Why has this site seen a huge turn towards Christian shit? It smells waaay off. Like, Russel Brand and all these other influencers turn Christian and this forum becomes overrun with worshippers of the Lord God of Israel via the Jesus psy op.
Why have TPTB decided to shove Christianity down everyones throats and flood boards with Christian bots etc?
Are they trying to strengthen their grip over us spiritually by reinforcing their original deception or what?
Hi, on the first point - yes, you're correct in genocide being an overarching (and very repetitive) theme.
Why order the murder of babies? And of livestock? When Saul kept some sheep and cattle alive to burn in sacrifice to YHWH, YHWH changed his mind towards Saul being King of Israel - because he didn't fulfil the complete and utter genocide of the Amalekites and all their livestock! Is this really the god you accept as your own? Is this really a god you can call all good and all-loving?
Deuteronomy 7 contains the command to genocide many peoples and reiterates the fact that YHWH is the god of Israel only and of no other nation. For example:
Deu 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; Deu 7:2 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: Deu 7:3 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. Deu 7:4 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. Deu 7:5 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. Deu 7:6 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.
See? He chose ONLY Israel to be his very own. And to conquer all other nations. Hence the verse in Isaiah 60:12 which states that the nation that does not serve thee (Israel) shall perish. Yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted. There were multiple genocides past in the bible, and more yet to follow for the sake of the fulfilment of prophecy - which Jesus says he is come to do and that no jot or tittle shall pass until ALL be fulfilled.
For example, Jesus acknowledged that it is he who is referred to in Psalm 110 in Matthew and Mark. Thus:
Mar 12:35 And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the Son of David? Mar 12:36 For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. Mar 12:37 David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly.
Psalm 110 says that Jesus will rule of Israels enemies and that they will be made his footstool. The enemies of Israel were Rome - and it was Rome that became the seat of Christianity in what was the Jews theological conquest of the gentiles and parasitisation of the Roman Empire. Remember, it is Jesus being spoken of in Psalm 110 where it says: Psa 110:5 My Lord is at your right side, and when he gets angry he will crush the other kings. Psa 110:6 He will judge the nations and crack their skulls, leaving piles of dead bodies all over the earth.
Jesus will judge the nations (goyim ie the non-Jews), crack our skulls and leave piles of dead bodies all over the earth. Is this guy REALLY your saviour...?
sa 49:23 And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD: for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.
Our leaders are to fall at the feet of Israel and lick up the dust of their feet. I mean, they already do so now, but still...
Or in Micah 7:16-17:
Mic 7:16 The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. Mic 7:17 They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the LORD our God, and shall fear because of thee.
Us goy (nations) are likened to worms and will be afraid of their god and shall be in fear because of Israel. Their god is not your god. Them and their god hates you if your not Jewish. Jesus is one of them and is not your saviour.
Hi, I'm not sure how to proceed but I hope to keep talking, I'm thinking we could go back and forth on scripture all day, I think you're pretty smart and I'm glad you've informed yourself to a point, I'm still learning to do this also with God stuff and everything really, though I have a different point then you at this time.
Forgive me if I'm stepping over boundaries now, I am thinking you not only don't believe Jesus is real but also if He is real then you don't want anything to do with Him. I think this is all a giant misunderstanding and I'd like to learn more with you about the nature of God, if you're willing.
We can even step outside scripture (special revelation) and go to the observable universe (general revelation) and what that means for observers like us.
You're not stepping over any boundaries at all. You are correct in what you think. I don't believe Jesus was real, I believe he was a trick rustled up by Jews - a midrash from their scriptures to be sold to the Gentiles (as he was) in order that they would come to worship the god of the jews, which is what happened. By force and by persuasion. And all of our own gods and ways of life were prohibited by the Jews using the husk of the Roman Empire to enforce it - an Empire which became the holy Roman see and the seat of power of the Jewish Messiah, fulfilling Psalm 110. But bear in mind that Rome, for Jesus and the Jews, is the 'midst of thine enemies' from which he will rule. Not to mention all those dead bodies to come...
And if Jesus was real, then he's still a vile character who has set out to deceive not only the gentiles but even his fellow Jews. His main target however is us gentiles who he wishes to bring to utter destruction.
I'd not be keen to move on if that's ok as you still have that challenge pending...
History proves Jesus was real, much to the chagrin of Jews.
Your expressed thinking is entirely backwards here. There is also much to be learned about the development of the Bible itself that speaks to these facts ...
I think we're going to have to start at the beginning, that is how I got to my understanding of these things that you question, they are really good questions.
I think the universe is intelligently designed. I think nature proves that.
