By Gary DeVaney
Joshua 1:1-6 Moses is dead. Joshua takes over. God promises: I’ll deliver to you every place you set foot. No one can withstand you while you live. I will not leave you nor forsake you. I will give you possession of the land that I swore to your fathers I would give them.
Did God give the land to them as He promised? Aren’t they mostly all dead in the desert as the result of war and this God’s wrath? If someone promised a gift to you and gave the gift to someone else, is that promise fulfilled?
Joshua 2:1 Joshua, God’s chosen, sends 2 spies into Jericho who lodge with a harlot, Rahab.
Isn’t a "harlot" questionable company for God’s chosen? Obviously not.
Joshua 2:8-13 Rahab sells out her home and Jericho to the spies of Israel in exchange for her family’s survival.
Rahab Helping the Spies
Rahab is a traitor to her people. And you wonder why
hookers get a bad name.
Joshua 3:16-17 The priests, who bear The Ark of The Covenant, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan river.
Why didn’t this miracle that "all the Israelites passed over on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan river" make it big like Moses’ "parting of The Red Sea"?
Joshua 4:13-14 40,000 troops stood before Jericho. God exalted Joshua. The Israelites respected Joshua as they did Moses.
Joshua 4:24 (These deeds were done) in order that all the people of Earth may learn that the hand of God is mighty and to fear God forever.
Tyrant tactics! Ah, FEAR. Along with obedience, fear is a primary theme of this God. Fear is the oldest tool of power. Aren't you prone to be obedient to what you are afraid of?
Joshua 5:6 The Israelites wandered 40 years in the desert until all the warriors that came out of Egypt died off because they had not obeyed the command of God. God swore He would not let them see the land of milk and honey that He promised their fathers He would give them.
Here is the absolute documented Bible C&V evidence that God's "promises" were conditional.
Didn’t Joshua meet Moses in Exodus 32:17 when he came down from the mountain with God’s finger-written tablets, The original 10 Commandments? Must Joshua also be old?
What command did the now dead soldiers fail to obey for God? Wasn’t God’s command for them to murder men, women and babies in order to steal their land? These soldiers were punished for not murdering and stealing. They tried to fulfill God’s commandments.
Joshua 6:20-21 God ordered Joshua to attack Jericho’s mighty walled city. God knocked the walls down with sound. Joshua’s army slaughtered all the men, women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and the asses.
Joshua 6:23-24 The harlot, Rahab, and her family were spared by the spies. They burned the city and everything in it except for the silver and gold which was placed in the treasury in the house of God.
This hooker serves God? Can Rahab possibly go to Heaven? Yes? - No?
Catholic BN Pg. 163: From Matthew 1:5, we learn that Rahab (the harlot, prostitute, hooker) married Salmon of Judah and thus became the great-great grandmother of King David and Jesus Christ’s sacred ancestor.
What? Rahab was a traitor to her people! She also was not Hebrew and often God murdered His "Chosen Hebrews" for marrying outside their "sacred" tribes.
What? Tamar and Rahab, women who received payment for sex, were both blood-descendents of King David and Jesus Christ? Bathsheba was an adulteress with David. Ruth laid with Boaz before she married him. All these women were in Jesus Christ's "sacred" bloodline. This is shocking!
Tamar Rahab
Then, the "Virgin Mary", a girl at the age of about 13, was mysteriously impregnated to produce Jesus Christ’s “pure bloodline”.
Joshua 7:19-25 Joshua said to A’chan: My son, give God glory and honor by telling me what you have done. Don’t hide it from me. A’chan, an Israeli warrior confessed that he took for himself some gold, silver etc. God gets mad and the Israelites lose an ensuing battle in which thousands of Israeli soldiers are killed. All Israel stoned and burned A’chan, his innocent children and all their animals.
Confession may be good for the soul, but upon confession, God didn’t treat thousands of Israel’s soldiers or A’chan’s children very well.
Joshua 8:1-2 God tells Joshua to get his army up and to go murder the city of A’I; to do to the A’i king what they did to Jericho and its king, except they may take its spoils and livestock as booty.
Joshua 8:8 God said to Joshua: When you have taken the city, set it on fire in obedience to God’s command. These are My orders to you.
Joshua 8:24-29 (By ambush) God murders all 12,000 men and women, the entire population of A’i and gave the Israelites their cattle and spoils. Joshua hanged their King.
Joshua 10:10-11 God slew a great slaughter at Gideon and other cities. When the victims fled, God cast down great stones from Heaven. More died from God’s hailstones than the Israeli soldiers killed by the sword.
Law enforcement prohibits a police officer to shoot a fleeing criminal, yet God sees fit to murder fleeing innocent women and children with his hail stones from the sky.
Isn’t a foul deed a foul deed no matter who commits it? Aren’t we willing accomplices when we say: My God, King and Country right or wrong? Let’s cut to it. Isn’t this God a murderous monster? Isn’t, under certain circumstances, our own Ego (I’m the value, the authority, and more important, I am entitled) capable of identical attitudes and acts?
Mention ego and people get defensive. Isn’t this destructive profile of God exactly like the destructive profile of the ego of predatory man, animal, insect, parasite and virus?
Because our hidden, sacred ego is capable of this same heinous behavior, isn’t that the real reason we unconditionally protect and defend this God? Aren’t God and ego synonymous?
Don’t people behave: My ego is most sacred and unless I am the value, I am the authority or I’m more important to your ego, I won’t like your ego and will be inclined to eliminate your ego (reject your Ego / God) from my world? Isn’t this the prejudicial, discriminatory and biased history of man’s behavior?
