God and Mass Genocide in the Old Testament!

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The Top Crusader
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God and Mass Genocide in the Old Testament!

Post by The Top Crusader »

One thing that is prone to come up in discussions with people about Christianity and a loving God is "OH YEAH!? How can you say you have a LOVING GOD when in the Old Testament He is always either personally wiping out people, or having the Israelites or someone do it!? HMMMM!!!??? ANSWER ME THAT!!!!!!!" And yeah, from the flood to Sodom and Gomorrah to lots of random folks the Israelites came across as they journeyed to the Promised Land, to them getting there... and... well, okay, it goes on a lot throughout the Old Testament. It's not just "Hey, those guys are bad and in our way so we will fight them, and then when we beat them back we will go through and let them tend to their wounded!" It was generally, "GO IN THERE AND KILL EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD AND BURN THEIR OXEN!!!!!!!" And... yeah. ;) It can be difficult to rationalize, although there is the occasional reasonable or unreasonable Christian response to these matters. Ranging from "GOD IS SMART!" to "Well, God mellowed out later when he had a kid", to "GOD CAN DO WHAT HE WANTS BECAUSE HE IS GOD!!!"

But ANYWAY after researching these things and trying to make sense of them, I don't think that God would just brutalize mass populations without good reason, obviously. But what could be a good reason to not just kill an army, but wipe out an entire tribe of people?

WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED! \:D/

My standing theory, which I am still working on, but so far is making sense, is this all goes back to Genesis 6:3.

What happened in Genesis 6:3? Fallen angels said "LOL hey lets make TEH BABBIES with the human peeps!" And thus, they did. Being half-fallen angel and all, the Bible tells us these were a race of superhuman giants, "men of renown" etc. And, okay this weird stuff happens. And then what? Very next verse God tells Noah he is going to FLOOD THE EARTH AND KILL EVERYTHING! So, yeah, growing up I was always told "Well people were REALLY REALLY wicked and having wild parties and listening to rock music!" and well, okay, doing very bad things, but not necessarily anything worse than the stinky ways of people these days (although the Bible doesn't tell us the depth and detail of their sins). That never really made total sense to me with the degree of wickedness still in the world to this day. But hey, it makes a lot more sense if you think about in the context that GOD HAD TO WIPE OUT A RACE OF SUPERHUMANS.

Fastforwarding a bit, the Israelites were hanging around in the wilderness walking around and who do they come across? The Amalakites (spelling is wrong there, I assume, but I'm not getting any suggestions from my spell check ;)), who happen to be... SIX FINGERED GIANTS. And God tells them to obliterate them and leave no trace, basically.

Also, they get to Jericho. What do the 12 spies say? THE PLACE IS FILLED WITH GIANTS! When I was a kid the thing we were taught was "The 10 spies who said that were COWARDS! They were too scared so they said the place was full of giants!" But... uhhh... the Bible doesn't really say that. >_> Caleb and Joshua didn't contradict the other 10 as far as the size of the people, only that they had faith God would help them win the battle no matter what. Also, doesn't it kind of make sense if there is a race of EVIL GIANT HALF FALLEN ANGEL PEOPLE that they would settle and make a big city exactly where God wants his chosen people?

Going forward again, we have King David. Yeah, we know he killed the giant Goliath, and frankly, Goliath is the only giant from the Bible who seems to overall get any credit these days. ;) So lets skip ahead a bit. Later in David's reign as King... what does he do? Does he stand on his roof and watch people take baths? YES! But what else? He has a crusade of sorts, sending an army to Goliath's hometown where THE GOLIATH FAMILY OF GIANTS is all killed. Yes. The man had a family. :(

So in a nutshell, a lot, if not all, of the times where there is MASS GENOCIDE in the Bible, its not just God wiping out random people who are sinful, but it is God STOPPING A RACE OF EVIL SUPERHUMANS. I think that puts God's ways in a better perspective! :yes:

Again, other than Goliath, it seems basically all these other events I've highlighted are ignored and glossed over. You would think people would have more interest in RACES OF SUPER HUMANS BENT ON DESTROYING THE WORLD, what with all these X-men and whatnot these day. Lots of times when I've brought these things up to people, they just shrug it off and act like the Bible MUST mean something else even though its right there in black and white.

On a happy note, Jesus did say "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." So hey maybe we will get EVIL SUPER HUMAN GIANTS one last time before Christ returns! \:D/
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Post by Christian A. »

I agree with most of that, but I do think that there were times, as expressly stated in the Bible, that God took out whole tribes because they were into the sin of idolatry, which is naturally horrendous to Him. And He didn't want those nations to be a temptation to His chosen people, the Israelites, so that they wouldn't have other "gods" to look to to worship.
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Post by The Top Crusader »

Right, I don't want to say that EVERY TIME anything like that happened then 100% it goes with my theory, but the commonality of the human/fallen angel hybrids goes deeper than most people think (of course most people are unaware entirely of the matter). ;)
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Post by Parker Family »

Hmm... Interesting I've heard a little about "super humans" before but never gave it much thought.

I'll have to think about this... :-k
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Post by SoccerLOTR »

I've given that verse a lot of thought as well--the Nephilim have interested me for a long time, but really I haven't come to any solid conclusions regarding the giants. Though not everyone that the Israelites destroyed were giants--most of them weren't. But what I've learned is more along the lines of what Christian was saying. God was protecting the Israelites from contamination by other beliefs and false gods and immorality. Wiping out the entire population was the only way to completely eliminate the threat--if God had allowed exceptions, the Israelites might have been tempted to bend the rules more and more by letting more people live and welcoming people into their civilization. Anyhow...yeah, could be a bit of both...
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