I believe God when He says He is the Creator in Genesis and I also believe in original sin and fallen human nature.
God communicated with His creation and gave us His ways and commands, this is how we learn His personal nature and not just general natural design.
Before going to Deut 7 you have to have an understanding of Deut 6 and having that understanding your issues with the verses in Samuel, Isaiah, Micah, Psalms, Mark and wherever else, can be fleshed out and I'm happy to do that with you, I'm just not sure the answers I have matter to you at this time as a point of spiritual growth and not just a game. I personally love games and searching scripture for understanding is one of my favorite things but I'm not here right now just to amuse myself.
I would like to know where you are coming from in your faith and worldview. I have started this reply with mine and I do think we should start at the beginning.
What do you believe about who we are, where we come from and why?
If you believe in gods, whom do you serve?
I would agree with you that nature and everything in it only points one way - towards a creator. Nothing else makes any sense to me and I highly doubt it ever will.
But the Jewish god ain’t it. Not by a long chalk. The Jewish gods is a war god of one people. He was a jealous god - jealous of all his other fellow gods. Angry, spiteful, sadistic and the self-confessed creator of evil.
Nor is the Jewish messiah Jesus any better, who also wages War by deception in order to fulfill the wicked plans of his wicked father YHWH and act as false shepherd to gentiles, leading them to their slaughter and even ‘treading the winepress’ personally himself.
I think there is a creator, absolutely, but I don’t think it can be contained within the bounds of human characteristics and it most certainly would not be YHWH.
I believe you can see the creator in natural things, in the patterns and ways and I believe you can even experience the creator when you have respite from the ego.
Have you heard of yaldabaoth / “the demiurge”?
I have heard of these, yes. This is the Gnostic interpretation of YHWH.
Even if YHWH is as the gnostics believe then the ultimate god above him still appointed him over the earth and so is equally as uncaring/evil or equally as ignorant.
I don’t believe in ANY of the Jewish religions or sects of Judaism, be it Christianity or Gnosticism or Islam but the Gnostic assessment of YHWH seems much more sober and realistic.
Well, thank you for this fresh meat and I hope u/Thisisnotanexit doesn't mind my stepping in first, as we agree on a lot but not perfectly.
If you start with natural law, that rapidly leads to necessity for capital punishment for the incorrigible, and then to the possibility of just war against the incorrigibly belligerent society. If you have a problem with the idea of defending your nation with force when attacked, that's probably a separate discussion because most moral codes allow protection of the innocent.
The question turns to when to judge that a nation is sufficiently belligerent (hardened), and the degree of collateral risk against noncombatants. This is also a very detailed moral dilemma but is closer to the objection you are staking out. It seems that you're not objecting to the principle that nations have the right to judge that war against one of their number is better for all, and to judge who is included in that war; you're objecting to the loose application of this principle as many read it into the Bible. If we could never declare war against an attacking nation or determine for ourselves who constitutes combatants or what collateral risk is acceptable, that would be quite a difficult pacifism to walk.
It's my experience that the Biblical accounts indicate principles in this moral minefield that are at least as good as those of any other comparative system: this requires reading them in their context the same way as any other historical document, of course.
Your first passage, 1 Sam. 15:2-3, states the rationale directly, that Amalek had attacked Israel without cause (Ex. 17:8). In context Amalek "smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary", so grave an attack against a people on pilgrimage as to require continuous remembrance (Ex. 17:14-16, Deut. 25:17-19). They hadn't changed any later, as cited by the independent witness of Balaam, who also judged the people worthy of death (Num. 24:20); this is unlike the Kenites, who had been among Amalek but accepted terms of peace with Israel, 1 Sam. 15:6. Now, as with Egyptian justifications for its many wars, you could object that the history is wrong or exaggerated, but we don't have an objection that there are times when a nation should be judged for crimes against humanity, and attacking the feeble among a wearied people en masse is one such crime.
In those days it was also argued that one who attacks the weak (i.e. including the children) deserves to have one's own children attacked; the fact that we are (often) more sensitive nowadays is a further moral development, but still isn't an objection against the morality as it had developed that far. The fact is that the adults were all judged worthy of death by Samuel and Saul, and for the children in this case death was judged more merciful than alternatives (including their remaining alive to revive the rebellious nation). I believe that anyone seeking morality should be able to accept that the Creator, through the Cosmos, allows many unexplained deaths of children or "innocents" through many secondary causes, and that if we're not atheists we trust that there is a good reason for this. So it's not impossible for the Creator to communicate that a certain nation is so far gone that its children are better off spared from growing up in that nation, due to the secondary cause of war. Since that's possible, I don't have a problem with the theory that it may have happened on a couple occasions. When genocide occurs for any reason, I trust that the Creator knows who are truly dying in innocence and who are dying for their sins, and judges rightly.
