay for their own sins when they died.

In the Old Testament people carried their own sins around with them.  So God saw them as sinners, worthy of death.

But God gave them a break. They could repent and kill an innocent animal to take their place. Something had to die because only an innocent death could atone for sin. That is how serious sin is.

People live by killing animals and eating them. That is how serious this human life of sin is. An animal must die to keep a person’s  body alive. But even that is a temporary life as we usually die before 100 years has passed.

So the Old Testament animal sacrifice for human sins was also temporary.  Jews had to keep offering sacrifices as they kept sinning. We needed a New Testament as there had to be a better solution to get rid of sin.

The life that was in the sacrificed animal could not come back into the Old Testament believer and make him a better person.

So the pagan sinners were degraded people. And the Jews were harsh people who were warlike and cruel at times. A bad sinner just had to be killed. That was the only way to keep sin in check.

A cancer just has to be cut out. That is the only way to stop it spreading.

Now let us consider the real problem with sinful people.

We are selfish, greedy, self-obsessed, proud, vain, nasty when it suits us, and our motives are seldom pure as self-gain rules our thinking etc.

We can also be kind, decent, friendly, but often our good deeds are driven by motives of self-gain.

So humans are simply a lukewarm combination of good and evil.

We often serve God just for the reward of Heaven. We mainly serve God just to escape the punishment of hell. Notice how self-gain dominates our thinking. We want a reward or an escape from deserved punishment. (We will only support a deserving charity if we get a lottery ticket that gives us a chance of winning something expensive).

We do not just serve God because we love Him, irrespective of what happens to us. We want to show a profit from our faith. Materialism is our downfall.

The mother of James and John spoke to Jesus.

MATTHEW 20:21   And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom.

James and John, two fine men, wanted to be the top two disciples in Heaven. So even being in Heaven was not enough. They wanted to be the most important men there. Competitive Christianity was born. My church is better than yours. I am a better Christian than you. God loves me more than He loves you. We humans really are pathetic. We are never satisfied, always greedy for gain.

Like a stain on a clean dress,  the bad habits and motives of humans are more repulsive than the attraction of our good points. When we are weighed in the balances of God then the selfish greed and harm that we have done out-weighs the good.

The pagan nations of the Old Testament usually had disgusting lifestyles.

Greek women, however honourable, were expected to give up some of their time and act as temple prostitutes.

Greek history is full of in-fighting and treachery. Trusting a Greek was hazardous. Leonidas, with his famous 300 Spartan men and their immortal three day stand at Thermopylae were basically abandoned there by other Greeks.

Immorality was rife. Greeks practiced homosexuality and raped their way through the women of the Persian empire.

Molech was a god in the Middle East that parents worshiped by throwing their living babies into a burning fire.

The more you read of the lifestyle of Old Testament pagans,  the more disgusting it gets.

The first half of Alexander’s campaign into Persia  was impressive as the Greeks out-fought the Persians. The second half was rather sickening. In a drunken rage he killed his friend Cleitus, who had saved his life in the first battle. He conquered Afghanistan by means of ethnic cleansing. Soldiers would spread out and march for days killing men, women, children, and animals until there was nothing left.

But we call him Alexander the Great.  As if he achieved something great in Afghanistan.

But nothing has really changed in human nature.

Between  1979 to 1989 Soviet Russia invaded and killed one million Afghans. After  the Soviets withdrew the different Afghan tribes promptly began killing each other in a brutal civil war as their death toll rose into hundreds of thousands. Since the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 another 100 000 Afghans have been killed. The killing fields of Afghanistan are woven into the fabric of history.

So the urge to kill just spreads from one generation to the next. We want God to deal with us mercifully when murder is rampant and evil flourishes. Russians disguised little land mines as toys so that they could explode when picked up by poor Afghan children who had no toys.

Nevertheless, killing the children of the pagans is a difficult action to explain.

But killing children is part of modern life as well. In 1932 Japan began total war in Manchuria by bombing cities and villages. That idea spread to all nations. Men, woman, and children die. Half a million people have been killed in the Syrian civil war since 2011 as cities were pounded to rubble and helicopters dropped barrel bombs full of deadly chlorine gas on men, women, and children below. One of the two atom bombs that were dropped on Japan exploded 700 metres above a hospital and vapouised its patients, medical staff, and maternity wards.

