By Nathaniel Burson
But this shouldn't come as a great surprise to anyone – After all, God never changes. And God always does things the perfect way, right? So... how many perfect ways are there to do something? In other words, if God hasn't changed, when He gets into a situation today that is similar to one He handled, say, 3500 years ago, He's going to handle it similarly, isn't He? That seems self-evident. But still, it never ceases to amaze me how similarly some things are done. A good case in point involves the Canaanites and the American Indians.
You see, about 3500 years ago, God delivered His people, Israel, out of bondage to Egypt, so that they could worship Him in freedom. And He sent them into the promised land, and drove out the various tribes of the Canaanites before them, and gave them great blessings to the point where they were the leading power in the world at the time of David and Solomon.
Ultimately, however, they grew more and more rebellious and evil, through a period of several minor corrections and captivities, and finally God was fed up and sold them into captivity to the Assyrians as a punishment. However, for all of this, He did promise them that one day He would lead them back out of captivity...
Amos 9:9 For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.
And in due course of time, after Israel had been sifted (mixed) among the nations of Europe, God began to turn their captivity around and bring them into the blessings He had promised to Abraham. And He has fulfilled those promises in establishing the nations of northwestern Europe, and particularly England and the United States.
England and the United States have, between them, been the dominant power in the world for the past 500 years. And this is because England and the United States are the literal descendants of the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh. They received the greatest blessings of any of the other 11 tribes of Israel; for example:
Genesis 49:25 Even by the God of thy [Joseph's] father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:
These (and other) material blessings were originally promised to Abraham, and then later to Isaac and Jacob, and finally rested on Joseph's two sons who each inherited a portion of those blessings which included what God promised to Abraham in Genesis 22...
Genesis 22:16-17 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, ... That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
God promised that Abraham's children would have vast national wealth, and large numbers, and that they would possess the gates of their enemies, among other things. As of about 1945, either the United States or Britain controlled every major port and gate in the world. Think about it; the Suez Canal. The Panama Canal. Hong Kong. Gibraltar. The Falkland Islands. Guam. Midway. Guantanamo Bay. Berlin. Dozens of others. Quite literally every strategic port or gate in the world belonged to, or was directly controlled by, one of these two nations. Some of them still do, but many of them have been lost or given away.
In the same time frame, 6 percent of the world's population (the US and UK) controlled 48 percent of the world's wealth. The US is the most beautiful, rich, and wealthy piece of property in the world. And while Britain itself is not as large or wealthy, Britain held colonies in every continent on Earth at the height of the British Empire, from Egypt to India to China to Canada to Central America.
I dwell long on this because it is vital to understand just how great the blessings were that God gave to the countries of northwestern Europe in general, and to the US and UK in particular. Because these blessings were those which were promised to Abraham, and Joseph was the tribe who inherited the bulk of those blessings.
The reason that this is relevant to our subject today is that about 500 years ago, give or take, God began to lead the children of Israel back out of the lands where He had driven them after the fall of Assyria in 612 B.C. And much as He had 3000 years before, He again led His people out of captivity to other nations, and gave them independence and the blessings of material wealth and religious freedom. But in order to do this, He had to first drive out the nations which already possessed those places, such as the American Indians – which brings me to the topic of this article.
Forgive me for laying such extensive groundwork, but in case you didn't already know all of that, it was necessary to give you a primer so that you could appreciate the comparison between the two Promised Lands.
You've no doubt heard the United States referred to as the promised land many times. And it was called that quite often in its infancy as a country because it was believed by many of the early founders and settlers of this nation that it was given to them by God – as witnessed by the “Monroe Doctrine” and the “Manifest Destiny”, concepts that were household words 150 years ago. Which essentially said that it was our (the peoples of Northwestern Europe) “Manifest Destiny” to inherit this land, and chase out the inhabitants. And as it turns out, they were right.
