the Reason for Old Testament "Holy Wars"

February 16

The Reason for Old Testament “Holy Wars” (Part 1)​

The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo; they took no gain of money. They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera (Judges 5:19-20)

Many people are troubled by the numerous references to war in the Old Testament. Some are most troubled by the fact that God even commanded the Israelites to fight. Atheists use the Old Testament Biblical “holy wars” to paint a false picture of a cruel deity that they can hate and excuse themselves from worshipping. However, many sincere Christians are also troubled by all of the physical violence in the Old Testament. They have a difficult time reconciling this with the picture of God given to us by our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah, in the New Testament.

Many things that trouble God’s people can be resolved when they understand that there is an ongoing spiritual battle in the Heavenlies that has spilled over into our world (2 Kings 6:15-17; Eph. 6:10-13). The “stars” that Deborah is singing about is speaking about angelic beings both good and evil (Job 38:7; Rev. 1:16, 20; 12:3-4, 7-9).

When the king of Assyria threatened Israel and blasphemed God, King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah cried out to God. God sent an angel to deal with the situation (2 Chron. 32:20-22; Isa. 37:33-36). We see from this that a physical problem was dealt with through spiritual means, which proves that the root of the problem in the first place is spiritual.

During the time in which the Old Testament was written, many things were resolved by physical warfare. However, much of the warfare we find in the Old Testament is symbolic of the ongoing war between satanic forces of evil and God’s forces of good. It was Satan who was behind the evil kings in the Old Testament who threatened Israel (Job 1:12, 14, 15; Isa. 14:4-17; Eze. 28:12-19; Luke 4:5-8; John 8:44; 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 5:18-19; Rev. 20:1-8).

Satan is the one who deceives nations (Rev. 20:3, 8). It was Satan who often sought to destroy Israel since it was through this nation from which the Messiah would come to render him his ultimate defeat and free the rest of the world that is under his control. Even today Satan is behind the Islamic terrorist attacks and wars in the Middle East.

Just like Biblical times, these battles are not simply just a bunch of angry nations that can’t get along. Diplomacy will not work against demons. Whether we like it or not, we are involved in this war. We must keep our armor on and use it (Eph. 6:10-18).​

February 20

Satanically Influenced Nations​

Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled (Lev. 18:26-27)

Read through Leviticus 18 and take note of the sins being committed by the nations that God was going to dispossess. It was not only the blatant worship of false gods that posed a problem but the horrendous acts that they led to them. There were sexual perversion such as incest, inappropriate behavior with animals, and homosexuality. People in our generation have been made these acceptable practices for the majority of the world and therefore look upon God as being too stringent in condemning them. However, these practices lead to outbreaks of all kinds of diseases and other epidemics.

Even more, there was the devaluation of human dignity and human life. Children were sacrificed in torturous ways in order to appease their local deities. Even those in our day who don’t seem to have any difficulty with the legal slaughter of innocent unborn children might balk at roasting an infant alive in a fire. Nonetheless, if these nations were to continue to exist it would only be a matter of a few centuries that these acts could bring destruction to all of mankind. This is exactly what Satan has been planning in His war against God and humanity.

Sadly people don’t get it and reject these Old Testament truths and the necessity for these “holy wars.” Modern day people have been desensitized to the horror of sin and its results. Liberal ideology proclaims the false idea that what one person does for pleasure has no effect on others or on society as a whole has impacted how we view God’s standards and His methods for dealing with them. Furthermore, pacifist ideas have crept into much of our thinking about God in which we could never see Him using violent means for handling a situation (due to false interpretations of Jesus’ explanations of God’s laws).

However, God tells the Israelites that the very land was defiled due to these sins. Like any plague, if God were to allow it to spread it could only mean the destruction of the earth as a whole. It was incumbent upon God as the judge of all the earth to deal with the spread of sin in the world.

However, there is a practical lesson for us as well. Are we allowing sin to dwell in our hearts? If we are we must deal with it and ask God to remove it before it completely defiles us and we are destroyed by it.​