Abuse of women and children is commonly reported in the news media. These disgusting actions merely show that sinful nature has not changed. Sinners today are just as bad as they were back there in olden days.

So the Old Testament is a chilling warning to us.

God declared total war on sin and wiped out even the children in Canaan.

So when God declares total war on sin in the Tribulation He will also wipe out men, women, and children.

As it was in the days of Noah. All died except 8 people.

As it was in the days of Lot. All died in Sodom and the cities around Sodom, except for 3 people.

Armageddon will be a bloodbath where the blood flows for 200 miles. After that we will all know that God hates sin.

But also remember that the conduct and laws of the Old Testament Jews must be assessed by the standards of that age. God was bringing them out of paganism that was corrupt and perverted.  So God judged the pagans by their own cruel standards. The pagans in Canaan were killing their own children. They were cannibals. They were very immoral, sickeningly so.

It is the nature of people to get worse rather than better. So the Jews, once they had been in the Promised Land for a while, began to pick up the child-killing worship of the pagans. Parents worshiped the god Molech by throwing their living babies into a fire.

So if a Jew killed a pagan baby with the sword,  that was indeed cruel but a far more merciful death than the baby being burnt alive by his own parents.

Christians today have also been attracted by paganism. God never asked us to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Yet the church chose the pagan day of 25 December to do this. This date was made in 274 AD by the pagan Roman emperor Aurelian to celebrate the birth of the sun god, Sol Invictus. Christians then decorated an upright tree in the same way that the pagans had done. Yet Jeremiah said we should not copy the pagans. But we do anyway.

JEREMIAH 10:2  Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

(Notice the signs of heaven, star signs. Telling your future from the stars. This is the most common literature on planet earth, as "Your stars foretell" appears in every newspaper and magazine. These clever ideas were invented in Babylon. But we should not do it because it comes from the pagans. But Christians still read their fortunes in the stars anyway)

JEREMIAH 10:3   For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

:4   They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

The shortest day is between December 21 and December 23, depending on how the earth wobbles. After that the days got longer so the pagans celebrated the birth of the sun god with a decorated tree.

We should not do this says Jeremiah. But the decorated tree is the centre of our whole Christmas tradition, which is now the main festival of the Christian year.

Then we need Christmas presents, which children love, so we have the wise men giving gifts to Jesus in the stable.

But the wise men followed a star and went into a house not a stable. So no gifts were given at His birth. That is just fake news.

MATTHEW 2:11   And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

He was not a baby, He was a young child. Joseph was not present. Nor were any shepherds.

Yet Christians associate the star with the birth of Jesus in the stable.  But Amos spoke of the pagan false gods.

Amos 5:26  Your Moloch …the star of your god

So Christians put the star on top of the Christmas tree. No star guided anyone to the stable. Angels had to tell the local shepherds where to go.

So Christians fear Jesus as God, but nevertheless make up their own form of worship based on pagan ideas.

II KINGS 17:33   They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

Things have not changed. Christians today are still enchanted with pagan customs.

This kind of attitude was the despair of Saint Paul.

GALATIANS 4:9   But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

Bondage to pagan beliefs. Paul was not sure if these Christians knew God. God obviously knew them as He knows everything. But if Christians bow to pagan beliefs, do they actually know God?

GALATIANS 4:10   Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

25^th Day.  December month.  Christmas time.  Every year.  Christmas fulfills every condition that the church has learned about time from the pagan festivals. And time was only invented as a four dimensional prison cage to hold the Devil and his demons in bondage. Now the church is trapped in bondage to pagan customs that have the name of Jesus stuck onto them.

Nowhere in the Bible were we asked to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But we have made it the main Christian event of the year.

GALATIANS 4:11   I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.

This kind of “Christianized” paganism made Paul fear that he had simply wasted his time on those people. Their beliefs were a mix of Christian and pagan and he was unsure if they would actually make Heaven.

Christians today are in the same boat.

In 1932 the Japanese declared total war on Manchuria and began bombing cities which contained men, women, and children. President Roosevelt condemned them for being barbaric. By the end of the war the Americans fire bombed sixty of Japan’s cities and then dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which vapourized men, women, and children. One bomb exploded directly over a hospital. Nagasaki had the biggest Christian population of any Japanese city, and they were blasted by  the shockwaves, and a fireball that was hotter than the sun’s surface, and the deadly radiation.  All this came from their fellow Christians in America.

