Dear Jonathan:

I am afraid your priest is wrong. God did order the killing of people. He has the right to take out anyone He chooses. As Bill Cosby said to his son on this TV show, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out."

God is a perfect judge, God's justice is perfect. When He wishes to take a nation out, He will and sometimes He uses men as the instruments of His judgement. He is God and He can do that. When He does this, He has made the judgment perfectly.

When Moses was talking to God on the mountain the people below were debauching themselves.  God told Moses this and Moses came down from the mountain carrying the Ten Commandments. When Moses saw the debauchery he told the people that those who were with him and God to come over to him. The others who were rejecting God stayed where they were at. Then then men of the Tribe of Levi who ordered by Moses all those who rejected God  to be destroyed. As a reward for this the Tribe of Levi were made priests. They became the priestly class. This was the beginning of the Mosaic Magisterium (Chair of Moses).

God has perfect knowledge and thus He had perfect knowledge of the hearts of those who rejected Him. Anyone rejecting God is already dead, a dead man walking. In this instance, God chose to have men administer His justice.

The same thing happened when Israel came to the promised land. God ordered them to conquer the peoples there, the Canaanites,  and kill them all. In the first place, the Canaanites had already been judged by God, in His perfect justice, and thereby the Canaanites were dead already. God used the Israelite to administer His justice. God used the circumstance of His judgement.

This was also an opportunity for God to test the obedience of Israel. As happened over and over again, Israel did not follow God's orders precisely. They did not kill everyone but took woman and children as slaves. These woman and children brought with them their idols and idolatrous ways. As a result this contaminated Israel. God told them to set themselves apart. Israel disobeyed and heresy and idolatry creep into the Jewish community.

There is a lesson for us in this.

This is not genocide. Anyone that says that God committed genocide has the devil for his voice. Anyone who says that God did not order the killing of these people as the devil for his voice.

These things did happen. They happened out of God's perfect justice.

Islam, which is a fake religion with a false prophet, plagiarized a little from ancient Israel and a little from the Catholic Church to create a purely man-made religion for the purposes of uniting the warring Bedouins, albeit with the sword.

Islam take only the surface form of what they saw from Mosaic Law. For example, Islam saw the concept of an "eye for an eye" without knowing the slightest notion of why Moses had that law. Thus, the Muslims adopt this practice only on the surface level.

In reality, Moses created laws like this to help civilize the people. At the time revenge between people would escalate worse than the Hatfield and McCoy family feud. People were maiming each other left and right.

Moses sought to stop this every escalating feud phenomena and introduced a law that said that if someone plucks out you eye, you may pluck out his eye, but no more. That is the end of it. No more feud.

Christ introduced a further development in revealing God true intention that we are not to seek revenge at all. That is what the turn the other cheek is about — not taking revenge.

Islam reminds me of the Scripture, Rom 1:21-22  "for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools."

That passage is actually referring to something else, but it reminds of Islam in a way. Islam knows God, but became futile in their thinking, taking the form of godliness but not the substance. This verse is a little closer to what Islam really is: (2 Tim 3:5)  "holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. "

The power of religion is not in its rituals or practices, but the God to which we worship in those rituals. To practice an "eye for an eye" in and of itself is meaningless unless one understands the substance behind it.

But, what can we expect from a a so-called religion that was invented by a false prophet who claims to speak to St. Gabriel (this was a demon not St. Gabriel) with political and empire building ambitions.

The verse in 2 Timothy I think applies to people like your priest who desire to re-interpret the clear teaching of the Bible concerning God's dealings with rebellious people. He, in essence, it taking the power out of the actions of God.

I hope this helps.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary