So you think that our God is non-violent? You are wrong and I will prove it to you. Don’t get me wrong, I think the peace lovers and the sheep and the innocent are the best that Christ has to offer. So if you are a sheep, I am not asking you to change. But there is a reason that sheep have shepherds. There has to be those that will go the extra mile to protect them. They fight and bleed and die and when they come home they are ridiculed by the sheep. Par for the course…slings and arrows that the brave have to endure.
Ecclesiastes 3
1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Certainly violence is best avoided but violence in itself is not evil or a sin. It all depends on the reason, the purpose, and the intent of the violence. Now when Christ walked among us…that is, God walked among us, He promoted none violence and no resistance to evil…let evil have its way with you and your family…and that occurred during the persecutions. Now He intended to avenge all that in the end…and Christian were told that his return would be quickly…soon…that they were living in the last days.
Well that did not happen. What did happen was that Christ moved to join Christianity with the most powerful empire on earth. The Roman Catholics were not pacifists and when the Protestants came along, most of them were not pacifists either. So did something change that made it so that the Church and Christians had to defend themselves? Was there something that the biblical writers misunderstood? Was there something that we misunderstood? A lot of water under the bridge. This is something that Christians as a whole can debate and opinions vary and that is fine. But there is no way of proving anything.
But as far as your statement that our God is peaceful, that I can prove wrong. There is a time for peace and there is a time for war and that is how God, has always operated.
Numbers 31-1-54 17-18 presented here and it starts out with Yahweh telling Moses to take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites…
7 So they made war against the Midian, just as the Lord had commanded Moses, and they killed every male. [So then they addressed the children and the women.]
15-18 And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? Behold, these caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
35 and of the humans beings, of the women who had not known a man intimately, all the persons were 32,000.
Deuteronomy 20:13-17
This is actually one of the Mosaic Laws.
When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
Numbers 33:55-56
But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from you, then it will come about that those whom you let remain of them will be like thorns in your eyes and like pricks in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live.
And just as I plan to do to them, I will do to you
Exodus 21:23-25
But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
Now Christ disagreed with this Mosaic Law and I also have issues with the Spirit of the Mosaic Laws but what do you think the Spirit of this Law is?
Of course there are other things to consider, Christ did make a scourge of small cords and drive out the money changers.
Luke 22:36 And He said to them, “But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his cloak and buy one.
He was telling His Apostles to buy swords and in fact they did.
Matthew 12:29 Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.
Matthew 24:43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.
Luke 11:21-22 “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.
You can read through Revelation and see a lot of violence, but here are some highlights.
Revelation 6:8
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Revelation 9:13-21 15-16-19 presented here.
So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million;
And the rest with the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat upon the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.
