There has been a couple of threads based on this topic but I would like to know why God allowed to exterminate entire populations even infants or allow Elisha to send bears to kill young boys. It just seems against the character of God shown in the Orthodox faith of a God who loves mankind. I mean, it would make sense in a Calvinistic way where God gets glory out of the damnation and destruction of people.
Hi it does not say the young boys were killed but mauled by the bear. God destroyed the entire world once with a flood and preserved life through Noah.
“Hear, O Israel: You
are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, 2 a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and
of whom you heard
it said, ‘Who can stand before the descendants of Anak?’ 3 Therefore understand today that the LORD your God
is He who goes over before you
as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.
4 “Do not think in your heart, after the LORD your God has cast them out before you, saying, ‘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 driving them out from before you. 5
It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart
that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations
that the LORD your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 6 Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you
are a stiff-necked people.
God then put a conditional covenant of blessing and cursing on Israel which still holds to the everlasting covenant with Abraham that this promised land would be an eternal unconditional covenant to the nation that came from him. We see God now twice has punished Israel with expulsion from the land. Now both times he has restored them. If you think the OT alone has the violence the end of the age and 2nd coming will be horrific. The day of vengeance of God is Jesus treading the wine press of wrath and all his garments will be stained with blood in that day. The climax of prophecy is the 2nd coming of Jesus which will bring in the promised reign of peace and righteousness. This is the destruction of antichrist false prophet and Satan being bound. This is the Joseph moment for Israel when they see Jesus is God and has saved them from certain destruction. this is when they are born again and have Gods laws written on their hearts and minds.
here is synopsis of Zech 14
Then the LORD will go forth
And fight against those nations,
As He fights in the day of battle.
4 And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives,
Which faces Jerusalem on the east.
And the Mount of Olives shall be split in two,
From east to west,
Making a very large valley;
Half of the mountain shall move toward the north
And half of it toward the south.
Thus the LORD my God will come,
And all the saints with You
And in that day it shall be
That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem,
Half of them toward the eastern sea
And half of them toward the western sea;
In both summer and winter it shall occur.
9 And the LORD shall be King over all the earth.
In that day it shall be—
“The LORD
is one,”[fn]
And His name one.
12 And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem:
Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet,
Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets,
And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths.