Have humans improved since the Old Testament?

Hitler gassed 6 million Jewish men, women, and children and an extra 6 million non-Jews as he developed the first example of industrialized death. Britain firebombed Dresden and Hamburg. They waited a couple of hours and then sent in the next wave of bombers. That way they could eliminate all the rescue workers and medics who were trying to help the wounded. Not to mention using an oily substance that flowed along the ground as it burned so that it could flow down into the underground shelters and cellars and incinerate the terrified people who were hiding there. But they won the war so they were not war criminals.

The number of men, women, and children who died in the siege of Stalingrad in the second World War was about one and a half million.

So are we modern people any different to the cruel Jews who wiped out the indigenous population of Palestine?

Before 1900, most casualties in a war were soldiers and not civilians. After 1900 most casualties in a war were civilians. Modern people have killed far more children than the Old Testament Jews  ever killed. Compared to the 200 million people who were killed in war between 1900 and 2000, the Old Testament Jews were rather amateurish. The urge to kill is ingrained into human free will.

The British Empire in India made money by transporting millions of tons of grain to England to make Britain rich. Meanwhile when famines swept India, about 30 million Indians starved to death thanks to this ruthless economic policy during the two hundred years of the British Raj. Since 1947 India has been independent and there has been no record of a famine despite inefficiencies and mistakes that occurred.

If we modern people accuse the Old Testament of being cruel, which is true, then remember that we have far more blood on our hands than they ever did on theirs.

So when God began dealing with sinful man He knew that the nature of man would not change and that mankind would kill and wade through blood as long as humans were on earth.

God knew that the Jews would also pick up all the sins of the pagans who were living in the Promised Land. So He told the Jews to destroy the pagans.

Children brought up by the pagans would simply grow up to be as cruel and paganistic as their parents.

Children growing up in Muslim countries become Muslims like their parents.

Hindu children grow up to become Hindus.

The children of atheists grow up and tend to become atheists.

DEUTERONOMY 18:9   When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.

These people were not just pagans. They were an abomination.

DEUTERONOMY 12:31  "You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.

Throwing their own children into a fire as an act of worship. That is sick. Fooled by demons who were masquerading as gods and idols.

2 KINGS 3:26-27   When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too fierce for him, he took with him 700 men who drew swords, to break through to the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place, and offered him as a burnt offering on the wall.

To win a battle he burnt his oldest son alive. That was sick. Normal parents risk their lives to save their children.

2 KINGS 16:2-3   Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what was right in the sight of the LORD his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and even made his son pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had driven out from before the sons of Israel.

God wiped out he pagans in the Promised Land so as to give the Jews a clean start. But then the Jews began to copy pagan worship, like Christians do with Christmas and Trinity and church steeples and Lent and Easter eggs and hot cross buns and ….. (The list is long).

God knew that pagan beliefs would infiltrate and take over His people.

2 KINGS 17: 16-17   They forsook all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him.

2 KINGS 21: 6   He made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and used divination, and dealt with mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD provoking Him to anger.

2 CHRONICLES 28: 1-3   Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do right in the sight of the LORD as David his father had done. But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel; he also made molten images for the Baals. Moreover, he burned incense in the valley of Ben-hinnom and burned his sons in fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD had driven out before the sons of Israel.

Pagan beliefs had taken over the Jews.

PSALMS 106: 37-38   They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons, And shed innocent blood, The blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; And the land was polluted with the blood.

JEREMIAH 7: 30-31   "For the sons of Judah have done that which is evil in My sight," declares the LORD, "they have set their detestable things in the house which is called by My name, to defile it. "They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind.

JEREMIAH 19: 2-5   "Then go out to the valley of Ben-hinnom, which is by the entrance of the potsherd gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you, and say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, "Behold I am about to bring a calamity upon this place, at which the ears of everyone that hears of it will tingle. "Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent

EZEKIEL 23: 37-39   "For they have committed adultery, and blood is on their hands. Thus they have committed adultery with their idols and even caused their sons, whom they bore to Me, to pass through the fire to them as food. "Again, they have done this to Me: they have defiled My sanctuary on the same day and have profaned My sabbaths. "For when they had slaughtered their children for their idols, they entered My sanctuary on the same day to profane it; and lo, thus they did within My house.

