God commanded killing?

I came across a thread in an Atheists debate Christians group on FakeBook that was getting a lot of comments.  The opening post included a thumbnail (which I’ve included here) that began, “The Bible commands us to: Kill witches, kill adulterers, kill blasphemers,...” followed by about a dozen other alleged commands, and concludes with “Kill anyone who kills anyone.”  The seeming point of the thread was to make the Bible look like a “bad” book and…  well, I’m not sure what else.  Actually, I’ve never really understood this kind of argument.  Is the Atheist trying to say that there is no God because He’s mean?  That sounds non sequitur to me.  

I’ve written before about how unbelievers reject God because they have a wrong idea about who He is.  They create this false idea in their heads about how God should act if He were real and, since God doesn’t act that way, He must not be real.  But they’re not rejecting the true God; they’re rejecting a straw god of their own making.  I get the impression that’s what’s going on here.  The atheist who posted this is trying to suggest that the Bible isn’t true (or God isn’t real) because a “true” Bible wouldn’t have passages about killing witches!  

If we look carefully at the list, we see that some of the criticisms are misrepresentations of what the Bible is saying.  Nowhere does the Bible say, “Kill non-Hebrews,” for example.  Deuteronomy 20 is actually talking about specific peoples occupying the land God has promised to the fledgling nation of Israel.  The same list also cites Deuteronomy 20 as saying to “Kill all males after winning battles.” In other words, they are taking 2 passages describing one particular event, and claiming the Bible commands these to be universal rules.  Also, the list has “Kill gays” and “Kill men who have sex with other men” and even cites the same passage for both (Leviticus 20:13).  These are exactly the same things so why are they on the list twice?  It looks like items are being reworded, reinterpreted, and rewritten simply to bulk up the list.  It’s like highschool kids who fill up their research papers with nonsense sentences simply to reach the required word count.  In this case, the author of the list is padding the list simply to make the Bible sound worse than it actually is. 

It’s hard to take arguments like this seriously because atheists lack credibility.  They have a worldview that is built upon billions of years of death and struggle.  “Survival of the fittest” is the unofficial motto of evolution and killing off the “undesirables” in a tribe or village isn’t really any different than predators picking off the weakest members of their prey.  If the universe were all there is, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  It’s only because there is a Christian worldview,  one that values human lives above animals because we are made in God’s image, that criticisms like this have any weight at all.  In other words, it’s only because the Bible is true that these claims seem horrific!  Ironic, huh?

But what about these claims?  Do they contradict the idea of a loving God?  Do we hide from them and hope no one finds out about them?  Do we say, “that's the Old Testament so it’s not true anymore?”  No, no, and no.  What we should do is seek to understand God better and stand boldly on His word.  The answers to these criticisms are right there in the Scriptures and it is our job as Christians to be ready to respond when unbelievers speak them.  In this post, I hope to point to a few passages that might shed light on this subject.

1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love.  Some people seize upon this verse and others to try to portray Him as some namby-pamby kind of god.  They try to make God seem like a hippy whose only response to sin is pacifism.  If an earthly judge freed murderers because he “loved” them, we’d be outraged.  He would be an unjust judge.  If that’s what unbelievers think about God, then it’s no wonder they reject Him!  

The Bible also tells us about God’s wrath.  Romans 2:5-6 warns us, “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds:”  How frightening is the thought of standing before an angry God, knowing I am guilty of my sins!

You see, God is not only love, He is also just.  He is also patient and long-suffering.  He is merciful and good.  He is perfect in all of His ways.  The creatures around the Throne don’t sing, “Love, love, love.”  They don’t sing, “Wrath, wrath, wrath.”  They sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8).

Let’s get to the real meat of the issue: The penalty for witchcraft is still death.  The penalty for adultery is still death.  The penalty for blasphemy is still death.  The penalty for lying or stealing or looking at porn or cheating on your taxes is death. Need I remind you that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)?  It is the only penalty for sin and it has been that way for the entire history of man. But here’s the good news: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  In this single verse, we see the love of God, the wrath of God, and the mercy of God.  Praise Him!!

Now, I know what the skeptics are saying: what about the list?  What about killing false prophets?  To that I would ask, where are all the true prophets?  Where is Moses and Daniel and Jeremiah?  In case you haven’t noticed, they’re dead too.  Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”  So, yeah, the Israelite armies killed all the Amorites and Hittites but all the Jewish soldiers are dead now too.  All the prophets are dead.  Samson and all the other Judges are dead.  David and Solomon and all the other kings of Israel are dead.  

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed unto men to die and afterward is the judgment. God is the author of life so it is His right to decide when we die.  Some people die very old and some die very young.  Some die peacefully and some die violently.  When and how they die might vary but just as all have sinned, so all die.  The mortality rate among humans is 100%. When you think about it, it's sort of silly to say that there's anyone who doesn't deserve to die. If everyone dies, then how can we say that a rebellious son or an adulterer isn't worthy of death?

No sin is “trivial.” The list might dismiss blasphemy, sexual immorality, and rebellion as harmless but any transgression of the law earns God's judgment and the wages of our sin is death. Nobody is stoned anymore but we all have the same destiny - a grave. We all also have the same opportunity - salvation through His Son. When we stand before God in judgment (and we all will), I'm going to receive mercy because I have believed in His Son. Others are welcome to tell God He's being unfair.

God created all animals to eat plants… and it was so!

 Genesis 1:29-30, And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Creationists are sometimes chided for believing that all animals were created to be herbivorous.  The usual criticism is that the fangs and claws of predatory animals that exist today were obviously designed to kill and eat the flesh of other animals.  Furthermore, due to the design of their digestive systems, most predatory animals couldn’t even survive on a vegetarian diet.  In summary, the sharp teeth of the T-rex weren’t designed to eat coconuts!

