FOURTH QUARTER 2025
SABBATH SCHOOL INSIGHT #4
OCTOBER 25, 2025
"THE CONFLICT BEHIND ALL CONFLICTS."

 

The lesson rightly calls our attention to “the conflict behind all conflicts,” what we in Seventh-day Adventism call the “Great Controversy.” Stories like Job’s pull the curtain back and show us how this conflict or controversy is woven into each of our lives, every single day. Our lesson begins to form an apologetic for the Israelite destruction of the Canaanites, which will continue in the next lesson.

The Israelite destruction of the Canaanites is cited by many an atheist as evidence for either the non-existence of God, or at least His brutality thus rendering Him unworthy of worship or recognition. Notice this famous quote by Richard Dawkins:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous  and  proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. “

The lesson makes several vital points in response to the charge of genocide by Israel at the command of God that we do well to remember. “But sanctify the Lord in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense (an answer, KJV)to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Pet. 3:15, emphasis supplied). We need to be prepared to “give an answer (or defense)” of God, and this will require the sanctified presence of God in our hearts that will produce a spirit of meekness and fear (or respect, NIV).

The lesson points out, as do the 1888 messengers as we will see shortly, that it was never God’s intent for Israel to fight their way into and through Canaan. Their exodus from Egypt had occurred entirely without them ever taking up arms against the Egyptians. Israel had not lost one life in the Exodus because God was fighting for them. God even told them NOT to fight. 

“And Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace’” (Ex. 14:12-13).

Notice, the Lord promised to do any destruction that was necessary. And note that in the Exodus story that the Lord continued to use gradually escalating disciplinary lessons to minimize the damage to Egypt and lead the Egyptians to repentance. Every plague and every call of God via Moses to Pharaoh was meant to minimize damage and lead to repentance.

Further, God told Israel to “hold your peace”! He was telling them, “Don’t fight,” don’t take up arms to kill, let Me do the difficult work of judgment, dispossession, and—if ultimately necessary—destruction.

Israel quickly forgot this lesson in a few weeks when the Amalekites attacked them. Ellen White points out that this attack was allowed by God in the context of this great controversy because of the unbelief and murmuring of the Israelites so soon after the Exodus deliverance. If they had maintained their faith in God, they would not have been attacked. Then, sadly, rather than letting the Lord fight for them, and them “holding their peace,” they took up arms themselves, without the Lord’s direction, and fought the Amalekites. God miraculously gave them a victory, but it was not His method they were following.

“A new danger now threatened them. Because of their murmuring against Him, the Lord suffered them to be attacked by their enemies. The Amalekites came out against them and smote those who, faint and weary, had fallen into the rear.”—Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 298, emphasis supplied here and onward.

And so it was with the conquest of Canaan. God’s goal for the Canaanites was, as always, repentance (e.g., Rahab and the Gibeonites), and not destruction. And if they would not repent, then they would be dispossessed from Canaan. Annihilation was the absolute final option, based on the willful and persistent evil of the Canaanites in combination with the unbelief of Israel.

“When you go near a city to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of peace to it. And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you. Now if the city will not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it” (Deut. 20:10-12).

“I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before you” (Ex. 23:28).

Clearly, God’s goal all along was first repentance, then dispossession, and only as a final act, destruction.

We should also be aware that for 400 years prior to the arrival of the Israelites, the Holy Spirit had been striving with the Canaanites to turn them from the extreme violence and gross immorality that were the daily, continuous, generational fabric of their culture. At the end of the 400 years of the Holy Spirit’s striving with them, there was nothing more God could do. They were like those living before the flood, whose thoughts were only evil continually, and filled with violence (Gen. 6:5,11,13). The Canaanites were like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah where gang rape and incest were part of norms of society (Gen. 19). Remember that the best man in Sodom offered his daughters to be raped and his daughters later raped him. It is hard to fathom, but this was also the condition of all Canaanite society (Lev. 18, note verses 24-30).

We don’t have time to detail the sacrifice of young children to demons and the burning of children alive in those ceremonies. Suffice it to say that the onlooking universe was probably wondering why it took God so long to finally intervene and stop the evil in Canaan.

The atheist will criticize God for not intervening to stop evil, and then when God does step in to stop evil, they will criticize Him again.

The fundamental problem that God was dealing with in Israel was unbelief. The whole history of the possession of Canaan could have been different if they had had faith in God. Satan in heaven started the conflict because of unbelief. Adam and Eve brought the conflict to us through unbelief. Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Israel—when spying out the land, murmuring, rebelling, etc.,—all manifested unbelief that has constantly thwarted God’s ideal will and brought disrepute on God because of unbelief.

Notice E. J. Waggoner’s clear articulation. The 1888 messengers addressed these issues long before we were born:

“In the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, God showed how necessary it is for people, and His people above all, to fight. He showed also that it was not His purpose that Israel should do any fighting and killing on the way to the promised land, nor in the conquest of it. Think of how they came out of Egypt. Not a blow did they strike. Human arms would have been of no avail; and even if they could have been able to fight their way out, it would have been with the loss of many lives; but not a soul was left to die in Egypt when God undertook their deliverance. At every step God worked in such a way as to demonstrate that the man had no hand in the matter; and at the last the whole Egyptian army, with the king, was destroyed without the striking of a single blow. Now read how it might have been all through the subsequent history of Israel:

“‘The Lord your God which goeth before you, according to all that He did for you in Egypt before your eyes.’ Deut. 1:30. God said to them: ‘I will send My fear before thee and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive about the Hivites, the Canaanite, and the Hittite from before thee.’ Ex. 23:27, 28. Whatever instruments of warfare men may invent, their enemies can make their equal, and so meet them on even terms; but nobody can invent weapons that will be of any value against an army of hornets. The simple weapons that God calls into use are far more effective than all the ponderous machinery that men can devise. 

“How much better, then, to allow God to do our fighting for us. Yet professed Christians will declare that if we did not defend ourselves, we should doubtless lose all our possessions and even our lives. Have they forgotten the story of God's power in Egypt and at the Red Sea? or do they not believe it?” —Present Truth UK, December 12, 1901.

It is always easy to see the faults of others, particularly those of Israel and the disciples. How could they be so blind?, we ask. But inspiration tells us that we have followed a nearly identical course to them. The details are different, but the spirit of unbelief is the same. May we pray for the eye salve to see ourselves as God sees us, and a revelation of the goodness of God that will lead us to repentance.

 “For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord’s professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years. —Ellen G. White, Manuscript 4, 1883.

 

~ Robert Hunsaker