Humanity is hopeless.

God gave the Jews a set of laws to live by and a Temple sacrifice to atone for their sins. This was the only Old Testament faith that gave man dignity. No temple prostitutes. No child killing. No sexual perversions.

He told them to kill all the pagans in the Promised Land so that they could have a clean start and not be corrupted.

And guess what?  The Jews were more interested in the sick pagan ideas.

In the Old Testament the people carried their own sins. If they were pagan and did not follow the Old Testament rules to atone for their sins, then God saw them as unrepentant sinners. Because God hated sin, He had to destroy the sinners.

As it was in Noah’s day, people just sinned and condemned the truth that Noah preached. To get rid of sin God had no option but to get rid of the sinners. So they all drowned because the rejected the only way of escape from the Flood, which was the ark.

This indicates man’s natural state which is one of rebellion against God. Man is just naturally in defiance of God’s will.

When President Trump decided to confirm Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and thereby fulfill prophecy, the vote against him in the United Nations was 128 to 9. Voting against God’s people the Jews. They voted against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the land that God gave to Abraham.  So all the so-called Christian nations of Europe and Canada are actually in rebellion against God and trying to stop prophecy from being fulfilled.

By 2018 the various nations had absorbed  21 million refugees from violence in their home countries. Yet since 1948 these nations have never  absorbed  the two million Palestinian refugees in Gaza. They are left as an international centre of opposition to the Jewish state taking over the land that was promised to Abraham. Such is the world’s opposition to God’s will. Despite the prophecies that said that the Jews would be regathered.

So are we modern people interested in God’s will?  Not at all. We have our own self-important opinions.

Last time God wiped out sinful mankind with water. Next time it will be by fire.

When it comes to dealing with sin, God is cruel.

If you carry your own sin you will die for your sins. The Law of God against sin is as merciless as the Law of physics that says if you put your hand into a fire for long enough you will burn it.

The only way out is to find Someone innocent enough Who can carry your sins for you. If that person is not sinless, then he could only carry his own sins.

Then this Person has to die for your sins in your place.

God’s cruel Law says that only innocent blood can atone for sin.

So you need a perfect Man to pay the supreme price for you.

There are other human laws that should be obeyed.

The laws of traffic should  be obeyed. Overtake on a solid barrier line and a fatal head-on collision looms. You may be lucky at times and get away with it. So we humans think we are clever when we break a law and get away with it. But we were a danger towards oncoming traffic, which was not clever.

We then take this attitude towards God’s Laws. I can break God’s laws and get away with it. But can we?

God knows how many hairs you have on your head. He has also kept an exact list of everything you have done or thought wrong. The Day of Judgement is waiting for you, even if you got away with it on this side.

By law we must be inoculated against certain diseases. You may get away with not being inoculated but all too many people died from that disease which is why the inoculation was invented. By not being inoculated you become a possible source for that disease to revive instead of being eliminated. So I owe it to others to be inoculated.

We humans easily put our own selfish ideas ahead of what is in the best interests  of mankind.

So when we get away with sin we keep sin alive, and it can spread to others who follow our example.

We burn too much fuel and dump too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Global warming gets increased and weather patterns are disrupted. So we learn that we cannot just live as we like because much of our lifestyle is destructive to the environment.

The Taliban took over Afghanistan and sold 90% of their forests for a quick profit to the Japanese to make throw away chopsticks. Greedy for gain, humans choose short term profit.  Eighty percent of the world’s original natural forests have been cut down. This process cannot continue indefinitely. Evaporation from forests plays a big role in the production of rainfall. Richer nations are trying hard to regrow forests. Poorer nations keep cutting them down.

Chopping down forests leads to less rain and a spreading of deserts and increased soil erosion. All over the world the deserts are spreading, except in Israel. Palestine was a bleak landscape for close on 2000 years. Now that the Jews, the true owners of the land are back, Palestine is blossoming like a rose. The land is actually responding to the people that God gave the land to. When the Ottoman Turks lived there for 400 years the land was very unproductive. They were simply illegal squatters who moved in and ruled because their army was strong.