The assumption that sharp teeth = predator is overly simplistic.  Evolutionists seem to have a superficial grasp of advantage or adaptation - that is, they look at the survival benefit of a particular trait, then claim that trait evolved in order to convey that benefit!  For example, some might say male birds evolved bright feathers to attract a mate or male lions evolved large manes to protect their head and neck when fighting for dominance.  It’s about as scientific as saying Michael Jordan grew tall in order to play basketball.

Another misunderstanding held by many is the belief that the highly adapted creatures we observe today aren’t substantially different from their ancestors.  Critics have asked, for example, how did freshwater fish species survive the Flood when all the fresh and salt waters were mixed together?  The flawed assumption behind this criticism is that the modern species of fish have exactly the same range of tolerances to salt and temperatures as their ancestors had in Noah’s day.

I believe the creationists’ understanding of Scripture better explains what we observe in the world today.  God originally created plants and animals “after their kind” (Genesis 1:11, et al).  Every modern species we observe today belongs to one of these originally created kinds but modern animals are the products of centuries of changing environments and adaptation.  Today, the species that exists may not look like any of their created ancestors.

I sometimes use bears as an example of kinds and species.  Both creationists and evolutionists agree that all modern species of bears are descended from a common ancestor.  Creationists might call this the “bear-kind” (ursa).  What did the original bear look like?  If we could see this creature now, I think we could probably identify it as some kind of bear but did it look like a panda?  A grizzly?  A polar bear?  It would have shared characteristics with each of these species but I suspect it wouldn’t have looked exactly like any of them.  

God created a bear-kind with the genetic potential for diversity.   As bears spread out around the world after the Flood, natural selection began its work.  Traits well suited to one environment allowed members with that trait to survive while members without that trait died.  Eventually, all the cubs born in that environment possessed only the most beneficial and the population became a new species.  In Asia, some bears became pandas; near the North Pole, some bears became polar bears.

Here’s a question, though: what did the ancestral bear eat?  Pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo while polar bears primarily eat seals.  Both species have sharp teeth and claws.  Both have descended from the same common ancestor.  So, clearly, the ancestral bear did not have the same dietary restrictions as either of these descendants.  Likewise, sharp teeth on a dino or fossilized dung containing bits of bone may be evidence that a critter ate meat, but it’s not proof that it always ate meat or that God always intended for it to eat meat!

I’m not surprised that unbelievers believe in a theory that is so muddled and unconvincing.  What surprises me more, though, is that people who claim to be Christians also believe the same things.  Theistic evolutionists often apply the label of “myth,” “allegory,” or “parable” to the creation account.  They do this to try to make Scripture compatible with the corrupt theory of evolution.  But when we read Genesis 1:29-30, where God clearly tells the man that plants would be food to him and every animal, what do they do with the phrase, “and it was so”?

When God created the animals, He commanded that plants were to be their food.  The Bible clearly says, “and it was so.”  In other words, God said it and it happened!  All animals ate plants - even the ancestral bears, cats, wolves, and other predators.  I believe this comports with other passages that say death follows sin and was not what God intended.

Some people may ask why I would make a big deal about this point?  I believe that evolution is a religion of death.  The very idea of the “survival of the fittest” requires that the unfit don’t survive.  It is the struggle to live that supposedly drives evolution.  The death of one species, gives rise to a new species.  It’s the circle of life.  Evolution almost makes death seem noble which makes evolution one of Satan’s most successful lies!

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Death is the judgment that God spoke to Adam because of his disobedience.  But the judgment wasn’t on Adam only, but on the entire creation.  God also cursed the ground for Adam’s sake (Genesis 3:17-19) and even now, the whole creation groans under the Curse (Romans 8:22).

Evolution makes the Bible seem nonsense.  Evolution says that the history of the earth before the appearance of man was defined by death, disease, and struggle.  Death is the way things are and, when Homo sapien finally appeared, they were mortal just like everything else.  This backward way of thinking has led many Christians into gross error in their interpretation of Scripture.  The YouTube channel, Inspiring Philosophy, made a comment bordering on heresy.  In a video titled, TOP TEN Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism, they made the following claim:

The implication numerous scholars have pointed out is Adam and Eve were already mortal and the only way they obtained immortality in the Garden was eating continuously from the Tree of Life. To make them mortal again, all God had to do was prevent access to this sacred tree. But that means humans were already mortal before the Fall and only granted immortality through a special fruit – not because they were created with immortal bodies….  This is also supported by the fact that Adam is called dust, which is an idiom in the Bible to denote that one is mortal. In Genesis, it might just be metaphorical language to denote that he was a mortal human – meaning Adam was mortal before the Fall which implies death was a possibility before sin entered. [bold added for emphasis]

Yikes!!  What terrible hermeneutics!  

The gospel is seen in the entire Bible, even in Genesis.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they were ashamed and tried to hide themselves.  They tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves but the Bible says God killed an animal and covered them with the skin of the animal.  What a sobering realization must have set in for the first couple when they looked upon that dead animal and saw the terrible consequence of their disobedience. 

That act ushered in an era of sacrifices where the shedding of blood was made to cover our sins (Hebrews 9:22).  The practice continued until the appearance of Christ - the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  His was the final sacrifice and now our sins are covered by His blood and righteousness.  Praise God!!

So you see, it is a big deal.  Understanding that God commanded the animals to eat plants was part of His plan that there would be no death - not even the death of animals.  The death of animals is evidence that He judges sin.  Christ’s death on the Cross was His plan to deal with sin.  We also have His promise of a restored creation where there is no more death.  

God said it, so I know it’s so!!