JERRY,

"How can "the government" carry out its responsibility to wield the sword without people to do it for them."

***Obviously they can't, but let them do it with the heathen and not the children of God. You absolutely cannot love your neighbor if you have a gun pointed at his head and you're ready to kill him. Can we all agree that we don't need to bend over backwards to have that make sense?
I don't mean any sarcasm. Honestly. It's important to me that I come across as being charitable and not at all hostile like some folks who come here just to raise trouble.

"Are you stating that when they obeyed God and went to war, that they were hating those people?"

***No, because when they went out, they went out because He said so and to accomplish His purpose which was the vengeance of God against the idolators. The vengeance of God is not at all like the vengeance of man as we all know. God even tells them that the Canaanites would not be destroyed earlier on because the fullness of their sin was not yet complete, demonstarting God's longsufferingness.
Therefore there is no contradiction between God doing something that seems wrathful and Him maintaining His love.
God spoke either audibly to their leaders (i.e. Moses, Joshua, etc.) or else through the prophets when He called His children to war. That doesn't happen today and it's important to note that because if it doesn't happen that way, we shouldn't assume the role of thinking for God when God has not spoken.

PALADIN 54
Thanks for the story. However I think the verses quoted are out of context.
Example: Luke 22:36 comes before Peter cuts off someone's ear and Jesus rebukes him. While I confessed earlier that I don't completely understand that verse I do know that we can't base a doctrine off of just one verse. There's something else going on there that needs to be thought out a bit more clearer.

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar" - I do not belong to Caesar but to Christ so I have no compulsion to disobey our Lord simply because Caesar said so. If the Lord said "love your enemies and pray for those that curse you" I have no right or authority to disobey and add "and blow their heads off" to the simple command.

Regarding Ezekiel 33- please remember that Israel was God's chosen people and they existed to show off His glory, righteousness, holiness, etc. He even stated that it wasn't because they had merited it but rather because they were nobodies through whom He wanted to work.
There has been no other nation in all of history that can claim that, so appeals to Israel and God's relationship with them need to be examined a bit closer.
Example: God told the Israelites to destroy the Cannanites. God has not told any one else in the whole world to do anything like that ever again.
As such, the Christian must be IN the world but certainly not OF it in matters where God has not clearly spoken.

"Gentle as doves", "They will know we are Christians by the love we have one to another", "Peacemakers"...these are the characteristics of the child of God.


By the way...I am not some liberal, tree hugging, hippie, socialist, yadda-yadda-yadda. My remarks are IN NO WAY politically minded but rather they are motivated by a love for the Word of God and a desire to have the world recognize us by the love we display for it.
These are the things Jesus taught and I feel we have somehow gotten away from this basic Christian doctrine.