The United States is a type of the Promised Land in Canaan, which was itself only a type of the REAL fulfillment of a Promised Land which is prophesied for the Millennium... (see Hebrews 4). And in each of these “Types”, God acts the same way. But let's concentrate on the similarities between the entry into the Promised Land of Canaan by the children of Israel, and the entry into the Promised Land of America by the children of Israel.
To begin with,
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Both were descendants of Jacob
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Both were in search of Religious freedom
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Both were destined to inherit a “land flowing with milk and honey” by God
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Both were receiving the promises God gave to Abraham
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Both lands were inhabited by natives who resisted the children of Israel
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Both groups of Israelites had just been freed from bondage
These are a few of the obvious correlations. But there are some things that are more subtle, but no less important or interesting. I want to pay attention for the moment to the similarities between the Indians and the Canaanites. As Abraham traveled through Canaan 470 years before his descendants entered it to inherit it, God told him that He could not give him the land of Canaan yet...
Genesis 15:16 But in the fourth generation they [Abraham's children] shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
The reason He gave is that the sins of the Amorites (and the other inhabitants of the land as well) were not full. God wasn't fed up with them yet, and ready to destroy them utterly. 470 years later it is a different story altogether, however...
Leviticus 18:24-28 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; ... That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.
At the time of the entry to the promised land, their sins WERE full. And God, after mentioning several atrocious sins, commands Israel not to be involved in any of those things, for the nations that he drove out were defiled in them – and He was driving them out before Israel BECAUSE of those sins. And their evil is why God said...
Deuteronomy 7:1-5 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make NO COVENANT with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly. But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.
God wanted no vestige of the Pre-Israelite civilization to remain in the land He gave to the children of Abraham, because He knew that sooner or later they would cause them to serve other gods and he would have to destroy them. Also, they were NOT to make a covenant, or an agreement, or a truce, or any sort of a compromise, but were to destroy them completely.
This looks like as good a place as any to introduce a comparison to this land which was to become the United States. Mind you, I have nothing against Indians as people, but God did forcibly wrest this land from them for their evil. They worshiped a host of other gods, they stole, fought, enslaved, raped, pillaged, and plundered as a way of life. Of course, I am speaking in general. Not all tribes had all of these faults – and some were better than others. But all of them had some of them. And if we can apply the commands of God regarding the Caananites to the Indians, which for the sake of argument I am going to do, then God wanted them all destroyed.
I know that sounds atrocious, but now you can better appreciate how the Israelites of 3500 years ago felt.
So that said, in the early years in Canaan, under Joshua, they did a pretty good job of utterly wiping out the nations and were obedient to God, and so God drove out the nations before them as He had promised. Similarly, in the early years in America, the Indians were forcibly driven from their lands and (for the most part) no truces or treaties were made with them. Of course, there were notable exceptions just as the Gibeonites in the days of Joshua. (Joshua 9:3-21) Nonetheless, as a general rule the Indians were dispossessed from their homes in the early days of this nation.
Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.
And by that we may know that God was with the founders and helped them to drive out the nations before the Americans - But He didn't do it all at once, although of course He could have; because He said:
Deuteronomy 7:22 And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
He wanted the native tribes to stay there so that the animals wouldn't multiply without anyone to hunt them, and so that land would be a pleasant land when they took it over. But when they DID take it over, God wanted these nations TOTALLY destroyed. And to make that happen, He hardened their hearts...
Joshua 11:18-20 Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all other they took in battle. For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have NO FAVOUR, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses.
God knew that if the inhabitants came humbly and begging before Israel (Or Americans) that Israel wouldn't want to kill them, in spite of what God said – so God hardened the hearts of these nations, as He had done to Pharoah, so that they would come out fighting and be completely truculent and just generally nasty, so they'd be easier to kill – so that they would have NO favor in the eyes of the people.
An attitude of disfavor towards Indians persisted up until the first half of the twentieth century, with sayings like “a good Indian is a dead Indian”. And so this is how God led the children of Abraham into the promised land, in groups spaced 3500 years apart. But there was a catch: He only drove the nations out from before them WHILE THEY OBEYED HIM!
Joshua 23:9-15 For the LORD hath driven out from before you great nations and strong: but as for you, no man hath been able to stand before you unto this day. One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the LORD your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you. Take good heed therefore unto yourselves, that ye love the LORD your God. Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you: Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.
So God clearly warned them that if they made treaties with the inhabitants, married them, and didn't totally destroy them, that God would stop driving them out, and hardening their hearts, and instead would leave them in the land to be a temptation for them, and a thorn in their side – and they would remain there and be that until they PERISHED from out of the promised land! And of course, what did Israel do but exactly what God said not to do?
Judges 2:1-3 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.
And as God said, they remained there until Israel and Judah were sold into captivity, 700 and 900 years later, respectively. Now let's look at America's Indians. God warned his people NOT to make treaties with the Indians. Not to marry their daughters, or to give their own daughters to their sons. And to totally destroy the gods of the people.
We, of course, didn't, just as our ancestors and forebears didn't. We intermarried, made treaties with them, and went following after their gods, and made them reservations. And so God grew a bit testy and no longer drove out the nations before us as he had at the first.
Judges 2:12-15 And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the GODS OF THE PEOPLE THAT WERE ROUND ABOUT THEM, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. ... And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed.
And so we had the Indian wars, where our settlements were ravaged and destroyed, and where we were “distressed before our enemies”, and the hand of the Lord was against us. Then, when the nation began to cry to God, He had pity on them, and...
Judges 2:16 ... the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them.
And so God raised up to Israel people like Gideon and Ehud and Samson, and similarly He gave America Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Andrew Jackson, and the other great heroes lionized in our history books, to deliver our nation from the hands of the Indians, and put us back on the path.
Judges 2:17-19 And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the LORD; but they did not so. And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.
To any student of history, this not a novel concept; this is literally the history of every nation. Periods of obedience to righteousness, then periods of corruption and disobedience followed by periods of chaos, poverty, slavery, and civil war, followed by the people being penitent and obedient for a brief period, and then starting the cycle again.
Judges 2:20 And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel; and he said, Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice; I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died: That through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not. Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered he them into the hand of Joshua.
And so as God gave this land to the Americans, He stopped helping them to utterly wipe out the nations, such as the Apaches and Comanches which caused so much suffering in the American southwest, and so we were forced to make treaties with them. Well, not forced exactly; we could have repented; but barring that, a treaty with the natives was the only option. Treaties which we never honored.
We should never have made a treaty in the first place; God was clear on that. But once made, a treaty should never have been broken, and each time it was God grew still more angry at is and caused us more grief. If you'll remember the story of how Joshua made a treaty with the Gibeonites that he wouldn't destroy them (Judges 9:3-21), Saul, approximately 500 years later came along and killed many of the Gibeonites, assuming I suppose that God would take it as an atonement for not completely destroying the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:2-33). However, instead of being pleased, it came to pass that...
2 Samuel 21:1-2 Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.)
So for breaking a treaty that had been made, against God's commands, 500 years befoe, Saul brought a three-years famine on the land of Israel, and to make atonement for it David had to kill seven of Saul's children until the Gibeonites were satisfied.
Of course, since God never changes, when we broke our treaties with... well, pick a name of a tribe out of a hat and we probably broke a treaty with them... and each time we broke that treaty God would have been annoyed and punished us in some way – with wars, famines, disease, or some such calamity. But finally, through all this, we succeeded in subduing them, with God's help, in spite of the mistakes and sins of our people. But not without leaving us a visual record of the righteousness of our people, and showing when God was with us, and when he was against us...
