Israel Conquers the Land of Canaan
God’s methods of judgment
have taken various forms. In Noah’s day He judged sinful humanity through the
instrument of a flood that annihilated every person and creature that walked on
the earth, only Noah and his family and the creatures with them on the Ark were
saved (Genesis 7).
In the days of Lot He judged
the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah through the instrument of fire raining
down from heaven that annihilated every person and creature in those cities,
only Lot and his wife and two daughters whom angels had sent away before
judgment fell were saved, except Lot’s wife looked back and perished by
becoming a pillar of salt (Genesis 19).
Later, God judged the ungodly
idol worshipping nations of the land of Canaan through the instrument of His
people, Israel, commanding them to conquer and to destroy its inhabitants,
including often women and children and animals (Deuteronomy 3).
Such instruction by God to
Israel seems to some people to have been unjust!
They ask, how could a loving
and righteous God direct Israel to conquer and to kill, even women and children
and animals, and to take possession of the land of Canaan? They respond in
anger towards Holy God, crying, injustice!
But is God unjust? When we
open God’s Word we find that because God is just and righteous that He brought
such judgment upon the Canaanites and the Amorites and the other nations of the
land of Canaan.
More than four hundred years
earlier God begins His explanation for the conquest of Canaan. He tells Abram
(Abraham) that He would give to him and to his descendants the land of Canaan,
but that He would not do it now because:
God
said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a
land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred
years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward
they will come out with many possessions. . . . Then in the fourth generation
they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.
(Genesis 15:13,14,17)
Here, God tells Abraham that
He will give the land of Canaan to him and his descendants, but not now because
“the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.” In other words, the sins of
the Amorites and the Canaanites and other nations of that land were not yet
such as to warrant judgment . . . but God foreknew how wicked these nations
would become in four hundred years.
Over four centuries later
having crossed the Red Sea in their exodus from Egypt, the children of Israel
find themselves standing at the edge of the land of Canaan about to go in to
possess it. But before entering, God explains to Israel why He is allowing
Israel to dispossess its nations, saying:
Do
not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you,
‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’
but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is
dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the
uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is
because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving
them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your
fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 9:4-5)
So, we find that God is
indeed just and holy, and that He hates wickedness and will judge it one way or
the other, whether through flood or fire or human instruments.
At Armageddon, when the church returns with
Jesus Christ from heaven to fight for Israel and to destroy the Antichrist and
his ungodly followers on earth, Jesus will use us, His church, as His
instruments to fight with Him. You can read about it in my book available on
Amazon entitled Rediscovered Early Church
Premillennialism: Teachings of the Earliest Church Fathers on Prophecy.
