How would you feel if the Lord God were to threaten you with horrible plagues and droughts and starvation so severe that you would eat your own children? Would you still love our Lord God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength if he were to threaten you with the curse's he threatened the people of Israel with should they not fully obey him? Would the Father of our Lord Christ Jesus act in this way? It seems hard to believe that our Father in heaven would ever threaten His children in this way. Instead, He might let us do whatever we wanted to do with our lives and never demand that we must obey Him or face consequences to terrible to contemplate. Perhaps this is why the Israelite people slaughtered so many helpless children and mothers and old men and old women when the Lord of Israel demanded they march to war and destroy the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. It was not just the enemies’ soldiers who died, often the Lord of Israel ordered the entire nation to be destroyed along with all of their pets, livestock, and even their crops as happened to the Amorites. This you will find in Deuteronomy 7:1.
If you had been threatened with the curses you will read later in this paper, would you be willing to slaughter innocent children and even little babies by smashing their skulls up against rock walls? This is what the Israelite people did by orders from the Lord of Israel. The Lord of Israel even stated he would take pleasure in destroying the Israelite people should they not obey his every command. However, sometimes the Lord of Israel would only destroy a few of the offending Israelite's by burning them alive. Still, would you worship a Lord God like this and still be able to love him with all your heart, and soul, and strength? Perhaps you would pretend to love him out of fear only and then you would live in fear that he might discern your true feelings concerning him.
How could you conceal your true feelings from the Lord of Israel if he burned two of your children alive right in front of you? This is what happened to Aaron's two sons when they made a small mistake in the incense mixture they burned in the presence of the Lord of Israel. They then burst into flames as fire blazed forth from the Lord's presence. How horrifying Aaron must have felt, their father, at not being able to help his two sons while he watched them burn alive. This horrifying event is found in Leviticus 10:1-3. So, think of these matters while you read all the curse's the Lord of Israel planned to unleash on the people of Israel if they could not fully obey his commands as agreed upon by Moses.
Deuteronomy 28:1, "If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.
Starting in Deuteronomy 28:2-14, which you may read on your own, the Lord of Israel describes the benefits the Israelite's will have if they fully obey the Lord of Israel. However, should the Israeli people not be able to fully obey the Lord of Israel then the curses he will inflict on them are then listed in Deuteronomy 28:15-68.
Curses for Disobedience
15 "But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:
16 "Your town and your fields will be cursed.
17 "Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed.
18 "Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed.
19 "Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.
20 "The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me.
21 "The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy.
22 "The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.
23 "The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron.
24 "The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.
25 "The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.
26 "Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.
27 "The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured.
28 "The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic.
29 "You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you.
30 "You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit.
31 "Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a singled bite of the meat.
32 "You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won't be able to help them.
33 "A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment.
34 "You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you.
35 "The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot.
36 "The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone!
37 "You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you.
38 "You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops.
39 "You will plant vineyards, and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines.
40 "You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens.
41 "You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity.
42 "Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops.
43 "The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker.
44 "They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail!
45 "If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake your until you are destroyed.
46 "These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever.
47 "If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received,
48 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you.
49 "The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand,
50 a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young.
51 "Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death.
52 "They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land--the walls you trusted to protect you--are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you.
53 "The siege and terrible distress of the enemy's attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you.
54 "The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children.
55 "He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring--the flesh of one of his own children--because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.
56 "The most tender and delicate woman among you--so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot--will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter.
57 "She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.
58 "If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God,
59 then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick.
60 "He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief.
61 "The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed.
62 "Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God.
63 "Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy.
64 "For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone!
65 "There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair.
66 "Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive.
67 "In the morning you will say, 'If only it were night!' And in the evening you will say, 'If only it were morning!' For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you.
68 "Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you."
Deuteronomy 29:1, "These are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelite's while they were in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Mount Sinai."
Now, do you see how cruel and unjust the Lord of Israel is? How would you feel if you were to see our Lord Christ Jesus telling his followers to prepare to wipe out a Gentile community simply because he told you to do so. After all, he might say, they are all evil sinners. Can you imagine our Lord Christ Jesus being so cruel and inhuman as to enjoy watching his children suffer for not loving him with all their might, with all their soul, and with all their mind? What kind of Lord God is this Lord of Israel? Is he the same Lord God we worship in the New Testament? I leave that up to you. Further, if you would like to read a comparison between the Lord of Israel in the Old Testament and our Lord God in the New Testament then you can find this written comparison on my blog not too far below this latest blog post. It is titled, "The Evil of the Old Testament Lord God versus The Goodness of the New Testament Lord God." I do hope you will read it and see why things in the Middle East are as they are still today.
Adios for now my friends.
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