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Transcript 579B — "Thou Shalt Not Kill"
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Brother Camping, do you remember when God sent the army down to slaughter those people? We've had so many people give us a different answer on this. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill." Could you kindly help us out a little bit on that? And I'll take the answer over the air.
HC: All right. Fine. Thank you for calling.,
On the one hand we read in the Bible, "Thou shalt not kill." And the Bible says, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." And on the other hand, we read again and again where God would send the armies of Israel against the heathen, or against some other nation, and they would slaughter them. They would kill them, every last one of them, frequently. When the nation of Israel came against Jericho, for example, we read in the Book of Joshua, they were commanded to kill every man, every woman, every baby, every child, every animal. The only ones that were spared were Rahab the Harlot and her family.
Now how does that agree with the statement, "Thou shalt not kill"? You see, first of all, when God is using this phrase, "Thou shalt not kill," God is saying, "Thou shalt not murder; thou shalt not take a man's life just indiscriminately because you want to take a man's life." But on the other hand, God also brings judgments against certain nations. And He used the nation of Israel to bring His judgment against the nation of Canaan. He used the nation of Babylon to bring a judgment against the nation of Israel. And so these armies fought, and one nation was vanquished by the other. And truly there was much killing.
Now this was killing not in the sense of murder, not in the sense of just indiscriminately taking life, but because God was showing that His judgment rested upon these people. They were subject to death. Now God doesn't do this anymore today. God has given us His word pictures in the Bible. God doesn't command one nation to go against another nation, although God will allow one nation to go. against another. But we don't have the same kind of a command as was given David to go against the Philistines, or the kind of a command where the nation of Israel was commanded to go against the city of Jericho. But through these instances God has given us, God is giving us a picture of the fact that the unbelievers, those who are in rebellion against God, are under the judgment of God. And this physical killing was a picture of the fact that they are subject to eternal damnation. At the judgment of the last day, they will be cast into hell.
Now we don't like to read about this in the Bible, but God has put it in the Bible in order that we might understand that if we are unsaved we are subject to eternal damnation, and to be physically killed is only a tiny part of that. But it's a picture of being under eternal damnation.
Now at first blush it would look as if God has a double standard. But you see, God is, we must begin with the principle that God is absolutely holy. God is absolutely just. Now when He takes a man's life and remember, it is God ultimately who allows us to be killed, or even though Satan may be the vehicle God uses to kill us, God allowed it, and frequently God takes our life, when our time has been spent on earth, then God takes us. And God has done the killing then, in that sense. And God can do this because God is absolutely holy. He does not do it as a sinful act in any way, but He does it out of His perfect holiness, out of His perfect justice, out of His perfect love or anger, or whatever it may be, that caused the act.
In the Old Testament, when we read of one nation going against another, God simply used these as examples of the way God works and showed us that indeed we are subject to the wrath of God if we remain rebellious against Him.