I was having a discussion online about how what God did in the Old Testament is clearly acceptable:
The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament, unquestionably in every case. It’s quite trivial to show how, and every atheist top ten lists are missing cultural and intellectual context. People are normally wowed when I explain stuff since they normally don’t hear it that way if you wanted to shoot a shot or two of something that’s hard to understand for you. Ask away.
The Old Testament was there to show operations before grace. Before Jesus came on Earth, he was in Heaven and those who died will be raised if in faith. Still, the time was a spiritually different time, as if with atonement for sin had not yet come… So if someone did something wrong, they had to be punished, such that they would not do it again. An eye for an eye,a tooth for a tooth was the determent for such crimes. A change came down when the spirit of God manifested himself in human flesh so he can experience all the pain, trials, temptation and suffering a human being could in order to sympathize with us now.
Literally Jesus spoke about the change:
Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew 5:38-42. 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. ‘ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Jesus’ contemporary, the sometimes spoken second in charge under him John The Baptist did speak on war. God fully approve of John the Baptist who also suffered because he had to live outside of society eating locusts and honey, not very fun stuff, yet shows the poor are not necessarily the cursed of God.
John the Baptist was preaching for people to turn from their sins:
Luke 3:14 Some soldiers also asked him, “What about us? What are we to do?” He said to them, “Don’t take money from anyone by force or accuse anyone falsely. Be content with your pay.”
The approved of Jesus: John The Baptist did not say soldiering is sin. He said not to bully people into giving them money because they have force. This also condemned wars for loot like viking raids. Do not use might to make money. You can use a war to defend your country. You can use an offensive war to defend your country, but you’re not to pick fights out of pride, or desire for loot. Being a soldier is a noble thing to put your life out their to defend freedom. Even self defense is noble… Pacifism is not Christianity, Jesus followers were supposed to stand up for his rights even if it meant their death, but Jesus had the worst possible experience a person could have: Betrayed by a friend who took a bribe, Betrayed by the church which should have been his ally, betrayed by state justice which didn’t even care one way or the other, betrayed by police who violently beat him even before he was found guilty of a crime then after on his way to his punishment , the punishment of all sins of all mankind, even his own closest friends wanted to not stand up for him…. So if you’re on the street and your friend or your mom get attacked by an idiot, you’re allowed to defend family, pacifism is a type of cowardice when you could help save a victim.
If you face an enemy nation who declares they’re going to destroy your nation at any cost, and all their people are united to kill you… I get that you’d want to do your best to contain them because you really don’t want them hurt and to die. We all understand there are uneducated people who are brainwashed into thinking other people are just bad based on their nation, race or sex. You want them to exist peacefully and learn it is best to be chill and enjoy life, like video games n books are cool! But if they keep attacking your land, relentlessly, there’s a point where you might as king think,”Hey, these guys need to be offensively attacked or they’ll keep coming at us and we’ll lose in the long run.” This last paragraph is a military reality and has nothing to do with the spirit realm at all.