The cattle are a separate issue, as the victor in a just war has the right to dedicate its spoils to its god rather than use it for other purposes. Saul's issue was that he agreed with the dedication and then didn't follow through. Samuel called this out publicly and said that Yahweh had said "It repenteth me" about it, which means not that he changed his mind but that Saul's kingship had turned away (repented) from him. Yahweh didn't leave Saul in that sense, Saul left.
Now you ask if this is a good, all-loving God. That's a moral question that I'll just allude to briefly. God being Love cannot mean rewarding the evil: sooner or later Love draws a line and allows justice and judgment. The complex transactions of God in the Bible demonstrate a very developed sense of how to draw those lines, and when I compare it to other systems I find it superior. Many who speak of omnibeneficence haven't thought through what it would actually mean as an attribute of deity.
Deut. 7:1-6 is similarly a judgment against various Canaanite tribes for their evil practices, well-documented in the Late Bronze Age archaeology. One reference to these evils, aside from idolatry itself being connected to many shrine immoralities, is that they bring diseases (7:15), including sexual; another reference is the Deut. 2 giants, several nations of which had already been dispossessed by other Semitic tribes, which was regarded as a judgment against their sexual immorality (Gen. 6), a judgment in which Israel had much precedent from which to participate. This is not about genocide against every other nation, but is surgically selected; the rules of just war require offering terms of peace, allowing coexistence. Also, Moses gives laws of war by which captives can be spared and naturalized, which apply in all these cases (Amalek being a specific exception).
Now, if a national god was in fact the true Creator it would be natural to affirm that all nations should come to know him; but this aspect is claimed by several gods, so we need not choose a priori, as it remains for them to continue competing in history as we study truth claims to determine which of them is correct.
You then regard Christianity as some kind of Jewish plot ("parasitisation") to subvert all these nations. Well, again, American Christianity today is great at hearing all competing truth claims and allowing discussion, so if this were true then the way it exists today as upholding rights of conscience is one of the best vehicles in which to discover any errors! I'm happy to discuss faults of Jews and Christians, but that is a separate matter from whether the true Creator is actually on Jesus's side and speaking truth through him.
Ps. 110:5-6 is of course warlike, though you have an exaggerated paraphrase and in the KJV it reads more rightly and generically as "He shall judge among the heathen, he shall fill the places with the dead bodies; he shall wound the heads over many countries." If a king is unable to defeat enemies and wound heads when called for, yeah, that wouldn't be my Savior forever. It doesn't come close to implying that every Gentile will be killed. I don't see a problem with the psalm itself, or other multifaceted Messianic literature, unless racism is attributed to Jesus contrary to the historical record.
Is. 49:23 could be taken as Gentiles serving Israel, but the same passage (6) says "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." Salvation and light to the Gentiles alongside Israel, where both are given to the Messiah "servant", means that all are equally serving the Messiah as the true representative of what Israel or any nation was supposed to be. I'm a love-slave of Jesus, sold to him unless truth should be otherwise. So I don't have a problem with the idea that all nations, including Israel, serve him in his kingdom, as he's proved his worthiness for it. I know that it's been said Talmudists take this triumphalistically, but that hasn't been demonstrated and doesn't inform the idea that they have any power to do so via Christianity apart from Jesus.
Micah 7:16-17 isn't really even an applicable passage, it comes in the midst of shepherding, compassion, and pardon (14, 18-19) for all who have the faith of Abraham (20), which precedes that one grandson Israel. Generic charges against the nations generally refer to whether they accept God's offer of peace or remain belligerent against him (hmm, returning theme), not to race.
TLDR: It takes eyes to distinguish advocacy for child murder from a wartime accepted risk of collateral death to children. The Bible gives hundreds of examples of moral decisionmaking and the couple times it discusses collateral damage appear to me to be some of the best guidance on the subject, compared to any other analyst. Child murderers write in a completely different way. Your difficulty blurring the two indicates you have some other objection, possibly founded in some other (European?) religious code that you haven't shared with us. By all means, teach us Odin and Yggdrasil if that has a better morality, but don't deconstruct one morality disingenuously without setting up something better in its place.
There are definite answers to this.
Understanding even just one of them requires patience; and there are many different answers, all of which have their own unique facet of truth.
Perhaps the place to begin is by looking at where these appear in Scripture, and how incredible it is that we can recover any meaning at all from such ancient scribblings. Have you devoted any effort to this?