My dear readers,

Answering Remaining Questions from Calvary Pandan Church Camp 2025 (1)

Question 1: For the current era, does God still hold the same promise to protect Israel? How about if they are the ones who initiated the attack on others?

Answer 1: The protection of Israel is always based on God’s glory. God’s glory includes keeping His promises. God does not protect anyone for the wrong reason, especially when they do wrong. Indeed, the Bible teaches clearly that Israel was a nation designed and created by God. The reasons were twofold. The first was for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ cannot come into this world to suffer and die for the sins of the world without a nationality. If that is the case, anyone could pretend to be the Messiah, which is still being done today. However, in God's prophecies, God ensured that when the Messiah finally came, He alone would fulfil all the prophecies God had given hundreds of years earlier. For example, the Messiah must be of the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David, etc. That is why God provided us with the genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, which delineate the lineage of Christ to authenticate His messianic status.

The second reason was the witness to the world that God still loves this sinful world in Christ. He does not desire to send anyone to hell, but that all may come and believe in Christ and be saved. That is why every aspect of Israel’s daily life, from their clothing to their food, was ordained by God for their spiritual witness and protection from compromise. Israel’s holy feasts were spiritual, reminding her of the importance of remaining holy, and that their God is holy, so that all who saw how Israel lived would see Christ and be saved.

When Israel rejected Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah (i.e. “Christ” in Greek), God rejected Israel as His witness and replaced her with the ecclesiastical witness from Acts 2 onwards. Since then, Israel has no longer been able to point any sinner to Christ. However, some promises of God to Israel remain unfulfilled. God always keeps His promises. Israel will exist till His promises have been fulfilled and for His glory. For example, God’s promise to Abraham regarding the boundaries of the Promised Land has not yet been fulfilled. Genesis 15:18-21: “¹⁸In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: ¹⁹The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, ²⁰And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, ²¹And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Even in the height of Israel's glory in the days of King David and King Solomon, the boundaries did not reach the size that God promised Abraham in Genesis 15. The promise of Genesis 15 will be fulfilled during the Millennial Kingdom.

Israel was to be a holy witness from the beginning of her existence to point others to Christ. They were permitted to defend themselves if attacked, but they were not to attack any nation. The conquest of the Land of Canaan was due to the sins of the Canaanites being full. Genesis 15:12-16: “¹²And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. ¹³And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; ¹⁴And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. ¹⁵And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. ¹⁶But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” [Emphasis added]

If Israel attacked other nations out of pride and arrogance, Israel would lose her significance as a witness for Christ. Israel was not to enlarge her borders and make conquests to satisfy the ego of the kings like the Gentile rulers such as Nebuchadnezzar. Israel needed to live in peace with her neighbours for her to fulfil her holy witness for Christ.

Question 2: How to reconcile God sending people to destroy other nations in war because of sin, and yet command us not to murder, etc? How to discern when a country's attack in the current world is part of God's will or if they are sinning against God through an attack?

Answer 2: Commandment number six, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exod 20:13), together with the other nine Commandments, was given by God as the foundation for the civil laws of Israel to regulate her societal life. These Ten Commandments are absolute, and there are no scenarios or excuses to justify breaking any one of them. In the Bible, God always condemns murder. In war, when soldiers are killed in battle, it is not called murder. When God sent His people Israel to destroy the Canaanites, the reason given by God was that the sins of the Canaanites were full. It was not murder.

Of course, the Israelites were never to delight in the killing of the Canaanites; it was a spiritual exercise they were called to do. The Land of Promise had to be void of idolatry and idols when Israel began her holy witness for Christ to save the world from sin. If Israel was to fail, and she did, then her holy witness would be compromised, and sinners would not see Christ by the way Israel lived, and they would die in sin and be cast into hell. Idolatry starts with the hearts and minds of idol worshippers. That was why God commanded all in Canaan to be killed, unless they repented and gave up their idolatry, like Rahab and the Gibeonites who surrendered and became slaves to Israel and did everything Israel demanded, which included getting rid of idols and idolatry.

God, as the Creator of heaven and earth and the Giver of life, has the right to take any life. Every man’s time on earth is in God’s hand, thus He can take any life by sickness, natural disasters, or by the hand of other men. God is the proponent of capital punishment.

Whenever a nation attacks another nation, it is always wrong, as many will die in vain to satisfy the ego of the conqueror. This is not to be compared with God sending Israel to conquer the Promised Land for the birth of the nation of Israel. It is always a sin when a kingdom attacks another kingdom because powerful men will do whatever is right in their own eyes. Even in sin, what a powerful and sinful man does will still fall within the sovereign will of God; Judas’s betrayal of Christ was in the decretive will of God, to save the world from sin. Was Judas punished for his evil? Yes, he was. Did he accomplish God's will? Yes, he did. God’s absolute sovereignty is over all things, events, angelic beings and every human, without exception. Psalm 76:10 is self-explanatory on the sovereignty of God, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.”

There are many aspects in God’s will. Man can never do anything outside of God's will. If that is ever possible, then God is no longer sovereign.

Question 3: In Genesis, when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, He spared Lot and his two daughters. Can we interpret that as "he knoweth them that trust him" in Nahum 1:7b? Can we apply that to the city of Nineveh, so that those who believed were spared?

Answer 3: The answer is yes, in that God wanted to save them because their work on earth was not yet done. The answer is no, if we interpret Nahum 1:7b to mean that God saves only those who trust Him by sparing their lives. Some believers would have died with unbelievers when God destroyed cities and nations like Israel and Judah, but they entered heaven. Their deaths would not be seen as a punishment if they were killed not as a form of chastisement from God.

Question 4: Can you please explain the rough timeline and sequence of events from Jonah to the book of Nahum? (In the context of better understanding when the Ninevites repented, to when they conquered Israel, and their eventual fall in Nahum.)

Answer 4: Like the Book of Nahum, the Book of Jonah does not provide us with any record of kings. However, Jonah was mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25, which was during the reign of King Jeroboam, the son of Joash, the king of Israel. The reign of Jeroboam was between 793 and 753 B.C. It is possible that between these two dates, God sent Jonah to preach to the Ninevites. The Assyrians destroyed Samaria in 722 B.C. Nahum mentioned the destruction of No, a city in Egypt. Nahum did not mention that No was destroyed in 663 B.C. and rebuilt in 654 B.C. Nahum’s ministry was between 663 and 654 B.C.

During the ministry of Jonah, the city of Nineveh was spared because the people (from the king to the animals) repented. We cannot assume that the repentance and sparing of the city means that everyone, including the animals, became believers. Nineveh fell to the Babylonians led by Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C.