The image there is a map showing the Indian reservations in the United States. All purple areas are Indian land. As we spread from the east to the west through the 19th century, you will notice an increasing amount of Indian reservations – despite the fact that Indians filled the eastern part of the country as well, when we arrived here four centuries ago. This increasing amount of reservations is in direct proportion to how we were forced to make treaties because we couldn't defeat these tribes. These treaties in turn are a direct sign that God was not with us at that time. So in a sense, it is a snapshot of the righteousness of our people.
And that brings us to the last part of the story. Like us, Israel didn't completely destroy the nations, or destroy their idols; and they made “reservations” for the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the other tribes, cities that were theirs to live in. Of course the natives jumped at the chance in most cases, considering the alternative was annihilation. But God orchestrated this for a reason...
Judges 3:4 And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
And these nations proved Israel, and our nation, by providing a constant temptation to follow other Gods and to intermarry and follow after their sins – the sins that caused God to destroy the land in the first place.
Numbers 33:55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.
And so today, if you do not believe a word I've said here, visit an Indian reservation. See them selling dreamcatchers and animal charms to those who were once the people of God. Visit a pow-wow and listen to the drums and chanting to attract the attention of their god, and watch our people follow after them with their tongues hanging out. Look at where the casinos are, and look at whose influence inspires movies about the great spirit, and a wolf spirit and an eagle spirit who guide the hero towards his goal. And see if these people, whom God intended to destroy from this land for their idolatry and abominations are not leading our people down the same path that destroyed them.
Deuteronomy 18:9,14 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. ... For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.
And now we have been a-whoring after their gods for so long now, that we've gotten better at it than they were!
2 Kings 21:9,11 But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel. Because Manasseh king of Judah hath done these abominations, and hath done wickedly above all that the Amorites did, which were before him, and hath made Judah also to sin with his idols:
And we have idols in all our churches, fortune tellers in every town in the land, dreamcatchers in every flea market and Mandelas and beads and charms in every home, and we have even adapted our worship of God based on these other nations, by holding hands in a circle, by toasting, and countless other abominations, in the name of “respecting their culture”.
Deuteronomy
12:29-30
When
the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither
thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in
their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following
them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou
enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve
their gods? even so will I do likewise.
And so, all of this is in direct violation to God's commands. What can we do about it now? We have already made the treaties with the natives. We cannot break them now. We have already given our daughters to their sons, and taken their daughters for our sons. But we, that is, you and I, CAN use them as God intended. He set them here as traps for us; to prove us, whether we would walk in His law or not. As a nation, we fell for that trap, hook, line, and sinker. But you and I can still prove to God that WE don't have dreamcatchers in our homes, and OUR children haven't married their children, and WE don't follow the works of these nations. For these nations will remain in our land until we go into captivity again. After all, as God told Jeremiah...
Jeremiah 9:9 Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
What about the Indians, you ask? Isn't this unfair to them? Isn't this just another hate-crime-like anti-Indian bigoted article? Absolutely not! NOTHING could be farther from the truth. Indians are children of God, just as you and I are. They have access to salvation, just as the blacks, orientals and europeans do, and God has made of ONE blood ALL NATIONS who dwell on the face of the earth (Acts 17:26).
Acts 10:35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.
But just as they have the same opportunities that we have, they also are subject to the same requirements – and punishments – that we are. When Israel had proved themselves to be evil and had filled the land with abominations worshiping other Gods, God took their land away from them and gave it to someone else.
Ezekiel 39:23 And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword.
Similarly, when Rome had been filled with evil to the brim and running over, he gave it over to the Ostrogoths, the Heruli, and the Vandals. When Babylon had been evil to the point that they were making sport with the sacred vessels from the house of God, He gave their kingdom to Cyrus the Mede.
And when the Caananites and the Indians had filled their lands with abominations to where, as God said, “The land itself spews out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:28), he took their land and gave it to us. And as punishment, and as protection for the people to whom He was giving it in their stead, God wanted them all destroyed. We failed to do that, and have paid the price ever since, and will continue to pay it until God removes US out of this land for OUR abominations. Sooner or later.
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