Predators and grazers both have egos. Most predators tend to posture in the offense through control and manipulation; while, grazers tend to appear defensive. Does not the predatory ego tend to use and abuse others for its own purposes?
Joshua 10:12-14 Joshua told God: Sun and Moon stand still. They did. Is this not recorded in the Book of Jashar (Apocrypha) God obeyed the voice of a man.
God now takes orders from Joshua to stop the Sun, mid-day, so Joshua can finish God’s murdering. Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia were history bearing neighbors, at that time, yet, no mention of the miraculous Sun and Moon stopping is elsewhere recorded other than claimed by the Book of Jashar, which obviously didn’t make the cut for the Bible.
Joshua 10:20-26 The 5 kings remained alive prisoners of war. Joshua said: Put your foot on their necks. Do not be afraid, be firm. Joshua struck and murdered them, then hanged the 5 Kings (P.O.Ws.) on 5 trees.
Doesn’t The Biblical God ever show mercy concerning His Prisoners Of War?
Historically, as horrible as it is for the participants, God never ceases to like a good fight that He, Himself, can’t get hurt in.
Joshua 10:28-42 Joshua captured and God slaughtered the cities: Makkedah, Libnam, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, and Debir and murdered every person leaving no survivors, not even their Kings.
Joshua 11:6 God instructs Joshua to hamstring the enemy’s horses.
Mine eyes have just glassed over with disgust, again. Me, an angry writer? What's your first clue?
Joshua 11:10-15 Joshua captured Hazor and slew its King with the sword. He put every person to the sword until none were left alive and burned Hazor. Joshua captured all those Kings with their cities and he fulfilled (God’s) doom by putting every person there to the sword. The Israelites took all the spoils and livestock of these cities as their booty, but the people, they put to the sword, until they had exterminated the last of them, leaving none alive. Joshua left nothing undone that God commanded Moses should be done.
Joshua 11:23 Joshua captured the whole country... And the land enjoyed peace.
Ah, the secret and sacred objective of war: “I want peace on my terms!”
Fights and arguments mostly result when two ego’s want peace on their terms.
Joshua 21:43-45 And so, God gave Israel the land He had sworn to their fathers. Not one single promise God made to Israel was broken, every one was fulfilled.
Outright lies! One may overlook or forgive a lie, but it is still a lie.
Joshua 22:8 Now that you are returning to your tents with great wealth, livestock, silver, gold; divide the spoils of your enemies with your kinsmen.
Joshua 23:14 Not one of the promises that God made you has remained unfulfilled. Every promise has been fulfilled, with not one single exception.
Bull! Chronic liars lie only when their lips move or when they pen the Bible.
Adolf Hitler, the most heinous tyrant in history, said that people will believe a big lie before they would believe a small one.
For most believers, it seems it is better to be a liar than to be wrong. Some believers use the Bible and its God to deceive the world in order to conform the world to their agenda.
Bible-toten Christians all but destroyed the American Indians in the name of God. They made false-promises to make it easier. Catholic Spaniards gave plagued blankets full of diseased lice to eradicate millions of South American Indians, in the name of the one God.
Those who survived, they baptized, converted to Jesus and made slaves until their deaths.
Joshua 24:2 God said: In past times your fathers, even Terah, father of Abraham, served other Gods.
This God was unpopular from the start. Even Abraham’s father, Terah, served other Gods. Do you think that Abraham was popular with his own father, Terah?
Joshua 24:5 Then I, God, sent Moses and Aaron and murdered Egypt.
Joshua 24:7-14 After you witnessed what I did in Egypt, you dwelt in the desert for a long time, I brought you to this land and destroyed it before you. I sent hornets ahead of you and drove them out of your way. It was not your sword or bow. I gave you land that you did not till and cities you did not build. Therefore, fear the Lord, obey, and serve him completely and sincerely.
Can you possibly confuse this murder and theft with love?
I am not a slave. If this God throws a party, I’m not going. (GWD)
Again, suggestions on learning about and debating the Biblical God:
Stay on the topic.
Debate the topic without censure.
Recognize when the debate concentrates on feelings instead of the topic.
Don’t interrupt or alter another’s point.
Question their points with respect.
Answer all the topical questions posed to you that you can.
Stay on a question until all are satisfied it has been answered.
Disagree without denouncing each other as each learns at a different speed.
Never claim authority over the material or over one another.
Keep yourself open to surprise.
Take these questions to your clergy and document what tact he or she takes.
Does he or she discuss to obtain information or do they stress blind obedience?
Does he or she talk down and / or demonize you or others?
Does he or she claim ignorance, that no man can know the mind of God?
Does he or she get angry at you and your questions?
Does he feel you are insolent to ask and infer you are defying him or her and God?
Does he or she claim that you are Biblically ignorant?
Does he or she tell you to just have faith?
Does he or she dismiss you before your questions are answered?
Don’t be afraid to take on God, the greatest heavy weight of all times.
Does he or she claim the proper interpretations lie in the Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew, inferring, in essence, that the English Bible is really an inferior piece of literature?
Speak to the quality that you would write as if it were to be documented and speak in a manner that you wouldn’t easily go back on.
If the Biblical God, and His angels, are “supernatural”, aren’t they “alien” to humanity? Would you quit and lay down as a sacrifice if aliens, who could be God’s angels, should attack the earth? Wouldn’t any alien, who knows of this voodoo effect, have a tactical advantage over Earth? Would an American soldier, who is sworn to defend you, have to also fight you too because of your loyalty to the alien commander and against humanity?
Brainwashed believers have no capacity to criticize the Bible nor to question its God?