Modern chemicals destroy the ozone layer that is 20 to 30 kilometers up in the air. More ultraviolet radiation from the sun then gets through to cause skin cancer and lower agricultural production.

We thought we could just safely make these useful chemicals but we had no idea that they would degrade our environment.

Only one percent of earth’s water is fresh water that is drinkable. Most of that is in big lakes that few people have access to. So one third of humanity does not have guaranteed access to fresh water. Yet the use of fertilizers, pesticides, sewerage, and industrial waste is heavily polluting the available fresh water.

The increasing scarcity of fresh water also means that our modern lifestyle cannot continue indefinitely.

Half the earth’s coastal wetlands have been lost. But their function is to purify fresh water.

Our biggest human problem is free will, coupled to our egos (self-image) which make us think that we are clever.

This makes us feel that we can do as we like, and in the process we create future problems. Our best science is medicine as that heals the sick and keeps people alive for longer but ironically that has led to overpopulation which is now a major problem.

Population pressure means too many people chasing too few resources.

The biggest single change on the surface of the earth in the last century is the increase in size of the slums that exist around cities. About one third of humanity lives in poverty.

Wealth inequality is shocking.  Adding up all the money of the poorest half of the world’s population produces a figure that is equal to the total wealth of the richest 100 people on earth.

Basically one percent of the world’s population owns half the world’s wealth.

Thus hundreds of millions of people can never realize the benefits of their talents and hard work.

So we humans are just totally incapable of running this earth in a manner that is fair to everyone.

Yes. The killing of people in the Old Testament was cruel.

But let us consider mankind’s endless cruel obsession with killing his fellow man.

Human wars.  Last century about 200 million people were killed in wars.

As we developed better technology, we became more efficient killers.

Germany was the most cultural nation in Europe but still had a deep-seated hatred for Jews and killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. This was the first case of Industrialized Death. It was a pre-Tribulation, a warning of what the oncoming Tribulation will be like.

A sad fact. People have wanted to kill each other all through human history. Then famine, starvation, disease, plagues etc. follow the wars and add to the death toll.

Hitler’s war probably killed about 60 million people.

Mao Tse Tung killed a similar number in his ruthless rule of China.

Stalin killed about 40 million in Russia.

But tobacco companies are probably responsible for 100 million deaths (so far). Probably the biggest mass murderer of all time.

So smokers pay someone to kill them. This is almost like suicide. It is some form of insanity on a large scale.

Mosquitos kill one million people every year. Despite our best efforts, this is one pest we have not been able to get rid of. At the moment, mosquitos are the biggest killer on planet earth.

Humans think they know what they are doing, but more humans are defeated by a tiny insect than by any other creature.

Although the AIDS virus takes a similar death toll.

We are slowly learning the limitations of Science. Thomas Midgley invented the poisonous leaded petrol and CFCs that destroy the ozone layer. His inventions were brilliant and swept the world but he did not know that his poisons would have the most damaging impact on the atmosphere, until those disasters were overtaken by the effects of  global warming. We got rid of the lead in petrol but now it is the carbon dioxide produced by burning petrol  in car engines that is doing the damage.

No one knows how many died or suffered from lead poisoning in the air from petrol exhaust fumes. Nor do we know how many died from extra ultraviolet radiation effects because of damage to the ozone layer.

We can change to electric cars but forget that the electric energy to charge the batteries mainly comes from burning something. So carbon dioxide still goes into the air. Sun and wind are only about 30% efficient. So something has to burn to fill the gap. So we make storage batteries but forget  how much coal is burned in order to make those batteries. Producing clean electric energy is very difficult. And will the poor be able to afford it?

Electric power just does not seem to be able to avoid the deadly embrace of pollution.

In the same way, political power just does not seem to avoid the embrace of corruption.

Most of the world is poor. So as more cars get onto the road they will tend to be the cheaper petrol cars.

Humans cannot forsee the consequences of a scientific invention until they happen. Then the big companies who profit from the invention fight hard to deny the damage that is being done.

So humanity is just not capable of setting up a long term sustainable lifestyle where everyone gets a fair deal.

If God wants to set up an eternal kingdom that is free from sin, then He is going to have to do a clean up job on planet earth that will totally dwarf the elimination of the pagan tribes in the Promised Land.

We live in dangerous times.